“But my father, think of his disappointed hopes,” said Ole Bull.

“Your father will never regret it either,” answered the professor.

As good fortune ordered for the forlorn youth, his musical friends did not desert him, but secured for him the temporary position of director of the Philharmonic Society of Christiania, the regular incumbent being ill.  On the death of the latter shortly afterward, Ole Bull was tendered the place.  As the new duties were very well paid, and relieved the youth from dependence on his father’s purse, further opposition to his musical career was withdrawn.

In the summer of 1829 Ole Bull made a holiday trip into Germany, and heard Dr. Spohr, then director of the opera at Cassel.  “From this excursion,” said one of Ole Bull’s friends, “he returned completely disappointed.  He had fancied that a violin-player like Spohr must be a man who, by his personal appearance, by the poetic character of his performance, or by the flash of genius, would enchant and overwhelm his hearers.  Instead of this, he found in Spohr a correct teacher, exacting from the young Norwegian the same cool precision which characterized his own performance, and quite unable to appreciate the wild, strange melodies he brought from the land of the North.”  Spohr was a man of clock-work mechanism in all his methods and theories—­young Ole Bull was all poetry, romance, and enthusiasm.

At Minden our young violinist met with an adventure not of the pleasantest sort.  He had joined a party of students about to give a concert at that place, and was persuaded to take the place of the violinist of the party, who had been rather free in his libations, and became “a victim of the rosy god.”  Ole Bull was very warmly applauded at the concert, and so much nettled was the student whose failure had made the vacancy for Ole Bull’s talent, that the latter received a challenge to fight a duel, which was promptly accepted.  Ole Bull proved that he could handle a sword as well as a fiddle-bow, for in a few passes he wounded and disabled his antagonist.  He was advised, however, to leave that locality as soon as possible, and so he returned straight to Christiania, “feeling as if the very soil of Europe repelled him” (to use an expression from one of his letters).

Ole Bull remained in Norway for two years, but he felt that he must bestir himself, and go to the great centers of musical culture if he would find a proper development and field for the genius which he believed he possessed.  His friends at Christiania idolized him, and were loath to let him go, but nothing could stay him, so with pilgrim’s staff and violin-case he started on his journey.  Scarcely twenty-one years of age, nearly penniless, with no letters of introduction to people who could help him, but with boundless hope and resolution, he first set foot in Paris in 1831.  The town was agog over Paganini and Mme. Malibran, and of course the first impulse