ck, and they gave me spirit to
eat the dry crust I often dipped in the water of a spring. I worked, I
composed airs, and, after playing them on any instrument that came to
hand, I went off again on foot across Italy. Finally, at the age of
two-and-twenty, I settled in Venice, where for the first time I
enjoyed rest and found myself in a decent position. I there made the
acquaintance of a Venetian nobleman who liked my ideas, who encouraged
me in my investigations, and who got me employment at the Venice
theatre.

"Living was cheap, lodging inexpensive. I had a room in that Capello
palace from which the famous Bianca came forth one evening to become a
Grand Duchess of Tuscany. And I would dream that my unrecognized fame
would also emerge from thence one day to be crowned.

"I spent my evenings at the theatre and my days in work. Then came
disaster. The performance of an opera in which I had experimented,
trying my music, was a failure. No one understood my score for the
_Martiri_. Set Beethoven before the Italians and they are out of their
depth. No one had patience enough to wait for the effect to be produced
by the different motives given out by each instrument, which were all at
last to combine in a grand _ensemble_.

"I had built some hopes on the success of the _Martiri_, for we votaries
of the blue divinity Hope always discount results. When a man believes
himself destined to do great things, it is hard not to fancy them
achieved; the bushel always has some cracks through which the light
shines.

"My wife's family lodged in the same house, and the hope of winning
Marianna, who often smiled at me from her window, had done much to
encourage my efforts. I now fell into the deepest melancholy as I
sounded the depths of a life of poverty, a perpetual struggle in which
love must die. Marianna acted as genius does; she jumped across every
obstacle, both feet at once. I will not speak of the little happiness
which shed its gilding on the beginning of my misfortunes. Dismayed at
my failure, I decided that Italy was not intelligent enough and too much
sunk in the dull round of routine to accept the innovations I conceived
of; so I thought of going to Germany.

"I traveled thither by way of Hungary, listening to the myriad voices
of nature, and trying to reproduce that sublime harmony by the help
of instruments which I constructed or altered for the purpose. These
experiments involved me in vast expenses which had soon