Having traced the career of Paganini "from the cradle to the grave," let us now look a little more closely at the man, the artist. Glimpses of his character have already been revealed, but so curiously interesting a personality will repay further study. Totally uneducated, he yet made himself so much a man of the world, as to enjoy the personal friendship of such notabilities as Lord Byron, Sir Thomas Clifford Constable, Lord Holland, Prince Metternich and others. In his official positions at Court he comported himself with dignity. He had the pride of the artist, and would not play if the conditions were not suitable. One instance has already been given. Here is another, which also occurred in Paris. Paganini was asked to play at a Court concert at the Tuilleries. He went the day before to inspect the _salon_ where the function was to take place, and found the heavy draperies so numerous that the tones of his violin would be deadened, and the effect of his playing would be lost unless the curtains were removed or rearranged; he acquainted an official with his wish to alter them. To that august personage a "fiddler" was a mere nobody, and Paganini was given to understand his proper place. Highly offended with the manner of the official, Paganini resolved not to play. The Court was assembled for the concert, but the great violinist was absent. A messenger was sent to his hotel, and was informed that the Signor had retired to rest very early. Mobbed by ill-mannered crowds whenever he appeared in the streets, (and this especially in London, when strangers not only spoke to him, but even felt him, to ascertain if he was really flesh and blood), Paganini, with his sensitive nature, shrank more and more from contact with the outer world. He was not a Milton, "whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart," but he was essentially a solitary, a recluse. His character was the result of his environment. Accustomed to brutal treatment in his childhood, he became hardened; set free from restraint, he tasted the wild joys of youth, only to find them turn to Dead Sea apples. Schumann, in his "Advice to young musicians," wrote: "The laws of morality are also the laws of art." But Paganini had no mentor, and learnt by bitter experience the lesson of life. He was accused of avarice, and many ridiculous stories were told of him. When at Prague, it is said that even the members of the theatre were struck off the free list, and he was annoyed that the police who watched the upper galleries could not be made to pay for their places! He beat down a London laundress a halfpenny in her charge for washing his shirts, and Moscheles gives currency to the story, though he cannot vouch for its truth, that Paganini gave his servant a gallery ticket for one of his concerts on condition that the man served him gratuitously for one day! All these wretched things may have been true, more's the pity. But there is one little story that appears to have been overlooked.