n long ago. He used to frequent a house to
which his clever parts had opened the door. There was an only
daughter. He swore to the father and mother that he would marry
their daughter. They shrugged their shoulders, laughed in his face,
told him he was out of his senses, and I saw in an instant that his
business was done. He wanted to borrow a few crowns from me, which
I gave him. He worked his way, I cannot tell how, into some houses
where he had his plate laid for him, but on condition that he
should never open his lips without leave. He held his tongue and
ate away in a towering rage: it was excellent to watch him in this
state of constraint. If he could not resist breaking the treaty,
and ever began to open his mouth, at the first word all the guests
called out _Rameau!_ Then fury sparkled in his eyes, and he turned
to his plate in a worse passion than ever. You were curious to know
the man's name, and now you know it: 'tis Rameau, pupil of the
famous man who delivered us from the plain-song that we had been
used to chant for over a hundred years; who wrote so many
unintelligible visions and apocalyptic truths on the theory of
music, of which neither he nor anybody else understood a word; and
from whom we have a certain number of operas that are not without
harmony, refrains, random notions, uproar, triumphs, glories,
murmurs, breathless victories, and dance-tunes that will last to
all eternity; and who, after burying Lulli, the Florentine, will be
himself buried by the Italian virtuosi,--a fate that he had a
presentiment of, which made him gloomy and chagrined; for nobody is
in such ill-humour, not even a pretty woman who awakes with a
pimple on her nose, as an author threatened with loss of his
reputation.

He comes up to me. Ah, ah! here you are, my philosopher! And what
are you doing among this pack of idlers? Can it be possible that
you too waste your time in pushing the wood?...

_I._--No, but when I have nothing better to do, I amuse myself by
watching people who push it well.

_He._--In that case you are amusing yourself with a vengeance.
Except Philidor and Legal, there is not one of them who knows
anything about it.

_I._--What of M. de Bussy?

_He._--He is as a chess-player what Mademoiselle Clairon is as an
actr