for there is no gaiety, whether for _him_, or for the listening public, of a natural, fresh and youthful character; there is no frank and confiding attachment; there is no serene and grateful pleasure; there is no sadness that pours itself out for the sake of consolation; no joys but such as are like scentless flowers, that one picks to pieces in sport; no passion save what is akin to delirium, debauchery, or deadly poison! What the public must have, and the artist, are your _pizzicati_, your contrasts, your satanic schooleries, your touches of the extravagant;—’tis a dose of madness or despair,—’tis an agony—the sensation of a man suspended over a bottomless abyss;—’tis a violin, which is at once a flute, a bass, a guitar, and a whole orchestra, intermixed, confounded, and getting into harmony only by fits;—’tis a professional visage, revealing a wounded and withered heart; ’tis a human skeleton—death, in grotesque attire; ’tis the “talented exhibition” of a rebellious angel, who gnashes his teeth, and howls, and jeers! And so the public, seeing their artist hold forth to them, under convenient forms, all possible monstrosities, seem to applaud themselves inwardly, and to exclaim instinctively, ‘Here is our interpreter, our plaything, and our own handywork!’ “Of such a public, and such an artist, how saddening the sight!... The public, made up of idlers—of beings isolated, selfish, cold, corrupt—must be _amused_, forsooth! and the artist exhausts his taste and his sentiment, and well nigh perspires blood and water, to comply with their exactions—to _amuse_ them!—and if he attain this end, the public clap their hands, the manager of the theatre counts out to him a heap of gold, and he goes away, with his ears deafened at the noise which has surrounded him, and which, for a moment, (it may be), has made his heart beat high;—he goes away, with a loving grasp tightened over the coin he has so hardly won; and inwardly exclaims, with a smile of pity, ‘The blockheads—the barbarians! Who is there among them that can comprehend me—that can _feel_ my intentions?’—and then the home-returning public, selfish to the very soul, indemnify themselves for their fingers’-end applause, by sottish contempt, by remarks that are empty, or worse—that are scornful, bitter, shocking, disgusting even—such as those which may have been buzzed into one’s ears in Italy or in Paris, but varied in a hundred ways, and aggravated at will, just as _he_ varies and enlarges, twists and turns, beneath his magic bow, a subject of apparently the most simple and insignificant kind. And now the voices most distinguishable among the ebbing crowd murmur out the words, ‘Gambler! Libertine!’ or worse.... And the privileged public resort again to the theatre, to admire the talent of him whom they comprehend not; and the artist returns in like manner, to _amuse_ those who provoke his pity, and whom he beholds so far below him! Thus, we