“The Baron turned to me, saying, ‘He is about your age, little son, but of a more serious, deep-thoughted nature. You appear to me — don’t take it ill if I say so — to be a little bit of a — well, I mean, you lack purpose. However, no matter. Now you, dear Haak, I have great hopes of. Since I have been teaching you you have become quite another man. Keep up your unresting zeal and industry. Never waste a single hour. You know that is what distresses me.’

  “I was turned to stone with amazement and admiration at what I heard. I could not wait the necessary time to ask the concert-meister if it was all true — if the Baron was, really, the greatest violinist of the day — if he, my master himself, did actually take lessons from him.

  “‘Undoubtedly,’ Haak said, ‘he had no hesitation in accepting the profitable instruction which the Baron placed at his disposal; and he told me that I should do well if I went, some morning, to him myself, and asked him to let me have some lessons from him too.’

  “To all the questions which I then put to him concerning the Baron and his artistic talent, Haak would give me no direct reply, but kept on telling me that I ought to do as he advised me, and I should then find out all about it myself.

  “The peculiar smile which passed over Haak’s face as he said this did not escape me. I did not understand the meaning of it, and it excited my curiosity to the highest point.

  “When I bashfully made my request to the Baron, assuring him that the most unbounded zeal, the most glowing enthusiasm for my art inspired me, he looked at me seriously and fixedly. But soon his face put on an expression of the most benevolent kindliness. ‘Little son! little son!’ he said, ‘that you have betaken yourself to me — the only real violin-player now living — proves that you possess the true artistic spirit, and that the ideal of the genuine violin-player has come into existence within you. I should be delighted to give you lessons; but the time — the time! where to find it? Haak occupies me a great deal, and then I have got this young man Durand here just now, he wants to be heard in public, and knows that he need not try that till he has had a good course of lessons from me. However, wait a moment, between breakfast and lunch, or at lunch time — yes. I have still an hour at liberty then. Little son, come to me at twelve exactly every day, and I will fiddle with you for an hour until one; then Durand comes.’

  “You can imagine how I hastened, with a throbbing heart, to the Baron’s the next forenoon at the appointed hour.

  “He would not let me play a single note on my own violin, which I had brought with me, but placed in my hands a very old instrument by Antonio Amati. Never had I had any experience of a violin like this. The celestial tone which streamed from its strings altogether inspired me. I let myself go, and abandoned myself to a stream of ingenious ‘passages,’ suffering the river of music to surge and swell, higher and higher, in mighty waves and billows of sound, and then die down and expire in murmuring whispers. My own belief is that I was playing exceedingly well; much better than I often did afterwards.

  “When I had done, the Baron shook his head impatiently, and said: ‘My little son! my little son! you must forget all that. In the first place, you hold your bow most abominably,’ and he showed to me, practically, how the bow ought to be held, according to the manner of Tartini. I thought I should never be able to bring out a single tone whilst so holding it; but great was my astonishment when I found that, on repeating my ‘passages’ at the Baron’s desire, the amazing advantage of holding the bow as he told me to hold it was strikingly manifest, after two or three seconds.

  “‘Good!’ said the Baron. ‘Little son, let us begin the lesson. Commence upon the note G, above the line, and hold out that note as long as you can possibly hold it. Economize your bow; make the very utmost of it that you possibly can. What the breath is to the singer, the bow is to the violinist.’

  “I did as I was directed, and was greatly delighted to find that, in this manner of dealing with matters, I was enabled to bring out a tone of exceptional powerfulness; to swell it out to a marvellous fortissimo, and make it die down to a very soft pianissimo, with an excessively long stroke of the bow.

  “‘You see, do you not, little son?’ cried the Baron. ‘You can play all kinds of “passages,” jumps, and new-fangled nonsense of that sort, but you can’t properly sustain a note as it ought to be done.’

  “He took the instrument from my hands, and laid the bow across the strings, near the bridge — and the simple truth is, that words completely fail me to describe to you what then came to pass.

  “Laying that trembling bow of his close to the bridge, he went sliding with it up and down on the strings, as it quivered in his hands, jarringly, whistlingly, squeakingly, mewingly; the tone he produced was to be likened to that of some old woman, with spectacles on nose, vainly attempting to hit the tune of a hymn.

  “And all the time he raised enraptured eyes to heaven, like a man lost in the most celestial blissfulness; and when at length he left off scraping with his bow up and down between the bridge and the finger-board, and laid the violin down, his eyes were shining, and he said, in deep emotion: ‘That is tone! that is tone!’

  “I felt in a most extraordinary condition: although the inward impulse to laugh was present with me, it was killed by the aspect of that venerable man, glorified by his inspiration. At the same time the whole affair had a most eery effect upon me, and I felt very much affected by it, and could not utter a syllable.

