UCSB LIBRARY
 
 MEMOIRS OF AN ARTIST.
 
 CHARLES FRANCOIS GOUNOD.
 
 MEMOIRS OF AN ARTIST 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FRANQOIS GOUNOD 
 
 RENDERED INTO ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 ANNETTE E. CROCKER 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 RAND, McNALLY A COMPANY. 
 
 MDCCCXCV.
 
 Copyright, 1893, by Rand, McNally & Co.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 Gounod, in these memoirs, terms 
 words "docile and faithful servants of 
 thought," and states their duty to be to 
 "lead one to the summit without rude 
 shock mysterious guides, who conceal 
 both themselves and their methods." 
 
 Words served him thus. He was 
 their master, as he was master of all 
 things he took in hand to perform, 
 his dominating genius attuning thought 
 to phrase as sweetly as it wove melody 
 and harmony into musical expression. 
 
 I approached with trepidation the 
 task of clothing in new livery his deft 
 servitors, fearing that, perchance, ill- 
 fashioned apparel might render their 
 presence obvious, their guidance clumsy; 
 nevertheless, I undertook the work, actu- 
 ated by a resolute purpose to maintain 
 faithfully the tone of the original. 
 
 That I have fallen somewhat short in 
 my aim, I am only too conscious, but 
 (i)
 
 that the substance and color of the 
 master's thought are at least faintly 
 reflected, I fain would hope. 
 
 The abrupt termination of his me- 
 moirs, which break off at a time before 
 the tardy public fully recognized his 
 genius, is a matter of deep regret, for 
 his illuminating comments on contem- 
 porary compositions and men doubtless 
 would have been of inestimable value 
 and interest. 
 
 It is believed that he brought his 
 memoirs down much nearer to the pres- 
 ent time, but afterward destroyed the 
 latter part. Many theories are advanced 
 to account for this regrettable destruc- 
 tion, the most plausible of which is 
 based on the knowledge that shortly 
 after the production of Faust there oc- 
 curred phases in his life which probably 
 he later desired to forget; so it may 
 be reasonably assumed that, dreading to 
 embitter with distressing memories the 
 mellow joys of subsequent years of 
 prosperous recognition, he blotted out 
 that part of his autobiography which 
 would have recalled painful episodes.
 
 Whatever may have been the cause, 
 the loss, though great, is, fortunately, 
 not altogether irreparable; for Gounod 
 was a voluminous correspondent, and 
 his letters, which it is understood will 
 soon be published, will in some measure 
 compensate for the loss of his later 
 memoirs. 
 
 ANNETTE E. CROCKER. 
 
 CHICAGO, December, 1895.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following- pages tell of the events 
 that have most affected my life as an 
 artist, of the impressions that I have 
 received, of the influence they have 
 exercised upon my career, and the re- 
 flections they have suggested to me. 
 
 Without deceiving myself as to the 
 degree of interest that may attach to 
 my personality, I believe that the pre- 
 cise and simple relation of the life of 
 an artist may afford to others useful 
 instruction, which, lying concealed, 
 perhaps, in some fact or word of no 
 apparent importance, adapts itself to 
 individuals according to the disposition 
 of the mind or the needs of the moment. 
 The most unimportant action, the most 
 unpremeditated word, often exerts a 
 beneficial influence; this has been my 
 experience, and what has been useful 
 or salutary to me may be so to others. 
 
 (5)
 
 An author, in writing memoirs, has 
 frequent, almost momentary, occasion 
 to speak of himself. In doing this I 
 have tried to be impartial in the 
 expression of my opinions; I have en- 
 deavored to be exact and truthful in 
 the narration of events, especially when 
 repeating the words of others concern- 
 ing me. I have stated with sincerity 
 what I think of my own works; but the 
 owl deceives herself in her judgment of 
 her little ones, and I am no better pro- 
 tected than she from the danger of 
 delusion. Time, if it should occupy 
 itself with me, will decide the measure 
 of my worth; upon it I depend to put 
 me where I belong, as it does with all 
 things else, or to set me right if I be 
 out of place. 
 
 This account of my life isa testimony 
 of veneration and affection for the 
 being who has given me the greatest 
 love in the world mother-love. The 
 mother is,, here below, the most perfect 
 image, the purest and warmest ray of 
 Providence; her never-failing care and 
 watchfulness are the direct emanation
 
 of the eternal care and watchfulness of 
 God. 
 
 If I have succeeded in being, saying, 
 or doing anything good, however small, 
 in my life, it is to my mother that I owe 
 it; and it is to her that I wish to give 
 the credit. It was she who nursed me, 
 who brought me up, who formed me 
 not, alas, in her own image; that would 
 have been too beautiful and in what- 
 ever respect I may have lacked, the 
 shortcoming was not hers, but mine. 
 
 She rests under a stone as pure and 
 simple as was her life. 
 
 May this tribute of a well-beloved 
 son leave upon her tomb a wreath more 
 durable than our "immortelles of a 
 day," and assure for her memory, after 
 my death, a respect that I could wish 
 to make eternal!
 
 MEMOIRS OF AN ARTIST. 
 
 i. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 MY mother was born at Rouen, June 
 4, 1 780, her maiden name being Vic- 
 toire Lemachois. Her father was a 
 magistrate of that city. Her mother, 
 a Mademoiselle Heuzey, was endowed 
 with remarkable intelligence and a 
 wonderful gift for the arts. She was 
 a poet and musician ; she composed, 
 sang, and played the harp ; and I 
 have often heard my mother say that 
 she acted tragedy like Mademoiselle 
 Duchesnois, and comedy like Made- 
 moiselle Mars. 
 
 Such a rare combination of excep- 
 tional natural gifts made her sought 
 for by the most distinguished persons 
 in high society, such as the families 
 
 (9)
 
 10 
 
 of d'Hcmdetot, de Mortemart, Saint- 
 Lambert, d'Herbotiville, and others, 
 among whom she was literally a 
 spoiled child. 
 
 But, alas! the accomplishments 
 which are the charm and fascination 
 of life do not always insure happiness. 
 Domestic peace is with difficulty pre- 
 served in the case of a total disparity 
 of tastes, inclinations, and instincts, 
 and it is a dangerous dream to wish 
 to subject the realities of life to the 
 reign of the ideal. Thus, harmony 
 was not slow in deserting a household 
 where so many differences conspired 
 to banish it. My mother's childhood 
 suffered the unhappy consequence, 
 and her life became serious at the age 
 when she should have known no care. 
 
 But God had blessed her, however, 
 with a strong mind, good sense, and 
 courage equal to anything. Deprived 
 at an early age of a mother's care, she 
 was obliged to learn alone to read and 
 write, and acquired by herself, also, 
 the first ideas of drawing- and music,
 
 11 
 
 of the latter of which she was soon to 
 make use as a source of livelihood. 
 
 The Revolution occasioned my 
 grandfather the loss of his position 
 in the court of Rouen. My mother 
 then thought only of striving to be 
 useful. She sought for piano pupils, 
 which having found, she commenced, 
 at the age of eleven years, that labo- 
 rious profession to which, when later 
 a widow, she was to have recourse as 
 a means of raising her children. 
 
 Stimulated by a desire to always do 
 better, and by a sense of duty that 
 directed and dominated her whole 
 life, she felt, as a teacher, the neces- 
 sity of learning from the best author- 
 ity the most correct method of in- 
 struction. She resolved, therefore, 
 to have lessons from some celebrated 
 master, by which means her reputa- 
 tion would be strengthened and her 
 conscience reassured. In order to 
 attain this object, she put aside, little 
 by little sou by sou, perhaps a part 
 of the poor little sum realized from
 
 12 
 
 her modest patronage, and, when she 
 had saved the necessary amount, she 
 took the coach, which was then three 
 days in going from Rouen to Paris, 
 and went straight to Adam, professor 
 of piano at the Conservatory, also 
 father of Adolphe Adam, author of 
 Le Chalet, and of many other charm- 
 ing works. Adam received her 
 kindly and listened to her with atten- 
 tion, recognizing in her the qualities 
 that maintain and solidify the in- 
 terest first felt in promising talent. 
 Not being able, on account of her 
 youth, to install herself in Paris for 
 the purpose of taking lessons in a 
 regular and consecutive manner, it 
 was arranged that she should make 
 the journey from Rouen to Paris once 
 every three months to have a lesson. 
 One lesson every three months! 
 That would hardly seem enough, it 
 must be admitted, to be profitable. 
 But there are beings who are a living 
 demonstration of the miracle of the 
 increase of bread in the wilderness,
 
 13 
 
 and it will be seen by many other in- 
 stances in the course of this narrative, 
 that my mother was one of those 
 beings. 
 
 This woman, who was to win for 
 herself in after years so good and 
 genuine a reputation in teaching, was 
 not, could not be, a pupil to lose any- 
 thing of the rare and precious in- 
 structions of her master. Therefore, 
 he was astonished at the progress 
 made from one lesson to another ; and 
 appreciating the courage of his young 
 pupil even more highly than her mu- 
 sical capacity, he obtained for her the 
 gratuitous possession of a piano, thus 
 enabling her to study assiduously 
 without the care and expense of hir- 
 ing one, which, little as the latter 
 might be, was still a great tax upon 
 her slender income. 
 
 Some time afterward, an event 
 occurred in my mother's life that 
 had a decisive effect upon her future. 
 
 The masters for piano music at 
 that time in vogue were dementi,
 
 14 
 
 Steibelt, Dussek, etc. I make no 
 mention in this connection of Mozart, 
 who, following Haydn, was already 
 shining upon the musical world ; nor 
 of the great Sebastian Bach, whose 
 immortal collection of preludes and 
 fugues, known as the "Well-Tem- 
 pered Clavichord," had been for a 
 century the unrivaled code for the 
 study of the piano, and the breviary 
 of musical composition. Beethoven, 
 young yet, had not attained the 
 celebrity that his giant genius was to 
 conquer for him. 
 
 It was then that a celebrated Ger- 
 man musician Hullmandel, a violin- 
 ist of great merit, and a friend and 
 contemporary of Beethoven came to 
 France with the intention of obtain- 
 ing pupils in accompaniment. Stop- 
 ping at Rouen, he wished to hear 
 some of the young 'people most ad- 
 vanced in musical art. A sort of 
 competition was opened, in which my 
 mother took part, and had the honor 
 of being particularly remarked and
 
 is 
 
 congratulated by Hullmandel, who 
 selected her at once as capable of 
 receiving his instructions, and of be- 
 ing heard with him in houses where 
 music was passionately and seriously 
 cultivated. 
 
 At this point concludes the infor- 
 mation obtained from my mother re- 
 garding her childhood and youth. I 
 know no more of her life until the 
 event of her marriage, which took 
 place in 1806, she being then twenty- 
 six and a half years old. 
 
 My father, Fran9ois-Louis Gounod, 
 born in 1758, was, at the time of his 
 marriage, forty-seven years old. He 
 was a distinguished painter, and my 
 mother often told me that he was 
 considered the best draughtsman of 
 his time, by the great contempo- 
 rary artists, Gerard, Girodet, Gue"rin, 
 Joseph Vernet, Gros, and others. I 
 recall a saying of Gerard's, repeated 
 by my mother with justifiable pride. 
 This artist, surrounded with glory and
 
 16 
 
 honors, baron of the empire, and 
 possessor of a great fortune, had very 
 fine equipages. Riding one day in 
 his carriage, he met my father going 
 on foot through the streets of Paris, 
 upon which he immediately cried 
 out: 
 
 " Gounod on foot, while I go in a 
 carriage ! Ah, that is a shame ! " 
 
 My father was a pupil of Lepicie" at 
 the same time with Carle Vernet (son 
 of Joseph and father of Horace). He 
 twice competed for the grand prix 
 de Rome. An act of his youth, in 
 connection with one of these com- 
 petitions, will show the scrupulous 
 nature of his conscience, and his 
 modesty as an artist and fellow- 
 student. The subject chosen was 
 "The Adulterous Woman." Among 
 the competitors with whom he took 
 part was the painter, Drouais, whose 
 well-known remarkable picture of 
 that name earned for him the great 
 prize. Drouais had permitted my 
 father to see his competing work.
 
 The latter declared honestly to his 
 comrade that there was no possible 
 comparison between their pictures, 
 and returning to his studio, he 
 stripped up his own canvas, judging 
 it unworthy to appear by the side of 
 that of Drouais. This incident shows 
 the high degree of his artistic integ- 
 rity, which hesitated not an instant 
 between the voice of justice and that 
 of personal interest. 
 
 A man of learning, with fine per- 
 ceptions and a highly cultivated 
 mind, my father had, nevertheless, all 
 his life, a sort of fear of undertaking 
 any great work. Gifted as he was, it 
 is, perhaps, to his frail health that we 
 must look for an explanation of this 
 reluctance. Allowance should also 
 be made for his love of independ- 
 ence, the extreme need of which 
 made him doubtful of engaging in a 
 work of long duration. The follow- 
 ing anecdote will furnish an exam- 
 ple of this feeling : 
 
 Monsieur Denon, then conservator 
 
 2
 
 of the Museum of the Louvre, and at 
 the same time, I believe, superintend- 
 ent of the Royal Museums of France, 
 had a great personal liking for my 
 father, and valued very highly his 
 ability as a draughtsman and etcher. 
 One day he proposed to the latter the 
 execution of a number of etchings 
 representing the collection compris- 
 ing the cabinet of medals in the 
 Louvre, and assuring him as a recom- 
 pense for the finished work an annual 
 income of 10,000 francs. For a house- 
 hold possessing nothing, that was, 
 especially in those times, a fortune; 
 and there were husband, wife, and 
 two children to be maintained. But 
 my father flatly refused this offer, 
 limiting himself to the filling of or- 
 ders for portraits and lithographs, 
 of which several are works of the 
 first rank, preserved to this day in 
 families. for which they were exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 Moreover, in the case of these very 
 portraits, revealing a feeling so fine
 
 19 
 
 and a talent so marked, my mother's 
 indomitable energy was often indis- 
 pensable in bringing the task to a 
 conclusion. How many of them 
 would have rested by the way if she 
 had not put her hand to the work? 
 How many times was she, herself, 
 obliged to clean and prepare the pal- 
 ette ? And this was not all. As long 
 as it was the question of the human 
 in the portrait the pose, the face, 
 expression, eyes, look, the interior 
 being, in fact it was all pleasure, 
 all enjoyment. But when it came to 
 the details of the accessories sleeves, 
 ornaments, trimmings, insignia, etc. 
 oh, that was the time of weakness ! 
 there was no more interest ; patience 
 was necessary; and it was then that 
 the poor wife took the brush and 
 assumed the ungrateful part of the 
 task, finishing by intelligence and 
 courage the work commenced by tal- 
 ent and abandoned through dread of 
 tedium. 
 
 My father, besides his work as a
 
 20 
 
 painter, had consented, fortunately, 
 to open at home a school in drawing, 
 which not only provided for the fam- 
 ily the necessaries of life, but which 
 became, as will be seen later on, the 
 starting point of my mother's career 
 as a teacher of the piano. 
 
 Such was the extremely modest 
 course of life in our poor household 
 until the death of my father, which 
 took place on the 4th of May, 1823, in 
 his sixty-fourth year, from inflam- 
 mation of the lungs. My mother was 
 thus left a widow with two children 
 my brother, fifteen and a half years 
 old, and myself, five years of age the 
 coming i/th of June. 
 
 In dying, my father took with him 
 the livelihood of the family. I will 
 now relate how my mother, by her 
 virile energy and her incomparable 
 tenderness, more than compensated 
 us for the loss of the protection and 
 support of the father who had been 
 taken from us.
 
 21 
 
 There was, at this time, in the quai 
 Voltaire, a lithographer, named Del- 
 pech, whose name was to be seen 
 long afterward on the fagade of the 
 house where he lived. Scarcely had 
 my mother become a widow when 
 she hurried to him. 
 
 " Delpech," said she, " my husband 
 is no more ; I am left alone, with two 
 children to nourish and bring up; 
 from henceforth I must be at once 
 their father and their mother. I will 
 work for them, and I come to ask you 
 two things. How is the lithographic 
 engraving point sharpened, and how 
 is the stone prepared ? I will answer 
 for the rest, and I beg you to procure 
 work for me." 
 
 Her first care was to announce that 
 she would continue the drawing- 
 school begun by my father, if the 
 parents of the pupils would kindly 
 continue their patronage. With one 
 consent the greatest encouragement 
 and praise were given to the brave 
 initiative of this noble and generous
 
 22 
 
 woman, who, instead of allowing her- 
 self to be overcome and buried in 
 the sorrow of widowhood, raised and 
 sustained herself through her devo- 
 tion and tenderness as a mother. 
 
 The class in drawing was, there- 
 fore, continued and even rapidly aug- 
 mented by a great number of new 
 pupils. Furthermore, as my mother, 
 while well skilled in drawing, was 
 also an excellent musician, the parents 
 of her pupils in the former art re- 
 quested her consent to give their 
 daughters lessons in music also. 
 
 She did not hesitate in taking up 
 this new resource for meeting the 
 wants of her little family. The two 
 branches went well together for a 
 time, but, as it is unwise to exceed 
 one's strength in the performance of 
 a task, it became necessary to choose 
 between the two arts, and music re- 
 mained mistress of the situation. 
 
 Having known him so little, I have 
 preserved but few memories of my 
 father; these are, however, as clear
 
 23 
 
 as if dating from yesterday, and I 
 feel, in retracing them here, an emo- 
 tion easy to be understood. Among 
 these impressions, I remember par- 
 ticularly his attitude as an attentive 
 reader, seated, with legs crossed, in 
 the corner of the fireplace, wearing 
 glasses, and dressed in long cotton 
 trousers, white striped vest, and cot- 
 ton cap, such as were usually worn by 
 artists of his time, and which I saw 
 worn many years later by my illustri- 
 ous and regretted friend, Monsieur 
 Ingres, the director of the Academy 
 of France at Rome. While my father 
 was thus absorbed in reading, I used 
 to lie flat on my stomach on the floor 
 in the middle of the room, drawing, 
 with a white crayon on a varnished 
 blackboard, eyes, noses, and mouths, 
 for which he had already traced the 
 copy on the aforesaid board. I see 
 this now as if I were still there, and 
 I was then but four, or four and a 
 half years old at the most. This 
 occupation had for me, I remember,
 
 24 
 
 so great a charm that I have no 
 doubt if my father had lived I 
 should have been a painter instead 
 of a musician, but my mother's pro- 
 fession and the education received 
 from her during the years of child- 
 hood determined the balance in favor 
 of music. 
 
 Soon after the death of my father 
 in the house which bore, and still 
 bears, the number n, place Saint- 
 Andre'-des-Arts (or, rather, des Arcs] 
 my mother established herself in 
 other lodgings not far from there, 
 number 20, rue des Grands-Augustins. 
 From this time date the first precise 
 remembrances of my musical impres- 
 sions. My mother, in nursing me, 
 had certainly made me imbibe as 
 much music as milk. She never per- 
 formed that function without sing- 
 ing, and I can say that I took my first 
 lessons without knowing it, and with- 
 out having to give them the attention 
 so painful to tender years, and so 
 difficult to obtain from children.
 
 25 
 
 Quite unconsciously I thus early 
 gained a correct idea of intonations 
 and of the intervals they represent ; 
 of the first elements of modulation, 
 and of the characteristic difference 
 between the major and minor modes; 
 for one day, even before being able to 
 speak correctly, upon hearing a song 
 in the minor mode, sung by some 
 street musician, probably a mendi- 
 cant, I exclaimed : 
 
 " Mamma, why does he sing in 'do 
 (C)' that cries (plore) ? " 
 
 My ear was, therefore, perfectly 
 trained, and I easily held my place 
 as pupil in a vocal class in which I 
 might even have been a teacher. My 
 mother, proud of seeing her baby able 
 to correct full-grown girls in the 
 matter of reading music (thanks to 
 herself for that), could not resist the 
 desire to show her young pupil to 
 some prominent musician. There 
 was, at this time, a musician named 
 Jadin, whose son and grandson have 
 since made a reputation in painting.
 
 26 
 
 This man Jadin was well known by 
 some songs then in vogue, and filled, 
 if I am not mistaken, the position of 
 accompanist in Choron's celebrated 
 school for sacred music. My mother 
 wrote, begging him to kindly call 
 upon her, and pass judgment upon 
 my musical ability. He came to the 
 house, had me placed with my face 
 turned from him, in a corner of the 
 room that I see yet, seated himself at 
 the piano, and improvised a series of 
 chords and modulations, asking me at 
 each change : 
 
 " In what key am I ? " 
 
 I made not even one mistake. 
 Jadin was amazed ; my mother was 
 jubilant. 
 
 Poor, dear mother; she little thought 
 then that she was developing in her 
 child the germs of a determination 
 which was, but a few years later, to 
 cause her great anxiety on the sub- 
 ject of his future, and upon which 
 already, probably, a great influence 
 had been exerted by my hearing of
 
 27 
 
 Robin des Bois at the Oddon theater, 
 where she had taken me when six 
 years old. 
 
 Those who read these memoirs 
 will, doubtless, be surprised that I 
 have said nothing concerning my 
 brother. That is because no mem- 
 ories of him were connected with 
 those of my early childhood. It is 
 only after arriving at the age of six 
 years that he takes place in my life 
 and in my remembrance. My brother, 
 Louis-Urbain Gounod, was born De_ 
 cember 13, 1807. He was, therefore, 
 ten and a half years older than myself. 
 When about twelve years old, he 
 was sent to the lyceum, at Ver- 
 sailles, where he remained until his 
 eighteenth year. It is from Versailles 
 that dates the first remembrance I 
 have of this excellent brother, who 
 was taken away from me just when I 
 could best appreciate the worth of 
 such a friend. 
 
 My father had been appointed by
 
 28 
 
 the king, Louis XVIII., professor of 
 drawing to the pages of his court. 
 The king, who was very fond of him, 
 had authorized our family to occupy, 
 during the time that we were at Ver- 
 sailles, lodgings situated in the vast 
 building, No. 6, rue de la Surintend- 
 ance, which extends from the Place du 
 Chdteau to the rue de VOrangerie. Our 
 apartments, as I still see them, and to 
 which ascent was made by a number 
 of stairways of peculiar arrangement, 
 looked out upon the basin of the 
 Suisses, and upon the great woods of 
 Satory. A long corridor, that seemed 
 to me to extend farther than the eye 
 could reach, ran past our apartments, 
 connecting them with those occupied 
 by the Beaumont family, in which I 
 found one of the first companions of 
 my infancy Edouard Beaumont, 
 afterward distinguished as a painter. 
 Edouard's father was a sculptor and 
 restorer of the statues in the palace 
 and park of Versailles ; it was in this 
 capacity that he occupied the lodging
 
 29 
 
 next to ours. After the death of my 
 father, in 1823, the privilege was still 
 allowed us of sojourning during the 
 summer vacation in the buildings 
 of the Surintendance; this favor was 
 continued under the reign of Charles 
 X., that is to say, until 1830, but was 
 withheld upon the accession of Louis 
 Philippe. My brother, who was, as I 
 have said, in the lyceum at Versailles, 
 passed his vacations with us there. 
 
 There was at Versailles an old mu- 
 sician named Rousseau, chapel master 
 of the palace. Rousseau played the 
 violoncello (or bass, as it was then 
 called), and my mother employed him 
 to give lessons on that instrument to 
 my brother, who was gifted with a 
 charming voice, and often sang at 
 the services in the palace chapel. 
 I can not say whether this old father 
 Rousseau played his bass well or ill ; 
 but I do remember that my brother 
 gave me the impression of not being 
 very clever on his instrument, and, 
 as I did not understand what it was
 
 30 
 
 to be a beginner, I thought instinct- 
 ively that if one played an instru- 
 ment at all, it could not be otherwise 
 than in tune. The idea that one 
 could play out of tune never entered 
 my little head. One day, hearing 
 my brother practicing his bass in the 
 next room, and being struck with the 
 number of more than doubtful pas- 
 sages from whicn my ear was suffer- 
 ing, I said to my mother : 
 
 " Mamma, why is Urbain's bass so 
 false ? " 
 
 I do not remember her reply, but 
 she must surely have been amused at 
 the naivett of my question. I have 
 stated that my brother had a very- 
 fine voice, which fact was later con- 
 firmed by the opinion of Wartel, 
 who often sang with him in the 
 chapel at Versailles, and who, after 
 having been in Choron's music 
 school, became a member of the 
 opera company in the time of Nour- 
 rit, afterward acquiring a great and 
 well-earned reputation as a teacher.
 
 3i 
 
 In 1825 my mother fell ill, I being 
 then nearly seven years old. Her 
 physician, for a long time, was Doctor 
 Baffos, who was present at my birth, 
 and who became our family physi- 
 cian after Doctor Halle, by whom he 
 was recommended. Baffos, seeing in 
 my presence in the house a super- 
 addition of fatigue for my mother, 
 whose days were passed in giving 
 lessons at home, suggested the idea 
 of having me taken every morning to 
 school, and brought home every night 
 before dinner. The school selected 
 was that of a Monsieur Boniface, near 
 the School of Medicine, not far from 
 the rue des Grands- Augustins, where 
 we were living. This school was 
 transferred a short time afterward 
 to the rue de Conde", almost oppo- 
 site the Ode'on theater. It was there 
 that I first saw Duprez, who was des- 
 tined to be one day that well-known 
 great tenor who shone with such 
 brilliancy upon the stage of the 
 Ode'on. Duprez, who was nearly nine
 
 32 
 
 years older than I, was then sixteen 
 or seventeen years of age. He was 
 a pupil of Choron, and came to the 
 Boniface school as a vocal teacher. 
 Seeing that I read music as easily as 
 one reads a book, and even more 
 rapidly than I could probably read it 
 to-day, he took a special liking for 
 me. Seating me upon his knees, 
 when my little comrades made mis- 
 takes, he used to say : 
 
 " Come, little man, show them how 
 to do it." 
 
 When, many years later, I recalled 
 this circumstance to him, so long past 
 for him as well as for me, he was 
 greatly struck with it, and said : 
 
 " Comment! you were the little fel- 
 low, then, who sang so well ?" 
 
 Meanwhile I was approaching the 
 age when it became necessary to 
 think of having me begin work under 
 conditions more serious than were 
 offered in a house which more re- 
 sembled a kindergarten than a school. 
 I was, therefore, placed as a boarder
 
 33 
 
 in the institution of M. Letellier, rue 
 de Vaugirard, at the corner of the 
 rue Fe"rou. M. Letellier was soon 
 succeeded by M. de Reusse, whose 
 house I left at the end of a year to 
 enter the boarding-school of Hallays- 
 Dabot, Place de V Estrapade, near the 
 Pantheon. 
 
 I recall M. Hallays-Dabot and his 
 wife as clearly as if they stood before 
 me. It would be hard to imagine 
 treatment more kind, benevolent, and 
 tender than that I received from 
 them. I was touched to such an 
 extent that my first impression was 
 sufficient to instantly dissipate my 
 fears, and make me accept with con- 
 fidence the trial of a new regime for 
 which I felt an insurmountable re- 
 pugnance. It seemed to me that I 
 had almost found a father, and that 
 with him I had nothing to fear. 
 
 In fact I have no unpleasant re- 
 membrance of the two years passed 
 in his house. His affection for me 
 never ceased; I always found him 
 
 3
 
 34 
 
 equally just and kind, and when, at 
 the age of eleven years, it was de- 
 cided to place me in the Lycte St. 
 Louis, M. Hallays-Dabot gave me a 
 certificate so flattering that I abstain 
 from reproducing it. I regard it as 
 a duty to here make this acknowl- 
 edgment of what he was to me. 
 
 The good recommendations, under 
 the protection of which I left the 
 institution of Hallays-Dabot, assisted 
 in obtaining for me in the Lycte St. 
 Louis a "quart de bourse." I went in 
 upon these conditions at the close of 
 the vacation, that is, in the month of 
 October, 1829. I had just passed my 
 eleventh birthday. 
 
 The principal of the lyceum was 
 then a priest, the Abbe Ganser, a 
 man gentle, serious, reserved, and 
 fatherly with his pupils. I was ad- 
 mitted at once into the class known 
 as the sixth. I had the good fortune 
 to have as a teacher, from the begin- 
 ning, the man whom, without excep- 
 tion, I loved the most of all during
 
 35 
 
 my school days my beloved and 
 venerable master and friend, Adolphe 
 Regnier, member of the Institute of 
 France, who was also the preceptor 
 and has remained the friend of the 
 Comte de Paris. 
 
 I was not a bad pupil, and my 
 masters generally loved me, but I 
 was dreadfully thoughtless, and often 
 brought punishment upon myself for 
 waste of time ; rather, however, dur- 
 ing hours of study than in the class. 
 I have said that I entered the St. 
 Louis with a "quart de bourse" that is, 
 with a quarter less to pay than the 
 usual charge. It was for me to suc- 
 ceed, little by little, by good reports 
 of conduct and progress, in relieving 
 my mother of the expense of the 
 school, by gradually obtaining the 
 " demi bourse" (half purse), then the 
 three-quarters, and finally the " bourse 
 enttire" (whole purse); and, as I adored 
 my mother, and my greatest happi- 
 ness would have been to aid her by 
 my application to study, it seems as
 
 36 
 
 if this thought ought not to have 
 deserted me for an instant. But, 
 alas ! " Chassez le nature I, il revient 
 au galop!" And my " naturel" gal- 
 loped very often far too often! 
 
 One day I was punished, I do not 
 know for what shortcoming of inat- 
 tention, or task unfinished, or lesson 
 unlearned. The punishment seemed 
 to me in excess of the fault, and 
 I protested, which resulted in the 
 additional penalty of being placed 
 in solitary confinement in the cell 
 used for correction of pupils, and 
 where I had to live on bread and 
 water until I had finished an enor- 
 mous task consisting of, I can not 
 remember, how many lines to write 
 500 or i ,000 an absurdity! When 
 I found myself in prison, oh, then I 
 felt like a criminal ! The cry of the 
 Eumenides to Orestes, "He has killed 
 his mother!" could not have been 
 more frightful than the thoughts 
 that assailed me at the moment when 
 they brought me the bread and water
 
 37 
 
 of the condemned. I looked at my 
 piece of bread and burst into tears : 
 
 " Scoundrel, rascal, wretch ! " said I 
 to myself ; " it is the labor of your 
 mother that earns for you this piece 
 of bread ! Your mother, who will 
 come to see you at the hour of recrea- 
 tion, to whom it will be reported that 
 you are in prison, and who will go 
 home weeping through the streets, 
 without having seen or embraced 
 you. You are a good-for-nothing, and 
 not worthy even to eat this bread!" 
 
 And the bread was left untasted. 
 
 However, when once more in the 
 usual routine of the school, I worked 
 very well, and, thanks to the prize 
 that I carried off each year, I was in 
 the way of obtaining that " bourse 
 en t tire" the object of all my wishes. 
 
 There was at the Lycte St. Louis 
 a chapel in which high mass was 
 celebrated every Sunday. The gal- 
 lery was divided into two parts and 
 ran across the whole width of the 
 chapel. In one of these parts were
 
 38 
 
 the organ and the seats reserved for 
 the singers. The chapel master, at 
 the time I entered the lyceum, was 
 Hippolyte Monpou, then employed 
 as accompanist at the Choron school 
 of music, and who has since become 
 known by several melodies and dra- 
 matic works that have made his name 
 very popular. 
 
 Thanks to the musical education 
 received from my mother from my 
 most tender infancy, I read music at 
 first sight. I had, besides, a very 
 good and true voice, and when I 
 entered the school was presented 
 at once to Monpou, who was aston- 
 ished at my ability, and immediately 
 appointed me soprano soloist of his 
 little musical band, consisting of two 
 first sopranos, two second sopranos, 
 two tenors, and two basses. 
 
 An imprudence of Monpou's caused 
 the loss of my voice. He continued 
 to have me sing during the time of 
 change, in spite of the rest and quiet 
 required by this transformation of
 
 39 
 
 the vocal organs, and after that I 
 never acquired again the force, sonor- 
 ity, and timbre possessed as a child, 
 and which are the necessary qualities 
 of a good voice. Mine remained weak 
 and husky. But for that accident, I 
 think I should have made a good 
 singer. 
 
 The revolution of 1830 put an end 
 to the principalship of the Abbe Gan- 
 ser. He was replaced by M. Liez, an 
 old professor of the Lycte Henry IV., 
 very much devoted to the new rt- 
 gime, and a zealous advocate of the 
 military exercises then being intro- 
 duced into the schools, and at which 
 he was always present, standing with 
 head erect, and right hand slipped ct 
 la Napotion between the buttons of 
 his redingote, in an attitude of drill- 
 master or chief of battalion. After 
 two years, M. Liez was himself re- 
 placed by M. Poirson, under whose 
 directorship began the events that 
 decided the course of my life.
 
 40 
 
 Among the faults of which I was 
 the most frequently guilty, there was 
 one for which I had a particular weak- 
 ness. I adored music, and from this 
 passionate fondness, which deter- 
 mined the choice of my career, arose 
 the first tempests that troubled my 
 young existence. Whoever has been 
 brought up in a lyceum knows the 
 festival so dear to schoolboys that 
 of St. Charlemagne. It is a great 
 banquet, in which all pupils take part 
 who have, since the beginning of the 
 school year, stood once in the first or 
 twice in the second place in the class 
 for composition. This banquet is fol- 
 lowed by a leave of absence of two 
 days, which allows the pupils to " ctt- 
 coucher" that is, to pass one night at 
 home a pleasure very rare, an in- 
 dulgence greatly envied by all. The 
 festival falls in the middle of winter. 
 In the year 1831, 1 had the good for- 
 tune to be bidden to this banquet, 
 and, as a reward, my mother promised 
 that I might go in the evening with
 
 41 
 
 my brother to the Theatre des Italiens, 
 to hear Rossini's Othello. Malibran 
 was playing the part of Desdemona ; 
 Rubini, that of Othello ; Lablache, 
 that of the father. The anticipation 
 of this pleasure made me wild with 
 joy and impatience. I remember that 
 it took away my appetite, so that at 
 dinner my mother was obliged to say : 
 
 " See here ! If you do not eat, you 
 can not go to the Italiens" 
 
 I immediately set myself to eat 
 with resignation. The dinner hour 
 was very early, inasmuch as we could 
 not afford tickets in advance, and it 
 would be necessary to stand in line to 
 get places in the parquet at 3 francs, 
 75 centimes each, which was, even at 
 that figure, a great outlay for my 
 poor, dear mother. It was bitter 
 cold, and my brother and I waited, 
 with frozen feet, nearly two hours 
 for the moment so ardently wished 
 for, and the crowd began to give 
 way before the ticket office. We 
 finally entered. Never shall I forget
 
 42 
 
 the impression received at the sight 
 of that interior, of the curtain, of 
 the chandeliers. It seemed to me 
 that I was in a temple, and that 
 something divine was to be revealed 
 to me. The solemn moment arrived ; 
 the three customary raps were given, 
 and the overture was about to com- 
 mence. My heart was beating to 
 burst my breast! That representa- 
 tion was an enchantment, a delirium. 
 Malibran, Rubini, Lablache, Tambu- 
 rini (who played lago), the voices, 
 the orchestra all made me literally 
 wild. 
 
 I emerged from the theater thor- 
 oughly at variance with the prose of 
 real life, and completely wrapped up 
 in that dream of the ideal which had 
 become my atmosphere, my fixed pur- 
 pose. I did not close my eyes that 
 night! I was beset, possessed! I 
 thought of nothing but of produc- 
 ing I also an Othello ! (Alas, my 
 exercises and translations suffered 
 severely, and soon showed the effect
 
 43 
 
 of this madness !) I hurried off my 
 work without first writing it in the 
 rough, making at once a copy on 
 finishing paper, so as to be the more 
 quickly rid of it, and to have my un- 
 divided time for my favorite occupa- 
 tion musical composition which 
 seemed to me the only thing worthy 
 of my attention or thoughts. This 
 was the source of many tears and of 
 great sorrows. My teacher, seeing 
 me scribbling one day on music paper, 
 approached me, and asked for my ex- 
 ercise. I handed him my finished 
 copy. 
 
 "And your rough copy ? " added he. 
 
 As I could not produce it, he took 
 possession of my music paper and 
 tore it into a thousand pieces. I re- 
 monstrated ; he punished me ; I pro- 
 tested, and appealed to the principal. 
 Result kept in after school, extra 
 task, solitary confinement, etc. 
 
 This first persecution, far from cur- 
 ing me, only inflamed more violently
 
 44 
 
 my musical ardor, and I resolved 
 henceforth to be careful to secure the 
 enjoyment of my pleasures by the 
 regular fulfillment of my duties as 
 a student. At this juncture I deter- 
 mined to address to my mother a 
 sort of profession of faith, formally 
 declaring my positive wish to be an 
 artist. I had, at one time, hesitated 
 between painting and music ; but 
 finally feeling more inclination to 
 express my ideas in music, I settled 
 upon the latter choice. 
 
 My mother was completely over- 
 come, as may well be understood. 
 She had known from experience the 
 hardships and uncertainty of the life 
 of an artist, and probably dreaded 
 for me a second edition of the scarcely 
 fortunate existence she had shared 
 with my father. Therefore, she came, 
 greatly excited, to tell her troubles to 
 the principal, M. Poirson. He re- 
 assured her, saying : 
 
 " Do not fear ; your son will not be 
 a musician ; he is a good little pupil ;
 
 45 
 
 he works hard ; his teachers are 
 pleased with him. I will see to it 
 that he is pushed forward to the Nor- 
 mal School. Rest assured, Madame 
 Gounod, he will not be a musician." 
 
 My mother went away very much 
 comforted. The principal called me 
 into his office. 
 
 " Eh, bien," said he to me, " how is 
 this ? You wish to be a musician ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "Ah, but you do not think what 
 that means ! To be a musician 
 amounts to nothing in the world." 
 
 "What, monsieur! It is nothing 
 to be Mozart ? Rossini ? " 
 
 And I felt while replying to him 
 that my little head of thirteen or 
 fourteen years threw itself backward. 
 Instantly the face of my interlocutor 
 changed expression. 
 
 "Ah ! " said he, " that is what you 
 think about it. Very well, we will 
 see if you are able to make a musi- 
 cian. I have had a box at the Italiens 
 for ten years, and I am a good judge."
 
 46 
 
 He then opened a drawer and, 
 taking out a paper, began to write 
 some verses. This being finished, 
 he handed me the paper, saying : 
 
 "Take this away and set it to 
 music." 
 
 I was delighted. I left him and 
 went back to my studies. On the 
 way to the class-room I looked over 
 with feverish anxiety the written 
 lines. They were the song of Joseph, 
 "A peine au sortir de renfance . . . ' 
 I knew nothing of Joseph, nor of 
 Mehul. I was neither hindered nor 
 intimidated by any remembrance. 
 It may easily be imagined how little 
 interest I felt for my Latin exercise 
 in this moment of musical intoxica- 
 tion. My song was written during 
 the following recreation hour. I 
 ran in haste with it to the principal. 
 
 " What is it, my child ? " 
 
 " My song is finished." 
 
 " What, already ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Let us see ; sing it to me."
 
 47 
 
 " But, sir, I need a piano for my 
 accompaniment." 
 
 Monsieur Poirson had a daughter 
 studying- the piano, and I knew there 
 was one in the adjoining room. 
 
 " No, no," said he, " that is unnec- 
 essary. I do not need a piano." 
 
 " But I do, sir, for my chords." 
 
 "And where are they, your chords ?" 
 
 " Here, sir," said I, pointing to my 
 forehead. 
 
 "Ah ! very well ; but it makes no 
 difference to me ; sing all the same. 
 I shall understand very well without 
 the chords." 
 
 I saw that I had to do without 
 accompaniment, and began ; but I was 
 scarcely in the middle of the first part 
 when I perceived the face of my 
 judge softening. This encouraged 
 me, and I commenced to feel that 
 victory was on my side. I went on 
 with confidence, and, when the song 
 was finished, the principal said : 
 
 " Now, then ; come to the piano." 
 
 I triumphed at once ; I had all my
 
 48 
 
 weapons in my hands. I recom- 
 menced my little exercise, and at 
 the end poor Monsieur Poirson, com- 
 pletely vanquished, with tears in his 
 eyes, took my head in his two hands 
 and embracing me, said : 
 
 " Go on, my child, with your music." 
 
 My dear, sainted mother had acted 
 prudently ; her resistance was a duty 
 dictated by her solicitude ; for, aside 
 from the danger of giving too easy 
 consent to my wishes, there was also 
 the grave responsibility of hindering 
 my natural vocation. The encour- 
 agement given me by M. Poirson 
 deprived her of the chief support of 
 her opposition to my plans, and of 
 the assistance upon which she had 
 most counted to turn me from them. 
 The assault had been made, the 
 siege commenced; it was necessary 
 to capitulate. She, however, took as 
 long a time as possible, and fearing 
 to yield too quickly and too easily to 
 my wishes, thought of and adopted 
 the following expedient :
 
 49 
 
 There was then in Paris a German 
 musician who enjoyed a high reputa- 
 tion as a theorist Antoine Reicha by 
 name. Besides his duties as professor 
 of composition at the Conservatory, 
 of which Cherubini was then director, 
 Reicha gave private lessons at home. 
 My mother thought of putting me in 
 his hands, and requested of the prin- 
 cipal of the lyceum the privilege of 
 taking me on Sundays, at the time 
 the school went out for a promenade, 
 to M. Reicha instead, for the purpose 
 of beginning the study of harmony, 
 counterpoint, and fugue or, in a 
 word, to learn the preliminaries of 
 the art of composition. My going, 
 my lesson, and my return to the 
 school would take about the same 
 time as that given to the promenade, 
 and my regular studies would not 
 suffer on account of this favor of an 
 exceptional outing. The principal 
 consented, and I was taken to M. 
 Reicha. ; but, when confiding me to 
 him, my mother privately said, as she 
 
 4
 
 so 
 
 afterward related to me, the follow- 
 ing words : 
 
 " My dear M. Reicha, I bring you 
 my son, a child who declares that he 
 wishes to devote himself to musical 
 composition. I bring him against 
 my will. An artistic career for him 
 frightens me, for I know with what 
 difficulties it bristles. However, I do 
 not wish to have to reproach myself, 
 nor to give him the right to reproach 
 me in future years for having hin- 
 dered his ambition, or put obstacles 
 in the way of his happiness. I desire, 
 therefore, to be assured at the outset, 
 that his talents are real and his call- 
 ing well defined. For this reason I 
 desire to have you put him to a seri- 
 ous test. Place before him difficul- 
 ties ; if he is really called to be an 
 artist, they will not repel him ; he will 
 conquer them. If, on the contrary, 
 he becomes discouraged, I shall know 
 what to do, and shall certainly not 
 allow him to embark in a career, the 
 first difficulties of which he has not 
 the courage to overcome."
 
 51 
 
 Reicha promised to submit me to 
 the regime demanded by my mother ; 
 and he kept his word, as far as in 
 him lay. As samples of my boyish 
 talent, I took to him several pages of 
 music, containing songs, preludes, 
 bits of waltzes, and what-not else that 
 had passed through my little head. 
 Looking over these, he said to my 
 mother : 
 
 " That child already knows a great 
 deal of what I have to teach him ; but 
 he does not know that he knows it." 
 
 When, at the end of one or two 
 years, I had come to exercises in har- 
 mony something more than element- 
 ary, to counterpoint of all kinds, to 
 fugues, canons, etc., my mother asked 
 him: 
 
 " Well, what do you think ? " 
 
 " I think, dear madame, that there 
 is no way of tiring him ; nothing re- 
 pels him; everything amuses him, 
 everything interests him; and what 
 pleases me the most is that he always 
 wants to know the ' why.' "
 
 52 
 
 "Very well," said she, " I must be 
 resigned then." 
 
 I knew that with my mother there 
 was no trifling. Several times she 
 had said to me : 
 
 "You know, if you do not do well 
 quick, a carriage, and to the notary ! " 
 
 The notary ! That was enough to 
 make me accomplish impossibilities. 
 Furthermore, my reports from school 
 were good, and in spite of the threat 
 suspended ovei me of making me go 
 twice through the same studies, in 
 order to prolong my time in school, I 
 was careful not to give my teachers 
 the right to consider my musical pas- 
 sion detrimental to my other work. 
 One time, however, I was punished, 
 and that very severely, for not having 
 finished some exercise. The teacher 
 kept me in after school, with a tre- 
 mendous task something like 500 
 verses to copy. I was scrawling away, 
 with that careless rapidity with which 
 one usually does such tasks, when 
 the preceptor approached the table.
 
 53 
 
 After having observed me for some 
 moments in silence, he laid his 
 hand gently upon my shoulder and 
 said : 
 
 " That is very badly written what 
 you are doing there ! " 
 
 Raising my head, I replied : 
 
 " Tiens ! perhaps you think it is 
 amusing!" 
 
 " It is tiresome because you are 
 doing it badly; if you would take 
 more care," added he, quietly, "it 
 would not be so tedious." 
 
 This simple remark, so full of good 
 sense, so quiet, and spoken with a 
 tone of patient and persuasive kind- 
 ness, put such a new light upon the 
 matter, that since that day I do not 
 remember ever to have been negli- 
 gent or thoughtless at my work. It 
 was a sudden revelation, complete 
 and convincing, of the secret of 
 attention and application. I set myself 
 again to my task, which was finished 
 with quite a different feeling, and my 
 ennui disappeared under the content-
 
 54 
 
 ment and benefit derived from the 
 good advice just received. 
 
 In the meantime, my musical stud- 
 ies were followed with satisfactory 
 results, becoming more and more 
 absorbing. A vacation of several 
 days arrived (that of the New Year), 
 of which my mother took advantage 
 to procure for me a pleasure that was 
 at the same time a great and impres- 
 sive lesson. They were giving Mo- 
 zart's Don Giovanni, at the It aliens, 
 to a hearing of which she took me 
 herself; and that heavenly evening 
 spent with her in a little box on the 
 fourth floor of that theater is one of 
 the most memorable and delightful 
 of my life. I can not say if my 
 memory is correct, but I think it 
 was Reicha who advised her to take 
 me to hear Don Giovanni. 
 
 Before describing the emotion pro- 
 duced in me by that incomparable 
 chef-d"ceuvre, I ask myself if my pen 
 can ever transcribe it I do not say
 
 55 
 
 faithfully, as that would be impossi- 
 ble but at least in a manner to give 
 some idea of what went on in my 
 mind during those few hours, the 
 charm of which has dominated my 
 life like a luminous apparition, or a 
 kind of vision of revelation. 
 
 From the very beginning of the 
 overture I felt myself transported 
 into an absolutely new world, by the 
 solemn and majestic chords of the 
 final scene of the Commandant. I 
 was seized with a freezing terror; 
 and when came the threatening pro- 
 gression over which are unrolled 
 those ascending and descending 
 scales, fatal and inexorable as a sen- 
 tence of death, I was overcome with 
 such a fright that I hid my face 
 upon my mother's shoulder, and thus 
 enveloped in the double embrace of 
 the beautiful and the terrible, I mur- 
 mured the following words : 
 
 " Oh ! mamma, what music ! that 
 is, indeed, real music ! " 
 
 The hearing of Rossini's Othello
 
 56 
 
 stirred in me the fibers of musical 
 instinct, but the effect produced by 
 Don Juan fyad quite another significa- 
 tion, and an entirely different result. 
 It seemed to me that between these 
 two kinds of impressions there must 
 be something analogous to that felt 
 by a painter in passing directly from 
 contact with the Venetian masters 
 to that with Raphael, Leonardo da 
 Vinci, and Michael Angelo. Rossini 
 gave me to know the intoxication of 
 purely musical delight; he charmed 
 me, delighted my ear. Mozart did 
 more ; to that enjoyment so complete, 
 from an exclusively musical and emo- 
 tional point of view, was then added 
 the profound and penetrating influ- 
 ence of true expression united to per- 
 fect beauty. It was, from one end to 
 the other of the score, a long and 
 inexpressible delight. The pathetic 
 tones of the trio at the death of the 
 Commandant, and of Donna Anna's 
 lament over the body of her father, 
 the charming grace of Zerlina, the
 
 57 
 
 supreme and stately elegance of 
 the trio of the Masks, and of that 
 which begins the second act under 
 Donna Elvira's window all, finally 
 (for in this immortal work all must be 
 mentioned), created for me that beati- 
 tude one feels only in the presence of 
 the essentially beautiful things that 
 hold the admiration of the centuries, 
 and serve to fix the height of the 
 esthetic level of perfection in art. 
 This representation counts as one of 
 the most cherished holiday gifts of 
 my childhood, and later, when I had 
 won the prix de Rome, it was the 
 full score of Don Juan that my dear 
 mother gave me as a reward. 
 
 That year was, as it happened, par- 
 ticularly favorable to the develop- 
 ment of my love of music. During 
 Holy Week, I heard two concerts by 
 the concert society of the Conserva- 
 tory, then directed by Habeneck. At 
 one of these, Beethoven's Pastoral 
 Symphony was played; and at the 
 other, the symphony with chorus, by
 
 58 
 
 the same master. A new inspiration 
 was then given to my musical ardor, 
 and I remember that, while these two 
 compositions revealed to me the lofty, 
 bold individuality of this singular 
 and gigantic genius, I also instinct- 
 ively recognized in them a manner 
 of expression similar, in many re- 
 spects, at least, to that into which the 
 hearing of Don Juan had initiated 
 me. Something told me that these 
 two great geniuses, so differently in- 
 comparable, had a common country, 
 and belonged to the same school. 
 
