m as they
went off; and then there merely remained a petty retired tradesman of
the neighbourhood, asleep in front of a saucer.

Gagniere, quite at his ease, as if he had been at home, absolutely
indifferent to the yawns of the solitary waiter, who was stretching his
arms, glanced towards Claude, but without seeing him, for his eyes were
dim.

'By the way,' said the latter, 'what were you explaining to Mahoudeau
this evening? Yes, about the red of a flag turning yellowish amid
the blue of the sky. That was it, eh? You are studying the theory of
complementary colours.'

But the other did not answer. He took up his glass of beer, set it down
again without tasting its contents, and with an ecstatic smile ended by
muttering:

'Haydn has all the gracefulness of a rhetorician--his is a gentle
music, quivering like the voice of a great-grandmother in powdered hair.
Mozart, he's the precursory genius--the first who endowed an orchestra
with an individual voice; and those two will live mostly because they
created Beethoven. Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene
suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici! A heroic logician,
a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments,
was the starting-point of all the great ones of to-day!'

The waiter, tired of waiting, began to turn off the gas, wearily
dragging his feet along as he did so. Mournfulness pervaded the deserted
room, dirty with saliva and cigar ends, and reeking of spilt drink;
while from the hushed boulevard the only sound that came was the distant
blubbering of some drunkard.

Gagniere, still in the clouds, however, continued to ride his
hobby-horse.

'Weber passes by us amid a romantic landscape, conducting the ballads of
the dead amidst weeping willows and oaks with twisted branches. Schumann
follows him, beneath the pale moonlight, along the shores of silvery
lakes. And behold, here comes Rossini, incarnation of the musical gift,
so gay, so natural, without the least concern for expression, caring
nothing for the public, and who isn't my man by a long way--ah!
certainly not--but then, all the same, he astonishes one by his wealth
of production, and the huge effects he derives from an accumulation of
voices and an ever-swelling repetition of the same strain. These
three led to Meyerbeer, a cunning fellow who profited by everything,
introducing symphony into opera after Weber, and giving dramatic
expression to the unconsc