I wished for nothing better.

Rameau consented with an ill grace, incessantly repeating that the composition of a man not regularly bred to the science, and who had learned music without a master, must certainly be very fine! I hastened to copy into parts five or six select passages.

Ten symphonies were procured, and Albert, Berard, and Mademoiselle Bourbonois undertook the vocal part.

Remeau, the moment he heard the overture, was purposely extravagant in his eulogium, by which he intended it should be understood it could not be my composition.

He showed signs of impatience at every passage: but after a counter tenor song, the air of which was noble and harmonious, with a brilliant accompaniment, he could no longer contain himself; he apostrophised me with a brutality at which everybody was shocked, maintaining that a part of what he had heard was by a man experienced in the art, and the rest by some ignorant person who did not so much as understand music.