r start, will
accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district,
in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home
as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhelming them
with the importance of their past, the veterans of art--the celebrities
of a vanished generation: tenors with gray hair and false teeth; strong,
proud, old men who cough and clear their throats to show they still
preserve their sonorous baritone; retired singers who, with incredible
niggardliness, lend their savings at usury or turn shopkeepers after
dragging silks and velvets over world famous "boards."

Whenever the two dozen "stars," the stars of first magnitude that shine
in the leading operas of the globe, pass through the Gallery, they
attract as much admiring attention as monarchs appearing before their
subjects. The _pariahs_, still waiting for a contract, bow their heads
in veneration; and tell, in bated breath, of the castle on Lake Como
that the great tenor has bought, of the dazzling jewels owned by the
eminent soprano, of the graceful tilt at which the applauded baritone
wears his hat; and in their voices there is a tingle of jealousy, of
bitterness against destiny--the feeling that they are just as worthy of
such splendor--the protest against "bad luck," to which they attribute
failure. Hope forever flutters before these unfortunates, blinding them
with the flash of its golden mail, keeping them in a wretched despondent
inactivity. They wait and they trust, without any clear idea of how they
are to attain glory and wealth, wasting their lives in impotence, to die
ultimately "with their boots on," on some bench of the Gallery.

Then, there is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera,
walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their
arms, on the way to the _maestro's_; slender, light-haired English
_misses_, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned,
buxom Russian _parishnas_ who greet their acquaintances with the
sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish _senoritas_ of bold faces
and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet's
cigarette-girl--frivolous, sonorous song-birds nesting hundreds of
leagues away, and who have flown hither dazzled by the tinsel of glory.

At the close of the Carnival season, singers who have been abroad for
the winter season appear in the Gallery. They come from London, St.
Petersburg, New