  “‘Don’t you find, little son,’ asked the Baron, ‘that that goes to your heart? Had you ever any idea that such magic could be conjured out of that little thing there, with its four simple strings? Well, well! take a glass of wine, little son.’ He poured me out a glass of Madeira. I had to drink it, and also to take some of the pastry and cakes which were upon the table. Just then the clock struck one.

  “‘This will have to do for to-day,’ said the Baron. ‘Go, go, little son! Here, here! put that in your pocket.’

  “And he placed in my hand a little paper packet, in which I found a beautiful, shining ducat.

  “In my amazement I ran to the concert-meister and told him all that had happened. He, however, laughed aloud, and said: ‘Now you know all about our Baron and his violin lessons. He looks upon you as a mere beginner, so that you only get a ducat per lesson; but as the mastership, in his opinion, increases, so does the pay. He gives me a Louis, and I think Durand gets a couple of ducats.’

  “I could not help expressing my opinion that it was anything but an honourable style of going to work, to mystify this kind gentleman in such a fashion, and pocket his money into the bargain.

  “‘You ought to be told,’ said Haak, ‘that his whole enjoyment consists in giving lessons — in the way which you now comprehend; and that if I and the other artists were to show any symptoms of under-valuing him or his lessons, he would proclaim to the whole artistic world, in which he is looked upon as a most competent and valuable critic, that we were nothing but a set of wretched scrapers; that, in fact, apart from his craze of being a marvellous player, the Baron is a man whose vast knowledge of music, and most cultivated judgment thereon, are matters from which even a master can derive great benefit. So judge for yourself whether I am to be blamed if I hold on to him, and now and then pocket a few of his Louis. I advise you to go to him as often as you can. Don’t listen to the cracky nonsense he talks about his own execution; but do listen to, and profit by, what this man — who is most exceptionally versed in the musical art, and has immense and valuable experience in it — has to say about it. It will be greatly to your advantage to do so.’

  “I took his advice; but it was often hard to repress laughter when the Baron would tap about with his fingers upon the belly of the fiddle instead of on the finger-board, stroking his bow diagonally over the strings the while, and asseverating that he was playing the most beautiful of all Tartini’s solos, and that he was the only person in the world who could play it.

  “But soon he would lay the violin down, and pour forth sayings which enriched me with the profoundest knowledge, and enflamed my heart towards the most glorious of all arts.

  “If I then played something from one of his concertos with my utmost verve, and happened to interpret this or the other passage of it better than usual, the Baron would look round with a smile of complacence, or of pride, and say: ‘The boy has to thank me for that; me, pupil of the great Tartini!’

  “Thus, you perceive, I derived both profit and pleasure from the Baron’s lessons; and from his ducats into the bargain.”

  “Well, really,” said Theodore, laughing, “I should think that the greater part of the virtuosos of the present day — although they do consider themselves far beyond any description of instruction or advice — would be glad enough to have a few lessons such as the Baron von S —— was in the habit of giving.”

  “I render thanks to Heaven,” said Vincenz, “that this meeting of our Club has ended so happily. I never dared to hope that it would; and I would fain entreat my worthy Serapion Brethren to see that proper measures are taken, in future, that there be a due alternation between the terrifying and the entertaining, which on this occasion has by no means been the case.”

  “This admonition of yours,” Ottmar said, “is right and proper; but it rested with yourself to rectify the error into which we have fallen to-night by contributing something of your own, in your special style of humour.”

  “The truth is,” said Lothair, “that you, my very fine fellow — and at the same time my very lazy-as-to-writing fellow — have never yet paid your entrance-money into the Serapion Guild, and the only mode of payment is a Serapiontic story.”

  “Hush!” cried Vincenz. “You don’t know what has come glowing forth from my heart, and is nestling in this breast-pocket of mine here; a quite remarkable little creature of a story, which I specially commend to the favour of our Lothair. I should have read it to you to-night. But don’t you see the landlord’s pale face peeping in at the window every now and then, just in the style in which the uncle Kuehleborn, in Fouqué’s ‘Undine,’ used to ‘keek’ in at the window of the fisherman’s hut. Haven’t you noticed the irritated ‘Oh, Jemini!’ countenance of the waiter? Was there not written on his forehead, legibly and distinctly (when he snuffed the candles), ‘Are you going to sit here for ever? Are you never going to let an honest man get to his well-earned bed?’ Those people are right. It is past twelve: our parting hour has struck some time ago.”

  The friends agreed to have another Serapiontic meeting at an early date, and dispersed.

  SECTION VII.

