ger's main objection to the opera, and
though he was considered Philistine once, it is amusing to see how the
tide of even popular opinion is setting his way, now.

So in the great final trio, Margarita did not show at her best,
perhaps; the situation seemed strained, unreal, and the final shriek a
little high for her. But oh, what a lovely creature she was, alone in
her cell! What lines her supple figure gave the loose prison robe,
what poignant, simple, cruelly deserted grief, poured from her big,
girlish eyes! And I do not believe anyone will ever again make such
exquisite pathos of the poor creature's crazed return to her first
meeting with her lover. So clearly did she picture to herself this
early scene that we all saw it too, and lived it over again with the
poor child.

_"Ni belle, ni demoiselle ..."_

[Illustration: IT WAS AFTER THE GARDEN LOVE-SCENE THAT SHE WON HER
RECALLS]

It was the whole of love betrayed, abandoned, yet loving and
forgiving, that little phrase; and I staunchly insist that the good
Papa Gounod deserves credit for it, sentimentalist though he be!

It was after the garden love-scene that she won her recalls, over and
over again. Above the great sheaf of hot-house daisies I sent up to
the footlights she bowed and bowed and bowed again and smiled, and the
jewels flashed on her white shoulders and the yellow braids shook at
her deep, triumphant breaths, as she beamed out over us all, the
wonderful, all-embracing smile of the born artist, that cannot be
taught. Part of that brilliant smile came straight into my misted
eyes, back in the loge, and so extraordinary is the power of such a
success, so completely does that row of footlights cut off the victor
from us who applaud below, that I, even I, who had literally taught
this girl some of the ordinary reserves of decent society, who had
found her a savage (socially speaking) only two years ago, now bowed
low to her, dazed, humble as the man beside me who never saw her
before.

How they pounded and cried, those amusing, sophisticated, babyish
Parisians!

"_Brava, la petite!_" I hear the old gentleman now that turned to me
in amazement, chattering like a well-preserved, middle-aged monkey;
"but it is that it is an American, they tell me? _Ca y est, alors!_ It
is extraordinary, then, _impayable! Je n'en reviens pas!_"

"And why, Monsieur?" I asked.

"For the reason, simply, that it is well known how they are cold,
those women, cold