"A tooth-pick!"
"Yes, exactly, you will in that way do me a favour, because, at that dinner, I partook of veal, and I should very much like a tooth-pick. You see it was paternal veal, stringy, tough and salted.... Ah, so salt that I am dying of thirst, and it would be so kind of you if you would have some drinks served."
During the last intermission, some champagne had been uncorked. Wagner, who was as amused as a child, interrupted the scene at this point, crying out:
"Here it is! Here it is!"
And he poured the sparkling wine for us himself!
Then Servais became epic.
"It is very curious, Madam, but you have a butler who has a marvellous resemblance to a composer of whom they have been talking very much of late, a certain Richard Wagner. He is an extravagant person, a madman, who makes terrible music, full of discords that are worthy of cannibals and calls it 'the music of the future.'"
And he retailed, without trembling, all the venomous imbecilities that were current, and finally:...
"And it appears that this music has no airs, yet, apropos of this, something surprises me very much: this composer has brought out in Paris a so-called opera, which naturally was finely hissed, and which furnished a subject for endless witticisms: one, among others, you might, perhaps, be able to explain to me. Some one said, 'He bores me with his recitatives and wearies me with his airs'—(il me tanne aux airs).[3] But since there are no airs? and then 'tanne.' What can that word mean?"
Then the lady's wrath broke forth: