But madame was thinking of my future, and sent me on some pretext to see M. d’Aubonne, a relative of hers, to find out what might be made of me.  His report of me was, that I was a poor-spirited creature, narrow, ignorant, and clownish, and that the career of village priest was the best that could be hoped for.  Once more, therefore, I was set to Latin at the seminary; but after some months I was returned by the bishop and the rector as incapable of learning, though a passably well-conducted youth.  In the meantime I had been taken with a strong taste for music, and it was arranged that I should spend the winter at the house of M. le Maitre, director of music at the cathedral; he was a young man of great talent and of high spirits, and lived only twenty paces from my little mother.  There I spent one of the most pleasant times of my life.  But it was cut short by a quarrel between Le Maitre and the cathedral chapter, who had, as he thought, put a slight upon him.  His revenge was to desert his post on the eve of the elaborate Easter services, and madame desired me to assist him in his flight.  I was to attend him to Lyons, and remain with him as long as he should need me.  Her purpose was, as I have since learned, to detach me from a plausible adventurer, M. Venture, a man of great musical talent who had turned up at Annecy, and had engaged my fancy.  Our flight was successful.  But on the second day after our arrival at Lyons Le Maitre fell ill with a sudden seizure in the street, and I, after telling the bystanders the name of his inn, and begging them to carry him thither, slipped round the nearest corner and disappeared.  Le Maitre was deserted at his worst need by the only friend on whom he had to count.  I returned at once to Annecy, only to find that madame had left for Paris.

M. Venture, however, was still there, and had turned the heads of all the ladies in the place, and for a time I shared his lodging.  Then, after travelling with Merceret, the housemaid, as far as her home at Fribourg-for she had to return thither and could find no other attendant—­I turned aside to Lausanne, with the idea of seeing the lake.  I arrived here without a penny, and it occurred to me to play Venture’s game on my own account.  I took a false name, called myself a Parisian, and having secured a lodging, set up as a teacher of music, though I knew next to nothing of the art.  There was a professor of law in the town who was an amateur of music, and held concert parties in his house; to this man I had the effrontry to propose a symphony of my own.  I worked a fortnight at this production, wrote out the instrumental parts, and on the appointed evening stood up before the orchestra and audience, tapped my desk, raised by baton, and—­never since music began has there been such an orgy of discords.  The musicians could hardly sit in their chairs for laughing, yet played even louder and louder as the fun took hold of them; the audience sought to stop