excelled?"

Gambara drank a large glass of champagne, accompanying the draught by
a covert smile of approval.

"Beethoven," the Count went on, "extended the limits of instrumental
music, and no one followed in his track."

Gambara assented with a nod.

"His work is especially noteworthy for simplicity of construction and
for the way the scheme is worked out," the Count went on. "Most
composers make use of the orchestral parts in a vague, incoherent way,
combining them for a merely temporary effect; they do not persistently
contribute to the whole mass of the movement by their steady and
regular progress. Beethoven assigns its part to each tone-quality from
the first. Like the various companies which, by their disciplined
movements, contribute to winning a battle, the orchestral parts of a
symphony by Beethoven obey the plan ordered for the interest of all,
and are subordinate to an admirably conceived scheme.

"In this he may be compared to a genius of a different type. In Walter
Scott's splendid historical novels, some personage, who seems to have
least to do with the action of the story, intervenes at a given moment
and leads up to the climax by some thread woven into the plot."

"_E vero_!" remarked Gambara, to whom common sense seemed to return in
inverse proportion to sobriety.

Andrea, eager to carry the test further, for a moment forgot all his