/T^^VXVT T T~< /*>nnT/"\^ ir 1 * 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OK 
 CAUPOHN/A 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 Ml 
 A- 1.0
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS
 
 The Master, Jules Massenet
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 THE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION' DONE AT THE 
 MASTER'S EXPRESS DESIRE 
 
 BY HIS FRIEND 
 
 H. VILLIERS BARNETI 
 
 Authorized Translator of 
 
 H. S. H. the Prince of Monaco's Autobiography: 
 La Carriere fun Navigateur 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, 1919, 
 BY SMALL, MA YNARD & COMPANY 
 
 (lACOBI'OBATED)
 
 TO 
 LUCY ARBELL 
 
 CONSUMMATE DRAMATIC ARTIST 
 
 AND 
 GREATEST CONTRALTO SINGER 
 
 OF OUR TIME 
 IN AFFECTIONATE ADMIRATION 
 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 THIS ENGLISH VERSION 
 OF HER 
 
 BELOVED MASTER'S BOOK 
 
 "Chere amie, gardez aussi sa religion, ft qu'elle vous conduise, 
 ferme et courageuse, an milieu des cahots de la vie, jusquau paradis 
 des arts"
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 I Have been often asked whether I put together 
 the recollections of my life from notes jotted 
 down from day to day. To tell the truth I did, 
 and this is how I began the habit of doing so reg- 
 ularly. 
 
 My mother a model wife and mother, who 
 taught me the difference between right and wrong 
 said to me on my tenth birthday: 
 
 "Here is a diary." (It was one of those long- 
 shaped diaries which one found in those days at 
 the little Bon Marche, not the immense enterprise 
 we know now.) "And," she added, "every 
 night before you go to bed, you must write down 
 on the pages of this memento what you have seen, 
 said, or done during the day. If you have said 
 or done anything which you realize is wrong, you 
 must confess it in writing in these pages. Per- 
 haps it will make you hesitate to do wrong dur- 
 ing the day." 
 
 How characteristic of an unusual woman, a 
 woman of upright mind and honest heart this
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 idea was! By placing the matter of conscience 
 among the first of her son's duties, she made Con- 
 science the very basis of her methods of teaching. 
 
 Once when I was alone, in search of some dis- 
 traction I amused myself by foraging in the cup- 
 boards where I found some squares of chocolate. 
 I broke off a square and munched it. I have said 
 somewhere that I am greedy. I don't deny it. 
 Here's another proof. 
 
 When evening came and I had to write the ac- 
 count of my day, I admit that I hesitated a mo- 
 ment about mentioning that delicious square of 
 chocolate. But my conscience put to the test in 
 this way conquered, and I bravely recorded my 
 dereliction in the diary. 
 
 The thought that my mother would read about 
 my misdeed made me rather shamefaced. She 
 came in at that very moment and saw my con- 
 fusion; but directly she knew the cause she 
 clasped me in her arms and said: 
 
 "You have acted like an honest man and I for- 
 give you. All the same that is no reason why 
 you should ever again eat chocolate on the sly!" 
 
 Later on, when I munched other and better 
 chocolate, I always obtained permission.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 Thus it came about that from day to day I have 
 always made notes of my recollections be they 
 good or bad, gay or sad, happy or not, and kept 
 them so that I might have them constantly in 
 mind.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD vu 
 
 I MY ADMISSION TO THE CONSERVATOIRE . . 1 
 
 II YOUTHFUL YEARS 11 
 
 III THE GRAND PRDC DE ROME 20 
 
 IV THE VILLA MEDICI 29 
 
 V THE VILLA MEDICI (CONTINUED) ... 37 
 
 VI THE VILLA MEDICI (CONTINUED) ... 43 
 
 VII MY RETURN TO PARIS 53 
 
 VIII MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 63 
 
 IX THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR 74 
 
 X JOY AND SORROW 82 
 
 XI MY DEBUT AT THE OPERA 93 
 
 XII THE THEATERS IN ITALY 103 
 
 XIII THE CONSERVATOIRE AND THE INSTITUTE . 114 
 
 XIV A FIRST PERFORMANCE AT BRUSSELS . . . 123 
 XV THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA-COMIQUE 136 
 
 XVI FIVE COLLABORATORS 148 
 
 XVII A JOURNEY TO GERMANY 161 
 
 XVIII A STAR 173 
 
 XIX A NEW LIFE .... 186
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XX MILAN LONDON BAYREUTH .... 199 
 
 XXI A VISIT TO VERDI FAREWELL TO AM- 
 
 BROISE THOMAS 208 
 
 XXII WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 217 
 
 XXIII IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES . . 231 
 
 XXIV FROM Cherubin TO Therese 242 
 
 XXV SPEAKING OF 1793 254 
 
 XXVI FROM Ariane TO Don Quichotte .... 267 
 
 XXVII A SOIREE .......... 278 
 
 XXVIII DEAR EMOTIONS 288 
 
 XXIX THOUGHTS AFTER DEATH . . 302
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Master, Jules Massenet . . . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE: 
 Massenet at Egreville ...... 44 
 
 One of the last portraits of Massenet . . .68 
 
 Mme. Pauline Viardot ...... 84 
 
 Titta Ruffo, Caruso and Chaliapine . . . .110 
 
 The Forum from the First Act of Roma (See page SOO) 154 
 Posthumia (Roma) (Seepage 297) . . . .170 
 
 Lucy Arbell 212 
 
 Persephone in Ariane ...... 244 
 
 Queen Amahelly (Bacchus) ..... 268 
 
 Dulcinee (Dora Quichotte) 282 
 
 Facsimile of Massenet's Reply to an Invitation to 
 
 Visit America 296
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MY ADMISSION TO THE CONSERVATOIRE 
 
 Were I to live a thousand years which is 
 hardly likely I should never forget that fateful 
 day, February 24, 1848, when I was just six 
 years old. Not so much because it coincided 
 with the fall of the Monarchy of July, as that it 
 marked the first steps of my musical career a 
 career which, even yet, I am not sure was my real 
 destiny, so great is my love for the exact sciences ! 
 
 At that time I lived with my parents in the 
 Rue de Beaune in an apartment overlooking the 
 great gardens. The day promised to be fine, but 
 it was very cold. 
 
 We were at luncheon when the waitress rushed 
 into the room like a maniac. "Aux armes, citoy- 
 ens!" she yelled, throwing rather than placing 
 the plates on the table. 
 
 I was too young to understand what was going 
 on in the streets. All I can remember is that 
 
 1
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 riots broke out and that the Revolution smashed 
 the throne of the most debonair of kings. The 
 feelings which stirred my father were entirely dif- 
 ferent from those which disturbed my mother's 
 already distracted soul. My father had been an 
 officer under Napoleon Bonaparte and a friend 
 of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia. He was all 
 for the Emperor, and the atmosphere of battles 
 suited his temperament. My mother, on the 
 other hand, had experienced the sorrows of the 
 first great revolution, which dragged Louis XVI 
 and Marie Antoinette from their throne, and 
 thrilled with worship for the Bourbons. 
 
 The memory of that exciting meal remained 
 the more deeply fixed in my mind because on the 
 morning of that historic day, by the light of tal- 
 low candles (wax candles were only for the rich) 
 my mother for the first time placed my fingers 
 on the piano. 
 
 In order best to introduce me to the knowledge 
 of this instrument, my mother she was my 
 music teacher stretched along the keyboard a 
 strip of paper upon which she wrote the notes 
 corresponding to each of the black and white 
 keys, with their position on the five lines. It was 
 most ingenious; no mistake was possible. 
 
 2
 
 THE CONSERVATOIRE 
 
 My progress on the piano was so pronounced 
 that three years later, in October, 1851, my pa- 
 rents thought I ought to apply at the Conserva- 
 toire for the entrance examination to the piano 
 classes. 
 
 One morning that month we went to the Rue 
 de Faubourg-Poissonniere. The Conservatoire 
 National de Musique was there then, and it re- 
 mained there until it was moved to the Rue de 
 Madrid. The large room we entered like all 
 the rest in the place at that time had walls 
 painted a bluish gray, spotted with black. A 
 few old benches were the only furniture in this 
 anteroom. 
 
 M. Ferriere, a harsh, severe looking man he 
 was one of the upper employees came out to 
 call the candidates by flinging their names into 
 the crowd of relatives and friends that accom- 
 panied them. It was like summoning the con- 
 demned to execution. Then he gave each can- 
 didate the number of his turn before the jury 
 which had already assembled in the rooms where 
 the sessions were held. 
 
 This room was intended for examinations and 
 was a sort of small theater with a row of boxes and 
 a circular gallery in the Consulate style. I con- 
 
 3
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 fess that I have never entered that room without 
 feeling emotion. I have always fancied that I 
 saw, seated opposite in a first-tier box, as in a 
 black hole, Bonaparte, the First Consul, and Jos- 
 ephine, the sweet companion of his early years. 
 He with his forceful, handsome face ; she with her 
 kind and gentle glances, for both used to come to 
 such occasions. By her visits to this sanctuary 
 dedicated to Art and by bringing him, so preoccu- 
 pied with many cares, good and noble Josephine 
 seemed to wish to soften his thoughts and to 
 make them less stern by contact with the youth 
 who some day perforce would not escape the hor- 
 rors of war. 
 
 From the time of Sarette, the first director, un- 
 til recently, all the examinations for classes in the 
 institution, both tragedy and comedy, were held 
 in this same small hall, but it should not be con- 
 fused with the hall so well known as the Salle de 
 la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire. 
 
 The organ class was also held there several 
 times a week for at the back, hidden behind a 
 large curtain, was a great organ with two key- 
 boards. Beside that old, worn, squeaky instru- 
 ment was the fateful door through which the pu- 
 pils came on to the platform that formed the 
 
 4
 
 THE CONSERVATOIRE 
 
 small stage. Again, this same small hall, for 
 many a year, was the judgment seat for the award 
 of prizes for musical composition known as the 
 Prix de Rome. 
 
 But to return to the morning of October 9, 
 1851. When all the youngsters had been in- 
 formed of the order in which we must take our 
 examinations, we went into an adjoining room 
 which led into the hall through the "fateful" 
 door, and which was only a sort of dusty, disor- 
 dered garret. 
 
 The jury whose verdict we had to face was 
 composed of Halevy, Carafa, Ambroise Thomas, 
 several professors of the school, and the director, 
 who was also the president of the Conservatoire, 
 Monsieur Auber. We rarely said just Auber 
 when we spoke of this French master, the most 
 eminent and prolific of all who made the opera 
 and opera-comique of that time famous. 
 
 At this time Monsieur Auber was sixty-five. 
 He was universally respected and everyone at the 
 Conservatoire adored him. I shall always re- 
 member his pleasing, unusually bright black 
 eyes, which remained the same until his death in 
 May, 1871. 
 
 May, 1871 ! We were then in open insurrec- 
 5
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 > .. 
 
 tion, almost in the last throes of the Commune 
 . . . and Monsieur Auber, still faithful to his 
 beloved boulevard near the Passage de 1'Opera 
 his favorite walk met a friend also in despair 
 over the terrible days we were passing through, 
 and said to him, in an accent of utter weariness, 
 
 "Ah! I have lived too long!" Then he 
 added, with a slight smile, "One should never 
 abuse anything." 
 
 In 1851 the date when I became acquainted 
 with Monsieur Auber he had already lived a 
 long time in his old mansion in the Rue St. 
 George, where I remember having been received 
 soon after seven in the morning, the master's 
 work was finished by that time, the hour at which 
 he gave himself to the calls he welcomed so sim- 
 ply. 
 
 Then he went to the Conservatoire in a tilbury 
 which he ordinarily drove himself. At sight 
 of him one was instantly reminded of the opera 
 La Muette de Portici, which had exceptional 
 good luck, and which was the most lasting success 
 before Robert le Diable made its appearance at 
 the Opera. To speak of La Muette de Portici is 
 to be vividly reminded of the magical effect which 
 the duet in the second act, Amour sacre de la 
 
 6
 
 THE CONSERVATOIRE 
 
 patrie, produced on the patriots in the audience 
 when it was produced at the Theatre de la Mon- 
 naie at Brussels. In very truth it gave the signal 
 for the revolution which broke out in Belgium in 
 1830 and which brought about the independence 
 of our neighbors on the north. The whole audi- 
 ence was wild with excitement, and sang the 
 heroic strain with the artists, repeating it again 
 and again without stopping. What master can 
 boast of a success like that in his own career? 
 
 When my name was called, all of a tremble, I 
 made my appearance on the stage. I was only 
 nine years old and I had to play the finale of Bee- 
 thoven's Sonata, Opus 29. What ambition ! 
 
 They stopped me in the usual way after I had 
 played two or three pages. I was utterly embar- 
 rassed as I heard Monsieur Auber's voice calling 
 me before the jury. To get down from the stage, 
 I had to descend two or three steps. I paid no 
 attention to them and would have gone head first 
 if Monsieur Auber had not kindly called out, 
 "Take care, my little man." Then he immedi- 
 ately asked me where I had studied so well. 
 After replying with some pride that my mother 
 had been my only teacher, I went out, absolutely 
 
 7
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 bewildered, almost at a run, but entirely happy. 
 He had spoken to me ! 
 
 Next morning my mother received the official 
 notice. I was a pupil at the Conservatoire. 
 
 At this time there were two teachers of the 
 piano at the great school Mamontel and Laur- 
 ent. There were no preparatory classes. I was 
 assigned to Laurent's class, and I remained there 
 two years while I continued my classical studies 
 at college. At the same time I took sol-fa lessons 
 from M. Savard who was excellent. 
 
 Professor Laurent had been Premier Prix de 
 piano under Louis XVIII. Then he was a cav- 
 alry officer, but left the army to become a profes- 
 sor in the Royal Conservatoire of Music. He 
 was goodness itself, realizing the ideal of that 
 quality in the fullest sense of the word. He 
 placed entire confidence in me. 
 
 M. Savard was an extraordinarily erudite man. 
 He was the father of one of my pupils, a Grand 
 Prix de Rome, now the director of the Conserva- 
 toire at Lyons. (What a number of my old pu- 
 pils are or have been directors of conservatoires ! ) 
 His heart was as large as his learning was exten- 
 sive. It is pleasant to recall that when I wanted 
 to work at counterpoint, before I entered the class 
 
 8
 
 THE CONSERVATOIRE 
 
 in fugue and composition Ambroise Thomas 
 was the professor M. Savard was quite willing 
 to give me lessons. I went to his house to take 
 them, and every evening I went down from Mont- 
 martre where I lived to Number 13, Rue de la 
 Vielle-Estrpade, behind the Pantheon. 
 
 What wonderful lessons I had from that sim- 
 ple, learned man! How courageous I was as I 
 walked the long way I had to go to his house from 
 which I returned each evening about ten o'clock 
 full of the wise and learned advice he had given 
 me! 
 
 As I said, I made the trip on foot. I did not 
 even ride on the top of an omnibus in order to set 
 aside sou by sou the price I would have to pay for 
 my lessons. I had to follow this system; the 
 shade of Descartes would have congratulated me. 
 
 But note the delicacy of that charitable- 
 hearted man. When the day came for him to 
 take what I owed him, M. Savard told me that he 
 had some work for me the transcription for a 
 full orchestra of the military band accompani- 
 ment U Adolphe Adam's mass, and he added 
 that the work would net me three hundred 
 francs ! ! . . . 
 
 His purpose was obvious, but I did not see it. 
 9
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 It was not till long afterwards that I understood 
 that M. Savard had thought of this way of not ask- 
 ing me for money by making me think that the 
 three hundred francs represented the fee for his 
 lessons; that, to use a fashionable phrase, they 
 "compensated" him. 
 
 After all the years which have gone since he 
 was no more, my heart still says to that master, 
 to that charming, admirable soul, "Thank you!" 
 
 10
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 YOUTHFUL YEARS 
 
 When I took my seat on the benches of the 
 Conservatoire, I was rather delicate and not very 
 tall. This was the excuse for the drawing which 
 the celebrated caricaturist Cham made of me. 
 He was a great friend of the family and often 
 came to spend the evening with my parents. 
 They had many talks which the brilliant crafts- 
 man enlivened with his sprightly and witty en- 
 thusiasms, seated around the family table lighted 
 by the dim light of an oil lamp. (Kerosene was 
 scarcely known and electricity had not come into 
 use for lighting.) 
 
 We used to drink a sweet syrup on such occa- 
 sions, for this was before a cup of tea was the 
 fashionable drink. 
 
 I was often asked to play, so that Cham had 
 every opportunity to draw my profile. He rep- 
 resented me as seated on five or six folios of music 
 with my hands in the air, scarcely reaching the 
 
 11
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 keyboard. This was obviously an exaggeration, 
 but there was enough truth in it to show that it 
 was founded on fact. 
 
 I often went with Cham to see a lovely and lov- 
 able friend of his in the Rue Tarranne. Natu- 
 rally I was asked to "play the piano." I remem- 
 ber that on one evening when I was asked to play 
 I had just received third place in a prize competi- 
 tion both on the piano and in solfeggio, and to 
 prove it I had two heavy bronze medals inscribed 
 "Conservatoire imperial de musique et de decla- 
 mation." It is true that they listened to me no 
 better on this account, but I was affected by the 
 honor nevertheless. 
 
 Some years later, in the natural course of 
 events, I learned that Cham had secretly married 
 the beautiful lady of the Rue Tarranne. As he 
 was somewhat embarrassed by the marriage, he 
 did not send announcement cards to his friends, 
 much to their surprise. When they asked him 
 about it, he replied, wittily, 
 
 "Of course I sent announcements. . . . They 
 were anonymous." 
 
 In spite of my mother's extreme watchfulness, 
 I escaped from home one evening. I knew that 
 they were giving Berlioz's UEnfance du Christ 
 
 12
 
 YOUTHFUL YEARS 
 
 at the Opera-Comique and that the great com- 
 poser was to conduct. I could not pay my way 
 in, but I had an irresistible desire to hear the 
 work, especially as it was a creation of Berlioz's, 
 who aroused the enthusiasm of all our young peo- 
 ple. So I asked my companions who sang in 
 the children's chorus to take me in and let me 
 hide among them. I must confess that I secretly 
 wanted to get behind the scenes of a theater. 
 
 As might be imagined, my escapade rather 
 upset my mother. She waited up for me until 
 after midnight . . . she thought I was lost in 
 this vast Paris. 
 
 Needless to say that, when I came in abashed 
 and shamefaced, I was well scolded. I bore up 
 under two storms of tears if it is true that a 
 woman's wrath, like the rain in the forests, falls 
 twice; still, a mother's heart cannot bear anger 
 forever and I went to bed made easy on that 
 scare. Nevertheless I could not sleep. I re- 
 called all the beauties of the work I had just 
 heard and before my mind's eye I saw again the 
 tall and impressive figure of Berlioz as he directed 
 the superb performance in masterly style. 
 
 My life ran on happily and industriously, but 
 this did not last. The doctors ordered my 
 
 13
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 father to leave Paris, as the climate did not agree 
 with him, and to take treatment at Aix-les-Bains 
 in Savoy. My mother and father followed this 
 advice and went to Chambery taking me with 
 them. My artistic career was interrupted, but 
 there was nothing else for me to do. 
 
 I stayed at Chambery for two long years ; still 
 the life there was not monotonous. I passed the 
 time in classical studies, alternating with diligent 
 work on scales and arpeggios, sixths and thirds, 
 as if I were going to be a fiery pianist. I wore 
 my hair ridiculously long, as was the style with 
 every virtuoso, and this touch of resemblance 
 harmonized with my dreams. It seemed to me 
 that wild locks of hair were the complement of 
 talent. 
 
 Between times I took long rambles through the 
 delightful country of Savoy which was still ruled 
 by the King of Piemont; sometimes I went to the 
 Dent de Nicolet, sometimes as far as Les Charm- 
 ettes, that picturesque dwelling made famous by 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau's stay there. 
 
 During my enforced rustication I found, by 
 sheer accident, some of Schumann's works which 
 were then little known in France and still less in 
 Piemont. I shall always remember that every* 
 
 14
 
 YOUTHFUL YEARS 
 
 where I went I did my share by playing a few 
 pieces on the piano. I sometimes played that 
 exquisite thing entitled Au Soir and that brought 
 me one day this singular invitation, "Come and 
 amuse us with your Schumann with its detestable 
 false notes." It is unnecessary to repeat my 
 childish outburst at these words. What would 
 the good old people of Savoy say if they could 
 hear the music of to-day? 
 
 But the months went on, and on, and on . . < 
 until one morning, before the first signs of day- 
 break had come over the mountains, I escaped 
 from the paternal homestead and started for 
 Paris without a sou or even a change of clothes. 
 For Paris, the city with every artistic attraction, 
 where I should see again my dear Conservatoire, 
 my masters, and the "behind the scenes," for the 
 memory of them was still with me. 
 
 I knew that in Paris I should find my good 
 older sister, who, in spite of her modest means, 
 welcomed me as though I were her own child 
 and offered me board and lodging; a very simple 
 lodging and a very frugal table, but made so 
 delightful by the magic of greatest kindliness 
 that I felt exactly as though I were in my own 
 home. 
 
 15
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Imperceptibly my mother forgave me for run- 
 ning away to Paris. 
 
 What a good devoted creature my sister was! 
 Alas ! she died January 13, 1905, just as she was 
 glorying in attending the five hundredth perform- 
 ance of Manon, which took place the very evening 
 of her death. Nothing can express the sorrow I 
 felt. 
 
 In the space of two years I had made up for 
 the time I had lost in Savoy and I had won a 
 prize. I was awarded a first prize on the piano, 
 as well as one in counterpoint and fugue, on July 
 26, 1859. 
 
 I had to compete with ten of my fellow stu- 
 dents and by chance my name was number eleven 
 in the order. All the contestants were shut up 
 in the foyer of the concert hall of the Conserva- 
 toire to wait until their names were called. 
 
 For a moment Number Eleven found himself 
 alone in the foyer. While waiting for my turn, 
 I studied respectfully the portrait of Habeneck, 
 the founder and the first conductor of the orches- 
 tra of the Societe des Concerts. A red handker- 
 chief actually blossomed in his left buttonhole. 
 If he had become an officer of the Legion of 
 
 16
 
 YOUTHFUL YEARS 
 
 Honor and had several orders to accompany that, 
 he certainly would have worn, not a rosette, but 
 a rose. 
 
 Then I was called. 
 
 The test piece was the concerto in F minor by 
 Ferdinand Hiller. At the time it was pretended 
 that his music was so like that of Niels Gade that 
 they would think it was Mendelssohn's. 
 
 My good master M. Laurent stayed close to 
 the piano. When I had finished concerto and 
 sight reading he threw his arms about me with- 
 out thought of the public which filled the hall and 
 I felt my face grow moist from his dear tears. 
 
 Even at that age, I was apprehensive about suc- 
 cess, and during my whole life I have always fled 
 from public rehearsals and first nights, thinking 
 it better to learn the worst ... as late as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 I raced all the way home, running like a gamin, 
 but I found no one there, for my sister had gone 
 to the prize contest. However I did not stay 
 long, for I finally decided to go back to the Con- 
 servatoire. I was so excited that I ran all the 
 way. At the corner of the Rue Sainte-Cecile I 
 met my boon companion Alphonse Duvernoy, 
 whose after career as a teacher and composer was 
 
 17
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 most successful, and I fell into his arms. He 
 told me what I might have known already, that 
 Monsieur Auber had announced the decision for 
 the jury, "Monsieur Massenet is awarded the first 
 prize on the piano." 
 
 One of the jury was Henri Ravina, a master 
 who was one of the dearest friends I ever had, 
 and my thoughts go out to him in affectionate 
 gratitude. 
 
 I scarcely touched the ground in getting from 
 the Rue Bergere to the Rue de Bourgogne where 
 my excellent master M. Laurent lived. I found 
 my old professor at lunch with several generals 
 who had been his comrades in the army. 
 
 He had hardly caught sight of me when he 
 held out two volumes to me: the orchestral 
 score of Le Nozze di Figaro, dramma giocoso 
 in quarti atti. Messo in musica dal Signor W . 
 Mozart. 
 
 The binding bore the arms of Louis XVIII and 
 the following superscription in gold letters: 
 Menus plaisirs du Roi. ficole royale de mu- 
 sique et de declamation. Concours de 1822. 
 Premier prix de piano decerne a M. Laurent. 
 
 My honored master had written on the first 
 page: 
 
 18
 
 YOUTHFUL YEARS 
 
 "Thirty-seven years ago I won, as you have 
 done, my child, the prize for the piano. I do 
 not think that there is any more pleasing gift I 
 could give you than this with my sincerest friend- 
 ship. Go on as you have begun and you will be 
 a great artist. 
 
 "This is the opinion of the jury which to-day 
 awarded you this fine reward. 
 
 "Your old friend and professor, 
 
 "LAURENT." 
 
 It was indeed a fine thing for an honored pro- 
 fessor to speak like this to a youth who had 
 hardly begun his career. 
 
 19
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GRAND PRIX DE ROME 
 
 So I had won the first prize on the piano. I 
 was doubtless as fortunate as I was proud, but 
 it was out of the question for me to live on the 
 memory of this distinction. The necessities of 
 life were pressing, inexorable, and they de- 
 manded something more real and above all more 
 practicable. I really could not go on accepting 
 my dear sister's hospitality without contributing 
 my personal expenses. So to ease the situation 
 I gave lessons in solfeggio and on the piano in a 
 poor little school in the neighborhood. The re- 
 turns were small, but the labor was great. Thus 
 I drew out a precarious and often difficult exist- 
 ence. I was offered the post of pianist in one of 
 the large cafes in Belleville; it was the first cafe 
 to provide music, a scheme invented to hold the 
 customers, if not to distract them. The place 
 paid me thirty francs a month ! 
 
 Quantum mutatus. . . . Like the poet I may 
 say, "What changes since that time?" To-day 
 even the young pupils have only to enter a com- 
 
 20
 
 THE GRAND PRIX DE ROME 
 
 petition to get their pictures in the papers and at 
 the very outset of their careers they are anointed 
 great men. All this is accompanied by Baccha- 
 nalian lines and they are fortunate if in their ex- 
 alted triumph they do not add the word "colos- 
 sal." That is glory; deification in all its mod- 
 esty. In 1859 we were not glorified in any such 
 way. 
 
 But Providence some called it Destiny 
 watched over me. 
 
 A friend, who to my great joy is still living, 
 got me better lessons. He was not like so many 
 friends I met later, who are ever in need of one's 
 assistance ; those who slink away when you want 
 to be comforted in poverty; the friends who are 
 always pretending that they defended you last 
 night against malevolent attacks in order to show 
 you their fine opinions, but at the same time tor- 
 turing you by repeating the wounding words di- 
 rected at you. I must add, however, that I have 
 had truly genuine friendships, as I have found in 
 my hours of weariness and discouragement. 
 
 The Theatre-Lyrique was then on the Boule- 
 vard du Temple and it gave me a place in its or- 
 chestra as kettle-drummer. Then, good Father 
 Strauss, the orchestra leader at the Opera balls, 
 
 21
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 let me play the bass drum, the kettle-drums, the 
 tam-tam, and all the rest of the resonant instru- 
 ments. It was dreadfully tiring to sit up every 
 Saturday from midnight until six in the morning, 
 but all told I managed to make eighty francs a 
 month. I felt as rich as a banker and as happy 
 as a cobbler. 
 
 The Theatre-Lyrique was founded by the elder 
 Alexander Dumas as the Theatre-Historique, and 
 was established by Adolphe Adam. 
 
 I was living at the time at No. 5, Rue de Men- 
 ilmontant, in a huge building, almost a city in 
 itself. My neighbors on the floor, separated 
 only by a narrow partition, were the clowns 
 both men and women of the Cirque Napoleon 
 which was near our house. 
 
 From my attic window I was able to enjoy 
 for nothing of course whiffs from the orchestra 
 which escaped from the popular concerts that 
 Pasdeloup conducted in the circus every Sunday. 
 This happened whenever the audience packed in 
 the overheated hall shouted loudly for air and 
 they opened the casement windows on the third 
 floor to satisfy them. 
 
 From my perch that is the only thing to call 
 it I applauded with feverish joy the overture of 
 
 22
 
 THE GRAND PRIX DE ROME 
 
 Tannhauser, the Symphonie Fantastique, in 
 short the music of my gods : Wagner and Berlioz. 
 
 Every evening at six o'clock the theater be- 
 gan very early I went by the way of the Rue des 
 Fosses-du-Temple, near my house, to the stage 
 door of the Theatre-Lyrique. In those days the 
 left side of the Boulevard du Temple was one 
 unbroken line of theaters. Consequently I went 
 along the back of the Funambules, the Petit-La- 
 zari, the Delassements-Comiques, the Cirque Im- 
 perial and the Gaite. Those who did not know 
 that corner of Paris in 1859 can have no idea 
 of it. 
 
 The Rue des Fosses-du-Temple, on which all 
 the stage doors opened, was a sort of wonderland 
 where all the supers, male and female, from all 
 the theaters waited in great crowds on the dimly 
 lighted pavements. The atmosphere was full of 
 vermin and microbes. Even in our Theatre- 
 Lyrique the musicians' dressing room was only 
 an old stable in which the horses used in his- 
 torical plays were kept. 
 
 Still, my delight was too great for words and I 
 felt that I was to be envied as I sat in the fine or- 
 chestra which Deloffre conducted. Ah! those 
 rehearsals of Faust! My happiness could not 
 
 23
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 be expressed when, from my own little corner, I 
 could leisurely devour with my eyes our great 
 Gounod who managed our work from the stage. 
 
 Many times later on when we came out, side 
 by side, from the sessions of the Institute 
 Gounod lived in the Place Malesherbes we 
 talked over the time when Faust now past its 
 thousandth performance was such a subject for 
 discussion and criticism in the press, while the 
 dear public which is rarely deceived ap- 
 plauded it. 
 
 Vox Populi, vox Dei! 
 
 I also remember that while I was in the orches- 
 tra I assisted at the performances of Reyer's La 
 Statue, a superb score and a tremendous success. 
 
 I can still see Reyer in the wings during the 
 performances eluding the firemen and smoking 
 interminable cigars. It was a habit he could not 
 give up. One day I heard him tell about being 
 in Abbe Liszt's room in Rome. The walls were 
 covered with religious pictures Christ, the Vir- 
 gin, and the Saints and he blew out a cloud of 
 smoke which filled the room. In reply to his 
 witty excuses about incommoding the "august 
 persons," he drew the following reply from the 
 
 24
 
 THE GRAND PRIX DE ROME 
 
 great abbe. "No," said Liszt, "it is always in- 
 cense." 
 
