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.
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