'Well, Cossel,' he said, finding the young musician at home, 'we are going to make a pile of money.'
'What?' shouted Cossel.
'We are going to make a pile of money. A man has been who wants to travel with the boy.'
Poor Cossel! all his worst fears seemed about to be realized; his heart leapt to his mouth.
'Then you are a word-breaker!' he thundered.
It was now Jakob's turn to look aghast, for Cossel, as described by all who knew him personally, was no stickler for ceremony, and could show his wrath right royally when he felt he had righteous cause for indignation. 'You are a word-breaker!' he cried, and, adopting a sudden idea, went on: 'You said to me, "You shall keep the boy till he knows as much as you do." He can only learn that from Marxsen!'
A heated argument followed, which ended in a compromise. The affair was to be allowed to stand over for a time, and, in fact, several succeeding months passed as quietly as heretofore. But the impresario renewed his proposal, and the struggle recommenced. Cossel perceived the only means of securing a permanent victory for the benefit of Hannes, and he determined to use it, cost him what it might. It lay in his own complete self-renunciation. He went again to Altona, and besought Marxsen to take entire charge of the boy's musical career, only to be once more refused. Marxsen did not yet feel convinced that the great progress made by Johannes during the past year had been due to other qualities than those of assiduous industry and eager wish to learn. Cossel, however, was not to be beaten. He returned to the attack, actually declaring to his bewildered master that the boy made such rapid strides he felt he could teach him nothing more. The kind Marxsen at length gave way, and consented to take the musical education of Johannes into his own hands henceforth, and to teach him without remuneration, saying he did so the more willingly since the parents were not able to pay for the training they wished to secure for their child, and because he had become fond of the little pupil for his own sake.
'How could you let yourself be put off from such business?' said Aunt Detmering after the impresario had been finally dismissed. She had been partner with Johanna in the little shop of the 'sisters Nissen,' and had married into somewhat better circumstances than Jakob's wife. 'I can't interfere in it,' answered Johanna simply, for her boy's good was more precious to her than silver and gold, in spite of her hard, struggling existence. 'Min soote Hannes!' she would say, throwing her arms round him, when he came up sometimes to give her a kiss.
Thus was the rich, budding faculty of Johannes guided to the safe shelter of Marxsen's fostering care, and it is not too much to say that Cossel, by his noble action, secured the future of the genius the significance of which he was the first to recognise. It would be idle to speculate about the unrealities of a non-existent might-have-been, and to contemplate a fancied picture of Brahms' career based upon circumstances and events other than those actual to his childhood. It is, however, certain that no mere natural musical endowment, however splendid, can attain to its perfect growth without having been put in the right way, and those who have entered into the heritage of Brahms' songs and symphonies, his choral works and chamber music, may well cherish Cossel's name in grateful remembrance. Although he will not again occupy a prominent place in our account of Brahms' life, his private relations with his pupil did not cease. His piano and his sympathy were still at the service of Hannes, who was grateful for one and the other, and who, remembering his early teacher and friend to the end of his life with admiring affection, strove, as opportunity served in later years, to obtain for him the more widely-known professional position to which his qualities so justly entitled him. Cossel died in 1865 at the age of fifty-two.