officiating priests were more than occasionally startled by hearing, mixed up with these spirited improvisations of their young organist, certain plainly recognisable themes from operas, old and new. [Illustration: CHURCH OF S. PIETRO, SOMALDI, WHERE PUCCINI WAS ORGANIST] There is no definite record of any specific continuation of studies while Puccini was contributing in a questionable way to the dignity of the church's service; but in 1877 there was an exhibition at Lucca, and a musical competition was announced, a setting of a cantata _Juno_, and young Puccini entered. As happened with Berlioz, so too the young composer's work was rejected, as not conforming in any way with the accepted canons of the art of music. Puccini at this point gave an early indication of that doggedness of purpose, a quiet pursuance of his own aims and working out his own ideas, which marked his later career, and which must have come as rather a surprise to his family, who regarded him in all probability as a lazy wayward youth. He did not take the refusal of the Lucca authorities to accept his work the least to heart, but arranged for a performance of it, and the public found it very much to their taste. About this time another early composition, a motet for the feast of San Paolina, was performed. With these successes, Lucca and its restricted area, with the evidently uncongenial work of a church organist, soon became entirely distasteful to him, and after hearing Verdi's _Aïda_ at the theatre, his mind was made up. To Milan, the Mecca of the young Italian musician, he must go. His mother still was his best friend; and although the cost of living and studying in Milan was sufficient to daunt the courage of any one far less hampered with domestic difficulties than she was, she bravely set about making the necessary sacrifices. Through a friend at Court, the Marchioness Viola-Marina, she enlisted the kindly sympathy of Queen Margherita, who generously agreed to be responsible for the expense of one of the necessary three years, while an uncle of hers came to her assistance by defraying the cost of the other two. The Conservatory of Music at Milan is best known perhaps from the fact that the great teacher of singing, Lamperti, whose pupils number Albani and Sembrich, was a professor there up to the date of his retirement, in 1875. With the Royal College at Naples it represents at the present day the only survival of the most ancient teaching schools which began to be founded in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century, the name Conservatorio being given to the union of music schools for the preservation of the art and science of music. The oldest of them were the four schools at Naples, all of which were attached to monastical foundations, and which had their rise in the schools founded by the Fleming, Tinctor. There were four other schools, similar as to their foundation, at Venice, the origin of which was due to another great Fleming, Willaert.