 For six months, under the same conditions of 
 work, I substituted for one of my fellows in the 
 orchestra at the Theatre-Italien. 
 
 As I had heard the admirable Mme. Miolan- 
 Carvalho in Faust excellent singing I now 
 heard the tragediennes like Penco and Frezzolini 
 and such men as Mario, Graziani, Delle Sedie, 
 and the buffo Zucchini. 
 
 The last is no longer alive and our great Lu- 
 cien Fugere of the Opera-Comique of to-day re- 
 minds me of him almost exactly. There is the 
 same powerful voice and the same perfect artistic 
 comedy. 
 
 But the time for the competition of the Insti- 
 tute approached. During our residence en loge 
 at the Institute we had to pay for our meals for 
 twenty-five days and also the rent of a piano. I 
 got out of that difficulty as best I could; at any 
 rate I forestalled it. All the same the money I 
 i.ad been able to put aside was insufficient and 
 acting on the advice of a friend (giving and act- 
 ing on advice are two entirely different things) 
 I went to a pawnshop and pawned my watch . . . 
 
 25
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 a gold one. It had adorned my fob since the 
 morning of my first communion. Alas ! it must 
 have been light weight, for they offered me only 
 . . . sixteen francs ! ! ! This odd sum, how- 
 ever, enabled me to pay for my meals. 
 
 But the charge for the piano was so exorbi- 
 tant twenty francs! that I couldn't afford it. 
 I did without it much more easily, for I have 
 never needed its help in composing. 
 
 I would have hardly imagined that my neigh- 
 bors would have bothered me so by their pound- 
 ing on their pianos and by their singing at the 
 top of their lungs. It was impossible to divert 
 my thoughts or to escape their noise, as I had 
 no piano, and, in addition, the corridors of our 
 garrets were unusually reverberant. 
 
 On my way to the Saturday sittings of the 
 Academic des Beaux- Arts I often cast a sad glance 
 at the grated window of my cell; it can be seen 
 from the Cour Mazarine to the right in a recess. 
 Yes, my glance is sad, for I left behind those old 
 bars the dearest and most affecting recollections 
 of my youth, and because they cause me to reflect 
 on the unhappy times in my long life. 
 
 In the trial competition in 1863 I was exam- 
 ined first and I kept the same place in the choral 
 
 26
 
 THE GRAND PRIX DE ROME 
 
 work. The first test was in the large hall of the 
 cole des Beaux- Arts which is entered from the 
 Quai Malaquais. 
 
 The final decision was made the next day in 
 the hall used for the regular sittings of the Acad- 
 emic des Beaux-Arts. 
 
 My interpreters were Mme. Van den Heuvel- 
 Duprez, Roger and Bonnehee, all three from the 
 Opera. With such artists I had to triumph. 
 And that is what happened ! 
 
 I went in first there were six competitors 
 and as at that time one could not listen to the 
 work of the other candidates I went wander- 
 ing haphazard down to the Rue Mazarine . . . 
 on the Pont des Arts . . . and, finally, in the 
 square court of the Louvre where I sat down on 
 one of the iron seats. 
 
 I heard five o'clock strike. I was very anx- 
 ious. "All must be over by now," I said to my- 
 self. I had guessed right, for suddenly I saw 
 under the arch three people chatting together 
 and recognized Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas and 
 Monsieur Auber. 
 
 Flight was impossible. They were in front 
 of me almost as if they barred my escape. 
 
 Ambroise Thomas, my beloved master, came 
 27
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 towards me and said, "Embrace Berlioz, you owe 
 him a great deal for your prize." 
 
 "The prize" I cried, bewildered, my face shin- 
 ing with joy. "I have the prize!!!" I was 
 deeply moved and I embraced Berlioz, then my 
 master, and finally Monsieur Auber. 
 
 Monsieur Auber comforted me. Did I need 
 comforting? Then he said to Berlioz pointing 
 tome, 
 
 "He'll go far, the young rascal, when he's had 
 less experience!" 
 
 28
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 The winners of the Grand Prix de Rome for 
 1863 in painting, sculpture, architecture, and 
 engraving, were Layraud and Monchablon, Bour- 
 geois, Brune and Chaplain. Custom decreed 
 it still does that we should all go to the Villa 
 Medici together and should visit Italy. What a 
 changed and ideal life mine now was ! The Min- 
 ister of Finance sent me six hundred francs and 
 a passport in the name of Napoleon III, signed 
 by Drouyns de Luys, Minister of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 I then met my new companions and we went 
 to pay the formal calls on the members of the 
 Institute before our departure for the Academic 
 de France at Rome. 
 
 On the day after Christmas, in three open car- 
 riages, we started to pay our official calls which 
 took us into every quarter of Paris where our 
 patrons lived. 
 
 The three carriages, crowded with young men, 
 real rapins, I had almost said gamins, mad with 
 
 29
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 success and intoxicated by thoughts of the future, 
 made a veritable scandal in the streets. 
 
 Nearly all the gentlemen of the Institute sent 
 out word that they were not at home to avoid 
 making a speech. M. Hirtoff, the famous archi- 
 tect, who lived in the Rue Lamartine, put on less 
 airs and shouted out to his servant from his bed- 
 room, "Tell them I'm not in." 
 
 I recall that of old the professors accompanied 
 their pupils as far as the starting place of the 
 diligences in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. 
 One day as the heavy diligence with the students 
 packed on the rear the cheapest places which 
 exposed them to all the dust of the road was 
 about to start on the long journey from Paris to 
 Rome, M. Couder, Louis Philippe's favorite 
 painter, was heard to say impressively to his spe- 
 cial pupil, "Above all don't forget my style." 
 This was a delightfully nai've remark, but it was 
 touching nevertheless. He was the painter of 
 whom the king said, after he had given him an 
 order for the museum at Versailles, "M. Couder 
 pleases me. His drawing is correct; his coloring 
 satisfies, and he is not dear." 
 
 Oh, the good, simple times, when words meant 
 what they seemed to and admiration was just 
 
 30
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 without that deifying bombast that is so readily 
 heaped on one to-day! 
 
 I broke the custom and went on alone after 
 making arrangements to meet my comrades on 
 the road to Genoa where I would overtake them 
 driving an enormous coach drawn by five horses. 
 My plans were first to stop at Nice, where my 
 father was buried, and then to go to embrace my 
 mother who was living at Bordighera. She had 
 a modest villa in a pleasant location in a forest 
 of palms overlooking the sea. I spent New 
 Year's with my mother, the anniversary of my 
 father's death, hours filled to overflowing with 
 tenderness. All too soon I had to leave her, for 
 my joyous comrades awaited me in their carriage 
 on the road of the Italian La Corniche. My tears 
 turned to laughter. Such is youth ! 
 
 Our first stop was at Loano about eight o'clock 
 in the evening. 
 
 I have confessed that I was almost gay and 
 this is true. Nevertheless I was a prey to in- 
 definite thoughts; I felt myself almost a man, 
 henceforth to be alone in life. I pondered over 
 such thoughts, too reasonable perhaps for my 
 years, while Italy's blossoming mimosas, lemon 
 trees and myrtles threw around me their sweet 
 
 31
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 disturbing odors. What a pleasant contrast it 
 was for me who until then had only known the 
 sour smell of the faubourgs of Paris, the trampled 
 grass of their fortifications, and the perfume I 
 mean perfume of my beloved wings of the 
 stage. 
 
 We spent two days in Genoa visiting the 
 Campo-Santo, the city's cemetery, so rich in the 
 finest marble monuments, reputed to be the most 
 beautiful in Italy. After that who can deny that 
 self-esteem survives after death? 
 
 Next I found myself one morning on the Place 
 du Dome at Milan walking with my companion 
 Chaplain, the famous engraver of medallions, 
 and later my confrere at the Institute. We 
 shared our enthusiasms before the marvellous 
 cathedral of white marble dedicated to the Vir- 
 gin by that terrible partisan leader Jean Galeas 
 Visconti as a repentance for his life. "In that 
 epoch of faith the world covered itself with white 
 robes," thus spake Bossuet whose weighty elo- 
 quence comes back to me. 
 
 We were completely carried away by Leonardo 
 da Vinci's "Last Supper." We found it in a 
 large hall which the Austrian soldiers had used as 
 a stable and they had cut a door Horrors! 
 
 32
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 Abomination of abominations! in the central 
 panel of the picture. 
 
 The masterpiece is gradually fading away. 
 In time it will have entirely disappeared, but it 
 is not like "La Giaconda" easier to carry away 
 than the wall thirty feet high on which it is 
 painted. 
 
 We went through Verona and made the obliga- 
 tory pilgrimage to the tomh of Juliet, the be- 
 loved of Romeo. That excursion satisfies the 
 inmost feelings of every young man in love with 
 Love. Then Vienza, Padua, where, while I was 
 looking at Giotto's paintings on the story of 
 Christ, I had an intuition that Mary Magdalene 
 would occupy my life some day, and then Venice ! 
 
 Venice ! One might have told me that I still 
 lived although I would not have believed it, so 
 unreal were the hours I passed in that matchless 
 city. As we had no Baedeker his guide was 
 too costly for us it was only through a sort of 
 divination that we discovered all the wonders of 
 Venice without directions. 
 
 My companions admired a painting by Palma 
 Vecchio in a church whose name they did not 
 know. How was I to find it among the ninety 
 churches in Venice? I got into my gondola 
 
 33
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 alone and said to my "barcaiollo" that I was go- 
 ing to Saint Zacharie ; but I did not find the pic- 
 ture, a Santa Barbara, so I had him take me to 
 another saint. A new deception ! As this kept 
 repeating and threatened never to end, my gon- 
 dolier laughingly showed me another church 
 All Saints and said to me, mockingly, "Go in 
 there; you'll surely find yours." 
 
 I pass over Pisa and Florence which I shall de- 
 scribe in detail later. 
 
 When we came near the Papal territory, we 
 decided to add a picturesque touch to our journey 
 and instead of entering Rome in the conventional 
 way by Ponte-Moll, the ancient witness of the de- 
 feat of Maxentius and the glorification of Chris- 
 tianity, we took a steamer from Leghorn to Civ- 
 itta Vecchia. It was the first sea voyage that I 
 went through . . . almost decently, thanks to 
 some oranges which I kept in my mouth all the 
 time. 
 
 At last we reached Rome by the railroad from 
 Civitta Vecchia to the Eternal City. It was the 
 pensionnaires' dinner hour and they were non- 
 plussed at seeing us, for we had deprived them 
 of a holiday in going to meet our coach on the 
 Flammian Way. Our welcome was spontane- 
 
 34
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 ous. A special dinner was hastily got together 
 and this started the jokes practised on newcom- 
 ers, who were called "Les Affreux Nouveaux" 
 
 As a musician I was instructed to go bell in 
 hand to call dinner through the numerous walks 
 of the Villa Medici, now plunged in darkness. 
 As I did not know the way, I fell into a fountain. 
 Naturally the bell stopped ringing and the board- 
 ers, who were listening to the sound and re- 
 joicing in the fun, burst into hearty laughter at 
 the sudden cessation of the noise. They under- 
 stood what had happened and came to fish me 
 out. 
 
 I had paid my first debt, the debt of entrance 
 to the Villa Medici. Night was to bring other 
 trials. 
 
 The dining room of the pensionnaires, which 
 I found so pleasant the next day, was trans- 
 formed into a den of bandits. The servants, 
 who ordinarily wore the green livery of the Em- 
 peror, were dressed as monks with short blunder- 
 busses across their shoulders and with pistols in 
 their belts. Their false noses were modeled by 
 a sculptor and were painted red. The pine table 
 was stained with wine and covered with dirt. 
 
 Our seniors wore proud and haughty looks, 
 35
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 but this did not prevent them, at a given signal, 
 from telling us that while the food was simple, 
 all lived in the most fraternal harmony. Sud- 
 denly, after a discussion of art which was carried 
 on facetiously, there was a hub-bub and amid 
 frightful shouts all the plates and bottles went 
 flying through the air. 
 
 At a signal from one of the supposed monks 
 there was instant silence and we heard the voice 
 of the oldest pensionnaire, Henner, saying 
 gravely, "Here all is harmony." 
 
 It was well that we knew we were the butts for 
 jokes. I was a little embarrassed. I did not 
 dare to move, and I sat with my head down, 
 staring at the table, where I read the name of 
 Herold, the author of the Pre aux Clercs, cut with 
 a knife when he was a pensionnaire at this same 
 Medici. 
 
 36
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 As I had foreseen and gathered from the mean- 
 ing looks which the pensionnaires exchanged, 
 another joke, the masterpiece of the hazing, was 
 arranged for us. We had hardly left the table 
 when the pensionnaires wrapped themselves in 
 the huge capes that were fashionable in Rome 
 at the time and obliged us, before we went to 
 rest in the rooms assigned to us, to take a con- 
 stitutional (Was it really necessary?) to the 
 Forum, the ancient Forum which all our mem- 
 ories of school recalled to us. 
 
 We knew nothing of Rome by night, or by 
 day for that matter, but we walked on surrounded 
 by our new school fellows who acted as guides. 
 It was a January night and very dark, and favor- 
 able for the schemes of our cicerones. When 
 we got near the Capitol, we could scarcely dis- 
 tinguish the outlines of the temples in the hol- 
 lows of the famous Campo Vaccino. Their re- 
 productions in the Louvre are still one of the 
 masterpieces of Claude Lorrain. 
 
 37
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I 
 
 In those days, under the rule of His Holiness 
 
 Pope Pius IX, no official excavations had been 
 begun even in the Forum. The famous place 
 was only a heap of stones and shafts of columns 
 buried in the weeds on which herds of goats 
 browsed. These pretty creatures were watched 
 over by goatherds in large hats and wrapped in 
 great black cloaks with green linings, the or- 
 dinary costume of the peasant of the Roman cam- 
 pagna. They were armed with long pikes to 
 drive off the wild cattle which splashed about in 
 the Ostian marshes. 
 
 Our companions made us cross the ruins of 
 the basilica of Constantine. We could just 
 make out the immense coffered vaults. Our ad- 
 miration changed to fright when we found our- 
 selves a moment later in a place entirely sur- 
 rounded by walls of indescribably colossal pro- 
 portions. In the middle of this place was a 
 large cross on a pedestal formed by steps a sort 
 of Calvary. When I reached this point, I could 
 no longer see my companions and on turning 
 back I found that I was alone in the middle of 
 the gigantic amphitheater of the Colosseum in a 
 silence which seemed frightful to me. 
 
 I tried to find a way which would lead me back 
 38
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 to the streets where some late but complacent 
 passerby might direct me to the Villa Medici. 
 But my search was in vain. I was so exasper- 
 ated by my fruitless attempts that I fell on one of 
 the steps of the cross overcome by weariness. 
 I cried like a child. It was quite excusable, for 
 I was worn out with exhaustion. 
 
 Finally, daylight appeared. Its rays showed 
 me that I had gone round and round like a squir- 
 rel in a cage and had come across nothing save 
 the stairways to the upper tiers. When one 
 thinks of the eighty tiers which in the time of 
 Imperial Rome held a hundred thousand spec- 
 tators, this round of mine could easily have been 
 endless for me. But the sunrise was my salva- 
 tion. After a few steps I was happy to see that, 
 like Little Tom Thumb lost in the woods, I was 
 following the path which would take me on the 
 right road. 
 
 I reached the Villa Medici at last and took pos- 
 session of the room which had been reserved for 
 me. The window looked out on the Avenue du 
 Pincio; my horizon was the whole of Rome and 
 ended in the outlines of the dome of St. Peter's 
 at the Vatican. The Director, M. Schnetz, a 
 member of the Institute, took me to my room. 
 
 39
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 He was tall and he had willingly wrapped him- 
 self in a capacious dressing gown and had put 
 on a Greek cap bedizened, like the gown, with 
 magnificent gold tassels. M. Schnetz was the 
 last of that generation of great painters which 
 had a special reverence for the country about 
 Rome. His studies and pictures were con- 
 ceived in the midst of the Sabine brigands. His 
 strong, determined appearance made his hosts in 
 his adventurous wanderings respect and fear him. 
 He was a perfect father to all the children of 
 the Academic de France at Rome. 
 
 The bell for luncheon sounded. This time it 
 was the real cook who rang it and not I who had 
 been so kindly given the duty the evening before. 
 The dining room had taken on its comfortable 
 every-day appearance. Our companions were 
 positively affectionate. The servants were no 
 longer the pseudo monks we had seen at the first 
 meal. I learned that I had not been the only 
 one to be hoaxed. 
 
 The Carnival festivities at Rome were just end- 
 ing with their wild bacchanalian revelries. 
 While they were not so famous as those of Venice, 
 they had, nevertheless, just as much dash and 
 life. Their setting was altogether different 
 
 40
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 more majestic if not more appropriate. We all 
 participated in a large car built by our architects 
 and decorated by our sculptors. We spent the 
 day in throwing confetti and flowers at all the 
 lovely Roman girls, who replied with bewitching 
 smiles from their palace balconies on the Corso. 
 Surely when Michelet wrote his brilliant and 
 poetic study La Femme, the sequel to his 
 U Amour, he must have had in his mind's eye, as 
 we saw them in life, these types of rare, sparkling 
 and fascinating beauty. 
 
 What changes have taken place in Rome since 
 such careless freedom and gaiety were the usual 
 thing! The superb Italian regiments march on 
 this same Corso to-day, and the rows of shops for 
 the most part belong to German shopkeepers. 
 
 Progress! How many are thy blows! 
 
 One day the Director told us that Hippolyte 
 Flandrin, the famous leader of the religious 
 movement in Nineteenth Century Art, had 
 reached Rome the night before and wanted to 
 meet the students. 
 
 I little thought that forty-six years later I 
 should recall this visit in the speech I would de- 
 liver as president of the Institute and the Acad- 
 emic des Beaux Arts. 
 
 41
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 In this speech I said: 
 
 "On the Pincio, opposite the Academic de 
 France, is a small bubbling fountain shaped like 
 an ancient vase, which, beneath a bower of green 
 oaks, stands out against the horizon with its fine 
 lines. There, when after thirty-two years he 
 returned to Rome a great artist, Hippolyte Flan- 
 drin, before he entered the temple, dipped his 
 fingers as in a holy font and crossed himself." 
 
 The sorrow stricken arts to which he had con- 
 tributed so much went into mourning at almost 
 the very moment we were getting ready to go to 
 thank him officially for his consideration of us. 
 He lived in the Piazza della Spagna, near the 
 Villa Medici where he wanted to be. In the 
 church of Santa Luigi della Francese we laid on 
 his coffin wreaths of laurel from the garden of 
 the Villa, which, as a student, he had loved so 
 well. He was a comrade at the Villa of his be- 
 loved musician Ambroise Thomas, whom he saw 
 for the last time at the height of his glory. . . . 
 
 Some days later Falguiere, Chaplain and I 
 started for Naples, by carriage as far as Pales- 
 trina, on foot to Terracina, at the southern end 
 of the Pontian marshes, then again by carriage to 
 Naples! . . . 
 
 42
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 What never to be forgotten times they were 
 for youthful artists, when we shared our enthu- 
 siasms for all we saw in these pleasantly pictur- 
 esque villages a picturesqueness which has cer- 
 tainly gone by now. 
 
 Our lodgings were in the most primitive inns. 
 I remember that one night I was greatly disturbed 
 by the feeling that my neighbor in the garret had 
 set the miserable hovel on fire. Falguiere had 
 the same idea too. It was only imagination. 
 It was the bright starlight shining through the 
 dilapidated ceiling. 
 
 As we passed through the woods of Subiacco, 
 a shepherd's zampogna (a sort of rustic bagpipe) 
 sounded a burst of melody which I presently 
 noted down on a bit of paper loaned me by a 
 Benedictine monk in a neighboring monastery. 
 These measures became the first notes of Marie- 
 Magdeleine, the sacred drama which I was al- 
 ready planning for my first venture. 
 
 43
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I still have the sketch Chaplain made of me 
 at the moment. 
 
 As was the custom in the olden times of the 
 pensionnaires of the Villa Medici, we lodged in 
 Naples at the Casa Combi, an old house over- 
 looking the Quay Santa Lucia. The fifth floor 
 was reserved for us. It was an old ruin with a 
 pink rough-cast front and windows framed in 
 mouldings shaped in small figures and cleverly 
 painted, like those one sees all over Italy as soon 
 as one crosses the Var. 
 
 A vast room held our three beds. As for the 
 dressing room and the rest, they were on the bal- 
 cony, where, according to the local custom, we 
 hung our clothes to dry. 
 
 In order to travel as comfortably as possible, 
 we had rigged ourselves out at Rome with three 
 suits of white flannel with blue stripes. 
 
 Risum teneatis, as that delightful poet Horace 
 would have said. First, listen to this. 
 
 From the moment of our arrival at the station 
 in Naples we were watched with surprising per- 
 severance by the gendarmes. In addition, the 
 passersby observed us with the utmost astonish- 
 ment. We were intensely curious and won- 
 dered what the reason was for all this. We did 
 
 44
 
 Massenet at Egreville
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 not have long to wait. Our landlady, Marietta, 
 told us that the Neapolitan convicts wore almost 
 exactly the same costume. The laughter which 
 greeted this revelation led us to complete the re- 
 semblance. So we went to the Cafe Royal in 
 the Piazza S. Ferdinando, the three of us drag- 
 ging our right legs as if they were fastened to a 
 ball and chain as the convicts were. 
 
 We almost lived in the galleries of the Bor- 
 bonico Museum during our first days in Naples. 
 The most wonderful of the discoveries in the 
 ruins of Herculanum, Pompeii, and their neigh- 
 bor Stabies had been placed there. We were as- 
 tonished at it all, enraptured, charmed by end- 
 less and ever new discoveries. 
 
 In passing I must recall our dutiful ascent of 
 Vesuvius, whose plume of smoke we could see 
 in the distance. We came back carrying our 
 burned shoes in our hands and with our feet 
 wrapped in flannel which we had bought at Torre 
 del Greco. 
 
 We took our meals at Naples on the seashore 
 on the Quay Santa Lucia, almost opposite our 
 house. For twelve grani, about eight sous, we 
 had an exquisite soup of shellfish, fish fried in 
 an oil which had been used for that purpose for 
 
 45
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 two or three years at least, and a glass of Capri 
 wine. 
 
 Then, there were walks to Castellamare at the 
 end of the Gulf of Naples, where we enjoyed a 
 wonderful view; and to Sorrento so rich in orange 
 trees that the arms of the city are interwoven in 
 the form of a crown of orange leaves. At Sor- 
 rento we saw where Tasso was born the famous 
 Italian poet, the immortal author of "Jerusalem 
 Delivered." 
 
 A simple terra cotta bust decorates the front 
 of this half ruined house! Thence to Amalfi, 
 once almost the rival of Venice in the size of its 
 commerce. 
 
 If Napoleon got the itch through handling the 
 gun sponge of a dirty artilleryman, we owe it to 
 the truth to state that the morning after we 
 passed the night in the place all three of us were 
 covered with lice. We had to have our heads 
 shaved, which added to our resemblance to con- 
 victs. 
 
 We were somewhat consoled for this adven- 
 ture by sailing to Capri. We left Amalfi at four 
 o'clock in the morning, but We did not reach 
 Capri until ten at night. The island is delight- 
 ful and the views bewitching. The top of Mount 
 
 46
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 Solaro is 1800 feet above the sea and about nine 
 and a half miles around. The view is one of the 
 most beautiful and extensive in all Italy. 
 
 We were overtaken by a frightful storm on 
 our way to Capri. The boat was loaded with a 
 large quantity of oranges and the wild waves 
 swept over everything to the great despair of 
 the sailors who outshouted each other in calling 
 on St. Joseph, the patron saint of Naples. 
 
 There is a pretty legend that St. Joseph, 
 grieved by the departure of Jesus and the Virgin 
 Mary for Heaven, ordered his Son to come back 
 to him. Jesus obeyed and came back with all 
 the saints in Paradise. The Virgin came back, 
 too, to the conjugal roof escorted by eleven thou- 
 sand virgins. When the Lord saw Paradise de- 
 populated in this way and not wanting to put 
 St. Joseph iii the wrong, he declared that the lat- 
 ter was the stronger and so Heaven was repopu- 
 lated by his permission. The veneration of the 
 Neapolitans for St. Joseph is surprising, as the 
 following detail illustrates. 
 
 In the Eighteenth Century the streets of 
 Naples were hardly safe, and it was dangerous to 
 pass through them at night. The king had lan- 
 terns placed at the worst corners to light the 
 
 47
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 passersby, but the birbanti broke them as they 
 found they interfered with their nocturnal deeds. 
 Whereupon some one was struck with the idea of 
 placing an image of St. Joseph beside each lan- 
 tern, and thereafter they were respected to the 
 great joy of the people. 
 
 To be in and live in Capri is the most ideal ex- 
 istence that one can dream of. I brought back 
 from there page after page of the works which I 
 intended to write later. 
 
 Autumn saw us back in Rome. 
 
 At that time I wrote my beloved master Am- 
 broise Thomas as follows : 
 
 "Last Sunday Bourgault got up an entertain- 
 ment to which he invited twenty Transteverins 
 and Transteverines plus six musicians, also 
 from the Transtervere. All in costume! 
 
 "The weather was fine and the scene was sim- 
 ply wonderful when we were in the 'Bosco,' my 
 sacred grove. The setting sun lighted up the 
 old walls of ancient Rome. The entertainment 
 ended in Falguiere's studio, lighted a giorno, 
 our doing. There the dance became so capti- 
 vating and intoxicating that we finished vis-a-vis 
 to the Transteverines in the final salturrele. 
 They all smoked, ate, and drank the women es- 
 pecially liked our punch." 
 
 48
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 One of the greatest and most thrilling periods 
 of my life was now at hand. It was Christmas 
 Eve. We arranged an outing so that we might 
 follow the midnight masses in the churches. 
 The night ceremonies at Sainte Marie Majeure 
 and at Saint Jean de Latran impressed me most. 
 Shepherds with their flocks, cows, goats, sheep 
 and pigs were in the public square, as if to re- 
 ceive the benediction of the Savior, recalling in 
 this way His birth in a manger. The touching 
 simplicity of these beliefs really affected me and 
 I entered Sainte Marie Majeure accompanied by 
 a lovely goat which I embraced and which did 
 not want to leave me. This in no way aston- 
 ished any of the crowd of men and women packed 
 in that church, kneeling on those beautiful Mo- 
 saic pavements, between a double row of columns 
 relics taken from the ancient temples. 
 
 The next day a day to be marked with a 
 cross on the staircase with its three hundred 
 steps which leads to the church of Ara Coeli, I 
 passed two women, obviously fashionable for- 
 eigners. I was especially charmed by the ap- 
 pearance of the younger. Several days later I 
 was at Liszt's who was preparing for his ordina- 
 
 49
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 tion, and I recognized among the famous mas- 
 ter's visitors the two women whom I had seen at 
 Ara Coeli. 
 
 I learned almost at once that the younger had 
 come to Rome with her family on a sightseeing 
 trip and that she had been recommended to Liszt 
 so that he might select for her a musician capable 
 of directing her studies. She did not want to 
 interrupt them while she was away from Paris. 
 Liszt at once proposed me. I was a pensionnaire 
 at the Academic de France and was supposed to 
 work there, so that I did not want to devote my 
 time to lessons. The young girl's charm, how- 
 ever, overcame my reluctance. 
 
 You may have already guessed that this beau- 
 tiful girl was the one who was to become my wife 
 two years later, the ever-attentive, often-worried 
 companion of my life, the witness of my weak- 
 nesses as well as of my bursts of energy, of my 
 sorrows and my joys. With her I have gone 
 up the steps of life, already long, but not so 
 steep as those which led to Ara Coeli, that altar 
 of the skies which recalls to Rome the pure and 
 cloudless celestial abodes, which have led me 
 along a way sometimes difficult and where the 
 
 50
 
 THE VILLA MEDICI 
 
 roses have been gathered in the midst of thorns. 
 But is not life always so? 
 
 In the following spring came the pension- 
 naires' annual entertainment, which took place as 
 was customary at Castel Fusano on the Roman 
 Campagna, a couple of miles from Ostia in a 
 magnificent pine forest divided by an avenue of 
 beautiful evergreen oaks. I brought away with 
 me such an agreeable remembrance of the day 
 that I advised my fiancee and her family to make 
 the acquaintance of this incomparable spot. 
 
 In that splendid avenue paved with old marble 
 slabs I recalled Gaston Boissier's story, in his 
 "Promenades Archelogiques," of Nisus and 
 Euraylus, those unfortunate young men who were 
 sent to their downfall by Volscens, as he came 
 from Laurentium, to bring part of his troops to 
 Turnus. 
 
 The thought that in December my two years' 
 stay would be up and that I would have to leave 
 the Villa Medici and return to France made me 
 extremely sad. I wanted to see Venice again. 
 I stayed there two months and during the time 
 I jotted down the rough sketch of my first Suite 
 d'Orchestra. 
 
 51
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I noted the strange and beautiful notes of the 
 Austrian trumpets which sounded every evening 
 as they closed the gates for the night. And I 
 used them twenty-five years later in the fourth 
 act of Le Cid. 
 
 My comrades bade me good-by on December 
 seventeenth, not only at the last sad dinner at 
 our large table, but also at the station in the 
 evening. I had given over the day to packing, 
 gazing meditatively the while at the bed in which 
 I should never sleep again. 
 
 All the souvenirs of my two years in Rome 
 palms from Palm Sunday, a drum from the 
 Transtevere, my mandolin, a wooden Virgin, a 
 few sprays and branches from the Villa's garden, 
 all my souvenirs of a past which would be with 
 me always, went into my trunk with my clothes. 
 The French Embassy paid the carriage. 
 
 I was unwilling to leave my window until the 
 setting sun had disappeared behind St. Peter's. 
 It seemed as if Rome in its turn took refuge in 
 shadow a shadow which bade me farewell. 
 
 52
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MY RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 My comrades went with me to the station "del 
 Termini," hard by the Diocletian ruins. They 
 did not leave until we had embraced warmly and 
 they stayed until my train disappeared beyond 
 the horizon. Happy beings! they would sleep 
 that night at the Academic, while I was alone, 
 torn by the emotions of leaving, numbed by the 
 keen, icy December cold, shrouded in memories, 
 and, unless fatigue aided me, unable to sleep. 
 Next day I was in Florence. 
 
