queplan,
"without snoring."

"I never knew what it meant to snore," said Auber, apologetically,
"until I took to sleeping in Veron's box; and as it is, I do not snore
now except under provocation. But there would be no possibility of
sleeping by the side of Veron without snoring. You have to drown his, or
else it would awaken you."

Auber was a brilliant talker, but he scarcely ever liked to exert
himself except on the subject of music. It was all in all to him, and
the amount of work he did must have been something tremendous. There are
few students of the history of operatic music, no matter how excellent
their memories, who could give the complete list of Auber's works by
heart. We tried it once in 1850, when that list was much shorter than it
is now; there was not a single one who gave it correctly. The only one
who came within a measureable distance was Roger, the tenor.

In spite of his world-wide reputation, even at that time, Auber was as
modest about his work as Meyerbeer, but he had more confidence in
himself than the latter. Auber was by no means ungrateful to the artists
who contributed to his success; "but I don't 'coddle' them, and put
them in cotton-wool, like Meyerbeer," he said. "It is perfectly logical
that he should do so. The Nourrits, the Levasseurs, the Viardot-Garcias,
and the Rogers, are not picked up at street-corners; but bring me the
first urchin you meet, who has a decent voice, and a fair amount of
intelligence, and in six months he'll sing the most difficult part I
ever wrote, with the exception of that of Masaniello. My operas are a
kind of warming-pan for great singers. There is something in being a
good warming-pan."

At the first blush, this sounds something like jealousy in the guise of
humility, but I am certain that there was no jealousy in Auber's
character. Few men have been so uniformly successful, but he also had
his early struggles, "when perhaps I did better work than I have done
since." The last sentence was invariably trolled out when a pupil of the
Conservatoire complained to him of having been unjustly dealt with. I
remember Coquelin the younger competing for the "prize of Comedy" in '65
or '66. He did not get it, and when we came out of Auber's box at the
Conservatoire, the young fellow came up to him with tears in his eyes. I
fancy they were tears of anger rather than of sorrow.

"Ah, Monsieur Auber," he exclaimed, "that's an injustice!"

"Perhaps so, my dear lad,"