"'How interesting! But suppose one of the tuners falls ill. What does he do then?'
"'Why, it's simple enough. In that case he only plays pieces requiring two of the three ranges of notes.'
"'How intensely interesting! But pray, if you do not take it amiss, my dear, I learnt that Herr Pedalewsky has only two tuners: one for the black keys, the other for the white ones.'
"'My dear, that was so in bygone times when he played sometimes a whole concert on the black keys alone, being 231 variations on Chopin's Etude on the black keys. But it made such a sad impression that some nasty critics said his piano was in mourning black; other critics said that he was paid to do so by Mr Jay of Regent Street.'
"'How excruciatingly interesting! Do you know, my dear, I was told that Herr Polonorusky plays practically all the time, and even when he travels he carries with him a dumb piano on which he practises incessantly.'
"'How touching! I have heard that too, and believed it, until that atrocious man who writes for the Bad Times destroyed all my illusions. He said that if Herr Pantyrewsky did that, he would for ever spoil his touch. Just fancy that! It is not the touch, but the pose of that languid, Chopinesque profile over a dumb piano in a rattling car that was so interesting. And now that horrid journalist spoils it all. Nay, he added that the whole story was deliberately invented by the artist's manager.'
"'How distressingly interesting! You know, my dear, I will not believe the story about the manager. I know too much about the wonderful pianist. I have learnt at Marienbad that he had ten teachers at a time, one for each of his fingers, and that for five years he lived in a tiny village in Bavaria, because, don't you see, it was so central for the ten different cities where his teachers lived. For the thumb he rushed off to Frankfort on the Maine. There is no town like Frankfort for the study of the thumb. That's why they make such excellent sausages there which resemble a thumb to perfection. For the index he went to Rome. And so forth and so on. It is most marvellous.'
"All during that time," Alcibiades continued, "the pianist was playing the moonlight sonata of Beethoven. At the end of the piece, the ladies who had carried on the lively conversation applauded wildly. 'Was it not marvellous?' said one to the other. 'Oh—delightful!' was the answer.
"So ended the concert. On leaving my seat I met Mrs Blazing.
"'O mon cher,' she said, 'why do all these women pretend to enjoy music? They very well know that not one of them cares for it in the least. I frankly admit that music to me is the anarchy of air, the French Revolution of sounds, acoustic bankruptcy. All our lives we have been taught to suppress our emotions, and to consider it ungenteel to express them in any way whatever. We were told that we must hide and suppress them—which we have done so successfully that after some time we resemble to a nicety the famous safe of Madame Humbert. And then, in flagrant contradiction to all this genteel education, we are supposed to accept with joy the moanings, cries, sobs, sighs, and other unsuppressed emotions of some middle-class Dutchman or Teuton dished up to us in the form of a sonata. It is too absurd for words.