“‘Ah! that was the first time in my life that I ever heard music! Next the sisters sang together, some of those earnest, quiet, deep-drawn duets of Abbate Steffani’e. Teresina’s rich, exquisitely beautiful contralto stirred the depths of my soul. I could not keep back my tears, they rolled down my cheeks. My uncle blew his nose a great deal, and cast reproachful looks at me. It was no use; I couldn’t control myself. This seemed to please the sisters; they asked about my musical studies. I felt utterly disgusted with all I had done, and declared, in my enthusiasm, that I had never heard music before.

  “‘“Il buon fanciullo!” said Lauretta, very sweetly and tenderly.

  “‘When I got home I felt almost out of my mind. I seized all the toccatas and fugues which I had so laboriously carpentered together (as well as forty-five Variations on a Thema in Canon, which the organist had composed for me, and presented to me in a beautifully written MS.), and shied the whole boiling of them into the fire. I laughed sardonically as this mass of double counterpoint crackled and blazed, and went sparkling out into ashes. Then I sat down to the instrument, and tried, first to imitate the guitar, and then to play, and next to sing, the melodies which I had heard the sisters execute. At last, about midnight, my uncle came out of his bedroom crying, “For the love of heaven stop that caterwauling, be off to your bed, and let’s try to get some sleep,” with which he blew out the lights and left me in the dark. I had nothing for it but obey; but in my dreams I thought I had solved the secret of song, and was singing the “Sento l’Amica Speme” in the most exquisite style myself.

  “‘Next morning my uncle had got together everybody who could play on string or wind instruments, to a rehearsal in the concert-room, and a proud man he felt himself to be able to turn out such a fine show of performers. The rehearsal was anything but a success, however. Lauretta essayed a grand scena, but we had not got many bars into the recitative when everything was at sixes and sevens; none of the players had the slightest idea of accompanying. Lauretta screamed, stormed, wept, with rage and disgust. The organist was at the piano, and him she attacked with her bitterest objurgations. He rose from his seat, and walked slowly, and with much composure, out at the door. The band-master, at whom she had hurled an “asino tedesco” put his violin under his arm, and cocked his cap martially over one ear; he, too, was making for the door, his men, unscrewing their mouthpieces, and sticking their bows in among their strings, preparing to follow him. Only the amateurs were left, looking at each other, almost with tears in their eyes, the exciseman saying, “Oh, dear me! how very much I do feel a thing of this sort!”

  “‘But all my natural bashfulness had abandoned me. I stopped the band-master; I entreated and implored him; in the anguish of the moment I promised I would write him six minuets, with double trios each, for the county-ball. I succeeded in pacifying him. He went back to his music-stand; the bandsmen followed his example, and the orchestra was ready to commence operations once more. All except the organist; his place at the piano was vacant. I found him strolling — a calm, contemplative man — up and down in the market-place, by no process whatever to be prevailed upon to cross the threshold of the concert-room any more.

  “‘Teresina had been looking on at all this, biting her lips to keep back her laughter. Lauretta was now just as conciliatory as she had previously been the contrary. She thanked me most warmly for all I had done. She asked if I could play the piano, and, ere I knew where I was, I found myself occupying the organist’s vacant place, with the score before me. Up to this time I had never accompanied a singer, or directed an orchestra. Teresina sat down beside me, and indicated the various tempi to me. Lauretta gave me an encouraging “bravo!” now and then; the orchestra began to understand, and things went better. At the second rehearsal all was clear, and the sensation the sisters produced at the concert was indescribable.

  “‘There were going to be great doings at the Residenz, on the occasion of the prince’s return from abroad, and the sisters were engaged to sing there; in the meantime they decided on remaining in our little town, and giving one or two more concerts. The admiration of the towns-folk for them amounted to a species of insanity. Only old Mdlle. Meibel would take a reflective pinch out of her pug-dog snuff-box, and remark that screeching of that sort was not singing. My organist was no more to be seen, and I by no means regretted his absence. I was the happiest creature on earth. I sat with the sisters all day long, playing their accompaniments, and writing out the parts from the scores for the concerts at the Residenz. Lauretta was my ideal; all her naughty tempers, her artistic outbreaks of fury, impatience with her accompanyist, and so forth, I bore like a lamb. I began to learn Italian, and wrote a canzonetta or two. How I rose to the empyrean when Lauretta sang my compositions, and even praised them! I often felt as if I had never thought and written those things, but as if the ideas streamed out for the first time when she sang them. With Teresina I did not get on so well. She sang very seldom; didn’t seem to take much interest in me or my doings, and sometimes gave me the impression of laughing at me behind my back.

