"Oui, mon fy! You will hear her some day—et vous m'en direz des nouvelles!"
"Why, you don't mean to say that she's got a better voice than Madame Alboni?"
"Mon ami, an apple is an excellent thing—until you have tried a peach! Her voice to that of Alboni is as a peach to an apple—I give you my word of honor! but bah! the voice is a detail. It's what she does with it—it's incredible! it gives one cold all down the back! it drives you mad! it makes you weep hot tears by the spoonful! Ah! the tear, mon fy! tenez! I can draw everything but that! Ça n'est pas dans mes cordes! I can only madden with love! But la Svengali!... And then, in the middle of it all, prrrout!... she makes you laugh! Ah! le beau rire! faire rire avec des larmes plein les yeux—voilà qui me passe!... Mon ami, when I heard her it made me swear that even I would never try to sing any more—it seemed too absurd! and I kept my word for a month at least—and you know, je sais ce que je vaux, moi!"
"You are talking of la Svengali, I bet," said Signor Spartia.
"Oui, parbleu! You have heard her?"
"Yes—at Vienna last winter," rejoined the greatest singing-master in the world. "J'en suis fou! hélas! I thought I could teach a woman how to sing till I heard that blackguard Svengali's pupil. He has married her, they say!"
"That blackguard Svengali!" exclaimed Little Billee ... "why, that must be a Svengali I knew in Paris—a famous pianist! a friend of mine!"
"That's the man! also une fameuse crapule (sauf vot' respect); his real name is Adler; his mother was a Polish singer; and he was a pupil at the Leipsic Conservatorio. But he's an immense artist, and a great singing-master, to teach a woman like that! and such a woman! belle comme un ange—mais bête comme un pot. I tried to talk to her—all she can say is 'ja wohl,' or 'doch,' or 'nein,' or 'soh'! not a word of English or French or Italian, though she sings them, oh! but divinely! It is 'il bel canto' come back to the world after a hundred years...."