CHAPTER XIX.
JULES MASSENET Massenet has been praised indiscriminately--sometimes for his numerous and brilliant powers and sometimes for merits he did not have at all.
I have waited to speak of him until the time when the Academie was ready to replace him,--that is to say, put some one in his place, for great artists are never replaced.

Others succeed them with their own individual and different powers, but they do not take their places nevertheless.

Malibran has never been replaced, nor Madame Viardot, Madame Carvalho, Talma and Rachel.

No one can ever replace Patti, Bartet or Sarah Bernhardt.

They could not replace Ingres, Delacroix, Berlioz, or Gounod, and they can never replace Massenet.
It is a question whether he has been accorded his real place.