To increase the attraction of her salon, she has made it into a temple of music. She herself sings like a siren, and thereby attracts many people. I meet there often a pianiste, Clara Hilst, a young, good-looking German girl, very tall of figure, whom one of the painters here describes thus: "C'est beau, mais c'est deux fois grandeur naturelle." In spite of her German origin, she has met with a considerable success. As to myself, I evidently belong to the old school, for I do not understand the music of the present, which consists in a great deal of noise and confusion. Listening the last time to Miss Hilst's playing at Laura's, I thought to myself that if the piano were a man who had seduced her sister, she could not belabor him more mercilessly. She also plays on the harmonium. Her compositions are thought of a great deal here, and considered very deep; most likely because those who could not understand them, hearing them for the tenth time, hope the eleventh time will make them more intelligible. I must confess that these remarks sound malicious, perhaps bold in one who does not profess to be a judge. Yet it seems to me that music for the understanding of which one has to be a professor of the Conservatorium, and for which people intellectually developed, let alone simple folk, do not possess the key, is not what it ought to be. I am afraid that musicians following the same track will end by creating a separate caste, like the Egyptian priests, in order to keep knowledge and art exclusively to themselves. I say this because I notice that since Wagner's time, music, compared, for instance, to painting, has taken a quite different direction. The newer school of painting is narrowing spontaneously the limit of its proportions, tries to divest itself from philosophical and literary ideas; does not attempt speeches, sermons, historical events that require a commentary, or allegory that does not explain itself at a glance; in fact confines itself with the full consciousness of doing so to the reproduction of shape and color. Music since Wagner's time goes in the opposite direction,--tries to be, not only a harmony of sound, but at the same time the philosophy of harmony. I sometimes think a great musical genius of the future will say, as Hegel did in his time:-- "There was only one who understood me, and he understood me wrongly."