A moment's pause, and the composer's suspicious expression relaxed.
'Frau Dr. Fellinger mentioned the circumstances to me,' she continued, 'and I thought they might suit me.'
By this time Brahms had become sufficiently reassured to show the rooms and to listen, though without remark, to a brief description of Frau Truxa's family and of the circumstances in which she found herself.
'Perhaps, Dr. Brahms, you will consider the matter,' she concluded, 'and communicate with me if you think further of it. If I hear nothing more from you, I shall consider the matter at an end.'
After about a week, during which Frau Truxa kept her own confidence, her maid came one day to tell her a gentleman had called to see her. Being engaged at the moment, she asked her aunt to ascertain his business, but the old lady returned immediately with a frightened look.
'I don't know what to think!' she exclaimed; 'there is a strange-looking man walking about in the next room measuring the furniture with a tape!'
'The things will all go in!' exclaimed the master as Frau Truxa hurried to receive him.
The upshot was that the master gave up the tenancy of the flat, returning to his old irresponsible position as lodger, whilst Frau Truxa, bringing her household with her, stepped into the position of his former landlady, thereby giving Brahms cause to be grateful for the remainder of his life for Frau Fellinger's wise firmness. He was, says Frau Truxa, perfectly easy to get on with; all he desired was to be let alone. He was extremely orderly and neat in his ways, and expected the things scattered about his room to be dusted and kept tidy, but was vexed if he found the least trifle at all displaced—even if his glasses were turned the wrong way—and, without making direct allusion to the subject, would manage to show that he had noticed it. Observing, after she had been a little time in the flat, that he always rearranged the things returned from the laundress after they had been placed in their drawer, she asked him why he did so. 'Only,' he said, 'because perhaps it is better that those last sent back should be put at the bottom, then they all get worn alike.' A glove or other article requiring a little mending would be placed carelessly at the top of a drawer left open as if by accident. The next day he would observe to Frau Truxa, 'I found my glove mended last night; I wonder who can have done it!' and on her replying, 'I did it, Herr Doctor,' would answer, 'You? How very kind!'
Frau Truxa came to respect and honour the composer more and more the longer he lived in her house. She made his peculiarities her study, and after a short time understood his little signs, and was able to supply his requirements as they arose without being expressly asked to do so. It is almost needless to say that he took great interest in her two boys, and once, when she was summoned away from Vienna to the sick-bed of her father, begged that the maid-servant might be instructed to give all her attention to the children during their mother's absence, even if his rooms were neglected. 'I can take care of myself, but suppose something were to happen to the children whilst the girl was engaged for me!' Every night whilst Frau Truxa was away, the master himself looked in on the boys to assure himself of their being safe in bed. For the old aunt he always had a pleasant passing word.
The fourth Symphony and two books of Songs were published in 1886, and the three new works of chamber music, Op. 99, 100, 101, in 1887. Of the songs we would select for particular mention the wonderfully beautiful setting of Heine's verses: