“Yes,” he said, “it is quite beautiful.... Orpheo is near enough to the real Orpheo for the expression of grief rendered as we have just heard it to overwhelm the senses.”
Juliette appreciated Wagner’s art, though she was far too much of a Latin to prefer this Teuton to Berlioz. “Berlioz,” she wrote, “is the initiator, he stands above all others. He can well afford to let the Wagnerian fanatics assert that Wagner’s is the music of the future.”
Juliette first met Wagner and heard him play at the Comtesse de Charnacé’s. The Comtesse was Mme. d’Agoult’s daughter by her husband, the Comte d’Agoult, and, strangely enough it may seem to us, she was in the habit of receiving her half-sister, daughter of Liszt and Mme. d’Agoult, and wife of the celebrated pianist, Hans von Bülow. Von Bülow was Wagner’s shadow; and it was Von Bülow who brought Wagner to the Rue Vaugirard. About twenty-five people were present. Juliette thought Wagner’s enormous head not lacking in character, at least the upper part of it. His forehead was broad and high. His questioning eyes were now tender, now hard; but his ugly mouth, with its sarcastic expression, seemed to press back his cheeks and like nut-crackers to bring together an authoritative chin and an arrogant nose. She found him caustic and witty as he talked of everything and seemed to know everything. Then suddenly he would become vulgar, personal, conceited.
He played the Prelude to Lohengrin. “Never has anything been written to equal it,” exclaimed Von Bülow.
“I alone,” said Wagner ..., “can do these things. No one else in the world would dare to attempt them.”
Then laughing, and, with a strong Germanic accent, he added: “People can never tell whether I am hydrocephalous or a man of genius.”
“Something of the first,” whispered Juliette to Mme. d’Agoult.
“A great deal of the second,” rejoined the Countess, rather severely.
Wagner, who was extremely quick of hearing, had caught this whispered conversation.