Two dilettanti have slipped in by favor. One is a young piano teacher of German extraction, who raves about the music of the future. The other is an amateur, well known in Brussels by the nickname of "l'ami de Rossini."
The instruments are tuned; here and there a violin practices a scale. The gas jets chirp faintly. The male chorus stamp their feet to keep warm, and rub their red knuckles together. De Sterny is letting himself be waited for.
The friend of Rossini makes up to the lady soloists.
"Madame," he says to the Alto, whose engagement at the "Monnaie" he had helped to bring about, "Madame, I pity you. De Sterny is an exponent of this new music of the future. His compositions are among the most ungrateful tasks ever set the human throat. One only needs to sing them to expiate by penance all one's musical pleasures."
"You are too severe, monsieur," said the Alto. "No one can wonder at the 'friend of Rossini' for hating the music of the future, and I grant that some numbers of this Oratorio are quite astonishingly dull. But with some of the others, monsieur, I predict that you will have to confess yourself in sympathy."
"I, confess myself in sympathy with the music of the future!"
"Well, well," said the Alto, soothingly, "up to a certain point I agree with your aversion, but you must grant all the same that Wagner and Berlioz are composers of genius, and that the music of the future has opened new regions of art."
"What has it opened? A parade ground for pretentious mediocrity! I'll grant this much, that Wagner and Berlioz are ill-doers of genius. But the 'school!' and this new invention they call descriptive music! An insurrection of fiddles screaming over against one another! and they give it names. 'Battleo of the Horatii'--'Eruption of Vesuvius'--so that the audience may have something to think about since they can't feel anything, except headache!"
L'ami de Rossini laughed very much at his own joke.
"H'm!-m! and this fine work of de Sterny's," he began again, "I suppose it consists of splendid paraphrases upon poverty of thought."