replied Auber; "but remember that the verdict
on all things in this world may be summed up in the words you have just
uttered, 'It's an injustice.' Let me give you a bit of advice. If you
mean to become a good Figaro, you must be the first to laugh at an
injustice instead of weeping over it." Wherewith he turned his back upon
the now celebrated comedian. In the course of these notes I shall have
occasion to speak of Auber again.

Auber need not have generalized to young Coquelin; he might have cited
one instance of injustice in his own profession, to which, fortunately,
there was no parallel for at least thirty years. In the forties the
critics refused to recognize the genius of Felicien David, just as they
had refused to recognize the genius of Hector Berlioz. In the seventies
they were morally guilty of the death of Georges Bizet, the composer of
"Carmen."

I knew little or nothing of Hector Berlioz, but I frequently met
Felicien David at Auber's. It was a pity to behold the man even after
his success--a success which, however, did not put money in his purse.
His moral sufferings, his material privations, had left their traces but
too plainly on the face as well as on the mind. David had positively
starved in order to buy the few books and the paper necessary to his
studies, and yet he had the courage to say, "If I had to begin over
again, I would do the same." The respectability that drives a gig when
incarnated in parents who refuse to believe in the power of soaring of
their offspring because they, the parents, cannot see the wings, has
assuredly much to answer for. Flotow's father stops the supplies after
seven years, because his son has not come up to time like a race-horse.
Berlioz' father does not give him so long a shrift; he allows him three
months to conquer fame. Felicien David had no father to help or to
thwart him in his ambition. He was an orphan at the age of five, and
left to the care of a sister, who was too poor to help him; but he had
an uncle who was well-to-do, and who allowed him the magnificent sum of
fifty francs per month--for a whole quarter--and then withdrew it,
notwithstanding the assurance of Cherubini that the young fellow had the
making of a great composer in him. And the worst is that these young
fellows suffer in silence, while there are hundreds of benevolent rich
men who would willingly open their purses to them. When they do reveal
their distressed condition, it is generally to s