“Now come! That’s something like the truth. You have no money; what business is that of mine, oh mightiest of scamps?”
“I’m no scamp. If you call me a scamp because I have no money, you are right, but if it is because I was two years at Civita Vecchia, you are wrong. I wasn’t sent to the galleys for stealing, but just for good honest shots at strangers in the mountains.”
It was all nonsense, of course, I don’t believe he ever shot so much as a monk. However, he was hurt in his feelings and would only accept three piastres, a shirt and a neckerchief.
The poor fellow was killed two years ago in a brawl. Shall I meet him in a better world?
In the miserable oblivion and dishonour into which music has sunk in Rome I found but one small sign of honest life. It was among the pfifferari, players of a little popular instrument, a surviving relic of antiquity. They were strolling musicians who, at Christmastide, came down from the mountains in groups of four or five armed with bagpipes and pfifferi, a kind of oboe, to play before the images of the Virgin.
I used to spend hours in watching them, there was something so quaintly mysterious in their wild aspect as they stood—head slightly turned over one shoulder, their bright dark eyes fixed devoutly on the holy figure, almost as still as the image itself.
At a distance the effect is indescribable and few escape its spell. When I heard it in its native haunts, among the volcanic rocks and dark pine forests of the Abruzzi, I could almost believe myself transported back through the ages to the days of Evander, the Arcadian.
Of this time, musically, I have little to tell. I wrote a long and incoherent overture to Rob Roy, which I burnt immediately after its performance in Paris; the Scène aux Champs of the Symphonie Fantastique, which I rewrote entirely in the Borghese gardens; the Chant de Bonheur for Lelio, and lastly a little song called La Captive, inspired by Victor Hugo’s lovely poem.
One day I was at Subiaco with Lefebvre, the architect. As he drew, he knocked over a book with his elbow; it was Les Orientales. I picked it up and it opened at that particular page. Turning to Lefebvre I said:
“If I had any paper I would write music to this exquisite poem; I can hear it.”