The reaction of an audience will somehow always be commensurate with the effect created, precisely because it is subconscious. Thus there are works that release noisy and vociferous, yet meaningless and empty, applause: it echoes their own emptiness. And there are others to which the audience reacts less spontaneously, yet whose worth is not only immeasurably greater but their effect immeasurably deeper. It is definitely wrong to draw conclusions from the effect made on an audience, i.e. from the volume of the applause, as to the real strength of the impression made by a work, let alone as to its quality. The audience itself—this curious something—does not know how and why it reacts; it reacts automatically and subconsciously, more or less like a barometer. What matters is that one should know how to read this barometer aright and how to interpret that reading.