 My time at the lyceum was passing 
 rapidly away. Among the means to 
 which my mother had recourse to 
 force me to reflect upon the conse- 
 quences of my determination, besides 
 that of counting somewhat on keep- 
 ing me another year in school, by 
 having me go twice over the same 
 studies, she hoped to dissuade me by 
 declaring that if I held an unlucky 
 number in the drawing of lots for 
 the military conscription, she would
 
 59 
 
 be obliged to let me go, being too 
 poor to pay for a substitute. Evi- 
 dently that was only a subterfuge 
 the poor woman who had eaten dry 
 bread more than once, so that her 
 children should lack nothing, would 
 have sold her bed rather than be 
 separated from one of us ; and, as I 
 was of an age to feel and comprehend 
 how much such a life of devotion and 
 sacrifice imposed upon me in the 
 way of respect and love for my 
 mother, I said to her : 
 
 " Very well, dear mamma ; say no 
 more about it ; I will look out for 
 that; I will exempt myself; I shall 
 have the prix de Rome" 
 
 I was then in the third class, in 
 which a circumstance had happened 
 that attracted to me special consid- 
 eration among my comrades. One 
 of our professors, M. Roberge, was 
 particularly fond of Latin poetry. 
 To be clever in Latin verse was to be 
 sure of conquering his good graces.
 
 60 
 
 One day the boys had played some 
 trick upon him, the perpetrator of 
 which would not confess his fault, 
 and no one else was allowed to reveal 
 the secret. On account of this refusal 
 to confess, M. Roberge punished the 
 whole class by depriving us of leave of 
 absence. As the Easter vacation was 
 approaching a vacation of perhaps 
 three or four days' duration the 
 punishment promised to be dreadful. 
 Nevertheless, the spirit of our boy- 
 ish solidarity did not falter, and the 
 guilty one remained unknown. 
 
 The idea came to me of taking M. 
 Roberge on his weak side, and of 
 trying to unbend him. Saying noth- 
 ing to my comrades, I composed a 
 piece of Latin poetry, the subject of 
 which was the grief of little birds 
 immured in a cage, far from the fields, 
 the woods, the sun, the air, begging 
 for their liberty with piteous cries. 
 It must be that the feeling under 
 the dictation of which my verses 
 were written brought me good luck.
 
 61 
 
 On going into the class-room, I took 
 advantage of a moment when the 
 attention of M. Roberge was turned 
 in another direction, and furtively 
 laid my little composition on his 
 chair. Returning to his seat, he 
 noticed the paper, unfolded it, and 
 began to read. Then he asked : 
 
 " Messieurs, who is the author of 
 this poetry?" 
 
 I raised my hand. 
 
 "It is very good," said he; then 
 added : " Messieurs, I withdraw the 
 refusal of leave of absence ; you may 
 thank your comrade, Gounod, whose 
 work has earned you your deliver- 
 ance." 
 
 The civic honors with which I was 
 crowned in return for this amnesty 
 may be imagined ! 
 
 In due course of time I reached the 
 second class, and found myself again 
 under the instruction of my dear 
 old master of the sixth, Adolphe 
 Regnier. I had, then, among my 
 comrades, Eugene Despois, who be-
 
 62 
 
 came a brilliant pupil of the Normal 
 School, and afterward a distinguished 
 humanitarian ; Octave Ducrois de 
 Sixt ; and, finally, Albert Delacourtie, 
 the honorable and intelligent attor- 
 ney, who has remained one of my 
 best and most faithful friends. We 
 four boys occupied between us almost 
 entirely the "bench of honor." At 
 Easter I was judged sufficiently ad- 
 vanced to take up rhetoric, which I 
 studied but three months; and my 
 progress in other branches having 
 been so satisfactory, my mother re- 
 nounced her favorite project of hav- 
 ing me go over the ground again. I 
 left the lyceum at the summer vaca- 
 tion, being then a little more than 
 seventeen years old. 
 
 But I had not finished philosophy, 
 and my mother did not intend that 
 any of my studies should be incom- 
 plete. It was, therefore, arranged to 
 go on with them at home, so that, 
 while pursuing my work in composi- 
 tion, I was also preparing for exami-
 
 63 
 
 nation as bachelor of arts, which 
 degree I passed at the end of the 
 year. 
 
 I have often regretted not having 
 added that of the baccalaureate of 
 sciences, which would have familiar- 
 ized me early with a crowd of ideas, 
 the importance of which I appreci- 
 ated when all too late, and regard- 
 ing which I have, unfortunately, 
 remained in ignorance. But time 
 was pressing ; it was necessary to 
 prepare for winning the prix de Rome, 
 to which I aspired, and which was 
 for me a question of life or death 
 for my future. Therefore, there was 
 no time to lose. 
 
 Reicha had just died, and I found 
 myself without a teacher. My mother 
 decided to take me to Cherubini, and 
 to ask for my admission into one of 
 the classes in composition at the 
 Conservatory. I carried with me 
 some of my exercises written under 
 Reicha, in order to show Cherubini
 
 64 
 
 the degree of my advancement. This, 
 however, was not necessary, as he 
 took only verbal information of my 
 progress, and, when he learned that I 
 had been a pupil of Reicha (who had 
 also taught at the Conservatory), he 
 said to my mother : 
 
 "Ah, well! he must now begin 
 again and do it all over in another 
 way. I do not like Reicha's method ; 
 he was a German. The young man 
 must now follow the Italian school. 
 I will put him into the class of coun- 
 terpoint and fugue under my pupil, 
 Halevy." 
 
 Now, the Italian school preferred 
 by Cherubini was that great one 
 handed down from Palestrina, just 
 as, for the Germans, the master par 
 excellence is Sebastian Bach. Far 
 from discouraging me, this decision 
 delighted me. 
 
 "So much the better," said I, re- 
 peatedly, to my mother. "I shall 
 only be more thoroughly equipped, 
 having learned from eaqh of these
 
 65 
 
 two great schools that which charac- 
 terizes each. All is for the best." 
 
 I went into Halevy's class, Cheru- 
 bini placing me at the same time, 
 for lyrical composition, in the hands 
 of Berton, author of Montana et Stt- 
 phanie, and of a great number of 
 works enjoying a well-merited repu- 
 tation. He was a man of fine mind, 
 agreeable, delicate in feeling, and a 
 great admirer of Mozart, the assidu- 
 ous study of whose works he recom- 
 mended. 
 
 "Read Mozart," repeated he, con- 
 stantly; "read the Marriage of Figaro." 
 
 He was right ; this ought to be the 
 breviary of musicians. Mozart is to 
 Palestrina and to Bach what the 
 New Testament is to the Old, both 
 being considered as parts of one and 
 the same Bible. 
 
 Berton having died about two 
 months after my entrance into his 
 class, Cherubini placed me in that of 
 Le Sueur, the author of Les Bardes, 
 La Caverne, and of several masses 
 
 5
 
 66 
 
 and oratorios; a man serious, reserved, 
 earnest, and devout, with an inspira- 
 tion sometimes biblical; very much 
 given to sacred subjects ; tall, with a 
 face pale as wax, and with the air of 
 an old patriarch. Le Sueur treated 
 me with paternal kindness and ten- 
 derness ; he was affectionate ; he had 
 a warm heart. His instructions, 
 which, unfortunately, lasted only 
 nine or ten months, were very bene- 
 ficial, and I derived from him ideas, 
 the light and elevation of which 
 insure him an indelible place in my 
 memory and in my grateful affec- 
 tion. 
 
 I went over again, under the direc- 
 tion of HaleVy, the whole course of 
 counterpoint and fugue ; but in spite 
 of my work, with which my master 
 was well satisfied, I never obtained a 
 prize at the Conservatory. My special 
 object was the grand prix de Rome, 
 which I was determined to carry off, 
 cost what it might. 
 
 I was then going on nineteen years
 
 67 
 
 of age, when I competed for the first 
 time, and won the second prize. Le 
 Sueur being dead, I became a pupil 
 of Paer, who had replaced the former 
 as teacher of composition. I com- 
 peted again the following year. My 
 mother was filled with hope and fear 
 at the same time, for nothing more 
 was left me but the grand prix or 
 failure. It was a failure ! I was 
 twenty years old the age for con- 
 scription ! But my second prize of 
 the preceding year gave me one more 
 chance, a respite of a year, after 
 which I could enter for the third and 
 last time into the competition. To 
 console me for my defeat, my mother 
 took me for a journey of a month in 
 Switzerland. She had yet, in spite of 
 her fifty-eight years, all the freshness 
 and vigor of a woman of thirty. For 
 me, also, who, outside of Paris, had 
 seen only Versailles, Rouen, and 
 Havre, this journey was a series of 
 enchantments, going from Geneva 
 by Chamouni to the Oberland, the
 
 Righi, the lakes, and returning by 
 Basel. We went on two mules, set- 
 ting out early each morning, and 
 retiring late to rest, my mother 
 always being the first one up, and all 
 dressed before I was awake. 
 
 I returned to Paris full of new zeal 
 for my work, and determined to finish 
 this time with the grand prix de 
 Rome. The date of this competi- 
 tion, so impatiently awaited, came at 
 last. I went into the required seclu- 
 sion, and carried off the prize ! My 
 mother wept; with joy, at first, and 
 then at the thought that this triumph 
 meant speedy separation and that 
 a separation of three years, of which 
 two were to be passed in Rome and 
 the third in Germany. We had 
 never been parted, and the fable of 
 " The Two Pigeons " would come 
 daily to her remembrance. 
 
 The artists who won the other 
 grand prizes in the same year with 
 me were : Hubert, for painting ,
 
 69 
 
 Gruyere, for sculpture ; Le Fuel, for 
 architecture; for engraving on medals, 
 Vauthier, grandson of Galle. 
 
 The official distribution of the prix 
 de Rome took place near the end of 
 October, at the annual public session 
 of the Institute, during which was 
 performed the cantata of the laureate 
 musician. My brother, who was an 
 architect, had made excellent prog- 
 ress at the School of Fine Arts, as a 
 pupil of Huyot ; but, not wishing 
 to leave our mother, and foresee- 
 ing, perhaps, that the grand prix 
 would take from her, some day, the 
 younger of her two sons, he renounced 
 the competition for Rome, which, in 
 case he had obtained it, would have 
 separated him for five years from 
 that mother whom he adored, and of 
 whom he was the mainstay and sup- 
 port. 
 
 But he had received what was 
 called the "departmental prize," 
 awarded to pupils obtaining the 
 greatest number of medals in the
 
 70 
 
 course of their studies at the School 
 of Fine Arts. This prize was also 
 announced at the same public ses- 
 sion of the Institute, and our mother 
 thus had the happiness of seeing her 
 two sons crowned on the same day. 
 
 I have already stated that my 
 brother was a student at the lyceum 
 of Versailles. It was there that he 
 first knew Lefuel, whose father, in- 
 deed, was architect of the palace, 
 and who was destined later to make 
 illustrious the name he bore. He 
 found my brother again as a fellow- 
 student in the atelier of Huyot, the 
 celebrated architect, one of the de- 
 signers of the Arc de Triomphe de 
 VEtoile; and from that time forward 
 they were bound together in an in- 
 destructible friendship. Lefuel was 
 nearly nine years older than I, and 
 my mother, who loved him as a son, 
 confided me to his care in going to 
 Rome (it may be imagined with how 
 many charges), and I owe it to the 
 memory of this most excellent friend
 
 71 
 
 to say that he acquitted himself of 
 his duty with the greatest fidelity 
 and the most watchful care. 
 
 Before my departure, an oppor- 
 tunity was offered me of attempting a 
 work, serious enough at any age, and 
 especially so at mine. The chapel 
 master of St. Eustache Dietsch 
 who was then director of chorus at 
 the Optra, said to me one day : 
 
 " Come, write a mass before start- 
 ing for Rome; I will have it sung at 
 St. Eustache." 
 
 A mass ! of mine ! at St. Eustache ! 
 I thought I was dreaming. I had five 
 months before me, and set myself 
 resolutely to the work. On the day 
 fixed, I was ready, thanks to the as- 
 sistance of my mother, who had 
 helped me copy the orchestral parts, 
 we not having the means with which 
 to pay a copyist. A mass, with grand 
 orchestra, if you please ! I dedicated 
 it, with as much temerity as grati- 
 tude, to my beloved and regretted
 
 72 
 
 master, Le Sueur, and directed the 
 performance of it myself, at St. 
 Eustache. 
 
 My mass was certainly not a re- 
 markable work ; it showed the inex- 
 perience that might be expected from 
 a young artist as yet a novice in the 
 handling of the rich palette of the 
 orchestra, the acquirement of which 
 demands such long practice. As to 
 the value of the musical ideas, con- 
 sidered by themselves, they were 
 conceived with correct feeling, and 
 with an instinct truly in harmony 
 with the sense of the sacred text; 
 but in the particulars of arrange- 
 ment and development, there was 
 much left to be desired. Such as 
 it was, however, this first attempt 
 brought me much -kind encourage- 
 ment, with one instance of which I 
 was especially touched. 
 
 At the instant when my mother 
 and I arrived at home, after the pro- 
 duction of the mass, I found waiting 
 for me at the door of our apart-
 
 73 
 
 ments (we were then living at No. 8 
 rue de r Eperon, rez-de-chaussee'), a 
 messenger with letter in hand. I 
 took it, opened it, and read as follows : 
 
 " Bravo ! dear young man, whom I 
 knew as a child. All honor to the Glo- 
 ria, to the Credo, and especially to 
 the Sanctus! It is fine, it is truly relig- 
 ious. Bravo! and thanks; you have 
 rendered me truly happy." 
 
 This was from good M. Poirson, 
 my old principal at the Lycte St. 
 Louis, and at that time principal of 
 the Lycte Charlemagne. He had seen 
 the notice of the production of my 
 mass and hastened, full of interest 
 and anxiety, to hear the first efforts 
 of the young artist to whom he had 
 said, seven years before : 
 
 " Go on, my child, with your music." 
 
 I was so much affected by his 
 remembrance that I did not take 
 time to enter the house ; I made but 
 one bound into the street, leaped into 
 a cab, and arrived at the Lyce'e Charle- 
 magne, rue St. A ntoine, where I found
 
 74 
 
 my dear old principal, who opened 
 his arms and embraced me with all 
 his heart. 
 
 I had then but four days to spend 
 with that mother from whom I was 
 to be separated for three years, and 
 who, through her tears, was pre- 
 paring everything for the day of my 
 departure. That day approached 
 rapidly.
 
 II. 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 ON the 5th of December, 1834, Le- 
 fuel, Vauthier, and I left Paris at 
 eight o'clock in the evening, by the 
 mail-stage that started from the rue 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau. My brother 
 was the only one to witness our 
 departure. Our first stop was at 
 Lyons. From there we descended 
 the Rhone by Avignon, Aries, etc., to 
 Marseilles. At Marseilles we took a 
 coach. 
 
 The coach! how many memories 
 are suggested by the word ! Poor, 
 old vehicle ! crushed, ground down, 
 outstripped by the breathless, dizzy 
 speed of the iron wheels of steam 
 the coach which permitted one to stop, 
 to look, and to peacefully admire the 
 places through which if, indeed, 
 
 (75)
 
 76 
 
 not under which the roaring loco- 
 motive now drags you like a piece 
 of baggage, and hurls you into space 
 with the fury of a meteor. 
 
 The coach which carried you little 
 by little, gradually, cautiously, from 
 one scene to another, instead of that 
 howitzer on rails that takes you, 
 sleeping under the sky of Paris, and 
 throws you, waking, roughly, like a 
 piece of merchandise, ^ I'Anglaise, 
 under that of the Orient, without 
 gradual preparatory transition of 
 mind or of temperature. Many to- 
 gether, closely packed, and in quick 
 time, like fish sent by express, so as 
 to be fresh on arrival ! 
 
 If progress, that pitiless conqueror, 
 would, at least, leave life in the van- 
 quished ! But no the coach exists 
 no longer. I bless it for having been; 
 it permitted me to enjoy in detail the 
 admirable route from La Corniche, 
 which prepares one so well for the 
 climate and the picturesque beauties 
 of Italy Monaco, Mentone, Sestri,
 
 77 
 
 Genoa, Spezzia, Trasitneno, Tuscany, 
 and Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Perugia, Flor- 
 ence alternating and progressive 
 instruction in nature, which explains 
 the masters, who, in their turn, teach 
 one to observe nature. All this we 
 dwelt upon and enjoyed at our leisure 
 for nearly two months, and on the 27th 
 of January, 1840, entered that Rome 
 which was to be our dwelling place, 
 our instructor, and our initiator into 
 the grand and severe beauties of 
 nature and of art. 
 
 The director of the Academy of 
 France, at Rome, then, was Monsieur 
 Ingres, whom my father had known 
 when quite young. Upon our arrival 
 we called upon the director, as was 
 customary, to be personally presented 
 to him. He had scarcely seen me 
 when he exclaimed : 
 
 " You are Gounod ! Dieu ! How 
 much you resemble your father! " 
 
 And he pronounced upon my 
 father's talent as a draughtsman, his 
 nature, and the charm of his mind
 
 78 
 
 and conversation, a eulogy that I 
 was proud to hear from the lips 
 of so eminent an artist, this being 
 for me the most agreeable reception 
 possible. 
 
 Each of us having been installed 
 in his allotted lodging a lodging 
 consisting of one large room, serving 
 for both working and sleeping quar- 
 ters my first thought was of the long 
 exile that was to separate me from 
 my mother. I wondered if my work 
 as a student would suffice to help me 
 to endure patiently a separation that 
 my stay in Rome and in Germany 
 would prolong to three years. From 
 my window I perceived in the dis- 
 tance the dome of St. Peters, and 
 involuntarily yielded myself to the 
 melancholy induced by my first 
 experience in solitude, although 
 a building could hardly be called 
 a solitude in which were lodged 
 twenty-eight students, who gathered 
 twice a day, at least, around a com- 
 mon table in that famous dining-
 
 79 
 
 room where hung the portraits of 
 all who had studied there since the 
 foundation of the Academy and 
 with which comrades I was of a dis- 
 position to soon make acquaintance 
 and be on good terms. 
 
 I must confess it! One of the 
 reasons that contributed the most to 
 my loneliness was, undoubtedly, the 
 impression made upon me by my 
 arrival in Rome. It was a complete 
 disappointment. Instead of the city 
 that I had imagined majestic in 
 character, striking in appearance, 
 magnificent, full of temples, ancient 
 monuments, and picturesque ruins 
 I found myself in a veritable provin- 
 cial city, ordinary, colorless, and dirty 
 almost everywhere. My illusions 
 were completely destroyed, and it 
 would have taken but little to induce 
 me to give up my studies, pack my 
 trunk, and leave post haste for Paris, 
 there to find again all that I loved. 
 
 Of course, Rome contained all that 
 of which I had dreamed, but not in a
 
 so 
 
 way to strike one at first sight; it 
 must be sought for; one must look 
 here and there, and question, little by 
 little, the sleeping grandeur of the 
 glorious past, bringing it to life again 
 by familiar acquaintance with those 
 silent ruins the bones of Roman 
 antiquity. 
 
 I was too young then, not alone in 
 years, but also in development of 
 mind ; I was too much of a child to 
 seize and comprehend at first sight 
 the profound meaning of that grave, 
 austere city, which appeared to me 
 so cold, arid, sad, and taciturn, which 
 speaks in a tone so low as to be un- 
 derstood only by ears trained by si- 
 lence and meditation. Rome can say 
 what the Holy Scriptures represent 
 God as saying with regard to the 
 soul : "I will allure her, and bring 
 her into the wilderness, and speak 
 comfortably unto her." 
 
 Rome is, in herself, so many things, 
 and these things are wrapped in a 
 calm so profound, in a majesty so
 
 81 
 
 tranquil and serene, that it is impos- 
 sible to suspect, at first, the prodi- 
 gious amount and inexhaustible rich- 
 ness of what she offers. Her past as 
 well as her present, her present as 
 well as her future, make of her the 
 capital, not of a country, but of 
 humanity. Whoever has lived there 
 long knows this very well; and to 
 whatever nation one may belong, 
 whatever may be one's native tongue, 
 Rome speaks a language so universal 
 that none can leave it without feel- 
 ing as if departing from a native 
 land. Little by little my melancholy 
 gave place to quite another senti- 
 ment. I familiarized myself with 
 my surroundings, and emerged from 
 the sort of winding-sheet in which I 
 had been enveloped. 
 
 In the meantime I had not been 
 altogether idle. My favorite employ- 
 ment was the reading of Goethe's 
 Faust (in French, of course, as I did 
 not know a word of German). I read, 
 besides, and with great pleasure, the 
 
 6
 
 82 
 
 poems of Latnartine. Before think- 
 ing of my first composition to be 
 sent home from Rome, and for which 
 I had still plenty of time, I busied 
 myself in writing- several melodies, 
 including Le Vallon and Le Soir, the 
 music of which was adapted ten 
 years later to the prize competition 
 scene in the first act of my opera, 
 Sapho, set to the beautiful lines of 
 my friend and collaborator, Emile 
 Augier " Hfro, sur la tour solitaire 
 . . . . " I wrote these melodies 
 within a short time of each other, 
 almost immediately after my arrival 
 at the Villa Medici. 
 
 Six weeks passed away; my eyes 
 became accustomed to that city whose 
 silence had impressed me as a desert. 
 This silence even began to charm 
 me, to be a solace, and I found 
 a particular pleasure in frequenting 
 the ruins of the Forum, the Palatine 
 Hill, and the Colosseum, those re- 
 mains of past grandeur and power 
 over which has been extended for
 
 83 
 
 centuries the august and pacific 
 shepherd's crook of the Pastor of 
 Peoples and the Ruler of Nations. 
 I had formed the acquaintanceship 
 and became the friend of an excellent 
 family, the Desgoffes, who were en- 
 joying the hospitality of Monsieur 
 and Madame Ingres. Alexander Des- 
 goffe was not one of our fellow-stu- 
 dents, but a pupil of Monsieur Ingres, 
 and a landscape painter of a severe 
 and noble style. He lived at the 
 Academy with his wife and daughter, 
 a charming child of nine years, who 
 afterward became Madame Paul Flan- 
 drin, a woman as admirable in the 
 capacity of wife and mother as she 
 was perfect in that of a daughter. 
 Desgoffe was possessed of a rare 
 nature ; a heart deep, worthy, de- 
 voted, modest ; clear and simple 
 as a child; faithful and generous. 
 It was, as may well be supposed, a 
 great delight to my mother to learn 
 that I was with kind and excellent 
 people, who were really fond of me,
 
 84 
 
 whose society afforded some mitiga- 
 tion of my loneliness, and upon whom 
 I could depend in case of need for 
 loving and devoted care. 
 
 Our Sunday evenings were usually 
 'passed in the large drawing-room of 
 the director, to whose apartments 
 the students were freely admitted on 
 that day. We always had music. 
 Monsieur Ingres favored me with his 
 special friendship. He was a great 
 lover of music, being passionately 
 fond of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 and above all, of Gluck, who, by the 
 nobility and pathos of his style, 
 seemed to him a Greek, a descendant 
 of ^schylus, of Sophocles, and Euri- 
 pides. Monsieur Ingres played the 
 violin, not as a good performer, much 
 less a virtuoso, but during his youth 
 he had played that instrument in the 
 orchestra of his native city, Montau- 
 ban, where he assisted in the per- 
 formance of Gluck's operas. I had, 
 also read and studied the works of
 
 CQtounofr* 85 
 
 Gluck. As to Mozart's Don Juan, I 
 knew it by heart, and, although I was 
 not a good pianist, I managed to 
 gratify M. Ingres by playing for him 
 the score he adored. I knew equally 
 well the symphonies of Beethoven, 
 for which he had a great admiration. 
 We two often passed a great part of 
 the night entertaining ourselves in 
 this way in the companionship of the 
 great masters, and in a short time I 
 was completely established in the 
 good graces of M. Ingres. 
 
 Whoever has not known that gen- 
 tleman can have but an incorrect and 
 false idea of him. I observed him 
 very closely, familiarly, frequently, 
 and for a long time ; and I can affirm 
 that he was by nature simple and 
 upright, open, candid, and impulsive, 
 with an enthusiasm' that sometimes 
 amounted to eloquence. He had the 
 tenderness of a child and the indig- 
 nation of an apostle ; he had a nazvett, 
 a touching sensibility, and a fresh- 
 ness of emotion not met with among
 
 86 
 
 "poseurs" with whom some people 
 have been pleased to number him. 
 
