and oh, now sweet to me then were words of praise! "Another year yet,"
at length said the masters, "and you ascend your throne among the queens
of song." Then--then--I would have changed for no other throne on earth
my hope of that to be achieved in the realms of my art. And then came
that long fever: my strength broke down, and the Maestro said, "Rest, or
your voice is gone, and your throne is lost forever." How hateful that
rest seemed to me! You again came to my aid. You said, "The time you
think lost should be but time improved. Penetrate your mind with other
songs than the trash of Libretti. The more you habituate yourself to the
forms, the more you imbue yourself with the spirit, in which passions
have been expressed and character delineated by great writers, the
more completely you will accomplish yourself in your own special art of
singer and actress." So, then, you allured me to a new study. Ah! in
so doing did you dream that you diverted me from the old ambition? My
knowledge of French and Italian, and my rearing in childhood, which had
made English familiar to me, gave me the keys to the treasure-houses of
three languages. Naturally I began with that in which your masterpieces
are composed. Till then I had not even read your works. They were the
first I chose. How they impressed, how they startled me! what depths in
the mind of man, in the heart of woman, they revealed to me! But I owned
to you then, and I repeat it now, neither they nor any of the works
in romance and poetry which form the boast of recent French literature
satisfied yearnings for that calm sense of beauty, that divine joy in
a world beyond this world, which you had led me to believe it was the
prerogative of ideal art to bestow. And when I told you this with the
rude frankness you had bid me exercise in talk with you, a thoughtful,
melancholy shade fell over your face, and you said quietly, "You
are right, child; we, the French of our time, are the offspring of
revolutions that settled nothing, unsettled all: we resemble those
troubled States which rush into war abroad in order to re-establish
peace at home. Our books suggest problems to men for reconstructing
some social system in which the calm that belongs to art may be found at
last: but such books should not be in your hands; they are not for
the innocence and youth of women as yet unchanged by the systems which
exist." And the next day you brought me 'l'asso's great poem, the
"Gerusalem