I like instrumental music best, better than songs, better than operas, and this seems to me strange as I have absolutely no knowledge of music or of any instrument, and am not much ear. I am very hard to please in operas, perhaps because my ear is confused. I generally look at the shoulders of the people under me so as not to see the acting. Operas seem to me literally screaming farces, and I like best those that are simple or those in which the melody is strange. I have no love for orchestration, and when it makes the voice difficult to hear I abominate it. I consider chiefly (when, that is, it is not playing by itself) as an accompaniment to the singer. I suspect that this is very vulgar, and that in Wagner, for instance, the orchestration is frightfully intellectual, but then I prefer a rich voice to an intellectual singer. In waltzes, polkas, chacones, nocturnes, fugues, bourrées, sonatas, and even overtures, I take very genuine pleasure.