The third variation gives the theme to the left hand, and the right flies up the keyboard in arpeggios and down in scales, at a high rate of speed. From here the music expands freely into a sort of fantasia. Fundamentally there are still variations, but they are not cut off definitely from each other. Notice from here on, likewise, some excellent writing for the keyboard, something of an independent and melodious part for the left hand, brilliant chromatics, trills, and runs that drop in whirling circles, tremolos, filigree scales over smooth basses _à la_ John Field. Then there is a _Final_ in which the theme is broken up into a lilting, extremely rapid waltz, and in which the pianist is called upon to surmount difficulties of no trivial kind. The series comes to an end in a coda, which, like many a classical coda, swells big as the frog in the fable till it bursts. These variations and all other variations of Herz are dead as the facile hand that wrote them. There is nothing of musical life in them, and consequently they never had a chance to prove themselves immortal. But the point is not the lack of musical value in these pieces, but the very striking presence of high technical skill. This, as found not only here but in his concertos and other compositions, is the gauge of his skill as a player, which by these signs was extraordinary. As a musician he may very well have been a charlatan, but as a virtuoso he was an adept. His universal success is, finally, proof that such a man was the man that the public most wanted to hear. Another indication of the public taste at that time, which, be it remembered, was the time of Schumann and Chopin, is the fact that such variations and fantasias as Herz now composed on familiar airs from operas or household songs were, perhaps above all else, acceptable. This again must mean that the general audience was interested not in what we know as music, but in a movement of hands, arms, fingers, and incidentally sounds, upon a musical structure with which they had not to bother themselves. In other words one went to hear or to see what the player could do, not to listen to what he could express of his own emotion, or reveal of the emotional content of pianoforte music. The pianoforte was, after all, a relatively new instrument. Though Clementi, Mozart and Beethoven had written for it, they had not forgotten that in the houses whither their music would find its way, there were likelier to be harpsichords than pianofortes. It was not until the time of Herz that the pianoforte had become familiar to the household touch of prosperous tradesmen and artisans. Here was created a new public, one which wished to relish its new possession, to prune itself beside the blazing glory in which it might now boast part-ownership.