  “‘The time arrived at last when they had to leave us: then it was that I fully realized what Lauretta had become to me, and how impossible it was for me to be parted from her. After she had been unusually smorfiosa with me, she would be kind and caressing, but always in such a fashion that, although my blood would seethe, the coldness which I could feel that she brought to bear upon me was sufficient to prevent me from throwing myself at her feet with passionate avowals of love.

  “‘I had a pretty fair tenor voice then: it had never had any cultivation, but it was beginning to improve, and I used to sing, with Lauretta, numbers of those tender Italian duets whose name is legion. We were singing one of those duets one day; the time of her departure was at hand —

  “Senza di te, ben mio!

  Vivere non poss’ io.”

  “‘Who could have resisted this? I threw myself at Lauretta’s feet, wild with despair.

  “‘She helped me to rise. “Why should we part, dear friend?” she said. I listened in delighted amazement. She said I had much better go with her and Teresina to the Residenz. If I meant to devote myself to music altogether, I should have to quit my little native town some day or other.

  “‘Picture to yourself a person who has bidden good-bye to life and hope, and is falling down some black, fathomless abyss; but, at the very instant when he expects the crash which is to dash him in pieces, lo and behold! he is in a beautiful bower of roses, with hundreds of little many-tinted lights dancing round him, and saying, “Darling! you’re still alive, you see!” These were my sensations at that moment. To go with them to the Residenz was the one prominent, tangible idea of my life.

  “‘I shan’t weary you by describing how I set about proving to my uncle the absolute necessity of my going to the Residenz — no such very great distance, when all was said. He agreed at last, and said he would go with me! Here was an unexpected baulk to my little plans. I dared not tell him I was going with the ladies; but luckily one of his attacks of bronchitis came to my rescue.

  “‘I started off in the stage-coach, but got out at the first change of horses, and waited there for the coming of my goddesses. I had plenty of money in my pocket, so that I was able to make all my arrangements. My idea was to escort the ladies on horseback, like a paladin of Romance; so I managed to hire a steed — not particularly grand to look at, but, as his owner assured me, a good serviceable animal, — and at the appointed time I mounted him, and rode out to meet the two cantatrices. Ere long, their little double-seated phæton was seen coming quietly along. The two sisters were on the front seat, and behind sat their maid, little fat Gianna, a brown Neapolitan. The carriage was crammed with all sorts of boxes, band-boxes, portmanteaus, and so forth, and two pug-dogs, on Gianna’s lap, yapped at me as I rode up.

  “Everything went swimmingly till we got to the last stage from the Residenz, but there my horse was seized with the remarkable idea that he ought to go home to his stable. A conviction that severe measures are seldom effectual in such conjunctures induced me to try every description of mild persuasion that I could think of. The perverse animal was proof against all my gentle remonstrances. I wanted to go forward; he wanted to go back. All that I could accomplish in the circumstances was that, instead of retrograding, he kept describing circles. Teresina leant out of the carriage, laughing most heartily; whilst Lauretta put her hands before her eyes and screamed, as if I were in the utmost danger. I jammed my spurs into the brute’s sides, and, ere I could say Jack Robinson, found myself on the broad of my back on the turnpike road, with the horse standing over me, his long neck stretched out, surveying me with an expression of calm derision.

