“Ah, that’s another pair of boots. What is your pupil’s name and picture? I must not get muddled. Pingard, a pencil and paper!”
“They went off into the window corner and wrote something, then I heard the musician say—
“All right, I will vote for him.”
“Now, isn’t that disgusting? If I had had a son in the competition and they had played him a trick like that, wouldn’t it have been enough to make me chuck myself out of window?”
“Come, Pingard, calm down a bit and tell me about to-day.”
“Well, when M. Dupont had finished singing your cantata they began writing their verdicts, and I brought the hurn” (Pingard always would stick in that “h”). “There was a musician close by whispering to an architect, ‘Don’t give him your vote; he’s no good at all, and never will be. He is gone on that eccentric creature Beethoven, and we shall never get him right again.’ ‘Really!’ said the architect. ‘Yet—’ ‘Well, ask Cherubini. You will take his word, won’t you? He will tell you that Beethoven has turned the fellow’s head—’ I beg pardon,” said Pingard, breaking off his story, “but who is this M. Beethoven? He doesn’t belong to the Academy, and yet everyone seems to be talking of him.”
“No, no! He’s a German. Go on.”
“There isn’t much more. When I passed the hurn to the architect I saw that he gave his vote to No. 4 instead of to you. Suddenly one of the musicians said, ‘Gentlemen, I think you ought to know that, in the second part of the score we have just heard, there is an exceedingly clever and effective piece of orchestration to which the piano cannot do justice. This ought to be taken into consideration.’ ‘Don’t tell us a cock-and-bull story like that,’ cried another musician. ‘Your pupil has broken the rules and written two quick arias instead of one, and he has put in an extra prayer. We cannot allow rules to be set at nought like this; it would be establishing a precedent.’ ‘Oh, this is too ridiculous! What says the secretary?’ ‘I think that we might pardon a certain amount of licence, and that the jury should distinctly understand that passage that you say cannot be properly given by the piano.’ ‘No, no!’ cried Cherubini, ‘it’s all nonsense. There is no such clever piece of work. It is a regular jumble, and would be abominable for the orchestra.’
“Then on all sides rose the architects, painters, sculptors, etc., saying, ‘Gentlemen, for pity’s sake agree somehow! We can only judge by what we hear, and if you will not agree—’ And all began to talk at once, and it became distinctly a bore, so M. Régnault and two others marched out without voting. They counted the votes. You only got second prize.”
“Thanks, Pingard, but, I say—they manage things better at the Cape Academy, don’t they?”