Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

HENSELT 227
strings ; an enchanting spell of beauty pervaded the
whole. It was an old man who was breathing out a
whole lifetime of sadness and disenchanted illusions
in song. He said, indeed, once to me, in speaking of
art, 'It is a compensation for the many disillusions
with which life abounds.'
My next piece this winter was Beethoven's C Minor
Concerto ; and it was when studying this that I had a
misunderstanding with Henselt which made me stay
away from him three weeks, during which I neither
inquired after him nor had a lesson. He sent his
servant to me several times to say that I was to come
and play to him; and each time I wrote back a
courteous line to say I was not quite ready to go to
him. To his wife, with whom I constantly corre-
sponded, I wrote, however, a full account of the whole
—the why and wherefore; and she, dear woman,
wrote me a letter which I still possess, telling me that
they both loved and valued me much, and that I must
not mind her husband, I must bear with him, for it
was his way. But I could not in a moment recover
from what Henselt afterwards called ' a fit of touchi-
ness.'
The two lady-professors who stood nearest to him,
and were my friends, remonstrated with me more than
once, and assured me that I was venturing on what
they would never have dared to do ; but it was not
until I met the Meister on my way to church, after
three weeks had elapsed, that the difference was