[Illustration: PUCCINI AND FONTANA, THE LIBRETTIST, AT THE TIME OF THE PRODUCTION' OF "LE VILLI," 1884] Flushed with his first real success Puccini was ready to act upon any suggestion that would enable him to keep the ball, once started, rolling along merrily. Ponchielli was struck with the essentially dramatic quality of Puccini's mind and bent, and promised to find him a suitable libretto so that he might start on an opera. He invited Puccini to spend a few days at his country villa at Caprino, and there Puccini met Fontana, who, like himself, was at the beginning of his career. After much cogitation, it was decided to collaborate in a short work, so that it might be ready for the Sozogno competition, the limit of time for that event having nearly expired. Thus it was that Fate, or Chance, settled the form in which, as it subsequently transpired, Puccini was from the very beginning to appear as a setter of fashion in opera. But, as we shall see, the path to fame did not immediately open to Puccini. The Sozogno prize was not won, but _Le Villi_, his first opera, was born, and, like Wagner, the ardent and now well-equipped young composer began to experience those pains and penalties, and bravely ploughed his way through thorns and over the rough places, and finally conquered by the sheer force of perseverance, endurance, and singleness of aim. III THE PUCCINI OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY Puccini, after the death of his beloved mother, sought consolation in hard work, and _Edgar_ was written in Milan during a period, which was in like manner experienced by Wagner, of additional anxiety, brought about by the want of the actual means to live. But it is undoubtedly that out of such trials and troubles the best work of the brain is forged and brought to an achievement. Puccini was living at this time in a poor quarter of Milan with his brother and another student. With the £80 he received for _Le Villi_ he paid away nearly half of it to the restaurant keeper who had allowed him credit. Milan, the chief operatic centre of opera-loving Italy, is full of music schools, agencies, restaurants and cafés, whose reason for existence, practically, is found in the fact that half the population is in one way or another connected with the operatic stage. Milan is even more Bohemian than Paris in this respect, and it is not difficult to understand why the subject of unconventionality, as treated by Puccini in _La Bohème_, should have come to him with such force. He had, in fact, gone through the whole thing completely, so far as living on nothing and making all sorts of shifts for existence were concerned. Milan's social atmosphere is almost completely that of theatrical Bohemianism, and all the students come very intimately into contact with its essence and spirit.