Yesterday--would you believe it?--I heard _Bizet's_ masterpiece for the twentieth time. Once more I attended with the same gentle reverence; once again I did not run away. This triumph over my impatience surprises me. How such a work completes one! Through it one almost becomes a "masterpiece" oneself.--And, as a matter of fact, each time I heard _Carmen_ it seemed to me that I was more of a philosopher, a better philosopher than at other times: I became so forbearing, so happy, so Indian, so _settled...._ To sit for five hours: the first step to holiness!--May I be allowed to say that Bizet's orchestration is the only one that I can endure now? That other orchestration which is all the rage at present--the Wagnerian--is brutal, artificial and "unsophisticated" withal, hence its appeal to all the three senses of the modern soul at once. How terribly Wagnerian orchestration affects me! I call it the _Sirocco._ A disagreeable sweat breaks out all over me. All my fine weather vanishes. Bizet's music seems to me perfect. It comes forward lightly, gracefully, stylishly. It is lovable, it does not sweat. "All that is good is easy, everything divine runs with light feet": this is the first principle of my æsthetics. This music is wicked, refined, fatalistic: and withal remains popular,--it possesses the refinement of a race, not of an individual. It is rich. It is definite. It builds, organises, completes: and in this sense it stands as a contrast to the polypus in music, to "endless melody." Have more painful, more tragic accents ever been heard on the stage before? And how are they obtained? Without grimaces! Without counterfeiting of any kind! Free from the _lie_ of the grand style!--In short: this music assumes that the listener is intelligent even as a musician,--thereby it is the opposite of Wagner, who, apart from everything else, was in any case the most _ill-mannered_ genius on earth (Wagner takes us as if ... he repeats a thing so often that we become desperate,--that we ultimately believe it).