In those days there was a musician of the name of Jadin, whose son and grandson both made themselves an honoured name among contemporary painters. Jadin himself was well known as a composer of romances, very popular in their day. He was, if I am not mistaken, accompanist at the well-known Choron School of Religious Music.
My mother wrote and asked him to come and pass judgment on my musical abilities.
Jadin came—put me in the corner of the room, with my face to the wall (I see that corner now), and sitting down to the piano, improvised a succession of chords and modulations. At each change he would ask, "What key am I playing in?" and I never made a single mistake in all my answers.
He was amazed, and my mother was triumphant. My poor dear mother! Little she thought that she herself was fostering the birth of a resolve, in her boy's mind, which was some years later to cause her sore uneasiness as to his future. Nor did she dream, when she took me, a six-year-old boy, to the Odéon to hear "Robin Hood," that she had stirred my first impulse towards the art that was to govern all my life.
My readers will have wondered at my saying nothing so far about my brother. I must explain that I cannot recall any memory of him till after I had passed my sixth birthday; prior to that time I remember nothing of him.
My brother, Louis Urbain Gounod, was ten and a half years older than myself, he having been born on December 13, 1807.
When he was about twelve he entered the Lycée at Versailles, where he remained till he was eighteen. My first recollections of that best of brothers are connected with my memories of Versailles. Alas! I lost him just when I was beginning to appreciate the value of his fraternal friendship.
Louis XVIII. had appointed my father Professor of Drawing to the Royal Pages, and having a strong personal regard for him, he had granted us permission, during our temporary residence at Versailles, to occupy rooms in the huge building known as No. 6 Rue de la Surintendance, which runs from the Place du Château to the Rue de l'Orangerie.
Our apartment, which I remember well, and which could only be reached by a number of most confusing staircases, looked out over the "Pièce d'Eau des Suisses" and the big wood of Satory. A corridor ran outside all our rooms, and looked to me quite endless. It led to a suite of rooms occupied by the Beaumont family. One of this family, Edouard Beaumont, was one of my earliest friends. He ultimately became a distinguished painter. Edouard's father was a sculptor, his duties at that time being to restore the various statues in the château and park at Versailles, which duties carried with them the right of occupying the rooms next ours.
When my father died in 1823, my mother was still allowed to live in these rooms during the annual holidays. This permission was extended to her during the reign of Charles X., that is, up to 1830, but was withdrawn on the accession of Louis-Philippe. My brother, who, as I said above, was a student at the Lycée at Versailles, always spent his holidays with us there.