r lessons were often very stormy. From time to time certain questions
came up on which I could not agree with him. He would then take me
quietly by the ear, bend my head and hold my ear to the table for a
minute or two. Then, he would ask whether I had changed my mind. As I
had not, he would think it over and very often he would confess that I
was right.

"Your childhood," Gounod once told me, "wasn't musical." He was wrong,
for he did not know the many tokens of my childhood. Many of my attempts
are unfinished--to say nothing of those I destroyed--but among them are
songs, choruses, cantatas, and overtures, none of which will ever see
the light. Oblivion will enshroud these gropings after effect, for they
are of no interest to the public. Among these scribblings I have found
some notes written in pencil when I was four. The date on them leaves no
doubt about the time of their production.

CHAPTER II

THE OLD CONSERVATOIRE

I cannot let the old Conservatoire in the Rue Bergere go without paying
it a last farewell, for I loved it deeply as we all love the things of
our youth. I loved its antiquity, the utter absence of any modern note,
and its atmosphere of other days. I loved that absurd court with the
wailing notes of sopranos and tenors, the rattling of pianos, the blasts
of trumpets and trombones, the arpeggios of clarinets, all uniting to
form that ultra-polyphone which some of our composers have tried to
attain--but without success. Above all I loved the memories of my
education in music which I obtained in that ridiculous and venerable
palace, long since too small for the pupils who thronged there from all
parts of the world.

I was fourteen when Stamaty, my piano teacher, introduced me to
Benoist, the teacher of the organ, an excellent and charming man,
familiarly known as "Father Benoist." They put me in front of the
keyboard, but I was badly frightened, and the sounds I made were so
extraordinary that all the pupils shouted with laughter. I was received
at the Conservatoire as an "auditor."

So there I was only admitted to the honor of listening to others. I was
extremely painstaking, however, and I never lost a note or one of the
teacher's words. I worked and thought at home, studying hard on
Sebastian Bach's _Wohltemperirte Klavier_. All of the pupils, however,
were not so industrious. One day, when they had all failed and Benoist,
as a result, had nothing to do, he put me at the organ. This ti