th time, hope the eleventh time will make them more
intelligible. I must confess that these remarks sound malicious,
perhaps bold in one who does not profess to be a judge. Yet it seems
to me that music for the understanding of which one has to be a
professor of the Conservatorium, and for which people intellectually
developed, let alone simple folk, do not possess the key, is not what
it ought to be. I am afraid that musicians following the same track
will end by creating a separate caste, like the Egyptian priests, in
order to keep knowledge and art exclusively to themselves.

I say this because I notice that since Wagner's time, music, compared,
for instance, to painting, has taken a quite different direction. The
newer school of painting is narrowing spontaneously the limit of its
proportions, tries to divest itself from philosophical and literary
ideas; does not attempt speeches, sermons, historical events that
require a commentary, or allegory that does not explain itself at a
glance; in fact confines itself with the full consciousness of doing
so to the reproduction of shape and color. Music since Wagner's time
goes in the opposite direction,--tries to be, not only a harmony of
sound, but at the same time the philosophy of harmony. I sometimes
think a great musical genius of the future will say, as Hegel did in
his time:--

"There was only one who understood me, and he understood me wrongly."

Miss Hilst belongs to the category of musical philosophers, which is
all the more strange, as her mind is full of simplicity. This caryatid
has the limpid, innocent eyes of a child, and is unsophisticated and
sincere like one. She is surrounded by a great throng of admirers, who
are attracted by her beauty, and more still by the nimbus that makes a
woman touched by the hand of the Muses always a centre of attraction;
nevertheless, not a breath has touched her fair fame. Even the women
speak well of her, for she disarms them by her invariable good humor
and sincerity. She is as gay as any street urchin, and I have seen her
laughing as schoolgirls laugh, the tears running down her face, which
would be considered bad form in anybody but an artist, who is a
privileged person. Hers, from a moral point of view, is a beautiful
character, though beyond her art, she is not endowed with great
intellectual gifts. Laura, who, in the main, does not like her, hinted
to me several times that the caryatid is in love with me. I do not
be