child I observed many things which subsequently recurred to the mind
of the full-grown man.

"The French turned us out of our own home--my father and me. We were
ruined by the war. Thus, at the age of ten I entered on the wandering
life to which most men have been condemned whose brains were busy with
innovations, whether in art, science, or politics. Fate, or the
instincts of their mind which cannot fit into the compartments where
the trading class sit, providentially guides them to the spots where
they may find teaching. Led by my passion for music I wandered
throughout Italy from theatre to theatre, living on very little, as
men can live there. Sometimes I played the bass in an orchestra,
sometimes I was on the boards in the chorus, sometimes under them with
the carpenters. Thus I learned every kind of musical effect, studying
the tones of instruments and of the human voice, wherein they differed
and how they harmonized, listening to the score and applying the rules
taught me by my father.

"It was hungry work, in a land where the sun always shines, where art
is all pervading, but where there is no pay for the artist, since Rome
is but nominally the Sovereign of the Christian world. Sometimes made
welcome, sometimes scouted for my poverty, I never lost courage. I
heard a voice within me promising me fame.

"Music seemed to me in its infancy, and I think so still. All that is
left to us of musical effort before the seventeenth century, proves to
me that early musicians knew melody only; they were ignorant of
harmony and its immense resources. Music is at once a science and an
art. It is rooted in physics and mathematics, hence it is a science;
inspiration makes it an art, unconsciously utilizing the theorems of