which Beethoven's coarse gray hair nearly resembled. Some time later, when the lady was exhibiting this peculiar souvenir as a lock of Beethoven's hair, another friend, who was a party to the joke, acquainted her with the deception.
The husband of the hero worshiper wrote a letter to Beethoven charging him with discourtesy and unkindness; and Beethoven, feeling ashamed of the trick, wrote a letter of apology to the aggrieved lady, enclosing in it a real lock of his hair, and refused to receive further visits from the gentleman who had prompted the deception.
263.—STAGE CENSORSHIP.
It seems strange that at this age of the world a composer should have to ask the police what characters and incidents he may use in the plot of his opera. Yet within a short time the Italian, Leoncavallo, in putting his "I Medici" on the stage in Vienna, has had to make serious alterations in the text at the "suggestion" of the censor of that city. He had to change a scene in the last act because two priests are there depicted as murderers of Giuliano Medici. The composer, unwilling to have his work forbidden, replaced the priests by two young courtiers. Also the Credo sung in Latin in a church scene was given with German words, and each time the name of the Pope had to be uttered during the course of the piece a nobleman's name was to be substituted.
This reads like the days in 1847, when republican sentiment was rampant in Italy, and the supervision of what was given to the public in print or on the stage was very strict. When, at that time, Verdi brought out "I Masnadieri," Schiller's great tragedy of "The Robbers" arranged to a string of Italian melodies, he was obliged to cut and slash his libretto in all directions at the bidding of the police authorities for fear there would
