Note 45 — Chapter IV

Of harmony, or of fine melody, or of the higher relations between poetry and music, the ostentatious Louis appears to have had no conception. In a case of rivalry, wherein Battista, a scholar of Corelli’s, played against one of the French band who was an ordinary performer, he (the royal Auditor) preferred an air in “Cadmus” (an opera of Lully’s, and not one of his best), as given by the Frenchman, to a solo (probably of Corelli’s) by the Italian,—saying, “Voila mon gout, à moi; Voila mon gout!”