When, a few years later, he came to Belgium on a concert tour, he and
I found no difficulty in taking up the old friendship contracted in my
father's house, just where we had left it. The boy had become the man,
the student had developed into the artist and thorough musician. He
was the boonest of boon companions, and his jokes were so broad that
they often reminded one, in their crudeness and their rudeness, of
certain passages in Mozart's early letters. To say that he spoke
French with a German accent à la Svengali would be putting it very
mildly; Teutonic gutturals would most unceremoniously invade the
sister language; d's and t's, b's and p's would ever change places, as
they are made to do in some parts of the Fatherland. With all that,
he rejoiced in a delightful fluency of speech, conveying quaint and
original thought. There was something decidedly interesting about
Brassin's looks, but his figure gave one the impression of having been
very carelessly put together; when he walked his head went back on his
shoulders, and his hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled,
pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along
anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the
piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same
individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl
avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in
his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were
the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater
rate than twenty to twenty-five miles an hour; when grand pianos were
not yet ironclad and armour-plated, or had learnt proudly to display
the maker's name on their broadside when they went forth to do battle
on the concert field.

[Illustration: COFFEE AND BRASSIN IN BOBTAIL'S ROOMS.]