nder his chair the foot that had been
seeking that of the fair Marianna, fixing his eyes on her while
listening to Gambara.

"I was born at Cremona, the son of an instrument maker, a fairly good
performer and an even better composer," the musician began. "Thus at an
early age I had mastered the laws of musical construction in its twofold
aspects, the material and the spiritual; and as an inquisitive 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 science. It is
founded in physics by the very nature of the matter it works on. Sound
is air in motion. The air is formed of constituents which, in us, no
doubt, meet with analogous elements that respond to them, sympathize,
and magnify them by the power of the mind. Thus the air must include a
vast variety