  “‘I could not get up till the driver got off and helped me. Lauretta, too, got out, and was weeping and screaming. I had twisted one of my feet, and couldn’t ride any further. What was to be done? The horse was made fast to the back of the carriage, and I had to squeeze myself inside, as best I could. Just picture to yourself two well-grown young women, a fat maid, a couple of dogs, a dozen or so of baskets, band-boxes, etc., and me in addition, squeezed up in a little two-seated phaeton! Think of Lauretta’s lamentations about the want of room; the dogs’ yapping; the Neapolitan’s chattering, and the horrible pain of my foot, and you will have some idea what a charming position I was in. Teresina declared she could bear it no longer; the driver pulled up, and with one bound she was out of the carriage. She loosed my horse, got on his back, and trotted and curvetted down the road before us. She certainly looked splendid; the grace and distinction which she possessed in an eminent degree were more especially conspicuous on horseback. She made us hand her out her guitar, and, slinging her bridle over her left arm, she sang Spanish ballads as she rode along, striking handfuls of chords in accompaniment. Her silk dress fluttered in shimmering folds, and the white plumes in her hat nodded and quivered, like airy sprites, in time to the music. Her whole effect was romantic beyond expression, and I could not take my eyes away from her; although Lauretta called her absurd, and said she was a silly, forward girl, and had better take care she didn’t meet with an accident. However, the horse seemed to have altered his tactics — or perhaps he preferred the lady-singer to the Paladin; at all events, it was not till we were close to the gates of the Residenz that Teresina clambered back into the carriage again.

  “‘Imagine me now deliciously up to my eyes in concerts, operas, and music of every description, passing my days and hours at the piano, whilst arias, duets, and I don’t know all what, are being studied and rehearsed. From the total change in my outward man you gather that I am permeated and inspired by a spirit of might. All the provincial bashfulness is gone. I sit at the piano, a maestro, with the score before me, conducting my donna’s scenas. My whole soul and existence is centred in melody. With the utmost contempt for counterpoint, I write quantities of canzonettas and arias, which Lauretta sings — only in private, however. Why won’t she ever sing anything of mine at a concert? I can’t make this out. Teresina sometimes dawns on my memory, curvetting with her lyre on her charger, like some incarnation of music; and, spite of myself, I write loftier and more serious strains when I think of this. Lauretta, no doubt, sports and plays with the notes like some fairy-queen. What does she ever attempt in which she does not succeed? Teresina never attempts a roulade; a simple appoggiatura or so, in the antique style, is the utmost that she ventures upon; but those long, sustained notes of hers shine through the dim background, and wonderful spirits arise, and gaze, with their earnest eyes, deep into the breast. I don’t know why mine was so long before it opened to them.

  “‘The sisters’ benefit-concert came off at length. Lauretta was singing a great scena of Anfossi’s. I was, of course, at the piano as usual. We had arrived at her final “pause,” where her grand cadenza ad libitum had to come in. It was a question of showing what she really could do. Nightingale trills went warbling up and down; then came long holding-notes; then all kinds of florid passages — a regular solfeggio; even I thought the affair was being kept up too long. Suddenly I felt a breath. Teresina was standing close behind me; Lauretta was just pulling herself together to begin her long, swelling harmonica shake, which was to lead back to the a-tempo. Some demon took possession of me. I crashed down the chord of the dominant with both hands; the orchestra followed me; and there was an end of Lauretta’s trillo, just at the supreme moment when it ought to have set the audience in furore.

  “‘Lauretta, with a glare of fury at me, which went through me like a two-edged sword, tore her music in pieces, and sent it flying about my ears; then rushed away like a mad creature, through the orchestra, into the ante-room. As soon as the tutti was finished, I hastened after her. She was sobbing and raving. “Don’t come near me, you malignant fiend!” she screamed: “you have blasted my career for ever; how can I ever look an audience in the face again? You have robbed me of my name, and fame, and, oh, of my trillo! Out of my sight;” she made a rush at me, but I slipped deftly out of the door. During the concerto — which somebody or other played — Teresina and the Kapellmeister succeeded in so far pacifying her as to induce her to appear again — but not with me at the piano — and in the concluding duet, which the sisters sung, Lauretta did actually introduce the harmonica shake, was tremendously applauded, and got into the most delightful temper imaginable.

  “‘I, however, couldn’t get over the style in which I had been treated before so many strangers; and I had quite made up my mind to be off back to my native town again the following morning. In fact I was packing up, when Teresina came into my room. When she saw what was going on, she was thunderstruck. “You going to leave us?” she cried. I said that after the way in which Lauretta had behaved to me, I could not possibly stay.

