"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.