The çoisRenéKing, into whose presence I came as I finished my sight-seeing, took me to his oratories: he called my attention to the crucifixes and pictures, and ascribed the honour of those innovations to me, because, said he, having read in the _Génie du christianisme_ that the Protestants had stripped their cult too bare, he had thought my remark just: he had not yet reached the excess of his Lutheran fanaticism.
In the evening, at the Opera, I had a box next to the Royal Box, situated facing the stage. I talked with the Princesses; the King went out between the acts; I met him in the corridor: he would look round to see that no one was near us and that we could not be overheard; then he would confess to me, in a whisper, his detestation of Rossini[114] and his love of Gluck[115]. He branched out into lamentations on the decadence of art, and, above all, on those gargling notes destructive of dramatic singing: he confided to me that he dared say this only to me, because of the people who surrounded him. If he saw any one coming, he hurried back into his box.
I saw a performance of Schiller's[116] Joan of Arc; the Cathedral of Rheims was perfectly copied. The King, who was seriously religious, with difficulty endured the representation of Catholic worship on the stage. Signor Spontini[117], composer of the _Vestal_, was manager of the Opera. Madame Spontini, daughter of M. Érard[118], was pleasant, but she seemed to atone for the volubility of the language of women by her own slowness in speaking: any word divided into syllables died away on her lips; if she had tried to say to you, "I love you," a Frenchman's love would have had time to fly between the commencement and the end of those three words. She was unable to finish my name, and she did not come to the end without a certain grace.
A public musical assembly took place two or three times in the week. In the evening, on returning from their work, little work-women, their baskets on their arms, journeymen artisans, carrying the tools of their trades, crowded promiscuously into a hall; on entering, they were given a written sheet of music and they joined in the general chorus with astonishing precision. It was something surprising to hear those two or three hundred blended voices. When the piece was finished, each resumed his homeward road. We are very far from this feeling for harmony, a powerful means of civilization; it has introduced into the cottage of the German peasants an education which our rustics lack: wherever there is a piano, there is no more grossness.