ctable' audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the
boards and withdrawn her small talents in disgust. 'And how dare you,'
said the manager, 'how dare you, madam, without a notice, withdraw
yourself from your theatrical duties?' 'I was hissed, sir.' 'And you
have the presumption to decide upon the taste of the town?' 'I don't
know that, sir, but I will never stand to be hissed,' was the
rejoinder of Young Confidence. Then, gathering up his features into
one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory
indignation--in a lesson never to have been lost upon a creature less
forward than she who stood before him--his words were these: 'They
have hissed ME!'"

It is understood that this argument failed in its effect, for, after
all, a hiss is not to be in such wise excused or explained away; its
application is far too direct and personal. "Ladies and gentlemen, it
was not I that shot the arrow!" said Braham to his audience, when some
bungling occurred in the course of his performance of William Tell,
and the famous apple remained uninjured upon the head of the hero's
son. If derision was moved by this bungling, still more did the
singer's address and confession excite the mirth of the spectators. To
another singer, failure, or the dread of failure, was fraught with
more tragic consequence. For some sixteen years Adolphe Nourritt had
been the chief tenor of the Paris Opera House. He had "created" the
leading characters in "Robert," "Les Huguenots," "La Juive,"
"Gustave," and "Masaniello." He resigned his position precipitately
upon the advent of Duprez. The younger singer afflicted the elder with
a kind of panic. The news that Duprez was among his audience was
sufficient to paralyse his powers, to extinguish his voice. He left
France for Italy. His success was unquestionable, but he had lost
confidence in himself; a deep dejection settled upon him, his
apprehension of failure approached delirium. At last he persuaded
himself that the applause he won from a Neapolitan audience was purely
ironical, was but scoffing ill-disguised. At five in the morning, on
the 8th of March, 1839, he flung himself from the window of an upper
floor, and was picked up in the street quite dead. Poor Nourrit! he
was a man of genius in his way; but for him there would have been no
grand duet in the fourth act of "Les Huguenots," no cavatina for
Eleazar in "La Juive;" and to his inventiveness is to be ascribed the
ballet of "La Sylph