I will begin, however, by giving you a little biographical
sketch of my father, and by telling you how he happened to make his
discovery. He was the son of a country doctor, a man poor but original.
My father was still a very little boy when his father sent him and his
younger brother to Paris. There they were apprenticed to a jeweler and
made bands of gold. Soon the little brother died, and my father was the
only one to follow him to the cemetery. On his way back, after the
burial, he fell fainting on the plain. When he regained consciousness he
heard music in the distance, and, not knowing whence it came, thought it
was the music of the angels. Since then he dreamed of nothing but music;
he wanted to hear all he could; he longed to study it. One day he heard
two little urchins singing in the street. He asked them: "Do you know
music?" The urchins replied: "Yes!" "Will you teach it to me?" "Yes,
certainly," and they sang a scale for him. "Is that all there is of
music?" "Why, yes."
Not long after, he made the acquaintance of an old musician, who became
interested in him, gave him a few lessons, and entered him at the
Conservatoire. There he attended the elocution classes, and a role was
given to him to learn in which he had to say: "How do you do, Papa
Dugrand!" He had no success with this sentence. Each of his four
professors told him a different way of saying it, and he wondered: "How
is this? Are there, then, no principles to go by?" One day a cousin of
his arrived unexpectedly from the country.
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