reproduce for himself and others true pictures of the scenes through which he scampered.  Here Falbe was not so easily moved to laughter; he was as severe with Michael as he was with himself, when it was the question of learning some piece with a view to really playing it.  There was no light-hearted hurrying on through blurred runs and false notes, slurred phrases and incomplete chords.  Among these pieces which had to be properly learned was the 17th Prelude of Chopin, on hearing which at Baireuth on the tuneless and catarrhed piano Falbe had agreed to take Michael as a pupil.  But when it was played again on Falbe’s great Steinway, as a professed performance, a very different standard was required.

Falbe stopped him at the end of the first two lines.

“This won’t do, Michael,” he said.  “You played it before for me to see whether you could play.  You can.  But it won’t do to sketch it.  Every note has got to be there; Chopin didn’t write them by accident.  He knew quite well what he was about.  Begin again, please.”

This time Michael got not quite so far, when he was stopped again.  He was playing without notes, and Falbe got up from his chair where he had the book open, and put it on the piano.

“Do you find difficulty in memorising?” he asked.

This was discouraging; Michael believed that he remembered easily; he also believed that he had long known this by heart.

“No; I thought I knew it,” he said.

“Try again.”

This time Falbe stood by him, and suddenly put his finger down into the middle of Michael’s hands, striking a note.

“You left out that F sharp,” he said.  “Go on. . . .  Now you are leaving out that E natural.  Try to get it better by Thursday, and remember this, that playing, and all that differentiates playing from strumming, only begins when you can play all the notes that are put down for you to play without fail.  You’re beginning at the wrong end; you have admirable feeling about that prelude, but you needn’t think about feeling till you’ve got all the notes at your fingers’ ends.  Then and not till then, you may begin to remember that you want to be a pianist.  Now, what’s the next thing?”

Michael felt somewhat squashed and discouraged.  He had thought he had really worked successfully at the thing he knew so well by sight.  His heavy eyebrows drew together.

“You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol,” he remarked, rather shortly.

Falbe put his hand on his shoulder.

“Look here, Michael,” he said, “you’re vexed with me.  Now, there’s nothing to be vexed at.  You know quite well you were leaving out lots of notes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren’t playing cleanly.  Now I’m taking you seriously, and I won’t have from you anything but the best you can do.  You’re not doing your best when you don’t even play what is written.  You can’t begin to work at this till you do that.”