hat you have no faith
in my score; you did not even dare go to the expense of a new set. I
would willingly have paid for it myself."

And he would willingly have paid for it, because Meyerbeer was not only
very rich, but very generous.

"It is a very funny thing," said Lord ----, as he came into the Cafe de
Paris one morning, many years afterwards; "there are certain days in the
week when the Rue Le Peletier seems to be swarming with beggars, and,
what is funnier still, they don't take any notice of me. I pass
absolutely scot-free."

"I'll bet," remarked Roger de Beauvoir, "that they are playing 'Robert
le Diable' or 'Les Huguenots' to-night, and I can assure you that I have
not seen the bills."

"Now that you speak of it, they are playing 'Les Huguenots' to-night,"
replied Lord ----; "but what has that to do with it? I am not aware that
the Paris beggars manifest a particular predilection for Meyerbeer's
operas, and that they are booking their places on the days they are
performed."

"It's simply this," explained De Beauvoir: "both Rossini and Meyerbeer
never fail to come of a morning to look at the bills, and when the
latter finds his name on them, he is so overjoyed that he absolutely
empties his pockets of all the cash they contain. Notwithstanding his
many years of success, he is still afraid that the public's liking for
his music is merely a passing fancy, and as every additional performance
decreases this apprehension, he thinks he cannot be sufficiently
thankful to Providence. His gratitude shows itself in almsgiving."

I made it my business subsequently to verify what I considered De
Beauvoir's fantastical statement, and I found it substantially correct.

To return to Dr. Veron, who, there is no doubt, did the best he could
for "Robert le Diable," to which and to the talent of Taglioni he owed
his fortune. At the same time, it would be robbing him of part of his
glory did we not state that the success of that great work might have
been less signal but for him; both his predecessors and successors had
and have still equally good chances without having availed themselves
of them, either in the interest of lyrical art or in that of the public.

I compared Dr. Veron just now to Phineas Barnum, and the comparison was
not made at random. Dr. Veron was really the inventor of the newspaper
puff direct and indirect--of that personal journalism which records the
slightest deed or gesture of the popular theatrica