 Sincerely humble and modest in 
 the presence of the masters, but dig- 
 nified and proud before the self-suf- 
 ficience and arrogance of ignorance 
 and pretension, fatherly toward all 
 the students, whom he considered as 
 his children, and whom he was care- 
 ful to treat as such before the visitors 
 that were received at the Academy, 
 whoever they might be, such was the 
 great and noble artist whose valuable 
 instructions I had the happiness to 
 receive. I loved him dearly, and I 
 shall never forget that he expressed 
 before me some of those luminous 
 sayings that suffice to light up the 
 life of any artist who has the good 
 fortune to comprehend them. 
 
 Everyone knows the famous say- 
 ing of M. Ingres : " Drawing is the 
 probity of art." He said in my pres- 
 ence another thing which is a whole 
 synthesis in itself: "There is no 
 grace without force." It is the truth
 
 87 
 
 that grace and force are complement- 
 ary to each other in the total of 
 beauty, force preserving grace from 
 becoming puerile, and grace prevent- 
 ing force from becoming brutal. It 
 is the perfect harmony of these two 
 elements that marks the height of 
 art and which constitutes genius. 
 
 It has been said, and often mechan- 
 ically repeated, that M. Ingres was 
 despotic, intolerant, exclusive ; but 
 he was nothing of all that. If he 
 asserted himself strongly, it was 
 because he had strong belief, and 
 nothing in the world gives more 
 authority than that. I have never 
 seen anyone admire more things 
 than he, simply because he could dis- 
 cern better than anyone else in 
 what respect and why a thing was 
 admirable. But he was prudent ; he 
 knew to what extent the impulses of 
 the young lead them, without dis- 
 cernment and without method, to be 
 enamored of, and infatuated with, 
 certain personal traits of such or such
 
 88 
 
 a master. He knew, also, that these 
 traits, which are the distinctive, per- 
 sonal characteristics of each master, 
 their individual physiognomy by 
 which they are recognized as we 
 recognize each other, are just the 
 very incommunicable peculiarities of 
 their nature ; and that, consequently, 
 it is, in the first place, to say the 
 least, a plagiarism to try to imitate 
 them; and, furthermore, that this 
 imitation will result fatally in an 
 exaggeration of those qualities, which 
 the imitator will turn into just as 
 many defects. This was the convic- 
 tion of M. Ingres, for which he was 
 unjustly accused of exclusiveness and 
 intolerance. 
 
 The following anecdote will show 
 how honest he was in correcting 
 a wrongly formed first impression, 
 and how little obstinate in his repug- 
 nances. I had just let him hear for 
 the first time the admirable scene of 
 Charon and the Shades, in the opera 
 of Alceste, not of Gluck, but of Lully.
 
 89 
 
 This first hearing left upon him an 
 impression of stiffness, dryness, and 
 barbarous harshness so painful that 
 he exclaimed : 
 
 " That is frightful ! it is hideous ! 
 it is not music, it is iron ! " 
 
 I was very careful not to oppose 
 myself, young as I was, to the im- 
 petuosity of one for whom I had the 
 greatest respect ; I waited to let the 
 storm pass by. Some time afterward 
 he referred to the impression left 
 upon him by this music an impres- 
 sion already somewhat softened, as it 
 seemed to me and said : 
 
 " Come, let us have that scene from 
 Lully again Charon and the Shades 
 I should like to hear it once more." 
 
 I sang it again for him ; and this 
 time, having become familiar, doubt- 
 less, with the simple and severe style 
 of that remarkable portrayal, he was 
 struck with the irony and cunning in 
 the language of Charon, and with the 
 touching lament of those wandering 
 Shades to whom he refused passage '
 
 90 
 
 in his boat because they had nothing 
 with which to pay him. Little by lit- 
 tle M. Ingres grew so much attached 
 to this scene that it became one of 
 his favorite selections, a repetition of 
 which he frequently requested. 
 
 But his ruling passion was for 
 Mozart's Don Juan, with which we 
 sometimes remained together until 
 two o'clock in the morning, at which 
 point Madame Ingres, ready to< drop 
 with weariness and fatigue, was ob- 
 liged to close the piano in order to 
 separate us and make us go, each one 
 his own way, to bed. 
 
 It is true that in the matter of 
 music, M. Ingres preferred the Ger- 
 man school, and did not care much to 
 talk about Rossini ; but he regarded 
 the Barber of Seville as a master- 
 piece; he had, also, the greatest 
 admiration for another Italian master 
 Cherubini of whom he left a fine 
 portrait, and whom Beethoven consid- 
 ered the greatest master of his time, 
 which is not slight praise, bestowed
 
 91 
 
 by such a man. Moreover, we all 
 have our preferences, and why should 
 M. Ingres not have his? To prefer 
 is not to condemn what one does not 
 prefer. 
 
 A particular circumstance favored 
 and increased my intimacy with M. 
 Ingres. I was very fond of drawing, 
 and often carried a sketch-book in 
 my excursions around Rome. One 
 day, returning from one of my expe- 
 ditions, I found myself at the door 
 of the Academy, face to face with 
 him, also returning at that moment. 
 He noticed the sketch-book under 
 my arm, and said, fixing upon me 
 that searching and luminous look 
 peculiar to him : 
 
 " What have you there, under your 
 arm?" 
 
 I replied, somewhat confused : 
 
 "But M. Ingres it is a sketch- 
 book." 
 
 " A sketch-book ! for what purpose? 
 Do you draw?"
 
 92 
 
 " Oh, no M. Ingres that is to say 
 yes I draw a little, but so very 
 little.' 
 
 "Indeed ! ah, come, let me see." 
 
 And opening my book his eyes fell 
 upon a small figure of St. Catharine 
 that I had copied that very day from 
 a fresco attributed to Masaccio, in the 
 old basilica of St. Clement, not far 
 from the Colosseum. 
 
 " Did you do this ?" asked M. Ingres. 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "All alone?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "Ah! but do you know that you 
 draw like your father ? " 
 
 " Oh ! M. Ingres." 
 
 Then looking at me seriously, he 
 said: 
 
 "You must make me some tracings." 
 
 Make tracings for M. Ingres ! Per- 
 haps to make them near him, to be 
 illuminated by his rays, to warm my- 
 self by his enthusiasm ! I was over- 
 come with honor and delight. 
 
 Thus it was in fact that, seated by
 
 93 
 
 his side and working at evening by 
 his lamp, I gave myself tip to this 
 fascinating occupation, so delightful 
 and at the same time so instructive, 
 both on account of the study of the 
 chefs-d'osuvres that passed under the 
 careful point of my pencil and by all 
 that I gathered from the conversa- 
 tion of M. Ingres. I made nearly a 
 hundred sketches for him after en- 
 gravings of primitive subjects that 
 had the honor of being in his port- 
 folio, and of which several were not 
 less than forty centimetres in height. 
 
 One day he said to me : 
 
 "If you wish it, I will have you 
 come back to Rome with the grand 
 prix for painting." 
 
 "Oh ! M. Ingres, "replied I, "change 
 my career, and begin another ? And 
 then leave my mother again? Oh! 
 no, no !" 
 
 However, as I was in Rome to 
 devote myself to music rather than 
 to painting, it was necessary to think
 
 94 
 
 seriously of improving occasions for 
 hearing music. These opportunities 
 were not, indeed, very frequent, but, 
 above all, they ought to have been 
 beneficial and instructive. And to 
 begin with, in the matter of re- 
 ligious music, there was hardly more 
 than a single place where one could 
 go satisfactorily and profitably, and 
 that place was the Sistine Chapel at 
 the Vatican. What went on in the 
 other churches was enough to make 
 one shudder ! Outside of the Sistine 
 Chapel, and the one called the Chapel 
 of the Canons in St. Peters, the 
 music was not even good-for-nothing ; 
 it was execrable. 
 
 One can not imagine a more un- 
 suitable collection of things brought 
 out in the other churches, in the 
 name of the honor of heaven. All 
 the gaudy tinsel of secular music 
 appeared on the stage of these relig- 
 ious masquerades. One hearing of 
 each was sufficient, and after my first 
 experience I was not found there 
 again.
 
 95 
 
 I went, usually, on Sunday to hear 
 High Mass at the Sistine Chapel, fre- 
 quently accompanied by my friend, 
 Hebert. But the Sistine to speak 
 of it as it deserves, too much can not 
 be said of the authors of both what 
 one sees and hears there or rather, 
 of what was once heard there in 
 former days ; for, alas ! although one 
 may still see the sublime work of 
 Michael Angelo destructible and 
 already very much changed it 
 seems that the music of the divine 
 Palestrina no longer resounds under 
 those vaults that the political cap- 
 tivity of the sovereign pontiff has 
 rendered mute, and which mourn 
 eloquently in emptiness the absence 
 of their holy guest. 
 
 I went, therefore, as often as pos- 
 sible to the Sistine Chapel. The 
 music there severe, ascetic, hor- 
 izontal, and calm as the line of the 
 ocean, monotonous by reason of se- 
 renity, ante-sensuous, and, neverthe- 
 less, possessing an intensity of con-
 
 96 
 
 templation that sometimes amounts 
 to ecstasy produced at first a strange, 
 almost unpleasant, effect upon me. 
 Whether it was the character of the 
 composition itself, entirely new to 
 me, or the especial sonority of those 
 particular voices, heard for the first 
 time, or, indeed, that attack, firm to 
 harshness, that forcible hammering 
 that gives such strong relief to the 
 various entrances of the voices into 
 a web so full and close, I can not 
 say, but, at any rate, this impression, 
 however strange it might have been, 
 did not displease me. I went the 
 second time, and still again, and 
 finished by not being able to do 
 without it. 
 
 There are works that must be seen 
 or heard in the places for which they 
 were created. The Sistine Chapel 
 is one of these exceptional places, 
 unique of its kind in the world. 
 The colossal genius who decorated 
 its vaulted ceiling and the wall of 
 the altar with his matchless concep-
 
 97 
 
 tions of the story of Genesis and of 
 the Last Judgment, the painter of 
 prophets, with whom he seemed to 
 be on an equality, will, doubtless, 
 never have his equal, no more than 
 Homer or Phidias. Men of this 
 stamp and stature are not seen twice 
 upon the earth; they are syntheses, 
 they embrace a whole world, they 
 exhaust it, they complete it, and 
 what they have said no one can 
 repeat after them. The music of 
 Palestrina seems to be a translation 
 in song of the vast poem of Michael 
 Angelo, and I am inclined to think 
 that these two masters explain and 
 illustrate each other in the same 
 light, the spectator developing the 
 listener, and reciprocally, so that, 
 finally, one is tempted to ask if the Sis- 
 tine Chapel painting and music is 
 not the product of one and the same 
 inspiration. Music and painting are ; 
 there found in a union so perfect! 
 and sublime that it seems as if the' 
 whole were the twofold expression 
 
 7
 
 98 
 
 of one and the same thought, the 
 double voice of one and the same 
 hymn. It might be said that what 
 one hears is the echo of what one sees. 
 There are, in fact, between the 
 works of Michael Angelo and of 
 Palestrina such analogies, such a 
 similarity of ideas, that it is very 
 difficult not to conclude that these 
 two privileged beings were possessed 
 of the same combination of qualities, 
 and I was about to say, of virtues. 
 In both the same simplicity, the 
 same modesty in the employment 
 of means, the same indifference to 
 effect,the same disdain of seductive at- 
 tractions. One feels that the material 
 agent, the hand, counts for nothing, 
 and that the soul alone, unalterably 
 fixed upon a higher world, strives 
 only to express in an humble and 
 subordinate form the sublimity of its 
 contemplations. There is nothing, 
 even to the general, uniform tone in 
 which this painting and this music 
 are enveloped, which does not seem
 
 99 
 
 created with a sort of voluntary 
 renouncement of all colors. The art 
 of these two men is, so to speak, a 
 sacrament, where the visible sign is 
 no more than a veil thrown over the 
 divine and living reality. Thus, 
 neither one nor the other of these 
 two grand masters fascinates at first. 
 In everything else it is the exterior 
 that attracts; but here, not so; one 
 must penetrate beyond the visible and 
 the sensual. 
 
 The hearing of a work of Pales- 
 trina produces something analogous 
 to the reading of one of the grand 
 pages of Bossuet. Nothing is noticed 
 as you go along, but at the end of the 
 road you find yourself carried to 
 prodigious heights ; the language, 
 docile and faithful servant of the 
 thought, has not turned you from 
 your course nor stopped you in its 
 own interest; and you arrive at the 
 summit without rude shock, without 
 turning from the way, and without 
 accident, conducted by a mysterious
 
 ioo 
 
 guide who has concealed from you 
 both himself and his methods. It is 
 this absence of visible means, of 
 worldly artifices, of vain coquetry, 
 that renders the highest works abso- 
 lutely inimitable. To attain to the 
 same degree of perfection requires 
 the same spirit by which they were 
 conceived, and the same raptures by 
 which they were dictated. 
 
 As to the immense, gigantic work 
 of Michael Angelo, what can I say? 
 What he has spread out, lavished, 
 heaped up in genius not only as a 
 painter, but as a poet upon the walls 
 of the Sistine Chapel, is prodigious. 
 What a powerful assemblage of facts 
 and of personages that one compris- 
 ing and symbolizing the principal 
 history, the essential history, of our 
 race ! What a conception that double 
 line of prophets and sibyls, whose 
 far-seeing vision pierces intuitively 
 the veil of the future and carries 
 across the ages the Spirit before 
 whom all things are revealed !
 
 101 
 
 What a book is that vaulted ceiling 
 showing the first history of man, as- 
 sociated in idea, through the colossal 
 figure of the prophet Jonah escaped 
 from the bowels of the whale, with 
 the triumph of the other Jonah deliv- 
 ered by his own power from the 
 shadows of the tomb, and conqueror 
 over death ! What a radiant and sub- 
 lime hosanna that legion of angels 
 turning and winding in a transport 
 of enthusiasm, so to speak, around 
 the sacred instruments of the Pas- 
 sion, which they are carrying through 
 the luminous space to the heights of 
 celestial glory, whilst in the lower 
 abysses of the picture the figures 
 of the doomed stand forth, mourn- 
 ful and despairing, in the last livid 
 lights of a day that seems to say 
 farewell to them forever! 
 
 And upon the vaulted ceiling it- 
 self, what an eloquent and pathetic 
 representation of the first hours of 
 our first parents ! What a revelation 
 that imposing gesture of the creative
 
 102 
 
 act which endows the still inanimate 
 statue of the first man with the " liv- 
 ing soul," which places him in con- 
 scious relationship with the author of 
 his being ! What spiritual power is 
 suggested by that empty space, so 
 narrow and yet so significant, left by 
 the painter between the creating 
 finger and the creature, as if he meant 
 to say that the divine will knows 
 neither distance nor obstacle in pass- 
 ing over to and reaching its object, 
 and that for God to will and to 
 create are but one and the same 
 operation ; or, as expressed in the 
 language of theology, an act of sim- 
 ple volition. 
 
 What grace in that submissive 
 attitude of the first woman, when, 
 evolved from the depths of Adam's 
 slumber, she finds herself in the 
 presence of her Creator and her 
 Father! How wonderful that im- 
 pulse of filial feeling and expansive 
 gratitude with which she bows her- 
 self beneath the hand that receives
 
 103 
 
 and blesses her with calm and sov- 
 ereign tenderness ! 
 
 But if one were to stop at each step, 
 no more could be done than to merely 
 skim over the surface of this wonder- 
 ful poem, the extent of which is con- 
 fusing to the mind. It can almost be 
 said of this most remarkable embodi- 
 ment of pictures from the Bible, that 
 it is the Bible of painting. Ah ! if the 
 young could but understand what 
 there is of education for their intelli- 
 gence and of spiritual nourishment 
 for future years in this sanctuary of 
 the Sistine Chapel, they would spend 
 entire days there, and neither the 
 calls of self-interest nor the desire 
 for fame could take hold of charac- 
 ters molded in so high a school of 
 fervor and meditation. 
 
 Besides profiting by this grand 
 tradition of sacred music maintained 
 in the services of the pontifical chapel, 
 I was also expected, as a student, to 
 make a study of dramatic music. The
 
 104 
 
 repertoire of the theater in Rome, at 
 this time, was almost entirely made 
 up of the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, 
 and Mercadante, all of them works 
 which, in spite of their individual 
 characteristics and the occasional 
 personal inspiration of their authors, 
 were, by the ensemble of means em- 
 ployed, by their conventional style, 
 and by certain forms, degenerated 
 into formulas, so many plants trained 
 around the robust Rossinian trunk, 
 of which they had neither the vitality 
 nor the majesty, and which seemed 
 to disappear under the momentary 
 brilliancy of their ephemeral foliage. 
 There was, besides, no musical profit 
 to be obtained from these representa- 
 tions, which, in point of execution, 
 were much inferior to those at the 
 Theatre des Italiens in Paris, where 
 the same works were interpreted by 
 the best of contemporary artists. 
 
 The stage-mounting itself was 
 sometimes even grotesque. I remem- 
 ber being once at the Apollo Theater
 
 105 
 
 in Rome during a representation of 
 Norma, in which the Roman soldiers 
 wore the short coat and helmet of a 
 fireman, and butter-colored nankeen 
 trousers, with cherry-red bands! It 
 was positively comical, and one might 
 have believed himself at a Punch and 
 Judy show. 
 
 I went, therefore, but rarely to the 
 theater, finding it more profitable to 
 study at home the scores of my be- 
 loved favorite masters, Gluck's Iphi- 
 genia, Lully's Alceste, Mozart's Don 
 Juan, and Rossini's William Tell. 
 
 Besides the hours of companion- 
 ship passed with M. Ingres during 
 that famous time of the tracings, I 
 had the good fortune to be allowed 
 to see him at work in his studio, and it 
 may be believed that I took good care 
 to profit by such a favor. While he 
 painted, I read to him, and, as one 
 may well suppose, I interrupted my- 
 self more than once to watch him 
 paint. It was thus that I saw him
 
 106 
 
 correct and finish his exquisite pic- 
 ture, La Stratonice, since become the 
 property of the Duke of Orleans, 
 and his Vierge & VHostie, destined 
 for the gallery of Count Demidoff. 
 There is an interesting circumstance 
 connected with the history of this 
 last painting, to which I was witness. 
 In the original composition the 
 foreground was not occupied with the 
 ciborium surmounted by the Sacred 
 Host, but by an admirable figure of 
 the infant Jesus lying asleep, his 
 head reposing upon a cushion, one 
 tassel of which he was holding in his 
 little hand, and with which he seemed 
 to be still 'playing. There was some- 
 thing exquisite about it so it seemed 
 to me, at least in the grace of design, 
 the beauty of the painting, and the 
 childish abandon of the position of 
 the charming little body, so radiant 
 and dimpled. M. Ingres himself 
 seemed well satisfied, and when I 
 left him as the fading light obliged 
 him to suspend work, he was de-
 
 107 
 
 lighted with the result of his day's 
 labor. 
 
 In the afternoon of the next day I 
 ascended again to his studio. No 
 more infant Jesus ! The figure had 
 disappeared, scraped off entirely with 
 a palette knife, not a trace of it 
 remaining. 
 
 "Ah ! M. Ingres!" cried I, in con- 
 sternation. 
 
 And he, with a triumphant, deter- 
 mined air, replied : 
 
 " Mon Dieu, yes ! " And then again, 
 with stronger emphasis, " Yes ! " 
 
 The splendor of the divine symbol 
 had just appeared to him superior to 
 the radiant human reality, and, there- 
 fore, more worthy of the homage 
 of the Virgin adoring her Son. He 
 did not hesitate to sacrifice a work of 
 art to a truth. It is by such noble 
 preferences, by such disinterested 
 severity, that we recognize the men 
 whose privilege and legitimate re- 
 ward it is to enjoy that indisputable 
 authority which classes them among
 
 108 
 
 the guides and teachers of other 
 men. 
 
 The company of students at the 
 Academy of France at Rome, in my 
 time, counted among its members 
 many young artists, of whom sev- 
 eral have since become celebrated : 
 Lefuel, Hebert, Ballu the architect 
 all three to-day members of the 
 Institute. 
 
 And others who either distin- 
 guished themselves or were removed 
 by premature death, with their coun- 
 try's hopes full upon them: Papity, 
 the painter ; Octave Blanchard, But- 
 tura, Lebouy, Brisset, Pils, the sculp- 
 tors Diebolt and Godde; the musi- 
 cians Georges Bousquet, Aime Mail- 
 lart all were offshoots of that 
 school so much decried, which, after 
 Hippolyte Flandrin and Ambroise 
 Thomas, produced Cabanel, Victor 
 Masse, Guillaume, Cavelier, Georges 
 Bizet, Baudry, Massenet, and many 
 other eminent artists whose names
 
 109 
 
 should be added to this already 
 respectable list. 
 
 The students were often invited to 
 the soirees of the French ambassador. 
 It was there that I saw for the first 
 time, Gaston de Se"gur, then attache* 
 of legation, and since become the 
 venerable bishop known to all the 
 world, and whom I have the honor to 
 count among my tenderest and most 
 faithful friends. 
 
 To the sojourn in Rome, which 
 was our regular and permanent resi- 
 dence, were added the excursions 
 authorized into other parts of Italy. 
 
 I shall never forget the impression 
 made upon me by Naples, the first 
 time I arrived there, with my 
 comrade, Georges Bousquet, now 
 deceased, who had won the grand 
 prix for music the preceding year. 
 We made the journey with the Mar- 
 quis Ame'de'e de Pastoret, who wrote 
 the words of the cantata with which 
 I gained the same prize for music.
 
 no 
 
 That enchanting climate, which 
 gives a foretaste and conception of 
 the sky of Greece ; that bay, blue as 
 a sapphire, encircled in a belt of 
 islands, and mountains whose slopes 
 and summits take at sunset that inces- 
 santly changing scale of magic tints 
 which eclipse the richest velvet and 
 the most glittering gems all pro- 
 duced upon me the effect of a dream 
 or a fairy tale. The environs those 
 wonderful places called Vesuvius, 
 Portici, Castellamare, Herculaneum, 
 Sorrento, Pompeii, the islands of 
 Ischia and of Capri, Posilipo, Amalfi, 
 Salerno, and finally Paestum, with 
 its admirable Doric temples, once 
 washed by the blue waves of the 
 Mediterranean seemed to me a ver- 
 itable vision. It was quite the con- 
 trary of Rome ; it was instantaneous 
 delight. 
 
 If to these attractions be added 
 the interest which attaches to a visit 
 to the Museum of Naples a treasure- 
 house unique in its way by reason of
 
 in 
 
 the masterpieces of ancient art con- 
 tained therein, the greater part of 
 which were brought to light in the 
 excavations of Pompeii, Hercula- 
 neum, Nola, and other cities buried 
 eighteen hundred centuries under 
 the eruptions of Vesuvius one may 
 easily understand how great must be 
 the attracting power of such a city, 
 and how much delight there waits 
 upon an artist. 
 
 Three times during my stay in 
 Rome I had the pleasure of visiting 
 Naples, and among the deepest and 
 most vivid impressions brought from 
 there, I place in the first rank the 
 wonderful island of Capri, so rugged 
 and at the same time so smiling, 
 thanks to the contrast between its 
 steep cliffs and green declivities. 
 
 It was in summer that I visited 
 Capri for the first time. The sun 
 was shining fiercely and the heat 
 was torrid. During the day it was 
 necessary either to immure one's 
 self in a room, in the effort to win
 
 112 
 
 from obscurity a little coolness and 
 sleep, or to plunge into the sea and 
 there pass a part of the day, which I 
 used to do with great delight. But 
 the most difficult thing to imagine is 
 the splendor of the nights in that 
 climate and at that season of the 
 year. The vault of heaven literally 
 palpitates with stars ; one might call 
 it another ocean whose waves are of 
 light, so perceptibly does the scintil- 
 lation of the stars fill and cause to 
 vibrate the infinite space. During 
 the two weeks of my sojourn there I 
 often went to listen to the living 
 silence of those phosphorescent 
 nights, many of which I passed 
 entirely, seated upon the summit of 
 some steep rock, my eyes fixed upon 
 the horizon, and sometimes rolling 
 down the perpendicular height a big 
 stone, to the sound of which I listened 
 until it reached the sea and buried 
 itself there in a spray of foam. At 
 long intervals some solitary bird 
 uttered a mournful note, which carried
 
 113 
 
 my mind toward those weird preci- 
 pices, the impression of whose terrors 
 has been so wonderfully rendered 
 by Weber's genius, in the immortal 
 scene of the casting of the bullets, in 
 his opera of Der Freischiitz. 
 
