Behold me now a teacher of singing, without knowing how to decipher an air.

Without the least knowledge of composition, I boasted of my skill in it before all the world; and without ability to score the slenderest vaudeville, I gave myself out for a composer.

Having been presented to M.de Treytorens, a professor of law, who loved music and gave concerts at his house, I insisted on giving him a specimen of my talent, and I set to work to compose a piece for his concert with as much effrontery as if I knew all about it." The performance came off duly, and the strange impostor conducted it with as much gravity as the profoundest master.
Never since the beginning of opera has the like charivari greeted the ears of men.[60] Such an opening was fatal to all chance of scholars, but the friendly tavern-keeper who had first taken him in did not lack either hope or charity.

"How is it," Rousseau cried, many years after this, "that having found so many good people in my youth, I find so few in my advanced life?
Is their stock exhausted?
No; but the class in which I have to seek them now is not the same as that in which I found them then.

Among the common people, where great passions only speak at intervals, the sentiments of nature make themselves heard oftener.