ds were "The
Beggar Student," "Fra Diavolo," "L'Africaine," and "Robert le Diable."
The singers and the orchestra were not much better than those of the
lamented Doermaul-Wurzelmann troupe. The possibility of arousing them to
intensified effort or filling them with a semblance of intelligent
enthusiasm for art was even less. Privileges based on length of service
and the familiar traditions of indolence made aesthetic innovations
unthinkable.

Wherever careworn Philistines and slothful materialists occupy the seats
from which art should raise her voice, advancement, progress born of
sacrificial application, is out of the question: the most it is
reasonable to expect is a bourgeois fulfilment of inescapable duties. In
such, cases the flower droops; the dream vanishes; the free-born spirit
has the choice of fighting day in and day out against the collective
demons of pettiness and mediocrity, or of going down in admitted defeat.

"Stuff the people can easily digest, my dear boy, that is the idea,"
said the director.

"What are you so excited about? Don't you know these people haven't a
musical muscle in their whole soul?" said Lebrecht.

"For nine consecutive years I have been singing F sharp at this opera
house, and now here comes a _musicien_ from the backwoods and demands
all of a sudden that I sing F!" This was the commentary of Fraeulein
Varini, the prima donna whose outstanding bosom had long been a source
of human merriment to pit, stall, and gallery.

"Ah, he is a greasy grind determined to arrive," said the first
violinist.

"He's a spit-fire," said the lad who beat the big drum, when Daniel
threatened to box his ears for a false intonation.

The Baroness had secured a publisher in Leipzig for his cycle of sixteen
songs; the compositions were to be brought out at her expense. That did
not have the right effect: it was not something, Daniel felt, that he
had fought for and won; it was not a case where merit had made rejection
impossible. He had the feeling that he was selling his soul and was
being paid to do it. Moreover, and worst of all, he had to express his
gratitude for this act. The Baroness loved to have somebody thank her
for what she had done. She never once suspected that what Daniel wanted
was not benefactors, but people who were stirred to the depths of their
souls by his creations. The rich cannot sense the feelings of the poor;
the higher classes remain out of contact with the lower.

His e