The binding bore the arms of Louis XVIII and the following superscription in gold letters: _Menus plaisirs du Roi_. _École royale de musique et de déclamation. Concours de 1822. Premier prix de piano décerné à M. Laurent._ My honored master had written on the first page: "Thirty-seven years ago I won, as you have done, my child, the prize for the piano. I do not think that there is any more pleasing gift I could give you than this with my sincerest friendship. Go on as you have begun and you will be a great artist. "This is the opinion of the jury which to-day awarded you this fine reward. "Your old friend and professor, "LAURENT." It was indeed a fine thing for an honored professor to speak like this to a youth who had hardly begun his career. CHAPTER III THE GRAND PRIX DE ROME So I had won the first prize on the piano. I was doubtless as fortunate as I was proud, but it was out of the question for me to live on the memory of this distinction. The necessities of life were pressing, inexorable, and they demanded something more real and above all more practicable. I really could not go on accepting my dear sister's hospitality without contributing my personal expenses. So to ease the situation I gave lessons in solfeggio and on the piano in a poor little school in the neighborhood. The returns were small, but the labor was great. Thus I drew out a precarious and often difficult existence. I was offered the post of pianist in one of the large cafés in Belleville; it was the first café to provide music, a scheme invented to hold the customers, if not to distract them. The place paid me thirty francs a month! _Quantum mutatus_.... Like the poet I may say, "What changes since that time?" To-day even the young pupils have only to _enter_ a competition to get their pictures in the papers and at the very outset of their careers they are anointed great men. All this is accompanied by Bacchanalian lines and they are fortunate if in their exalted triumph they do not add the word "colossal." That is glory; deification in all its modesty. In 1859 we were not glorified in any such way. But Providence--some called it Destiny--watched over me. A friend, who to my great joy is still living, got me better lessons. He was not like so many friends I met later, who are ever in need of one's assistance; those who slink away when you want to be comforted in poverty; the friends who are always pretending that they defended you last night against malevolent attacks in order to show you their fine opinions, but at the same time torturing you by repeating the wounding words directed at you. I must add, however, that I have had truly genuine friendships, as I have found in my hours of weariness and discouragement.