; some even denied that there was any in
Mozart. Melody was found, we were told, only in the works of the
Italian school, of which Rossini was the leader, and in the school of
Herold and Auber, which was descended from the Italian.

The Melodists considered Rossini their standard bearer, a symbol to
rally around, even though they had just obtained good prices for his
works at the second-hand shops and now permitted them to fall into
oblivion.

From some words he let fall during our intimacy I can state that this
neglect was painful to him. But it was a just--perhaps too
just--retribution for the fatality with which Rossini, doubtless in
spite of himself, served as a weapon against Beethoven. The first
encounter was at Vienna where the success of _Tancred_ crushed forever
the dramatic ambitions of the author of _Fidelio_; later, at Paris, they
used _Guillaume Tell_ in combating the increasing invasion of the
symphony and chamber music.

I was twenty when M. and Mme. Viardot introduced me to Rossini. He
invited me to his small evening receptions and received me with his
usual rather meaningless cordiality. At the end of a month, when he
found that I asked to be heard neither as a pianist nor as a composer,
he changed his attitude. "Come and see me tomorrow morning," he said.
"We can talk then."

I was quick to respond to this flattering invitation and I found a very
different Rossini from the one of the evening. He was intensely
interested in and open-minded to ideas, which, if they were not
advanced, were at least broad and noble. He gave proof of this when
Liszt's famous _Messe_ was performed for the first time at St. Eustache.
He went to its defense in the face of an almost unanimous opposition.

He said to me one day,

"You have written a duet for a flute and clarinet for Dorus and Leroy.
Won't you ask them to play it at one of my evenings?"

The two great artists did not have to be urged. Then an unheard of thing
happened. As he never had a written programme on such occasions, Rossini
managed so that they believed that the duet was his own. It is easy to
imagine the success of the piece under these conditions. When the encore
was over, Rossini took me to the dining-room and made me sit near him,
holding me by the hand so that I could not get away. A procession of
fawning admirers passed in front of him. Ah! Master! What a masterpiece!
Marvellous!

And when the victim had exhausted the resources of the langu