as carried home in triumph. There, my
good friend, I have done what you desired. Be happy, and believe me,
yours affectionately,

GIACOMO ROSSINI.

"PARIS, _22 Apr. 1860_."

* * * * *

The facts related were well known, but here they were confirmed by the
master's own narrative, and the recipient's happiness was unbounded.

The Jaques who was going to play to Rossini was my cousin, a partner in
one of the old banking firms of Hamburg, and, besides, a thorough artist
and virtuoso on that soul-stirring instrument, the violoncello. But it
was not to have his soul stirred that Rossini gathered young musicians
around him at that early hour of the day. They came to play his last
compositions to him, and they remained to practise them at his house.
You could often hear the sounds of various instruments proceeding from
as many various rooms. The piano predominated, for at that time of his
life Rossini was most assiduously composing for that instrument,
labouring, as it seemed to me, under the fond delusion that he had
discovered a new vein in the old mine which had produced such a fund of
musical wealth. Sometimes he reminded one of Hummel's style, sometimes I
thought I traced a Weber idea as it would be if filtered through the pen
of a Mendelssohn. He would on no account allow his MSS. to leave the
house. "Jamais," he said when my cousin expressed the wish to give the
violoncello piece a day's practising at home, "Jamais; je ne veux pas
dependre du public." So the performers had to go to the Chaussee
d'Antin, and prepare themselves there for the Saturday evenings at which
the latest works of the master were produced.

Amongst those privileged young musicians was the pianist, Georges
Pfeiffer, who has since become so popular a composer. Rossini would give
him such curiously named productions to study as "Cornichons," "Radis,"
and the like. There was also a "Bolero tartare," and a certain Rondo in
the style of Offenbach, the famous composer of "La belle Helene," "Orfee
aux Enfers," and other operettas that for years drew all Paris to the
"Bouffes." He was universally credited with exercising the baneful
influence of the evil eye, and Rossini, being superstitious, had headed
his manuscript with a drawing of a _gettatura_, which should act as a
charm to protect him. Georges Pfeiffer, no less superstitious--he always
asserted he had good reason to be so--had managed to play the opening
theme of