There was a slight inclination on the part of the audience to hiss, but its extreme curiosity speedily checked it and it breathlessly awaited results. The doctor, for he was one, bent over the recumbent figure of the pianist and, lifting him into an upright position, made a few passes over him and apparently uttered something into his ear through a long tube. A wonderful change at once manifested itself, and slowly raising himself on his feet there stood a gaunt old man, with an enormous skull-like head covered with long yellowish white hair, eyes so sunken as to be invisible, and a nose that would defy all competition as to size.
After fairly tottering from side to side in his efforts to make a bow, the Gospadin (or, as you would say, Mister or Herr) Bundelcund fell back exhausted in his seat, and while a murmur of pity ran through the house his attendants administered restoratives out of uncanny looking phials and vigorously fanned him. By this time the audience had worked itself up to a fever pitch (at least eight tones above concert pitch) and nothing short of an earthquake would have dispersed it; besides the price of admission was enormous and naturally every one wanted the worth of his money. I had a strong glass and eagerly examined the old man and saw that he had long skinny fingers that resembled claws, a cadaverous face and an air of abstraction one notices in very old or deaf persons. To my horror I noticed that the doctor in addressing him spoke through a large trumpet and then it dawned on me that the man was deaf, and hardly was I convinced of this when my right hand neighbor informed me that the Gospadin was blind also, and being feeble and exhausted by piano practice hardly ever spoke; so he was practically dumb.
Here was an interesting state of things, and my forebodings as to the result were further strengthened when I saw the attendants place the old man's fingers in the technique-developing machines that encumbered the stage, and vigorously proceeded to exercise his fingers, wrists, and forearms, he all the while feebly nodding, while two other attendants flapped him at intervals with bladders to keep him from going to sleep. Again my right-hand neighbor, who appeared to be loquacious, informed me that the Gospadin's mercenary great-grandchildren kept him awake in this manner and thus forced him to play eighteen hours a day. What a cruelty, I thought, but just then a few muffled chords aroused me from my thoughts and I directed all my attention to the stage, for the performance had at last begun.