any dancing?"

"Why, indeed?" grumbled Wagner. "Goethe had much better have let
Marguerite die on her straw and not of send her up in clouds of glory like
the Madonna to heaven, and with ballet music."

"Well," said the Princess, "I don't see any difference between a ballet in
heaven and a ballet in Venusberg."

The Emperor has made a fine _coup de popularite_. He refused to have
the new boulevard named after his mother, and cleverly proposed it to be
called Richard Lenoir, the man who led his fellow-workmen in the
Revolution.

We were invited to one of Rossini's Saturday evenings. There was a queer
mixture of people: some diplomats, and some well-known members of society,
but I fancy that the guests were mostly artists; at least they looked so.
The most celebrated ones were pointed out to me. There were Saint-Saens,
Prince Poniatowski, Gounod, and others. I wondered that Richard Wagner was
not there; but I suppose that there is little sympathy between these two
geniuses.

Prince Metternich told me that Rossini had once said to him that he wished
people would not always feel obliged to sing his music when they sang at
his house. "J'acclamerais avec delice 'Au clair de la lune,' meme avec
variations," he said, in his comical way. Rossini's wife's name is Olga.
Some one called her Vulgar, she is so ordinary and pretentious, and would
make Rossini's home and salon very commonplace if it were not that the
master glorified all by his presence. I saw Rossini's writing-table, which
is a thing never to be forgotten: brushes, combs, toothpicks, nails, and