voces_. It is but the dregs of the nectar
I can drink in deep draughts as I reproduce the heavenly music that I
hear! It is a patchwork of airs of which I could trace the origin. The
passage '_Gloire a la Providence_' is too much like a bit of Handel;
the chorus of knights is closely related to the Scotch air in _La Dame
Blanche_; in short, if this opera is a success, it is because the music
is borrowed from everybody's--so it ought to be popular.

"I will say good-bye to you, my dear friend. I have had some ideas
seething in my brain since the morning that only wait to soar up to
God on the wings of song, but I wished to see you. Good-bye; I must ask
forgiveness of the Muse. We shall meet at dinner to-night--but no wine;
at any rate, none for me. I am firmly resolved--"

"I give him up!" cried Andrea, flushing red.

"And you restore my sense of conscience," said Marianna. "I dared not
appeal to it! My friend, my friend, it is no fault of ours; he does not
want to be cured."

Six years after this, in January 1837, such artists as were so unlucky
as to damage their wind or stringed instruments, generally took them to
the Rue Froid-Manteau, to a squalid and horrible house, where, on the
fifth floor, dwelt an old Italian named Gambara.

For five years past he had been left to himself, deserted by his wife;
he had gone through many misfortunes. An instrument on which he had
relied to make his fortune, and which he called a _Panharmonicon_, had
been sold by order of the Court on the public square, Place du Chatelet,
together with a cartload of music paper scrawled with notes. The day
after the sale, these scores had served in the market to wrap up butter,
fish, and fruit.

Thus the three grand operas of which the poor man would boast, but which
an old Neapolitan cook, who was now but a patcher up of broken meats,
declared to be a heap of nonsense, were scattered throughout Paris on
the trucks of costermongers. But at any rate, the landlord had got his
rent and the bailiffs their expenses.

According to the Neapolitan cook--who warmed up for the street-walkers
of the Rue Froid-Manteau the fragments left from the most sumptuous
dinners in Paris--Signora Gambara had gone off to Italy with a Milanese
nobleman, and no one knew what had become of her. Worn out with
fifteen years of misery, she was very likely ruining the Count by her
extravagant luxury, for they were so devotedly adoring, that in all his
life, Giardini