My father would never let me learn the piano--if he had, no doubt I should have joined the noble army of piano thumpers, just like forty thousand others. Not wishing me to be a musician, he, I believe, feared the effect of such an expressive instrument on my sensitive nature. Sometimes I regret my ignorance, yet, when I think of the ghastly heap of platitudes for which that unfortunate piano is made the daily excuse--insipid, shameless productions, that would be impossible if their perpetrators had to rely, as they ought, on pencil and paper alone--then I thank the fates for having forced me to compose silently and freely by saving me from the tyranny of finger-work--that grave of original thought. As with most young folks, my early work was downright gloomy, it simply grovelled in melancholy. Minor keys were rampant. I knew it was a mistake, but it seemed impossible to escape from the black crape folds that had enshrouded my soul ever since the Meylan affair. The natural result of constantly reading Florian’s _Estelle_ was that I ended by setting parts of that mawky pastoral to music. The faded old-time poetry comes back to me as I write here in London, in the pale spring sunshine. Torn as I am by anxiety, worried by sordid, petty obstacles, by stupid opposition to my plans, it is strange to recall the sickly-sentimental words of a song I wrote in despair at leaving the Meylan woods, which were “lighted by the eyes”--and, may I add, by the little pink slippers of my cruel lady love. “I am going to leave forever This dear land and my sweet love, So alas! must fond hearts sever, As my tears and grief do prove! River, that has served so gaily To reflect her lovely face, Stop your course to tell her, daily, I no more shall see this place!” Although it joined the quintettes in the fire before I went to Paris, yet in 1829, when I planned my _Symphonie Fantastique_, this little melody crept humbly back into my mind; it seemed to me to voice so perfectly the crushing weight of young and hopeless love that I welcomed it home and enshrined it, without any alteration, for the first violins in the largo of the opening movement--_Rêveries_. But the fatal hour of choosing a profession drew rapidly nearer. My father made no secret of his intention that I should follow in his footsteps and become a doctor, since this he considered the finest career in the world; I, on the other hand, made no secret of my opinion that it was, to me, the most repulsive. Without knowing exactly what I did want, I was absolutely certain that I did _not_ want to be tied to the bedsides of sick people, to pass my days in hospitals and operating theatres, and I determined that no power on earth should turn me into a doctor.