 I wanted to see again this city with the richest 
 collections of art in Italy. I went to the Pitti 
 Palace, one of the wonders of Florence. In go- 
 ing through the galleries it seemed to me as 
 though I were not alone, but that the living re- 
 membrance of my comrades was with me, that 
 I was a witness of their enthusiasms and raptures 
 before all the masterpieces piled in that splendid 
 palace. I saw again the Titians, the Tintorets, 
 the works of Leonardo, the Veronese, the Michel 
 Angelos, and the Raphaels. 
 
 53
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 With what delightfully charmed eyes I ad- 
 mired anew that priceless treasure, Raphael's 
 masterpiece of painting, the "Madonna della 
 sedella," then the "Temptation of St. Anthony" 
 by Salvator Rosa placed in the Hall of Ulysses, 
 and in the Hall of Flora Canova's "Venus," 
 mounted on a revolving base. I studied, too, 
 the works of Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck. 
 
 From the Pitti Palace I went to be astounded 
 anew by the Strozzi Palace, the most beautiful 
 type of Florentine palace. Its cornice, attrib- 
 uted to Simon Pollajo, is the most beautiful 
 known to modern times. I saw once more the 
 Buboli gardens, beside the Pitti Palace, designed 
 by Tribolo and Buontalenti. 
 
 I finished the day with a walk in the so-called 
 Bois de Boulogne de Florence, the Cascine Walk, 
 at the western gate of Florence, between the right 
 bank of the Arno and the railroad. It is the 
 favorite walk of the elegant and fashionable 
 world of Florence, the city called the Athens of 
 Italy. I remember that evening had already 
 fallen and as I was without my watch I had 
 left it at the hotel I asked a peasant I met on the 
 road what time it was. The answer I received 
 was so poetically turned that I can never forget it, 
 
 54
 
 MY RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 V 
 
 "Sono le sette, Varia ne treme ancor! . . ." 
 
 "It is seven o'clock. The air still trembles 
 from the sound." 
 
 I left Florence to continue my trip by the way 
 of Pisa. 
 
 Pisa seemed to me as depopulated as if it had 
 been swept by the plague. When one considers 
 that in the Middle Ages it was a rival of Genoa, 
 Florence, and Venice, one feels puzzled by the 
 comparative desolation that envelops it. I re- 
 mained alone for nearly an hour on the Piazza del 
 Duomo, looking with curiosity on the master- 
 pieces which raise their artistic beauty there, the 
 Cathedral or Le Dome de Pisa, the Campanile, 
 better known as the Leaning Tower, and last, the 
 Baptistiere. 
 
 Between the Dome and the Baptistiere 
 stretches the Campo Santo, the famous cemetery. 
 The earth for this cemetery was brought from 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 It seemed to me that the Leaning Tower was 
 only waiting until I had passed, unlike the Cam- 
 panile of Venice, in order to bring down deadly 
 destruction on me. On the contrary, it appears 
 that the tower, which aided Galileo in making his 
 famous experiments on gravitation, was never 
 
 55
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 more secure. This is proved by the fact that 
 the seven great bells which sound in full swing 
 several times a day have never affected the 
 strength of this curious structure. 
 
 Here I come to the most interesting part of my 
 journey after I left Pisa, huddled under the top 
 of the diligence, which followed the shores of the 
 Mediterranean, by Spezzia as far as Genoa. 
 What an unreal journey that one of mine was 
 along the ancient Roman Way on the top of the 
 rocks which overlook the sea! I journeyed as 
 though I were in the car of a capricious balloon. 
 
 All the way the road skirted the sea, some- 
 times cutting through forests of olives, and again 
 rising over the tops of the hills where one over- 
 looked a wide horizon. 
 
 It was picturesque everywhere; there was al- 
 ways a variety of astonishing views along this 
 way. Traveling as I did by the light of a mag- 
 nificent moon, it was most ideally beautiful in its 
 originality with its villages in which one saw at 
 times a lighted window in the distance and this 
 sea into which one could see to fathomless depths. 
 
 During this journey it seemed to me that I had 
 never accumulated so many ideas and projects, 
 obsessed as I was by the thought that in a few 
 
 56
 
 MY RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 hours I would be back in Paris and that my life 
 was about to commence. 
 
 I traveled from Genoa to Paris by rail. 
 When one is young, one sleeps so well! I woke 
 up shivering. It was freezing. The piercing 
 cold of the night had covered the car windows 
 with frosty ornaments. 
 
 We went by Montereau, and Paris was almost 
 in sight! I could not imagine then that some 
 years later I should own a summer house in this 
 country near figreville. 
 
 What a contrast between the beautiful sky of 
 Italy, that eternally beautiful sky, sung by the 
 poets, which I had just left, and the one I saw 
 again, so dark, gray, and sullen ! 
 
 When I had paid for my journey and a few 
 small expenses, I had left in my pockets the sum 
 of ... two francs! 
 
 How joyful I was, when I reached my sister's 
 house ! Also, what unforeseen good fortune ! 
 
 It was raining in torrents and my precious two 
 francs went to buy that indispensable vade 
 mecum, an umbrella. I had not needed one dur- 
 ing my entire stay in Italy. Protected from the 
 weather I went to the Ministry of Finance where 
 I knew I should find my allowance for the first 
 
 57
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 quarter of the new year. At this time the hold- 
 ers of the Grand Prix enjoyed a pension of three 
 thousand francs a year. I was still entitled to it 
 for three years. What good luck! 
 
 The good friend, whom I have already men- 
 tioned, had been forewarned of my return and 
 had rented a room for me on the fifth floor of 
 No. 14, Rue Taitbout. From the calm and quiet 
 beauty of my room at the Academic, I had fallen 
 into the midst of busy, noisy Paris. 
 
 Ambroise Thomas introduced me to wealthy 
 friends who gave famous musical evening enter- 
 tainments. I saw there for the first time Leo 
 Delibes, whose ballet La Source had already won 
 him a great reputation at the Opera. I saw him 
 direct a delightful chorus sung by fashionable 
 ladies and I whispered to myself, "I, too, will 
 write a chorus. And it will be sung." Indeed 
 it was, but by four hundred male voices. I had 
 won the first prize in the Ville de Paris com- 
 petition. 
 
 My acquaintance with the poet Armand Sil- 
 vestre dates from this time. By chance he was 
 my neighbor on the top of an omnibus, and, one 
 thing leading to another, we got down the best 
 
 58
 
 MY RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 of friends. He saw that I was a good listener, 
 and he told me some of the most drolly im- 
 proper stories, in which he excelled. But to my 
 mind the poet surpassed the story teller and a 
 month later I had written the Poeme d'Avril, in- 
 spired by the exquisite verses in his first book. 
 
 As I speak of the Poeme d'Avril, I remember 
 the fine impression it made on Reyer. He urged 
 me to take it to a publisher. Armed with a too 
 flattering letter from him I went to Choudens to 
 whom he recommended me. After four futile 
 attempts I was finally received by the wealthy 
 publisher of Faust. But I was not even to show 
 my little manuscript. I was immediately shown 
 out. The same sort of reception awaited me at 
 Flaxland's, the publisher, Place de la Madeleine, 
 and also at Brandus's, the owner of Meyerbeer's 
 works. I considered this altogether natural, for 
 I was absolutely unknown. 
 
 As I was going back (not too bitterly disap- 
 pointed) to my fifth floor on the Rue Taitbout, 
 with my music in my pocket, I was accosted by a 
 fair, tall young man, with a kindly, intelligent 
 face, who said to me: "Yesterday I opened a 
 music store near here in the Boulevard de la 
 
 59
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Madeleine. I know who you are and I am ready 
 to publish anything you like." It was Georges 
 Hartmann, my first publisher. 
 
 All I had to do was to take my hand from my 
 pocket and give him the Poeme d'Avril which 
 had just received such a poor reception else- 
 where. 
 
 It is true that I made nothing out of it, but 
 how much I would have given had I had it to 
 have it published. A few months later lovers of 
 music were singing: 
 
 Quon passe en aimant! 
 Que Vheure est done breve 
 
 As yet I had neither honor nor money, but I 
 certainly had a good deal of encouragement. 
 
 Cholera was raging in Paris. I fell ill and 
 the neighbors were afraid to come and see how 
 I was. However, Ambroise Thomas learned of 
 my dangerous illness and my helpless distress 
 and visited me in my room accompanied by his 
 doctor, the Emperor's physician. This brave 
 and fatherly act on the part of my beloved mas- 
 ter affected me so much that I fainted in bed. I 
 must add that this illness was only fleeting and 
 that I finished ten pieces for the piano for which 
 
 60
 
 MY RETURN TO PARIS 
 
 Girod, the publisher, paid me two hundred 
 francs. A louis a page! To that benevolent 
 publisher I owed the first money I made from 
 music. 
 
 The health of Paris improved. 
 
 On the eighth of October I was married in the 
 little old church in the village of Avon near 
 Fontainebleau. 
 
 My wife's brother and my new cousin, the 
 eminent violinist Armingaud, the founder of the 
 famous quartet, were my witnesses. However, 
 there were others too. A flock of sparrows came 
 in through a broken window and out-chirped 
 one another so that we could scarcely hear the 
 words of the good cure. 
 
 His words were a kindly homage to my new 
 companion and encouragement for my still un- 
 certain future. 
 
 After the wedding ceremony we walked in the 
 beautiful forest of Fontainebleau, where I seemed 
 to hear, in the midst of the magnificence of na- 
 ture, verdant and purple in the warm rays of the 
 bright sun, caressed by the songs of the birds, the 
 words of that great poet Alfred de Musset: 
 
 61
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 "Aime et tu renaitrais ; fais-toi fleur pour 
 eclore" 
 
 We left Avon to pass a week at the seashore, 
 in a charming solitude a deux, often the most en- 
 viable solitude. While I was there, I corrected 
 the proofs of the Poeme d'Avril and the ten piano 
 pieces. 
 
 To correct proofs ! To see my music in print ! 
 Had my career as a composer really begun? 
 
 62
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 
 
 On my return to Paris I lived with my wife's 
 family in a lovely apartment whose brightness 
 was calculated to delight the eye and charm the 
 thoughts. Ambroise Thomas sent me word that 
 at his request the directors of the Opera-Comique, 
 Ritt and de Lewen, wanted to entrust to me a 
 one-act work. This was La Gran T ante, an 
 opera-comique by Jules Adenis and Charles 
 Grandvallet. 
 
 This was bewildering good fortune and I was 
 almost overcome by it. To-day I regret that at 
 that time I was unable to put into the work all of 
 myself that I might have wished. The prelim- 
 inary rehearsals began the next year. How 
 proud I was when I received my first notices of 
 rehearsals and when I sat in the same place on 
 the famous stage which had known Boi'eldieu, 
 Herold, M. Auber, Ambroise Thomas, Victor 
 Masse, Gounod, Meyerbeer! . . . 
 
 63
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I was about to learn an author's trials. But I 
 was so happy in doing so ! 
 
 A first work is the first cross of honor. A first 
 love. 
 
 I had everything except the cross. 
 
 The first cast was: Marie Roze, in all the 
 splendor of her youthful beauty and talent ; Vic- 
 tor Capoul, the idol of the public; and Mile. 
 Girard, the spirited singer and actress, the de- 
 light of the Opera-Comique. 
 
 We were ready to go on the stage when the 
 cast was upset. Marie Roze was taken away 
 from me and replaced by a seventeen year old 
 beginner, Marie Heilbronn, the artist to whom I 
 was to entrust the creation of Manon seventeen 
 years later. 
 
 At the first rehearsal with the orchestra I was 
 unconscious of what was going on, I was so deeply 
 absorbed in listening to this and that, in fact to 
 all the sonorousness of the work, which did not 
 prevent me, however, telling every one that I 
 was entirely pleased and satisfied. 
 
 I had the courage to attend the first perform- 
 ance in the wings, which reminded me of Ber- 
 lioz's UEnjance du Christ which I had attended 
 secretly. 
 
 64
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 
 
 That evening was both exciting and amusing. 
 
 I spent the entire afternoon in feverish agita- 
 tion. 
 
 I stopped at every poster to look at the fascinat- 
 ing words so large with promise : 
 
 First Performance of La Grand 'Tante 
 Opera-Comique in One Act 
 
 I had to wait to read the authors' names. 
 That would come only with the announcement 
 of the second performance. 
 
 We served as a curtain raiser for the great suc- 
 cess of the moment, La Voyage en Chine by La- 
 biche and Frangois Bazin. 
 
 I had been a pupil of the latter for a brief 
 while at the Conservatoire. His pilgrimages to 
 the land of the Celestials had not deprived his 
 teaching of that hard, unamiable form which I 
 suffered from with him, and I left his class in 
 harmony a month after I joined it. I went into 
 the class of Henri Reber of the Institute. He 
 was a fine, exquisite musician, of the race of 
 Eighteenth Century masters. All his music 
 breathed forth pleasant memories. 
 
 One fine Friday evening in April, at half-past 
 seven, the curtain rose at the Opera-Comique. 
 
 65
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I was in the wings near my dear frien3 Jules 
 Adenis. My heart throbbed with anxiety, seized 
 by that mystery to which for the first time I gave 
 myself body and soul, as to an unknown God. 
 To-day that seems a little exaggerated, rather 
 childish. 
 
 The piece had just begun, when we heard a 
 burst of laughter from the audience. "Listen, 
 mo/I ami, what a splendid start," said Adenis. 
 "The audience is amused." 
 
 The audience was indeed amused, but this is 
 what happened. The scene opened in Brittany 
 on a stormy, tempestuous night. Mile. Girard 
 had faced the audience and sung a prayer, when 
 Capoul entered, speaking these words from the 
 text: 
 
 "What a country ! What a wilderness ! Not 
 a soul in sight!" when he saw Mile. Girard's back 
 and cried : 
 
 "At last . . . There's a face!" 
 
 He had scarcely uttered this expression when 
 the roars of laughter we had heard broke loose. 
 
 However, the piece went on without further 
 incident. 
 
 They encored Mile. Girard's song, Les filles 
 de la Rochelle. 
 
 66
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 
 
 They applauded Capoul and gave the young 
 debutante Heilhronn a great welcome. 
 
 The opera ended in sympathetic applause, 
 whereupon the stage manager came out to an- 
 nounce the names of the authors. Just then a 
 cat walked across the stage. This was the cause 
 of fresh hilarity which was so great that the au- 
 thors' names went unheard. 
 
 It was a day of mishaps. Two accidents on 
 the same evening gave grounds for fear that the 
 piece would fail. There was nothing in it, how- 
 ever, and the press showed itself really indulgent. 
 It sheathed its claws in velvet in its appreciation. 
 
 Theophile Gautier, a great poet and an emi- 
 nent critic, was kind enough to fling a few of his 
 sparkling bits at the work, proof of his obvious 
 good feeling. 
 
 La Grand'Tante was played with La Voyage en 
 Chine, a great financial success, and I lived four- 
 teen evenings. I was in raptures. I no longer 
 consider only fourteen performances; they 
 scarcely count. 
 
 The orchestral score (it was not engraved) 
 was lost in the fire at the Opera- Comique in 1887. 
 It was no great loss to music, but I should be 
 
 67
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 happy to have the evidence of the first steps in 
 my career. 
 
 At this time I was giving lessons in a family 
 at Versailles, with which I am still in touch. 
 I was caught in a heavy shower on my way there 
 one day. That rain was good to me, verifying 
 the adage, "Every cloud has a silver lining." I 
 waited patiently in the station for the rain to 
 stop, when I saw near me Pasdeloup who was 
 also waiting until the shower was over. 
 
 He had never spoken to me. The wait at the 
 station and the bad weather were an easy and 
 natural excuse for the conversation we had to- 
 gether. On his asking me whether in my work 
 at Rome I had not written something for the or- 
 chestra, I replied that I had a Suite d'Orchestra 
 in five parts (the one I had written in Venice in 
 1865) ; he begged me point blank to send it to 
 him. I sent it the same week. 
 
 I take extreme pleasure in paying homage 
 to Pasdeloup. He not only aided me gener- 
 ously on this occasion, but he was also the cre- 
 ative genius of the first popular concerts which 
 aided so powerfully in making music understood 
 outside the theater. 
 
 In the Rue des Martyrs one rainy day (Always 
 68
 
 One of the last portraits of Massenet
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 
 
 rain ! Truly Paris is not Italy ! ) I met one of my 
 confreres, a violoncellist in Pasdeloup's orches- 
 tra. While we were chatting, he said, "This 
 morning we read a very remarkable Suite d'Or- 
 chestra. We wanted to know the author's name, 
 but it wasn't on the orchestral parts." 
 
 I jumped up at once. I was greatly excited. 
 Was it my work or that of some one else? 
 
 "In this Suite," I asked him with a start, "is 
 there a fugue, a march, and a nocturne?" 
 
 "Exactly," he replied. 
 
 "Then," I said, "it is mine." 
 
 I rushed to the Rue Lafitte and flew up the 
 stairs like a madman to tell my wife and her 
 mother. 
 
 Pasdeloup had given me no warning. 
 
 On the program for the next day but one, Sun- 
 day, I saw my first orchestral suite announced. 
 
 How was I to hear what I had written? 
 
 I paid for a place in the third balcony and 
 listened, lost in that dense crowd, as it was every 
 Sunday, in that gallery where they even had to 
 stand. Each passage was well received. The 
 last had just ended when a young fellow near me 
 hissed twice. Both times, however, the audi- 
 ence protested and applauded all the more heart- 
 
 69
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 ily. So the kill-joy did not gain the effect he 
 wanted. 
 
 I went back home all of a tremble. My fam- 
 ily had also gone to the Cirque Napoleon and 
 came to find me at once. If my people were 
 happy at my success, they were still more 
 pleased to have heard my work. 
 
 One would have thought no more about that 
 misguided hisser, except that the next day Al- 
 bert Wolf devoted a long article on the front 
 page of the Figaro, as unkind as it could be, to 
 breaking my back. His brilliant, cutting wit 
 was amusing reading for his public. My friend, 
 Theodore Dubois, as young as I was in his career, 
 had the fine courage to reply to Wolf at the risk 
 of losing his position. He wrote a letter worthy 
 in every way of his great, noble heart. 
 
 Reyer for his part consoled me for the Figaro 
 article by this curious, piquant bon-mot: "Let 
 him talk. Wits, like imbeciles, can be mis- 
 taken." 
 
 I owe it to the truth to say that Albert Wolf 
 regretted what he had written without attaching 
 any importance to it except to please his readers, 
 and never thinking that at the same time he might 
 
 70
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 
 
 kill the future of a young musician. Afterwards 
 he became one of my warmest friends. 
 
 Emperor Napoleon III opened three competi- 
 tions, and I did not wait a single day to enter 
 them. 
 
 I competed for the cantata Promethee, the 
 opera-comique Le Florentin, and the opera La 
 Coupe du Roi de Thule. 
 
 I got nothing. 
 
 Saint-Saens won the prize with his Promethee; 
 Charles Lenepveu was crowned for his Le Floren- 
 tin I was third and Diaz got first place with 
 La Coupe du Roi de Thule. It was given at the 
 Opera under marvellous conditions of interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 Saint-Saens knew that I had competed and 
 that the award had wavered between me and Diaz 
 who had won. Shortly after this he met me and 
 said: 
 
 "There are so many good and beautiful things 
 in your score that I have just written to Weimar 
 to see if your work can't be performed there." 
 
 Only great men act like that! 
 
 Events, however, decreed otherwise, and the 
 thousand pages of orchestration were for thirty 
 
 71
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 years a well from which I drew many a passage 
 for my subsequent works. 
 
 I was beaten, but not broken. 
 Ambroise Thomas, the constant, ever kind gen- 
 ius of my life, introduced me to Michel Carre, one 
 of the collaborators on Mignon and Hamlet. 
 The billboards constantly proclaimed his suc- 
 cesses and he entrusted me with a libretto in three 
 acts which was splendidly done, entitled Meduse. 
 
 I worked on this during the summer and win- 
 ter of 1869 and during the spring of 1870. On 
 the twelfth of July of that year the work had been 
 done for several days, and Michel Carre made an 
 appointment to meet me at the Opera. He in- 
 tended to tell the director, Emile Perrin, that he 
 must put the work on and that it would pay him 
 to do so. 
 
 Emile Perrin was not there. 
 
 I left Michel Carre, who embraced me heart- 
 ily and said, "Au revoir. On the stage of the 
 Opera." 
 
 I went to Fontainebleau where I was living, 
 that same evening. 
 
 I was going to be happy. . . . 
 
 But the future was too lovely ! 
 
 The next morning the papers announced the 
 72
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE THEATER 
 
 declaration of war between France and Germany 
 and I never saw Michel Carre again. He died 
 some months after this touching meeting which 
 seemed so decisive to me. 
 
 Good-by to my fine plans for Weimar, my 
 hopes at the Opera, and my own hopes too. 
 War, with all its alarms and horrors, had come to 
 drench the soil of France with blood. 
 
 I went. 
 
 I will not take up my recollections again until 
 after that utterly terrible year. I do not want to 
 make such cruel hours live again ; I want to spare 
 my readers their mournful tale. 
 
 73
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR 
 
 The Commune had just gasped its last breath 
 when we found ourselves again at the family 
 abode in Fontainebleau. 
 
 Paris breathed once more after a long period 
 of trouble and agony; gradually calm returned. 
 As if the lesson of that bloody time would never 
 fade away and as if its memory would be perpet- 
 ual, bits of burnt paper were brought into our 
 garden from time to time on the wings of the 
 wind. I kept one piece. It bore traces of fig- 
 ures and probably came from the burning of the 
 Ministry of Finance. 
 
 As soon as I saw again my dear little room in 
 the country, I found courage to work and in the 
 peace of the great trees which spread over us 
 with their sweetly peaceful branches I wrote the 
 Scenes Pittoresques. 
 
 I dedicated them to my good friend Paladilhe, 
 author of Patrie, later my confrere at the Insti- 
 tute. 
 
 As I had undergone all kinds of privation for 
 74
 
 THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR 
 
 so many months, the life I was now living seemed 
 to me most exquisite; it brought back my good 
 humor and gave me a calm and serene mind. 
 
 On this account I was able to write my second 
 orchestral suite which was played some years 
 later at the Chatelet concerts. 
 
 But I went back to Paris before long, for I 
 wanted to see, as soon as possible, the great city 
 which had been so sorely tried. I had hardly 
 got back when I met Emile Bergerat, the bright 
 and delightful poet, who later became Theophile 
 Gautier's son-in-law. 
 
 How dear a name in French letters is that of 
 Theophile Gautier! What glory he heaped on 
 them that illustrious Benvenuto of style as they 
 called him! 
 
 Bergerat took me with him one day to visit his 
 future father-in-law. 
 
 My sensations in approaching that great poet 
 were indescribable! He was no longer in the 
 dawn of life, but he was still youthful and viva- 
 cious in thought, and rich in images with which 
 he adorned his slightest conversation. And his 
 learning was extremely wide and varied. I 
 found him sitting in a large armchair with three 
 cats about him. I have always been fond of 
 
 75
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 the pretty creatures, so I at once made friends 
 with them which put me in the good graces of 
 their master. 
 
 Bergerat, who has continued to be a charming 
 friend to me, told him that I was a musician and 
 that a ballet over his name would open the doors 
 of the Opera to me. He developed on the spot 
 two subjects for me: Le Preneur de Rats (The 
 Rat Catcher) and La Fille du Roi des Aulnes. 
 The recollection of Schubert frightened me off 
 the latter, and it was arranged that the Rat 
 Catcher should be offered to the director of the 
 Opera. 
 
 Nothing came of it as far as I was concerned. 
 The name of the great poet was so dazzling that 
 the poor musician was completely lost in its bril- 
 liance. It was said, however, that I would not 
 remain a nonentity, but that I would finally 
 emerge from obscurity. 
 
 Duquesnel, an admirable friend, then the di- 
 rector of the Odeon, at the instance of Hartmann, 
 my publisher, sent for me to come to his office 
 at the theater and asked me to write the stage 
 music for the old tragedy Les Erinnyes by Le- 
 conte de Lisle. He read several scenes to me 
 and I became enthusiastic at once. 
 
 76
 
 THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR 
 
 How splendid the rehearsals were! They 
 were under the direction of the celebrated artist 
 Brindeau, the stage manager at the Odeon, but 
 Leconte de Lisle managed them in person. 
 
 What an Olympian attitude was that of the fa- 
 mous translator of Homer, Sophocles, and The- 
 ocritus, those geniuses of the past whom he al- 
 most seemed to equal! How admirable the ex- 
 pression of his face with his double eye-glass 
 which seemed a part of him and through which 
 his eyes gleamed with lightning glances ! 
 
 How could they pretend that he did not like 
 music when they inflicted so much of it on him, 
 in that work at any rate? It was ridiculous. 
 That is the sort of legend with which they over- 
 whelm so many poets. 
 
 Theophile Gautier, who, they said, considered 
 music the most costly of all noises, knew and 
 liked other marvellous artists too well to dis- 
 parage our art. Besides, who can forget his crit- 
 ical articles on music which his daughter Judith 
 Gautier, of the Goncourt Academy, has just col- 
 lected in one volume with pious care, and which 
 are uncommonly and astonishingly just appreci- 
 ations. 
 
 Leconte de Lisle was a fervent admirer of 
 77
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Wagner and of Alphonse Daudet, of whom I 
 shall speak later, and had a soul most sensitive to 
 music. 
 
 In spite of the snow I went to the country in 
 December to shut myself up for a few days with 
 my wife's good parents and I wrote the music of 
 Les Erinnyes. 
 
 Dusquesnel placed forty musicians at my dis- 
 posal, which, under the circumstances, was a con- 
 siderable expense and a great favor. Instead of 
 writing a score for the regular orchestra which 
 would have produced only a paltry effect I had 
 the idea of having a quartet of thirty-six stringed 
 instruments corresponding to a large orchestra. 
 Then I added three trombones to represent the 
 three Erinnyes: Tisiphone, Alecto and Megere, 
 and a pair of kettledrums. So I had my forty. 
 
 I again thank that dear director for this un- 
 usual luxury of instruments. I owed the sym- 
 pathy of many musicians to it and to him. 
 
 As I was already occupied with an opera-com- 
 ique in three acts which a young collaborator 
 of Ennery's had obtained for me from the man- 
 ager of the theater how my memory flies to 
 Chantepie, vanished from the stage too early 
 I received a letter from du Locle, then director 
 
 78
 
 THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR 
 
 of the Opera-Comique, telling me that this work, 
 Don Cesar de Bazan, must be ready in Novem- 
 ber. 
 
 The cast was : Mile. Priola, Mme. Galli Marie, 
 already famous as Mignon, later the never to be 
 forgotten Carmen, and a young beginner with a 
 well trained voice and charming presence, M. 
 Bouchy. 
 
 The work was put on hastily with old scenery, 
 which so displeased Ennery that he never ap- 
 peared in the theater again. 
 
 Madame Galli took the honors of the evening 
 with several encores. The Entr'acte Sevillana 
 was also applauded. The work, however, did 
 not succeed for it was taken off the bill after the 
 thirteenth performance. Joncieres, the author 
 of Dimitri, pled my cause in vain before the So- 
 ciete des Auteurs, of which Auguste Maquet was 
 president, arguing that they had no right to 
 withdraw a work which still averaged so good 
 receipts. They were kind words lost! Don 
 Cesar was played no more. 
 
 I recall that later on I had to re-write the whole 
 work at the request of several provincial houses 
 so that it might be played as they wished. The 
 manuscript of the score (only the entr'acte was 
 
 79
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 engraved) was burnea in the fire of May, 1887, 
 as was my first work. 
 
 An invincible secret power directed my life. 
 
 I was invited to dine at the house of Mme. 
 Pauline Viardot, the sublime lyric tragedienne. 
 In the course of the evening I was asked to play a 
 little music. 
 
 I was taken unawares and I began to sing a bit 
 from my sacred drama Marie Magdeleine. 
 
 Although I had no voice, at that age I had a 
 good deal of go in the manner of singing my 
 music. Now, I speak it, and in spite of the in- 
 sufficiency of my vocal powers, my artists get 
 what I mean. 
 
 I was singing, if I may say so, when Mme. 
 Pauline Viardot leaned over the keyboard and 
 said with an accent of emotion never to be for- 
 gotten, 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 "Marie Magdeleine" I told her, "a work of 
 my youth which I never even hope to put on." 
 
 "What? Well, it shall be and I will be your 
 Mary Magdalene." 
 
 I at once sang again the scene of Magdalene at 
 the Cross: 
 
 Obien-aime! Sous ta sombre couronne. . . . 
 80
 
 THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR 
 
 When Hartmann heard of this, he wanted to 
 play a trick on Pasdeloup, who had heard the 
 score not long before and who had refused it al- 
 most brutally, so he created, in collaboration with 
 Duquesnel at the Odeon, the Concert National. 
 The leader of the orchestra at this new popular 
 concert was Edouard Colonne, my old friend at 
 the Conservatoire, whom I had already chosen to 
 conduct Les Erinnyes. 
 
 Hartmann's publishing house was the ren- 
 dezvous for all the youngsters, including Cesar 
 Franck whose lofty works had not yet come into 
 their own. 
 
 The small shop at 17 Boulevard de la Made- 
 leine became the center of the musical movement. 
 Bizet, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Franck, and Holmes 
 were a part of the inner circle. Here they 
 chatted gaily and with every enthusiasm and ar- 
 dor in their faith in the great art which was to 
 ennoble their lives. 
 
 The first five concerts at the Concert National 
 were devoted to Cesar Franck and to other com- 
 posers. The sixth and last was given to the full 
 performance of Marie Magdeleine. 
 
 81
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 JOY AND SORROW 
 
 The first reading of Marie Magdeleine to the 
 cast took place at nine o'clock one morning in 
 the small hall of the Maison Erard, Rue de Mail, 
 which had been used heretofore for quartet con- 
 certs. Early as the hour was Mme. Viardot was 
 even earlier, so eager was she to hear the first 
 notes of my work. The other interpreters ar- 
 rived a few moments later. 
 
 Edouard Colonne conducted the orchestra re- 
 hearsals. 
 
 Mme. Viardot took a lively interest in the 
 reading. She followed it like an artist well ac- 
 quainted with the composition. She was a mar- 
 vellous singer and lyric tragedienne and more 
 than an artist ; she was a great musician, a woman 
 marvellously endowed and altogether unusual. 
 
 On the eleventh of April the Odeon received 
 the public which always attends dress rehearsals 
 and first nights. The theater opened its doors to 
 All Paris, always the same hundred persons who 
 
 82
 
 JOY AND SORROW 
 
 think it the most desirable privilege in tne world 
 to be present at a rehearsal or a first night. 
 
 The press was represented as usual. 
 
