Among us in the North it is quite otherwise; there music has become individual, and is called Mozart or Meyerbeer. And, more than that, when we closely examine the best which such Northern musicians offer us, we find in it Italian sunshine and orange perfume which belong much more to beautiful Italy, the home of music, than to our Germany. Yes, Italy will ever be the home of music, even if its great Maestri sink into the grave or grow silent, even though Bellini die and Rossini is mute."
"True," said Maria, "Rossini has long been still; if I am not mistaken, for ten years."
"That is perhaps a jest of his," replied Maximilian. "He wishes to show that the name of the 'Swan of Pesaro,' which has been given him, is utterly inappropriate. Swans sing at the end of their lives, but Rossini has become silent in the middle of his. And I think that there he did well, and proved himself to be a genius. An artist who has only talent feels to the end of his life the impulse to work it out; he is goaded by ambition; he feels that he is always short of perfection, and he is impelled to attain to the highest. But genius has already given us his highest possible work; he is content; he scorns the world and petty ambition, and goes home as Shakespeare did, or promenades, smiling and jesting, on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris, like Joachim
