"I repeat—you are a wonderful player. Who taught you?"
"Carl Hauptmann."
"Hauptmann!—he was a pupil of mine."
"Then you're Eitel von Gleichroeder!"
"I am."
Nigel looked interested. Memories of his life in London revived—music lessons, concerts, musical jargon, a lost world in which he had once lived, but had now almost forgotten. He seemed to hear Hauptmann's strange, coughing laugh as he chid his pupil for what von Gleichroeder had just chidden him now—his abominable taste. "You are hobeless, hobeless—you and your Balfe and your Bellini and your odder vons." Von Gleichroeder he knew would take an even more serious view of the case, as he had a reputation for ultra-modernism in music. Hauptmann's contempt for Balfe and Bellini he carried on to Verdi and Gounod, even Tschaikowsky, while though he was obliged to grant Beethoven supremacy with a grudge, he passed over his works in favour of those of Scriabin, d'Indy, Debussy and Strauss.
"Well, well," said the musician, "play Zampa, play Lucia di Lammermoor, play La Somnambula—any abomination you please—but play."
Nigel, with rather an evil grin, played Zampa.
"Why do you like those things?"
"Because they are pretty tunes."