It is understood that this argument failed in its effect, for, after all, a hiss is not to be in such wise excused or explained away; its application is far too direct and personal.  “Ladies and gentlemen, it was not I that shot the arrow!” said Braham to his audience, when some bungling occurred in the course of his performance of William Tell, and the famous apple remained uninjured upon the head of the hero’s son.  If derision was moved by this bungling, still more did the singer’s address and confession excite the mirth of the spectators.  To another singer, failure, or the dread of failure, was fraught with more tragic consequence.  For some sixteen years Adolphe Nourritt had been the chief tenor of the Paris Opera House.  He had “created” the leading characters in “Robert,” “Les Huguenots,” “La Juive,” “Gustave,” and “Masaniello.”  He resigned his position precipitately upon the advent of Duprez.  The younger singer afflicted the elder with a kind of panic.  The news that Duprez was among his audience was sufficient to paralyse his powers, to extinguish his voice.  He left France for Italy.  His success was unquestionable, but he had lost confidence in himself; a deep dejection settled upon him, his apprehension of failure approached delirium.  At last he persuaded himself that the applause he won from a Neapolitan audience was purely ironical, was but scoffing ill-disguised.  At five in the morning, on the 8th of March, 1839, he flung himself from the window of an upper floor, and was picked up in the street quite dead.  Poor Nourrit! he was a man of genius in his way; but for him there would have been no grand duet in the fourth act of “Les Huguenots,” no cavatina for Eleazar in “La Juive;” and to his inventiveness is to be ascribed the ballet of “La Sylphide,” which Taglioni made so famous.

It is odd to hear of an actor anxious for “goose,” and disappointed at not obtaining it.  Yet something like this happened once during the O.P. riots.  Making sure that there would be a disturbance in the theatre, Mr. Murray, one of John Kemble’s company, thought it needless to commit his part to memory; he was so certain that he should not be listened to.  But the uproar suddenly ceased; there was a lull in the storm.  The actor bowed, stammered, stared, and was what is called in the language of the theatre “dead stuck.”  However, his mind was soon at ease; to do him justice the audience soon hissed him to his heart’s content, and perhaps even in excess of that measure.  Subsequently he resolved, riot or no riot, to learn something of his part.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

EPILOGUES.