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My actresses are very ugly, and Armida and her confidential lady ought to be very handsome: "However great the success of the opera of Armida, and certainly it was one of the best productions ever exhibited on the French stage, no one had a better opinion of its composition than Gluck himself. He was quite mad about it.
He embraced the smiling donor, and examined his new possession on all sides; finally he threw open the door and jumped in, exclaiming: "I feel as rich and happy as Ritter Gluck. What eyes they will make in Vienna!" "I hope," said the Countess, "when you return from Prague, to see your carriage again, all hung with wreaths."
Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and the bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains. If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue in his brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so strong nor so practiced on the mountains. He had several very bad falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much frightened at the strange noises under the ice.
Sismondi's perception of the survival of the pastoral character in this new form of entertainment is something we can appreciate, for this character has survived all the experiments made on the "Orfeo" legend and it dominates even the epoch-making work of Gluck. Symonds, who had a broader view of art than Sismondi, had no difficulty in perceiving that the true genius of this new drama was lyric.
"Thank you," said the monarch; "but don't be frightened, it's all right"; for Gluck showed manifest symptoms of consternation at this unlooked-for reply to his last observation. "Why didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "instead of sending me those rascally brothers of yours, for me to have the trouble of turning into stones? Very hard stones they make too."
His melody, too, is dignified and expressive, but he is sensibly inferior to Gluck in what may be called dramatic instinct, and this, coupled with the fact that the libretti of his operas are almost uniformly uninteresting, whereas Gluck's are drawn from the immortal legends of the past, is perhaps enough to explain why the one has been taken and the other left.
This pause gave time for Gluck to collect his thoughts a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his diminutive visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his amazement, he ventured on a question of peculiar delicacy. "Pray, sir," said Gluck, rather hesitatingly, "were you my mug?"
"That mutton looks very nice," said the old gentleman, at length. "Can't you give me a little bit?" "Impossible, sir," said Gluck. "I'm very hungry," continued the old gentleman; "I've had nothing to eat yesterday, nor to-day. They surely couldn't miss a bit from the knuckle!" He spoke in so very melancholy a tone that it quite melted Gluck's heart.
Then the old gentleman walked into the kitchen and sat himself down on the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it was a great deal too high for the roof. "You'll soon dry there, sir," said Gluck, and sat down again to turn the mutton.
He spent his evenings sometimes in the great dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour.
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