“I answered very drily, that to-day my fantasies had all gone a wool-gathering; and, while we are talking about it, a devil, in the shape of a dandy, with two waistcoats, had smelt out Bach’s Variations, which were lying under my hat in the next room.  He thinks they are merely little variations, such as Nel cor mio non piu sento, or Ah, vous dirai-je, maman, etc., and insists upon it, that I shall play them.  I try to excuse myself, but they all attack me.  So then, ‘Listen, and burst with ennui,’ think I to myself,—­and begin to work away.

“When I had got to variation number three, several ladies departed, followed by the gentleman with the Titus-Andronicus head.  The Rodeleins, as their teacher was playing, stood it out, though not without difficulty, to number twelve.  Number fifteen made the man with two waistcoats take to his heels.  Out of most excessive politeness, the Baron stayed till number thirty, and drank up all the punch, which Gottlieb placed on the piano-forte for me.

“I should have brought all to a happy conclusion, but, alas! this number thirty,—­the theme,—­tore me irresistibly away.  Suddenly the quarto leaves spread out to a gigantic folio, on which a thousand imitations and developments of the theme stood written, and I could not choose but play them.  The notes became alive, and glimmered and hopped all round about me,—­an electric firestreamed through the tips of my fingers into the keys,—­the spirit, from which it gushed forth, spread his broad wings over my soul, the whole room was filled with a thick mist, in which the candles burned dim,—­and through which peered forth now a nose, and anon a pair of eyes, and then suddenly vanished away again.  And thus it came to pass, that I was left alone with my Sebastian Bach, by Gottlieb attended, as by a familiar spirit. (Your good health, Sir.)

“Is an honest musician to be tormented with music, as I have been to-day, and am so often tormented?  Verily, no art is so damnably abused, as this same glorious, holy Musica, who, in her delicate being, is so easily desecrated.  Have you real talent,—­real feeling for art?  Then study music;—­do something worthy of the art,—­and dedicate your whole soul to the beloved saint.  If without this you have a fancy for quavers and demi-semi-quavers, practise for yourself and by yourself, and torment not therewith the Capellmeister Kreisler and others.

“Well, now I might go home, and put the finishing touch to my sonata for the piano-forte; but it is not yet eleven o’clock, and, withal, a beautiful summer night.  I will lay any wager, that, at my next-door neighbour’s, (the Oberjagermeister,) the young ladies are sitting at the window, screaming down into the street, for the twentieth time, with harsh, sharp, piercing voices, ’When thine eye is beaming love,’—­but only the first stanza, over and over again.  Obliquely across the way, some one is murdering the flute, and has, moreover, lungs like Rameau’s nephew; and, in