ying dead at my feet than see them listening to the garbage of that
shameless fellow."

The play was The Doll's House and the author was Henrik Ibsen.

Professor Erlin classed him with Richard Wagner, but of him he spoke not
with anger but with good-humoured laughter. He was a charlatan but a
successful charlatan, and in that was always something for the comic
spirit to rejoice in.

"Verruckter Kerl! A madman!" he said.

He had seen Lohengrin and that passed muster. It was dull but no worse.
But Siegfried! When he mentioned it Professor Erlin leaned his head on
his hand and bellowed with laughter. Not a melody in it from beginning to
end! He could imagine Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing till
his sides ached at the sight of all the people who were taking it
seriously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He lifted
his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and drank till the
glass was empty. Then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said:

"I tell you young people that before the nineteenth century is out Wagner
will be as dead as mutton. Wagner! I would give all his works for one
opera by Donizetti."

XXV

The oddest of Philip's masters was his teacher of French. Monsieur Ducroz
was a citizen of Geneva. He was a tall old man, with a sallow skin and
hollow cheeks; his gray hair was thin and long. He wore shabby black
clothes, with holes at the elbows of his coat and frayed trousers. His
linen was very dirty. Philip had never seen him in a clean collar. He was
a man of few words, who gave his lesson conscientiously but without
enthusiasm, arriving as the clock struck and leaving on the minute. His
charges were very small. He was taciturn, and what Philip learnt about him
he learnt from others: it appeared that he had fought with Garibaldi
against the Pope, but had left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all
his efforts for freedom, by which he meant the establishment of a
republic, tended to no more than an exchange of yokes; he had been
expelled from Geneva for it was not known what political offences. Philip
looked upon him with puzzled surprise; for he was very unlike his idea of
the revolutionary: he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite;
he never sat down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met
Philip in the street took off his hat with an elaborate gesture; he never
laughed, he never even smiled. A more complete imaginat