"I know that he was a very wise man, and a scientific genius.

I am only a musician and I know very little about other things, but I adore Beethoven, and I think my little father did the same--he is a god; the most extraordinary man the world has ever produced.

Don't you think so, Gabriel ?" His nerves were quivering with his excitement, and getting up, he walked rapidly up and down the room, trampling on all the loose sheets of music.
"Ay! how I envy you, Gabriel, having travelled so much, and having heard so many good things! The other night I could not sleep for thinking of all you had told me about your life in Paris--those beautiful Sunday afternoons when you would go to the Lamoureax concerts, or sometimes to Colonnas, giving yourself a surfeit of sublimity! And here am I, shut up, my only hope being perhaps to conduct a Mass of Rossini's at one of the great festivals! My only comfort is to read music, instructing myself thoroughly in those great works that so many fools in the towns can listen to half asleep and bored.

Here I have, in this pile, the nine symphonies of the great man--his innumerable sonatas, his masses, and together with him, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, in fact all the great writers.

I have even Wagner.