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omething at all events." So the twain repaired to the theatre to hear Spontini's "Olympie." All went well till one of the overwhelming finales, which happened to be played that evening more _fortissimo_ than usual. The patient turned around beaming with delight, exclaiming, "Doctor, I can hear." As there was no reply, the happy patient again said, "Doctor, I tell you, you have cured me." A blank stare alone met him, and he found that the doctor was as deaf as a post, having fallen a victim to his own prescription. The German wits had a similar joke afterward at Halevy's expense. The "Punch" of Vienna said that Halevy made the brass play so loudly that the French horn was actually blown quite straight. Among the works produced at Berlin were "Nurmahal," in 1825; "Alcidor," the same year; and in 1829, "Agnes von Hohenstaufen." Various other new works were given from time to time, but none achieved more than a brief hearing. Spontini's stiff-necked and arrogant will kept him in continual trouble, and the Berlin press aimed its arrows at him with incessant virulence: a war which the composer fed by his bitter and witty rejoinders, for he was an adept in the art of invective. Had he not been singularly adroit, he would have been obliged to leave his post. But he gloried in the disturbance he created, and was proof against the assaults of his numerous enemies, made so largely by his having come of the French school, then as now an all-sufficient cause of Teutonic dislike. Spontini's unbending intolerance, however, at last undermined his musical supremacy, so long held good with an iron hand; and an intrigue headed by Count Bruehl, intendant of the Royal Theatre, at last obliged him to resign after a rule of a score of years. His influence on the lyric theatre of Berlin, however, had been valuable, and he had the glory of forming singers among the Prussians, who until his time had thought more of cornet-playing than of beautiful and true vocalization. The Prussian King allowed him on his departure a pension of 16,000 francs. When Spontini returned to Paris, though he was appointed member of the Academy of Fine Arts, he was received with some coldness by the musical world. He had no little difficulty in getting a production of his operas; only the Conservatory remained faithful to him, and in their hall large audiences gathered to hear compositions to which the opera-house denied its stage. New idols attracted the public, an
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