 The first idea of the Walpurgis 
 Night in my opera based on Goethe's 
 Faust came to me in one of these 
 nocturnal excursions. This poem 
 was never out of my possession ; I 
 carried a copy of it everywhere, and 
 recorded in scattered notes the differ- 
 ent ideas that might be of use some 
 day when I should attempt this sub- 
 ject as an opera an undertaking 
 which was not realized until seven- 
 teen years later. 
 
 But the time came to travel again 
 the road to Rome, and to reenter the 
 Academy. However agreeable and 
 seductive my stay in Naples, I could 
 not have remained there without 
 feeling, at the end of a certain time, 
 the need of a return to Rome. 
 
 8
 
 114 
 
 Something like homesickness took 
 possession of me, and 1 departed 
 without sadness from the place to 
 which I was indebted for so many 
 delightful hours. 
 
 Notwithstanding its splendor and 
 prestige, Naples is, after all, a noisy, 
 dirty, tumultuous, excitable, shriek- 
 ing, screaming city. The people 
 struggle, wrangle, quarrel, banter, 
 and dispute from morning to night 
 and from night to morning, upon the 
 quays, where there is neither silence 
 nor repose. Altercation is their 
 normal condition, and one is there 
 besieged, importuned, beset by the 
 indefatigable onslaught of the "fac- 
 chini" sellers of merchandise, coach- 
 men, and boatmen, who, for a trifle, 
 would take you by force, and bid 
 among themselves for the lowest 
 price.* 
 
 Having returned to Rome, I set 
 
 *See in appendix the letter from Gounod to 
 Lefuel, dated July 14, 1840.
 
 115 
 
 myself again to work. This was in 
 the autumn of 1840. My mother, in 
 spite of her duties as a teacher, 
 which, during the week occupied her 
 from morning until night, still found 
 time to keep up a large part of our 
 correspondence. It was only by 
 robbing herself of sleep that she 
 could find the time thus consecrated 
 to me by her tender and constant 
 solicitude. I received from her let- 
 ters, the length of which indicated 
 the great amount of rest of which 
 she must have deprived herself in 
 order to write them. I knew that 
 she was always up at five o'clock 
 in the morning, to be ready to 
 receive her first pupil, who came 
 at six; and that, very often, her 
 breakfast hour] was sacrificed to 
 a lesson, during which she took no 
 other nourishment than soup, or, 
 perhaps, a piece of bread, with a glass 
 of wine. I knew, also, that this busi- 
 ness lasted until six o'clock in the 
 evening; that after dinner she had
 
 116 
 
 to busy herself with the thousand 
 cares of a housekeeper ; that she had, 
 moreover, to write to many others 
 besides me; and that, still further, 
 being a charitable woman, she often 
 worked with her own hands to clothe 
 the poor whom she visited. Finally, 
 she did a thousand things that one 
 could not accomplish without order 
 and economy in the disposal of time. 
 She was endowed in the highest 
 degree with those two essential and 
 fundamental qualities upon which 
 rests every useful and well-filled 
 life. For example, she had erased 
 from her programme the useless 
 function of the " social call," which 
 consists in wasting one's time from 
 Monday to Saturday in going to 
 visit others, only to make them waste 
 theirs, also, in an effort to " kill " the 
 time of which everyone dies with 
 ennui who does not use it for the 
 serious purposes of life. Thus she 
 brought us up according to short but 
 far-reaching maxims like the follow-
 
 117 
 
 ing, thrown out in passing, with the 
 laconicism of people who have no 
 time to be talkative: "Whoever 
 makes no useless outlay always finds 
 the means for necessary expenses;" 
 "Whoever loses not a minute has 
 always the time to do what he ought 
 to do." 
 
 One of the friends of our family 
 used to say to me : " In my opinion, 
 your mother is not only one miracle, 
 but two; I do not know where she 
 finds the time for what she does, nor 
 the money that she gives away." 
 The more she had to do, the more 
 she did. This is the reverse of a 
 charming saying of Emile Augier, 
 but which signifies the same thing : 
 " I have been so very much unoc- 
 cupied that I have not had time to 
 do anything." 
 
 From time to time my dear, good 
 brother slipped into my mother's let- 
 ters kind words and judicious counsels 
 addressed to me. I had great need 
 of them, for I must admit that stabil-
 
 118 
 
 ity of judgment has never been my 
 strong point, and a weakness is very 
 strong when reason does not serve as 
 a counterweight. Alas! I profited 
 badly by all that, and I make of it 
 my med culpd 
 
 There is in Rome, in the Corso, a 
 church called St. Louis des Fran$ais, 
 the services of which are conducted 
 by French priests. Every year, at 
 the festival of the king, Louis 
 Philippe, that is to say, on the ist of 
 May, they used to celebrate in this 
 church a high mass composed by the 
 music student then at the Academy 
 by right of the grand prix. The 
 year of my arrival there, the mass 
 performed (with orchestra) was by 
 my comrade, Georges Bousquet. The 
 following year it was my turn. Fear- 
 ing that, with my duties as a student, 
 I might not have the time to accom- 
 plish a work of this importance, my 
 mother sent me my mass of St. Eus- 
 tache, entirely copied anew by her
 
 119 
 
 own hand from the manuscript of 
 my orchestral score, and from which 
 she did not wish to part, nor to risk 
 its transportation through the mail. 
 
 My feelings upon receiving at 
 Rome this new proof of maternal 
 patience and tenderness may easily 
 be imagined. But I did not make 
 the use of it intended by my mother. 
 It seemed to me more worthy of a 
 conscientious artist to try to do better 
 than that (which was not difficult), and 
 I bravely continued my work upon 
 the new mass already commenced for, 
 the king's fete. I composed it and 
 directed its execution myself.* This 
 work brought me good luck. Besides 
 the very indulgent congratulations 
 received on its account, I owe to it 
 my appointment as honorary chapel 
 master for life of the church of St. 
 Louis des Fran$ais at Rome. I hardly 
 thought then that I should have 
 occasion the following year, in Ger- 
 
 *Regardmg a repetition of this mass, see in 
 appendix, letter of Gounod to Lefuel, dated 
 April 4, 1841,
 
 120 
 
 many, to bring 1 it out again and to 
 direct it myself. It will be seen later 
 in what way I was affected by the 
 consequences and advantages of this 
 second performance. 
 
 The longer my stay in Rome, the 
 more deeply attached I became to 
 that city, so mysteriously attractive, 
 so incomparably peaceful. After the 
 crenelated, volcanic, bounding lines 
 of the crater of Naples, the placid, 
 solemn, silent lines of the Campagna 
 of Rome, surrounded by the Alban 
 Mountains, the hills of Latium, and 
 the Sabine range, the majestic Mount 
 Gennaro, Mount Soracte, the mount- 
 ains of Viterbo, Mount Mario, Mount 
 Janiculus, gave me the sweet and 
 serene impression of a cloister under 
 the open sky. 
 
 One of the places of my preference 
 in the environs of Rome was the 
 village of Nemi, with its lake sur- 
 rounded with thick woods of a splen- 
 did luxuriance, and at the bottom of
 
 121 
 
 which is seen a vast crater. To make 
 the tour of this lake by the upper 
 road is one of the most delightful 
 trips of which it is possible to dream. 
 Taken on a beautiful day, ended with 
 such a sunset as it was once my privi- 
 lege to witness, while viewing the sea 
 from the heights of Genzano, it is a 
 charming and ineffaceable memory. 
 The environs of Rome abound in 
 admirable locations, affording the 
 traveler and the artist an inexhaust- 
 ible series of excursions Tivoli, 
 Subiaco, Frascati, Albano, Ariccia, 
 and a thousand other places explored 
 many times by landscape painters, to 
 say nothing of the Tiber, the banks 
 of which have a character so noble 
 and majestic. 
 
 Among the works of art to be 
 found only in Rome, why should I 
 pass by in silence, in these memoirs 
 of my youth, a work of unrivaled 
 beauty, which divides with the Sistine 
 Chapel the interest and the glory of
 
 122 
 
 the Vatican ? I mean those immortal 
 paintings composing- the collections 
 found in "Le Loggie " and "Le Stanze " 
 of Raphael. Among the latter, in the 
 " Stanza delta Segnatura" are to be 
 seen those immortal pages of the 
 " School of Athens " and the " Dispute 
 About the Holy Sacrament." 
 
 These two chef-d'oeuvres, among so 
 many others due to the brush of this 
 celebrated artist, have carried so high 
 the standard of beauty that it seems 
 impossible ever to surpass them. But, 
 nevertheless, such is the irresistible 
 ascendency of genius, that this man 
 whose name the centuries have placed 
 at the summit of glory, this Raphael, 
 in fact, was troubled by Michael 
 Angelo. He felt the embrace of that 
 Titan ; he bent under the might of 
 that Colossus, and his last works show 
 traces of homage rendered to the 
 mighty inspiration of that great and 
 powerful brain, which surpassed all 
 human proportions. 
 
 Raphael is the first, Michael
 
 123 
 
 Angelo is the only. With Raphael, 
 force dilates and expands itself into 
 grace; with Michael Angelo, it is grace 
 which seems, on the contrary, to dis- 
 cipline and control force. Raphael 
 charms and fascinates ; Michael 
 Angelo fascinates and crushes. 
 One is the painter of the terrestrial 
 paradise, but the other seems to 
 pierce with the eye of an eagle, like 
 the prisoner of Patmos, into the 
 burning realm of seraphim and arch- 
 angels. 
 
 It may be said that these two great 
 evangelists of art were placed near 
 each other in the fullness of the 
 esthetic age, in order that he who 
 had received the gift of serene and 
 perfect beauty might be to the sight 
 a restful protection from the dazzling 
 splendors revealed to the singer of 
 the Apocalypse. 
 
 A detailed analysis of the innumer- 
 able masterpieces of art in Rome 
 would be beyond the scope of these 
 memoirs, in which my main object is
 
 124 
 
 to retrace the principal circumstances 
 of my youth and artistic career. 
 
 It was in the winter of 1840-1841 
 that I had the pleasure of seeing and 
 hearing, for the first time, Pauline 
 Garcia, sister of Malibran, and who 
 had just married Louis Viardot, then 
 director of the Thddtre des Italiens in 
 Paris. She was then only eighteen 
 years old, and her early appearances 
 at the above-named theater were re- 
 markable events. She was taking her 
 wedding tour with her husband, and 
 I had the honor and pleasure of play- 
 ing her accompaniment to the cele- 
 brated and immortal air from Robin 
 des Bois, when she sang in the 
 drawing-room of the Academy. I 
 was amazed at the wonderful talent 
 of that child, who promised to be, and 
 who did become, later, an illustrious 
 woman. I did not see her again until 
 ten years afterward. Strange cir- 
 cumstance ! When twelve years old, 
 I had heard Malibran in Rossini's
 
 125 
 
 Othello, and had carried away from 
 that representation the dream of con- 
 secrating myself to musical art. At 
 twenty-two years of age I made the 
 acquaintance of Malibran's sister, 
 Madame Viardot, for whom I was, 
 when thirty-two years old, to write 
 the role of Sapho, which she created 
 in 1 85 1, upon the stage of the Od/on 
 theater, with most brilliant success. 
 The same winter I had the pleas- 
 ure, also, of making the acquaint- 
 ance of Fanny Henzel, sister of 
 Mendelssohn. She was passing the 
 winter in Rome, with her husband 
 painter to the king of Prussia and 
 her son, who was still quite a child. 
 Madame Henzel was a musician 
 beyond comparison, a remarkable 
 pianist, and a woman of superior 
 mind ; small and thin in person, but 
 with an energy that showed itself in 
 her deep eyes and in her fiery glance. 
 She was gifted with rare ability as a 
 composer, and to her are due sev- 
 eral of the Songs Without Words pub-
 
 126 
 
 lished in the piano collection under 
 her brother's name. Monsieur and 
 Madame Henzel came to the 
 Academy on Sunday evenings. She 
 used to place herself at the piano 
 with the good grace and simplicity 
 of those who make music because 
 they love it, and, thanks to her fine 
 talent and prodigious memory, I was 
 brought to the knowledge of a mass 
 of the chefs-d'oeuvres of German music, 
 of which I was completely ignorant 
 at that time ; among others, a number 
 of pieces by Sebastian Bach sona- 
 tas, concertos, fugues and preludes 
 and several of Mendelssohn's com- 
 positions, which were, also, a revela- 
 tion to me from an unknown world. 
 Monsieur and Madame Henzel left. 
 Rome to return to Berlin, where I 
 was to see them again two years 
 later. 
 
 Before leaving the Academy, M. 
 Ingres presented me with a souvenir, 
 doubly precious, both as an evidence 
 of his affection and as a production
 
 127 
 
 of his talent. He painted my por- 
 trait in crayon, representing me 
 seated at the piano and having be- 
 fore me Mozart's Don Juan. 
 
 I deeply realized the void that 
 would be caused by his departure, and 
 to what an extent I should miss the 
 salutary influence of a master whose 
 faith was so firm, whose ardor so com- 
 municable, and whose teachings so 
 sure and elevated. There is, in the 
 arts, something besides technical 
 excellence and special ability, or the 
 knowledge and possession, however 
 perfect, of methods. A II that is good, 
 and even absolutely necessary, but it 
 constitutes only the material part of 
 the artist, the covering and body of 
 any particularly designated art. In 
 all arts there is something which 
 belongs exclusively to none, and 
 which is common to all, above all, 
 and without which they are nothing 
 more than mere professions. This 
 something which is invisible, but 
 which is the soul and life is art.
 
 Art is one of the three great trans- 
 formations that realities undergo in 
 contact with the human mind, accord- 
 ing as it considers them in the ideal 
 and governing light of one of the 
 three great aspects the good, the 
 true, and the beautiful. Art is no 
 more a mere dream than it is a mere 
 copy; it is neither the ideal alone 
 nor the real alone; it is like man 
 himself, the meeting, the combina- 
 tion of the two. It is unity in dual- 
 ity; judged by the ideal alone, it is 
 above us; by the real alone, it is 
 below us. Morality is the humaniza- 
 tion, the incarnation of the good ; 
 science, that of the true ; art, that of 
 the beautiful. 
 
 It was to this apostolate of the 
 beautiful that M. Ingres belonged ; it 
 was his life. This was perceptible in 
 his discourses as well as in his works, 
 and even more, perhaps, in the latter 
 than in the former, to such a de- 
 gree are men of faith also men of 
 desire, and so far does the effort of
 
 129 
 
 aspiration carry them beyond the 
 beaten path. From this height he 
 threw as much light upon a musician 
 as upon a painter, and revealed to all 
 the common ground of the highest 
 truths. In giving me to understand 
 what is art in general, he taught me 
 more regarding my special art than 
 could have done any number of 
 purely technical masters. 
 
 However little I may have gath- 
 ered from this valuable intercourse, 
 this little sufficed to leave upon me 
 an impression never to be effaced, 
 and a remembrance of him which 
 almost took the place of his actual 
 presence. 
 
 In the month of April, 1841, M. 
 Ingres was replaced by M. Schnetz, a 
 distinguished painter, who owed his 
 success and his popularity principally 
 to qualities of sentiment and expres- 
 sion. He was amiable, affectionate, 
 of great natural intelligence, very 
 cordial with the students, jovial, and 
 with a gentle and benevolent face, in 
 
 9
 
 130 
 
 spite of a thick hedge of black eye- 
 brows that went to meet an abundant 
 growth of hair nearly covering his 
 whole forehead. M. Schnetz was, 
 above all, of the type called a bon 
 enfant. I passed the second and last 
 year of my stay in Rome under his 
 direction. 
 
 M. Schnetz had for that city a 
 great predilection, which was speci- 
 ally favored by circumstances. He 
 was three times appointed director 
 of the Academy, where he left the 
 most favorable impression. 
 
 My time of residence in Rome was 
 to expire with the year 1841, but 
 I had not the force to take myself 
 away, and, with the consent of the 
 director, prolonged my stay nearly 
 five months beyond the regulation 
 period, leaving only at the last ex- 
 tremity, and having no more than 
 just enough means for my journey to 
 Vienna, where I was to receive the 
 first half of my third year's pension. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe my
 
 sorrow when the time came to say 
 farewell to that Academy, to those 
 dear comrades, to that Rome where 
 I felt that I had taken root. My 
 fellow-students accompanied me as 
 far as the Ponte Molle, and after 
 having embraced them, I mounted 
 the coach which was to tear me away 
 yes, that is, indeed, the word 
 from those two blessed, happy years 
 in the Promised Land. If, at least, 
 I could have gone directly to see my 
 dear mother and my good brother, 
 this departure would have cost me 
 less pain ; but I was going to be alone 
 in a country where I knew no one, 
 and of the language of which I was 
 ignorant, and this perspective could 
 not fail to appear cold and dreary to 
 me. As long as the route allowed, 
 my eyes remained fixed upon the 
 cupola of St. Peter's, that summit of 
 Rome and center of the whole world. 
 When the hills concealed it entirely 
 from my sight, I fell into a deep 
 reverie and wept like a child.
 
 III. 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 LEAVING Rome for Germany, my 
 way naturally lay through Florence 
 and the north of Italy, turning on 
 the right toward Ferrara, Padua, 
 Venice, and Trieste. 
 
 I stopped in Florence, of which 
 city I will not attempt to name in 
 detail the objects of interest, for, 
 like Rome, it is inexhaustible in 
 works of art. The Uffizi Gallery, 
 with its admirable Tribuna a verit- 
 able shrine of relics of the beautiful 
 the Pitti Palace, the Academy, the 
 convents, all overflow with chefs- 
 d'ceuvres. But there, also, in that 
 delightful city of Florence, the 
 scepter is in the hand of Michael 
 Angelo, who dominates everything 
 from the height of the marvelous 
 
 032)
 
 133 
 
 and impressive Chapel of the 
 Medici. There, as in Rome, his 
 genius has left its unique, sover- 
 eign, unrivaled imprint. 
 
 Wherever one meets Michael 
 Angelo, he commands serious at- 
 tention. As soon as he speaks, one 
 feels that all else must be still, and 
 this supreme authority of silence 
 is, perhaps, nowhere exercised with 
 more force than in this awe-inspir- 
 ing crypt of the Chapel of the 
 Medici. What a grand conception 
 is that of the Pensieroso, mute senti- 
 nel seeming to guard the dead and 
 waiting immovably the trumpet-call 
 of the judgment ! What repose and 
 grace in that figure of Night, or 
 rather of the Peace of Sleep, form- 
 ing a companion piece to the robust 
 figure of Day, lying extended, and 
 as if enchained, until the dawn of 
 the last of days! It is by the pro- 
 found meaning, by the choice of 
 attitude, at once ideal and natural, 
 that Michael Angelo raises himself
 
 134 
 
 everywhere to that intensity of ex- 
 pression which is the distinguishing 
 characteristic of his powerful indi- 
 viduality. The amplitude of his 
 figures naturally results from the 
 grandeur of his conceptions a 
 great river-bed hollowed out by the 
 majestic stream of his thoughts 
 and it is this which forcibly con- 
 demns as pompous and inflated all 
 imitations of forms that his genius 
 alone could perfect, because he only 
 could fill and vivify them. 
 
 But I am on my way to Germany, 
 where time and money urge me to 
 arrive, and I must glide rapidly over 
 Florence and the pleasant memories 
 brought away from there. I passed 
 through the deserted Ferrara, and 
 stopped at Padua a day or two to 
 visit the fine frescoes of Giotto and 
 Mantegna. 
 
 My stay in Italy had given me a 
 knowledge of the three great cities 
 that are the principal birthplaces of
 
 135 
 
 art in that specially favored country: 
 Rome, Florence, and Naples Rome, 
 the city of the soul; Florence, the 
 city of the intelligence; Naples, the 
 city of pleasure and of light, of 
 intoxication and of dazzling glory. 
 
 It remained for me to know a 
 fourth, which has held, also, a great 
 and glorious place in the history of 
 the arts, and to whose natural 
 features her geographical situation 
 has given a character unique and 
 exceptional in the world Venice. 
 
 Venice, joyous and sad, light and 
 somber, rosy and livid, coquettish 
 and sinister, a constant contrast, a 
 strange combination of the most 
 opposite impressions, a pearl in a 
 cesspool ! 
 
 Venice is an enchantress; she 
 is the home of painters of radiance ; 
 she has invested art with sunlight. 
 Contrary to Rome, which waits for 
 you, solicits you slowly, and conquers 
 you invincibly and forever, Venice 
 seizes you by the senses and fesci-
 
 136 
 
 nates you instantly. Rome is serene 
 and pacifying, Venice is exhilarating 
 and disquieting ; but the exhilaration 
 that she induces is mixed (at least 
 it was for me) with an indefinable 
 melancholy a feeling of captivity. 
 Was it the thought of the dark 
 dramas of which she has been the 
 theater, and to which her location 
 seems to have predestined her? It 
 may be; at any rate, along sojourn 
 in this sort of amphibious necrop- 
 olis would not seem possible with- 
 out ending by feeling one's self 
 asphyxiated and swallowed up in 
 spleen. Those still-standing waters, 
 washing in gloomy silence the foun- 
 dations of the old palaces.; that dark, 
 shadowy surface, from the depths 
 under which one thinks he hears 
 the groans of some illustrious victim, 
 make of Venice a kind of capital of 
 Terror ; she has retained the im- 
 pression of the Sinister. And yet, 
 under fine sunlight, what magic 
 in the Grand Canal! What reflec-
 
 137 
 
 tions from those lagoons, when the 
 wave transforms itself into light! 
 What power of brilliancy in those 
 old remains of ancient splendor, 
 which seem to contend among 
 themselves for the favors of the 
 sky, and to ask its aid against the 
 abyss into which they are falling, 
 day by day, finally to disappear 
 forever ! 
 
 Rome invites to meditation, Venice 
 to dissipation; Rome is the grand 
 Latin ancestor, who, through the 
 channel of conquest, will spread over 
 the world the catholicity of language 
 - prelude and means to a catholicity, 
 vaster and of deeper meaning. Ven- 
 ice is an Oriental, not of the Greek, 
 but of the Byzantine type ; more sug- 
 gestive of satraps than of pontiffs, 
 and of Asiatic luxury than of the 
 solemnities of Athens or of Rome. 
 
 There is nothing there, even to 
 that marvel of the Church of St. 
 Mark, which does not resemble rather 
 a mosque than a basilica, or cathedral,
 
 138 
 
 and which does not appeal more to 
 the imagination than to the sentiment 
 or the soul. The magnificence of 
 those mosaics, and of that gold, the 
 dull, subtly changing colored lights 
 from which stream from the height 
 of the dome down to the foundation, 
 is something absolutely unparalleled 
 in the world. I know of nothing 
 equal to it in vigor of tone and 
 strength of effect. 
 
 Venice is a passion, not a love. I 
 was seduced upon entering, but when 
 I left, it was not with that sense of 
 tearing myself away as when bidding 
 farewell to Rome, the strength of 
 which feeling shows the force of the 
 ties that bind. 
 
 Naples is a smile, a reflection from 
 Greece ; her horizon drowned in pur- 
 ple and azure, her blue sky reflecting 
 itself in the sapphire waves ; all, even 
 to her ancient name of Parthenope, 
 plunge you again into that brilliant 
 civilization to which nature set such 
 charming surroundings. Quite dif-
 
 139 
 
 ferent is the smile of Venice, at the 
 same time caressing and perfidious; 
 it is like a feast above a dungeon- 
 trap. It was for this reason, undoubt- 
 edly, that, in spite of her master- 
 pieces and the magic with which she 
 is enveloped, I had at departure, and 
 without knowing why, a feeling of 
 deliverance rather than of regret. 
 
 From Venice my route was by 
 steamboat to Trieste, where I took 
 the diligence for Graetz. On the way 
 I visited the curious and superb grot- 
 toes of stalactites at Adelberg real 
 subterranean cathedrals. I crossed 
 the Carinthian Mountains, of whose 
 jagged silhouette I made a sketch as 
 we went along. I arrived at Graetz, 
 and then at Olmutz, whence the rail- 
 road carried me to Vienna, my first 
 stop in that Germany for which I 
 cared only to have done with as 
 quickly as possible, in order to shorten 
 the exile that separated me from 
 home and mother.
 
 140 
 
 Vienna is an animated city. The 
 population there is almost more 
 French than German in its vivacity 
 of character; it has spirit, good- 
 nature, and gayety. 
 
 I had no letters of recommendation 
 in Vienna, and knew not a soul there. 
 I took lodgings temporarily at a hotel, 
 with the intention of finding, as soon 
 as possible, a quieter and less expen- 
 sive location in that city where I was 
 to pass some months, and where it 
 was necessary to regulate my man- 
 ner of life according to my resources. 
 A traveling companion had advised 
 me to lodge in some private house or 
 family pension. An opportunity of 
 putting this advice in practice was 
 soon offered. 
 
