“Of no great account!” said Marcosini.  “Why, all the world knows that the immortal author of Don Giovanni and the Requiem was named Mozart; and I am so unhappy as not to know the name of the inexhaustible writer of quadrilles which are so popular in our drawing-rooms——­”

“Music exists independently of execution,” said the retired conductor, who, in spite of his deafness, had caught a few words of the conversation.  “As he looks through the C-minor symphony by Beethoven, a musician is transported to the world of fancy on the golden wings of the subject in G-natural repeated by the horns in E. He sees a whole realm, by turns glorious in dazzling shafts of light, gloomy under clouds of melancholy, and cheered by heavenly strains.”

“The new school has left Beethoven far behind,” said the ballad-writer, scornfully.

“Beethoven is not yet understood,” said the Count.  “How can he be excelled?”

Gambara drank a large glass of champagne, accompanying the draught by a covert smile of approval.

“Beethoven,” the Count went on, “extended the limits of instrumental music, and no one followed in his track.”

Gambara assented with a nod.

“His work is especially noteworthy for simplicity of construction and for the way the scheme is worked out,” the Count went on.  “Most composers make use of the orchestral parts in a vague, incoherent way, combining them for a merely temporary effect; they do not persistently contribute to the whole mass of the movement by their steady and regular progress.  Beethoven assigns its part to each tone-quality from the first.  Like the various companies which, by their disciplined movements, contribute to winning a battle, the orchestral parts of a symphony by Beethoven obey the plan ordered for the interest of all, and are subordinate to an admirably conceived scheme.

“In this he may be compared to a genius of a different type.  In Walter Scott’s splendid historical novels, some personage, who seems to have least to do with the action of the story, intervenes at a given moment and leads up to the climax by some thread woven into the plot.”

“E vero!” remarked Gambara, to whom common sense seemed to return in inverse proportion to sobriety.

Andrea, eager to carry the test further, for a moment forgot all his predilections; he proceeded to attack the European fame of Rossini, disputing the position which the Italian school has taken by storm, night after night for more than thirty years, on a hundred stages in Europe.  He had undertaken a hard task.  The first words he spoke raised a strong murmur of disapproval; but neither the repeated interruptions, nor exclamations, nor frowns, nor contemptuous looks, could check this determined advocate of Beethoven.