he even said that my favourite airs were "touchants et gracieux."

And so he would have left me, but I stopped him timidly, and said, "Tell
me frankly, do you think that with time and study I could compose music
such as singers equal to myself would sing to?"

"You mean as a professional composer?"

"Well, yes."

"And to the abandonment of your vocation as a singer?"

"Yes."

"My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I encouraged such a
notion: cling to the career in which you call be greatest; gain but
health, and I wager my reputation on your glorious success on the stage.
What can you be as a composer? You will set pretty music to pretty
words, and will be sung in drawing-rooms with the fame a little more or
less that generally attends the compositions of female amateurs. Aim at
something higher, as I know you would do, and you will not succeed. Is
there any instance in modern times, perhaps in any times, of a female
composer who attains even to the eminence of a third-rate opera-writer?
Composition in letters may be of no sex. In that Madame Dudevant and
your friend Madame de Grantmesnil can beat most men; but the genius of
musical composition is _homme_, and accept it as a compliment when I say
that you are essentially _femme_."

He left me, of course, mortified and humbled; but I feel he is right as
regards myself, though whether in his depreciation of our whole sex I