Paganini may also at that time have sketched, if he did not complete, the Studies, or Caprices, Op. 1. In 1797 the father took the boy from Parma, and set out with him on a tour through Lombardy. Concerts were given in Milan, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn. The young artist achieved an extraordinary reputation; the father took possession of the more material rewards of art. The "golden dreams" were in process of realisation! Returning to Genoa, young Paganini finished the composition of his Twenty-four Studies, which were of such excessive difficulty that he could not play them. He would try a single passage over in a hundred ways, working for ten or eleven hours at a stretch, and then would come the inevitable collapse. He was still under the stern domination of his father, and his spirit must have chafed under the bondage. His own ardour was sufficient to carry his labours to the verge of exhaustion, and he needed no spur as an incentive to exertion. In all directions save that of music his education was utterly neglected. The moral side of his nature was allowed to grow wild. There was the restraining influence of a mother's love, but there was little else. It might indeed be said that, musically, Paganini was self-educated; but that one of the world's great geniuses should lack the intellectual and moral training that go to make the complete man was sad in the extreme. Paganini's was a nature warped; on the one side phenomenal power, on the other bodily suffering, intellectual and spiritual atrophy. But more of this when we turn from his career to the man himself. As the youth grew older the spirit of revolt arose. He must and would escape from the tyranny of his avaricious father. But how? A way soon offered itself. At Lucca, the festival of St. Martin, held each November, was an event of such importance, musically, that it drew visitors from all parts of Italy. As the November of 1798 drew near, young Paganini besought his father's permission to attend the festival, but his request was met by a point-blank refusal. The importunities of the youth, aided by the prayers of the mother, at length prevailed, and in care of the elder brother afterwards Dr. Paganini (?)--Nicolo was allowed to leave home.