 I took refuge with my interpreters in the wings. 
 They were all there and they were highly ex- 
 cited. In their emotion it seemed as if they were 
 to pass a final sentence on me, that they were 
 about to give a verdict on which my life de- 
 pended. 
 
 I can give no account of the impression of the 
 audience. I had to leave the next day with my 
 wife for Italy, so I had no immediate news. 
 
 The first echo of Marie Magdeleine reached me 
 at Naples in the form of a touching letter from 
 the ever kindly Ambroise Thomas. 
 
 This is what the master, always so delicately 
 attentive to everything which marked the steps of 
 my musical career, wrote: 
 
 PARIS, April 12, 1873 
 
 As I am obliged to go to my country place to- 
 day, I shall, perhaps, not have the pleasure of 
 seeing you before your departure. In the un- 
 certainty I cannot postpone telling you, my dear 
 friend, how pleased I was last evening and how 
 happy I was at your fine success. 
 
 It is at once a serious, noble work, full of feel- 
 83
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 ing. It is of OUT times, but you have proved that 
 one can walk the path of progress and still remain 
 clear, sober, and restrained. 
 
 You have known how to move, because you 
 have been moved yourself. 
 
 I was carried away like everyone else, indeed 
 more than anyone else. 
 
 You have expressed happily the lovely poetry 
 of that sublime drama. 
 
 In a mystical subject where one is tempted to 
 fall into an abuse of somber tones and severity of 
 style, you have shown yourself a colorist while 
 retaining charm and clearness. 
 
 Be content ; your work will be heard again and 
 will endure. 
 
 Au revoir; with all my heart I congratulate 
 you. 
 
 My affectionate congratulations to Madame 
 Massenet. 
 
 AMBROISE THOMAS. 
 
 I read and re-read this dear letter. I could 
 not get it out of my thoughts so agreeable and 
 precious was the comfort it brought me. 
 
 I was lost in such delightful revery when, as 
 we were taking the steamer for Capri, I saw a 
 breathless hotel servant running towards me with 
 a package of letters in his hands. They were 
 from my friends in Paris who were delighted with 
 
 84
 
 Mme. Pauline Viardot
 
 JOY AND SORROW 
 
 my success and who were determined to express 
 their joy to me. A copy of the Journal des De- 
 bats was enclosed. It came from Ernest Reyer 
 and contained over his signature an article which 
 was most eulogistic of my work, one of the most 
 moving I have ever received. 
 
 I had now returned to see this charming and 
 intoxicating country. I visited Naples and Ca- 
 pri, then Sorrento, all picturesque places capti- 
 vatingly beautiful, perfumed with the scent of 
 orange trees, and all this on the morrow of a 
 never to be forgotten evening. I lived in the 
 most unutterable raptures. 
 
 A week later we were in Rome. 
 
 We had scarcely reached the Hotel de la Min- 
 erve when there arrived a gracious invitation to 
 lunch from the director of the Academic de 
 France, a member of the Institute, the illustrious 
 painter Ernest Hebert. 
 
 Several students were invited to this occasion. 
 We breathed the warm air of that wholly lovely 
 day through the open windows of the director's 
 salon where De Troy's magnificent tapestries rep- 
 resenting the story of Esther were hung. 
 
 After lunch Hebert asked me to let him hear 
 some of the passages from Marie Magdeleine* 
 
 85
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Flattering accounts of it had come to him from 
 Paris. 
 
 The next day the Villa's students invited me 
 in their turn. It was with the keenest emotion 
 that I found myself once more in that dining 
 room with its arched ceiling, where my portrait 
 was hung beside those of the other Grand Prixs. 
 After lunch I saw in a studio opening into the 
 garden the "Gloria Victis," the splendid master- 
 piece which was destined to make the name of 
 Mercie immortal. 
 
 I must confess in speaking of Marie Magde- 
 leine that I had a presentiment that the work 
 would in the end gain honors on the stage. 
 However I had to wait twenty years before I had 
 that pleasant satisfaction. It verified the opin- 
 ion I had formed of that sacred drama. 
 
 M. Saugey, the able director of the Opera at 
 Nice, was the first to have the audacity to try it 
 and he could not but congratulate himself. On 
 my part I tender him my sincere thanks. 
 
 Our first Marie Magdeleine on the stage was 
 Lina Pacary. That born artist, in voice, beauty 
 and talent was fitted for the creation of this part, 
 and when the same theater later put on Ariane, 
 
 86
 
 JOY AND SORROW 
 
 Lina Pacary was again selected as the interpreter. 
 Her uninterrupted success made her theatrical 
 life really admirable. 
 
 The year following my dear friend and director 
 Albert Carre put the work on at the Opera-Com- 
 ique. It was my good fortune to have as my in- 
 terpreters Mme. Marguerite Carre, Mme. Ai'no 
 Ackte, and Salignac. 
 
 So I lived again in Rome in the most pleasant 
 thoughts of Marie Magdeleine. Naturally it was 
 the topic of conversation on the ideal walks I 
 took with Hebert in the Roman Campagna. 
 
 Hebert was not only a great painter but also a 
 distinguished poet and musician. In the latter 
 capacity he played in a quartet which was often 
 heard at the Academic. 
 
 Ingres, also a director of the Academic, played 
 the violin. Delacroix was asked one day what 
 he thought of Ingres's violin playing. 
 
 "He plays like Raphael," was the amusing an- 
 swer of this brilliant colorist. 
 
 So delightful was our stay in Rome that it was 
 with regret that we left that city so dear to our 
 memories and went back to Paris. 
 
 I had hardly got back to No. 46 Rue du Gen- 
 87
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 eral Foy where I lived for thirty years than I 
 became absorbed in a libretto by Jules Adenis 
 Les Templiers. 
 
 I had hardly written two acts when I began to 
 worry about it. The piece was extremely inter- 
 esting, but its historical situations took me along 
 the road already travelled by Meyerbeer. 
 
 Hartmann agreed with me; indeed my pub- 
 lisher was so outspoken about it that I tore into 
 bits the two hundred pages which I had sub- 
 mitted to him. 
 
 In deep trouble, hardly knowing where I was 
 going, I happened to think of calling on Louis 
 Gallet, my collaborator in Marie Magdeleine. I 
 came from this interview with him with the plan 
 of Le Roi de Lahore. From the funeral pyre of 
 the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jean 
 Jacques de Molay, whom I had given up, I found 
 myself in the Paradise of India. It was the 
 seventh heaven of bliss for me. 
 
 Charles Lamoureux, the famous orchestra 
 leader, had just founded the Concerts de THar- 
 monie Sacree in the Cirque des Champs filysees, 
 which to-day has disappeared. (What a wicked 
 delight they take in turning a superb theater into 
 
 88
 
 JOY AND SORROW 
 
 a branch of the Bank or an excellent concert 
 hall into a grass plot of the Champs filysees!) 
 
 As everyone knows Handel's oratorios made 
 these concerts famous and successful. 
 
 One snowy morning in January Hartmann in- 
 troduced me to Lamoureux who lived in a garden 
 in the Cite Frochot. I took with me the manu- 
 script of Eve, a mystical play in three acts. 
 
 The hearing took place before lunch. And by 
 the time we had reached the coffee we were in 
 complete accord. The work was to go to re- 
 hearsal with the following famous interpreters: 
 Mme. Brunet Lafleur and Mm. Lasalle and 
 Prunet. 
 
 Les Concerts de I'Harmonie Sacre had Eve on 
 the program of the eighteenth of March, 1875, 
 as had been arranged. 
 
 In spite of the superb general rehearsal in the 
 entirely empty hall that was the reason I was 
 there, for I had already begun to avoid the excite- 
 ments of public performances I waited in a 
 small cafe nearby for the news brought by an old 
 comrade, Taffanel, then the first flute player at 
 the Opera and at the Concerts de l'Harmonie Sa- 
 cree. Ah, my dear Taffanel, my departed 
 
 89
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 friend, whom I loved so well, how dear to me 
 were your affection and your talent when you con- 
 ducted my works at the Opera ! 
 
 After each part Taffanel ran across the street 
 and told me the comforting news. After the 
 third part he was still encouraging, and he told 
 me hastily that it was all over, that the audience 
 had gone, and hegged me to come at once and 
 thank Lamoureux. 
 
 I believed him, but what a fraud he was ! No 
 sooner was I in the musicians' foyer than I was 
 blown like a feather into my confreres arms, 
 which I grabbed as hard as I could, for I now un- 
 derstood the trick. But they put me down on 
 the stage before the audience which was still 
 there and still applauding and waving their hats 
 and handkerchiefs. 
 
 I got up, bounced like a ball, and disappeared 
 furious ! 
 
 I have drawn this doubtless exaggerated pic- 
 ture of my success because the moments which 
 followed were terrible for me and showed in con- 
 trast the vanity of the things of this world. 
 
 A servant had been searching for me all the 
 evening as she did not know my whereabouts in 
 
 90
 
 JOY AND SORROW 
 
 Paris and she found me at last at the door of the 
 concert hall. With tears in her eyes she bade 
 me come to my mother who was very ill. My 
 dear mother was living in the Rue Notre-Dame- 
 de-Lorette. I had sent her seats for herself and 
 my sister and I felt sure that both of them had 
 Leen at the concert. 
 
 The servant and I jumped into a cab, and when 
 I reached the landing, my sister, with out- 
 stretched arms and sobbing, cried, "Mamma is 
 dead ... at ten o'clock this evening." 
 
 Words cannot express my deep grief at this 
 announcement of the terrible misfortune which 
 had come upon me. It darkened my days just at 
 the time when it seemed as if a kind heaven 
 wished to drive away the clouds. 
 
 In accordance with my mother's last wishes, 
 she was embalmed the next day. My sister and 
 I, both prostrated by grief, were there, when we 
 were surprised by the sudden appearance of Hart- 
 mann. I dragged him swiftly away from the 
 painful sight, and he hurried out, but not before 
 he had said, 
 
 "You are down for the cross!" 
 
 Poor mother ! how proud she would have been ! 
 91
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 March, 21, 1875 
 Dear Friend: 
 
 If I had not lost your card and, consequently, 
 your address, for which I searched for a quarter 
 of an hour in the Testaccio of my papers, I would 
 have told you yesterday of my keen joy and deep 
 emotion at hearing your Eve and at its success. 
 The triumph of one of the Elect should be a festi- 
 val for the Church. And you are one of the 
 Elect, my dear friend; Heaven has marked you 
 with a sign as one of its children; I feel it in 
 everything which your beautiful work has stirred 
 in my heart. But prepare for the martyr's role 
 for the part which must be played by all who 
 come from on high and offend what comes from 
 below. Remember that when the Lord said, 
 "He is one of the Elect," he added, "And I will 
 show him how greatly he must suffer in my 
 name." 
 
 Wherefore, my dear friend, spread forth your 
 wings boldly, and trust yourself fearlessly to the 
 lofty regions where the lead of earth cannot hit 
 the bird of heaven. 
 
 Yours with all my heart, 
 
 CH. GOUNOD. 
 
 92
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE OPERA 
 
 Death, which by taking away my mother had 
 stricken me in my dearest affections, had also 
 taken her mother from my dear wife. So we 
 lived the next summer at Fontainebleau in a sor- 
 rowful house of mourning. 
 
 Remembrance of the dear departed still hung 
 over us, when I learned on the fifth of June of 
 the death of Bizet. The news came like a thun- 
 der clap. Bizet had been a sincere and affection- 
 ate comrade, and I had a respectful admiration 
 for him although we were about the same age. 
 
 His life was very hard. He felt the spirit 
 within him, and he believed that his future glory 
 would outlive him. Carmen., famous for forty 
 years, appeared to those called upon to judge a 
 work which contained good things, although it 
 was somewhat incomplete, and also what did 
 they not say at the time? a dangerous and im- 
 moral subject. 
 
 93
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 What a lesson on too hasty judgments! . . . 
 
 On returning to Fontainebleau after the 
 gloomy funeral I tried to take up my life again, 
 and work on Le Roi de Lahore on which I had 
 already been busy for several months. 
 
 The summer that year was particularly hot and 
 enervating. I was so depressed that one day 
 when a tremendous storm broke I felt almost an- 
 nihilated and let myself fall asleep. 
 
 But if my body was lulled to sleep, my mind 
 remained active ; it seemed never to stop working. 
 Indeed my ideas seemed to profit from this invol- 
 untary rest imposed by Nature to put themselves 
 in order. I heard as in a dream my third act, the 
 Paradise of India, played on the stage of the 
 Opera. The intangible performance had, as it 
 were, filled my mind. The same phenomenon 
 happened to me on several subsequent occasions. 
 
 I never would have dared to hope it. That 
 day and those which followed I began to write 
 the rough draft of the instrumental music for 
 that scene in Paradise. 
 
 Between times I continued to give numerous 
 lessons in Paris, which I found equally oppressive 
 and enervating. 
 
 I had long since formed the habit of getting 
 94
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE OPERA 
 
 up early. My work absorbed me from four 
 o'clock in the morning until midday and lessons 
 took up the six hours of the afternoon. Most 
 of the evenings were given to my pupils' parents. 
 We had music at their homes and we were made 
 much of and entertained. I have been accus- 
 tomed to working in the morning like this all my 
 life, and I still continue the practice. 
 
 After spending the winter and spring in Paris 
 we returned to our calm and peaceful family 
 home in Fontainebleau. At the beginning of 
 the summer of 1876 I finished the whole of the 
 orchestral score for Le Roi de Lahore on which I 
 had now spent several years. 
 
 Finishing a work is to bid good-by to the in- 
 describable pleasure which the labor gives one ! 
 
 I had on my desk eleven hundred pages of 
 orchestral score and my arrangement for the 
 piano, which I had just finished. 
 
 What would become of this work was the ques- 
 tion I asked myself anxiously. Would it ever 
 be played? As a matter of fact it was written 
 for a large stage that was the danger, the dark 
 spot in the future. 
 
 During the preceding winter I had become ac- 
 quainted with that soulful poet Charles Grand- 
 
 95
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 mougin. The delightful singer of the Prome- 
 nades and the impassioned bard of the French 
 Patrie had written a sacred legend in four parts, 
 La Vierge, which he intended for me. 
 
 I have never been able to let my mind He idle, 
 and I at once started in on Grandmougin's beau- 
 tiful verses. Why then should bitter discour- 
 agement arise? I will tell you later. As a mat- 
 ter of fact I could stand it no longer. I must see 
 Paris again. It seemed to me that I would come 
 back relieved of my weak heartedness which I 
 had undergone without noticing it much. 
 
 I went to Paris on the twenty-sixth of July in- 
 tending to bother Hartmann with my troubles by 
 confessing them to him. 
 
 But I did not find him in. I strolled to the 
 Conservatoire to pass the time. A competition 
 on the violin was in progress. When I got there, 
 they were taking a ten minute rest, and I took 
 advantage of it to pay my respects to my master 
 Ambroise Thomas in the large room just off the 
 jury-room. 
 
 As that place, then so delightfully alive, is 
 to-day a desert which has been abandoned for 
 other quarters, I will describe what the place was 
 in which I grew up and lived for so many years. 
 
 96
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE OPERA 
 
 The room of which I have spoken was reached 
 by a great staircase entered through a vestibule of 
 columns. As one reached the landing he saw 
 two large pictures done by some painter or other 
 of the First Empire. The door opposite opened 
 on a room ornamented by a large mantelpiece and 
 lighted by a glass ceiling in the style of the an- 
 cient temples. 
 
 The furniture was in the style of Napoleon I. 
 
 A door opened into the office of the director 
 of the Conservatoire, a room large enough to hold 
 ten or a dozen people seated about the green 
 cloth table or seated or standing at separate ta- 
 bles. The decoration of the great hall of the 
 Conservatoire was in the Pompeiian style in har- 
 mony with the room I have described. 
 
 Ambroise Thomas was leaning on the mantel- 
 piece. When he saw me, he smiled joyfully, 
 held out his arms into which I flung myself, and 
 said with an appearance of resignation, delightful 
 at the time, "Accept it; it is the first rung." 
 
 "What shall I accept?" I asked. 
 
 "What, you don't know? They gave you the 
 cross yesterday?" 
 
 fimile Rety, the valued general secretary of 
 the Conservatoire, took the ribbon from his but- 
 
 97
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 tonhole and put it in mine, but not without some 
 difficulty. He had to open it with an ink eraser 
 which he found on the jury's table near the presi- 
 dent's desk. 
 
 That phrase "the first rung," was delightful 
 and profoundly encouraging. 
 
 Now, I had only one urgent errand to see 
 my publisher. 
 
 I must confess to a feeling which enters into 
 my tastes to such an extent as to be indicative of 
 my character. I was still so youthful that I felt 
 uneasy about the ribbon which seemed to blaze 
 and draw all eyes. 
 
 My face was still moist from those lavish em- 
 braces and I was planning to go home to the coun- 
 try when I was stopped on the corner of the Rue 
 de la Paix by M. Halanzier, the director of the 
 Opera. I was surprised the more, for I believed 
 that I was only moderately thought of at the 
 Great House as a result of the refusal of my bal- 
 let, Le Preneur de Rats. 
 
 But M. Halanzier had a frank and open mind. 
 
 "What are you doing?" he asked. "I hear 
 nothing of you." 
 
 I may add that he had never spoken to me be- 
 fore. 
 
 98
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE OPERA 
 
 "How could I dare to speak of my work to the 
 director of the Opera?" I replied, thoroughly 
 confused. 
 
 "And if I want you to?" 
 
 "Well, I have a simple work in five acts, Le Roi 
 de Lahore, with Louis Gallet." 
 
 "Come to my house, 18 Place Vendome, to- 
 morrow and bring your manuscript." 
 
 I rushed to tell Gallet, and then went home to 
 Fontainebleau, carrying my wife the two bits of 
 news, one obvious in my buttonhole, and the 
 other the greatest hope I had ever had. 
 
 I was at the Place Vendome the next morning 
 at nine o'clock. Gallet was there already. 
 
 Halanzier lived in a beautiful apartment on the 
 third floor of the superb mansion which formed 
 one of the corners of the Place Vendome. 
 
 I began the reading at once. Halanzier 
 stopped me so little that I went right through the 
 whole of the five acts. My voice was gone . . . 
 and my hands were useless from fatigue. 
 
 As I put my manuscript back into my old 
 leather portfolio and Gallet and I prepared to go: 
 
 "Well ! So you leave me no copy?" 
 
 I looked at Gallet in stupefaction. 
 
 "Then you intend to perform the work?" 
 99
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 "The future will tell." 
 
 I was scarcely reinstalled in our apartment in 
 the Rue du General Foy on my return to Paris in 
 October, than the morning's mail brought me the 
 following bulletin from the Opera: 
 
 Le Roi 
 
 2 heures Foyer 
 
 The parts had been given to Mile. Josephine 
 de Reszke her two brothers Jean and Edouard 
 ;were to ornament the stage later on Salomon 
 and Lassalle, the last creating a role for the first 
 time. 
 
 There was no public dress rehearsal. It was 
 not the custom then as it is nowadays to have a re- 
 hearsal for the "couturieres," then for the "col- 
 onelle" and, finally, the "general" rehearsal. 
 
 In spite of the obviously sympathetic demon- 
 strations of the orchestra and all the personnel at 
 the rehearsal, Halanzier announced that as they 
 were putting on the first work of a debutant at 
 the Opera, he wanted to look after everything 
 himself until after the first performance. 
 
 I want to record again my deep gratitude to 
 that singularly good director who loved youth 
 and protected it. 
 
 100
 
 MY DEBUT AT THE OPERA 
 
 The staging, scenery and costumes were of un- 
 heard-of splendor; the interpretation of the first 
 order. . . . 
 
 The first performance of Le Roi de Lahore, the 
 twenty-seventh of April, 1877, was a glorious 
 event in my life. ^ 
 
 Apropos of this I recall that on that morning 
 Gustave Flaubert left his card with the servant, 
 without even asking for me. On it were these 
 words : 
 
 "This morning I pity you; to-night I shall envy 
 you." 
 
 These lines show so well the admirable under- 
 standing of the writer of Salammbo and that im- 
 mortal masterpiece Madame Bovary. 
 
 The next morning I received the following 
 lines from the famous architect and great artist 
 Charles Gamier: 
 
 "I do not know whether it is the hall which 
 makes good music ; but, sapristi, what I do know 
 is that I lost none of your work and found it ad- 
 mirable. That's the truth. 
 
 "Your 
 
 "CARLO." 
 
 The magnificent Opera had been opened six- 
 teen months previously, January 5, 1875, and 
 
 101
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 the critics had considered it their duty to attack 
 the acoustics of that marvellous house built by 
 the most exceptionally competent man of modern 
 times. It is true that the criticism did not last, 
 for when one speaks of Garnier's magnificent 
 work it is in words which are eloquent in their 
 simplicity, "What a fine theater !" The hall ob- 
 viously has not changed, but the public which 
 pays to Gamier his just and rightful homage.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE THEATERS IN ITALY 
 
 The performances of Le Roi de Lahore were 
 running on at the Opera and they were well at- 
 tended and finely done. At least that is what I 
 heard for I had already stopped going. Pres- 
 ently I left Paris where, as I have said, I devoted 
 myself to giving lessons, and went back to the 
 country to work on La Vierge. 
 
 In the meantime I had learned that the great 
 Italian publisher Guilio Ricordi had heard Le Roi 
 de Lahore at the Opera and had come to terms 
 with Hartmann for its production in Italy. Such 
 a thing was really unique, for at that time the only 
 works translated into Italian and given in that 
 country were those of the great masters. And 
 they had to wait a long time for their turn, while 
 it was my good fortune to see Le Roi de Lahore 
 played on the morrow of its first performance. 
 
 The first house in Italy at which this honor fell 
 to me was the Regio in Turin. What an unex- 
 pected good fortune it was to see Italy again, to 
 
 103
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 know their theaters from more than the outside, 
 and to go into their wings ! I found in all this a 
 delight which I cannot express and in this state 
 of rapture I passed the first months of 1878. 
 Hartmann and I went to Italy on the first of Feb- 
 ruary, 1878. 
 
 With the Scala at Milan, the San Carlo at Na- 
 ples, the Communal Opera at Boulogne, the old 
 Apollo at Rome since demolished and replaced 
 in popular favor by the Costanzi with the Per- 
 gola at Florence, the Carlo Felice at Genoa, and 
 the Fenice at Venice, the beautiful Regio Thea- 
 ter, built opposite the Madame Palace on the 
 Piazza Castella, is one of the most noted in all 
 Italy. It rivaled then as it does now the 
 most famous houses of that classic land of the 
 arts to which it was always so hospitable and so 
 receptive. 
 
 The manners at the Regio were entirely differ- 
 ent from those at Paris and were, as I discovered 
 later, much like those in Germany. Absolute 
 deference and punctilious exactness are the rule, 
 not only among the artistes but also among the 
 singers of the minor roles. The orchestra obeys 
 the slightest wish of the director. 
 
 The orchestra at the Regio at that time was 
 104
 
 THE THEATERS IN ITALY 
 
 conducted by the master Pedrotti who was subse- 
 quently the director of the Rossini Conservatory 
 at Pesaro. He was known for his gay, viva- 
 cious melodies and a number of operas, among 
 them Tutti in maschera. His death was tragic. 
 I can still hear honest Pedrotti saying repeatedly 
 to me: 
 
 "Are you satisfied ? I am so much." 
 
 We had a famous tenor of the time, Signer 
 Fanselli. He had a superb voice, but a manner- 
 ism of spreading his arms wide open in front of 
 him with his fingers opened out. In spite of the 
 fact that an excessive fondness for this method 
 of giving expression is almost inevitably displeas- 
 ing, many other artists I have known use it to ex- 
 press their feelings, at least they think they do, 
 when, as a matter of fact, they feel absolutely 
 nothing. 
 
 His open hands had won for this remarkable 
 tenor the nickname, Cinque e cinque fanno died! 
 (Five and five make ten ! ) 
 
 Apropos of this first performance I will men- 
 tion the baritone Mendioroz and Signorina Me- 
 cocci who took part in it. 
 
 Such goings about became very frequent, for 
 scarcely had Hartmann and I got back to Paris 
 
 105
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 than we had to start off again for Rome where // 
 Re di Lahore had the honor of a first performance 
 on March 21, 1879. 
 
 Here I had still more remarkable artists: the 
 tenor Barbaccini, the baritone Kashmann, both 
 singers of great merit; then Signorina Mariani, 
 an admirable singer and tragedienne, and her 
 younger sister who was equally charming. M. 
 Giacovacci, the director at the Apollo, was a 
 strange old fellow, very amusing and gay, es- 
 pecially when he recalled the first performance 
 of The Barber of Seville at the Argentine Theater 
 in the days of his youth. He drew a most inter- 
 esting picture of the young Rossini and his vivac- 
 ity and charm. To have written The Barber of 
 Seville and William Tell is indeed a most striking 
 evidence of wit personified and also of a keen 
 mind. 
 
 I profited by my stay in Rome to revisit my 
 dear Villa Medici. It amused me to reappear 
 there as an author . . . how shall I say it? 
 Well (and so much the worse) let us say, an en- 
 thusiastically applauded author. 
 
 I stopped at the Hotel de Rome, opposite the 
 San Carlo, on the Corso. 
 
 The morning after the first performance, they 
 106
 
 THE THEATERS IN ITALY 
 
 brought a note to my rooms I was hardly 
 awake, for we had come in very late which bore 
 these words: 
 
 "The next time you stay at a hotel, let me 
 
 know beforehand, for I haven't slept all night 
 
 with all their serenading and toasting you! 
 
 What a row! But I am pleased for your sake. 
 
 "Your old friend, 
 
 "Du LOCLE." 
 
 Du Locle! How could it be he! But there 
 he was my conductor at the birth of Don Cesar 
 de Bazan. I hastened to embrace him. 
 
 The morning of March 21 brought hours of 
 magical delight and alluring charm. I count 
 them as among the best that I remember. 
 
 I had obtained an audience with the newly 
 enthroned Pope Leo XIII. The grand salon 
 where I was introduced was preceded by a long 
 antechamber. Those who had been admitted 
 like myself were kneeling in a row on each side of 
 the room. The Pope blessed the faithful with 
 his right hand and spoke a few words to them. 
 His chamberlain told him who I was and why I 
 had come to Rome, and the Sovereign Pontiff 
 added to his benediction words of good wishes 
 for my art. 
 
 107
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Leo XIII combined an unusual dignity with a 
 simplicity which reminded me forcibly of Pius 
 IX. 
 
 After leaving the Vatican I went at eleven 
 o'clock to the Quirinal Palace. The Marchese 
 di Villamarina was to present me to Queen 
 Margherita. We passed through a suite of five 
 or six rooms and in the one where we waited was 
 a crape-covered glass case in which were sou- 
 venirs of Victor Emanuel who had died only re- 
 cently. There was an upright piano between 
 the windows. The following detail was almost 
 theatrical in its impression. I had noticed that 
 an usher was stationed at the door of each of the 
 salons through which I had come, and I heard a 
 distant voice, evidently in the first room, an- 
 nounce loudly, La Regina, then nearer, La Re- 
 gina, then nearer still, La Regina, and again and 
 louder, La Regina, and finally in the next salon, 
 in ringing tones, La Regina. And the Queen ap- 
 peared in the salon where we were. 
 
 The Marchese di Villamarina presented me, 
 bowed to the Queen, and went out. 
 
 Her Majesty, in a charming voice, asked me 
 to excuse her for not going to the opera the eve- 
 ning before to hear // Capolavoro of the French 
 
 108
 
 THE THEATERS IN ITALY 
 
 master, and, pointing to the glass case, said, 
 "We are in mourning." Then she added, "As I 
 was deprived of the evening, will you not let me 
 hear some of the motifs of the opera?" 
 
 As there was no chair beside the piano, I began 
 to play standing. Then I saw the Queen looking 
 about for a chair and I sprang towards one, placed 
 it in front of the piano and continued playing as 
 she had asked so adorably. 
 
 I was much moved when I left her Majesty and 
 I was deeply gratified by her gracious reception. 
 I passed through the numerous salons and found 
 the Marchese di Villamarina whom I thanked 
 heartily for his great courtesy. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later I was in the Via 
 delle Carozze, visiting Menotti Garibaldi to whom 
 I had a letter of introduction from a friend in 
 Paris. 
 
 That was no ordinary morning. Indeed it 
 was unusual in view of the personages I had the 
 honor to see: His Holiness the Pope, her Majesty 
 the Queen, and the son of Garibaldi. 
 
 I was presented during the day to Prince Mas- 
 simo of the oldest Roman nobility. When I 
 asked, perhaps indiscreetly but with genuine 
 curiosity nevertheless, whether he were de- 
 
 109
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 scended from Emperor Maximus, he replied, 
 simply and modestly, "I do not know certainly, 
 but they have been sure of it in my family for 
 eighteen hundred years." 
 
 After the theater that evening (a superb suc- 
 cess), I went to supper at the house of our am- 
 bassador, the Duke de Montebello. At the re- 
 quest of the duchess I began to play the same mo- 
 tifs I had given in the morning before her Maj- 
 esty the Queen. The duchess smoked, and I re- 
 member that I smoked many cigarettes while I 
 played. That gave me the opportunity, as the 
 smoke rose to the ceiling, to contemplate the 
 marvellous paintings of the immortal Carrache, 
 the creator of the famous Farnese Gallery. 
 
 Again, what never to be forgotten hours ! 
 
 I returned to my hotel about three in the morn- 
 ing where the serenade with which they enter- 
 tained me kept my friend du Locle awake. 
 
 Spring passed rapidly on account of my memo- 
 ries of my brilliant winter in Italy. I set to 
 work at Fontainebleau and finished La Vierge. 
 Then my dear wife and I set out for Milan and 
 the Villa d'Este. 
 
 That was a year of enthusiasms, of pure, radi- 
 ant joy, and its hours of unutterable good fortune 
 
 110
 
 THE THEATERS IN ITALY 
 
 left a mark on my career, which was never to be 
 erased. 
 
 Giulio Ricordi had invited Mme. Massenet and 
 me, together with our dear daughter, still quite 
 a child, to spend the month of August at the Villa 
 d'Este in that marvellously picturesque country 
 about Lake Como. We found there Mme. Giu- 
 ditta Ricordi, the wife of our amiable and gra- 
 cious host, their daughter Ginette, a delightful 
 playmate for my little girl; and their sons Tito 
 and Manuel, small boys then but tall gentlemen 
 since. We also met there a lovely young girl, 
 a rose that had as yet scarcely blossomed, who 
 during our stay worked at singing with a re- 
 nowned Italian professor. 
 
