At our musical parties [in Paris] we played Haydn’s symphonies, compressed into quintetts. Our leader, who attacked every piece as a bull-dog would a badger, set off at a furious rate, and being a corpulent man, soon fiddled himself into such a heat that he took off his coat. The violoncello player was not behind him in fervour, for, on coming to a difficult passage, he screwed up his muscular powers till his mouth had a shape not unlike the mouth of a water-bottle, which with a goggling stare, would have charmed Cruickshank himself. The moment we had set off we never stopped till we arrived at the end. Our leader, disdaining anything like a halt, jumped over all the rest, dashed out of one movement into the other, keeping the same helter-skelter pace, so that it was difficult to come in, with any sort of grace, at the death. By the time we had got through a symphony, my friend had waxed so warm that he could not proceed without rubbing his hands in a bowl of oatmeal that stood beside him to absorb his exudations. After we had been at it for some time, the whisking of his bow-arm so loaded the atmosphere with the farinaceous substance, that, at the conclusion of our concert, we came away as dusty as millers. A performer of this kind is insensible to the combined effect of musical sounds; he hears no one but himself, and may be regarded as a mere musical machine. << less