Whenever we settled for a few months in one of the larger cities, I always obtained a piano, which was placed in Frau Luise's room, or, if there was no space there, in the dining-room--she still maintained the rule of having the meals in common, though the Round Table constantly dwindled--and here we passed our only hours of pure, unshadowed happiness. For, when she sang and I accompanied her, the narrow walls seemed to expand, the earth, with everything base and unlovely it contained, to sink beneath us, while we ourselves floated in a sunny atmosphere where everything was harmony and peace, love and hope, and every wound that bled secretly healed at once as though touched by the hand of some enchanter. We did not permit ourselves this delight daily, only on Sundays and when, for some reason, there was no acting. The boy, meantime, sat in a little chair and never turned his eyes from his mother while she sang; or I took him on my knee while I played the accompaniment, and he gazed wonderingly at the keys. At last I began to give him a few lessons on the piano, and was amazed to see how easily he understood everything. Oh, that child! He became more and more the one unalloyed delight of my life, for unmixed happiness in the society of his mother was impossible for me. Afterward, during my long life as a teacher, I had an opportunity to observe many hundred boys, and to this companionship I owe a thousand pleasures. But neither before nor after did I ever meet a child like Joachimchen. He was no prodigy in the usual acceptance of the word. No technical talent, no intellectual gift developed with extraordinary power or precocity, and, even in music--the only instruction I began in his sixth year to give him regularly--he made no remarkable progress. But the quality this young creature possessed to a far greater degree than other children of his age, was the subtlety and accuracy of his mental perceptions, by which he infallibly distinguished truth from semblance--a, if I may so express it, moral clairvoyance which enabled him to give the most striking opinions of persons and things without any precocious conceit. No trace of child-like vanity, no desire for praise, marred this innocent faculty of his soul. He was like a clear mirror, which reflected in their real outlines the images of everything that surrounded him. Any one whom he loved was sure to be pure and good; for everything base and sordid, though it approached him under the most flattering guise, instantly repelled him.