 Arrigo Boito, the famous author of Mefistole, 
 who was also a guest at the Villa d'Este, was as 
 impressed as I was with the unusual quality of 
 her voice. That prodigious voice, already so 
 wonderfully flexible, was that of the future artiste 
 who was never to be forgotten in her creation of 
 Lakme by the glorious and regretted Leo Delibes. 
 I have named Marie Van Zandt. 
 
 One evening as I entered the Hotel Bella Ven- 
 ezia, on the Piazza San Fedele at Milan (where 
 even to-day I should be glad to alight) Giulio 
 
 111
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Ricordi came to see me and introduced me to a 
 man of great distinction, an inspired poet, who 
 read me a scenario in four acts on the story of 
 Herodias, which was tremendously interesting. 
 That remarkable man of letters was Zanardini, a 
 descendant of one of the greatest families of Ven- 
 ice. 
 
 It is easy to see how suggestive and inspiring 
 the story of the Tetrach of Galilee, of Salome, of 
 John, and of Herodias would become under a pen 
 so rich in colors as that of the man who had 
 painted it. 
 
 On the fifteenth of August during our stay in 
 Italy, Le Roi de Lahore was put on at the Vienza 
 Theater, and on the third of October came the 
 first performance at the Communal Theater at 
 Bologna. That was the reason for our prolonged 
 stay in Italy. 
 
 Our return to Fontainebleau followed imme- 
 diately and I had to take up my normal life again 
 and my unfinished work. 
 
 To my surprise I received a visit from M. 
 fcnile Rety the day after my return! He came 
 from Ambroise Thomas to offer me the place of 
 professor of counterpoint, fugue and composition 
 at the Conservatoire to replace Frangois Bazin 
 
 112
 
 THE THEATERS IN ITALY 
 
 who had died some months before. He advised 
 me at the same time to become a candidate for 
 the Academic des Beaux Arts as the election of 
 a successor to Bazin was at hand. 
 
 What a contrast to the months of agreeable 
 nonsense and applause in Italy! I thought that 
 I was forgotten in France, whereas the truth was 
 the direct opposite. 
 
 113
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CONSERVATOIRE AND THE INSTITUTE 
 
 I received the official notice of my nomination 
 as professor at the Conservatoire and I went to 
 Paris. I would have hardly imagined that I had 
 said good-by to my beloved house at Fontaine- 
 bleau with no hope of seeing it again. 
 
 The life which had now begun for me trans- 
 planted my summers of work in the midst of quiet 
 and peaceful solitude those summers which I 
 had passed so happily far from the noise and tu- 
 mult of the city. If books have their destiny as 
 the poet says (habent sua fata libelli) , does not 
 each one of us follow a destiny which is just as 
 certain and irrevocable? One cannot swim 
 against the stream. It is easy to swim with it, 
 especially if it carries one to a longed for shore. 
 
 I gave my course at the Conservatoire twice a 
 week, on Tuesdays and Fridays at half past one. 
 
 I confess that I was both proud and happy 
 to sit in that chair, in the same classroom where 
 as a child I had received the advice and lessons 
 
 114
 
 THE INSTITUTE 
 
 of my master. I looked upon my pupils as other 
 or as new children grandchildren rather who 
 received the teaching which had come to me and 
 which seemed to filter through the memories of 
 the master who had imbued me with it. 
 
 The young people with whom I had to do 
 seemed nearly my own age, and I said to them 
 by way of encouraging them and urging them on 
 to work: "You have but one companion the 
 more, who tries to be as good a pupil as you are 
 yourselves." 
 
 It was touching to see the deferential affection 
 which they showed me from the first day. I was 
 completely happy when I surprised them some- 
 times chatting and telling their impressions of 
 the work given the day before or to be given to- 
 morrow. At the beginning of my professorship 
 that work was Le Roi de Lahore. 
 
 Thus I continued for eigtheen years to be both 
 friend and "patron," as they called me, of a con- 
 siderable number of young composers. 
 
 Since I took such joy in it, I may perhaps recall 
 the successes they won each year in the contests 
 in fugue, and how useful this teaching was to me, 
 for it obliged me to be very clever, face to face 
 with a task, in finding quickly what should be 
 
 115
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 done in accordance with the rigorous precepts of 
 Cherubini. 
 
 How delighted I was for eighteen years when 
 nearly annually the Grand Prix de Rome was 
 awarded to a pupil in my class ! I longed to go 
 to the Conservatoire and heap the honors on my 
 master. 
 
 I can still see, at evening in his peaceful salon 
 with the windows overlooking the Conservatoire's 
 courtyard deserted at that hour the good Ad- 
 ministrator-General fenile Rety listening to me 
 as I told him of my happiness in having assisted 
 in the success of "my children." 
 
 A few years ago I received a touching expres- 
 sion of their feeling toward me. 
 
 In the month of December, 1900, I saw come 
 to my publishers, where they knew they could 
 find me, Lucien Hillemacher, since dead, alas, 
 accompanied by a group of old Grand Prix. He 
 delivered to me on parchment the signatures of 
 more than five hundred of my old pupils. The 
 pages were bound into a thin octavo volume, 
 bound luxuriously in Levant morocco, spangled 
 with stars. On the fly-leaves in brilliant illumi- 
 nation, along with my name, were the two dates : 
 1878-1900. 
 
 116
 
 THE INSTITUTE 
 
 The signatures were preceded by the following 
 lines : 
 
 Dear Master: 
 
 Happy at your nomination as Grand Officer of 
 the Legion of Honor, your pupils unite in offer- 
 ing you this evidence of their deep and affection- 
 ate gratitude. 
 
 The names of the Grand Prix of the Institute 
 who showed me their gratitude in this way were: 
 Hillemacher, Henri Rabaud, Max D'Ollone, Al- 
 fred Bruneau, Gaston Carraud, G. Marty, Andre 
 Floch, A. Savard, Croce-Spinelli, Lucien Lam- 
 bert, Ernest Moret, Gustave Charpentier, Rey- 
 naldo Hahn, Paul Vidal, Florent Schmitt, En- 
 esco, Bemberg, Laparra, d'Harcourt, Malherbe, 
 Guy Ropartz, Tiersot, Xavier Leroux, Dallier, 
 Falkenberg, Ch. Silver, and so many other dear 
 friends of the class ! 
 
 Ambroise Thomas saw that I had no thought 
 of standing for the Institute as he had done me 
 the honor of advising me and was good enough 
 to warn me that I still had two days left in which 
 to send out the letter of candidature for the 
 Academic des Beaux Arts. He advised me to 
 make it short, adding that the mention of titles 
 
 117
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 was necessary only when one was able to ignore 
 them. This sensible remark rather wounded my 
 modesty. . . . 
 
 Election day was fixed for Saturday, November 
 30. I knew that there were many candidates 
 and that first and foremost among them was 
 Saint-Saens, whose friend and great admirer I 
 was and always have been. 
 
 I yielded to Ambroise Thomas without the 
 slightest expectation of being elected. 
 
 I had spent the day as usual giving lessons in 
 the various parts of Paris. That morning, how- 
 ever, I had said to Hartmann, my publisher, that 
 I should be at the house of a pupil, No. 11, Rue 
 Blanche, that evening between five and six. 
 And I said, laughing, that he would know where 
 to find me to announce the result whatever it was. 
 Whereupon Hartmann said grandiloquently, "If 
 you are a member of the Institute this evening, I 
 will ring twice and you will understand me." 
 
 I was about to begin work at the piano, my 
 mind all on my work, on the Promenades d'un 
 Solitaire., by Stephen Heller (What a dear mu- 
 sician, that Alfred de Musset of the piano, as 
 they called him!) when two sharp rings of the 
 
 118
 
 THE INSTITUTE 
 
 bell sounded. My heart stopped. My pupil 
 could not make out what was the matter. 
 
 A servant dashed in and said, "There are two 
 gentlemen who want to embrace your professor." 
 Everything was explained. I went with those 
 "Messieurs," even more startled than happy, and 
 leaving my pupil probably better pleased than I 
 was. 
 
 When I reached home I found that I had been 
 preceded by my new and famous colleagues. 
 They had left their congratulations with my con- 
 cierge signed Meissonier, Lefeul, Ballu, Cabanel. 
 Meissonier had brought the report of the sitting 
 signed by him, which showed the two votes, for 
 I was elected on the second ballot. That was 
 certainly an autograph the like of which I would 
 not receive twice in my life ! 
 
 A fortnight later, according to the custom, I 
 was introduced in the Salle des Seances of the 
 Academic des Beaux-Arts by Comte Delaborde, 
 the permanent secretary. 
 
 A new member had to wear a black coat and 
 a white tie, and going to the reception in dress 
 clothes at three o'clock in the afternoon, one 
 would have thought I was on my way to a wed- 
 ding. 
 
 119
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I took my place in the chair which I still 
 occupy. That takes me back more than thirty- 
 three years ! 
 
 A few days later I wanted to take advantage of 
 my privileges by attending the reception of 
 Renan. The ushers did not know me yet, and I 
 was the Benjamin of the Academic. They would 
 not believe me and refused to let me in. One of 
 my colleagues, and not the least of them, Prince 
 Napoleon, who was going in at the same time, 
 told them who I was. 
 
 While I was making the usual round of visits 
 of thanks, I called on Ernest Reyer at his pic- 
 turesque apartment in the Rue de la Tour d'Au- 
 vergne. He opened the door himself and was 
 much surprised to see me for he knew I must 
 know that he had not been altogether favorable 
 to me. "I know," I said, "that you did not vote 
 for me. What touched me was that you did not 
 vote against me!" This put Reyer in good hu- 
 mor, for he said, "I am at lunch. Share my 
 fried eggs with me!" I accepted and we talked 
 a long time about art and its manifestations. 
 
 For over thirty years Ernest Reyer was my 
 best and firmest friend. 
 
 As one might imagine, the Institute did not 
 120
 
 THE INSTITUTE 
 
 sensibly modify my position. Indeed it made it 
 somewhat more difficult, as I wanted to get on 
 with the score of Herodiade, and so stopped sev- 
 eral lessons which were my most certain sources 
 of revenue. 
 
 Three weeks after my election a monster fes- 
 tival took place at the Hippodrome. More than 
 twenty thousand people took part. Gounod and 
 Saint-Saens conducted their own works. I had 
 the honor of directing the finale of the third act 
 of Le Roi de Lahore. Everyone remembers the 
 prodigious effect of that festival which was organ- 
 ized by Albert Vizentini, one of the best compan- 
 ions of my childhood. 
 
 While I was waiting in the green-room for my 
 turn to go on, Gounod came in haloed with tri- 
 umph. I asked him what he thought of the audi- 
 ence. 
 
 "I fancied that I saw the Valley of Jehoso- 
 phat," he said. 
 
 An amusing detail was told me afterwards. 
 
 There was a considerable crowd outside and 
 the people kept on trying to get in notwithstand- 
 ing the loud protests of those already seated. 
 Gounod shouted so as to be heard distinctly, "I 
 
 121
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 will begin when everyone has gone out!" This 
 amazing exclamation worked wonders. The 
 groups which had blocked the entrance and ap- 
 proaches to the Hippodrome recoiled. They 
 vanished as if by magic. 
 
 The second of the Concerts Historiques, 
 founded by Vaucorbeil, the Director of the Na- 
 tional Academy of Music at the time, took place 
 at the Opera on May 20, 1880. He gave my sa- 
 cred legend La Vierge. Mme. Gabrielle Krauss 
 and Mile. Daram were the principals and splen- 
 did interpreters they were. 
 
 That work is a rather painful memory in my 
 life. Its reception was cold and only one frag- 
 ment seemed to satisfy the large audience which 
 filled the hall. They encored three times the 
 passage which is now in the repertoire of many 
 concerts, the prelude to Part IV, Le Dernier Som- 
 meil de la Vierge. 
 
 Some years later the Societe des Concerts du 
 Conservatoire twice gave the fourth part of La 
 Vierge in its entirety. Mme. Ai'no Ackte was 
 really sublime in her interpretation of the role of 
 the Virgin. This success was completely satis- 
 fying to me ; I had nearly said, the most precious 
 of revenges. 
 
 122
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE AT BRUSSELS 
 
 My trips to Italy, journeys devoted to follow- 
 ing, if not to the preparation of, the successive 
 performances of Le Roi de Lahore at Milan, Pia- 
 cenza, Venice, Pisa and Trieste on the other side 
 of the Adriatic, did not prevent my working on 
 the score of Herodiade and it was soon finished. 
 
 Perhaps such wanderings are surprising since 
 they are so little to my taste. Many of my pu- 
 pils, however, have followed my example in this 
 regard and the reason is obvious. At the begin- 
 ning of our careers we have to give hints to the 
 orchestras, the stage manager, the artists and cos- 
 turners; the why and wherefore of each scene 
 must, oftentimes, be explained, and the tempo, as 
 given by the metronome, is little like the true one. 
 
 I have let such things go for a long time for 
 they take care of themselves. It is true that, 
 since I have been known for so many years, it 
 would be difficult to make a choice and decide 
 where I ought to go. And where should I begin 
 
 123
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 'twere among my keenest desires personally 
 to express my gratitude to all the directors and 
 artists who now know my work. As to the hints 
 I might have given them, they have gone ahead 
 and departures from the true rendering have be- 
 come rare, much more so than in the beginning 
 when both directors and artists ignored my 
 wishes and could not foresee them; in short, 
 when my works were, to them, those of an un- 
 known. 
 
 I must recall, and I do so with sincere emotion, 
 all I owe in the great provincial houses to those 
 kind directors, so affectionately devoted to me: 
 Graviere, Saugey, Villefranck, Rachet, and many 
 others who can claim my thanks and my most 
 grateful congratulations. 
 
 During the summer of 1879 I lived at the sea- 
 shore at Pourville near Dieppe. Hartmann, my 
 publisher, and Paul Milliet, my collaborator, 
 spent the Sundays with me. When I say with 
 me, I abuse the words for I kept company but lit- 
 tle with these excellent friends. I was accus- 
 tomed to work fifteen or sixteen hours a day, 
 sleep six hours, and my meals and dressing took 
 the rest of the time. It is only through such tire- 
 less labor continued without ceasing for years 
 
 124
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE 
 
 that works of great power and scope can be pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Alexander Dumas, the Younger, whose modest 
 contemporary I had been at the Institute for a 
 year, lived in a superb property at Puys near 
 Dieppe. His being near often furnished me with 
 delightful pleasures. I was never so happy as 
 when he came for me at seven o'clock in the eve- 
 ning to take me to dinner. He brought me back 
 at nine o'clock so as not to take up my time. He 
 wanted me to have a friendly rest, and indeed it 
 was a rest which was both exquisite and alto- 
 gether delightful. It is easy to imagine what a 
 treat the vivacious, sparkling, alluring conversa- 
 tion of the celebrated Academician was to me. 
 
 How I envied him then for those artistic joys 
 which he had tasted and which I was to know 
 later! He received and kept his interpreters at 
 his home and made them work on their parts. 
 At this time Mme. Pasca, the superb comedienne, 
 was his guest. 
 
 The score of Herodiade was finished at the be- 
 ginning of 1881. Hartmann and Paul Milliet 
 advised me to inform the directorate of the Opera. 
 The three years I had given to Herodiade had 
 been one uninterrupted joy to me. They were 
 
 125
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 marked by a never to be forgotten and unex- 
 pected concentration. 
 
 In spite of the dislike I have always had for 
 knocking at the doors of a theater, I had, never- 
 theless, to decide to speak of this work and I went 
 to the Opera and had an interview with M. Vau- 
 corbeil, the Director of the National Academy of 
 Music. Here is the conversation I was honored 
 with: 
 
 "My dear Director, as the Opera has been in 
 a small way my house with Le Roi de Lahore, 
 permit me to speak of a new work, Herodiade." 
 
 "Who is your librettist?" 
 
 "Paul Milliet, a man of considerable talent 
 whom I like immensely." 
 
 "I like him immensely too ; but with him one 
 needs . . . (thinking of a word) ... a car- 
 
 cassier." 
 
 "A carcassier!" I replied in utter astonish- 
 ment; "a carcassier! What kind of an animal 
 is that?" 
 
 "A carcassier" added the eminent director, 
 sententiously, "a carcassier is one who knows 
 how to fix up in solid fashion the carcass of a 
 piece, and I may add that you are not enough of 
 a carcassier in the strictest sense of the word. 
 
 126
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE 
 
 Bring me another work and the National Theater 
 of the Opera will be open to you." 
 
 I understood. The Opera was closed to me, 
 and some days after this painful interview I 
 learned that the scenery of Le Roi de Lahore had 
 been relegated irrevocably to the storehouse in 
 the Rue Richer which meant the final abandon- 
 ment. 
 
 One day that same summer I was walking on 
 the Boulevard des Capuchines, not far from the 
 Rue Daunou; my publisher, George Hartmann, 
 lived in a ground-floor apartment at the end of 
 the court at No. 20 of this street. My thoughts 
 were terribly dark. I went along with careworn 
 face and fainting heart deploring the deceitful 
 promises the directors had sprinkled on me like 
 holy water, when I was suddenly saluted and 
 stopped by one whom I recognized as M. Cala- 
 bresi, director of the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie 
 at Brussels. 
 
 I stopped nonplussed. Must I put him too in 
 my collection of wooden-faced directors? 
 
 "I know," said M. Calabresi, as he accosted 
 me, "that you have a great work, Herodiade. 
 If you will give it to me, I will put it on at once 
 at the Theatre de la Monnaie." 
 k 127
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 "But you don't know it," I said. 
 
 "I would never dream of asking a hearing of 
 you!" 
 
 "Well," I replied at once, "I will inflict it on 
 you." 
 
 "But I am going back to Brussels to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 "This evening, then," I retorted. "I shall 
 expect you at eight o'clock in Hartmann's shop. 
 It will be closed by that time ... we shall be 
 alone." 
 
 I hurried to Hartmann's, radiant, and told him, 
 laughing and crying, what had happened to me. 
 
 A piano was brought immediately, and Paul 
 Milliet was hurriedly informed. 
 
 Alphonse de Rothschild, my colleague at the 
 Academic des Beaux Arts, knew that I had to go 
 to Brussels very often for the rehearsals of 
 Herodiade. They were about to begin at the 
 Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, and he wanted me 
 to avoid delays at the stations so he gave me a 
 pass. 
 
 They became so accustomed to seeing me cross 
 the frontier at Feignies and Quevy that I became 
 a real friend of the customs' officers, especially of 
 those on the Belgian side. I remember that to 
 
 128
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE 
 
 thank them for their kind attentions I sent them 
 seats for the Theatre de la Monnaie. 
 
 A real ceremony took place at the Theatre 
 Royal in the month of October of this same year 
 1881. As a matter of fact Herodiade was the 
 first French work to be created on the superb 
 stage of the capital of Belgium. 
 
 On the appointed day, my two excellent di- 
 rectors, Stoumon and Calabresi, went with me 
 as far as the great public foyer. It was a vast 
 place with gilt paneling and was lighted from the 
 colonnaded peristyle of the theater on the Place 
 de la Monnaie. On the other side of the Place 
 (a relic of old Brussels) was the Mint and, in a 
 corner, the Stock Exchange. These buildings 
 have since disappeared and have been replaced 
 by a magnificent Post Office. The Exchange has 
 been moved to a magnificent palace a short ways 
 away. 
 
 In the middle of the foyer to which I was taken 
 was a grand piano about which there were twenty 
 chairs arranged in a semi-circle. Besides the 
 directors, there were my publisher and my col- 
 laborator, as well as the artists we had selected 
 to create the parts. At the head of these artists 
 was Martha Duvivier, whose talent, fame, and 
 
 129
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 beauty fitted her for the role of Salome; Mile. 
 Blanche Deschamps, later the wife of the famous 
 orchestra leader Leon Jehin, had the role of 
 Herodiade; Vernet, Jean; Manoury, Herod; the 
 elder Gresse, Phanuel. I went to the piano, 
 turned my back towards the windows, and sang 
 all the roles including the choruses. 
 
 I was young, eager, happy, and, I add to my 
 shame, very greedy. But if I accuse myself, it 
 is to excuse myself for leaving the piano so 
 often to get a bite at a table laden with exquisite 
 food spread out on a plentiful buffet in the same 
 foyer. Every time I got up, the artists stopped 
 me as if to say, "Have pity. . . . Keep on. . . . 
 Continue. . . . Don't stop again." I ate al- 
 most all the food which had been prepared for 
 us all. The artists were so much pleased that 
 they thought more of embracing me than of eat- 
 ing. Why should I complain? 
 
 I lived at the Hotel de la Poste, Rue Fosse- 
 aux-Loups, beside the theater. In the same 
 room, on the ground floor on the corner of the 
 hotel overlooking the Rue d' Argent, I wrote, the 
 following autumn, the rough draft of the Sem- 
 inaire act of Manon. Later on I preferred to live 
 in the dear kindly Hotel du Grand-Monarque, 
 
 130
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE 
 
 Rue des Fripiers, and I continued to do so until 
 1910. 
 
 This hotel plays a part in my deepest mem- 
 ories. I lived there often with Reyer, the author J 
 of Sigurd and of Salammbo, my colleague at 
 the Academic des Beaux-Arts. There, we both 
 lost our collaborator and friend Ernest Blau. 
 He died here, and in spite of the custom that no 
 funeral black shall be hung in front of a hotel, 
 Mile. Wanters, the proprietress, insisted that the 
 obsequies should be public and should not be 
 concealed from the people who lived there. In 
 the salon among strangers we said the tender 
 words of farewell to the collaborator on Sigurd 
 and Esclarmonde. 
 
 A grim detail! Our poor friend Blau dined 
 the evening of his death at the house of Stoumon, 
 the director. As he was early, he stopped in the 
 Rue des Sablons to look at some luxurious cof- 
 fins displayed in an undertaker's shop. As we 
 had just paid our last farewell and had placed 
 the mortal remains of Blau in a temporary vault 
 beside the casket of a young girl, which was cov- 
 ered with white roses, one of the bearers observed 
 that if he had been consulted the deceased could 
 not have chosen a better neighborhood. The 
 
 131
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 head undertaker reflected: "We have done 
 things well. M. Blau noticed a fine coffin and we 
 let him have it cheap." 
 
 As we came from that vast cemetery, com- 
 paratively empty at that time, we were all im- 
 pressed by the poignant grief of Mme. Jeanne 
 Raunay, the great artiste. She walked slowly by 
 the side of the great master Gevaert. 
 
 Oh, mournful winter day ! 
 
 The rehearsals of Herodiade went on at the 
 Monnaie. They were full of delirious joy and 
 surprises for me. Its success was considerable. 
 Here is what I find in the papers of the times. 
 
 At last the great night came. 
 
 From the night before Sunday the public 
 formed lines at the entrance to the theater (the 
 cheaper seats were not sold in advance at that 
 time). The ticket sellers spent the whole night 
 in this way, and while some sold their places in 
 line at a high price on Monday morning, others 
 held on and sold places in the pit for sixty francs 
 on the average. A stall cost one hundred and 
 fifty francs. 
 
 That evening the auditorium was taken by 
 storm. 
 
 Before the curtain rose, the Queen entered 
 132
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE 
 
 her stage box accompanied by two ladies of honor 
 and Captain Chretien, the King's orderly. 
 
 In the neighboring box were their Royal High- 
 nesses the Count and Countess of Flanders, ac- 
 companied by the Baron Van den Bossch d'Hylis- 
 sem and Count Oultremont de Duras, grand mas- 
 ter of the princely household. 
 
 In the Court Boxes were Jules Devaux, chief 
 of the King's cabinet; Generals Goethals and 
 Goffinet, aides-de-camp; Baron Lunden, Colonel 
 Baron Anethan, Major Donny, Captain Wycker- 
 slooth, the King's orderlies. 
 
 In the principal boxes: M. Antonin Proust, 
 Minister of Fine Arts in France, with Baron 
 Beyens, Belgian Minister to Paris, the heads of 
 the cabinet, and Mme. Frere Orban, etc. 
 
 In the lower stage box: M. Buls, recently 
 elected Burgomaster, and the aldermen. 
 
 In the stalls and balcony were numerous peo- 
 ple from Paris: the composers, Reyer, Saint- 
 Saens, Benjamin Godard, Joncieres, Guiraud, 
 Serpette, Duvernois, Julien Porchet, Wormser, 
 Le Borne, Lecocq, etc., etc. 
 
 This brilliant emotional audience, said the 
 chronicles of the time, made the work a de- 
 lirious success. 
 
 Between the second and the third acts Queen 
 Marie Henriette summoned the composer to her 
 box and congratulated him warmly, as well as 
 
 133
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Reyer whose Statue had just been given at the 
 Monnaie. 
 
 The enthusiasm swelled crescendo to the end 
 of the evening. The last act ended amid cheers. 
 There were loud calls for the composer and the 
 curtain was raised several times, but the "author" 
 did not appear. As the audience was unwilling 
 to leave the house, the stage manager, Lapissida, 
 who had staged the work, finally had to announce 
 that the author had left as soon as the perform- 
 ance ended. 
 
 Two days after the Premiere the composer was 
 invited to dine at Court and a royal decree ap- 
 peared in the Moniteur naming him Chevalier de 
 1'Ordre de Leopold. 
 
 The dazzling success of the first performance 
 was trumpeted through the European press, 
 which, almost without exception, praised it in 
 enthusiastic terms. As to the enthusiasm of the 
 first days it continued persistently through fifty- 
 five consecutive performances, which, according 
 to the papers, realized four thousand francs every 
 evening above the subscriptions. 
 
 Herodiade, which made its first appearance on 
 the stage of the Monnaie December 19, 1881, 
 under the exceptionally brilliant circumstances 
 just quoted from the newspapers of Belgium as 
 
 134
 
 A FIRST PERFORMANCE 
 
 well as of other countries, reappeared at this 
 theater, after many revivals, during the first fort- 
 night of November, 1911 nearly thirty years 
 later. Herodiade long ago passed its hundredth 
 performance at Brussels. 
 
 And I was already thinking of a new work. 
 
 135
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA-COMIQUE 
 
 One autumn morning in 1881 I was much dis- 
 turbed, even anxious. Carvalho, the director of 
 the Opera-Comique, had entrusted to me the 
 three acts of Phoebe by Henri Meilhac. I had 
 read and re-read them, but nothing in them ap- 
 pealed to me; I clashed with the work which I 
 had to do; I was nervous and impatient. 
 
 With fine bravery I went to see Meilhac. The 
 happy author of so many delightful works, of 
 so many successes, was in his library, among his 
 rare books in marvellous bindings, a fortune 
 piled up in his rooms on the mezzanine floor in 
 which he lived at 30 Rue Drouot. 
 
 I can still see him writing on a small round 
 table beside a large table of the purest Louis XIV 
 style. He had hardly seen me than he smiled 
 his good smile, as if pleased, in the belief that 
 I brought news of our Phoebe. 
 "Is it finished?" he asked. 
 I retorted illico to this greeting, in a less as- 
 sured tone: 
 
 136
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA 
 
 "Yes, it is finished; we will never speak of it 
 again." 
 
 A lion in his cage could not have been more 
 abashed. My perplexity was extreme; I saw a 
 void, nothingness, about me, when the title of a 
 work struck me as a revelation. 
 
 "Manon!" I cried, pointing to one of Meil- 
 hac's books. 
 
 "Manon Lescaut, do you mean Manon Les- 
 caut?" 
 
 "No, Manon, Manon short, Manon, it is 
 Manon!" 
 
 Meilhac had separated from Dudovic Halevy 
 a little while before and had associated himself 
 with Philippe Gille, that fine, delightful mind, a 
 tender-hearted and charming man. 
 
 "Come to lunch with me to-morrow at Va- 
 chette's," said Meilhac, "and I will tell you what 
 I have done . . ." 
 
 It is easy to imagine whether in keeping this 
 engagement I had more curiosity in my heart or 
 appetite in my stomach. I went to Vachette's 
 and there to my inexpressible and delightful sur- 
 prise I found beneath my napkin the first two 
 acts of Manon. The other three acts followed 
 within a few days. 
 
 137
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 The idea of writing this work had haunted me 
 for a long time. Now the dream was realized. 
 
 Although I was much excited by the rehearsals 
 of Herodiade and greatly upset by my frequent 
 trips to Brussels, I was already at work on Manon 
 in the summer of 1881. 
 
 Meilhac went to live that summer in the Pavil- 
 lion Henri IV at Saint-Germain. I used to sur- 
 prise him there about five o'clock in the after- 
 noon, when I knew the day's work would be done. 
 Then, as we walked, we worked out new arrange- 
 ments in the words of the opera. Here we de- 
 cided on the Seminaire act, and, to bring off a 
 greater contrast at the end of it, I demanded the 
 act of Transylvania. 
 
 How pleased I was in this collaboration, in 
 that work in which we exchanged ideas with never 
 a clash, in the mutual desire of reaching perfec- 
 tion if possible. 
 
 Philippe Gille shared in this useful collabora- 
 tion from time to time, and his presence was dear 
 to me. 
 
 What tender, pleasing memories I have of this 
 time at Saint-Germain, with its magnificent ter- 
 race, and the luxuriant foliage of its beautiful 
 
 138
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA 
 
 forest. My work was well along when I had to 
 return to Brussels at the beginning of the sum- 
 mer of 1882. During my different sojourns at 
 Brussels I made a delightful friend in Frederix, 
 who showed rare mastery of the pen in his 
 dramatic and lyric criticism in the columns of the 
 Independance beige. He occupied a prominent 
 position in journalism in his own country and 
 was highly appreciated as well by the French 
 press. 
 
 He was a man of great worth, endowed with 
 a charming character. His expressive, spirituel, 
 open countenance rather reminded me of the old- 
 est of the Coquelins. He was among the first 
 of those dear good friends I have known whose 
 eyes have closed in the long sleep, alas ! and who 
 are no more either for me or for those who loved 
 them. 
 
 Our Salome, Martha Duvivier, had continued 
 to sing the role in Herodiade throughout the new 
 season, and had installed herself for the summer 
 in a country house near Brussels. My friend 
 Frederix carried me off there one day and, as I 
 had the manuscript of the first acts of Manon 
 with me, I risked an intimate reading before him 
 
 139
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 and our beautiful interpreter. The impression 
 I took away with me was an encouragement to 
 keep on with the work. 
 
 The reason I returned to Belgium at this time 
 was that I had been invited to go to Holland un- 
 der conditions which were certainly amusing. 
 
