of all his predecessors and contemporaries.  Giornowick’s style was full of grace and suave elegance; Viotti was characterized by a remarkable beauty, breadth, and dignity.  Lavish attentions were bestowed on him from the court circle.  Marie Antoinette, who was an ardent lover and most judicious patron of music, sent him her commands to play at Versailles.  The haughty artistic pride of Viotti was signally displayed at one of these concerts before royalty.  A large number of eminent musicians had been engaged for the occasion, and the audience was a most brilliant one.  Viotti had just begun a concerto of his own composition, when the arrogant Comte d’Artois made a great bustle in the room, and interrupted the music by his loud whispers and utter indifference to the comfort of any one but himself.  Viotti’s dark eyes flashed fire as he stared sternly at this rude scion of the blood royal.  At last, unable to restrain his indignation, he deliberately placed his violin in the case, gathered up his music from the stand, and withdrew from the concert-room without ceremony, leaving the concert, her Majesty, and his Royal Highness to the reproaches of the audience.  This scene is an exact parallel of one which occurred at the house of Cardinal Ottoboni, when Corelli resented in similar fashion the impertinence of some of his auditors.

Everywhere in artistic and aristocratic circles at the French capital Viotti’s presence was eagerly sought.  Private concerts were so much the vogue in Paris that musicians of high rank found more profit in these than in such as were given to the miscellaneous public.  A delightful artistic rendezvous was the hotel of the Comte de Balck, an enthusiastic patron and friend of musicians.  Here Viotti’s friend, Garat, whose voice had so great a range as to cover both the tenor and barytone registers, was wont to sing; and here young Orfila, the brilliant chemist, displayed his magnificent tenor voice in such a manner as to attract the most tempting offers from managers that he should desert the laboratory for the stage.  But the young Portuguese was fascinated with science, and was already far advanced in the career which made him in his day the greatest of all authorities on toxicological chemistry.  The most brilliant and gifted men and women of Paris haunted these reunions, and Viotti always appeared at his best amid such surroundings.  Another favorite resort of his was the house of Mme. Montegerault at Montmorency, a lady who was a brilliant pianist.  Sometimes she would seat herself at her instrument and begin an improvisation, and Viotti, seizing his violin, would join in the performance, and in a series of extemporaneous passages display his great powers to the delight of all present.