d many picturesque gesticulations.
Then they asked him to play the piano again. He did so, and the great
men retired to deliberate and vote on the issue.

Their decision was that the youth was self-willed, erratic, and that he
had some absurd mannerisms and tricks of performance that forbade his
ever making a musician. And therefore, they ruled that his admission to
the Conservatory was impossible.

Barezzi, who was present with his protege, stormed in wrath, and
declared that Verdi was the peer of any of his judges; in fact, was so
much beyond them that they could not comprehend him.

This only confirmed the powers in the stand they had taken, and they
intimated that a great musician in Busseto was something different in
Milan--Signore Barezzi had better take his young man home and be content
to astonish the villagers with noisy acrobatics. There being nothing
else to do, the advice was first flouted and then followed. They
arrived home, and Grazia and the grocer were informed that the
Conservatory at Milan was a delusion and a snare--"a place where pebbles
were polished and diamonds were dimmed." Shortly after, the townspeople,
to show faith in the home product, had Verdi duly installed as organist
of the village church at a salary equal to forty dollars a year.

Under the spell of this good fortune, Verdi proposed marriage to the
daughter of Jasquith, the grocer, his friend and benefactor. Gratitude
to the man who had first assisted him had much to do with the alliance;
and in wedding the daughter, Verdi simply complied with what he knew to
be the one ardent desire of the father.

The girl was a frail creature, of fine instincts, but her intellect had
been starved just as her body had been. Her chief virtue seems to have
been that she believed absolutely in the genius of Verdi.

The ambition of Verdi began to show itself. He wrote an opera, and
offered it to Merelli, the impresario of "La Scala" at Milan. The
impresario had heard of Verdi, through the fact that the Conservatory
had blackballed him. This of itself would have been no passport to fame,
but the Committee saw fit to defend themselves in the matter by making a
public report of the considerations which had moved them to shut the
doors on the young man from Busseto. This gave the subject a weight and
prominence that simple admission never would have given.

Merelli, the Major Pond of Milan, saw the expressions "bizarre,"
"erratic," "peculiar," "unprec