The boy did not wish to be a musician; he hankered after the literary life. “When I was a child,” Bizet told Gallet, “they hid my books to keep me from abandoning music for literature.” Although he was not of the required age, Bizet passed brilliantly, in his tenth year, the entrance-examination of the Conservatory, where he studied the pianoforte under Marmontel, the organ under Benoist, counterpoint and fugue under Zimmermann; and after the death of the latter, he studied composition under Halévy. He won a prize before he was eleven years old, the first of many prizes:— First solfeggio prize (1849); second pianoforte prize (1851), and the first pianoforte prize (1852); first “accessit d’orgue” (1853), second prize (1854), first prize (1855); second prize in fugue (1854), first prize (1855); second “grand prix de Rome” of the Institute (1856), and first “grand prix” (1857). In 1856 Offenbach, manager of the Bouffes-Parisiens, proposed a competition in operetta. The libretto was “Doctor Miracle.” Seventy-eight composers appeared; six were found worthy, and the prizes was awarded _ex aequo_, to Bizet and Lecocq. The music of the latter was first heard April 8th, 1857; the music of Bizet was heard April 9th. The public was impartially cold. Toward the end of 1857 Bizet started on his journey to Rome. He journeyed leisurely, and entered the city Jan. 28, 1858. It was in 1859 that he sent, according to rule, a composition to the “Académie des Beaux-Arts”; it was not a mass however; it was an operetta in Italian: “Don Procopio,” in two acts. The reviewer, Ambroise Thomas, praised the ease, the brilliancy, “the fresh and bold style” of the composer, and he deplored the fact that Bizet had not given his attention to a work of religious character. The score of this operetta is lost. In 1859 Bizet traveled in Italy and obtained permission to remain in Rome during the one year, that, according to tradition, should be spent in Germany. He sent to the Académie “Vasco de Gama,” a descriptive orchestral composition with choruses; three numbers of an orchestral suite; and, if Pougin is correct, an operetta in one act, “La Guzla de l’Emir”; but Pigot claims that this latter work was not begun until after the return to Paris. He returned and found his mother on her deathbed. He was without means, without employment; and he was crushed by the death of the one for whom he was eager to work day and night. He once wrote to her from Rome, “100,000 francs, the sum is nothing! Two successes at the Opéra Comique! I wish to love you always with all my soul, and to be always as to-day the most loving of sons.” He was a “prix de Rome,”—too often an honor that brings with it no substantial reward. He was a “prix de Rome,” as was the unfortunate described by Legouvé: “Listen to the wretched plight Of a melancholy man, A young man of sixty years, Whom they call ‘un prix de Rome.’”