That sketch admirably pourtrays the lankiness and flabbiness of Brassin’s figure, contrasting as it did with the strength of the wrist and the grip of the fingers.  He was certainly a fine subject for du Maurier, whom I always looked upon as a sort of vivisector of music and musicians, of their methods and their moods.  A brilliant career awaited Louis Brassin, but it was to be suddenly and unexpectedly cut off.  He died some ten years ago at the age of forty-four.

In 1858 my father came on a visit to Antwerp with my mother and my youngest sister, Clara.  Wherever my father took up his abode, even temporarily, a grand piano would in the natural course of events gravitate towards him, and a select circle of art lovers would soon be grouped around it.  Amongst the friends in the Antwerp circle were—­Van Lerius, Tadema, Baron Leys, Heyermans, and Bource.  My sister at that time was a bright and happy creature, not long out of her teens, full of hopes—­alas! never to be realised, and of talents never to be matured.  The large dark eyes—­they seemed the gift of her godmother, the famous Malibran—­reflected the artist’s soul, and a grand soprano voice spoke its powerful language.  Du Maurier and she were soon on a brother and sisterly footing, and they ever remained so.

[Illustration:  CLARA MOSCHELES.]

Of the pleasant evenings we of the circle spent together I recall one in particular.  My sister had been singing one song after another; my father was engaged in an animated conversation with Stefani, the pianist, on the relative merits of Mendelssohn and Schumann.  Du Maurier and I had been sitting at the farther end of the room, talking of his eyes.  At that time one doctor held out hopes; another, a great authority, had considered it his painful duty not to conceal the truth from his patient, and had, with much unction and the necessary complement of professional phraseology, prepared him for the worst.  The sight of one eye had gone, that of the other would follow.  Those were anxious days, both for him and for his friends; but, whatever he felt, he could talk about his trouble with perfect equanimity, and I often wondered how quietly he took it, and how cheerfully he would tell me that he was “fearfully depressed.”  That evening I had been putting the chances of a speedy recovery before him, and making predictions based, I am bound to admit, on nothing more substantial than my ardent hopes.  But du Maurier was too much of a philosopher to be satisfied with such encouragement as I could give, and said:  “No, I had better face the enemy and be prepared for the worst.  If it comes, you see, my dear fellow, there is Nature’s law of compensation, and I firmly believe that one cannot lose one faculty without being compensated by some great gain elsewhere.  I suppose one gets to see more inside as things grow darker outside.  If one can’t paint, one must do something else—­write perhaps; that is, as long as one can, and then, if the steam accumulates, and one wants a safety valve to let it off, dictate.”  Happily, to this day he writes, and need not have recourse to dictation.