l spits which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder
is a heavy cart, rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable
instrument one hears. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of
rosin thrown on a flame, and the thunder is a cracker at the end of
a fusee. The theatre is furnished, moreover, with little square
trap-doors, through which the demons issue from their cave. When they
have to rise into the air, little devils of stuffed brown cloth are
substituted, or perhaps live chimney-sweeps, who swing suspended and
smothered in rags. The accidents which happen are sometimes tragical,
sometimes farcical. When the ropes break, then infernal spirits and
immortal deities fall together, laming and sometimes killing each other.
Add to all this the monsters which render some scenes very pathetic,
such as dragons, lizards, tortoises, and large toads, which promenade
the theatre with a menacing air, and display at the opera all the
temptations of St. Anthony. Each of these figures is animated by a lout
of a Savoyard, who has not even intelligence enough to play the beast."
Saint Preux is also made to say of the singers: "One sees actresses
nearly in convulsions, tearing yelps and howls violently out of their
lungs, closed hands pressed on their breasts, heads thrown back, faces
inflamed, veins swollen, and stomach panting. I know not which of the
two, eye or ear, is more agreeably affected by this display.... For my
part, I am certain that people applaud the outcries of an actress at the
opera as they would the feats of a tumbler or rope-dancer at a fair....
Imagine this style of singing employed to express the delicate gallantry
and tenderness of Quinault. Imagine the Muses, the Graces, the Loves,
Venus herself, expressing themselves this way, and judge the effect. As
for devils, it might pass, for this music has something infernal in it,
and is not ill adapted to such beings."

From this and similar accounts it will be seen that opera in France
during the latter part of the eighteenth century had, notwithstanding
Jean Jacques's garrulous sarcasms, advanced a considerable way toward
that artificial perfection which characterizes it now. Music was a topic
of discussion, which absorbed the interest of the polite world far more
than the mutterings in the politi-cal horizon, which portended so fierce
a convulsion of the social _regime_. Wits, philosophers, courtiers, and
fine ladies joined in the acrimonious con