my subjects were now here before me, to do justice to my
august sentiments," were the concluding words in his Majesty's answer.
And the royal utterance was suitably quoted beneath a drawing published
shortly afterwards, in which the king stands, fuse in hand, by the
cannon, ready to fire a well-directed charge of grape-shot into the
midst of his faithful subjects.

* * * * *

All this happened some months after Mendelssohn's death, and it was well
he was spared experiences which would have made the most painful
impression on his sensitive nature. Indeed, so impressionable was he,
that even trifling incidents would sometimes visibly affect him, and
then he could make it very trying for those who had the misfortune to
incur his displeasure. He had strong likes and dislikes, and would not
always take the trouble to conceal them; as on one occasion, when he
very pointedly showed his dislike to Miss F., an Irish girl, who was
studying at the Conservatorio in Leipsic. I think he was prejudiced
against her because she had a mass of fluffy reddish hair, which would
break away from the rule of the hairpin and escape in a spirit of
rebellion; just the sort of thing we admire nowadays, but that was
thought positively improper then.

She once appealed to me, when my mother was reading her a homily on the
wicked ways of that hair. "Now, Felix, you who have an artist's eye; is
it really so dreadful?" she asked. To be sure I told her that I, for
one, thought it mighty fine, and she triumphed, but I was ever after
chaffed as the one who had "an artist's eye."

There were tears shed on the evening of the Pupils' concert at the
Gewandhaus. When Miss F.'s turn came, it was found she had forgotten her
music, and Mendelssohn, behind the scenes, was in a rage. There was an
awkward pause whilst the music was being fetched and the audience was
waiting, but my father called up the tuner to officiate and fill the
gap, and so appearances were saved. But Mendelssohn never forgave poor
Miss F.

A passage in a letter to my mother, dated September 3, 1832, I must
transcribe, if only because I think it my duty to quote it as a warning
to such bachelors as may be inclined to make rash vows of celibacy.
Mendelssohn, who was then twenty-three, wrote of his friend Klingemann:
"If Klingemann flirts, he is only doing the correct thing, and wisely
too; what else are we born for? But, if he gets married, I shall just
die