The youth, intoxicated with the license of his life, plunged into all kinds of dissipation, specially into gambling, at this time a universal vice in Italy, as indeed it was throughout Europe.  Alternate fits of study and gaming, both of which he pursued with equal zeal, and the exhaustion of the life he led, operated dangerously on his enfeebled frame, and fits of illness frequently prevented his fulfillment of concert engagements.  More than once he wasted in one evening the proceeds of several concerts, and was obliged to borrow money on his violin, the source of his livelihood, in order to obtain funds wherewith to pay his gambling debts.  Anything more wild, debilitating, and ruinous than the life led by this boy, who had barely emerged from childhood, can hardly be imagined.  On one occasion he was announced for a concert at Leghorn, but he had gambled away his money and pawned his violin, so that he was compelled to get the loan of an instrument in order to play in the evening.  In this emergency he applied to M. Livron, a French gentleman, a merchant of Leghorn, and an excellent amateur performer, who possessed a Guarneri del Gesu violin, reputed among connoisseurs one of the finest instruments in the world.  The generous Frenchman instantly acceded to the boy’s wish, and the precious violin was put in his hands.  After the concert, when Paganini returned the instrument to M. Livron, the latter, who had been to hear him, exclaimed, “Never will I profane the strings which your fingers have touched!  That instrument is yours.”  The astonishment and delight of the young artist may be more easily imagined than described.  It was upon this violin that Paganini afterward performed in all his concerts, and the great virtuoso left it to the town of Genoa, where it is now preserved in a glass case in the Museum.  An excellent engraving of it, from a photograph, was published in 1875 in George Hart’s book on “The Violin.”

At this period of his life, between the ages of seventeen and twenty, Nicolo Paganini was surrounded by numerous admirers, and led into all kinds of dissipation.  He was naturally amiable and witty in conversation, though he has been reproached with selfishness.  There can be no doubt that he was, at this period, constantly under the combined influences of flattery and unbounded ambition; nevertheless, in spite of all his successful performances at concerts, the style of life he was leading kept him so poor that he frequently took in hand all kinds of musical work to supply the wants of the moment.  It is a curious coincidence that the fine violin which was presented to him by M. Livron, as we have just seen, was the cause of his abandoning, after a while, the allurements of the gaming-tables.  Paganini tells us himself that a certain nobleman was anxious to possess this instrument, and had offered for it a sum equivalent to about four hundred dollars; but the artist would not sell it even if one thousand had been offered for