He said to me one day,

“You have written a duet for a flute and clarinet for Dorus and Leroy.  Won’t you ask them to play it at one of my evenings?”

The two great artists did not have to be urged.  Then an unheard of thing happened.  As he never had a written programme on such occasions, Rossini managed so that they believed that the duet was his own.  It is easy to imagine the success of the piece under these conditions.  When the encore was over, Rossini took me to the dining-room and made me sit near him, holding me by the hand so that I could not get away.  A procession of fawning admirers passed in front of him.  Ah!  Master!  What a masterpiece!  Marvellous!

And when the victim had exhausted the resources of the language in praise, Rossini replied, quietly: 

“I agree with you.  But the duet wasn’t mine; it was written by this gentleman.”

Such kindness combined with such ingenuity tells more about the great man than many volumes of commentaries.  For Rossini was a great man.  The young people of to-day are in no position to judge his works, which were written, as he said himself, for singers and a public who no longer exist.

“I am criticised,” he said one day, “for the great crescendo in my works.  But if I hadn’t put the crescendo into my works, they would never have been played at the Opera.”

In our day the public are slaves.  I have read in the programme of one house, “All marks of approbation will be severely repressed.”  Formerly, especially in Italy, the public was master and its taste law.  As it came before the lights were up, a great overture with a crescendo was as necessary as cavatinas, duets and ensembles:  they came to hear the singers and not to be present at an opera.  In many of his works, especially in Otello, Rossini made a great step forward towards realism in opera.  In Moise and Le Siege de Corinthe (not to mention Guillaume Tell) he rose to heights which have not been surpassed in spite of the poverty of the means at his disposal.  As Victor Hugo has victoriously demonstrated, such poverty is no obstacle to genius and wealth in them is only an advantage to mediocrity.

I was one of the regular pianists at Rossini’s.  The others were Stanzieri, a charming young man of whom Rossini was very fond and who lived but a short time, and Diemer, who was also young but already a great artist.  One or the other of us would often play at the evening entertainments the slight pieces for the piano which the Master used to write to take up his time.  I was only too willing to accompany the singers, when Rossini did not do so himself.  He accompanied them admirably for he played the piano to perfection.

[Illustration:  Mme. Patti]

Unfortunately I was not there the evening that Patti sang for Rossini the first time.  We know that after she had sung the aria from Le Barbier, he said to her, after the usual compliments,