spend at the piano, day in, day out, for months to come, before the
result could be compared with the achievements even of many a
fellow-student. As the private lessons Schwarz gave were too expensive
for him, he decided, as a compromise, to take a course of extra
lessons with Furst, who prepared pupils for the master, and was quite
willing to come to terms, in other words, who taught for what he could
get.

Once a week, then, for the rest of the summer, Maurice climbed the
steep, winding stair of the house in the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE where
Furst lived with his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in
dull weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different
landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what
seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were
continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various
kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let
the piercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of
its kind in this relatively new street, was divided into countless
small lodgings; three families, with three rooms apiece, lived on each
storey, and on the fifth floor, at the top of the house, the same
number of rooms was let out singly. Part of the third storey was
occupied by a bird-fancier; and between him and the Fursts above waged
perpetual war, one of those petty, unending wars that can only arise
and be kept up when, as here, such heterogeneous elements are forced
to live side by side, under one roof. The fancier, although his
business was nominally in the town, had enough of his wares beside him
to make his house a lively, humming kind of place, and the strife
dated back to a day when, the door standing temptingly ajar, Peter,
the Fursts' lean cat, had sneaked stealthily in upon this, to him,
enchanted ground, and, according to the fancier, had caused the death,