When I was ill as a child, and death seemed near, a melody of Mozart would watch over my pillow like a lover.... Later, in crises of doubt and depression, the music of Beethoven would revive in me the sparks of eternal life.... Whenever my spirit is weary, whenever I am sick at heart, I turn to my piano and bathe in music." Thus early did the child enter into communion with the wordless speech of humanity; thus early had the all-embracing sympathy of the life of feeling enabled him to pass beyond the narrows of town and of province, of nation and of era. Music was his first prayer to the elemental forces of life; a prayer daily repeated in countless forms; so that now, half a century later, a week and even a day rarely elapses without his holding converse with Beethoven. The other saint of his childhood's days, Shakespeare, likewise belonged to a foreign land. With his first loves, all unaware, the lad had already overstridden the confines of nationality. Amid the dusty lumber in a loft he discovered an edition of Shakespeare, which his grandfather (a student in Paris when Victor Hugo was a young man and Shakespeare mania was rife) had bought and forgotten. His childish interest was first awakened by a volume of faded engravings entitled _Galerie des femmes de Shakespeare_. His fancy was thrilled by the charming faces, by the magical names Perdita, Imogen, and Miranda. But soon, reading the plays, he became immersed in the maze of happenings and personalities. He would remain in the loft hour after hour, disturbed by nothing beyond the occasional trampling of the horses in the stable below or by the rattling of a chain on a passing barge. Forgetting everything and forgotten by all he sat in a great armchair with the beloved book, which like that of Prospero made all the spirits of the universe his servants. He was encircled by a throng of unseen auditors, by imaginary figures which formed a rampart between himself and the world of realities.