Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/119

Rh "I feel sure I have seen it before."

"Do you recognise it by any mark?"

"I recognise it by every mark, and"—he touched it with the bow—"I recognise it by its voice."

The idea struck me as fanciful. In an orchestra of violins, all playing the same music, if one among them could be recognised by its voice, it seems to me that that violin would not be popular. But he is fanciful, is Ernest.

We went down to dinner. During the meal he told me about a young man in whom he was much interested. The name of this young man was Philip Coursault, and he, too, was a musician. According to Ernest, he was a strange and wild young man. Poor and proud. Impracticable, too. He relied upon his art for bread. And his art had failed him. Nor was it strange, from all that Ernest said. He had composed oratorios, and grand operas, and elaborate symphonies—all the heavy artillery of music. Ernest declared that genius had inspired them all—that unmistakable genius which rings clear and true. But an unknown young man cannot go into the market with a grand opera in his hand, and have it produced and paid for on the spot, especially when that young man is a crotchety young man, who has ideas of his own as to the way in which he wishes his work produced.

So Mr. Coursault found. Pupils he scorned. Ernest, for instance, had found him one or two. But his treatment of them was so extraordinary, that, as a matter of course, he lost them. He was never punctual. He kept them waiting hours. Sometimes he never came at all. And when he did appear he spent