directorship.

When fairly launched on a musical career, his trials and
disappointments began. Wishing to assure himself whether he had
genius or not, he traveled five hundred miles to see and hear the
celebrated Louis Spohr, who received the tremulous youth coldly,
and gave him no encouragement. No matter, he would go to the city
of art. In Paris he heard Berlioz and other great musicians.
Entranced he listened, in his high seat at the top of the house,
to the exquisite notes of Malibran.

His soul feasted on music, but his money was fast dwindling away,
and the body could not be sustained by sweet sounds. But the poor
unknown violinist, who was only another atom in the surging life
of the great city, could earn nothing. He was on the verge of
starvation, but he would not go back to Christiana. He must still
struggle and study. He became ill of brain fever, and was tenderly
nursed back to life by the granddaughter of his kind landlady,
pretty little Felicie Villeminot, who afterward became his wife.
He had drained the cup of poverty and disappointment to the dregs,
but the tide was about to turn.

He was invited to play at a concert presided over by the Duke of
Montebello, and this led to other profitable engagements. But the
great opportunity of his life came to him in Bologna. The people
had thronged to the opera house to hear Malibran. She had
disappointed them, and they were in no mood to be lenient to the
unknown violinist who had the temerity to try to fill her place.

He came on the stage. He bowed. He grew pale under the cold gaze