Ah, that was a note! Well, well, well, his nobs can play. Hm! A cadenza in
double stops! And the E minor scale in harmonics! Listen to the baron in
the dirty white vest. The man's a violinist. Observe--calisthenics on the
G string and in the second position. A very difficult position and easily
faked. And when did Heifetz ever take a run like that? Up, down and the
fingers hammering like thoroughbreds on a fast track. Pizzicato with the
left hand and obbligato glissando!

Hoopla! The fellow's showing off! And it isn't a Drdla souvenir or a
vaudeville Brahms arrangement. But twenty years of practice. Yes, sir,
there are twenty years and eight hours a day, every day for twenty years,
in these acrobatics. There are twenty years, twenty years, behind this
technique. And well-spent years.

But tell me, Cyril, for whom is our baron showing off--for whom? Our baron
with the soiled tie and the made-up eyes, fiddling coldly, elaborately for
a handful of annoyed flappers, amused shoe clerks and bored home lovers
sitting stolidly in the dark, waiting stolidly and defiantly to be
diverted?

Bravo! Five of us applaud. No, six. A gentleman in an upper box applauds
with some degree of violence. And there is the orchestra leader--a
dark-skinned, black-eyed, curly-headed youth, nodding and smiling.

Next on the program? Ah, a ballad. A thing the cabaret ladies sing, "Do
You Think of Me?" A faint smile on our baron's face. But the fiddle leaps
into position as if for another cold, elaborate attack. It takes twenty
years, twenty well-spent years to learn to hold a bow like that. Firmly,
casually, indifferently as one holds a pencil between one's fingers.