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the rage. Ah, signor! I know what you are thinking! You are thinking that the whole concert was a fiasco and that is why I am here! You are wrong, signor. The concert went superbly and I played as well, if not better than I had ever played with the result that the reception I received was most gratifying. Afterwards I awaited a visit from Maestro Tardini and the great Sivori, but imagine my disappointment when it was only Signor Tardini who called on me after the concert. He said that Sivori had sent his profuse apologies, but that he could not come to thank me in person for he had some pressing business. I asked Tardini what his friend had thought and then I saw my teacher hesitate. Sivori, he said, had thought my playing most correct and accurate, that I would always be a most valuable member of an orchestra, and, no doubt, in time an admirable teacher of the instrument, but I would never be a virtuoso. I lacked the fire, he said, the inner spirit of the true maestro. It was nothing to be ashamed of, he said: some had the spark and some had not. Maestro Tardini laid a kind hand on my shoulder and said that this too was his opinion, but that I was not to be downhearted for such gifts were given to very few.
    ‘ “When he had left me, I went out and wandered the streets weeping, because I too knew that he was right. I possessed everything in the way of diligence and knowledge, but I lacked the one thing that I needed and wanted. After I had wept I felt a great rage inside me against God who had denied me the only thing that I had ever desired. The prize that I would have toiled through wind and rain to achieve had been capriciously snatched from me. I had done so much; I had achieved so little. I thought that God was a cheat and this world was a sham, so I thought I would cheat both of them. I bought some spirits of aconite and some drops of laudanum at an apothecary’s. I mixed them together in a small glass bottle and set off for the Garden of Strangers.
    ‘ “It was on an evening just like this,” said the little violinist, “I do not know how long ago, for time has ceased to have a meaning for me, that I came here to die. I have drained my little bottle of laudanum mixed with spirits of aconite, and, as I wait for the poison to work, a terrible thing happens: a nightingale begins to sing his song in a nearby brake. You might ask, signor, what is so terrible about the song of a nightingale. Well, in itself nothing. What I hear is a passionate trill of pure untrammelled beauty: the great maestro Paganini himself could not have produced such ecstasy. It ravishes me, but its beauty scorches my soul, for it makes me see the truth of what I have done. God made this little brown bird to give us a night song more exquisite than anything made by the mind and skill of man, and yet—and yet!—that little brown bird would never be aware of what he was doing. It would be his song, no more than that to him. Its loveliness would quite escape him, and I who perceived it could never tell him. The supreme gift that God gives to man, is not the gift of making beauty, like this nightingale, but the gift of appreciating it, and I have thrown it away. I could have lived out my entire life among the second violins of the San Carlo, and still triumphed because I could in my humble way have lived in beauty and for it. I have cast my life into the shadows, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of vanity. I thought I had taken revenge upon God but I have only taken revenge upon myself. And you, signor, have you lived for beauty?”
    ‘I told the wretch that I had, that I had drifted with every passion till my soul was a stringed lute on which all winds could play. I told him many wonderful things, but I doubt if he listened: the dead never do. I could have told him that I had lost everything for beauty, except for my life and perhaps my soul, but by that time the little cloud which was all that was left of Maestro Martini had gone. I