He said: "ACH GOTT! a great man! You shall see him.

He is so celebrate in all Germany--and he has a pension, yes, from the government.

He not obliged to sing now, only twice every year; but if he not sing twice each year they take him his pension away." Very well, we went.

When the renowned old tenor appeared, I got a nudge and an excited whisper: "Now you see him!" But the "celebrate" was an astonishing disappointment to me.

If he had been behind a screen I should have supposed they were performing a surgical operation on him.