“I like music,” he said, “better than singing.” Most people, I reflected, like singing better than music; are more interested in the executant than in what he executes, and find the impersonal orchestra less moving than the soloist. The touch of the pianist is the human touch, and the soprano’s high C is the personal note. It is for the sake of this touch, that note, that audiences fill the concert halls. Guido, however, preferred music. True, he liked “La ci darem”; he liked “Deh vieni alla finestra”; he thought “Che soave zefiretto” so lovely that almost all our concerts had to begin with it. But he preferred the other things. The _Figaro_ overture was one of his favourites. There is a passage not far from the beginning of the piece, where the first violins suddenly go rocketing up into the heights of loveliness; as the music approached that point, I used always to see a smile developing and gradually brightening on Guido’s face, and when, punctually, the thing happened, he clapped his hands and laughed aloud with pleasure. On the other side of the same disk, it happened, was recorded Beethoven’s _Egmont_ overture. He liked that almost better than _Figaro_. “It has more voices,” he explained. And I was delighted by the acuteness of the criticism; for it is precisely in the richness of its orchestration that _Egmont_ goes beyond _Figaro_. But what stirred him almost more than anything was the _Coriolan_ overture. The third movement of the Fifth Symphony, the second movement of the Seventh, the slow movement of the Emperor Concerto--all these things ran it pretty close. But none excited him so much as _Coriolan_. One day he made me play it three or four times in succession; then he put it away. “I don’t think I want to hear that any more,” he said. “Why not?” “It’s too ... too ...” he hesitated, “too big,” he said at last. “I don’t really understand it. Play me the one that goes like this.” He hummed the phrase from the D Minor Concerto. “Do you like that one better?” I asked. He shook his head. “No, it’s not that exactly. But it’s easier.” “Easier?” It seemed to me rather a queer word to apply to Bach. “I understand it better.” One afternoon, while we were in the middle of our concert, Signora Bondi was ushered in. She began at once to be overwhelmingly affectionate towards the child; kissed him, patted his head, paid him the most outrageous compliments on his appearance. Guido edged away from her. “And do you like music?” she asked. The child nodded. “I think he has a gift,” I said. “At any rate, he has a wonderful ear and a power of listening and criticising such as I’ve never met with in a child of that age. We’re thinking of hiring a piano for him to learn on.”