What the green room is to the theatre,
the robing-room to the assize court, the
vestry to the church; so is the singers' room
to the concert-hall. But, far more elegant,
sprightly, and amusing, than the dramatic
green-room, is the "professional room"
behind the ragged leaves of the screen at the
bottom of the steps of the orchestra at
Papadaggi's concert. There are no garish
gaslights here, no tinselled dresses: no rouge,
bismuth, jaded faces, pantomime masks—no
passing carpenters and call-boys:— all is
fresh, sparkling, and gay. Fresh flowers,
rosy bonnets and rosier faces, cleanest of
shirts, smartest of female toilettes, newest
of white kid gloves, most odoriferous of
scents. I don't pretend to know much
about female fashions, though I have
occasionally studied that sphynx-like journal the
Follet—every flounce in which is an enigma
—with fear and trembling. I don't
pretend to know much about dress; but I do
think that the best dressed ladies in creation
are the female singers at a morning
concert. They unite the prettiest portions of
the English and French styles of costume.
They dress their hair exquisitely, and
display their little jewelleries inimitably.
There is a whole art in making the most
of a ring, a brooch, a bracelet. I have seen
born ladies covered with gems, on whom
they produced no more elegant effect than
a bright brass-knocker would on a pigstye
door. And, more than all this, my musical
belles have the unmistakable appearance of
having dressed themselves, and are ten times
smarter, neater, prettier for it. There is a
table covered with fruit and wine in the
singers' room. I regret to see Tom Muffler
sitting thereat. Tom is not given to drinking;
but, when drink is given to him, he
exceeds.

Who is that strange wild man lying
dislocated over, rather than sitting upon, an
ottoman, his long fingers twined together, his
eyebrows bent into the form of a horseshoe,
his puissant head bent down? That is
Pauslavisco the harpist. The trumpet of
fame is braying his name out to all Europe,
like an impetuous, inconsiderate trumpet as
it is, blowing for dear life to make up for lost
time. He is deaf to Fame's trumpet.
Fortune is pelting him with golden marrow-bones.
He heeds not Fortune. She has
pelted him with bones without any gold in
them before now. He stands, and walks, and
works, and lives alone: he and his harp, for
they are one. The professionals say he is
dull. The ladies say he is a brute. The
multitude cry lo Panslavisce! Evoe Panslavisce!
as they would to Bacchus. He lets
them cry on. He plays his harp, and there
is silence, and a wild tumult at the end; and
then he receives his money, sees his harp
put into a green-baize cover, and carried off
by a dun-bearded man as mysterious as his
master, and goes away. No concert is
complete without him. In town and country he
is sure to draw. He has no intimates, no
places of resort save a mouldy cigar-shop—
where he sits as silent, and apparently as
immovable, as one of the tobacco-chests—and
a dreary public-house in a court up Drury
Lane, where he drinks large quantities of
beer, tacitly. He speaks seldom, and then
he does not seem to be quite certain in his
mind as to which is his mother tongue, and
his speech is a garbled compromise of many
languages. Indeed nobody knows for certain of
what nation he is. Some say he is an Italian,
some say he is a German, some say he is a Dane.
His harp is of all nations, and speaks all
languages. Of course there are grim reports
about, of his having killed men, and negotiated
a psychical investment in an unholy office.
His wealth is put down at a fabulous amount,
his crimes as unutterable. Little Miss Larke,
who is a brave body, as valorous as the young
lady whose virgin smile lighted her safely
through the Green Isle, once took courage to
ask Panslavisco how he did. " As well," he
answered, "as a man can be, who is eating his
own liver." He looks indeed as if he were
Prometheus, and, wishing to be alone, had
contracted to do the vulture's work
vicariously.

Little Saint Sheddle, who lives no one
knows how, but is the very Captain Cook of
the musical world, is supposed to be the only
man in Europe who has been sufficiently
admitted to Panslavisco's intimacy to dine
with him. he describes these dinners as if
he were telling a ghost story. The table, he
says, is garnished with two places, two pots of
porter, and one steak in a dish. Panslavisco
cuts the steak into two exact portions; takes
one half, pushes the other half towards Saint
Sheddle, and falls-to without saying a word.
After dinner he produces a cigar-box and a
bottle of hollands, and smokes and drinks
prodigiously, but with little more conversation;
then he will get up and go out; or go to
bed, or begin to play his harp wildly—all in a
speechless manner. " It's something to say
one has dined with him," whispers Saint
Sheddle, "but it's very queer."

Panslavisco lies upon his ottoman,
profoundly immobile until it is nearly time for
him to play. Then he begins to pat and
smooth down his harp, as a man would adjust
the girths of a wild horse he was about to
ride. His turn in the programme arrives;
the harp is carried into the orchestra; he
follows it; throws his long sinuous hair back;
sweeps his bony fingers over the strings, and
begins to play. A wild horse and his rider
are no bad images for him and his harp. He
seems to ride upon it: to bestride it as a witch
would a brookstick, making the air awful
with the melody of a demoniacal Sabbath.
He bows his head to the applause when he
has done, more as it the blast of a tempest had
smote him upon the head and compelled him
to bow it, than in reverence. Now he is