But nowadays the
old-fashioned beauty of this music seemed to have become a trifle stale.
Having forfeited, some years back, the esteem of 'really musical' people,
it had lost its distinction and its charm, and even those whose taste was
frankly bad had ceased to find in it more than a moderate pleasure to
which they hardly liked to confess. Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive
glance behind her. She knew that her young daughter-in-law (full of
respect for her new and noble family, except in such matters as related to
the intellect, upon which, having 'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek
alphabet, she was specially enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite
ill when she heard him played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny
of this Wagnerian, who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her
own contemporaries, Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of
exquisite memories and sensations. The Princesse des Laumes was touched
also. Though without any natural gift for music, she had received, some
fifteen years earlier, the instruction which a music-mistress of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who had been, towards the end of
her life, reduced to penury, had started, at seventy, to give to the
daughters and granddaughters of her old pupils.
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