Hence those ambitious and perfectly uninteresting performances with which we are constantly bored in the fashionable musical world.  It is self-love which gives us those flat, empty adagios, those cold, keen runs and embellishments.  Love of the art has more modesty in the undertaking, and more warmth in the execution.  George says that she has heard all the greatest singers of modern times, but that her grandmother, in her old age, singing fragments of the operas of her own time in a cracked and trembling voice, and accompanying herself on an old harpsichord with three fingers of a palsied hand, always remained to her a type of art above all others.

The first volume of these memoirs gives interesting notice of the friendships which surrounded Madame Dupin during her married life.  These embraced various celebrities, historical and literary.  Her husband was the congenial friend of the best minds of the day, and was able, among other things, to procure her the difficult pleasure of an interview with Jean Jacques Rousseau, then living near her in great spleen and retirement.  We cannot do better than to give the relation of this in her own words, as preserved by her grand-daughter.  It is highly characteristic of the parties and of the times.

“Before I had seen Rousseau, I had read the ‘Nouvelle Heloise’ in one breath, and at the last pages I found myself so overcome that I wept and sobbed.  My husband gently rallied me for this; but that day I could only cry from morning till evening.  During this, M. de Francueil, with the address and the grace which he knew how to put into everything, ran to find Jean Jacques.  I do not know how he managed it, but he carried him off, he brought him, without having communicated to me his intention.

“I, unconscious of all this, was not hastening my toilet.  I was with Madame d’Esparbes de Lussan, my friend, the most amiable woman in the world, and the prettiest, though she squinted a little, and was slightly deformed. M. de Francueil had come several times to see if I was ready.  I did not observe any marks of haste in my husband, and did not hurry myself, never suspecting that he was there, the sublime Bear, in my parlor.  He had entered, looking partly foolish and partly cross, and had seated himself in a corner, showing no other impatience than that about dinner, in order to get away very soon.

“Finally, my toilet finished, and my eyes still red and swollen, I go to the parlor.  I see a little man, ill-dressed and scowling, who rose clumsily, who chewed out some confused words.  I look, and I guess who it is,—­I try to speak,—­I burst into tears.  Francueil tries to put us in tune by a pleasantry, and bursts into tears.  We could not say anything to each other.  Rousseau pressed my hand without addressing me a single word.  We tried to dine, to cut short all these sobs.  But I could eat nothing.  M. de Francueil could not be witty that day, and Rousseau escaped directly on leaving the table, without having said a word,—­displeased, perhaps, with having found a new contradiction to his claim of being the most persecuted, the most hated, and the most calumniated of men.”