Mychowski the gainer thereby.
Still he obstinately refused to be lionized, cut his hair perilously
near the prizefighter's line, and never went into society, except for
money. He was a model business man; the impresarios worshipped him. Such
business ability, such frugality, such absence of eccentricity, such
temperance, were voted extraordinary.

"Why, the man never gambles," said a manager, "drinks only at his
meals"--"which are many," interrupted some one--"and always sends his
money home to his wife and family in Poland. Yet he plays like a god. It
is unheard of." ...

The Polish servant Mychowski brought with him from home sickened in
Paris and died. Although the pianist was playing the Erard, he went
often to the Pleyel piano warerooms and there told a friend that he was
without a valet.

"We have some one here who will suit you. His father was Chopin's
body-servant, who, as you must have read, was an Irish-Frenchman named
Daniel Dubois. We call the son Daniel Chopin; he looks so much like some
of the pictures of your great countryman. Best of all, he doesn't know
one note of music from another."

"Just the man," cried Mychowski; "my last valet always insisted on
waking me in the morning with a Bach Invention. It was awful." Mychowski
shuddered.

"Wait, then; I'll send upstairs for him," said the amiable
representative of the Maison Pleyel, and soon there appeared, dressed
after the fashion fifty years ago, a man of about thirty, whose face and
expression caused Mychowski to bound out of his seat and exclaim in his
native tongue:

"Slawa Bohu! but he looks like Frederic."

The man started a little, then became impassive. "My father was Daniel
Dubois, in whose arms the great master died. May he keep company with
the angels! When my mother bore me she wore a medallion containing a
portrait of the great master, and my father, who was his pupil, played
the nocturnes for her."

The speaker's voice was slightly muffled in timbre, its accent was
languid, yet it was indubitably the voice of a cultivated man. Mychowski
regarded him curiously. A slim frame of middle height; fragile but
wonderfully flexible limbs; delicately formed hands; very small feet; an
oval, softly-outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken
hair of a light chestnut color parted on one side; tender brown eyes,
intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet,
subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures--s