The master need only try it with me, and, now that both are ill, put me in place of one or the other." Wolf, who knew what each individual chorister could do, shook his head, and began to tell the boy from Malta for what good reason the master preferred the two sick youths; but little Hannibal interrupted by exclaiming, in tones of passionate lamentation: "So you are the same?
The master having begun it, all misjudge and crush me! Instead of giving me an opportunity to show what I can do in a solo part, I am forced back into the crowd.

My best work disappears in the chorus.

And yet, Sir Wolf, in spite of all, I heard the master's own lips say in Brussels--I wasn't listening--that he had never heard what lends a woman's voice its greatest charm come so softly and tenderly from the throat of a boy.

Those are his own words.

He will not deny them, for at least he is honest.