of illness frequently prevented his fulfillment of
concert engagements. More than once he wasted in one evening the
proceeds of several concerts, and was obliged to borrow money on his
violin, the source of his livelihood, in order to obtain funds wherewith
to pay his gambling debts. Anything more wild, debilitating, and ruinous
than the life led by this boy, who had barely emerged from childhood,
can hardly be imagined. On one occasion he was announced for a concert
at Leghorn, but he had gambled away his money and pawned his violin, so
that he was compelled to get the loan of an instrument in order to play
in the evening. In this emergency he applied to M. Livron, a French
gentleman, a merchant of Leghorn, and an excellent amateur performer,
who possessed a Guarneri del Gesu violin, reputed among connoisseurs one
of the finest instruments in the world. The generous Frenchman instantly
acceded to the boy's wish, and the precious violin was put in his hands.
After the concert, when Paganini returned the instrument to M. Livron,
the latter, who had been to hear him, exclaimed, "Never will I profane
the strings which your fingers have touched! That instrument is yours."
The astonishment and delight of the young artist may be more easily
imagined than described. It was upon this violin that Paganini afterward
performed in all his concerts, and the great virtuoso left it to the
town of Genoa, where it is now preserved in a glass case in the Museum.
An excellent engraving of it, from a photograph, was published in 1875
in George Hart's book on "The Violin."

At this period of his life, between the ages of seventeen and twenty,
Nicolo Paganini was surrounded by numerous admirers, and led into
all kinds of dissipation. He was naturally amiable and witty in
conversation, though he has been reproached with selfishness. There can
be no doubt that he was, at this period, constantly under the combined
influences of flattery and unbounded ambition; nevertheless, in spite
of all his successful performances at concerts, the style of life he was
leading kept him so poor that he frequently took in hand all kinds
of musical work to supply the wants of the moment. It is a curious
coincidence that the fine violin which was presented to him by M.
Livron, as we have just seen, was the cause of his abandoning, after a
while, the allurements of the gaming-tables. Paganini tells us himself
that a certain nobleman was anxious to possess this ins