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With what brutality this popular justice was sometimes executed we learn from the story of poor Pergolesi, who, says tradition, at the first per- formance of his Olimpiade, received, amidst a storm of hooting, an orange, full in his face. And this fact is a sufficient proof that the Roman public was not infallible. But it laid claim to infallibility. Faithful to its traditions, it arrogated to itself an empire over music:

''Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. …''

No one found anything surprising in this: the privilege of the Roman public was admitted. "Rome, capital of the world," wrote "Amadeo Mozart" in one of his letters, in 1770.

Such, in its broad outlines, was the fabric of Italian music in the eighteenth century. We perceive what abundance, what vitality it displayed. Its greatest danger—that to which it succumbed—was its very exuberance. It had no time to recollect itself, to meditate upon its past. It was eaten up by its mania for novelty.