“But, monsieur, could an Egyptian queen, passionate, remorseful, and despairing, die in mortal anguish of body and soul to the sound of cradle-music?” “Oh, come! come! I know you have plenty of excuses, but they go for nothing. You might at least have written gracefully.” “Gladiators could die gracefully, but not Cleopatra. She had not to die in public.” “There! you _will_ exaggerate so! No one expects her to dance a quadrille. Why need you introduce such odd, queer harmonies into that invocation? I am not well up in harmony, and I must own that those outlandish chords of yours are beyond me.” I bit my lip, not daring to make the obvious reply: “Is it my fault that you know no harmony?” “And then,” he went on, “why do you introduce a totally new rhythm in your accompaniments? I never heard anything like it.” “I did not understand, monsieur, that we were not to try new modes if we were fortunate enough to find the right place for them.” “But, my dear good fellow, Madame Dabadie is a capital musician, yet one could see it took all her care and talent to get her through.” “Really, monsieur, I have yet to learn that music can be sung without either talent or care.” “Well, well! you will have the last word. But do be warned for next year. Come and see me and we will talk it over like _French gentlemen_.” And, chuckling over the point he had made (for his last words were a quotation from his own _Jean de Paris_), he walked off. Yes, Boïeldieu was right. The Parisians liked soothing music, even for the most dramatic and harrowing situations. Pretty, innocent, gentlemanly music, pleasant and making no demand upon one’s deepest feelings. Later on they wanted something different, and now they do not know what they want, or rather they want nothing at all. Ah me! what was the good God thinking of when He dropped me down in this pleasant land of France? Yet I love her whenever I can forget her idiotic politics. How gay she is, how dainty in wit, how bright in retort--how she boasts and swaggers and humbugs, royally and republicanly! I am not sure, though, that this last _is_ amusing. XV A NEW LOVE _To_ HUMBERT FERRAND. “_July 1829._--I am sorry I did not send your music before, but I may as well own that I am short of money. My father has taken another whim and sends me nothing, so I could not afford the thirty or forty francs for the copying. I could not do it myself, as I was shut up in the Institute. That abominable but necessary competition! My only chance of getting the filthy lucre, without which life is impossible. ‘Auri sacra fames quid non mortalia pectora cogis!’ My father would not even pay my expenses in the Institute. M. Lesueur did so for me.”