 Not for anything in the world would 
 I have had my mother make sacrifices 
 for the sake of increasing my little 
 stipend ; besides, if I had had the 
 slightest desire for creating useless 
 expense, the example of a life as 
 laborious as hers would have sufficed
 
 141 
 
 to take away from me the temptation. 
 My board and lodging, and the cost 
 of admission to the theater, the fre- 
 quenting of which was necessary to 
 the study of my art, constituted my 
 whole budget, and with care, the 
 amount of my allowance could be 
 made sufficient for all. 
 
 The first work that I saw adver- 
 tised on the billboards of the Vienna 
 Opera was Mozart's Magic Flute. I 
 went in haste, and took a ticket for 
 one of the cheapest places, at the top 
 of the house. Unpretentious as was 
 my seat, I would not have exchanged 
 it for an empire. 
 
 It was the first time that I had ever 
 heard the admirable score of the 
 Magic Flute. I was carried away with 
 delight. The performance was excel- 
 lent. Otto Nicolai' directed the orches- 
 tra. The role of the Queen of Night 
 was finely rendered by a singer of 
 much talent, Madame Hasselt-Barth ; 
 that of the High Priest, Sarastro, was 
 sung by an artist of great celebrity,
 
 gifted with an admirable voice, which 
 he managed with fine method and in 
 grand style ; it was Staudigl. The 
 other roles were well sustained, and 
 I still recall the charming voices of 
 the trio of boys who filled those of 
 the Three Genii. 
 
 I passed in my card to the director, 
 stating the fact of my presence there 
 as a prix de Rome student, and re- 
 questing the privilege of seeing him. 
 He sent for me, and I was conducted 
 to him behind the scenes, where he 
 presented me to the artists, with 
 whom I found myself, from that time, 
 in continued relationship. But, as I 
 did not know a traitre mot of Ger- 
 man, and the most of the singers 
 scarcely spoke French any better, it 
 went rather hard at first. 
 
 Fortunately, however, one of the 
 musicians of the orchestra, to whom 
 Nicolai' presented me, spoke French. 
 His name was Le" vy, father of Richard 
 LeVy, then a child of fourteen years, 
 and who has since held his father's
 
 place at the Vienna Opera. M. LeVy 
 received me most kindly, inviting me 
 to call upon him. In a short time we 
 were the best of friends. There were 
 three other children in the family 
 the eldest, Carl L6vy, a pianist of 
 great ability, and a distinguished 
 composer; the second, Gustave, to- 
 day a publisher of music in Vienna ; 
 and the daughter, Melanie, a charm- 
 ing person, already married to the 
 harpist, Parish Alwars. 
 
 It was to M. LeVy that I owed my 
 acquaintance, after a stay of several 
 weeks, with Count Stockhatnmer, one 
 of the men most useful to me in 
 Vienna, and who was president 
 of the Philharmonic Society. Levy, 
 to whom I had shown my mass 
 written in Rome, presented me to 
 the count, and spoke to him of the 
 mass in the most flattering terms. 
 The count offered, with ready kind- 
 ness, to have it produced at the church 
 of St. Charles, by the soloists, chorus-, 
 and orchestra of the Philharmonic
 
 144 
 
 Society. The day chosen was the 
 1 4th of September. They seemed 
 well pleased with my work, of which 
 fact Count Stockhammer gave me 
 prompt and substantial proof by ask- 
 ing me to write a requiem mass 
 solos, chorus, and orchestra to be 
 performed at the same church on the 
 2d of November, the day of commem- 
 oration of the dead. 
 
 I had only six weeks before me. 
 It was impossible to be ready at the 
 date specified without working day 
 and night, without rest or relaxation. 
 I accepted the offer with joy, and lost 
 not an instant. The requiem was 
 finished at the desired time. One 
 rehearsal was sufficient to make 
 everything go admirably, thanks to 
 the excellence of the general musical 
 education, nowhere as common as in 
 Germany, and which it is a pleasure 
 to observe. I was especially amazed 
 at the facility with which even 
 schoolboys sing at first sight ; they 
 all read music as if it were their
 
 145 
 
 natural tongue. Therefore, the exe- 
 cution of the choruses was perfect. 
 I had, among the soloists, a superb 
 bass singer. It was Draxler, who 
 was then quite young, and divided 
 with Staudigl the place of first bass 
 at the Opera. Since that time, 
 Staudigl has died insane, as I am 
 informed, and Draxler, who replaced 
 him, was still at the theater, twenty- 
 five years later, when I returned to 
 Vienna, for the production of my 
 opera of Rome"o et Juliette. 
 
 Some time before the perform- 
 ance of my requiem, Nicolai' had 
 introduced me to an eminent com- 
 poser, named Becker, devoted exclu- 
 sively to chamber music. There was 
 assembled weekly, at his house, a 
 quartette, of which Holz, the first 
 violin, had known Beethoven inti- 
 mately a circumstance which, aside 
 from his talent, rendered his pres- 
 ence very interesting. Becker was, 
 besides, perhaps the best accepted 
 musical critic at that time in all 
 10
 
 146 
 
 Germany. He came to hear my 
 requiem, of which, he wrote a very 
 eulogistic report, most encouraging 
 to a young man of my age. He said 
 that this work, "although that of a 
 young artist, still seeking his way 
 and style, revealed a grandeur of 
 conception become very rare at this 
 time." 
 
 This great undertaking, accom- 
 plished in so few weeks, had worn 
 me out to that extent that I fell ill 
 with severe inflammation of the 
 throat, resulting in an abscess. Not 
 wishing to alarm my mother, I gave 
 reliable and confidential news of my 
 condition only to my friends, the Des- 
 goffes, who were then in Paris. As 
 soon as Desgoffe knew that I was ill 
 in Vienna, he hesitated not an instant ; 
 he left his wife and daughter, put 
 aside the pictures he was preparing 
 for the Salon, and started off to come 
 and take care of me. 
 
 At that time it took nearly five or 
 six days to go from Paris to Vienna.
 
 147 
 
 We were in the dead of winter, in 
 the month of December, and this 
 journey, uncomfortable at any rate 
 in such a season, became still more 
 so by reason of a serious indisposi- 
 tion contracted by my friend on the 
 way. He arrived at Vienna, himself 
 needing to be cared for. He passed 
 not less than twenty-two days at my 
 bedside, sleeping with one eye open, 
 on a mattress spread upon the floor, 
 and watching, with a mother's solici- 
 tude, my slightest movement. He 
 did not leave me to return to Paris 
 until the physician assured him of 
 my complete convalescence. 
 
 Such friendships are not often met 
 with, and in this respect Providence 
 has especially blessed me. 
 
 The success of my requiem re- 
 sulted in modifying all my plans of 
 sojourn in Germany, by prolonging 
 my residence in Vienna. Count 
 Stockhammer gave me another or- 
 der, in the name of the Philharmonic 
 Society. It was to write a vocal mass
 
 148 
 
 without accompaniment, intended to 
 be executed during Lent, in the same 
 church of St. Charles, my patron 
 saint. I took care not to allow this 
 additional opportunity to escape, 
 first, of trying my powers, and then, 
 of hearing my work a privilege so 
 rare and valuable at the beginning 
 of a career. This was my second 
 and last undertaking in Vienna, from 
 whence I departed immediately for 
 Berlin, by way of Prague and Dres- 
 den, in which latter city I made a 
 short stay for the purpose of seeing 
 the fine museum there, where, among 
 other masterpieces, are found Hol- 
 bein's celebrated Virgin, and the 
 wonderful Sistine Madonna, due to 
 the brush of Raphael. 
 
 Upon my arrival in Berlin I made 
 haste to call upon Madame Henzel, 
 as she had invited me to do ; but, in 
 about three weeks, I fell seriously ill 
 again, with inflammation of the bow- 
 els, just at the time when I had writ-
 
 149 
 
 ten to my mother that I was getting 
 ready to leave, and was finally to see 
 her again after a separation of three 
 years and a half. 
 
 Madame Henzel sent her physician 
 to see me, to whom I gave the follow- 
 ing ultimatum: 
 
 "Monsieur, I have a mother in 
 Paris who is waiting for my return, 
 and now counting the intervening 
 hours. If she knows that I am de- 
 tained from her by illness, she will 
 set out on the journey herself, and 
 might lose her senses on the way. 
 She is advanced in years. I will give 
 her a reason for my detention here, 
 but the delay must be short. Fifteen 
 days is all I can allow you in which 
 to put me under the ground or to set 
 me on my feet." 
 
 "Very well," said the doctor, "if 
 you will promise to follow my direc- 
 tions, you can leave in fifteen days." 
 
 He kept his word. The fourteenth 
 day I was out of the trouble, and 
 forty-eight hours afterward departed
 
 150 
 
 for Leipzig, where Mendelssohn was 
 living, and to whom his sister, Mad- 
 ame Henzel, had given me a letter of 
 introduction. 
 
 Mendelssohn received me admira- 
 bly. I use this word purposely, in 
 order to express the gracious con- 
 descension with which a man of such 
 distinction treated a young fellow who 
 could have been nothing more in his 
 opinion than a pupil. During the 
 four days that I passed at Leipzig, I 
 can say that Mendelssohn occupied 
 himself entirely with me. He ques- 
 tioned me concerning my studies and 
 my works, with the liveliest and 
 sincerest interest ; he asked to hear, 
 upon the piano, my last composition, 
 and I received from him the most pre- 
 cious words of approbation and en- 
 couragement. I will mention but one 
 of them, which I have always been 
 too proud of ever to forget. I had 
 played for him the Dies Irae of my 
 Vienna requiem. He placed his hand 
 upon a part of it written for five
 
 voices, without accompaniment, and 
 said: 
 
 " My friend, this part might be 
 signed by Cherubini." 
 
 Words like these, coming from 
 such a great master, are real deco- 
 rations, and one carries them with 
 more pride than any number of rib- 
 bons. 
 
 Mendelssohn was director of the 
 Gewandhaus Philharmonic Society. 
 This society was not holding its 
 meetings at that time, the concert 
 season having passed ; but he had 
 the delicate thoughtfulness to call it 
 together for me, and to let me hear 
 his beautiful work called the Scotch 
 Symphony, in A minor, a copy of the 
 score of which he gave me with a 
 word of friendly remembrance from 
 his own hand. Alas ! the premature 
 death of this great and charming 
 genius was soon to make of this sou- 
 venir a genuine and precious relic ! 
 And this death followed six months 
 after that of the lovely sister to whom
 
 152 
 
 I was indebted for the favor of hav- 
 ing known her brother. 
 
 Mendelssohn did not limit himself 
 to the calling together of the Philhar- 
 monic Society. He was an organist 
 of the first order, and wished to ac- 
 quaint me with several of the numer- 
 ous and admirable compositions of 
 Sebastian Bach for that instrument, 
 over which he reigned supreme. 
 For this purpose he ordered to be 
 examined and put in good condition 
 the old organ of St. Thomas, for- 
 merly played b)?- Bach himself; and 
 there, for more than two hours, he 
 revealed to me wonders of which 
 I had no previous conception ; then, 
 to cap the climax of his gracious 
 kindness, he made me a gift of a 
 collection of motets by this same 
 Bach, for whom he had a religious 
 veneration, according to whose school 
 he had been formed from his child- 
 hood, and whose grand oratorio of 
 The Passion According to St. Matthew 
 he directed and accompanied from
 
 153 
 
 memory when only fourteen years 
 old. 
 
 Such was the extreme courtesy 
 shown me by that great artist, that 
 eminent musician, who was taken 
 away in the flower of his age thirty- 
 eight years from the admiration 
 that he had won, and from the 
 master-works reserved for him by 
 the future. Strange destiny of 
 genius, even the most pleasing! It 
 required the death of him who wrote 
 the exquisite compositions, that are 
 to-day the delight of the subscribers 
 to the concerts of the Conservatory, 
 to win for them favor in the ears that 
 had formerly rejected them. 
 
 After having seen Mendelssohn I 
 had but one desire to return as soon 
 as possible to Paris, and to be again 
 with my poor, dear mother. I set out 
 from Leipzig on the i4th of May, 
 1 843 ; I changed conveyance seven- 
 teen times on the way ; of six nights, 
 I passed four in traveling; and,
 
 154 
 
 finally, on the 2 5th of May, I arrived 
 in Paris, where, for me, a new life 
 was to begin. My brother met me 
 upon the arrival of the diligence, and 
 together we took our way to that 
 dear home where I was again both to 
 give and find so much joy.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE RETURN. 
 
 WHETHER it was that three years 
 and a half of absence had so much 
 changed me, or that my last and still 
 recent illness, added to the fatigue of 
 the journey, had so dreadfully altered 
 my looks, my mother did not recog- 
 nize me at first sight. I had, it is 
 true, an outline of a beard, but so 
 slight was it that I think one might 
 even have counted the rudiments. 
 
 During my absence my mother had 
 left the ruede I'Eperon, and was living 
 in the rue Vaneau, in the parish of 
 the Missions Etrangtres, the church 
 of which stood at the corner of the 
 rue de Bac and the rue de Babylone, 
 and in which the new position that I 
 was to occupy for several years 
 awaited me. 
 
 (165)
 
 156 
 
 The cure" of the said parish, Abbe 
 Dumarsais, was formerly my chaplain 
 at the Lycte St. Louis. He succeeded 
 Abbe Lecourtier in the vicarage of 
 the Missions. During my stay at the 
 Academy of France at Rome, Abbe* 
 Dumarsais wrote to me, offering me 
 the position of organist and chapel 
 master of the parish upon my return 
 to Paris. I accepted, but on certain 
 conditions. I did not wish to receive 
 advice, and much less orders, either 
 from the cure", the vestry, or anyone 
 else whomsoever. I had my ideas, 
 my sentiments, my convictions ; in 
 short, I wished to be the "cure of 
 music " ; otherwise, not at all. This 
 was radical, but my conditions had 
 been accepted ; there was no objec- 
 tion to them. Habits are, however, 
 tenacious. The musical regime to 
 which my predecessor had accus- 
 tomed the good parishioners was 
 quite opposite to the tastes and 
 tendencies that I brought back from 
 Rome and Germany. Palestrina and
 
 157 
 
 Bach were my gods, and I was going 
 to burn what the people had until 
 then worshiped. 
 
 The resources at my disposal were 
 almost nothing. Besides the organ, 
 which was very mediocre and limited, 
 I had a body of singers composed of 
 two basses, one tenor, a choir-boy, 
 and myself, who filled at the same 
 time the functions of chapel master, 
 organist, singer, and composer. I 
 endeavored to direct the music to 
 the best advantage with this meager 
 force, and the necessity in which I 
 was placed, of making the most of 
 such limited means, proved beneficial 
 to me. 
 
 Things went very well at first, but 
 I finally surmised, from a certain 
 coldness and reserve on the part of 
 the parishioners, that I was not en- 
 tirely in the good graces of my 
 audience. I was not mistaken. To- 
 ward the end of the first year my 
 cure" called me to him and confessed 
 that he had to suffer complaints and
 
 158 
 
 fault-finding from the members of 
 the congregation. Monsieur So-and- 
 So and Madame So-and-So did not 
 find the musical service in the least 
 degree gay or entertaining. The 
 cur6 then asked me to "modify my 
 style," and to make concessions. 
 
 "Monsieur le Curt" replied I, "you 
 know our agreement. I am here, not 
 to consult your parishioners; I am 
 here to elevate them. If ' my style ' 
 does not please them the case is very 
 plain. I will resign ; you may recall 
 my predecessor, and everybody will 
 be satisfied. Take it as it is or leave 
 it alone." 
 
 "Very well, then," said the cure", 
 " that is all right ; it is understood ; I 
 accept your resignation." 
 
 And thereupon we separated, the 
 best friends in the world. 
 
 I had not been half an hour at home 
 when his servant rang at my door. 
 
 " Well, Jean, what is the matter?" 
 
 " Monsieur le Cure" would like to 
 s.peak with you."
 
 159 
 
 "Ah, very well, Jean; tell him I 
 will be there at once." 
 
 Arrived in his presence, he re- 
 sumed the conversation, saying : 
 
 " Come, come, my dear fellow, you 
 threw the helve after the hatchet a 
 while ago. Is there no way of arrang- 
 ing the matter ? Let us consider the 
 question calmly. You went off like 
 gunpowder." 
 
 "Monsieur le Cur/, it is useless to 
 begin anew this discussion. I persist 
 in all that I have said. If I must 
 listen to everybody's objections there 
 will be no way of getting along ; 
 either I remain entirely independent, 
 or I go. This was our understanding, 
 as you know, and I will abate nothing 
 from it." 
 
 "Ah! mon Dieu" said he; " what a 
 dreadful man you are !" 
 
 Then, after a pause : 
 
 " Well, come then, stay." 
 
 And from that day he never spoke 
 to me again on this subject, allowing 
 me the most perfect liberty of action.
 
 160 
 
 After that, my most determined oppo- 
 nents became, little by little, my 
 warmest supporters, and the small 
 additions successively made to my 
 salary indicated the progress made 
 in the sympathies of my hearers. I 
 began with twelve hundred francs a 
 year ; this was not much. The second 
 year they granted me an increase of 
 three hundred francs, the third year 
 I had eighteen hundred francs, and 
 the fourth two thousand. But I must 
 not anticipate the order of events. 
 
 My mother and I lived in the house 
 with the cure". There was also 
 living under the same roof an eccle- 
 siastic three years older than I, 
 who had been one of my comrades 
 at the Lycte St. Louis the Abbe 
 Charles Gay. The differences in 
 age and class that separated us at the 
 lyceum would, doubtless, have left us 
 strangers to each other if a common 
 interest had not brought us together. 
 This interest was music. Charles
 
 161 
 
 Gay, who was then fourteen years of 
 age, had great musical aptitude, and 
 sang the part of second soprano in 
 the chapel choir. He was, besides, 
 one of the most brilliant pupils of the 
 school. He finished his studies, and 
 it was nearly three years before we 
 saw each other again. I met him in 
 the foyer of the Optra one night 
 when they were playing La Juive. 
 Recognizing him at once, I went 
 directly to him : 
 
 " Comment ! " said he, " it is you. 
 And what has become of you ? " 
 
 " I am busy with composition." 
 
 " Indeed ! " replied he, " so am I. 
 And with whom are you studying?" 
 
 " With Reicha." 
 
 "Well, I declare! and I also. Oh, 
 that is delightful ; we must see each 
 other often." 
 
 Thus was renewed a friendship 
 begun at school, which has remained 
 one of the cherished affections of my 
 life. 
 
 I had great admiration for this 
 11
 
 162 
 
 friend, in whom I recognized a fine 
 organization and faculties much 
 superior to mine. His compositions 
 seemed to me to reveal a man of 
 genius, and I envied him the future 
 to which it seemed to me he was 
 called. I often went to pass the 
 evening at his house, where there 
 was always a great deal of music. 
 His sister was an excellent pianist, 
 and I there heard (besides his own 
 compositions which were tried before 
 invited friends) the trios of Mozart 
 and Beethoven. 
 
 One day I received from this friend, 
 who was then in the country, a line 
 begging me to come and see him, 
 saying that he had something of 
 interest to tell me. I thought that it 
 was a question of marriage. When 
 I arrived where he was stopping, he 
 announced that he was going to be a 
 priest. I then understood the mean- 
 ing of the folios and other big books 
 with which I had for some time 
 noticed that his table was loaded. I
 
 163 
 
 was too young to comprehend the 
 importance of this sudden change of 
 mind, and pitied him for making 
 a choice that would require the sacri- 
 fice of a fine future to a fate that 
 seemed to me so unenviable. 
 
 Having decided upon this course, 
 he resolved to go and pass some time 
 in Rome, there to begin his theolog- 
 ical studies. I had just then carried 
 off the grand prix, thus earning the 
 privilege of a two years' stay in Rome, 
 and so it was that I found my friend 
 again in that city, where his arrival 
 preceded mine by three months. On 
 my return from Germany, circum- 
 stances brought us still nearer to- 
 gether, by placing us as dwellers 
 under the same roof. To-day a 
 priest of thirty years' standing, vicar- 
 general of his intimate friend, the 
 bishop of Poitiers, the Abbe" Gay* 
 has become, by his virtues and his 
 ability as an orator and writer, one 
 
 * The Abbe Gay has since become, himself, 
 the bishop of Poitiers.
 
 164 
 
 01 the most eminent members of the 
 clergy of France. 
 
 Toward the third year of my ser- 
 vices as chapel master, I, also, felt a 
 strong desire to enter ecclesiastical 
 life. To my musical occupations I 
 had added philosophical and theo- 
 logical studies, and even attended in 
 clerical dress, during an entire winter, 
 the lectures on theology at the semi- 
 nary of St. Sulpice. 
 
 But I was strangely mistaken as to 
 my own nature and my true vocation. 
 I realized in time that it would be 
 impossible for me to live without my 
 art, and, laying aside the- garb for 
 which I was not adapted, I entered 
 again into the world. But I owe to 
 that period of my life a friendship, 
 the mention of which I consider it an 
 honor to associate with this history 
 of my life. 
 
 Abbe" Dumarsais, Abbe" Gay, and I 
 were sent, during the summer of 
 1846, to take sea-bathing at Trouville
 
 165 
 
 for our health. One day I came near 
 drowning, and the press made such 
 haste with this incident, that the 
 news was published on the following 
 day in the papers of Paris, whilst my 
 brother, whom, fortunately, I had 
 immediately informed of the danger 
 escaped, was trying, on his part, to 
 reassure my mother by showing her 
 my letter just received. It was 
 announced bluntly that I had been 
 " brought in dead upon a stretcher." 
 Truth has hard work to run as fast 
 as falsehood. 
 
 Now, in the course of our bathing 
 season, we met on the shore a most 
 worthy abbe", walking with a young 
 boy whose preceptor he was. This 
 boy of twelve or thirteen years was 
 named Gaston de Beaucourt. His 
 mother, the Countess de Beaucourt> 
 owned a fine estate some leagues 
 from Trouville, near Pont-V Evttque la 
 Lisieux. She invited us in the most 
 courteous and gracious manner to 
 visit there before returning to Paris.
 
 166 
 
 This dear, lovely boy, to-day a man 
 of forty-three years of age, and one 
 of the best of men, became a life- 
 long friend. I owe to his affection, 
 so sure, so firm and tender, not only 
 the joys afforded by such a perfect 
 friendship, but also proofs of the 
 most complete and steadfast devo- 
 tion. 
 
 The revolution of February, 1848, 
 had just broken out when I left the 
 musical leadership of the Missions 
 Etrangtres. I had filled a position 
 for four years and a half, which, 
 while very useful and profitable in 
 the way of musical studies, had, nev- 
 ertheless, the disadvantage of leaving 
 me to vegetate, as far as my career 
 and future were concerned, in a posi- 
 tion without prospect of advance- 
 ment. For a composer, there is 
 hardly but one road to follow in or- 
 der to make a name, and that is the 
 theater. 
 
 The theater is the place where one
 
 167 
 
 finds the opportunity and the way to 
 speak every day to the public ; it is 
 a daily and permanent exposition 
 opened to the musician. 
 
 Religious music and the symphony 
 are certainly of a higher order, ab- 
 stractly considered, than dramatic 
 music, but the opportunities and the 
 means of making one's self known 
 along those lines are rare, and appeal 
 only to an intermittent public, rather 
 than to a regular public, like that of 
 the theater. And then what an infi- 
 nite variety for a dramatic author 
 in the choice of subjects! What a 
 field opened to the fancy, to imagina- 
 tion, and to romance! The theater 
 tempted me. I was then nearly thirty 
 years of age, and was impatient to 
 try my powers upon this new field of 
 battle. But I had need of a poem, 
 and knew no author from whom I 
 could obtain one. I needed, also, to 
 find a director interested in me, and 
 who would consent to entrust me 
 with the composition of an opera.
 
 168 
 
 Who was likely to be so disposed, 
 considering the religious character 
 of my antecedents, and my inexperi- 
 ence in the theater ? No one. I saw 
 myself in an inextricable difficulty. 
 But circumstances placed in my 
 path a man who shed upon me a 
 light. This was the violinist, Seg- 
 hers, director at that time of the con- 
 certs of the St. Cecilia Society, in the 
 rue Chausste-d-Antin. The opportu- 
 nity was given me at these concerts 
 for the hearing of a number of pieces 
 that produced a good impression. 
 Seghers knew the Viardot family. 
 Madame Viardot was then in all the 
 glory of her talent and fame. It was 
 in 1849, a t th e time when she first 
 created, in so masterly a manner, the 
 role of Fidts in Meyerbeer's Prophtte. 
 Madame Viardot received me with 
 the best of grace, inviting me to 
 bring some of my compositions for 
 her to hear. I made haste to accept 
 this offer, and passed several hours 
 with her at the piano. After having
 
 . 169 
 
 listened to me with the kindest inter- 
 est, she said : 
 
 " But, Monsieur Gounod, why do 
 you not write an opera?" 
 
