“What? Don’t you know?” respectfully asked the trombone player who sat in front, turning his head. Trombone players are generally of awkward, timid disposition, and while barytones, tenors, basses, and violinists revel in dreams of future greatness, the trombonist’s aspirations rise no higher than the back row of the orchestra. This must account for the lady pianists’ hardness of heart toward them, not to speak of the indifference of the lady singers, who are so constantly devoured by the ardent fire of their ambition. “It is Spiridonoff, who is full of brilliant promise,” explained the trombonist. “Onkel says he’ll be a second Paganini, and he hopes to make his own name famous through the boy.” “Oh, Spiridonoff! Is that he?” For the last year all have heard and spoken of Spiridonoff. The boy had made marvelous progress. Even now he could have played in public and put many a grown violinist to shame. But Onkel would not allow it. He guarded his young talent with the utmost care. “Why is he so pale, poor little fellow?” asked the florid soprano, whose interest had been aroused by the words of the trombonist. “Pallor is an attribute of true talent,” stated the baritone. He had a pale face surmounted by a shock of black hair. The trombonist, overwhelmed by the remark--he possessed neither pallor nor talent--again turned his face to the platform. Among the friends of the performers, in the second row, on the last chair to the left, sat a man whose eyes were riveted on the boy with unswerving attention. He was tall and slender. His thin hair was combed over from the right temple to the left, and stuck down with pomatum in an evident desire to hide a conspicuous baldness. He must have been over fifty years of age, as there were many and deep wrinkles in his forehead, and his cheeks, and around his eyes and chin. His thin hair too was thickly streaked with gray. The strongly marked eyebrows expressed determination and obstinacy, yet there was a look of gentleness in the eyes. At the present moment he was evidently in an excited, emotional and expectant frame of mind. He wore a long, old-fashioned, black coat, carefully buttoned up to the chin.