As the strange discords “howled beneath his fingers,” Gambara, we are told, almost fainted with intoxicating joy. Furthermore, he had a raucous voice,—the true voice of a composer. “He stamped, panted, yelled; his fingers equalled in rapidity the forked head of a serpent; finally, at the last howl of the piano, he threw himself backward, and let his head fall upon the back of his arm-chair.” Poor Gambara! poor Kapellmeister Kreisler! And how much it all sounds like the early stories told of Richard Wagner trying to express on the treble keyboard his gigantic dreams, his tonal epics: and for such supercilious men and critics as Mendelssohn, Hiller, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Schumann! Signor Giardini, the Italian cook in Gambara, stands for a portrait of the true musical Philistine; he has a pretty taste in music, but melody, or what he conceives to be melody, is his shibboleth. Andrea Marcosini, a nobleman in pursuit of Gambara’s wife, and a musical dilettante, finds Giardini a gabbling boaster. “Yes, your excellency, in less than a quarter of an hour you will know what kind of a man I am. I have introduced into the Italian kitchen refinements that will surprise you. I am a Neapolitan,—that is to say, a born cook. But what good is instinct without science? Science? I have passed thirty years in acquiring it, and see what it has brought me to. My history is that of all men of talent. My experiments and tests have ruined three restaurants established successfully at Naples, Parma, and Rome.” He keeps a little place where Italian refugees and men who have failed in the black, weltering symphony of Parisian life gather and feed at dusk. It is a queer, interesting crew. Here is a poor composer—not Gambara—of romances. “You see what a florid complexion, what self-satisfaction, how little there is in his features, so well disposed for romance. He who accompanies him is Gigelmi.” The latter is a deaf conductor of orchestra. Then there is Ottoboni, a political refugee—a nice, clean old gentleman, but considered dangerous by the Italian government. A journalist is discovered at the table, the poorest of the lot. He tells the truth about the theatrical performances, hence writes for an obscure journal and is miserably paid. Enter Gambara. He is bald, about forty, a man of refinement, with brains,—a sufferer in a word. Though his dress was free from oddity, the composer’s appearance was not lacking in nobility. A conversation follows, merging into a debate, modulating angrily into a furious discussion about art. It is wonderfully executed.