 " Eh ! Madame," replied I, "I could 
 ask nothing better, but I have no 
 poem." 
 
 " What ! You know no one who 
 could write you one ?" 
 
 "Some one who could, mon Dieu, 
 perhaps ; but who would that is an- 
 other thing. I know, or rather, I did 
 know in my childhood, Emile Augier, 
 with whom I played at rolling hoop 
 in the Luxembourg gardens; but 
 Augier has since become famous. I 
 have no celebrity, and the playfellow 
 of childhood would hardly care to 
 play over again a game otherwise 
 hazardous than a turn at hoops." 
 
 "Well," said Madame Viardot, "go 
 and see Augier, and tell him that I 
 will sing the principal role in your 
 opera, if he will write the poem." 
 
 One may guess if I waited to be 
 told the second time ! I ran to Augier,
 
 170 
 
 who received my proposition with 
 open arms. 
 
 " Madame Viardot !" cried he; " yes, 
 to be sure ! and that immediately !" 
 
 Nestor Roqueplan was then direc- 
 tor of the Optra. Upon the recom- 
 mendation of Madame Viardot, he 
 consented to allow a part of the time 
 of performance, but not the whole 
 evening. It was necessary, then, to 
 find a subject uniting three essential 
 conditions first, to be short ; second, 
 to be serious ; and third, to have a 
 female role as the principal figure. 
 We decided upon Sapho. The study 
 of the opera could not be undertaken 
 until the following year, and, further- 
 more, Augier had to first finish a 
 grand subject upon which he was 
 occupied at that time. It was, I be- 
 lieve, Diana, for Mademoiselle Rachel. 
 
 Finally, I had his promise to begin, 
 and waited with mingled impatience 
 and tranquility. 
 
 A sad event came to afflict our 
 family at the moment when I was
 
 about setting myself to work. It was 
 in the month of April, 1850. Augier 
 had just finished the poem of Sapho, 
 when, on the 2d of April, my brother 
 fell ill. On the 3d, I signed with 
 Roqueplan the contract, according to 
 which I engaged to deliver to him 
 the score of Sapho on the 3oth of 
 September, at the latest. I had six 
 months in which to compose and 
 write an opera in three acts my 
 dtbut at the theater. On the night of 
 the 6th of April my brother passed 
 away. It was a dreadful blow to my 
 mother and to all of us. 
 
 He left a widow, the mother of a 
 child of two years, and of another 
 little being coming into the world 
 seven months later, in the midst of 
 tears ; and whose destiny it was to be 
 born on the 2d of November, the 
 very day when the church mourns 
 'with her children for those whom they 
 have lost. This situation of affairs 
 brought about difficulties and com- 
 plications in life of which it was
 
 m 
 
 necessary to think immediately. The 
 question of guardianship of the chil- 
 dren ; of succession in my brother's 
 business as an architect, in which his 
 death left a host of affairs unfinished ; 
 all the consequences, finally, of so 
 sudden and unforeseen a calamity 
 demanded for a month my personal 
 attention to the regulation of the in- 
 terests, and the arrangements for 
 living, of my poor, prostrated, and 
 inconsolable sister-in-law. Further- 
 more, my unhappy mother seemed 
 almost to lose her reason under the 
 stunning blow by which she had been 
 smitten. Everything in and around 
 me conspired to render me incapable 
 of devoting myself to the work for 
 which I had already so little time. 
 
 At the end of a month, however, 
 I began to think of occupying my- 
 self again with the composition so 
 urgently demanding my attention. 
 Madame Viardot, who was then sing- 
 ing in Germany, and whom I had 
 advised of the misfortune with which
 
 173 
 
 we had been visited, wrote me at once, 
 suggesting that I go with my mother 
 to a place owned by her in Brie, 
 where I could find, as she said, the soli- 
 tude and quiet of which I had need. 
 I followed her advice, and my 
 mother and I left Paris to go and stay 
 for a while in the house where the 
 mother of Madame Viardot (Madame 
 Garcia, widow of the celebrated 
 singer) was living, in company with 
 a sister of Monsieur Viardot and a 
 young daughter (the oldest of the 
 children), to-day Madame He"ritte a 
 remarkable musical composer. I also 
 met there a charming man, Ivan 
 Tourgueneff, the eminent Russian 
 writer, a most excellent man, and an 
 intimate friend of the Viardot family. 
 I set myself to work immediately 
 upon my arrival. Strange fact! It 
 seems as if sad and pathetic accents 
 should have been the first to thrill 
 the fibers of my being, so recently 
 shaken by the most painful emotions ! 
 But it was to the contrary; the brigther
 
 174 
 
 scenes were those that first seized 
 and took possession of me, as if my 
 nature, bent under the weight of sor- 
 row and mourning, felt the need of 
 reaction and of free respiration after 
 those hours of agony and days of 
 tears and sighs. 
 
 Thanks to the calm which reigned 
 around me, my work advanced more 
 rapidly than I had expected. Madame 
 Viardot, after her season in Germany, 
 was called by her engagements to 
 England. Returning from that 
 country at the beginning of Septem- 
 ber, she found my opera nearly fin- 
 ished. I hastened to let her hear the 
 composition, for her impressions of 
 which I waited with the greatest 
 anxiety. She expressed herself 
 pleased with it, and in a few days 
 she was so well acquainted with the 
 score that she accompanied herself 
 upon the piano almost entirely from 
 memory. That was, perhaps, the 
 most extraordinary feat of musical 
 memorizing of which I was ever wit-
 
 175 
 
 ness, and one which shows the aston- 
 ishing ability of that wonderful artist. 
 Sapho was represented at the Optra 
 for the first time on the i6th of April, 
 1851. I was then nearly thirty-two 
 years old. It was not a success, and 
 yet this ctibut gave me a good place 
 in the estimation of artists. While 
 the work showed inexperience in 
 what is called stage business, a lack of 
 knowledge of dramatic effects, of re- 
 sources, and of practice in instru- 
 mentation, there was, at the same 
 time, a true feeling in expression, an 
 instinct generally correct on the lyric 
 side of the subject, and a tendency to 
 nobility of style. The close of the 
 first act produced an impression com- 
 pletely surprising. It was called for 
 again, with unanimous applause, in 
 which I could hardly believe, although 
 my ears were ringing with unex- 
 pected emotion, and this " bis " was 
 repeated at each of the following 
 representations. The effect of the 
 second act was inferior to that of the
 
 176 
 
 first, notwithstanding the success of 
 a cantilena sung by Madame Viardot, 
 and that of the airy duo between 
 Bre"mond and Mademoiselle Poinsot, 
 " Va wfattendre, mon mattre" But the 
 third act was very well received. 
 A rehearing was demanded of the 
 shepherd's song, " Broutez le thym, 
 broutez mes ckevres; " and the final 
 lines of Sapho, "O ma lyre immortelle" 
 were highly applauded. 
 
 The shepherd's song was the de"but 
 of the tenor, Aymes; he sang it mar- 
 velously well, thereby making his 
 reputation. Gueymard and Marie 
 filled the roles of Phaon and of Alce"e. 
 
 My mother was naturally present 
 at the first representation. As I was 
 leaving the stage to rejoin her in the 
 hall, where she was waiting for me 
 after the exit of the public, I met 
 Berlioz in the lobby of the Optra, his 
 eyes filled with tears. I sprang to 
 his neck, saying : 
 
 " Oh ! my dear Berlioz, come show 
 those eyes to my mother ! that would
 
 be the best criticism she could read 
 upon my work." 
 
 Berlioz yielded to my wishes, and 
 approaching my mother, said : 
 
 "Madame, I do not remember to 
 have felt a similar emotion in twenty 
 years." 
 
 He published an account of Sapho, 
 which is, assuredly, one of the high- 
 est and most flattering tributes that I 
 have had the honor and good fortune 
 to gather in my career. 
 
 This opera was played only six 
 times. The engagement of Madame 
 Viardot came to a close, and she was 
 replaced in the role by Mademoiselle 
 Masson, with whom it had only three 
 more representations. 
 
 It may be set down as a principle, 
 I think, that a dramatic work always 
 has, or nearly so, all the success that 
 it deserves with the public. Theat- 
 rical success is the result of such a 
 combination of elements that it suf- 
 fices (examples of which are abun- 
 dant) for the absence of any one of 
 
 12
 
 178 
 
 these elements, sometimes of the 
 most accessory, to counteract and 
 compromise the effect of the highest 
 qualities. The stage-setting, the bal- 
 let, the scenery, the costumes, the 
 libretto so many things contribute 
 to the success of an opera! The 
 attention of the public needs to be 
 sustained and satisfied with the va- 
 riety of the spectacle. There are 
 works of the first order in certain 
 respects that have gone under, not in 
 the admiration of artists, but in the 
 public favor, from the lack of the 
 condiment necessary to secure their 
 acceptance by those for whom the 
 simple attraction of the beautiful 
 does not suffice. 
 
 I do not pretend, by any means, to 
 demand for the fate of Sapho the 
 benefit of these considerations. The 
 public brings to the formation of 
 opinion upon any work certain rights 
 and titles constituting a kind of prov- 
 ince and authority apart. One can 
 not expect or demand of it the special
 
 179 
 
 knowledge by which the technical 
 value of a work of art is decided; 
 but it has on its side the right to 
 expect and demand that a dramatic 
 work should respond to the instincts 
 for which it seeks nourishment and 
 gratification at the theater. Now, a 
 dramatic composition does not de- 
 pend exclusively upon the qualities 
 of form and style ; these qualities are 
 certainly essential ; they are even 
 indispensable in preserving a work 
 from the rapid attacks of Time, 
 whose scythe restrains itself only in 
 the presence of ideal beauty; but 
 they are neither the only qualities, 
 nor even, in a certain sense, the first ; 
 they consolidate and strengthen dra- 
 matic success they do not establish 
 it. 
 
 The public of the theater is a dy- 
 namometer. It seeks not to know the 
 value of a work from the point of 
 view of taste ; it measures only the 
 power of the passion and the degree 
 of the emotions excited; that is to say,
 
 180 
 
 what makes of it really a dramatic 
 work, an expression of what goes on 
 in the human soul, individual or col- 
 lective. From which it results that 
 author and public are reciprocally 
 called to instruct each other in mat- 
 ters of art the public instructing the 
 author by showing its discernment 
 and approval of the true, and the 
 author teaching the public by initia- 
 ting it into the elements and condi- 
 tions of , the beautiful. Outside of 
 this view of the question, it seems to 
 me impossible to explain the strange 
 phenomenon of the incessant change- 
 ability of the public, rejecting in the 
 morning what moved it to passion 
 the night before, and crucifying to- 
 day what it will worship to-morrow. 
 
 Although Sapho was not fated to 
 be what is called a popular success, it 
 was not without results advantageous 
 to my musical career and to my 
 future. In the first place, Ponsard 
 asked me on the very evening of the
 
 isi 
 
 first representation, to write the music 
 for the choruses in Ulysse, a tragedy 
 in five acts, intended by him for 
 the The'dtre Frangais. I accepted the 
 offer upon the spot, without knowing 
 the work ; but the reputation of the 
 author of Lucr^ce, of Charlotte Cor- 
 day, and of Agnts de Mtranie was 
 a sufficient guarantee of the impor- 
 tance of the work, to the collabora- 
 tion of which I had the good fortune 
 to be called. 
 
 Arsene Houssaye was then the 
 director of the Come'die-Fran$aise. It 
 was necessary to add to the usual 
 personnel of the theater a chorus 
 troop and a reinforcement of the 
 regular orchestra.* 
 
 Ulysse was produced the i8th of 
 June, 1852. I had just married, a 
 few days before, a daughter of 
 Zimmerman, f the celebrated pro- 
 fessor of the piano at the Conserv- 
 
 * See in appendix, letter from Berlioz to 
 Gounod, dated November 19, 1851. 
 
 t See in appendix, letter from Gounod to 
 Lefuel, without date.
 
 182 
 
 atory, and to whom is due the 
 fine school from which have come 
 Prudent, Marmontel, Goria, Lefe- 
 bure-Wely, Ravina, Bizet, and many 
 others. I became, by this alliance, 
 brother-in-law of the young painter, 
 Edouard Dubufe, who was already 
 most ably carrying his father's name, 
 the heritage and reputation of which 
 his own son, Guillaume Dubufe, 
 promises to brilliantly maintain. 
 
 The principal roles of Ulysse were 
 taken by Mademoiselle Judith, Mes- 
 sieurs Geffroy, Delaunay, Maubant, 
 Mademoiselle Nathalie, and others. 
 The musical part included not less 
 than fourteen choruses, a tenor solo, 
 several passages of instrumental 
 melodrama, and- an orchestral intro- 
 duction. There was, for the com- 
 poser, a certain danger of monotony 
 in the constant employment of the 
 same resources the orchestra and 
 the choruses. 
 
 I had the good fortune, neverthe- 
 less, to get very happily around the
 
 183 
 
 difficulty, and this second work 
 earned me another good point in 
 the opinion of artists. My score 
 had, besides, a great advantage not 
 possessed by that of Sapho, for which 
 no publisher presented himself. Mes- 
 sieurs Escudier did me the honor 
 to engrave my new work without 
 charge. 
 
 Ulysse was played forty times. It 
 was the second trial in my dramatic 
 career of which my mother was 
 witness. 
 
 The choruses of Ulysse seem to me to 
 be conceived in correct character and 
 color, and in individual style. The 
 management of the orchestra leaves 
 something to be desired with respect 
 to experience, rather than to that of 
 coloring, the instinct of which is, in 
 general, very happy. 
 
 A few days after my marriage, 
 I was appointed director of the 
 Orphean, and of vocal instruction in 
 the public schools of Paris. In this
 
 184 
 
 position I replaced M. Hubert, pupil 
 and successor to Wilhem, founder of 
 that branch of instruction. 
 
 These functions, filled during 
 eight years and a half, exercised a 
 most happy influence over my mu- 
 sical career, by the experience they 
 afforded me in the direction and 
 handling of large vocal forces, 
 treated in a style simple and favor- 
 able to their best sonority. 
 
 My third musical attempt for the 
 theater was La Nonne Sanglante, an 
 opera in five acts, with text by Scribe 
 and Germain Delavigne. Nestor 
 Roqueplan, who was still director of 
 the Optra, had a great admiration for 
 Sapho, and sincere friendship for me. 
 He used to say that he found in me 
 a tendency " to do things on a grand 
 scale." It was he who wished me 
 to write for the Optra a work in 
 five acts. La Nonne Sanglante was 
 written in 1852-1853. Put in re- 
 hearsal October 18, 1853; laid aside
 
 185 
 
 and afterward taken tip several 
 times for study, it finally came to 
 the footlights on October 18, 1854, 
 exactly a year after it was first begun. 
 It had only eleven representations, 
 after which Roqueplan was replaced 
 in the direction of the Optra by M. 
 Crosnier. The new director having 
 declared that he would not allow 
 "such filth " to be played any longer, 
 the piece disappeared from the bill- 
 boards, and has never been seen 
 there since. 
 
 This caused me some regret. The 
 satisfactory amount of the receipts 
 certainly did not warrant so radical 
 and summary a measure. But mana- 
 gerial decisions sometimes have, it is 
 said, an under side that it is useless to 
 think of penetrating. In such a case, 
 pretexts are given ; the real reasons 
 remain concealed. I do not know if 
 La Nonne Sanglante was susceptible 
 of enduring success, but I do not 
 think so. Not that it was a work 
 without effect (it contained several
 
 186 
 
 striking scenes), but the subject was 
 too uniformly somber. It had, 
 besides, the disadvantage of being 
 more than imaginary, more than im- 
 probable ; it was beyond the limits 
 of the possible, resting upon a purely 
 fanciful foundation, without reality, 
 and, consequently, without dramatic 
 interest, there being no interest out- 
 side of the true, or, at least, the prob- 
 able. 
 
 I think that my part of this work 
 showed substantial progress in the 
 employment of the orchestra. Cer- 
 tain pages therein are treated with a 
 surer knowledge of instrumentation, 
 and with a more experienced hand. 
 Several parts are well colored ; among 
 others, the song of the Crusade by 
 Peter the Hermit and chorus, in the 
 first act ; in the second act, the sym- 
 phonic prelude of the Ruins, and the 
 march of the Ghosts; in the third act, 
 a cavatina by the tenor, and his duo 
 with the Nonne. 
 
 My principal interpreters were
 
 187 
 
 Mesdemoiselles Wertheimber and 
 Poinsot, Messieurs Gueymard, De- 
 passio, and Merly. 
 
 I consoled myself for my mortifi- 
 cation by writing a symphony (No. i, 
 in D) for the Society of Young 
 Artists, just founded by Pasdeloup, 
 and whose concerts took place in the 
 Salle Herz, rue de la Victoire. This 
 symphony was well received, and I 
 was thus encouraged to write another 
 for the same society (No. 2, in E flat), 
 which also met with a certain suc- 
 cess. I also wrote, at this epoch, the 
 Mcsse Solennelle de Sainte Cfaile, which 
 was brought out successfully for the 
 first time by the Association des 
 Artistes Musiciens, on the 22d of 
 November, 1855, at the church of St. 
 Eustache, and which has been per- 
 formed several times since. It is 
 dedicated to the memory of my 
 father-in-law, Zimmerman, whom we 
 lost on October 29, 1853. 
 
 Still another misfortune fell upon
 
 188 
 
 our family. On the 6th of August, 
 1855, death took from us an elder 
 sister of my wife, Juliette Dubufe 
 (wife of Edouard Dubufe, the painter), 
 a woman gifted with a rare combina- 
 tion of the most charming qualities, 
 added to exceptional talent as a 
 sculptor and pianist. "Bont<?, esprit, 
 talent" such was the simple inscrip- 
 tion, as well merited as eloquent, that 
 summed up the praise and the regrets 
 inspired by this woman whose exqui- 
 site grace irresistibly captivated all 
 who approached her. 
 
 The leadership of the Orphe'on 
 then occupied the greater part of 
 my time. I wrote for the large 
 choral reunions of the organization 
 a number of compositions, of which 
 some were especially remarked ; and 
 among these are two masses, one of 
 which was performed under my direc- 
 tion, June 12, 1853, in the church of 
 St. Germain-V Auxerrois, in Paris. It 
 was during the time of one of the
 
 189 
 
 grand annual meetings of the Or- 
 phdon, June 8, 1856, that my wife 
 presented me with a son. (Three 
 years before, on the 1 3th of the same 
 month, we had the sorrow of losing 
 at birth our first-born child, a girl.) 
 On the morning of the day when my 
 son was born, my brave wife, although 
 feeling the first pains of motherhood 
 just as I was starting out for the 
 meeting of the Orphan, had the 
 force to conceal from me her suffer- 
 ings, and when in the afternoon I 
 returned to the house my son was 
 already in the world. 
 
 The coming of this child, so much 
 desired, was an occasion of joy and 
 feasting. We have been so fortu- 
 nate as to bring him up ; he has now 
 passed his twenty-first year, and is 
 destined to be a painter. 
 
 After La Nonne Sanglante, I did 
 not work at any other dramatic com- 
 position, but wrote a small oratorio, 
 Tobie, at the request of George Hainl,
 
 190 
 
 then orchestra director at the Grand 
 Thtdtre at Lyons, for one of his 
 annual benefit concerts. This work 
 had, I think, some qualities of senti- 
 ment and of expression. Especial 
 notice was taken of a very touching 
 air in the part of the young Tobie, 
 and of some other passages not lack- 
 ing in a certain pathetic effect. 
 
 In 1856, I made the acquaintance 
 of Jules Barbier and of Michel Carre". 
 I asked them if they were disposed 
 to work with me, and to entrust to 
 me a poem, to which they consented 
 with great willingness. The first 
 subject to which I called their atten- 
 tion was Faust. This idea impressed 
 them favorably. We went to see M. 
 Carvalho, at that time director of the 
 TkJdtre-Lyrique, in the Boulevard du 
 Temple, where they had just mounted 
 La Reine Topaze, by Victor Masse", and 
 in which Madame Miolan-Carvalho 
 had achieved a brilliant success. 
 Our project pleased M. Carvalho, and 
 my collaborators set themselves im-
 
 191 
 
 mediately to work. I had finished 
 nearly half of my part when M. Car- 
 valho informed me that the theater 
 of La Porte-Saint-Martin had in prep- 
 aration a grand melodrama entitled 
 Faust, which circumstance overturned 
 all his calculations in regard to our 
 work. He was of the opinion, and 
 with good reason, that it would be 
 impossible for us to be ready be- 
 fore the Porte-Saint-Martin, and, fur- 
 thermore, he considered it unwise, 
 from the point of view of financial 
 success, to engage in a contest upon 
 the same subject with a theater, 
 the luxury of whose stage-mounting 
 would already have attracted all Paris 
 before our opera could be produced. 
 
 He advised us, then, to choose 
 another subject, but this discomfiture 
 had rendered me incapable of apply- 
 ing my mind to anything else, and I 
 remained eight days without the force 
 to undertake other work. 
 
 Finally, M. Carvalho requested me 
 to write a comedy, and to seek my
 
 192 
 
 inspiration at the theater of Moliere. 
 This was the beginning of Le Mtd- 
 ecin Malgrt Lui, produced at the 
 Theatre -Lyrique on the I5th of Janu- 
 ary, 1858, the anniversary of the birth 
 of Moliere. The announcement of a 
 comedy written by a musician whose 
 first efforts seemed to indicate quite 
 different tendencies, caused a pre- 
 sentiment and fear of failure. The 
 result set at naught these fears, some 
 of which were, perhaps, not without 
 hope, and Le Me"decin Malgrt Lui 
 was, malgrtf cela, my first popular 
 success at the theater. This pleasure 
 was empoisoned by the death of my 
 dear mother, who, after an illness of 
 two months, and having been totally 
 blind for two years, expired on the 
 very nextday after the first represen- 
 tation, January 16, 1858, at the age of 
 seventy-seven and a half years. It 
 was not given to me to bring to her 
 last days the consolation of this fruit 
 and reward of a life wholly conse- 
 crated to the interests of her sons. I
 
 193 
 
 trust, at least, that she carried with 
 her the hope and premonition that 
 her efforts had not been in vain, and 
 that her sacrifices were blessed. 
 
 Le Mtdccin Malgrt Lui enjoyed an 
 uninterrupted series of one hundred 
 representations. It was mounted 
 with great care, and the actor, M. 
 Got, of the Comtdie-Franqaise, had, 
 by request of our director, the kind- 
 ness to personally give the assistance 
 of his valuable advice to the artists, 
 in the traditional setting of the piece 
 and the declamation of the spoken 
 dialogue. The principal role, that of 
 Sganarelle, was created by Meillet, a 
 rotund and spirited baritone, who 
 obtained in this part a great success, 
 both as a singer and an actor. The 
 other male roles were entrusted to 
 Girardot, Wartel, Fromant, and Le- 
 sage (afterward replaced by Potel and 
 Gabriel), who acquitted themselves 
 well. The two principal female 
 roles were taken by Mesdemoiselles 
 
 13
 
 194 
 
 Faivre and Girard, both full of spirit 
 and gayety. This score, the first that 
 I had occasion to write in a comic 
 vein, is in light and easy style, some- 
 what similar to Italian opera-bouffe. 
 In certain passages I tried to recall 
 the style of Lully, but the work, as a 
 whole, is in modern form and partakes 
 of the French school. Among the 
 parts most enjoyed were the Chanson 
 des Glougous, capitally sung by Meillet, 
 and always called for the second time; 
 the Trio de la Bastonnade, the Sextuor 
 de la Consultation, a Fabliau, the Sctne 
 de Consultation des Paysans, and a duo 
 between Sganarelle and the nurse. 
 
 The Faust of the Porte Saint-Martin 
 came to a representation, but not even 
 the elegance of the mounting could 
 assure to this melodrama a very long 
 run. M. Carvalho then took up again 
 our first project, and I busied myself 
 at once in finishing the work inter- 
 rupted to write Le M^decin Malgre" 
 Lui. 
 
 Faust was put in rehearsal in the
 
 195 
 
 month of September, 1858. I gave a 
 hearing of it to M. Carvalho, in the 
 green-room of the theater, on July 
 ist, before my departure for Switzer- 
 land, where I was going to spend the 
 vacation, with my wife and boy, then 
 two years old. At this time, nothing 
 was decided upon as to the distribu- 
 tion of the roles, and M. Carvalho 
 requested me to allow Madame Car- 
 valho, who lived opposite the theater, 
 to be present at the hearing given 
 him. She was so deeply impressed 
 with the part of Marguerite that M. 
 Carvalho begged me to assign that 
 role to her. This was agreed upon, 
 and the future proved this choice to 
 be a veritable inspiration. 
 
