, and that the ideal of the genuine violin-player has come into
existence within you. I should be delighted to give you lessons; but
the time--the time! where to find it? Haak occupies me a great deal,
and then I have got this young man Durand here just now, he wants to be
heard in public, and knows that he need not try that till he has had a
good course of lessons from me. However, wait a moment, between
breakfast and lunch, or at lunch time--yes. I have still an hour at
liberty then. Little son, come to me at twelve exactly every day, and I
will fiddle with you for an hour until one; then Durand comes.'

"You can imagine how I hastened, with a throbbing heart, to the Baron's
the next forenoon at the appointed hour.

"He would not let me play a single note on my own violin, which I had
brought with me, but placed in my hands a very old instrument by
Antonio Amati. Never had I had any experience of a violin like this.
The celestial tone which streamed from its strings altogether inspired
me. I let myself go, and abandoned myself to a stream of ingenious
'passages,' suffering the river of music to surge and swell, higher and
higher, in mighty waves and billows of sound, and then die down and
expire in murmuring whispers. My own belief is that I was playing
exceedingly well; much better than I often did afterwards.

"When I had done, the Baron shook his head impatiently, and said: 'My
little son! my little son! you must forget all that. In the first
place, you hold your bow most abominably,' and he showed to me,
practically, how the bow ought to be held, according to the manner of
Tartini. I thought I should never be able to bring out a single tone
whilst so holding it; but great was my astonishment when I found that,
on repeating my 'passages' at the Baron's desire, the amazing advantage
of holding the bow as he told me to hold it was strikingly manifest,
after two or three seconds.

"'Good!' said the Baron. 'Little son, let us begin the lesson. Commence
upon the note G, above the line, and hold out that note as long as you
can possibly hold it. Economize your bow; make the very utmost of it
that you possibly can. What the breath is to the singer, the bow is to
the violinist.'

"I did as I was directed, and was greatly delighted to find that, in
this manner of dealing with matters, I was enabled to bring out a tone
of exceptional powerfulness; to swell it out to a marvellous
fortissimo, and make it die down to a ver