Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/265

Rh so good a looking man did she make that one young lady in the audience fell violently in love with her. La Maupin, keeping up her disguise, encouraged the love smitten damsel, and the affair grew so serious that the girl's parents placed her in a convent to remove her from the influence of this captivating suitor.

But La Maupin was not so easily frustrated. Donning her proper attire, she applied at the convent for admission and finally was received as a novice, and thus kept up her intimacy with her admirer, who thought her assumption of feminine attire a disguise. But convent life soon lost its attractions for this uncertain person and she quickly hit on a scheme that permitted them both to escape. One of the nuns having just died and having been buried on the grounds, La Maupin, disinterred the poor lady, placed her remains in the infatuated girl's bed; then she set fire to the dormitory and in the confusion which followed they both made their escape. Then tiring of the part she was playing, she discovered her sex to her admirer and sent her home to her mother, sadder, and perhaps wiser.  

It is generally thought that a man must begin his career before the public at a very early age if he is to reach a high point in the world's list of celebrities. But the perusal of the following list shows that some have begun their musical career late in life. In this list we do not refer to the date of the first entrance of the musician into the field of composition or of his first public appearance, but give the age at which he stepped out into earnest work, his preliminary studies being completed.

Mozart began his career at the age of 12; Weber at 14; Rossini at 18; Handel, Cherubini, and Donizetti at 20; Scarlatti and Meyerbeer at 21; Bellini and Wagner at 23; Grétry and Massenet at 25; Thomas and Verdi