ing
Wagner's music, could therefore not be questioned, and it was not
questioned.

He had a habit of initiating grandiose schemes for opera or concerts and of
obtaining money therefor from wealthy amateurs. After a few months he would
return the money less ten per cent. for preliminary expenses and plus his
regrets that the schemes had unhappily fallen through owing to unforeseen
difficulties. And wealthy amateurs were so astonished to get ninety per
cent. of their money back from a rascal that they thought him almost an
honest man, asked him to dinner, and listened sympathetically to details of
his next grandiose scheme. The Xavier Hall was one of the few schemes--and
the only real estate scheme--that had ever gone through. With the hall for
a centre, Xavier laid daily his plans and conspiracies for persuading the
public against its will. To this end he employed in large numbers clerks,
printers, bill posters, ticket agents, doorkeepers, programme writers,
programme sellers, charwomen, and even artists. He always had some new
dodge or hope. The hall was let several times a week for concerts or other
entertainments, and many of them were private speculations of Xavier. They
were nearly all failures. And the hall, thoroughly accustomed to seeing
itself half empty, did not pay interest on its capital. How could it? Upon
occasions there had actually been more persons in the orchestra than in the
audience. Seated in the foyer, with one eye upon a shabby programme girl
and another upon the street outside, Xavier would sometimes refer to these
facts in conversation with a titled patron, and would describe the public
realistically and without pretence of illusion. Nevertheless, Xavier had
grown to be a rich man, for percentages were his hourly food; he received
them even from programme sellers. At nine o'clock the hall was rather less
than half full, and this was rightly regarded as very promising, for the
management, like the management of every place of distraction in Paris,
held it a point of honour to start from twenty to thirty minutes late--as
though all Parisians had many ages ago decided that in Paris one could not
be punctual, and that, long since tired of waiting for each other, they had
entered into a competition to make each other wait, the individual who
arrived last being universally regarded as the winner. The members of the
orchestra were filing negligently in from the back of the vast terraced
platform, yawning