He listened to them patiently: he complimented me on my accuracy in the mechanical laws of composition; he even said that my favourite airs were "touchants et gracieux." And so he would have left me, but I stopped him timidly, and said, "Tell me frankly, do you think that with time and study I could compose music such as singers equal to myself would sing to ?" "You mean as a professional composer ?" "Well, yes." "And to the abandonment of your vocation as a singer ?" "Yes." "My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I encouraged such a notion: cling to the career in which you call be greatest; gain but health, and I wager my reputation on your glorious success on the stage.
What can you be as a composer?
You will set pretty music to pretty words, and will be sung in drawing-rooms with the fame a little more or less that generally attends the compositions of female amateurs.

Aim at something higher, as I know you would do, and you will not succeed.

Is there any instance in modern times, perhaps in any times, of a female composer who attains even to the eminence of a third-rate opera-writer?
Composition in letters may be of no sex.

In that Madame Dudevant and your friend Madame de Grantmesnil can beat most men; but the genius of musical composition is homme, and accept it as a compliment when I say that you are essentially femme." He left me, of course, mortified and humbled; but I feel he is right as regards myself, though whether in his depreciation of our whole sex I cannot say.

But as this hope has left me, I have become more disquieted, still more restless.