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you can whistle an air, by the mere force of the mental faculty. You can

not form a more mistaken notion. The variation of the thirty-secondth of an inch in the sudden movement of the finger on the string will cause the note to be out of tune; and the man who puts his finger on the right spot at the right second of time, though he may have no more mental instinct than a pig, will produce in the utmost perfection the chords of the most angelic composer.”

"I deny it!" cried the master, in a kind of fury, walking up and down the long room, "I deny it! There is true sympathy and co-operation in the nerves and tissues of this faithful despised servant, the material human frame, even to the finger-tips, with the informing, teaching spirit. There is a tremor, a shading, a trill of meaning, given by the spirit to the nerves and tissues, that no instinctive touch of harmony will ever give. The ancient Greeks (as you ought to know, Herr Professor, for you speak of them often enough) had no music worthy of the name, for they had no instruments; but had they had our instruments they would have produced the most ravishing music, for the spirit taught them what music was apart from outward sound, and they talked as beautifully as you talk in your lecture-room of the divine laws of motion and of number, and of the harmonies of sound and of the mind."

The Professor seemed rather taken aback by this onslaught, and turning to me, said: "Well, Herr von Saale, you had better come with me: I will show you some of the sights of our kingly city. You shall come to Herr Veitch to-morrow, when perhaps you will see my daughter."

He seemed to me strangely willing that I should see his daughter.

He took me into the great cathedral and showed me the gigantic mailed figures that guarded the tombs of the kings, talking very learnedly upon heraldry, about which he seemed to know a great deal. The next morn

ing I went to Herr Veitch at the appointed time and found him alone, playing over a set of old Italian sonatas. He seemed to have been much put out by the Professor's remarks of the day before, and to regard me with kindliness as having been apparently on the opposite side; but when he came to talk to me I did not see much difference between his advice and that of the Professor.

"The Professor is so far right," he said, "in that of all instruments the violin needs the most careful study, the most practised fingering, the most instinctive aptitude of ear and touch. It is all very well to talk of expression, but expression with faulty execution is fatal on the violin. It is true that some of the most entrancing players have been self-taught amateurs, but they were such because they had musical genius by birth, and it was therefore possible to them to be amateurs and to be self-taught. concerted music no amount of expression will enable a performer to take his part or to be tolerated. What pleases me in your playing is that you are able to produce smooth and sweet notes: the scrapy, scratchy period with you has apparently been short. What you want is greater certainty of touch and ear. This can only be obtained by patient labour and study."

In

I set to work to play lessons, and while we were thus engaged the door opened and a young lady entered accompanied by a tall and imposing domestic in the royal livery. I did not need to be told that this was the Professor's daughter, the Fraülein Adelheid, the reader to the Princess. She appeared to me on this, the first time that my eyes rested upon her, a handsome, stately girl, with a steady fixed look, and grave solemn eyes and mouth, which seldom changed their expression or smiled. She was rather above the common height, with fair brown hair and eyes, and was richly dressed in white, with a lace kerchief across her shoulders, and a broad white

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The Fraulein regarded me without embarrassment, with her steady brown eyes. "Do you play in concert, Herr von Saale?" she said.

"He is not quite equal to that yet," said Herr Veitch. "The prospect of playing with you will, I am confident, inspire him with resolve to practise with the necessary patience."

"That will be very well timed," she said serenely, "as we want to perform a trio before the Princess."

"He must work some time before he can do that," observed Herr Veitch decisively.

They set to work to play, and I confess that I felt indescribable mortification in being unable to take a part. All my beautiful fantasias and windmusic seemed at the moment nothing to the power of joining in a concerted piece. The beauty of the playing, however, soon soothed my ruffled vanity and banished every thought save that of delight. The master and pupil were playing in perfect accord both in feeling and sympathetic touch-the old man and the stately, beautifully dressed girl-it was a delicious banquet of sight and sound.

After they had played some time, Herr Veitch said, to my great delight: "Otto will play you a lesson of his which the whispering woodlands of his mountains have taught him. You will like it."

I took the bow with a tremor of delight and excitement. I played my very best. I endeavoured only to listen to-to think only of the woodland voices that had spoken to the

child; and after a few moments I seemed, indeed, once again to be a child beside the lance-like waving rushes with their sunny dance-music, by the pool, or beneath the solemn poplars with the weird and awful notes that sounded amid their distant branches high above me in the sky. When I stopped I fancied that the brown eyes looked at me with a softer and more kindly gaze.

"He will do," said the master: "he will play the trio before the Princess anon, if he will be good."

For several days I was very good: I practised continually notes and scales and bars and shades of pitch, both with the master and in my chamber at the Three Roses, where, had I not been in Germany, I should no doubt have been thought a nuisance. I saw the Fraulein Adelheid almost every day, and was allowed once or twice to play in a simple piece. So everything seemed to prosper, when one fatal day I broke waywardly loose from this virtuous and regular course. It was after this manner that it came about.

