here is very much music here," she continued. "Are you fond of it?"

"Ye-es. I can't play much, but I can sing. I have come here partly to
take singing lessons."

"So!"

"Who is the best teacher?" was my next ingenuous question.

She laughed.

"That depends upon what you want to learn. There are so many: violin,
_Clavier_, that is piano, flute, 'cello, everything."

"Oh!" I replied, and asked no more questions about music; but inquired
if it were pleasant at Frau Steinmann's.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Is it pleasant anywhere? I don't find many places pleasant, because I
can not be a humbug, so others do not like me. But I believe some people
like Elberthal very well. There is the theater--that makes another
element. And there are the soldiers and _Kaufleute_--merchants, I mean,
so you see there is variety, though it is a small place."

"Ah, yes!" said I, looking about me as we passed down a very busy
street, and I glanced to right and left with the image of Eugen
Courvoisier ever distinctly if unconfessedly present to my mental view.
Did he live at Elberthal? and if so, did he belong to any of those
various callings? What was he? An artist who painted pictures for his
bread? I thought that very probable. There was something free and
artist-like in his manner, in his loose waving hair and in his keen
susceptibility to beauty. I thought of his emotion at hearing that
glorious Bach music. Or was he a musician--what Anna Sartorius called
_ein Musiker_? But no. My ideas of musicians were somewhat hazy, not to
say utterly chaotic; they embraced only two classes: those who performed
or gave lessons, and those who composed. I had never formed to myself
the faintest idea of a composer, and my experience of teachers and
performers was limited to one specimen--Mr. Smythe, of Darton, whose
method and performances would, as I have since learned, have made the
hair of a musician stand horrent on end. No--I did not think he was a
musician. An actor? Perish the thought, was my inevitable mental answer.
How should I be able to make any better one? A soldier, then? At that
moment we met a mounted captain of Uhlans, harness clanking,
accouterments rattling. He was apparently an acquaintance of my
companion, for he saluted with a grave politeness which sat well upon
him. Decidedly Eugen Courvoisier had the air of a soldier. That
accounted for all. No doubt he was a soldier. In my ignorance of the
strictness of German milita