he calamities that had come sweeping over Verdi well-nigh broke his proud heart. He was only twenty-six, but he had had a taste of life and found it bitter.
He lost interest in everything. All his musical studies were abandoned, his excursions into science went by default, and he was quite content to bang the piano in a concert saloon for enough to secure the bare necessaries of life. Suicide seemed to present the best method of solving the problem, and the various ways of shuffling off this mortal coil were duly considered. Meanwhile he filled in the time reading trashy novels—anything to forget time and place, and lose self in poppy-dreams of nothingness.
Two years of such blankness and blackness followed. He was sure that the desire to create, to be, to do, would never come again—these were all of the past. One day on an idle stroll through the park he met Merelli. As they walked along together, Merelli took from his pocket a book, the story of "Nabucco," and handing it to Verdi, asked him to look it over, and see if he thought there was a chance to make an opera out of it. Verdi responded that he was not in the business of writing operas—he had quit all such follies. He took the volume, however, but neglected to look at it for several days. At last he read the pages. He laid the book down and began to pace the floor. Possibilities of creation were looming large before him—a rush of thought was upon him. His soul was not dead—it had only been lying fallow.
He secured the loan of a piano and set to work. In a month the opera was completed. Merelli hesitated about accepting it—twice he had lost money on Verdi. Finally he decided he would put the play on, if Verdi would waive all royalties for the first three performances, if it were a success, and then sell the opera outright "at a reasonable price," if Merelli should chance to want it. The "reasonable price" was assumed to be about a thousand francs—two hundred dollars—pretty good pay for a month's work.
Verdi took no interest in the production of the piece. He had come to the conclusion that the public was a fickle, foolish thing, and no one could tell what it would hiss or applaud. Then he remembered the blackness of the night when only two years before his other opera was produced.
He made his way to his dingy little room and went to bed.
Very early the next morning there was a loud pounding on his door. It was Merelli. "How much for your opera?" asked the impresario, pushing his way into the room.
"Thirty thousand francs," came a voice, loud and clear out of the bedclothes.
"Don't be a fool," returned Merelli—"why do you ask such a sum!"