  THE DREARY LATE autumn had arrived, and Theodore was sitting in his room beside the crackling fire, waiting for the worthy Serapion Brethren, who came dropping in, one by one, at the appointed hour.

  “What diabolical weather!” cried Cyprian, entering the last. “In spite of my cloak I am nearly wet through, and a gust of wind all but carried away my hat.”

  “And it won’t be better very soon,” said Ottmar; “for our meteorologist, who lives in the same street with me, has prognosticated very fine weather at the end of this autumn.”

  “Right; you are perfectly right, my friend Ottmar,” Vincenz said. “Whenever our great prophet consoles his neighbours with the announcement that the winter is not going to be at all severe, but principally of a southerly character, everybody rushes away in alarm, and buys all the wood he can cram into his cellar. The weather-prophet is a wise and highly-gifted man, whom we can thoroughly trust, so long as we expect the exact reverse of what he predicts.”

  “Those autumnal storms always make me thoroughly wretched,” said Sylvester; “I always feel depressed and ill whilst they are going on; and I think you feel the same, Theodore.”

  “Oh, indeed I do,” answered Theodore; “this sort of weather always makes — —”

  “Splendid! — delightful beginning of a meeting of the Serapion Club!” intercalated Lothair. “We set to work to discuss the weather, like a parcel of old women round the coffee-table.”

  “I don’t see,” said Ottmar, “why we should not talk about the weather; the only reason you can object to it is that talking about it seems to be an observance of a kind of rather slovenly old custom, which has resulted from a necessity to say something or other when there happens to be nothing else in people’s minds to talk about. What I think is that a few words about the weather and the wind make a very good beginning of a conversation, whatsoever its nature may turn out to be, and that the very universality of the applicability of this as the beginning of a conversation prove how natural it really is.”

  “As far as I am concerned,” said Theodore, “I don’t think it matters a farthing how a conversation commences. But there is one thing certain — that, if one wants to make some very striking and clever beginning, that is enough to kill all the freedom and unconstraint which may be termed the very soul of conversation. I know a young man — I think he is known to you all, as well — who is by no means deficient in that mobility of intellect which is absolutely necessary for good conversation; but he is so tormented, particularly when ladies are present, by that kind of eagerness to burst out with something brilliant and striking at the very outset of a talk, that he walks restlessly about the room; makes the most extraordinary faces in the keenness of his inward torment; opens his lips, and — cannot manage to utter a syllable.”

  “Cease, cease, base wretch!” Cyprian cried, with comic pathos, “do not, with murderous hand, tear open wounds which are barely healed. He is speaking of me,” he continued, laughing, “and he doesn’t know that, a few weeks ago, when I insisted on restraining that tendency of mine, which I see the absurdity of, and falling into a conversation in the ordinary style of other people, I had to pay for it by complete annihilation. I prefer telling you all about this myself to letting Ottmar do it, and add witty comments of his own. At a tea-party where Ottmar and I were, there was present a certain pretty and clever lady, as to whom you are in the habit of maintaining that she interests me more than is right and proper. I went to talk to her, and I admit that I was a little at a loss how exactly to begin, and she was wicked enough to gaze at me with questioning eyes. I burst out with ‘The new moon has brought a nice change of weather.’ She answered, very quietly: ‘Oh, are you writing the Almanac this season?’”

  The friends laughed heartily.

  “On the other hand,” said Ottmar, “I know another young man — and you all know him — who, particularly with ladies, is never at a loss for the first word of a talk; in fact, my belief is that he has severely thought out, in private, a regular system, of the most comprehensive kind, as to conversation with ladies, which is by no means likely ever to find him left in the lurch. For instance, one of his dodges is to go to the prettiest — one who scarce ventures to dip a sweet biscuit in her tea; who, at the utmost, whispers into the ear of her who is sitting next to her: ‘It is very warm, dear;’ to which the latter answers with equal softness into her ear: ‘Dreadfully, my love;’ whose communication goeth not beyond ‘Yea, yea,’ and ‘Nay, nay,’ — to go up to such an one, I say, and, in an artful manner, startle her out of her wits, and thereby so utterly revolutionize her very being, in such a sudden manner, that she seems to herself to be no longer the same person: ‘Good heavens! how very pale you are looking!’ he cried out, recently, to a pretty creature, as silent as a church, just in the act of beginning a stitch of silver thread at a purse which she was working. The young lady let her work fall on her lap in terror, said she was feeling a little feverish that day. Feverish! — my friend was thoroughly at home on that subject; could talk upon it in the most interesting way, like a man who knows his ground; inquired minutely into all the symptoms; gave advice, gave warnings, — and behold! there was a delightful, interesting, confidential conversation spun out in a few minutes.”