first murmurs of its gentle and variegated _crescendo_, and the
appearance of a microscopic oboe which gradually increased its song
until it was silenced by the kettle boiling. Berlioz must have heard
that oboe as well as I, for I rediscovered it in the "Ride to Hell" in
his _La Damnation de Faust_.

At the same time I was learning to read. When I was two-years-and-a-half
old, they placed me in front of a small piano which had not been opened
for several years. Instead of drumming at random as most children of
that age would have done, I struck the notes one after another, going on
only when the sound of the previous note had died away. My great-aunt
taught me the names of the notes and got a tuner to put the piano in
order. While the tuning was going on, I was playing in the next room,
and they were utterly astonished when I named the notes as they were
sounded. I was not told all these details--I remember them perfectly.

I was taught by Le Carpentier's method and I finished it in a month.
They couldn't let a little monkey like that work away at the piano, and
I cried like a lost soul when they closed the instrument. Then they left
it open and put a small stool in front of it. From time to time I would
leave my playthings and climb up to drum out whatever came into my head.
Gradually, my great-aunt, who fortunately had an excellent foundation in
music, taught me how to hold my hands properly so that I did not acquire
the gross faults which are so difficult to correct later on. But they
did not know what sort of music to give me. That written especially for
children is, as a rule, entirely melody and the part for the left hand
is uninteresting. I refused to learn it. "The bass doesn't sing," I
said, in disgust.

Then they searched the old masters, in Haydn and Mozart, for things