"Yes"--continues Schumann--"but you'll have to suffer first--like me, who will have to kill myself very soon; because I am going mad--and that's worse than any blindness! and like Beethoven who went deaf, poor demigod! and like all the rest of us who've been singing to you to-night; that's why our songs never pall--because we are acquainted with grief, and have good memories, and are quite sincere. The older you get, the more you will love us and our songs: other songs may come and go in the ear; but ours go ringing in the heart forever!" In some such fashion did the great masters of tune and tone Discourse to Barty through Father Louis's well-trained finger-tips. They always discourse to you a little about yourself, these great masters, always; and always in a manner pleasing to your self-love! The finger-tips (whosesoever's finger-tips they be) have only to be intelligent and well trained, and play just what's put before them in a true, reverent spirit. Anything beyond may be unpardonable impertinence, both to the great masters and yourself. Musicians will tell you that all this is nonsense from beginning to end; you mustn't believe musicians about music, nor wine-merchants about wine--but vice versa! When Father Louis got up from the music-stool, the Abbé would say to Barty, in his delightful, pure French: "And now, mon ami--just for _me_, you know--a little song of autrefois." "All right, M. l'Abbé--I will sing you the 'Adelaïde,' of Beethoven ... if Father Louis will play for me." "Oh, non, mon ami, do not throw away such a beautiful organ as yours on such really beautiful music, which doesn't want it; it would be sinful waste; it's not so much the tune that I want to hear as the fresh young voice; sing me something French, something light, something amiable and droll; that I may forget the song, and only remember the singer." "All right, M. l'Abbé," and Barty sings a delightful little song by Gustave Nadaud, called "Petit bonhomme vit encore." And the good Abbé is in the seventh heaven, and quite forgets to forget the song. And so, cakes and wine, and good-night--and M. l'Abbé goes humming all the way home.... "Hé, quoi! pour des peccadilles Gronder ces pauvres amours? Les femmes sont si gentilles, Et l'on n'aime pas toujours! C'est bonhomme Qu'on me nomme.... Ma gaîté, c'est mon trésor! Et bonhomme vit encor'-- Et bonhomme vit encor'!" An extraordinary susceptibility to musical sound was growing in Barty since his trouble had overtaken him, and with it an extraordinary sensitiveness to the troubles of other people, their partings and bereavements and wants, and aches and pains, even those of people he didn't know; and especially the woes of children, and dogs and cats and horses, and aged folk--and all the live things that have to be driven to market and killed for our eating--or shot at for our fun!