The second quotation is Wagner's tribute to the personality of his disciple, and it seems only fair to print it here, since it contradicts almost all the views of Serov as a man which we find in the writings of his contemporaries in Russia. "For me Serov is not dead," says Wagner; "for me he still lives actually and palpably. Such as he was to me, such he remains and ever will: the noblest and highest-minded of men. His gentleness of soul, his purity of feeling, his serenity, his mind, which reflected all these qualities, made the friendship which he cherished for me one of the gladdest gifts of my life." CHAPTER VII ANTON RUBINSTEIN Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein was born November 16/28, 1829, in the village of Vykhvatinets, in the government of Podolia. He was of Jewish descent, his father being, however, a member of the Orthodox Church, while his mother--a Löwenstein--came from Prussian Silesia. Shortly after Anton's birth his parents removed to Moscow, in the neighbourhood of which his father set up a factory for lead pencils and pins. Anton, and his almost equally gifted brother Nicholas, began to learn the piano with their mother, and afterwards the elder boy received instruction from A. Villoins, a well-known teacher in Moscow. At ten years of age Anton made his first public appearance at a summer concert given in the Petrovsky Park, and the following year (1840) he accompanied Villoins to Paris with the intention of entering the Conservatoire. This project was not realised and the boy started upon an extensive tour as a prodigy pianist. In 1843 he was summoned to play to the Court in St. Petersburg, and afterwards gave a series of concerts in that city. The following year he began to study music seriously in Berlin, where his mother took him first to Mendelssohn and, acting on his advice, subsequently placed him under Dehn. The Revolution of 1848 interrupted the ordinary course of life in Berlin. Dehn, as one of the National Guard, had to desert his pupils, shoulder a musket and go on duty as a sentry before some of the public buildings, performing this task with a self-satisfied air, "as though he had just succeeded in solving some contrapuntal problem, such as a canon by retrogression." Rubinstein hastened back to Russia, having all his music confiscated at the frontier, because it was taken for some diplomatic cipher.