One morning in the late summer I woke up with a sudden surprising sense of a crisp freshness, of a sudden strain of livelier colour shot through sky and woodland, of a change beginning to work through masses of brown foliage and cloudless summer sky. The touch was that of the angel of decay but the first signs of his coming were gentle and gracious, with a sense even of life-giving in that new feeling of a change. The first day of autumn had dawned. As I rose, intending to go to the master, the city lay in a wonderful golden mist through which the old streets and gables and spires seemed strange to the sight, with the romantic vision, almost, of a dream. An intense longing possessed me for the woods and hills. It seemed to me as if a far-off voice from the long past hours of childhood was calling me to the distant rocks and forests: a faint, low voice, like that strange whisper through the short grass, to hear which

at all you must lay your ear very close indeed to the ground: a note untuned, uncertain, untrammelled, but with a strange alluring power, making itself felt amid the smooth, cultured, artistic sounds to which I had given myself up, and saying, as in the old har monic thirds which as a child I had used to pick out, "Come back to me." I was engaged to Herr Veitch, but it was uncertain whether the Fraulein would be able to come. There was some talk that the Princess would make an excursion with a guest of distinction into the mountains, and her reader might possibly be required to accompany her. The Princess was understood to be very shy, and to surround herself as much as possible with her ladies and women.

The irresistible impulse was too strong for me. I sent a message to Herr Veitch, and hastened out of the confining streets, past the crumbling gates and towers, into the valley and the fields. I wandered down the banks of the stream, by which the road ran, for some hours, until the sun was high in the heavens, and every sound and leaf was hushed in the noontide stillness and heat. Then crossing the river at a ferry, where a little village and some mills stayed its current for a time, I ascended a steep path into the wooded meadows, whence the seductive voice seemed still to come. In a broad upland valley that sloped downwards to the plain and to the river, I came upon a wide open meadow skirting the wild, pathless wood. Here, at a corner of the outstanding copse, I saw to my surprise a number of horses picketed and apparently deserted by their grooms, and turning the corner of the wood I saw in the centre of the meadow an unexpected and most beautiful sight.

In the midst of the meadow, only, as it seemed, a few paces from me, was a group of gentlemen in hunting costume, some with long curved horns slung at their backs. Some servants and grooms were collected a few paces behind them, but a little to the side

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nearest to me, close to two men of distinguished appearance some paces in advance of the rest, stood the most beautiful creature that I had ever seen. She was dressed as a huntress of romance, in green trimmed with white, and a hat fringed with white feathers, and a small silver bugle hung by her side. But it was not her dress, or her figure, that gave her the inde scribable charm that made her so lovely it was the bewitching expression of her face. Her features might possibly have been described as large, but this, as her complexion was of perfect delicacy and freshness, only increased the subduing charm of the shy, fleeting, coy expression about her eyes and mouth. Two ladies stood close behind her, neither of whom was the Fraulein, but I knew at once that this could be none other than

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the Princess. No family of pure German origin could have produced such a face she sprang, doubtless, as is becoming to a daughter of kings, from a mixed race.

A perfect stillness and hush, as of expectation, pervaded the scene: even the well-trained horses made no movement as I passed by them. One of the grooms caught a glimpse of me and made a slight sign: then, just as the had settled itself on my group sight, a slight, scarcely perceptible rustle was heard in the wood, and a stag of full age and noble bearing came out into the meadow and stood at gaze, startled but not alarmed. One of the gentlemen in front raised a short hunting-piece, and the Princess, in a soft sweet undertone that penetrated all the listening air and left an imperishable memory upon the heart, exclaimed: "Oh, do not kill it! How beautiful it is!"

A short, sharp crack, a puff of smoke, and the stag leaped suddenly into the air and fell lifeless, shot between the eyes.

There was a sudden outbreak of exclamation and talk, a rush of the hunters towards the fallen beast. Two or three of the gentlemen drew around

the Princess and her ladies, as if to protect her, and in the excitement no one noticed me. I stood for a moment or two, my eyes fixed on this changing, sensitive, inexpressibly beautiful face. Then the beaters and foresters came out of the wood: some remained with the fallen stag, and the rest of the party moved on farther up into the forest followed by the grooms and horses. I returned at once, silent and fancy-struck, to the city, and passed the rest of the day and the entire night in a dream.

The next morning I made my best excuses to Herr Veitch, and tried to settle to my work, but I found that this was impossible until I had made a full confession. He took it very quietly and as a matter of course: not so, however, did the Fraülein, a day or two afterwards, when he revealed the whole story to her. She looked at me strangely with her great brown eyes as one who foresaw some great danger awaiting me; and I wondered, in vain, from what quarter it would come.

I made great progress under her tuition. In playing with her in unison I learned more in a few minutes than in any other way. The instinct of fingering seemed to come naturally by her means, by her gentle guidance, by her placid rule. Here again outward harmonies of nature and of art corresponded in its contrast with the life of the spirit; with the rapt, enthralling passion of love which had come upon me by the vision in the forest, and with the calm sympathy which was growing up in my heart with the Fraulein, smooth, broad, tranquil, as the full harmonious chords which she taught me to play. But with all this I confess that the prevailing thought of my mind was that I should some day, and that soon, take my part in this music before the lovely Princess; that I should see again that indescribable, enchanting face.