  “‘“Then the hasty, petulant outburst of a foolish girl, which she is heartily ashamed of and sorry for, is going to drive you away; where else could you carry on your artistic life so happily? It rests entirely with you to cure Lauretta of those tempers of hers. You are too good to her, and let her have her own way far too much. You have too high an opinion of her altogether. She has a very fair voice, and an enormous compass, no doubt. But all those fioriture, those everlasting scales and passages, and nightingale trills of hers, what are they but dazzling tricks, more like what an acrobat does on the tight-rope than anything else? Can such things possibly touch the heart? The harmonica shake, which you wouldn’t let her bring in, is a thing which I detest! it makes me feel quite ill. Then all that clambering up among the ledger-line notes, isn’t it a mere, unnatural forcing of the proper voice — the real voice — the only voice that touches the listener? What I admire are the middle and lower registers. A tone which goes to the heart, a genuine portamento di voce, I prefer to everything else. None of those meaningless embellimenti — a firm, steady, full utterance of the note — something like decision and accuracy of intonation; that is real singing, and that is how I sing myself. If you can’t bear Lauretta longer, don’t forget that there is Teresina, who is your devoted friend: and you can be my maestro and composer quite in your own special style. Don’t be vexed with me, but all your florid canzonettas and arias are nothing in comparison with the one.”

  “‘Teresina sang, in her rich pathetic tones, a simple canzone in church style which I had written a few days before. Never could I have imagined that it could ever possibly have sounded like that. Tears of rapture rolled down my cheeks: I seized her hand, and pressed it to my lips a thousand times: I vowed that nothing on earth should ever part us.

  “‘Lauretta looked upon my alliance with Teresina with angry jealousy, which she concealed as best she could. I was indispensable to her at the time; because, clever as her singing was, she couldn’t learn anything new without assistance. She was a wretched hand at reading, and extremely shaky over her time. Teresina could read everything at sight, and the accuracy of her time was incomparable. Lauretta’s tempers and caprices never came out in such full force as when she was being accompanied. The accompaniment never pleased her. She looked upon it in the light of a necessary evil, she wanted the piano to be barely audible, always pianissimo. She was always dragging and altering the time, every bar different, just as she happened to take it in her head at the moment. I set to work to resist this firmly. I combatted those evil habits of hers; I showed her that there must be a certain energy about an accompaniment, that breadth of phrasing was one thing, and meaningless dragging quite another. Teresina backed me up staunchly. I gave up writing everything but the church style, and gave all the solos to the contralto voice. Teresina dragooned me pretty smartly, too; but I didn’t mind that. She knew more than Lauretta, and I thought she had more feeling for German music.

  “‘When we were in a certain little town in the south of Germany, we met with an Italian tenor on his way from Milan to Vienna. My ladies were charmed to meet with a fellow-countryman. He was continually with them. Teresina was the one whom he chiefly devoted himself to, and, to my no small disgust, I found myself quite playing second fiddle. One morning, as I was just going into their room, with a score under my arm, I heard an animated conversation going on between my ladies and the tenor. My own name struck my ear, and I listened with might and main. I knew enough Italian to catch every word that was said. Lauretta was relating the terrible story of the concert when I cut her out of her shake by striking my chord too soon.

  “‘“Asino tedesco!” cried the tenor. I felt inclined to go and chuck the vapouring stage-hero out of the window; but I restrained myself. Lauretta went on to say that she would have got rid of me on the spot, but that I had implored her to let me stay, and she had done so, out of compassion, as I was going to take singing-lessons from her. Teresina confirmed this, to my no small amazement. “He is a nice boy, enough,” she added. “He is in love with me just now, and writes all his solos for the contralto. There is a certain amount of talent in him, if he could get rid of the stiffness and awkwardness which all Germans have. I am in hopes I may make a composer of him who may write some good things for the contralto: there is so little written for it that is worth very much. He is dreadfully wearisome with his everlasting sighings and devotion, and torments me fearfully with his compositions, which are poor enough as yet.”