 A Dutch gentleman, a great lover of music, 
 with phlegm more apparent than real, as is often 
 the case with those Rembrandt's country sends 
 us, made me the most singular visit, as unex- 
 pected as it well could be. He had learned that 
 I was working on the romance of the Abbe Pre- 
 vost, and he offered to install my penates at the 
 Hague, in the very room in which the Abbe had 
 lived. I accepted the offer, and I went and shut 
 myself up this was during the summer of 1882 
 in the room which the author of Les Memories 
 d'un homme de qualite had occupied. His bed, 
 a great cradle, shaped like a gondola, was still 
 there. 
 
 The days slipped by at the Hague in dream- 
 ing and strolling over the dunes of Schleveningin 
 or in the woods around the royal residence. 
 There I made delightfully exquisite little friends 
 of the deer who brought me the fresh breath of 
 their damp muzzles. 
 
 140
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA 
 
 It was now the spring of 1883 I had re- 
 turned to Paris and, as the work was finished, an 
 appointment was made at M. Carvalho's. I 
 found there our director, Mme. Miolan Car- 
 valho, Meilhac, and Philippe Gille. Manon was 
 read from nine in the evening until midnight. 
 My friends appeared to be delighted. 
 
 Mme. Carvalho embraced me joyfully, and 
 kept repeating, 
 
 "Would that I were twenty years younger!" 
 
 I consoled the great artiste as best I could. 
 I wanted her name on the score and I dedicated 
 it to her. 
 
 We had to find a heroine and many names were 
 suggested. The male roles were taken by Tala- 
 zac, Taskin and Cobalet a superb cast. But 
 no choice could be made for Manon. Many had 
 talent, it was true, and even great fame, but I 
 did not feel that a single artist answered for the 
 part as I wanted it and could play the perfidious 
 darling Manon with all the heart I had put into 
 her. 
 
 However, I found a young artist, Mme. Vail- 
 lant Couturier, who had such attractive vocal 
 qualities that I trusted her with a copy of sev- 
 eral passages of the score. I made her work at 
 
 141
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 them at my publisher's. She was indeed my 
 first Manon. 
 
 They were playing at this time at Les Nou- 
 veautes one of Charles Lecocq's great successes. 
 My great friend, Marquis de la Valette, a Parisian 
 of the Parisians, dragged me there one evening. 
 Mile. Vaillant later Mme. Couturier the 
 charming artiste of whom I have spoken, played 
 the leading part adorably. She interested me 
 greatly ; to my eyes she greatly resembled a young 
 flower girl on the Boulevard Capucines. I had 
 never spoken to this delightful young girl (proh 
 pudor) but her looks obsessed me and her mem- 
 ory accompanied me constantly; she was exactly 
 the Manon I had had in my mind's eye during 
 my work. 
 
 I was carried away by the captivating artiste 
 of Les Nouveautes, and I asked to speak to the 
 friendly director of the theater, a free and open 
 man, and an incomparable artist. 
 
 "Illustrious master" he began, "what good 
 wind brings you ? You are at home here, as you 
 know!" 
 
 "I came to ask you to let me have Mile. Vail- 
 lant for a new opera." 
 
 "Dear man, what you want is impossible; I 
 142
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA 
 
 need Mile. Vaillant. I can't let you have her." 
 
 "Do you mean it?" 
 
 "Absolutely, but I think that if you would 
 write a work for my theater, I would let you have 
 this artiste. Is it a bargain, bibi?" 
 
 Matters stayed there with only vague prom- 
 ises on both sides. 
 
 While this dialogue was going on, I noticed 
 that the excellent Marquis de La Valette was 
 much occupied with a pretty gray hat covered 
 with roses passing back and forth in the foyer. 
 
 All at once I saw the pretty hat coming to- 
 wards me. 
 
 "So a debutant no longer recognizes a debu- 
 tante?" 
 
 "Heilbronn!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Herself!" 
 
 Heilbronn recalled the dedication written on 
 the first work I had done and in which she had 
 made her first appearance on the stage. 
 
 "Do you still sing?" 
 
 "No, I am rich, but nevertheless Shall I 
 tell you? I miss the stage. It haunts me. 
 Oh, if I could only find a good part!" 
 
 "I have one in Manon." 
 
 "Manon Lescaut?" 
 
 143
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 "No, Manon. That is all." 
 
 "May I hear the music?" 
 
 "When you like." 
 
 "This evening?" 
 
 "Impossible, it is nearly midnight." 
 
 "What? I can't wait till morning. I feel 
 that there is something in it. Go and get the 
 score. You will find me in my apartment (the 
 artiste lived in the Champs filysees) with the 
 piano open and the lights lit." 
 
 I did as she said. 
 
 I went home and got the score. Half-past 
 four had struck when I sang the final bars of 
 Manon's death. 
 
 During my rendering Heilbronn was moved to 
 tears. I heard her sigh through her sobs, "It is 
 my life . . . that is my life." 
 
 This time, as ever has been the case, the secpiel 
 showed that I was right to wait, to take time in 
 choosing an artist who would have to live my 
 work. 
 
 The day after he heard Manon, Carvalho 
 signed the contract. 
 
 The following year, after more than eighty 
 consecutive performances, I learned of Marie 
 Heilbronn's death! . . . 
 
 144
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA 
 
 I preferred to stop the performances rather 
 than to see it sung by another. Some time after- 
 wards the Opera-Comique went up in flames. 
 Manon was not given again for ten years. Dear 
 unique Sybil Sanderson took up the work at the 
 Opera-Comique and she played in the two-hun- 
 dredth performance. 
 
 A glory was reserved for me on the five hun- 
 dredth performance. Manon was sung by 
 Marguerite Carre. A few months ago this cap- 
 tivating, exquisite artist was applauded on the 
 evening of the 740th performance. 
 
 In passing I want to pay tribute to the beauti- 
 ful artistes who have taken the part. I will men- 
 tion Miles. Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar, Lina 
 Cavalieri, Mme. Brejean-Silver, Miles. Courte- 
 nay, Genevieve Vix, Mmes. Edvina and Nicot- 
 Vauchelet, and still other dear artistes. They 
 will pardon me if all their names do not come to 
 my grateful pen at the moment. 
 
 The Italian Theatre (Maurel's Season), as I 
 have already said, put on Herodiade two weeks 
 after the first performance of Manon, with the 
 following admirable artists: Fides Devries, 
 Jean de Reszke, Victor Maurel, Edouard de 
 Reszke. 
 
 145
 
 MY RECOLIJECTIONS 
 
 As I write these lines in 1911, Herodiade con- 
 tinues its career at the Theatre-Lyrique de la 
 Gaite (under the management of the Isola 
 brothers) who put on the work in 1903 with the 
 famous Emma Calve. The day after the first 
 performance of Herodiade in Paris I received 
 these lines from our illustrious master, Gounod: 
 
 Sunday, February 3, '84. 
 My dear Friend: 
 
 The noise of your success with Herodiade 
 reaches me; but I lack that of the work itself, 
 and I shall go to hear it as soon as possible, prob- 
 ably Saturday. Again new congratulations, and 
 Good luck to you, 
 
 CH. GOUNOD. 
 
 Meanwhile Marie Magdeleine went on its 
 career in the great festivals abroad. I recall the 
 following letter which Bizet wrote me some years 
 before with deep pride. 
 
 Our school has not produced anything like it. 
 You give me the fever, brigand. 
 
 You are a proud musician, I'll wager. 
 
 My wife has just put Marie Magdeleine under 
 lock and key ! 
 
 That detail is eloquent, is it not? 
 
 The devil! You've become singularly dis- 
 turbing. 
 
 146
 
 THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPERA 
 
 As to that, believe me that no one is more sin- 
 cere in his admiration and in his affection than 
 your, 
 
 BIZET. 
 
 That is the testimony of my excellent comrade 
 and affectionate friend, George Bizet a friend 
 and comrade who would have remained stead- 
 fast had not blind destiny torn him from us in 
 the full bloom of his prodigious and marvelous 
 talent. 
 
 Still in the dawn of life when he passed from 
 this world, he could have compassed everything 
 in the art to which he devoted himself with so 
 much love. 
 
 147
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 FIVE COLLABORATORS 
 
 As is my custom, I did not wait for Motions 
 fate to be decided before I began to plague my 
 publisher, Hartmann, to wake up and find me a 
 new subject. I had hardly finished my plaint, 
 to which he listened in silence with a smile on 
 his lips, than he went to a desk and took out five 
 books of manuscript written on the yellow paper 
 which is well known to copyists. It was Le Cid, 
 an opera in five acts by Louis Gallet and Edouard 
 Blatt. As he offered me the manuscript, Hart- 
 mann made this comment to which I had noth- 
 ing to reply, "I know you. I had foreseen this 
 outburst." 
 
 I was bound to be pleased at writing a work 
 based on the great Corneille's masterpiece, the 
 libretto due to the fellow workers I had had in 
 the competition for the Imperial Opera, La Coup 
 de TOI de Thule, in which, as I have said, I failed 
 to win the first prize. 
 
 I learned the words by heart, as I always did. 
 148
 
 ci 
 
 FIVE COLLABORATORS 
 
 I wanted to have it constantly in my thoughts, 
 without being compelled to keep the text in my 
 pocket, so as to be able to work at it away from 
 home, in the streets, in society, at dinner, at the 
 theater, anywhere that I might find time. I get 
 away from a task with difficulty, especially when, 
 as in this case, I am gripped by it. 
 
 As I worked I remembered that d'Ennery 
 sometime before had entrusted to me an impor- 
 tant libretto and that I had found a very moving 
 situation in the fifth act. While the words did 
 not appear sufficiently worth while to lead me to 
 write the music, I wanted to keep this situation. 
 I told the famous dramatist and I obtained his 
 consent to interpolate this scene in the second 
 act of Le Cid. Thus d'Ennery became a col- 
 laborator. This scene is where Chimene finds 
 that Rodriguez is her father's murderer. 
 
 Some days later, as I was reading the romance 
 of Guilhem de Castro, I came across an incident 
 which became the tableau where the consoling 
 apparition appears to the Cid as he is in tears 
 the second tableau in the third act. I was in- 
 spired to this by the apparition of Jesus to Saint 
 Julien the Hospitalier. 
 
 I continued my work on Le Cid wherever I 
 149
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 happened to be, as the performances of Manon 
 took me to the provincial theaters where they al- 
 ternated it with Herodiade both in France and 
 abroad. 
 
 I wrote the ballet for Le Cid at Marseilles dur- 
 ing a rather long stay there. I was very com- 
 fortably established in my room, at the Hotel 
 Beauveau, with its long latticed windows which 
 looked out on the old port. The prospect was 
 actually fairylike. This room was decorated 
 with remarkable panels and mirrors, and when I 
 expressed my astonishment at seeing them so 
 well preserved, the proprietor told me that the 
 room was an object of special care because Pagan- 
 ini, Alfred de Musset and George Sand had all 
 lived there once upon a time. The cult of mem- 
 ories sometimes reaches the point of fetishism. 
 
 It was spring. My room was scented with 
 bunches of carnations which my friends in Mar- 
 seilles sent me every day. When I say friends, 
 the word is too weak; perhaps it is necessary to 
 go to mathematics to get the word, and even 
 then? 
 
 The friends in Marseilles heaped upon me con- 
 sideration, attention and endless kindness. 
 That is the country where they sweeten the cof- 
 
 150
 
 fee by placing it outside on the balcony, for the 
 sea is made of honey ! 
 
 Before I left the kind hospitality of this Pho- 
 cean city, I received the following letter from 
 the directors of the Opera, Ritt and Gailhard: 
 
 "My dear Friend, 
 
 "Can you set the day and hour for your read- 
 ing of Le Cid? 
 
 "In friendship, 
 
 "E. RITT." 
 
 But I had brought from Paris keen anguish 
 about the distribution of the parts. I wanted the 
 sublime Mme. Fides Devries to create the part of 
 Chimene, but they said that since her marriage 
 she no longer wanted to appear on the stage. 
 I also depended on my friends Jean and Edouard 
 de Reszke, who came to Paris especially to talk 
 about Le Cid. They were aware of my plans for 
 them. How many times I climbed the stairs of 
 the Hotel Scribe where they lived! 
 
 At last the contracts were signed and finally 
 the reading took place as the Opera requested. 
 
 As I speak of the ballet in Le Cid I remember 
 I heard the motif, which begins the ballet, in 
 Spain. I was in the very country of Le Cid at 
 the time, living in a modest inn. It chanced that 
 
 151
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 they were celebrating a wedding and they danced 
 all night in the lower room of the hotel. Several 
 guitars and two flutes repeated a dance tune 
 until they wore it out. I noted it down. It be- 
 came the motif I am writing about, a bit of local 
 color which I seized. I did not let it get away. 
 I intended this ballet for Mile. Rosita Mauri who 
 had already done some wonderful dances at the 
 Opera. I even owed several interesting rhythms 
 to the famous dancer. 
 
 The land of the Magyars and France have been 
 joined at all times by bonds of keen, cordial sym- 
 pathy. It was not a surprise, therefore, when 
 the Hungarian students invited forty Frenchmen 
 I was one to go to Hungary for festivities 
 which they intended to give in our honor. 
 
 We started a joyous caravan one beautiful 
 evening in August for the banks of the Danube, 
 Frangois Coppee, Leo Delibes, Georges Clairin, 
 Doctors Pozzi and Albert Rodin, and many other 
 comrades and charming friends. Then, some 
 newspaper men went along. Ferdinand de Les- 
 seps was at our head to preside over us, by right 
 of name if not by fame. Our illustrious com- 
 patriot was nearly eighty at the time. He bore 
 the weight of years so lightly that for a moment 
 
 152
 
 FIVE COLLABORATORS 
 
 one would have thought he was the youngest in 
 the lot. 
 
 We started off in uproarious gaiety. The 
 journey was one uninterrupted flow of jests and 
 humorous wit, intermingled with farce and end- 
 less pleasantries. 
 
 The restaurant car was reserved for us. We 
 did not leave it all night and our sleeping car was 
 absolutely unoccupied. 
 
 As we went through Munich, the Orient Ex- 
 press stopped for five minutes to let off two trav- 
 elers, a man and a woman, who, we did not know 
 how, had contrived to squeeze into a corner of 
 the dining car and who had calmly sat through 
 all our follies. As they left the train, they made 
 in a foreign accent this rather sharp remark, 
 "Those distinguished persons seem rather com- 
 mon." We certainly did not intend to displease 
 that puritanical pair and we never overstepped 
 the bounds of joviality and fun. 
 
 That fortnight's journey continued full of in- 
 cidents in which jokes contended with burlesque. 
 
 Every evening, after the warmly enthusiastic 
 receptions of the Hungarian youth, Ferdinand 
 de Lesseps, our venerated chief, who was called 
 in all the Hungarian speeches the "Great French- 
 
 153
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 man," would leave us after fixing the order of 
 the next day's receptions. As he finished ar- 
 ranging our program, he would add, "To-mor- 
 row morning, at four o'clock, in evening dress." 
 And the "Great Frenchman" would be the first 
 one up and dressed. When we congratulated 
 him on his extraordinary youthful energy, he 
 would apologize as follows: "Youth must wear 
 itself out." 
 
 During the festivities of every kind which they 
 got up in our honor, they arranged for a gala 
 spectacle, a great performance at the Theatre 
 Royal in Budapest. Delibes and I were both 
 asked to conduct an act from one of our works. 
 
 When I reached the orchestra, amid hurrahs 
 from the audience, only in Hungary they shout, 
 "Elyen," I found on the desk the score ... of 
 the first act of Coppelia, when I had expected to 
 find before me the third act of Herodiade for me 
 to conduct. So much the worse! There was 
 no help for it and I had to beat time from 
 memory. 
 
 The plot thickened. 
 
 When Delibes, who had received the same 
 honors that I had, saw the third act of Herodiade 
 on his desk, with me rejoining my companions 
 
 154
 
 The Forum from the First Act of Roma. See page 300
 
 FIVE COLLABORATORS 
 
 in the audience, he presented a unique spectacle. 
 My poor dear great friend mopped his brow, 
 turned this way and that, drew long breaths, 
 begged the Hungarian musicians who didn't 
 understand a word he said to give him the right 
 score, but all in vain. 
 
 He had to conduct from memory. This 
 seemed to exasperate him, but Delibes, the ador- 
 able musician, was far above a little difficulty like 
 that. 
 
 After this entertainment we were all present 
 at an immense banquet where naturally enough 
 toasts were de rigeur. I offered one to that great 
 musician, Franz Liszt Hungary was honored in 
 giving him birth. 
 
 When Delibes's turn came, I suggested to him 
 that I collaborate in his speech as we had done at 
 the Opera with our scores. I spoke for him; he 
 spoke for me. The result was a succession of 
 incoherent phrases which were received by the 
 frantic applause of our compatriots and by the 
 enthusiastic "Elyens" of the Hungarians. 
 
 I will add that Delibes and I, like all the rest, 
 were in a state of delightful intoxication, for the 
 marvellous vineyards of Hungary are verily those 
 of the Lord himself. Something must be the 
 
 155
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 matter with one's head, if he does not enjoy the 
 charm of those wines with their voluptuous, 
 heady bouquet. 
 
 Four o'clock in the morning! We were, as 
 ordered, in evening dress (indeed we had not 
 changed it) and ready to go to lay wreaths on 
 the tomb of the forty Hungarian martyrs who 
 had died to free their country. 
 
 But through all these mad follies, all these 
 distractions, and impressive ceremonies, I was 
 thinking of the rehearsals of Le Cid which were 
 waiting for my return to Paris. When I got 
 back, I found another souvenir of Hungary, a 
 letter from the author of La Messe du Saint Graal, 
 the precursor of Parsifal: 
 
 "Most Honored Confrere: 
 
 "The Hungarian Gazette informs me that you 
 have testified benevolently in my favor at the 
 French banquet at Budapest. Sincere thanks 
 and constant cordiality. 
 
 "F. LISZT." 
 26 August, '85. Weimar. 
 
 The stage rehearsals of Le Cid at the Opera 
 were carried on with astonishing sureness and 
 skill by my dear director, P. Gailhard, a master 
 of this art who had been besides the most admir- 
 
 156
 
 FIVE COLLABORATORS 
 
 able of artists on the stage. He did everything 
 for the good of the work with an affectionate 
 friendship. It is my pleasant duty to pay him 
 honor for this. 
 
 Later on I found him the same invaluable col- 
 laborator when Ariane was put on at the Opera. 
 
 On the evening of November 20, 1885, the 
 Opera billed the first performance of Le Cid, 
 while the Opera-Comique played the same eve- 
 ning Manon, which had already passed its eight- 
 ieth performance. 
 
 In spite of the good news from the general 
 rehearsal of Le Cid, I spent the evening with the 
 artists at Manon. Needless to say all the talk in 
 the wings of the Opera-Comique was of the first 
 performance of Le Cid which was then in full 
 blast. 
 
 Despite my apparent calmness, in my inmost 
 heart I was extremely anxious, so the curtain had 
 hardly fallen on the fifth act of Manon than I 
 went to the Opera instead of going home. An 
 irresistible power pulled me thither. 
 
 As I skirted the outside of the house from 
 which an elegant and large crowd was pouring, 
 I overheard a snatch of conversation between a 
 well known journalist and a reporter who hur- 
 
 157
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 riedly inquired the results of the evening. "It 
 is splitting, my dear chap." 
 
 I was greatly troubled, as one would be in any 
 case, and ran to the directors' room for further 
 news. At the artists' entrance I met Mme. 
 Krause. She embraced me in raptures and said, 
 "It's a triumph!" 
 
 Need I say that I preferred the opinion of this 
 admirable artiste. She comforted me com- 
 pletely. 
 
 I left Paris (what a traveler I was then!) for 
 Lyons, where they were giving both Herodiade 
 and Manon. 
 
 Three days after my arrival there, as I was 
 dining at a restaurant with my two great friends 
 Josephin Soulary, the fine poet of Les Deux 
 Corteges, and Paul Marieton, the vibrant provin- 
 cial poet, I was handed the following telegram 
 from Hartmann : 
 
 "Fifth performance of Le Cid postponed a 
 month. Enormous advance sale returned. Ar- 
 tists ill." 
 
 I was nervous at the time ; I fainted away and 
 remained unconscious so long that my friends 
 were greatly alarmed. 
 
 158
 
 FIVE COLLABORATORS 
 
 At the end of three weeks, however, Le Cid 
 reappeared on the bills, and I realized once more 
 that I was surrounded by deep sympathy, as the 
 following letter shows: 
 
 "My dear Confrere: 
 
 "I must congratulate you on your success and 
 I want to applaud you as quickly as possible. 
 My turn for my box does not come around until 
 Friday, December llth, and I beg you to arrange 
 for Le Cid to be given on that day, Friday, De- 
 cember 11. 
 
 "H. D'ORLEANS." 
 
 How touched and proud I was at this mark 
 of attention from his Royal Highness the Due 
 d'Aumale ! 
 
 I shall always remember the delightful and 
 inspiring days passed at the Chateau de Chan- 
 tilly with my confreres at the Institute Leon Bon- 
 nat, Benjamin Constant, Edouard Detaille, and 
 Ger6me. Our reception by our royal host was 
 charming in its simplicity and his conversation 
 was that of an eminent man of letters, erudite 
 but unpretentious. It was captivating and at- 
 tractive for us when we all gathered in the library 
 where the prince enthralled us by his perfect 
 
 159
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 simplicity as he talked to us, pipe in his mouth, 
 as he had so often done in camp among our sol- 
 diers. 
 
 Only the great ones of earth know how to pro- 
 duce such moments of delightful familiarity. 
 
 And Le Cid went on its way both in the prov- 
 inces and abroad. 
 
 In October, 1900, the hundredth perform- 
 ance was celebrated at the Opera and on Novem- 
 ber 21, 1911, at the end of twenty-six years, I 
 read in the papers: 
 
 "The performance of Le Cid last night was 
 one of the finest. A packed house applauded 
 enthusiastically the beautiful work by M. Mas- 
 senet and his interpreters: Mile. Breval, Mm. 
 Franz and Delmas, and the star of the ballet, 
 Mile. Zambelli." 
 
 I had been particularly happy in the perform- 
 ances of this work which had preceded this. 
 After the sublime Fides Devries, Chimene was 
 sung in Paris by the incomparable Mme. Rose 
 Caron, the superb Mme. Adiny, the moving Mile. 
 Merentie, and particularly by Louise Grandjean, 
 the eminent professor at the Conservatoire. 
 
 160
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A JOURNEY TO GERMANY 
 
 On Sunday, August first, Hartmann and I 
 went to hear Parsifal at the Wagner Theater at 
 Bayreuth. After we had heard this miracle 
 unique we visited the capital of Upper Franconia. 
 Some of the monuments there are worth while 
 seeing. I wanted especially to see the city 
 church. It is an example of the Gothic archi- 
 tecture of the middle of the Fifteenth Century 
 and was dedicated to Mary Magdalene. It is 
 not hard to imagine what memories drew me to 
 this remarkable edifice. 
 
 After running through various German towns 
 and visiting different theaters, Hartmann, who 
 had an idea of his own, took me to Wetzler, where 
 he had seen Werther. We visited the house 
 where Goethe had written his immortal romance, 
 The Sorrows of Young Werther. 
 
 I knew Werther's letters and I had a thrilling 
 recollection of them. I was deeply impressed 
 
 161
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 by being in the house which Goethe made famous 
 by having his hero live and love there. 
 
 As we were coming out Hartmann said, "I 
 have something to complete the obviously deep 
 emotion you have felt." 
 
 As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a book 
 with a binding yellow with age. It was the 
 French translation of Goethe's romance. "This 
 translation is perfect," said Hartmann, in spite 
 of the aphorism Traduttore traditore, that a trans- 
 lation utterly distorts the author's thought. 
 
 I scarcely had the book in my hands than I 
 was eager to read it, so we went into one of those 
 immense beer halls which are everywhere in 
 Germany. We sat down and ordered two enor- 
 mous bocks like our neighbors had. Among the 
 various groups were students who were easily 
 picked out by their scholars' caps and were play- 
 ing cards or other games, nearly all with porce- 
 lain pipes in their mouths. On the other hand 
 there were few women. 
 
 It is needless to tell what I endured in that 
 thick, foul air laden with the bitter odor of beer. 
 But I could not stop reading those burning letters 
 full of the most intense passion. Indeed what 
 could be more suggestive than the following 
 
 162
 
 A JOURNEY TO GERMANY 
 
 lines, remembered among so many others, where 
 keen anguish threw Werther and Charlotte into 
 each other's arms after the thrilling reading of 
 Ossian's verses ? 
 
 "Why awakest me, breath of the Spring? 
 Thou caresseth me and sayeth I am laden with 
 the dew of heaven, but the time cometh when I 
 must wither, the storm that must beat down my 
 leaves is at hand. To-morrow the traveler will 
 come ; his eye will seek me everywhere, and find 
 me no more. ..." 
 
 And Goethe adds: 
 
 "Unhappy Werther felt crushed by the force 
 of these words and threw himself before Char- 
 lotte in utter despair. It seemed to Charlotte 
 that a presentiment of the frightful project he 
 had formed passed through her soul. Her 
 senses reeled ; she clasped his hands and pressed 
 them to her bosom; she leaned towards him ten- 
 derly and their burning cheeks touched." 
 
 Such delirious, ecstatic passion brought tears 
 to my eyes. What a moving scene, what a pas- 
 sionate picture that ought to make! It was 
 Werther, my third act. 
 
 I was now all life and happiness. I was 
 wrapped up in work and in an almost feverish 
 
 163
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 activity. It was a task I wanted to do but into 
 which I had to put, if possible, the song of those 
 moving, lively passions. 
 
 Circumstances, however, willed that I put this 
 project aside for the moment. Carvalho pro- 
 posed Phoebe to me and chance led me to write 
 Manon. 
 
 Then came Le Cid to fill my life. At last in 
 the summer of 1885, without waiting for the 
 result of that opera, Hartmann, Paul Milliet, my 
 great, splendid collaborator in Herodiade, and I 
 came to an agreement to take up the task of writ- 
 ing Wenher. 
 
 In order to incite me to work more ardently 
 (as if I had need of it) my publisher he had 
 improvised a scenario engaged for me at the 
 Reservoirs at Versailles, a vast ground floor apart- 
 ment on the level of the gardens of our great 
 Le Notre. 
 
 The room in which I was installed had a lofty 
 ceiling with Eighteenth Century paneling and it 
 was furnished in the same period. The table at 
 which I wrote was the purest Louis XV. Hart- 
 mann had chosen everything at the most famous 
 antiquarians. 
 
 Hartmann had special aptitude for doing his 
 164
 
 A JOURNEY TO GERMANY 
 
 share of the work. He spoke German very well; 
 he understood Goethe; he loved the German 
 mind; he stuck to it that I should undertake the 
 work. 
 
 So, when one day it was suggested that I write 
 an opera on Murger's La Vie de Boheme, he took 
 it on himself to refuse the work without consult- 
 ing me in any way. 
 
 I would have been greatly tempted to do the 
 thing. I would have been pleased to follow 
 Henry Murger in his life and work. He was an 
 artist in his way. Theophile Gautier justly 
 called him a poet, although he excelled as a 
 writer of prose. I feel that I could have fol- 
 lowed him through that peculiar world he cre- 
 ated and which he has made it possible for us to 
 cross in a thousand ways in the train of the most 
 amusing originals we had ever seen. And such 
 gaiety, such tears, such outbursts of frantic 
 laughter, and such courageous poverty, as Jules 
 Janin said, would, I think, have captivated me. 
 Like Alfred de Musset one of his masters he 
 had grace and style, ineffable tenderness, glad- 
 some smiles, the cry of the heart, emotion. He 
 sang songs dear to the hearts of lovers and they 
 charm us all. His fiddle was not a Stradivarius, 
 
 165
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 they said, but he had a soul like Hoffman's and 
 he knew how to play so as to bring tears. 
 
 I knew Murger personally, in fact so well that 
 I even saw him the night of his death. I was 
 present at a most affecting interview while I was 
 there, but even that did not lack a comic note. It 
 could not have been otherwise with Murger. 
 
 I was at his bedside when they brought in M. 
 Schaune (the Schaunardo of La Vie de Boheme) . 
 Murger was eating magnificent grapes he had 
 bought with his last louis and Schaune said 
 laughing, "How silly of you to drink your wine 
 in pills!" 
 
 As I knew not only Murger but also Schaunard 
 and Musette, it seemed to me that there was no 
 one better qualified than I to be the musician of 
 La Vie de Boheme. But all those heroes were 
 my friends and I saw them every day, so that I 
 understood why Hartmann thought the moment 
 had not come to write that so distinctly Parisian 
 work, to sing the romance that had been so great 
 a part of my life. 
 
 As I speak of that period which is already in 
 the distant past, I glory in recalling that I knew 
 Corot at Ville-d'Avray, as well as our famous 
 Harpigmes, who despite his ninety-two years is, 
 
 166
 
 as I write, in all the vigor of his immense talent. 
 Only yesterday he climbed gaily to my floor. 
 Oh, the dear great friend, the marvellous artist 
 I have known for fifty years ! 
 
 When the work was done, I went to M. Car- 
 valho's on the twenty-fifth of May. I had se- 
 cured Mme. Rose Caron, then at the Opera, to 
 aid me in my reading. The admirable artiste 
 was beside me turning the pages of the manu- 
 script and showing the deepest emotion at times. 
 I read the four acts by myself, and when I reached 
 the climax, I fell exhausted, annihilated. 
 
 Then Carvalho came to me without a word, 
 but he finally said: 
 
 "I had hoped you would bring me another 
 Manon! This dismal subject lacks interest. It 
 is damned from the start." 
 
 As I think this over to-day, I understand his 
 impression perfectly, especially when I reflect on 
 the years I had to live before the work came to 
 be admired. 
 
 Carvalho was kind and offered me some ex- 
 quisite wine, claret, I believe, like what I had 
 tasted one joyous evening I read Manon. . . . 
 My throat was as dry as my speech; I went out 
 without saying a word. 
 
 167
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 The next day, horresco referens, yes, the next 
 day I was again struck down, the Opera-Comique 
 was no more. It had heen totally destroyed by 
 fire during the night. I hurried to Carvalho's. 
 We fell into each other's arms, embraced each 
 other in tears and wept. My poor director was 
 ruined. Inexorable fate! The work had to 
 wait six years in silence and oblivion. 
 
 Two years before the Opera at Vienna had put 
 on Manon; the hundredth performance was 
 reached and passed in a short time. The Aus- 
 trian capital had given me a friendly and envi- 
 able reception; so much so that it suggested to 
 Van Dyck the idea of asking me for a work. 
 
 Now I proposed Wenher. The lack of good 
 will on the part of the French directors left me 
 free to dispose of that score. 
 