"We are getting on," said Herr Veitch : 66 we shall be ready soon.'

"Let us have a rehearsal,” said Adelheid, with her grave, gentle smile : "let us have a rehearsal to-morrow in Das Vergnügen, in the garden-valley of the palace."

Below the palace, on the side farthest from the city, the wooded valley formed a fairy garden of terraces and of streams flowing down from the hills. In the bottom of the valley were buildings, somewhat, on a small scale, after the fashion of the French gardenpalaces of Trianon and Marly, and in these little houses some of the courtofficials had rooms. The Professor and his daughter occupied one of the most charming suites of apartments opening upon a wide lawn beneath the terraced garden leading up to the palace, broken up by clipped hedges and rows of statues. I had never seen this garden of romance until the afternoon of the rehearsal. In the excitement and nervousness of the hour I was dimly conscious of a solemn blue sky overhead, of the dark foliage of the dying summer rising on the steep hill-sides on every hand, of a still afternoon full of sombre tints and sleeping sunlight, of the lateflowering china-roses and the tall asters, of massive wreaths of clematis, of a sense of finished effort and growth, and of a hush and pause before decay set in and brought the end of life and of the year the little stone palace with its carved pilasters and wreaths of fruit and flowers, the weather-stained, moss-tinted statues and urns,—of all this I was dimly conscious as in a dream.

The Herr Professor was more than usually spruce in his apparel. I had purchased, boy-like, a new dress for the occasion. It was the period of frizzled, powdered hair, and lace and embroidery. A man who wore plain clothes and his hair au naturel was considered eccentric and of doubtful character. We formed a group on the little inclosed grass-plot outside the windows of the Professor's sittingroom, separated from the great lawns by the low clipped hedges and the wreathed urns. I noticed that the

Fraulein seemed anxious and almost expectant, and was continually turning her head in the direction of the palace-gardens. At last she said to her father: "I fear that I have committed a blunder. I begged to be excused from attending the Princess, and I told her that I was going to practise with the master here, but I said nothing of Otto, or that he would be here. It is quite possible that the Princess may come down through the gardens to hear the master play."

The Professor shrugged his shoulders. "It is too late, now," he said: "the sight of Otto will not kill her."

"No," said his daughter, doubtfully; but she shook her head as though a catastrophe was very imminent.

A tremor of excitement and of suppressed delight passed through my frame. If the mere thought of the rehearsal had excited me, what must I have felt at such a possibility as this?

We began to practise the trio with the violoncello and two violins.

The

violin-parts were very lively and quick; but the great charm of the piece lay in some perfectly modulated chords of great beauty distributed through all the parts in a sustained, broad, searching tone on the fourth string. Herr Veitch played the violoncello with consummate skill. We had played the piece nearly through when Adelheid suddenly ceased, and turned in the direction of the wider lawns to which was access between the urns; and the next moment the same lovely creature I had seen some days before, but now very differently dressed, came through the opening in the low hedge, accompanied by a beautiful young lady, evidently of high rank, whom I also recognised as one of the ladies I had seen in the wood. The Princess looked for a moment serenely at the group, who drew backward a step or two and bowed very low; but the next moment, as her eyes fell upon me, she flushed suddenly, and her face assumed an expression of embarrassment and even reproof.

strangers here, Fraulein," she said, and stopped.

"This, Royal Highness," said Adelheid, bowing very low, "is a young gentleman, Otto gentleman, Otto von Saale, who is to play in the trio. It did not occur to me to mention him to the Royal Highness."

The Princess looked very disconcerted and mortified, but her embarrassment only made the unique expression of her face more exquisitely piquant and enchanting. I would willingly have risked untold penalties to secure such a sight. The young lady who accompanied her regarded me with an expression of loathing animosity and contempt, as much as to say, "What do you mean by using your miserable existence to get us into this scrape?

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The Professor came to the rescue with great aplomb. Herr Veitch evidently regarded the whole matter with lofty contempt.

"If the Royal Highness will deign to take a seat," said the Professor, "she may still hear the trio rehearsed. We will regard Otto as second violin merely. One violin is much like another."

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'Oh, sit down, my Princess!" said the young lady, coaxingly: "I should so like to hear the violins."

The Princess hesitated, and looked still more enchantingly confused and shy, but she sat down at last. It was reported that, as a boy, her brother, the Crown Prince, had been mortally in dread of the Professor. It is possible that his sister may have conceived something of a similar feeling.

We played the trio through. In spite of my excitement I had the sense to take the greatest pains. I kept my attention perfectly fixed upon my playing, and the clear notes in unison came in perfectly true and in time. When we had finished there was a short

embarrassed pause. Then Adelheid whispered to me: "Play that lesson of yours of the woodland breeze.”

Scarcely knowing what I did I

"I did not understand that you had began to play; but I had not finished

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