 But the rehearsals for Faust were 
 not destined to be pursued without 
 meeting difficulties. The tenor to 
 whom the title role had been as- 
 signed, could not, although possess- 
 ing a charming voice and attractive 
 physique, sustain the weight of this 
 heavy and important part. Some
 
 196 
 
 days before the time fixed for the 
 first representation, we were obliged 
 to think of replacing him, and had 
 recourse to Barbot, who was then 
 available. In one month Barbot 
 learned the role and was ready to 
 play, and the opera was brought out 
 for the first time on the i9th of 
 March, 1859. 
 
 The first production of Faust did 
 not create a remarkable impression; 
 it is, however, at this time, my great- 
 est theatrical success. Can it be said 
 to be my best work ? Positively I do 
 not know. At any rate, I see in it 
 a confirmation of the thought ex- 
 pressed above, upon the subject of 
 success, namely, that success is rather 
 the result of a certain combination of 
 fortuitous circumstances and favora- 
 ble conditions, than a proof or meas- 
 ure of the intrinsic value of the work 
 itself. It is by the surface that the 
 favor of the public is first gained ; it is 
 by the depth that it is maintained and 
 strengthened. It requires a certain
 
 197 
 
 length of time to seize and take to 
 one's self the expression and the 
 meaning of the infinite number of 
 details of which a drama is composed. 
 The dramatic art is a kind of por- 
 trait painting. It should interpret 
 characters as a painter reproduces a 
 face or an attitude ; it should gather 
 up and fix all the features, all the 
 inflections, so variable and fleeting, 
 which, taken together, form the 
 individuality of physiognomy that is 
 called a personage. Such are the 
 immortal characters of Hamlet, of 
 Richard III., of Othello, and of Lady 
 Macbeth, in Shakspeare ; impersona- 
 tions having such a resemblance to the 
 type of which they are the expression, 
 that they remain in the memory like 
 a living reality; therefore, they are 
 justly called creations. Dramatic 
 music is subject to this same law, out- 
 side of which it has no existence ; its 
 object is to specialize physiognomies. 
 Now, that which painting represents 
 simultaneously to the mind, music
 
 198 
 
 can only say successively ; this is why 
 it escapes so easily from first impres- 
 sions. 
 
 None of my works written before 
 Faust gave any reason to expect a 
 score of this kind ; nothing had pre- 
 pared the public for it. It was then, 
 in this respect, a surprise, as it was 
 also with regard to the interpretation. 
 Certainly Madame Carvalho had not 
 been waiting for the role of Mar- 
 guerite to reveal the masterly qual- 
 ities of execution and style which 
 place her in the front rank of the 
 singers of our day ; but no other role 
 had afforded her, until that time, the 
 opportunity of showing, to this same 
 degree, the superior phases of her 
 talent, so sure, so refined, so steady 
 and tranquil I mean its lyric and 
 pathetic qualities. The role of Mar- 
 guerite established her reputation in 
 this respect, and she has left upon 
 this character an imprint which will 
 remain one of the glories of her 
 brilliant career. Barbot showed him-
 
 199 
 
 self a great musician in the difficult 
 role of Faust. Balanque", who created 
 the part of Mephistopheles, was an 
 intelligent comedian whose play, phy- 
 sique, and voice lent themselves won- 
 derfully to this fantastic and Satanic 
 personage. In spite of a little exag- 
 geration in gesture and irony, he 
 succeeded well. The small role of 
 Siebel, and that of Valentin, were 
 very acceptably taken by Mademoi- 
 selle Faivre and M. Raynal. 
 
 As to the score, it was so much dis- 
 cussed that I had no great hope of 
 success
 
 APPENDIX. 
 I. 
 
 To MONSIEUR H. LEFUEL, Architect, 
 
 At the Academy of France, 
 
 Villa Medici, Rome. 
 
 NAPLES, Tuesday, July 14, 1840. 
 
 I should have been pleased, my dear 
 Hector, to address to you earlier these 
 few lines that I now remit by Murat,* 
 but I have not even yet found time to 
 write to my brother a sufficiently long 
 pancarte, for having formed some 
 acquaintances in this city of Naples, 
 three months ago, I had to begin this 
 time by making myself known. And 
 now, from to-day, I shall be more at 
 liberty. 
 
 I have also written to Desgoffe, and 
 I should like to have done as much for 
 our good H6bert, to whom I beg you 
 
 * Murat (Jean), painter, prix de Rome. 
 
 (201)
 
 202 
 
 to make many excuses for me. He 
 shall certainly have news from me 
 directly, one of these days, and that 
 soon, probably, for I expect (although I 
 am not quite sure) to leave on Wednes- 
 day or Thursday of the coming week, to 
 make my trip to the islands of Ischia and 
 Capri, returning by Paestum, Salerna, 
 Amalfi, Sorrento, Pompeii, and Naples. 
 It will be an affair of twelve days. 
 
 I hope, my dear, good friend, that you 
 liave been well since my departure. I 
 have inquired of Desgoffe regarding 
 you, whom I begged to persuade you 
 not to work too hard. The heat there 
 must be great at this time. Here in 
 Naples it is sometimes very oppressive; 
 to-day, especially, we have had over- 
 powering, sultry weather, but the sea- 
 breeze is invigorating, and we who are 
 lodged almost upon the sea enjoy and 
 take in as much of its freshness as 
 possible. 
 
 Naples wearies me more than ever 
 (the city, you understand). I am very 
 curious to see Capri and Ischia, also 
 Paestum. I went up finally, yesterday,
 
 203 
 
 to Camaldoli; it is an admirable point 
 of view, especially for expanse of sea. 
 You know how well we love the sea ! 
 The more one gazes at it, the better 
 one appreciates the beauty of that 
 simple, horizontal line, beyond which 
 may be imagined the infinite. 
 
 To-morrow afternoon, at four o'clock, 
 should it be fine, we are to go up 
 Vesuvius to see the sunset, and shall 
 pass the night there in order to get the 
 effect of the whole bay by moonlight ; 
 and the following morning we shall 
 see the sunrise. You perceive that 
 that is a fine plan. 
 
 I received, day before yesterday, a 
 letter from my mother, sent from Rome. 
 I thank you, dear Hector, if it is to you 
 that I owe the arrival of this letter. My 
 mother sends you a thousand compli- 
 ments, as does also my good Urbain. 
 
 How did you like M. Ingres' picture ? 
 Write me your opinion, or send a word 
 in Desgoffe's letter when he answers 
 me. Always forward your letters to 
 the " Ville de Rome, Quai St. Lucie, 
 Naples." If I should happen to be
 
 204 
 
 out on an excursion in the mean- 
 while, they will be there upon my 
 return. Tell Hubert that I should 
 be very glad to know the effect pro- 
 duced upon his mind by M. Ingres' 
 picture. Although I do not deserve to 
 have news from him before writing 
 myself, I desire this greatly. 
 
 Kind regards to my little brother, 
 Vauthier, whom I beg, also, not to for- 
 get me. Tell Fleury* that I regretted 
 not being able to say good-by to him 
 before my departure. Finally, I chaige 
 you, my dear friend, with all my 
 remembrances for our good comrades, 
 in general and in particular, according 
 to the recognized formula. 
 
 Adieu, dear Hector; I embrace you 
 as I love you, which is, as you well 
 know, with all my heart. 
 
 CHARLES GOUNOD. 
 
 Gue'nepinf will write you in a few 
 
 * Confidential servant of the students, having 
 been then for forty years in the service of the 
 Academy. 
 
 f Guenepin (Franois-Jean-Baptiste), archi- 
 tect, prix de Rome.
 
 205 
 
 days, and will tell you a thousand 
 pleasant things. He is very good to me 
 and we have had a pleasant journey, 
 although our nights have been but three 
 or four hours long, at the most ; this is, 
 however, only a detail. 
 
 Be so kind as to tell me, when you 
 write, if Desgoffe has sent to Prince 
 Soutzo's house for my score of Der 
 Freischutz, 
 
 II. 
 
 To MONSIEUR H. LEFUEL, 
 
 Venice, Poste Restante. 
 
 ROME, Tuesday, April 4, 1841. 
 MY DEAR AND LOVING FATHER:* 
 
 Here is your desolated child, racking 
 his brains to know where to write to 
 you, and commencing to despair of the 
 affection of his old papa, when he 
 learned through M. Schnetz, that that 
 intrepid centenarian had taken himself 
 from Florence to Bologna, in order to 
 reach Venice in the quickest way. It 
 
 * See page 70.
 
 206 
 
 is there, then, in Venice that this son, 
 being reassured, hastens to address his 
 father to say that he is well, and finally, 
 that his mass has met with great suc- 
 cess ; in the first place, among his little 
 comrades, and in the second, with the 
 public. He has thought, also, of the 
 gratification this fact would afford his 
 old father, which thought has counted 
 for much in the joy of his success. 
 
 This son has also much regretted the 
 absence of this same old father, who is 
 naturally the one to whom he is most 
 attached, and from whom separation at 
 this time is most inopportune for him. 
 
 Furthermore, I have letters from 
 Paris charging me with a thousand 
 kind regards for you, my dear, good 
 Hector. I do not know how it hap- 
 pened, but mamma seemed to think that 
 I was going to see you again in two 
 or three months. I have set her mind 
 right upon this point, but the disillu- 
 sion must have cost her some pain. 
 
 And now then, you do not know the 
 news that I have received regarding 
 Urbain. At first it gave me a tremen-
 
 207 
 
 dous spring of joy, but at the end of the 
 paragraph there came a fearful reaction. 
 In short, it seems there was some talk 
 of his making a trip to Sicily and Rome, 
 but it has fallen through, and I will tell 
 you how it all happened. 
 
 M. le Marquis de Crillon, who has 
 always felt great interest in our family, 
 intended to take with him for a trav- 
 eling companion in Sicily, some good 
 artist of thorough attainments an 
 earnest, serious man in short, he had 
 thought of Urbain. He came to our 
 house one day and made this proposi- 
 tion to my mother. She thanked him 
 for his extreme kindness, expressed her 
 gratitude, and spoke to Urbain of the 
 plan when she saw him. He, having 
 quickly and thoroughly decided to 
 accept the offer, gave an affirmative 
 reply to M. Crillon. But when it finally 
 came to the point of going to bid fare- 
 well to his patrons, he everywhere met 
 faces sad and dejected at seeing him go 
 away, and everywhere expressions of 
 regret; no one could be found to replace 
 him in tact, judgment, honesty, etc.
 
 208 
 
 in short, in all the good and estimable 
 qualities which you know him to pos- 
 sess. This was already a circumstance 
 to hinder the plan of his departure, but 
 it was not all. Something else came to 
 clog the wheels, and this was a business 
 affair in which he found his interests 
 involved to the extent of ten or twelve 
 thousand francs. His presence in Paris 
 became indispensable at this time, as 
 you can readily understand. I am very 
 uneasy regarding the outcome of this 
 critical affair, and should like to know 
 as soon as possible how it has turned. 
 I will inform you about it in my next 
 letter. Poor Urbain ! he is so good, and 
 has given himself so much trouble! 
 Fortunately, he has great courage, and 
 knows how to sustain vexatious trials, 
 but it is hard for the moment. 
 
 I found out, dear Hector, that you 
 had written to Gruyere; but at the 
 moment when I was giving way to my 
 jealousy, H6bert said to me: "Console 
 yourself; it was only a commission with 
 which he charged him." Then I com- 
 forted myself in the hope of hearing 
 from you later.
 
 209 
 
 I must tell you that I have been very 
 much pleased with the evidences of 
 interest shown in me lately by several 
 of our comrades among others, our 
 good little painter, Hubert. I appre- 
 ciated most highly the careful attention 
 with which I noticed him listening to 
 the rehearsal of my mass. This, cer- 
 tainly, would not have been the case 
 had he been indifferent, and one is 
 always glad to mention those who are 
 not so. As I know that you, also, love 
 Hebert, I am glad to give you this 
 information concerning him, being sure 
 that his attachment for me will in 
 nowise diminish yours for him. He is, 
 also, quite well, and sends you a thou- 
 sand compliments, as do, also, all the 
 other young men at the Academy. I 
 am going to see if he is in his room, 
 and will tempt him to add two words at 
 the end of my letter. 
 
 Bazin has not yet arrived. I do not 
 know what he is doing. I am afraid 
 that his native city, in the enthusiasm 
 it must have shown him while passing 
 through, may have taken him bodily 
 
 14
 
 and set him upon a pedestal as a statue 
 in his own honor. The Marseillaise are 
 hot-headed; they are capable of having 
 done so with him; that would be a good 
 joke for his prospects as a student here. 
 
 Adieu, my dear Hector; you know 
 how well I love you. Eh, bien, I 
 embrace you "upon the two cheeks 
 and the left eye," as they say. If you 
 are still with Courtepe"e,* tell him that 
 I send him, also, a warm grasp of the 
 hand. 
 
 I hope that you are u both well. If 
 you are having the same weather as 
 with us you ought to do some fine 
 things. Adieu, dear friend. 
 
 Yours, with all my heart, 
 
 CHARLES GOUNOD. 
 
 MY DEAR ARCHITECT: 
 
 I profit by the opportunity offered by 
 our dear musician to give you a sign 
 of life. I have learned through our 
 great sculptor, Gruyere, that you have 
 had a succession of colds, and I hope 
 that the sunshine of the noble and 
 
 * Architect, assistant to Lefuel.
 
 an 
 
 voluptuous Venice will melt the ice 
 that old winter has heaped up in your 
 brain. 
 
 You have had a great success at the 
 Exposition; all were astonished at your 
 drawings the ambassador and ambas- 
 sadress could not sleep for thinking of 
 them. 
 
 I say nothing of myself; what I have 
 done is of too little importance, and not 
 good enough to merit a line. The mass 
 of our celebrated musician met with 
 great success amongst us, and with the 
 public. It was well performed thanks 
 to the activity he displayed in shaking 
 up the old sleepy-heads. 
 
 If you see Loubens* tell him many 
 things for me; and Courtepe'e, what 
 have you done with him ? Have you 
 succeeded in making him get up when 
 you do, oh, early morning worker ? 
 
 Adieu. If I can be useful or agree- 
 able to you, I am at your service. 
 
 E. HUBERT. 
 
 * Former pupil of the Polytechnic School, 
 friend of Gounod, Hebert, etc.
 
 Murat does not want to add two 
 words; he says he will write you soon. 
 CHARLES GOUNOD. 
 
 That is not true. 
 
 MURAT. 
 
 III. 
 
 To MONSIEUR H. LEFUEL, 
 
 Genoa, Poste Restante. 
 If M. Lefuel does not come to claim 
 his letters at Genoa, please forward 
 this to him at the Academy of France, 
 at Rome. 
 
 VIENNA, Monday, 
 
 August 21, 1842. 
 MY DEAR HECTOR: 
 
 I received, the other week, a letter 
 from Hubert, whom I was the first to 
 write to from Vienna. He informs me 
 that you are somewhere around Genoa, 
 but can not tell me exactly where. As 
 you have neglected me all along my 
 journey, and I have not found, either at 
 Florence, or Venice, or Vienna, a line
 
 213 
 
 from you, I find myself obliged to ask 
 of some mutual friend if, by accident, 
 he happens to know your address and 
 can give it to me. By the reply I 
 received from Hubert, I saw that he 
 had been more fortunate than I, since 
 he knew, at least, where you were, and 
 where he could give you news of him- 
 self while receiving the same from you. 
 You know, however, very well, abomi- 
 nable and unnatural father, how happy 
 would have been your son in seeing 
 a few lines from you; but the whole 
 length of the journey, and not even the 
 first stroke of an "A" ! And I, on my 
 part, how could I write to you ? I 
 wished to do so everywhere, but no- 
 where did you give me the means 
 to do so. Even now, I fear that this 
 letter will find you flown away from 
 where you were, so that this uncer- 
 tainty has decided me to take the pre- 
 caution that you will observe in the 
 address of this letter. If I were near 
 you, wouldn't I scold you right hard! 
 How is it? Have your patriarchal 
 affections, then, degenerated to the
 
 214 
 
 point of having no further need of 
 sending a few of those kind lines of 
 which you know your first-born son 
 is so appreciative? With merely your 
 name and address, if you had not the 
 time to write, I could, at least, have 
 kept you informed of all that has 
 concerned me, and still concerns me to- 
 day things to which I can not believe 
 you indifferent. Finally, dear and well 
 beloved father and friend, now that 
 I have scolded you, I will forget all 
 your iniquities; I pardon you from the 
 bottom of my heart; I have known for 
 a long time that you dislike to write; I 
 know, also, that you do not waste your 
 time, of which I had the proof too often 
 in Rome, to lay to the score of laziness 
 the lack of news from you. So, then, 
 all is forgotten, except yourself. 
 
 I should have been glad to tell you, 
 a long time ago, the good fortune that 
 has happened to me here that is the 
 opportunity of having performed with 
 grand orchestra, on the 8th of Septem- 
 ber, in one of the churches of Vienna, 
 my mass written in Rome^ and played
 
 215 
 
 there at St. Louis-des-Frangais, at the 
 king's fete. It is a great privilege, and 
 one which has never before been ac- 
 corded to any student. I owe it to the 
 acquaintance of some very kind artists 
 who have presented me to people of 
 influence. In Vienna, I work; I see but 
 very few people. I hardly ever go out; 
 I am up to the neck in a requiem with 
 grand orchestra, which will probably be 
 performed in Germany on the ad of 
 November. An offer has already been 
 made me for the performance of my 
 requiem in the church where my mass 
 will be played, but as I do not know 
 how well I shall be satisfied with the 
 execution of the latter, I have not yet 
 decided with regard to the requiem. 
 
 Through the acquaintanceship of 
 Madame Henzel and of Mendelssohn, 
 it is quite possible that I might obtain, 
 in Berlin, a much finer performance 
 than in Vienna, which would have the 
 advantage of placing me in a better 
 position in the opinion of artists. I am 
 still free to accept the offer in this city. 
 If I am satisfied with the execution of
 
 216 
 
 my mass on the 8th of September, I shall 
 decide to give my requiem here; if not, 
 I shall take it to Berlin. Madame Hen- 
 zel, when in Rome, said to me: "When 
 you come to Germany, if you have 
 music to be played, my brother can be 
 of great assistance to you." I wrote to 
 her in Berlin a few days ago, and, as I am 
 to leave here on the i2th of September 
 to make a journey to Munich, Leipzig, 
 Berlin, Dresden, and Prague, I have 
 begged her to inform me if she thinks 
 whether or not I can go to Berlin with 
 prospects of having my music played 
 there. Her reply will influence my de- 
 cision in this respect. If she replies 
 affirmatively, I shall remain in Berlin 
 until the first days of November, and 
 then return directly to Paris; if not, I 
 shall be obliged to return to Vienna, 
 which I can reach in three or four days 
 by railway. There is one 'which goes 
 from Vienna to Olmutz, nearly sixty 
 leagues in length. If I am to remain 
 in Berlin for my requiem, I shall be 
 obliged to arrange my journey differ- 
 ently, in this way: Munich, Prague,
 
 217 
 
 Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin. At any rate, 
 I will inform you when I am certain 
 with regard to it. 
 
 I have many times regretted our 
 beautiful Rome, dear Hector, and I 
 envy the fate of those who are still 
 there. It is almost entirely in the re- 
 membrance of that beautiful country 
 that I now find any delight or happiness. 
 If you knew what all those countries 
 are that I have traversed, when com- 
 pared with Italy! 
 
 The last thing that impressed me viv- 
 idly and profoundly was Venice. You 
 know how beautiful it is ; therefore, I 
 will not lay myself out in descriptions, 
 nor in ecstasies you understand me. 
 
 You have probably learned on your 
 part, dear friend, of the death of our 
 good comrade, Blanchard. It is by the 
 sorrow this event caused me, that I 
 judge what you must have felt you, 
 who were so much more intimately 
 connected with him than I. So you see, 
 my dear friend, how uncertain we are 
 of seeing each other again when we 
 separate, and, although nothing is more
 
 218 
 
 commonplace, there is nothing more ter- 
 ribly necessary to put at the bottom of 
 each letter than: 
 
 Adieu, dear friend, adieu; I embrace 
 you as I love you that is to say, like a 
 friend, like a brother, and always in the 
 hope that we may meet again. 
 
 Adieu yours with all my heart, 
 CHARLES GOUNOD. 
 
 IV. 
 
 MONSIEUR CHARLES GOUNOD, 
 
 47 Rue Pigalle, Paris. 
 
 November 
 MY DEAR GOUNOD: 
 
 I have just read very attentively your 
 choruses in Ulysse. The work, in its 
 entirety, seems to me very remarkable, 
 and the musical interest goes on in- 
 creasing with that of the drama. The 
 double chorus of the Banquet is admir- 
 able, and will produce an exciting effect 
 if properly performed. The Comtdie- 
 Fran$aise neither ought, nor can be, 
 niggardly with regard to your means
 
 219 
 
 of execution. According to my opinion, 
 the music alone will attract the crowd 
 for a great number of presentations. It 
 is, then, in the most direct pecuniary 
 interest of the director to allow to the 
 musical composer a large part of the 
 expense and of the stage-setting of 
 Ulysse ; and I think he will do so. But 
 do not weaken in your demands. It 
 must be done in the right way, or not at 
 all. Be careful about the singers to 
 whom you entrust your solos; a ridicu- 
 lous solo spoils a whole piece. 
 
 On the page turned down at the 
 corner is an error in punctuation in 
 the music, at the commencement of a 
 verse, that I advise you to correct. An 
 artist should not scan in this way; leave 
 that to cheap rhymesters. 
 
 A thousand warm and sincere com- 
 pliments. Yours devotedly, 
 
 H. BERLIOZ.
 
 V. 
 
 MONSIEUR HECTOR LEFUEL, 
 
 20 Rue de Tournon, Paris. 
 
 My DEAR HECTOR: 
 
 I went to your house, nearly a month 
 ago, to inform you of a very important 
 event, to the knowledge of which your 
 ancient title of " friend and father " gives 
 you a special right. I am going to be 
 married next month, to Mademoiselle 
 Anna Zimmerman. We are all perfectly 
 satisfied with this union, which seems 
 to offer the most reliable assurances of 
 lasting happiness. The family is ex- 
 cellent, and I have the good luck to be 
 loved by all its members. 
 
 I am sure, dear friend, that you will 
 rejoice with me most heartily in this new 
 happiness. It will be temporarily dis- 
 turbed, however, by the cruel recalling 
 to our poor Martha* of the same 
 pleasure once tasted by her, the loss of 
 which she now mourns daily. God 
 grant that the affection of my new 
 
 * The widow of Gounod's brother.
 
 221 
 
 companion may console her for the 
 unintentional pain roused in her heart 
 by the joy of this new sister! So it will 
 be, I trust; for these two good creatures 
 are already very sympathetic. 
 
 Adieu, dear Hector, with all my 
 heart. 
 
 CHARLES GOUNOD. 
 
 My affectionate regards to Madame 
 Lefuel. 
 
 VI. 
 
 MONSIEUR PIGNY,* 
 
 Rue d' Enghien, Paris. 
 
 LUCERNE, Tuesday, 
 
 August 28, 1855. 
 MY DEAR AND GOOD PIGNY: 
 
 In the letter received to-day from my 
 mother, she tells me with the thankful 
 feeling of an appreciative heart, of the 
 filial attentions you have shown her 
 since my departure, and of the delicate 
 precautions with which you offered to 
 
 * M. Pigny, architect, had also married a 
 daughter of Zimmerman.
 
 
 surround her, by assisting personally in 
 her removal from the country, a change 
 always troublesome for one of her 
 advanced years, however reduced the 
 undertaking may be by the simplicity 
 of her habits and of her life. 
 
 You who have, as they say, a mother 
 Devotion, a mother Abnegation (I use 
 these words purposely, as epithets do 
 not suffice for hearts of this kind), you 
 will understand me when I tell you that 
 to give to my mother is to give to me 
 what is sweetest and dearest; for it is 
 to supplement and aid me in a work 
 that I shall never accomplish as I wish; 
 that is, to return to my mother a small 
 part of what her long, honorable, and 
 laborious life has lavished for me in 
 cares, sacrifices, anxieties, and devotion 
 of all kinds. In a word, we have been 
 her whole life; she will have been but 
 a part of ours. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Pigny, I am 
 deeply touched at finding you already 
 in relationship so sympathetic with me, 
 and, in addition to the affection with 
 which all regard you here, nothing could
 
 223 
 
 give you a better right and title to a 
 place in my heart than the reverential 
 deference you have so cordially shown to 
 my honored and dearly beloved mother. 
 CHARLES GOUNOD.
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
 A 000 651 009 3