 The Vienna Opera was an imperial theater. 
 The management asked the Emperor to place an 
 apartment at my disposal and he graciously of- 
 fered me one at the famous Hotel Sacher beside 
 the Opera. 
 
 My first call after my arrival was on Jahn, the 
 director. That kindly, eminent master took me 
 to the foyer where the rehearsals were to be held. 
 It was a vast room, lighted by immense windows 
 
 168
 
 A JOURNEY TO GERMANY 
 
 and provided with great chairs. A full length 
 portrait of Emperor Francis Joseph ornamented 
 one of the panels ; there was a grand piano in the 
 center of the room. 
 
 All the artists for Werther were gathered 
 around the piano when Jahn and I entered the 
 foyer. As they saw us they rose in a body and 
 bowed in salutation. 
 
 At this touching manifestation of respectful 
 sympathy to which our great Van Dyck added 
 a most affectionate embrace I responded by 
 bowing in my turn ; and then a little nervous and 
 trembling all over I sat down at the piano. 
 
 The work was absolutely in shape. All the 
 artists could sing their parts from memory. The 
 hearty demonstrations they showered on me at 
 intervals moved me so that I felt tears in my 
 eyes. 
 
 At the orchestra rehearsal this emotion was 
 renewed. The execution was perfection ; the or- 
 chestra, now soft, now loud, followed the shad- 
 ing of the voice so that I could not shake off the 
 enchantment. 
 
 The general rehearsal took place on February 
 fifteenth from nine o'clock in the morning until 
 midday and I saw (an ineffable, sweet surprise) 
 
 169
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 in the orchestra stalls my dear publisher, Henri 
 Heugel, Paul Milliet, my precious co-worker, and 
 intimate friends from Paris. They had come so 
 far to see me in the Austrian capital amid great 
 and lively joys, for I had really been received 
 there in the most exquisite and flattering manner. 
 
 The performances that followed confirmed the 
 impressions of the beautiful first performance of 
 February 16, 1892. The work was sung by the 
 celebrated artists Marie Renard and Ernest Van 
 Dyck. 
 
 That same year, 1892, Carvalho again became 
 the director of the Opera-Comique, then in the 
 Place du Chatelet. He asked me for Werther, 
 and in a tone so full of feeling that I did not hesi- 
 tate to let him have it. 
 
 The same week Mme. Massenet and I dined 
 with M. and Mme. Alphonse Daudet. The other 
 guests were Edmond de Goncourt and Charpen- 
 tier, the publisher. 
 
 After dinner Daudet told me that he wanted 
 me to hear a young artiste. "Music herself," he 
 said. This young girl was Marie Delna! At 
 the first bars that she sang (the aria from the 
 great Gounod's La Reine de Saba) I turned to 
 her and took her hands. 
 
 170
 
 A JOURNEY TO GERMANY 
 
 "Be Charlotte, our Charlotte," I said, utterly 
 carried away. 
 
 The day after the first performance at the 
 Opera- Comique, in January, 1893, I received 
 this note from Gounod: 
 
 "Dear Friend: 
 
 "Our most hearty congratulations on this 
 double triumph and we regret that the French 
 were not the first witnesses." 
 
 The following touching and picturesque lines 
 were sent me at the time by the illustrious archi- 
 tect of the Opera. 
 
 "Amico mio, 
 
 Two eyes to see you, 
 Two ears to hear you, 
 Two lips to kiss you, 
 Two arms to enfold you, 
 Two hands to applaud you. 
 and 
 
 "Two words to give thee all my compliments 
 and to tell thee that thy Werther is an excellent 
 hit do you know? I am proud of you, and for 
 your part do not blush that a poor architect is en- 
 tirely satisfied with you. 
 
 "CARLO." 
 
 In 1903, after nine years of ostracism, M. 
 171
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Albert Carre revived this forgotten work. With 
 his incomparable talent, his marvellous taste, 
 and his art, which was that of an exquisite man 
 of letters, he knew how to present the work to the 
 public so as to make it a real revelation. 
 
 Many famous artistes have sung the role since 
 that time: Mile. Marie de 1'Isle, who was the 
 first Charlotte at the revival and who created the 
 work with her fine, individual talents ; then Miles. 
 Lamare, Cesbron, Wyns, Raveau, Mmes. de 
 Nuovina, Vix, Hatto, Brohly, and . . . others 
 whose names I will give later. 
 
 At the revival due to M. Albert Carre, Werther 
 had the great good fortune to have Leon Beyle 
 as the protagonist of the part; later Edmond 
 Clement and Salignac were also superb and thrill- 
 ing interpreters of the work. 
 
 172
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A STAR 
 
 But to go back to the events the day after the 
 destruction of the Opera-Comique. 
 
 The Opera-Comique was moved to the Place 
 du Chatelet, in the old theater called Des Na- 
 tions, which later became the Theatre Sarah 
 Bernhardt. M. Paravey was appointed director. 
 I had known him when he directed the Grand- 
 Theatre at Nantes with real talent. 
 
 Hartmann offered him two works: Edouard 
 Lalo's Le Roi d'Ya and my W either on suffer- 
 ance. 
 
 I was so discouraged that I preferred to wait 
 before I let the work see the light. 
 
 I have just written about its genesis and des- 
 tiny. 
 
 One day I received a friendly invitation to dine 
 with a great American family. After I had de- 
 clined, as I most often did I hadn't time, in 
 addition to not liking that sort of distraction 
 they insisted, however, so graciously that I could 
 not persist in my refusal. It seemed to me that 
 
 173
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 perhaps my afflicted heart might meet something 
 there which would turn aside my discourage- 
 ments. Does one ever know? . . . 
 
 I was placed beside a lady who composed mu- 
 sic and had great talent. On the other side of 
 my neighbor was a French diplomat whose ami- 
 able compliments surpassed, it seemed to me, all 
 limits. Est modus in rebus, there are limits in 
 all things, and our diplomat should have been 
 guided by this ancient saying together with the 
 counsel of a master, the illustrious Talleyrand, 
 "Pas de zele, surtout!" 
 
 I would not think of telling the exact conversa- 
 tion which occurred in that charming place any 
 more than I would think of giving the menu of 
 what we had to eat. What I do remember is a 
 salad a disconcerting mixture of American, 
 English, German, and French. 
 
 But my French neighbors occupied my entire 
 attention, which gave me the chance to remem- 
 ber this delightful colloquy between the lady 
 composer and the diplomat. 
 
 The Gentleman. "So you are ever the child 
 of the Muses, a new Orphea?" 
 
 The Lady. "Isn't music the consolation of 
 souls in distress?" 
 
 174
 
 A STAR 
 
 The Gentleman (insinuatingly). "Do you 
 not find that love is stronger than sounds in ban- 
 ishing heart pain?" 
 
 The Lady. "Yesterday, I was consoled by 
 writing the music to 'The Broken Vase.' ' 
 
 The Gentleman (poetically). "A nocturne, 
 no doubt, o . " 
 
 I heard muffled laughter. The conversation 
 took a new turn. 
 
 After dinner we went into the drawing room 
 for music. I was doing my best to obliterate 
 myself when two ladies dressed in black, one 
 young, the other older, came in. 
 
 The master of the house hastened to greet 
 them and I was presented to them almost at 
 once. 
 
 The younger was extraordinarily lovely; the 
 other was her mother, also beautiful, with that 
 thoroughly American beauty which the Starry 
 Republic often sends to us. 
 
 "Dear Master," said the younger woman with 
 a slight accent, "I have been asked to come to 
 this friendly house this evening to have the honor 
 of seeing you and to let you hear my voice. I 
 am the daughter of a supreme court judge in 
 America and I have lost my father. He left my 
 
 175
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 mother, my sisters, and me a fortune, but I want 
 to go on the stage. If they blame me for it, after 
 I have succeeded I shall reply that success ex- 
 cuses everything." 
 
 Without further preamble I granted her desire 
 and seated myself at the piano. 
 
 "You will pardon me," she added, "if I do not 
 sing your music. That would be too audacious 
 before you." 
 
 She had scarcely said this than her voice 
 sounded magically, dazzlingly, in the aria, 
 "Queen of the Night," from the Magic Flute. 
 
 What a fascinating voice ! It ranged from low 
 G to the counter G three octaves in full 
 strength and in pianissimo. 
 
 I was astounded, stupefied, subjugated! 
 When such voices occur, it is fortunate that they 
 have the theater in which to display themselves ; 
 the world is their domain. I ought to say that 
 I had recognized in that future artiste, together 
 with the rarity of that organ, intelligence, a flame, 
 a personality which were reflected luminously in 
 her admirable face. All these qualities are of 
 first importance on the stage. 
 
 The next morning I hurried to my publisher's 
 176
 
 A STAR 
 
 to tell him about the enthusiasm I had felt the 
 previous evening. 
 
 I found Hartmann preoccupied. "It con- 
 cerns an artist, right enough," he said. "I want 
 to talk about something else and ask you, yes or 
 no, whether you will write the music for the work 
 which has just been brought me." And he 
 added, "It is urgent, for the music is wanted for 
 the opening of the Universal Exposition which 
 takes place two years from now, in May, 1889." 
 
 I took the manuscript and I had scarcely run 
 through a scene or two than I cried in an out- 
 burst of deep conviction, "I have the artiste for 
 this part. I have the artiste. I heard her yes- 
 terday! She is Mile. Sibyl Sanderson! She 
 shall create Esclarmonde, the heroine of the new 
 opera you offer me." 
 
 She was the ideal artiste for the romantic work 
 in five acts by Alfred Blau and Louis de Gramont. 
 
 The new director of the Opera-Comique, who 
 always showed me deference and perfect kind- 
 ness, engaged Mile. Sibyl Sanderson and ac- 
 cepted without discussion the salary we proposed. 
 
 He left the ordering of the scenery and the 
 costumes entirely to my discretion, and made me 
 
 177
 
 
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 the absolute master and director of the 8ecor- 
 ators and costumers whom I was to guide in en- 
 tire accordance with my ideas. 
 
 If I was agreeably satisfied by this state of 
 affairs, M. Paravey for his part could not but 
 congratulate himself on the financial results from 
 Esclarmonde. It is but just to add that it was 
 brought out at the necessarily brilliant period of 
 the Universal Exposition in 1889. The first 
 performance was on May 14 of that year. 
 
 The superb artists who figured on the bill with 
 Sibyl Sanderson were Mm. Bouvet, Taskin, and 
 Gibert. 
 
 The work had been sung one hundred and one 
 consecutive times in Paris when I learned that 
 sometime since the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie 
 at Brussels had engaged Sibyl Sanderson to cre- 
 ate Esclarmonde there. That meant her en- 
 forced disappearance from the stage of the Opera- 
 Comique, where she had triumphed for several 
 months. 
 
 If Paris, however, must needs endure the si- 
 lence of the artiste, applauded by so many and 
 such varied audiences during the Exposition, if 
 this star who had risen so brilliantly above the ho- 
 rizon of the artistic heavens departed for a tune to 
 
 178
 
 
 A STAR 
 
 charm other hearers, the great provincial houses 
 echoed with the success in Esclarmonde of such 
 famous artistes as Mme. Brejean-Silver at Bor- 
 deaux; Mme. de Nuovina at Brussels, and Mme. 
 Verheyden and Mile. Vuillaume at Lyons. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, Esclarmonde re- 
 mained the living memory of that rare and beau- 
 tiful artiste whom I had chosen to create the role 
 in Paris; it enabled her to make her name for- 
 ever famous. 
 
 Sibyl Sanderson! I cannot remember that 
 artiste without feeling deep emotion, cut down 
 as she was in her full beauty, in the glorious 
 bloom of her talent by pitiless Death. She was 
 an ideal Manon at the Opera-Comique, and a 
 never to be forgotten Thai's at the Opera. These 
 roles identified themselves with her temperament, 
 the choicest spirit of that nature which was one 
 
 of the most magnificently endowed I have ever 
 known. 
 
 An unconquerable vocation had driven her 
 to the stage, where she became the ardent inter- 
 preter of several of my works. But for our part 
 what an inspiring joy it is to write works and 
 parts for artists who realize our very dreams ! 
 
 It is in gratitude that in speaking of Esclar- 
 179 

 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 monde I dedicate these lines to her. The many 
 people who came to Paris from all parts of the 
 world in 1889 have also kept their memories of 
 the artiste who was their joy and who had so de- 
 lighted them. 
 
 A large, silent, meditative crowd gathered at 
 the passing of the cortege which bore Sibyl San- 
 derson to her last resting place. A veil of sor- 
 row seemed to be over them all. 
 
 Albert Carre and I followed the coffin. We 
 were the first behind all that remained of her 
 beauty, grace, goodness, and talent with all its 
 appeal. As we noted the universal sorrow, Al- 
 bert Carre interpreted the feeling of the crowd 
 towards the beautiful departed, and said in these 
 words, eloquent in their conciseness and which 
 will survive, "She was loved!" 
 
 What more simple, more touching, and more 
 just homage could be paid to the memory of her 
 who was no more? 
 
 It is a pleasure to recall in a few rapid strokes 
 the happy memory of the time I spent in writing 
 Esclarmonde. 
 
 During the summers of 1887 and 1888 I went 
 to Switzerland and lived in the Grand Hotel at 
 Vevey. I was curious to see that pretty town at 
 
 180
 
 A STAR 
 
 the foot of Jorat on the shores of Lake Geneva 
 and which was made famous by its Fete des 
 Vigerons. I had heard it praised for the many 
 charming walks in the neighborhood and the 
 beauty and mildness of the climate. Above all 
 I remembered that I had read of it in the "Con- 
 fessions" of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, at any 
 rate, had every reason to love it, Mme. de War- 
 ens was born there. His love for this delightful 
 little city lasted through all his wanderings. 
 
 The hotel was surrounded by a fine park which 
 afforded the guests the shade of its large trees 
 and led to a small harbor where they could em- 
 bark for excursions on the lake. 
 
 In August, 1887, 1 wanted to pay a visit to my 
 master Ambroise Thomas. He had bought a 
 group of islands in the sea near the North Coast 
 and I had been there to see him. Doubtless my 
 visit was pleasant to him, for I received from 
 him the next summer in Switzerland the follow- 
 ing pages: 
 
 ILLIEC, Monday, August 20, 1888 
 
 Thanks for your good letter, my dear friend. 
 
 It has been forwarded to me in this barbarous 
 
 island where you came last year. You remind 
 
 me of that friendly visit of which we often speak, 
 
 181
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 but we regret that we were only able to keep you 
 two days. 
 
 It was too short ! 
 
 Will you be able to come again, or rather, shall 
 I see you here again? You say you work with 
 pleasure and you appear content. ... I con- 
 gratulate you on it, and I can say without envy 
 that I wish I were able to say as much for myself. 
 At your age one is filled with confidence and 
 zeal ; but at mine ! . . . 
 
 I am taking up again, not without some diffi- 
 culty, a work which has been interrupted for a 
 long time, and what is better, I find that I am 
 already rested in my solitude from the excitement 
 and fatigue of life in Paris. 
 
 I send you the affectionate regards of Mme. 
 Ambroise Thomas, and I say au revoir, dear 
 friend, with a good grip of the hand. 
 Yours with all my heart, 
 
 AMBROISE THOMAS. 
 
 Yes, as my master said, I did work with pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 Mile. Sibyl Sanderson, her mother and three 
 sisters were also living at the Grand Hotel at 
 Vevey and every evening from five o'clock until 
 seven I made our future Esclarmonde work on 
 the scene I had written that day. 
 
 182
 
 i > 
 A STAR ' 
 
 After Esclarmonde I did not wait for my mind 
 to grow fallow. My publisher knew my sad feel- 
 ings about Werther which I persisted in being un- 
 willing to have given to a theater (no manage- 
 ment had then made advances to obtain the 
 work) and he opened negotiations with Jean 
 Richepin. They decided to offer me a great sub- 
 ject for the Opera on the story of Zoroaster, en- 
 titled Le Mage. 
 
 In the course of the summer of 1889 I already 
 had several scenes of the work planned out. 
 
 My excellent friend the learned writer on his- 
 tory, Charles Malherbe, was aware of the few 
 moments I made no use of, and I found him a 
 real collaborator in these circumstances. In- 
 deed, he chose among my scattered papers a se- 
 ries of manuscripts which he indicated to me 
 would serve in the different acts of Le Mage. 
 
 P. Gailhard, our director at the Opera, was as 
 ever the most devoted of friends. He put the 
 work on with unheard of elaborateness. I owed 
 to him a magnificent cast with Mmes. Fierens and 
 Lureau Escalais and Mm. Vergnet and Delmas. 
 The ballet was important and was staged in a 
 fairylike way and had as its star Rosita Mauri. 
 
 183
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Although it was knocked about a good deal by 
 the press, the work ran for more than forty per- 
 formances. 
 
 Some were glad of the chance to seek a quarrel 
 with our director who had played his last card 
 and had arrived at the last month of his privilege. 
 It was useless trouble on their part. Gailhard 
 was shortly afterwards called upon to resume the 
 managerial scepter of our great lyric stage. I 
 found him there associated with E. Bertrand 
 when Thais, of which I shall speak later, was put 
 on. 
 
 Apropos of this, some verses of the ever witty 
 Ernest Reyer come to mind. Here they are: 
 
 Le Mage est loin, Werther est proche, 
 Et deja Thais est sous roche; 
 Admirable fecondite . . . 
 Moi, voila dix ans que je pioche 
 Sur Le Capuchin enchante. 
 
 i 
 You may be astonished at never having seen 
 
 this work of Reyer's played. Here is the theme 
 as he told it, with the most amusing seriousness, 
 at one of our monthly dinners of the Institute, 
 at the excellent Champeaux restaurant, Place de 
 Bourse. 
 
 First and Only Act! 
 184
 
 A STAR 
 
 The scene represents a public square; on the 
 left the sign of a famous tavern. Enter from the 
 right a Capuchin. He stares at the tavern door. 
 He hesitates ; then, finally, he decides to cross the 
 threshold and closes the door. Music in the or- 
 chestra if desired. Suddenly, the Capuchin 
 comes out again enchanted, assuredly en- 
 chanted by the cooking! 
 
 Thus the title of the work is explained; it has 
 nothing to do with fairies enchanting a poor 
 monk! 
 
 185
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 The year 1891 was marked by an event whicK 
 had a profound effect on my life. In the month 
 of May of that year the publishing house of Hart- 
 mann went out of business. } 
 
 How did it happen? What brought about 
 this catastrophe? I asked myself these ques- 
 tions but could get no answer. It had seemed to 
 me that all was going as well as could be ex- 
 pected with my publisher. I was utterly stupe- 
 fied at hearing that all the works published by the 
 house of Hartmann were to be put up at auction; 
 that they would have to face the ordeal of a public 
 sale. For me this was a most disturbing uncer- 
 tainty. 
 
 I had a friend who had a vault, and I entrusted 
 to him the orchestral score and piano score of 
 Werther and the orchestral score of Amadis. 
 He put these valueless papers beside his valua- 
 bles. The scores were in manuscript. 
 
 I have already written of the fortunes of 
 186
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 WertJier, and perhaps I shall of Amadis, the text 
 of which was by our great friend Jules Claretie 
 of the French Academy. 
 
 As may be imagined, my anxiety was very 
 great. I expected to see my labor of many years 
 scattered among all the publishers. Where 
 would Manon go? Where would Herodiade 
 bring up? Who would get Marie Magdeleine? 
 Who would have my Suites a" Orchestra? All 
 this disturbed my muddled brain and made me 
 anxious. 
 
 Hartmann had always shown me so much 
 friendliness and sensitiveness in my interests, 
 and he was, I am sure, as sorrowful as I was 
 about this painful situation. 
 
 Henri Heugel and his nephew Paul-Emile 
 Chevalier, owners of the great firm Le Menestrel, 
 were my saviors. They were the pilots who kept 
 all the works of my past life from shipwreck, pre- 
 vented their being scattered, and running the 
 risks of adventure and chance. 
 
 They acquired all of Hartmann's assets and 
 paid a considerable price for them. 
 
 In May, 1911, I congratulated them on the 
 twentieth anniversary of the good and friendly re- 
 lations which had existed between us and at the 
 
 187
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 same time I expressed the deep gratitude I cher- 
 ish towards them. 
 
 How many times I had passed by Le Menestrel, 
 and envied without hostility those masters, those 
 published, all those favored by that great house ! 
 
 My entrance to Le Menestrel began a glorious 
 era for me, and every time I go there I feel the 
 same deep happiness. All the satisfactions I en- 
 joy as well as the disappointments I experience 
 find a faithful echo in the hearts of my publishers. 
 
 Some years later Leon Carvalho again became 
 the manager at the Opera-Comique. M. Para- 
 vey's privilege had expired. 
 
 I recall this card from Carvalho the day after 
 he left in 1887. He had erased his title of "di- 
 recteur." It expressed perfectly his sorrowful 
 resignation : 
 
 "My dear Master, 
 
 "I scratch out the title, but I retain the mem- 
 ory of my great artistic joys where Manon holds a 
 first place. . . . 
 
 "What a fine diamond! 
 
 "LEON CARVALHO." 
 
 His first thought was to revive Manon which 
 had disappeared from the bills since the fire of 
 
 188
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 mournful memory. This revival was in Octo- 
 ber, 1892. 
 
 Sibyl Sanderson, as I have said, had been en- 
 gaged for a year at the Theatre de la Monnaie at 
 Brussels. She played Esclarmonde and Manon. 
 Carvalho took her from the Monnaie to revive 
 Manon in Paris. The work has never left the 
 bills since and, as I write it, has reached its 
 763rd performance. 
 
 At the beginning of the same year Werther 
 was given at Vienna as well as a ballet : Le Caril- 
 lon. The applauded collaborators were our Des 
 Grieux and our German Werther: Ernest Van 
 Dyck and de Roddaz. 
 
 It was on my return from another visit to 
 Vienna that my faithful and precious collaborator 
 Louis Gallet paid me a visit one day at Le Menes- 
 trel. My publishers had arranged a superb 
 study where I could rehearse my artists from 
 Paris and elsewhere in their parts. Louis Gallet 
 and Heugel proposed to me a work on Anatole 
 France's admirable romance Thais. 
 
 I was immediately carried away by the idea. 
 I could see Sanderson in the role of Thais. She 
 belonged to the Opera-Comique so I would do 
 the work for that house. 
 
 189
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Spring at last permitted me to go to the sea- 
 shore where I have always liked to live and I left 
 Paris with my wife and daughter, taking with me 
 all that I had composed of the work with so much 
 happiness. 
 
 I took with me a friend who never left me day 
 or night an enormous gray Angora cat with 
 long silky hair. 
 
 I worked at a large table placed on a veranda 
 against which the waves of the sea sometimes 
 broke heavily and scattered their foam. The cat 
 lay on the table, sleeping almost on my pages 
 with an unceremoniousness which delighted me. 
 He could not stand such strange noises and every 
 time it happened he pushed out his paws and 
 showed his claws as if to drive the sea away. 
 
 I know some one else who loves cats, not more 
 but as much as I do, the gracious Countess Marie 
 de Yourkevitch, who won the grand gold medal 
 for piano playing at the Imperial Conservatoire of 
 Music at St. Petersburg. She has lived in Paris 
 for some years in a luxurious apartment where 
 she is surrounded by dogs and cats, her great 
 friends. 
 
 "Who loves animals, loves people," and we 
 190
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 know that the Countess is a true Maecenas to ar- 
 tists. 
 
 The exquisite poet Jeanne Dortzal is also a 
 friend of these felines with the deep-green enig- 
 matic eyes ; they are the companions of her work- 
 ing hours. 
 
 I finished Thais at the Rue du General Foy, in 
 my bedroom where nothing broke the silence ex- 
 cept the crackling of the Yule logs which burned 
 in the fireplace. 
 
 At that time I did not have a mass of letters 
 which I must answer, as is the case now ; I did not 
 receive a quantity of books which I must run 
 over so that I could thank the authors; neither 
 was I absorbed in incessant rehearsals, in short, 
 I did not lead the sort of a life I would willingly 
 qualify as infernal, if it were not my rule not to go 
 out in the evening. 
 
 At six in the morning I received a call from my 
 masseur. His cares were made necessary by 
 rheumatism in my right hand, and I had some 
 trouble with it. 
 
 Even at this early morning hour I had been 
 at work for some time, and this practitioner, Im- 
 bert, who was in high good standing with his cli- 
 
 191
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 ents, brought me morning greetings from Alex- 
 ander Dumas the Younger from whose house he 
 had just come. As he came, he said, "I left the 
 master with his candles lighted, his beard 
 trimmed, and comfortably installed in his white 
 dressing gown." 
 
 One morning he brought me these words a 
 reply to a reproach I had allowed myself to make 
 to him: 
 
 "Confess that you thought that I had forgotten 
 you, man of little faith. 
 
 "A. DUMAS." 
 
 Between whiles, and it was a delightful distrac- 
 tion, I had written Le Portrait de Manon, a de- 
 lightful act by Georges Boyer, to whom I already 
 owed the text of Les Enfants. 
 
 Some good friends of mine, Auguste Cain, the 
 famous sculptor of animals, and his dear wife, 
 had been generous and useful to me in difficult 
 circumstances, and I was delighted to applaud 
 the first dramatic work of their son Henri Cain. 
 His success with La Vivandiere affirmed his talent 
 still more. The music of this work in three acts 
 was the swan song of the genial Benjamin God- 
 
 192
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 ard. Ah! the dear great musician who was a 
 real poet from his youth up, in the first bars he 
 wrote. Who does not remember his masterpiece 
 Le Tasse? 
 
 As I was strolling one day in the gardens of the 
 dismal palace of the dukes d'Este at Ferrare, I 
 picked a branch of oleander which was just in 
 blossom and sent it to my friend. My gift re- 
 called the incomparable duet in the first act of 
 Le Tasse. 
 
 During the summer of 1893 my wife and I 
 went to Avignon. This city of the popes, the 
 terre papale, as Rabelais called it, attracted me 
 almost as much as that other city of the popes, 
 ancient Rome. 
 
 We lived at the excellent Hotel de 1'Europe, 
 Place Grillon. Our hosts, M. and Mme. Ville, 
 were worthy and obliging persons and were full 
 of attention for us. That was imperative for I 
 needed quiet to write La Navarraise, the act 
 which Jules Claretie had entrusted to me and my 
 new librettist Henri Cain. 
 
 Every evening at five o'clock our hosts, who 
 had forbidden our door all day with jealous care, 
 served us a delicious lunch. My friends, the 
 
 193
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Provengal poets, used to gather around, and 
 among them was Felix Gras, one of my dearest 
 friends. 
 
 One day we decided to pay a visit to Frederic 
 Mistral, the immortal poet of Provence who 
 played a large part in the renaissance of the 
 poetic language of the South. 
 
 He received us with Mme. Mistral at his home 
 which his presence made ideal at Millane. 
 He showed when he talked that he knew not only 
 the science of Form hut also that general knowl- 
 edge which makes great writers and makes a poet 
 of an artist. As we saw him we recalled that 
 Belle d'aout, the poetical story full of tears and 
 terrors, then the great epic of Mirelle, and so 
 many other famous works besides. 
 
 By his walk and vigor one recognized him as 
 the child of the country, but he was a gentleman 
 farmer, as the English say; although he is not 
 any more a peasant on that account, as he wrote 
 to Lamartine, than Paul-Louis Courier, the bril- 
 liant and witty pamphleteer, was a cultivator of 
 vineyards. 
 
 We returned to Avignon full of the inexpres- 
 sible enveloping charm of the hours we had 
 passed in the house of this great, illustrious poet. 
 
 194
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 The following winter was entirely devoted to 
 the rehearsals of Thais at the Opera. I say at 
 the Opera in spite of the fact that I wrote the 
 work for the Opera-Comique where Sanderson 
 was engaged. She triumphed there in Manon 
 three times a week. 
 
 What made me change the theater? Sander- 
 son was dazzled by the idea of entering the Opera, 
 and she signed a contract with Gailhard without 
 even taking the mere trouble of informing Car- 
 valho first. 
 
 Heugel and I were greatly surprised when Gail- 
 hard told us that he was going to give Thais at 
 the Opera with Sibyl Sanderson. "You've got 
 the artist ; the work will follow her ! " There was 
 nothing else for me to say. I remember, how- 
 ever, how bitterly Carvalho reproached me. He 
 almost accused me of ingratitude, and God knows 
 that I did not deserve that. 
 
 Thais was interpreted by Sibyl Sanderson; 
 J. F. Delmas, who made the role of Athanael one 
 of his most important creations; Alvarez, who 
 consented to play the role of Nicias, and Mme. 
 Heglon, who also acted in the part which de- 
 volved upon her. 
 
 As I listened to the final rehearsals in the 
 195
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 depths of the empty theater, I lived over again my 
 ecstatic moments before the remains of Thai's of 
 Antinoe, beside the anchorite, who had been be- 
 witched by her grace and charm. We owed this 
 impressive spectacle which was so well calculated 
 to impress the imagination to a glass case in the 
 Guimet Museum. 
 
 The evening of the dress rehearsal of Thais I 
 escaped from Paris and went to Dieppe and Pour- 
 ville, with the sole purpose of being alone and 
 free from the excitements of the great city. I 
 have said already that I always tear myself away 
 in this fashion from the feverish uncertainties 
 which hover over every work when it faces the 
 public for the first time. No one can tell before- 
 hand the feeling that will move the public, 
 whether its prejudices or sympathies will draw it 
 towards a work or turn it against it. I feel weak 
 before the baffling enigma, and had I a conscience 
 a thousand times more tranquil, I would not 
 want to attempt to pierce the mystery! 
 
 The day after my return to Paris Bertrand and 
 Gailhard, the two directors of the Opera, called 
 on me. They appeared to be down at the mouth. 
 I could only get sighs from them or a word or 
 two, which in their laconicism spoke volumes, 
 
 196
 
 A NEW LIFE 
 
 "The press ! Immoral subject ! It's done for!" 
 These words were so many indications of what the 
 performance must have been. 
 
 So I told myself. Nevertheless seventeen 
 years have gone and the piece is still on the bills, 
 and has been played in the provinces and abroad, 
 while at the Opera itself Thais has long since 
 passed its hundredth performance. 
 
 Never have I so regretted letting myself go in 
 a moment of disappointment. It is true that it 
 was only a passing one. Could I foresee that I 
 should see again this same score of Thais, dated 
 1894, in the salon of Sibyl Sanderson's mother, 
 on the music rest of the very piano at which that 
 fine artiste, long since no more, studied? 
 
