time and look to the opposite windows.
They were nearly always open, as were also mine, for the heat of the
stove was oppressive to me, and I preferred to temper it with a little
of the raw outside air. I used sometimes to hear from those opposite
rooms the practicing or playing of passages on the violin and
violoncello--scales, shakes, long complicated flourishes and phrases.
Sometimes I heard the very strains that I had to sing to: airs, scraps
of airs, snatches from operas, concerts and symphonies. They were always
humming and singing things. They came home haunted with "The Last Rose,"
from "Marta"--now some air from "Faust," "Der Freischuetz," or
"Tannhauser."

But one air was particular to Eugen, who seemed to be perfectly
possessed by it--that which I had heard him humming when I first met
him--the March from "Lenore." He whistled it and sung it; played it on
violin, 'cello and piano; hummed it first thing in the morning and last
thing at night; harped upon it until in despair his companion threw
books and music at him, and he, dodging them, laughed, begged pardon,
was silent for five minutes, and then the March _da Capo_ set in a
halting kind of measure to the ballad.

By way of a slight and wholesome variety there was the whole repertory
of "Volkslieder," from

"Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen;
Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn,"

up to

"Maedele, ruck, ruck, ruck
An meine gruene Seite."

Sometimes they--one or both of them with the boy--might be seen at the
window leaning out, whistling or talking. When doors banged and quick
steps rushed up or down the stairs two steps at a time I knew it was
Courvoisier. Friedhelm Helfen's movements were slower and more sedate.
I grew to know his face as well as Eugen's, and to like it better the
more I saw of it. A quite young, almost boyish face, with an
inexpressibly pure, true, and good expression upon the mouth and in the
dark-brown eyes. Reticent, as most good faces are, but a face which made
you desire to know the owner of it, made you feel that you could trust
him in any trial. His face reminded me in a distant manner of two
others, also faces of musicians, but greater in their craft than he,
they being creators and pioneers, while he was only a disciple, of
Beethoven and of the living master, Rubinstein. A gentle, though far
from weak face, and such a contrast in expression and everything else to
that of my musician, as to make me wonder sometime