Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/24

 ate. I was suffering from a kind of madness. My one idea was music—the cornet. I made up my mind to learn, and I learnt. And it seems to me that had I been dumb I should have learnt to speak; lame—to walk; blind—I should have recovered my sight!—because I had the will! Where there's a will there's a way! I had the will, and I succeeded. Children, mark that!

"So I saved our lives; but the experience affected my brain; I was mad about music. For three years the cornet was scarcely ever out of my hands. C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C: that was my world, and my life was spent in blowing the cornet.

"Ramon would not leave me. I went to France with him, and played the cornet there. The cornet and I were one. My madness was like that of Donizetti's. Everybody came to hear me, including the leading musicians; I was a prodigy. In my hands the cornet became a living thing; it sighed, it groaned, laughed, scolded; it mimicked the bird and the beast of prey, as well as the sobs of a human being. My lungs were of iron.

"Thus I lived for two years longer, and at the end of that time Ramon died. The sight of my friend's lifeless body had such an effect upon me that it broke the spell and restored my reason. I took up the cornet—but my skill was gone, and I could not play it.

"Now do you wish me to play you a dance?"