Part 5 (1/2)

And this is your operatic hero today! This is your maker of ood red herring Give aro_ or the finale to _Don Giovanni_ and I will show you divine ! But I'm old-fashi+oned, I suppose I have since been told the real story of _Die Walkure_ and am dumfounded It is all worse than I expected Give ive me Mozart, let me breathe pure, sweet air after this hot-house music with its debauch of color, sound, action, and rip, because even now as I write ner, the arch fiend of

XIV

A VISIT TO THE PARIS CONSERVATOIRE

I feel very much like the tutor of Prince Karl Heinrich in the pretty play _Old Heidelberg_ After a long absence he returned to Heidelberg where his student life had been happy--or at least had seemed so to him in the latter, loneso, carousing, flirting, dueling, debt- He liked it so well that, if I mistake not, the place killed him I felt very much in the same position as the Doctor Juttner of the play when I returned to Paris last summer The _Conservatoire_ is still in its old, crooked, narrow street; it is still a noisy sheol as one enters at the gate; and there is still the sa and co Only they all seeh--know more than their daddies, and they show it As they brushed past, literally elbowing ant in their youthful exuberance And yet, and yet--_ego in Arcadia!_

I stood in the quadrangle and dreao--or is it fifty?--I had stood there before; but it was in the chillythen, and I was very ambitious The little Ohio tohose obscurity I had hoped to transforotistical boyhood--did not resentit It still stands where it was--stands still I seeone on, and yet I return to that little, dull, dilapidated town in hts, for it was there I enjoyed the purple visions of o forth into the world and make harmony I did; but my harmony exercises were always returned full of blue marks Such is life--and its lead-pencil ironies!

To be precise as well as concise, I stood in the concierge's bureau soo and wondered if the secretary would see e, parentage, nationality, qualifications, even personal habits, it occurred to hih, that I had crossed the yeasty Atlantic in a sailing vessel--for ht study the pianoforte in Paris I remember that I also navely inquired the hours when M Francois Liszt--he called hiave his lessons The secretary was too polite to laugh at hed violently several tiave piano-lessons any time, any-where; that he was to be found in WeirandStill undaunted, I insisted on enteringpublic exa, very inexperienced, and I was alone, with just enough money to keep arret in a little alley--you couldn't call it a street--just off the exterior boulevard Whether it was the Clichy or the Batignolles doesn't matter very much no I lived was another affair--and also an object lesson for the young felloho go abroad nowadays equipped withfrom my weekly expenses in my native town, I supposed that Paris could not be very old, which, partially an inheritance, partially saved and borroas to last et hos that I dared not reflect upon Sufficient for the day are the finger exercises thereof! I paid 8 a s Heavens--what a room! It was so small that I undressed and dressed in the hall, always dark, for the reason that ht piano quite crowdedout my hands touch the keyboard of the little rattletrap of an instrument But it was a piano, after all, and at it I could weaveand drinking did not cut i I had made up my mind early in my career that tobacco and beer were for rand consoler, and with coffee, soup, bread, I h my work I ate at a cafe frequented by cabiven soup, the meat of the soup--tasteless stuff--bread, and a potato

Whatman want? There were many not so well off as I I took two meals a day, the first, coffee and milk with a roll Then I starved until dark for my soup meat I recall wintry days when I stayed in bed to keep ware in the luxury of fire, and with a pillow on my stomach I did my harmony lessons The pillow, need I add, was to suppress the latent pangs of juvenile appetite My one sorroasWith my means, fresh linen was out of the question A flannel shi+rt, one; socks at intervals, and a silk handkerchief, my sole luxury, was the full extent of my wardrobe

When the wet rain splashedof the examination I was not cast down I had determined to do or die With a hundred ofnationality, I was penned up in a rooe of the Conservatory theater I looked about irls in cru their arias, while shabbily dressedboys and little, bad boys and good, slim, fat, stupid, shrewd boys, encircled e, joked me about my senile appearance I had a numbered card in my hand, No 13, and all those who saw it shuddered, for the French are as stupid as old-ti of the early Christian martyrs was experienced by all of us as a number was called aloud by a hoarse-voiced Cerberus, and the victi to the lions in the arena At last, after soht they had precedence over No 13, I went forth to e which held two grand pianofortes and several chairs A colorless-looking individual read htened, I told his and suppressed laughter in the dies--I don't kno h I could not see her She had a disagreeable laugh, and she let it loose when the assistant professor on the platform stumbled over the syllables of my very Teutonic name I explained that I had memorized a Beethoven sonata, all the Beethoven sonatas, and that was the reason I left my music at hoh I did not fail to note that it prejudiced the interrogating professor against me He evidently took me for a superior person, and he then and there s I felt, rather than saw, all this in the twinkling of an eye I sat down to the keyboard and launched forth into Beethoven's first _Sonata in F minor_, a favorite ofof a nervous lead pencil in the hand of a nervous woh the movement and then a voice punctuated the stillness

”Ah, Mozart is _so_ easy! Try so else!” And then Ito the invisible one in the gloom, I said: ”That, was _not_ Mozart, but Beethoven” There was an explosion of laughter, formidable, brutal The fe accents

”Impertinent! And what a silly beard he has!” I sat down in despair, plucking atif they looked as frivolous as they felt

Nudged from dismal reverie, I saw the colorless professor with a music book in his hand He placed it on the piano-desk and ht” Puzzled by the raphy, I peered at the notes as peers a old he is soon to lose No avail My vision was blurred, h malicious intent or stupid carelessness, the book was upside down Now, I knewfamiliar about the musical text told me that before me, inverted, was the _C-sharp Major Prelude_ in the first book of the _Well-tean that ht-hearted of caprices--I did not dare to touch the hts three thousand miles away in a little Ohio town When I had finished I arose in grim silence, took the music, held it toward the chief executioner, and said:

”And upside down!”

There was another outburst, and again that wo Yankee!”

I left the stage without bowing, jostled the stupid doorkeeper, and fled through the roohter Seizing e tried to stopfist at him He stepped back in a fine hurry, I assure you When I came to my senses I found myself on my bed, my head buried in the pillows Luckily I had no ht of ed

In the e envelope with an official seal was thrust through a crack in my door--there were many--and in it I found a notification that I was accepted as a pupil of the Paris _Conservatoire_ What a dream realized! But only to be shattered, for, so I was further inforht reading was not up to the high standard deers ht-reading trial Therefore, continued this implacable docu other pupils receiving their instruction I was to be an _auditeur_, a listener--and allaboutcannot be told in one article; suffice it to say I sat, I heard, I suffered If music-students of today experience kindred trials I pity theed for toowomen will not make the sacrifices for art we oldsters did; and it all shows in the shallow, superficial, showy, e of the day and hour

XV

TONE VERSUS NOISE

The tropical weather in the early part of last alow on the upper Wissahickon were several youngwith great gusto a lovely sonata by Dussek--the one in A-flat--when I heard laughter, and, rising, I went to thein an angryfaces of two young men

”Well!” said I, rather shortly

”It was like a whiff fro fellow