The tricksy Monkey, the Goat, the Ass, and bandy-legged Mishka the
Bear, determine to play a quartette. They provide themselves with the
necessary pieces of music--with two fiddles, and with an alto and a
counter-bass. Then they sit down on a meadow under a lime-tree,
prepared to enchant the world by their skill. They work away at their
fiddlesticks with a will; and they make a noise, but there is no music
in it.
"Stop, brothers, stop!" cries the Monkey, "wait a little! How can we
get our music right? It's plain, you mustn't sit as you are. You,
Mishka, with your counter-bass, face the alto. I will sit opposite the
second fiddle. Then a different sort of music will begin: we shall set
the very hills and forests dancing."
So they change places, and recommence; but the music is just as
discordant as before.
"Stop a little," exclaims the Ass; "I have found out the secret. We
shall be sure to play in tune if we sit in a row."
They follow its advice, and form in an orderly line. But the quartette
is as unmusical as ever. Louder than before there arose among them
squabbling and wrangling as to how they ought to be seated. It
happened that a Nightingale came flying that way, attracted by their
noise. At once they all entreated it to solve their difficulty.
"Be so kind," they say, "as to bear with us a little, in order that our
quartette may come off properly. Music we have; instruments we have:
tell us only how we ought to place ourselves."
But the Nightingale replies,
"To be a musician, one must have a quicker intelligence and a finer ear
than you possess. You, my friends, may place yourselves just as you
like, but you will never become musicians."