So single-minded was he,[Herbeck] that he never suspected the traps that were laid for him on these occasions. Had he done so, nothing would have been easier for him than to turn the tables on his guileful friends by improvising ad libitum in the style of the school to which the composer belonged whose work they had asked him to play; for his marvellous familiarity with all the successive phases of tonality enabled him to perform the most remarkable imitative feats. I remember, on one occasion, when an old musical crony carried the joke so far as to invent the name of a composer and beg Herbeck to play a few bars of a specified work by this creature of imagination, the Kapellmeister turned upon him quite indignantly, exclaiming, "Du mochtest mich zum Besten haben ; es gibt keinen Componisten dieses Namens!" (You are trying to take a rise out of me; there is no composer of that name!)