He was an only son of a physician.  His father, a learned man, with the utmost care, taught his little boy history, literature, geography, languages, even music.  Hector was a most romantic, impressionable child, who peopled nature with fairies and elves, as he lay under great trees and dreamed fantastic day dreams.  Poetry and romantic tales were his delight and he found much to feed his imagination in his father’s large library.

His mother’s father lived at Meylan, a little village not far from Grenoble, and there, in this picturesque valley, the family used to spend a part of each summer.

Above Meylan, in a crevice of the mountain, stood a white house amid its vineyards and gardens.  It was the home of Mme. Gautier and her two nieces, of whom the younger was called Estelle.  When the boy Hector saw her for the first time, he was twelve, a shy, retiring little fellow.  Estelle was just eighteen, tall, graceful, with beautiful dusky hair and large soulful eyes.  Most wonderful of all, with her simple white gown, she wore pink slippers.  The shy boy of twelve fell in desperate love with this white robed apparition in pink slippers.  He says himself: 

“Never do I recall Estelle, but with the flash of her large dark eyes comes the twinkle of her dainty pink shoes.  To say I loved her comprises everything.  I was wretched, dumb, despairing.  By night I suffered agonies—­by day I wandered alone through the fields of Indian corn, or, like a wounded bird, sought the deepest recesses of my grandfather’s orchard.

“One evening there was a party at Mme. Gautier’s and various games were played.  In one of them I was told to choose first.  But I dared not, my heart-beats choked me.  Estelle, smiling, caught my hand, saying:  ‘Come, I will begin; I choose Monsieur Hector.’  But, ah, she laughed!

“I was thirteen when we parted.  I was thirty when, returning from Italy, I passed through this district, so filled with early memories.  My eyes filled at sight of the white house:  I loved her still.  On reaching my old home I learned she was married!”

With pangs of early love came music, that is, attempts at musical composition.  His father had taught him the rudiments of music, and soon after gave him a flute.  On this the boy worked so industriously that in seven or eight months he could play fairly well.  He also took singing lessons, as he had a pretty soprano voice.  Harmony was likewise studied by this ambitious lad, but it was self taught.  He had found a copy of Rameau’s “Harmony” among some old books and spent many hours poring over those labored theories in his efforts to reduce them to some form and sense.