The Loud Noise of applause sounded through the room. The improvisor's success exceeded the expectations of his hearers, and even his own. A theme had hardly been assigned him when exalted ideas and touching sentiments, expressed in sonorous verse, burst from his mouth like fantastic apparitions from a magic altar. The artist did not pause to think even for a moment: in one instant the idea came to birth in his head, went through all its periods of growth, and was transmuted into expression. The ingenious form of the piece, the poetic images, the elegant epithet, and the obedient rhyme, all appeared simultaneously. And this was not all: he was given two or three completely different subjects at once: he dictated one poem, wrote a second, and improvised a third. Each was beautiful in its own genre: one evoked rapture, a second moved to tears, a third made one die of laughter. But he seemed hardly interested in his work — he constantly made jokes and talked with the audience. All the elements of poetic composition were at his fingertips like men on a chess-board, which he moved carelessly, with only a perfunctory glance.