"_Choses Vues_," written "_Shows Vues_" would be a good heading for an
all-round-about theatrical and entertainment article in _Mr. Punch's_
pages. Patent this.

* * * * *

PULLER has recovered his high spirits. The temperature has changed:
the waters are agreeing with him. So is the dinner hour, which M.
HALL, our landlord, kindly permits us to have at the exceptional
and un-Royat-like hour of 7.30. At dinner he is convivial. Madame
METTERBRUN and her two daughters are discussing music. Cousin JANE
is deeply interested in listening to Madame METTERBRUN on WAGNER. The
young Ladies are thorough Wagnerites. La Contessa is unable to get
a word in about SHAKSPEARE and SALVINI, and her daughter, who,
in a quiet tone and with a most deliberate manner, announces herself
as belonging to the "Take-everything-easy Society," is not at this
particular moment interested in anything except the _menu_, which she
is lazily scrutinising through her long-handled _pince-nez_.

Mrs. DINDERLIN, having succumbed to the usual first attack of Royat
depression, is leaning back in her chair, smelling salts and nodding
assent to the Wagnerite theories, with which she entirely agrees.
For my own part, I am neutral; but as the METTERBRUNS are thorough
musicians,--the mother being a magnificent pianist, and the eldest
daughter a composer,--I am really interested in hearing all they have
to say on the subject. Our bias is, temporarily, decidedly Wagnerian,
for Cousin JANE, who is really in favour of "tune," and plenty of
it,--being specially fond of BELLINI and DONIZETTI,--in scientific
musical society has not the courage of her opinions.

From composers the conversation travels to executants, and we name the
favourite singers. After we have pretty well exhausted the list, and
objected to this one as having a head voice, or to that as using the
_vibrato_, or to the other as dwelling on an upper note ("queer sort
of existence," says PULLER, gradually coming up, as it were to the
surface to open his mouth for breath,--whereat Cousin JANE smiles, and
Miss CASANOVA lazily nods approbation of the joke--while the rest of
us ignore PULLER, putting him aside as not wanted just now,--when
down he goes again), we generally agree that GAYARRE is about the
best tenor we have had in London for some time; that SANTLEY is still
unequalled as a baritone; that there is no one now to play and sing
_Mephistopheles_ like FAURE; that M.