sufficiently easy for me to handle. At five I was playing small sonatas
correctly, with good interpretation and excellent precision. But I
consented to play them only before listeners capable of appreciating
them. I have read in a biographical sketch that I was threatened with
whippings to make me play. That is absolutely false; but it was
necessary to tell me that there was a lady in the audience who was an
excellent musician and had fastidious tastes. I would not play for those
who did not know.

As for the threat of whippings, that must be relegated to the realm of
legends with the one that Garcia punished his daughters to make them
learn to sing. Madame Viardot expressly told me that neither she nor her
sister was abused by their father and that they learned music without
realizing it, just as they learned to talk.

But in spite of my surprising progress my teacher did not foresee what
my future was to be. "When he is fifteen," she said, "if he can write a
dance, I shall be satisfied." It was just at this time, however, that I
began to write music. I wrote waltzes and galops--the galop was
fashionable at that period; it ran to rather ordinary musical motives
and mine were no exception to the rule. Liszt had to show by his _Galop
Chromatique_ the distinction that genius can give to the most
commonplace themes. My waltzes were better. As has always been the case
with me, I was already composing the music directly on paper without
working it out on the piano. The waltzes were too difficult for my
hands, so a friend of the family, a sister of the singer Geraldy, was
kind enough to play them for me.

I have looked over these little compositions lately. They are
insignificant, but it is impossible to find a technical error in them.