welt especially on those parts in which the great composer has
shown his greatness most clearly. When he was not singing, he took the
part of the instruments; these he quickly dropped again, to return to
the vocal part, weaving one into the other so perfectly that the
connection, the unity of the whole, was preserved. He took possession
of our souls and held them in the strangest suspense I have ever
experienced. Did I admire him? Yes, I admired him. Was I moved and
melted? I was moved and melted, and yet something of the ludicrous
mingled itself with these feelings and modified their nature.

But you would have burst out laughing at the way he imitated the
different instruments. With a rough muffled tone and puffed-out
cheeks he represented horns and bassoon; for the oboe he assumed a
rasping nasal tone; with incredible rapidity he made his voice run
over the string instruments, whose tones he endeavored to reproduce
with the greatest accuracy; the flute passages he whistled; he rumbled
out the sounds of the German flute; he shouted and sang with the
gestures of a madman, and so alone and unaided he impersonated the
entire ballet corps, the singers, the whole orchestra,--in short, a
complete performance,--dividing himself into twenty different
characters, running, stopping, with the mien of one entranced, with
glittering eyes and foaming mouth.... He was quite beside himself.
Exhausted by his exertions, like a man awakening from a deep sleep or
emerging from a long period of abstraction, he remained motionless,
stupefied, astonished. He looked about him in bewilderment, like one
trying to recognize the place in which he finds himself. He awaited
the return of his strength, of his consciousness; he dried his face
mechanically. Like one who upon awaking finds his bed surrounded by
groups of people, in complete oblivion and profound unconsciousness of
what he had been doing, he cried, "Well, gentlemen, what's the matter?
What are you laughing at? What are you wondering about? What's the
matter?"

_I_--My dear Rameau, let us talk again of music. Tell me how it comes
that with the facility you display for appreciating the finest
passages of the great masters, for retaining them in your memory, and
for rendering them to the delight of others with all the enthusiasm
with which the music inspires you,--how comes it that you have
produced nothing of value yourself?

(Instead of answering me, he tossed his head, and raising h