Every time a popular tenor sang, the public testified to the utmost their enjoyment and appreciation. The tenor was not bound to any land. He needed no majority, no army, no colour-box. He was the only man who could make a fortune with absolutely no stock-in-trade except what nature and art had given him. He was equally effective by the Tiber or the Neva, in Buda-Pesth or Chicago. Climates or tongues had no power of limiting him. English, Italian, French, German, it did not matter what his nationality, or what his language, he appealed to all hearts, to all peoples. In the face of this universality of tenors in power, what a limited hole-and-corner thing the art of medicine seemed. It was all locked up in crooked words, in dreary books. Its terminology was supplied by the inarticulated bones of dead languages. The greatest glory it afforded was an article in a learned magazine, a reference to one's labour by some distinguished fellow-worker. How had he ever come to think of this as a career? It was no livelier than living in a vault, spending one's life in a charnel-house. Bah! He would get away from this gloomy climate, and this still more gloomy idea of medicine. He would change his mind again. A man had a perfect right to change his mind. He would go south once more, to the land of colour and song, and devote himself anew to the glorious art he had long ago selected. He would be a singer--a tenor, a glorious tenor, an unrivalled tenor. He would be a head and shoulders taller than any of the pigmy tenors now on the boards. He would be town talk, world talk. He would be a second and a greater Mario. Everything was in his favour. He had a fine voice, fine manner, good stage presence, and he felt sure he could act. He would be greater than Eugene. He had more go and dash about him than Eugene, and there was not much to choose between their voices. Some people said Eugene's voice was more sympathetic and tender than his, and that he never could approach the Irishman in _cantabile_ singing. But, after all, who cared much about _cantabile_ singing? What people liked most was to hear the whole organ, the full chest; and in the higher register of the chest he could walk away from Eugene. He would not deny to himself that the quality of Eugene's voice was superior. It might be Eugene would never fail to melt his audience, but he, Lavirotte, could rouse them, and in martial music would make Eugene seem a tame and somewhat faded hero.