In justice, I must say that Bellini has got a most beautiful effect in a really powerful incident. The lovers, dragged apart by angry parents, tear themselves free and rush into each other’s arms, crying: “We meet again in heaven.” He has used a quick, impassioned _motif_, sung in unison, that expresses most eloquently the idea of perfect union. I was unwontedly moved, and applauded heartily. Thinking that I had better know the worst that Italian opera could perpetrate, had better--as it were--drink the cup to the dregs, I went to hear Paccini’s _Vestal_. Although I knew it had nothing in common with Spontini’s opera, I little dreamed of the bitterness of the cup I had to face. Licinius, again, was a woman.... After a few minutes’ painfully strained attention I cried, with Hamlet, “Wormwood! wormwood!” and fled, feeling I could swallow no more, and stamping so hard that my great toe was sore for three days after. Poor Italy! At least, thought I, it will be better in the churches. This was what I heard. A funeral service for the elder son of Louis Bonaparte and Queen Hortense was being held. What thoughts crowded into my mind as I stood amid the flaming torches in the crape-hung church! A Bonaparte! _His_ nephew, almost his grandson, dead at twenty; his mother, with his only brother, an exile in England. I thought of the gay creole child dancing on the deck of the ship that carried her to France, untitled daughter of Madame Beauharnais, adopted daughter of the master of Europe, Queen of Holland, exiled, forgotten, bereft, without a kingdom, without a home! Oh, Beethoven! Great soul! Titan, who couldst conceive the _Eroica_ and the _Funeral March_, is not this a meet subject for thy genius?... The organist pulled out the small flute stops and fooled about over twittering little airs at the top of the key-board, exactly like wrens preening themselves on a sunny wall in winter! Again, hearing great things of the Corpus Christi music in Rome, I hurried there in company with several Italians bent on the same errand. They raved all the way of the wonders we should see, dangling before my eyes tiaras, mitres, chasubles, etc., etc. “But the music?” I asked. “Oh, signor, there will be an immense choir,” then they went back to their crosses and incense, and bell-ringing and cannon. “But the music?” I repeated. “Oh, there will be a gigantic choir.” “Well, anyway,” I thought, “things will be on a magnificent scale,” and my vivid imagination raced off to the glories of Solomon’s Temple and the colossal pageants of ancient Egypt. Cruel gift of Nature that clothes dull life in a golden veil! It simply made more appalling and impossible the shrill nasal voices of the singers, the quacking clarinets, the bellowing trombones, and the rampant vulgarity of the big drums. It was brutal unadulterated cacophony. Rome calls this military music!