in Hoffmann’s artistic atmosphere of ghosts and spirits.  With my head quite full of Kreissler, Krespel, and other musical spectres from my favourite author, I imagined that I had at last found in real life a creature who resembled them:  this ideal musician in whom for a time I fancied I had discovered a second Kreissler was a man called Flachs.  He was a tall, exceedingly thin man, with a very narrow head and an extraordinary way of walking, moving, and speaking, whom I had seen at all those open-air concerts which formed my principal source of musical education.  He was always with the members of the orchestra, speaking exceedingly quickly, first to one and then the other; for they all knew him, and seemed to like him.  The fact that they were making fun of him I only learned, to my great confusion, much later.  I remember having noticed this strange figure from my earliest days in Dresden, and I gathered from the conversations which I overheard that he was indeed well known to all Dresden musicians.  This circumstance alone was sufficient to make me take a great interest in him; but the point about him which attracted me more than anything was the manner in which he listened to the various items in the programme:  he used to give peculiar, convulsive nods of his head, and blow out his cheeks as though with sighs.  All this I regarded as a sign of spiritual ecstasy.  I noticed, moreover, that he was quite alone, that he belonged to no party, and paid no attention to anything in the garden save the music; whereupon my identification of this curious being with the conductor Kreissler seemed quite natural.  I was determined to make his acquaintance, and I succeeded in doing so.  Who shall describe my delight when, on going to call on him at his rooms for the first time, I found innumerable bundles of scores!  I had as yet never seen a score.  It is true I discovered, to my regret, that he possessed nothing either by Beethoven, Mozart, or Weber; in fact, nothing but immense quantities of works, masses, and cantatas by composers such as Staerkel, Stamitz, Steibelt, etc., all of whom were entirely unknown to me.  Yet Flachs was able to tell me so much that was good about them that the respect which I felt for scores in general helped me to overcome my regret at not finding anything by my beloved masters.  It is true I learnt later that poor Flachs had only come into the possession of these particular scores through unscrupulous dealers, who had traded on his weakness of intellect and palmed off this worthless music on him for large sums of money.  At all events, they were scores, and that was quite enough for me.  Flachs and I became most intimate; we were always seen going about together—­I, a lanky boy of sixteen, and this weird, shaky flaxpole.  The doors of my deserted home were often opened for this strange guest, who made me play my compositions to him while he ate bread and cheese.  In return, he once arranged one of my airs for wind instruments,