Such is the world’s market of song-birds; the world’s Rialto of Music; the world’s recruiting office for its army of voices.  From that center, march forth to glory or to the poorhouse, all those who one fine day have touched their throats and believed they have some talent for singing.  In Milan, from every corner of the earth, all the unhappy aspirants of art, casting aside their needles, their tools or their pens, foregather to eat the macaroni of the trattoria, trusting that the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with millions.  Beginners, in the first place, who, to make their start, will accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district, in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhelming them with the importance of their past, the veterans of art—­the celebrities of a vanished generation:  tenors with gray hair and false teeth; strong, proud, old men who cough and clear their throats to show they still preserve their sonorous baritone; retired singers who, with incredible niggardliness, lend their savings at usury or turn shopkeepers after dragging silks and velvets over world famous “boards.”

Whenever the two dozen “stars,” the stars of first magnitude that shine in the leading operas of the globe, pass through the Gallery, they attract as much admiring attention as monarchs appearing before their subjects.  The pariahs, still waiting for a contract, bow their heads in veneration; and tell, in bated breath, of the castle on Lake Como that the great tenor has bought, of the dazzling jewels owned by the eminent soprano, of the graceful tilt at which the applauded baritone wears his hat; and in their voices there is a tingle of jealousy, of bitterness against destiny—­the feeling that they are just as worthy of such splendor—­the protest against “bad luck,” to which they attribute failure.  Hope forever flutters before these unfortunates, blinding them with the flash of its golden mail, keeping them in a wretched despondent inactivity.  They wait and they trust, without any clear idea of how they are to attain glory and wealth, wasting their lives in impotence, to die ultimately “with their boots on,” on some bench of the Gallery.

Then, there is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera, walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their arms, on the way to the maestro’s; slender, light-haired English misses, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian parishnas who greet their acquaintances with the sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish senoritas of bold faces and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet’s cigarette-girl—­frivolous, sonorous song-birds nesting hundreds of leagues away, and who have flown hither dazzled by the tinsel of glory.