“An act of society between a minister of foreign relations and a minister of the interior.”
“And for preparation they have learned—”
“To roll off scales, to shine in trills, to shift their wrists. Prestidigitation instructs in housekeeping.”
“Decidedly, you Europeans have a fine logic. And the eighth girl, the one who does not become a hand-organ?”
“The piano forms her too. It answers for everything, everywhere. Beneficent machine!”
“How is that?”
“It exalts and refines. Mendelssohn surrounds them with ardent, delicate, morbid imaginings. Rossini fills their nerves with an expansive and voluptuous joy. The sharp, tormented desires, the broken, rebel cries of modern passions, rise from every strain of Meyerbeer. Mozart awakens in them a swarm of affections and dim longings. They live in a cloud of emotions and sensations.”
“The other arts would do as much.”
“Not a bit of it. Literature is a living psychology, painting a living physiology. Music alone invents all, copies nothing, is a pure dream, gives free rein to dreams.”
“And probably they strike out into it.”