of Salome at the Châtelet and while Destinn was osculating the head of Jochanaan she dropped to her knees in her loge and began to pray!
I don't blame her, said Clara. It's rotten and immoral, Salome—not the play, I don't mean that, but the music, rotten, immoral music, ruinous to the voice. Patti was probably praying God for another Rossini. Strauss's music will steal ten years from Destinn's career.
Peter eyed her with adoration. After a few more remarks, I made my departure, both of them urging me to come again at any time. Peter had not said one word about his writing, I reflected, as I walked down the stairs, and he had been very exaggerated in his praise of Clara's meagre talents.
And I did not go back. I did not see Peter again that summer; I did not see him again, in fact, for nearly six years. My further adventures, which included a trip to London, to Munich, where I attended the Wagner and Mozart festivals, to Holland and Belgium, were sufficiently diverting but, as they have no bearing on Peter's history, I shall not relate them now. They will fall into their proper chapters in my autobiography, which Alfred A. Knopf will publish in two volumes in the fall of 1936.
Although I did not learn the facts I am about to catalogue until a much later date—some of them, indeed, not until after Peter's death—this seems as good a place as any to tell what I know of his early
