That music of a certain spontaneous kind, the music within us which we were ever longing to bring to the surface, was a bond of union between du Maurier and myself, I have already mentioned; but that bond was to be greatly strengthened by the music that great musicians on more than one occasion lavished on us.  First came Louis Brassin, the pianist.  He had studied under Moscheles at the Conservatorio of Leipsic, the city of Bach and Mendelssohn fame; and there, from the days of his boyhood, he had belonged to the little circle of intimates who frequently gathered around the master at his house.

When, a few years later, he came to Belgium on a concert tour, he and I found no difficulty in taking up the old friendship contracted in my father’s house, just where we had left it.  The boy had become the man, the student had developed into the artist and thorough musician.  He was the boonest of boon companions, and his jokes were so broad that they often reminded one, in their crudeness and their rudeness, of certain passages in Mozart’s early letters.  To say that he spoke French with a German accent a la Svengali would be putting it very mildly; Teutonic gutturals would most unceremoniously invade the sister language; d’s and t’s, b’s and p’s would ever change places, as they are made to do in some parts of the Fatherland.  With all that, he rejoiced in a delightful fluency of speech, conveying quaint and original thought.  There was something decidedly interesting about Brassin’s looks, but his figure gave one the impression of having been very carelessly put together; when he walked his head went back on his shoulders, and his hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another.  But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual.  He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause.  And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater rate than twenty to twenty-five miles an hour; when grand pianos were not yet ironclad and armour-plated, or had learnt proudly to display the maker’s name on their broadside when they went forth to do battle on the concert field.

[Illustration:  COFFEE AND BRASSIN IN BOBTAIL’S ROOMS.]

Brassin used to draw inane caricatures of himself, which he would present to us with a triumphant laugh of immoderate calibre.  I have preserved some of these, but decidedly prefer du Maurier’s rendering of our common friend.  In the accompanying drawing he shows him at the piano, entertaining us on “A rainy day.”

“Ah!  Felix, amico mio,” he says, “may thy room be always as jolly, thy coffee be ever so sweet, as on that happy morning!  May Brassin’s fingers be ever as brilliant and inspired!  May Tag be ever as lazy, and with equal satisfaction to himself, and may I never be blinder!  Amen.”