the music—­even the best of it—­even Pauline Lucca’s part’—­here she looked up, and shot me a quick glance across the table—­’I have mere music in my ears.  Nothing more.  Mere music!’ The professor of biology, who was gifted with, a sense of music and had studied it scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of salad.  Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tete-a-tete.  ’Gracious madam, I agree with you.  He who seeks from music more than music gives, is on the quest—­how shall I put it?—­of the Holy Grail.’  ’And what,’ I struck in, ‘is this minimum or maximum that music gives?’ ‘Dear young friend,’ replied the professor, ’music gives melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be fashioned.  Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in themselves, interesting for their history and classification, so is it with music.  You must not seek an intellectual meaning.  No; there is no Inhalt in music’ And he hummed contentedly the air of ’Voi che sapete.’  While he was humming, Miranda whispered to me across the table, ‘Separate the Lucca from the music.’  ‘But,’ I answered rather hotly, for I was nettled by Miranda’s argument ad hominem, ’But it is not possible in an opera to divide the music from the words, the scenery, the play, the actor.  Mozart, when he wrote the score to Da Ponte’s libretto, was excited to production by the situations.  He did not conceive his melodies out of connection with a certain cast of characters, a given ethical environment.’  ’I do not know, my dear young friend,’ responded the professor, ’whether you have read Mozart’s Life and letters.  It is clearly shown in them how he composed airs at times and seasons when he had no words to deal with.  These he afterwards used as occasion served.  Whence I conclude that music was for him a free and lovely play of tone.  The words of our excellent Da Ponte were a scaffolding to introduce his musical creations to the public.  But without that carpenter’s work, the melodies of Cherubino are Selbst-staendig, sufficient in themselves to vindicate their place in art.  Do I interpret your meaning, gracious lady?’ This he said bending to Miranda.  ‘Yes,’ she replied.  But she still played with her wineglass, and did not look as though she were quite satisfied.  I meanwhile continued:  ’Of course I have read Mozart’s Life, and know how he went to work.  But Mozart was a man of feeling, of experience, of ardent passions.  How can you prove to me that the melodies he gave to Cherubino had not been evolved from situations similar to those in which Cherubino finds himself?  How can you prove he did not feel a natural appropriateness in the motifs he selected from his memory for Cherubino?  How can you be certain that the part itself did not stimulate his musical faculty to fresh and still more appropriate creativeness?  And if we must fall back on documents, do you remember what he said himself about the love-music