The faster Paderewski’s career gathered speed, the harder he worked, “always struggling for perfection, pushing on and on to that ever-receding faraway peak of attainment,” he would write of those days. “All work is like that.... The summit of the mountain is always farther and farther away.” He went back to Vienna and prepared more and more programs, and added concerto after concerto to his growing list. He accepted more and better engagements with bigger and bigger box office receipts to show for them. He toured the French provinces—Lyons ... Nantes ... Bordeaux ... Tours.... Then on to Antwerp ... Brussels ... Liège ... and Vienna again. And always Paris. After three successful seasons in Paris he felt like a real veteran of the concert stage. The financial rewards of success were important to him because of Alfred, who was now nine years old. It had been evident from the time he was a year old that the little boy, mentally so alert, was not developing well physically. In those days doctors could do very little to improve or even to diagnose his condition. It would seem that he suffered from a congenital weakness of the spine, and possibly of the heart. “Always in the foreground,” his father wrote, “was the menace of his illness, a constantly increasing problem to be met. He had his tutors at this time and he was intelligent and gifted. He had a brilliant, clear mind; he loved music too. It was difficult to take him to concerts, but he often went to recitals at the Salle Erard which we could manage easily and he was very happy to go, and touchingly proud of me at these concerts. It was a great excitement to him, a stimulant to his mind. Poor child, he was completely cut off from everything in life except intellectual things, by his great infirmity.” Father and son were together at last. And Paderewski had accepted the fact that the boy would never walk. In Paris Alfred was cared for in the home of the beautiful Mme. Helena Gorska, a friend who gave great love and kindness to the motherless boy and therefore much peace of mind to his father.