"Will you tell me, monsieur," said he to the composer of dance-music,
"how it is that the Napoleon of these tunes can condescend to usurp
the place of Palestrina, Pergolesi, and Mozart,--poor creatures who
must pack and vanish at the advent of that tremendous Mass for the
Dead?"

"Well, monsieur," replied the composer, "a musician always finds it
difficult to reply when the answer needs the cooperation of a hundred
skilled executants. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, without an orchestra
would be of no great account."

"Of no great account!" said Marcosini. "Why, all the world knows that
the immortal author of _Don Giovanni_ and the _Requiem_ was named
Mozart; and I am so unhappy as not to know the name of the
inexhaustible writer of quadrilles which are so popular in our
drawing-rooms----"

"Music exists independently of execution," said the retired conductor,
who, in spite of his deafness, had caught a few words of the
conversation. "As he looks through the C-minor symphony by Beethoven,
a musician is transported to the world of fancy on the golden wings of
the subject in G-natural repeated by the horns in E. He sees a whole
realm, by turns glorious in dazzling shafts of light, gloomy under
clouds of melancholy, and cheered by heavenly strains."

"The new school has left Beethoven far behind," said the
ballad-writer, scornfully.

"Beethoven is not yet understood," said the Count. "How can he be