 To accustom the public to the work, the direc- 
 tors of the Opera associated with it a ballet from 
 the repertoire. Subsequently Gailhard saw that 
 the work pleased, and in order to make it the only 
 performance of the evening he asked me to add 
 a tableau, the Oasis, and a ballet to the third act. 
 Mile. Berthet created this new tableau and Zam- 
 belli incarnated the new ballet. 
 
 Later, the title role was sung in Paris by Miles. 
 Alice Verlet and Mary Garden and Mme. Kous- 
 nezoff. I owe some superb nights at the Opera 
 
 197
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 to them. Genevieve Vix and Mastio sang it in 
 other cities. I wait to speak of Lina Cavalieri 
 for she was to be the creator of the work at Milan, 
 October, 1903. This creation was the occasion 
 for my last journey to Italy up to now. 
 
 198
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 MILAN LONDON BAYREUTH 
 
 I regret all the more that I have given up trav- 
 eling, for I seem to have become lazy in this re- 
 gard, since my visits to Milan were always so de- 
 lightful I was going to say adorable thanks 
 to the friendly Edouard Sonzogno, who con- 
 stantly paid me the most delicate and kindly at- 
 tentions. 
 
 What delightful receptions, and perfectly ar- 
 ranged and elaborate dinners, we had at the fine 
 mansion at 11 Via Goito! What bursts of 
 laughter and gay sallies there were; what truly 
 enchanted hours I passed there, with my Italian 
 confreres, invited to the same love-feast as I, at 
 the house of the most gracious of hosts : Umberto 
 Giordano, Cilea and many others ! 
 
 In this great city I had excellent friends and 
 illustrious ones as well, as Mascagni and Leonca- 
 vallo, whom I had known before and had had as 
 friends in Paris. They did not then foresee the 
 
 199
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 magnificent situation they would create for them- 
 selves one day at the theater. 
 
 In Milan my old friend and publisher Giulio 
 Ricordi also invited me to his table. I was sin- 
 cerely moved at finding myself again in the bosom 
 of the Ricordi family to whom I was attached by 
 so many charming memories. It is unnecessary 
 to add that we drank to the health of the illustri- 
 ous Puccini. 
 
 Among my memories of Milan I have kept the 
 recollection of being present at Caruso's debut. 
 The now famous tenor was very modest then; 
 and when, a year afterwards, I saw him wrapped 
 in an ample fur-coat, it was obvious that the fig- 
 ures of his salary must have mounted crescendo. 
 As I saw him I did not envy him his brilliant for- 
 tune or his undoubted talent, but I did regret 
 that winter especially that I could not put his 
 rich warm coat on my back. ... It snowed, in- 
 deed, in Milan, in large and seemingly endless 
 flakes. It was a hard winter. I remember that 
 once I hadn't enough bread from my breakfast to 
 satisfy the appetite of some thirty pigeons which, 
 shivering and trembling with cold, came to my 
 balcony for shelter. Poor dear little creatures! 
 I regretted that I could not do more for them. 
 
 200
 
 MILAN LONDON BAYREUTH 
 
 And involuntarily I thought of their sisters in the 
 Piazza Saint Marc, so pretty, so friendly, who at 
 that instant must be just as cold. 
 
 I have to confess to a flagrant but entirely inno- 
 cent joke that I played at a dinner of Sonzogno's, 
 the publisher. Everyone knew of the strained 
 relations between him and Ricordi. I slipped 
 into the dining room before any of the guests had 
 gone in and placed under Sonzogno's napkin an 
 Orsini bomb, which I had bought and which was 
 really awe inspiring be reassured, it was only 
 of cardboard and from the confectioner's. Be- 
 side this inoffensive explosive I placed Ricordi's 
 card. The joke was a great success. The din- 
 ers laughed so much that during the whole meal 
 nothing else was talked about and little attention 
 was paid to the menu, in spite of the fact that we 
 knew that it must inevitably be appetizing, like 
 all those to which we had to do honor in that opu- 
 lent house. 
 
 I always had the glorious good fortune to have 
 as my interpreter of Sapho in Italy La Bellincioni, 
 the Duse of opera. In 1911 she continued her 
 triumphal career at the Opera in Paris. 
 
 I have mentioned that Cavalieri was to create 
 Thais in Milan. Sonzogno insisted strongly that 
 
 201
 
 X 
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 r 
 
 I should let her see the part before I left. I 
 remember the considerable success she had in the 
 work al teatro lirico of Milan. Her beauty, 
 her admirable plasticity, the warmth and color of 
 her voice, her passionate outbursts simply 
 gripped the public which praised her to the skies. 
 
 She invited me to a farewell dinner at the Hotel 
 de Milan. The table was covered with flowers 
 and it was laid in a large room adjoining the 
 bedroom where Verdi had died two years before. 
 The room was still furnished just as it had been 
 when the illustrious composer lived there. The 
 great master's grand piano was still there, and on 
 the table where he had worked were the inkstand, 
 the pen and the blotting paper which still bore 
 the marks of the notes he had traced. The dress 
 shirt the last one he wore hung on the wall 
 and one could still see the lines of the body it 
 had covered. ... A detail which hurt my feel- 
 ings and which only the greedy curiosity of 
 strangers can account for, was that bits of the 
 linen had been boldly cut off and carried away as 
 relics. 
 
 Verdi! The name signifies the whole of vic- 
 torious Italy from Victor Emanuel II down to our 
 own times. Bellini, on the other hand, is the 
 
 202
 
 MILAN LONDON BAYREUTH 
 
 image of unhappy Italy under the yoke of the 
 past. 
 
 A little while after the death of Bellini in 1835 
 that never to be forgotten author of La Som- 
 nanbula and La Norma Verdi, the immortal 
 creator of so many masterpieces, came on the 
 scene and with rare fertility never ceased to pro- 
 duce his marvellous works which are in the reper- 
 toire of all the theaters in the world. 
 
 About two weeks before Verdi's death I found 
 at my hotel the great man's card with his regards 
 and best wishes. 
 
 In a remarkable study of Verdi Camille Bel- 
 laigue uses the following words about the great 
 master. They are as just as they are beautiful. 
 
 "He died on January 27, 1901, in his eighty- 
 eighth year. In him music lost some of its 
 strength, light and joy. Henceforth a great, 
 necessary voice will be missing from the balance 
 of the European 'concert.' A splendid bower 
 has fallen from the chaplet of Latin genius. I 
 cannot think of Verdi without recalling that fa- 
 mous phrase of Nietzsche, who had come back 
 from Wagnerism and had already turned against 
 the composer: 'Music must be Mediterranean- 
 ized.' Certainly not all music. But to-day as 
 
 203
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 the old master has departed, that glorious host of 
 the Doria palace, from which each winter his 
 deep gaze soared over the azure of the Ligurian 
 sea, one may well ask who is to preserve the rights 
 and influence of the Mediterranean in music?" 
 
 To add another of my memories of Thais I re- 
 call two letters which must have touched me 
 deeply. 
 
 August 1, 1892 
 
 ... I brought a little doll Thai's to the Insti- 
 tute for you, and as I was going to the country 
 after the session and you were not there, I left it 
 with Bonvalot and begged him to handle her care- 
 fully. . . . 
 
 I return in a day or so, for on Saturday we 
 receive Fremiet who wishes me to thank you for 
 voting for him. 
 
 GEROME.- 
 
 I wanted this colored statuette by my illustri- 
 ous colleague to place on my table as I wrote 
 Thais. I have always liked to have before my 
 eyes an image or a symbol of the work on which 
 I am engaged. 
 
 The second letter I received the day after the 
 first performance of Thais at the Opera. 
 
 204
 
 MILAN LONDON BAYREUTH 
 
 Dear Master: 
 
 You have lifted my poor Thais to the first rank 
 of operatic heroines. You are my sweetest 
 glory. I am delighted. "Assieds-toi pres de 
 nous," the aria to Love, the final duet, is charm- 
 ingly beautiful. 
 
 I am happy and proud at having furnished you 
 with the theme on which you have developed the 
 most inspiring phrases. I grasp your hand with 
 joy. 
 
 ANATOLE FRANCE. 
 
 I had already been to Covent Garden twice. 
 First, for Le Roi de Lahore, and then for Manon 
 which was sung by Sanderson and Van Dyck. 
 
 I went back again for the rehearsals of La Nav- 
 arraise. Our principal artists were Emma 
 Calve, Alvarez and Plancon. 
 
 The rehearsals with Emma Calve were a great 
 honor for me and a great joy as well, which I was 
 to renew later in the rehearsals for Sapho in 
 Paris. 
 
 The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, at- 
 tended the first performance of La Navarraise. 
 
 The recalls of the artists were so numerous and 
 enthusiastic that finally they called for me. As 
 I did not appear, for the good reason that I was 
 not there, and could not be presented to the 
 
 205
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Prince of Wales who wanted to congratulate me, 
 the manager could find only this way to excuse 
 me both to the prince and to the public. He 
 came on the stage and said, "M. Massenet is out- 
 side smoking a cigarette and won't come." 
 
 Doubtless this was true, but "the whole truth 
 should not always be spoken." 
 
 I returned on board the boat with my wife, 
 Heugel, my dear publisher, and Adrien Bern- 
 heim, the Governmental Commissary General of 
 the subsidized theaters, who had honored the per- 
 formance with his presence. Ever since he has 
 been one of my most charming and dearest 
 friends. 
 
 I learned that her Majesty Queen Victoria sum- 
 moned Emma Calve to Windsor to sing La Nav- 
 arraise, and I was told that they improvised a 
 stage setting in the queen's own drawing room, 
 which was most picturesque but primitive. The 
 Barricade was represented by a pile of pillows 
 and down quilts. 
 
 Have I said that in the month of May preced- 
 ing La Navarraise in London (June 20, 1894), 
 the Opera-Comique gave Le Portrait de Manon, 
 an exquisite act by Georges Boyer, which was de- 
 
 206
 
 MILAN LONDON BAYREUTH 
 
 lightfully interpreted by Fugere, Grivot and Mile. 
 Laine? 
 
 Many of the phrases of Manon reappeared 
 in the work. The subject prompted me to this, 
 for it is concerned with Des Grieux at forty, a 
 poetical souvenir of Manon long since dead. 
 
 Between whiles I again visited Bayreuth. I 
 went to applaud the Meister singers of Nurem- 
 burg. 
 
 Richard Wagner had not been there for many a 
 long year, but his titanic soul ruled over all the 
 performances. As I strolled in the gardens 
 about the theater at Bayreuth, I recalled that I 
 had known him in 1861. I had lived for ten 
 days in a small room near him in the Chateau de 
 Plessis-Trevise, which belonged to the celebrated 
 tenor Gustave Roger. Roger knew German and 
 offered to do the French translation of Tann- 
 hauser. So Richard Wagner came to live with 
 him properly to set the French words to music. 
 
 I still remember his vigorous interpretation 
 when he played on the piano fragments of that 
 masterpiece, then so clumsily misunderstood and 
 now so much admired by the whole world of art 
 and music. 
 
 207
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 A VISIT TO VERDI 
 FAREWELL TO AMBROISE THOMAS 
 
 Henri Cain had accompanied us to London and 
 came to see me at the Cavendish Hotel, Jermyn 
 Street, where I was staying. 
 
 We remained in conference for several hours 
 reviewing different subjects which were suitable 
 for works to occupy me in the future. Finally 
 we agreed on the fairy story of Cinderilla: Cen- 
 drillon. 
 
 I returned to Pont de 1'Arche a new home 
 for my wife and me to work during the sum- 
 mer. 
 
 Our home was most interesting and even had a 
 historical value. A massive door hung on enor- 
 mous hinges gave access on the street side to an 
 old mansion. It was bordered by a terrace which 
 looked down on the valley of the Seine and the 
 Andelle. La Belle Normandie indeed offered us 
 the delightful spectacle of her smiling, magnifi- 
 cent plains and her rich pastures stretching to 
 the horizon and beyond. 
 
 208
 
 A VISIT TO VERDI 
 
 The Duchess of Longueville, the famous hero- 
 ine of La Fronde, had lived in this house it was 
 the place of her loves. The seductive Duchess 
 with her pleasant address and gestures, together 
 with the expression of her face and the tone of 
 her voice, made a marvellous harmony. So much 
 so that a Jansenist writer of the period said, "She 
 was the most perfect actress in the world." 
 This splendid woman here sheltered her charms 
 and rare beauty. One must believe that they 
 have not exaggerated about her for Victor Cousin 
 became her posthumous lover (along with the 
 Due de Coligny, Marcillac, the Due de la Roche- 
 foucauld, and the great Turenne; he might have 
 been in less brilliant company) ; but as we said, 
 the illustrious eclectic philosopher dedicated to 
 her a work which was no doubt admirable in 
 style but which is still considered one of the most 
 complete examples of modern learning. 
 
 She was born a Bourbon Conde, the daughter 
 of the Prince of Orleans, and the fleurs de lys 
 which were hers by right were still visible on the 
 keystones of the window arches of our little cha- 
 teau. 
 
 There was a large white salon with delicately 
 carved woodwork, which was lighted by three win- 
 
 209
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 dows overlooking the terrace. It was a perfectly 
 preserved masterpiece of the Seventeenth Cen- 
 tury. 
 
 The room where I worked was also lighted by 
 three windows and here one could admire a man- 
 tel, a real marvel of art in Louis XIV style. I 
 found a large table of the same period at Rouen. 
 I was at ease at it because I could arrange the 
 leaves of my orchestral score on it. 
 
 It was at Pont de 1'Arche that I learned one 
 morning of Mme. Carvalho's death. This was 
 bound to plunge the art of singing and the stage 
 in deep mourning for she had been with her mas- 
 terly talent the incarnation of both for long years. 
 Here too I received the visit of my director, Leon 
 Carvalho, who was terribly stricken by her death. 
 He was overcome by this irreparable loss. 
 
 Carvalho came to ask me to finish the music 
 of La Vivandiere, a work on which Benjamin God- 
 ard was working, but which the state of his health 
 led them to fear he would never finish. 
 
 I refused this request curtly. I knew Ben- 
 jamin Godard and his strong-mindedness as well 
 as the wealth and liveliness of his inspiration. I 
 asked Carvalho not to tell of his visit and to let 
 Benjamin Godard finish his own work. 
 
 210
 
 A VISIT TO VERDI 
 
 That day ended with a rather drole incident. 
 I set out to get a large carriage to take my guests 
 to the station. At the appointed time an open 
 landau appeared at my door. It had at least six- 
 teen springs, was lined with blue satin, and one 
 got in by a triple step-ladder arrangement which' 
 folded up when the door was closed. Two thin, 
 lanky white horses, real Rossinantes, were har- 
 nessed to it. 
 
 My guests at once recognized this historic 
 looking coach for they had often met its owners 
 riding in it on the Bois de Boulogne. Public 
 malice had found these people so ridiculous that 
 they had given them a nickname which in the 
 interests of decorum I must refrain from men- 
 tioning. I will only say that it was borrowed 
 from the vocabulary of zoology. 
 
 Never had the streets of that little town, 
 usually so calm and peaceful, echoed with such 
 shouts of laughter. They did not stop till the 
 station was reached, and I will not swear that 
 they were not prolonged after that. 
 
 Carvalho decided to give La Navarraise at the 
 Opera-Comique in May, 1895. 
 
 I went to Nice to finish Cendrillon at the Hotel 
 211
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 de Suede. We were absolutely spoiled by our 
 charming hosts M. and Mme. Roubion. When 
 I was settled at Nice, I got away to Milan for 
 ten days to give hints to the artists of the admir- 
 able La Scala Theatre who were rehearsing La 
 Navarraise. The protagonist was Lison Fran- 
 din, an artist known and loved by all Italy. 
 
 As I knew that Verdi was at Genoa, I took ad- 
 vantage of passing through that city on the way 
 to Milan to pay him a visit. 
 
 When I arrived at the first floor of the old pal- 
 ace of the Dorias, where he lived, I was able to 
 decipher on a card nailed to the door in a dark 
 passage the name which radiates so many mem- 
 ories of enthusiasm and glory: Verdi. 
 
 He opened the door himself. I stood non- 
 plussed. His sincerity, graciousness and the no- 
 bility which his tall stature gave his whole per- 
 son soon drew us together. 
 
 I passed unutterably charming moments in his 
 presence, as we talked with the most delightful 
 simplicity in his bedroom and then on the terrace 
 of his sitting room from which we looked over the 
 port of Genoa and beyond on the deep sea as far 
 as the eye could reach. I had the illusion that 
 
 212
 
 A VISIT TO VERDI 
 
 he was one of the Dorias proudly showing me his 
 victorious fleets. 
 
 As I was leaving, I was drawn to remark that 
 "now I had visited him, I was in Italy." 
 
 As I was about to pick up the valise I had left 
 in a dark corner of the large reception room, 
 where I had noticed tall gilt chairs which were in 
 the Italian taste of the Eighteenth Century, I told 
 him that it contained manuscripts which never 
 left me on my travels. Verdi seized my luggage, 
 briskly, and said he did exactly as I did, for he 
 never wanted to be parted from his work on a 
 journey. 
 
 How much I would have preferred to have had 
 his music in my valise instead of my own ! The 
 master even accompanied me across the garden 
 of his lordly dwelling to my carriage. 
 
 When I got back to Paris in February, I 
 learned with the keenest emotion that my master 
 Ambroise Thomas was dangerously ill. 
 
 Although far from well he had dared the cold 
 to attend a festival at the Opera where they had 
 played the whole of that terrible, superb prelude 
 to Frangoise de Rimini. 
 
 213
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 They encored the prelude and applauded Am- 
 broise Thomas. 
 
 My master was the more moved by this recep- 
 tion, as he had not forgotten how cruelly severe 
 they had shown themselves toward this fine work 
 at the Opera. 
 
 He went from the theater to the apartment he 
 occupied at the Conservatoire and went to bed. 
 He never got up again. 
 
 The sky was clear and cloudless that day, and 
 the sun shone with its softest brilliance in my 
 venerated master's room and caressed the cur- 
 tains of his bed of pain. The last words he said 
 were a salutation to gladsome nature which 
 smiled upon him for the last time. "To die in 
 weather so beautiful," he said, and that was all. 
 
 He laid in state in the columned vestibule of 
 which I have spoken, at the foot of the great stair- 
 case leading to the president's loge which he had 
 honored with his presence for twenty-five years. 
 
 The third day after his death, I delivered his 
 funeral oration in the name of the Societe des 
 Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. I began 
 as follows. 
 
 "It is said that a king of France in the pres- 
 ence of the body of a powerful seigneur of his 
 
 214
 
 A VISIT TO VERDI 
 
 court could not help saying, 'How tall he was!' 
 So he who rests here before us seemed tall to us, 
 being of those whose height is only realized after 
 death. 
 
 "To see him pass in life so simple and calm, in 
 his dream of art, who of us, accustomed to feel 
 him kindly and forbearing always at our sides, 
 has seen that he was so tall that we had to raise 
 our eyes to look him fairly in the face." 
 
 Here my eyes filled with tears and my voice 
 seemed to die away strangled with emotion. 
 Nevertheless I contained myself, mastered my 
 grief, and continued my discourse. I knew that 
 I should have time enough for weeping. 
 
 It was very painful to me on that occasion to 
 see the envious looks of those who already saw in 
 me my master's successor at the Conservatoire. 
 And as a matter of fact, this is exactly what hap- 
 pened, for a little afterwards I was summoned to 
 the Ministry of Public Instruction. At the time 
 the Minister was my confrere at the Institute, 
 Rambaud the eminent historian, and at the head 
 of the Beaux- Arts as director was Henri Roujon, 
 since a member of the Academic des Beaux- Arts 
 and the permanent secretary. 
 
 The directorship of the Conservatoire was of- 
 215
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 fered me. I declined the honor as I did not want 
 to interrupt my life at the theater which took my 
 whole time. 
 
 In 1905 the directorship was offered me again, 
 but I refused for the same reason. 
 
 Naturally, I tendered my resignation as profes- 
 sor of composition at the Conservatoire. I had 
 only accepted and held the situation because it 
 brought me in touch with my Director whom I 
 loved so much. 
 
 Free at last and loosed from my chains for- 
 ever, during the first days of summer my wife 
 and I started for the mountains of Auvergne. 
 
 216
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 At the beginning of the preceding winter, 
 Henri Cain proposed to Henri Heugel a text for 
 an opera based on Alphonse Daudet's famous ro- 
 mance Sapho. He went to Heugel in order that 
 I might the more certainly accept it, for he knew 
 the influence my publisher had with me. 
 
 I had gone to the mountains with a light heart. 
 There was to be no directing the Conservatoire 
 and no more classes ; I felt twenty years younger. 
 I wrote Sapho with an enthusiasm I had rarely 
 felt up to that time. 
 
 We lived in a villa, and I felt far removed from 
 everything, the noise, the tumult, the incessant 
 movement and feverish activity of the city. We 
 went for walks and excursions through the beau- 
 tiful country which has been praised so much for 
 the variety of its scenery, but which was still too 
 much unknown. The only accompaniment of 
 our thoughts was the murmur of the waters which 
 flowed along the roadside ; their freshness rose up 
 to us, and often it was from a bubbling spring 
 
 217
 
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 which broke the quiet of luxuriant nature. 
 Eagles, too, came down from their steep rocks, 
 "Thunder's abode," as Lamartine said, and sur- 
 prised us by their bold flights as they made the 
 air echo with their shrill, piercing cries. 
 
 Even while I journeyed, my mind was work- 
 ing and on my return the pages accumulated. 
 
 I became enamored with this work and I re- 
 joiced in advance at letting Alphonse Daudet 
 hear it, for he was a very dear friend whom I had 
 known when we were both young. 
 
 If I insist somewhat of speaking of that time, 
 it is because four works above all others in my 
 long career gave me such joy in the doing that I 
 freely describe it as exquisite : Marie Magdeleine, 
 WertheT, Sapho, and Therese. 
 
 At the beginning of September of that year an 
 amusing incident happened. The Emperor of 
 Russia came to Paris. The entire population 
 this is no exaggeration was out of doors to see 
 the procession pass through the avenues and 
 boulevards. The people drawn by curiosity had 
 come from everywhere ; the estimate of a million 
 people does not seem exaggerated. 
 
 We did what everyone else did, and our serv- 
 ants went at the same time; our apartment was 
 
 218
 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 empty. We were at the house of friends at a win- 
 dow overlooking the Pare Monceau. The pro- 
 cession had scarcely passed when we were sud- 
 denly seized with anxiety at the idea that the time 
 was particularly propitious for burglarizing de- 
 serted apartments and we rushed home. 
 
 When we reached our threshold whispers were 
 coming from inside, which put us in a lively flut- 
 ter. We knew our servants were out. It had 
 happened ! Burglars had broken in ! 
 
 We were shocked at the idea, but we went 
 in ... and saw in the salon Emma Calve and 
 Henri Cain who were waiting for us and talking 
 together in the meantime. We were struck in a 
 heap. Tableau ! We all burst out laughing at 
 this curious adventure. Our servants had come 
 back before we had, and naturally opened the 
 door for our friendly callers who had so thor- 
 oughly frightened us for a moment. Oh power 
 of imagination, how manifold are thy fantastic 
 creations ! 
 
 Carvalho had already prepared the model of 
 the scenery and the costumes for Cendrillon, 
 when he learned that Emma Calve was in Paris 
 and put on Sapho. In addition to the admir- 
 
 219
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 able protagonist of La Navarraise in London and 
 in Paris, our interpreters were the charming ar- 
 tiste Mile. Julia Guiraudon (later the wife of my 
 collaborator Henri Cain) and M. Lepreste who 
 has since died. 
 
 I have spoken of the extreme joy I experienced 
 in writing Sapho, an opera in five acts. Henri 
 Cain and dear Arthur Bernede had ably con- 
 trived the libretto. 
 
 Never before had the rehearsals of a work 
 seemed more enrapturing. The task was both 
 easy and agreeable with such excellent artists. 
 
 While the rehearsals were going on so well, my 
 wife and I went to dine one evening at Alphonse 
 Daudet's. He was very fond of us. The first 
 proofs had been laid on the piano. I can still 
 see Daudet seated on a cushion and almost brush- 
 ing the keyboard with his handsome head so de- 
 lightfully framed in his beautiful thick hair. It 
 seemed to me that he was deeply moved. The 
 vagueness of his short sightedness made his eyes 
 still more admirable. His soul with all its pure, 
 tender poetry spoke through them. 
 
 It would be difficult to experience again such 
 moments as my wife and I knew then. 
 
 As they were about to begin the first rehearsals 
 220
 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 of Sapho, Danbe, who had been my friend since 
 childhood, told the musicians in the orchestra 
 what an emotional work they were to play. 
 
 Finally, the first performance came on Novem- 
 ber 27, 1897. 
 
 The evening must have been very fine, for the 
 next day the first mail brought me the following 
 note: 
 
 My dear Massenet: 
 
 I am happy at your great success. With Mas- 
 senet and Bizet, non omnis moriar. 
 Tenderly yours, 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 I learned that my beloved friend and famous 
 collaborator had been present at the first per- 
 formance, at the back of a box, although he had 
 stopped going out save on rare occasions. 
 
 His appearance at the performance touched 
 me all the more. 
 
 One evening I decided to go to the playhouse, 
 in the wings, and I was shocked at Carvalho's ap- 
 pearance. He was always so alert and carried 
 himself so well, but now he was bent and his eyes 
 were bloodshot behind his blue glasses. Never- 
 theless his good humor and gentleness toward me 
 were the same as ever. 
 
 221
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 His condition could but cause me anxiety. 
 
 How true my sad presentiments were ! 
 
 My poor director was to die on the third day. 
 
 Almost at the same time I learned that Daudet, 
 whose life had been so admirably rounded out, 
 had heard his last hour strike on the clock of 
 time. Oh mysterious, implacable Timepiece! 
 I felt one of its sharpest strokes. 
 
 Carvalho's funeral was followed by a consider- 
 able crowd. His son burst into sobs behind his 
 funeral car and could scarcely see. Everything 
 in that sad, impressive procession was painful 
 and heartrending. 
 
 Daudet's obsequies were celebrated with great 
 pomp at Sainte Clotilde. La Solitude from 
 Sapho (the entr'acte from the fifth act) was 
 played during the service after the chanting of 
 the Dies Irae. 
 
 I was obliged to make my way almost by main 
 force through the great crowd to get into the 
 church. It was like a hungry, eager reflection 
 of that long line of admirers and friends he had 
 during his lifetime. 
 
 As I sprinkled holy water on the casket, I re- 
 called my last visit to the Rue de Bellechasse 
 where Daudet lived. I had gone to give him 
 
 222
 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 news of the theater and carried him sprays of 
 eucalyptus, one of the trees of the South he 
 adored. I knew what intense pleasure that 
 would give him. 
 
 Meanwhile Sapho went on its way. I went to 
 Saint Raphael, the country where Carvalho had 
 liked to live. 
 
 I relied on an apartment which I had engaged 
 in advance, but the landlord told me that he had 
 let it to two ladies who seemed very busy. I 
 started to hunt another lodging when I was called 
 back. I learned that the two who had taken my 
 rooms were Emma Calve and one of her friends. 
 The two ladies doubtless heard my name men- 
 tioned and changed their itinerary. However, 
 their presence in that place so far from Paris 
 showed me that our Sapho had necessarily sus- 
 pended her run of performances. 
 
 What whims will not one pardon in such an 
 artiste? 
 
 I learned that in two days everything was in 
 order again at the theater in Paris. Would that 
 I had been there to embrace our adorable fugi- 
 tive! 
 
 Two weeks later I learned from the papers in 
 223
 
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Nice that Albert Carre had been made manager of 
 the Opera-Comique. Until then the house had 
 been temporarily under the direction of the 
 Beaux-Arts. 
 
 Who would have thought that it would have 
 been our new manager who would revive Sapho 
 considerably later with that beautiful artiste who 
 became his wife. But it was she who incarnated 
 the Sapho of Daudet with an unusually appealing 
 interpretation. 
 
 Salignac, the tenor, had a considerable success 
 in the role of Jean Gaussin. 
 
 At the revival Carre asked me to interweave a 
 new act, the act of the Letters, and I carried out 
 the idea with enthusiasm. 
 
 Sapho was also sung by that unusual artiste 
 Mme. Georgette Leblanc, later the wife of that 
 great man of letters Maeterlinck. 
 
 Mme. Brejean-Silver also made this role an 
 astonishingly lifelike figure. 
 
 How many other artists have sung this work! 
 
 The first opera put on under the new manage- 
 ment was Reynaldo Hahn's Ulle de Reve. He 
 dedicated that exquisite score to me. That mu- 
 sic is pervading for it was written by a real mas- 
 
 224
 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 ter. What a gift he has of wrapping us in warm 
 caresses ! 
 
 That was not the case with the music of some 
 of our confreres. Reyer found it unbearable 
 and made this image-raising remark about it: 
 
 "I just met Gretry's statue on the stairs; he 
 had enough and fled." 
 
 That brings to mind another equally witty 
 sally which du Locle made to Reyer the day after 
 Berlioz's death, 
 
 "Well, my dear fellow, Berlioz has got ahead 
 of you." 
 
 Du Locle could permit himself this inoffensive 
 joke for he was Reyer's oldest friend. 
 
 I find this word from the author of Louise 
 whom I knew as a child in my classes at the Con- 
 servatoire and who always felt a family affection 
 forme: 
 
 Midnight, New Year's Eve. 
 Dear Master: 
 
 Faithful remembrance from your affectionate 
 on the last day which ends with Sapho and the 
 first hour of the year which will close with Cen- 
 drillon. 
 
 GUSTAVE CHARPENTIER. 
 225
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Cendrillon did not appear until May 24, 1899. 
 These works presented one after another, at more 
 than a year's interval however, brought me the 
 following note from Gounod: 
 
 "A thousand congratulations, my dear friend, 
 on your latest fine success. The devil! Well, 
 you go at such a pace one can scarcely keep up 
 with you." 
 
 As I have said, the score of Cendrillon, written 
 on a pearl from that casket of jewels "Les Contes 
 de Perrault," had been finished a long time. It 
 had yielded its turn to Sapho at the Opera-Com- 
 ique. Our new director Albert Carre told me 
 that he intended to give Cendrillon at the first 
 possible chance, but that was six months away. 
 
 I was staying at Aix-les-Bains in remembrance 
 of my father who had lived there, and I was deep 
 in work on La Terre Promise. The Bible fur- 
 nished a text and I got out an oratorio of three 
 acts. As I said, I was deep in the work when my 
 wife and I were overcome by the terrible news of 
 the fire at the Charity Bazaar. My dear daugh- 
 ter was a salesgirl. 
 
 We had to wait until evening before a tele- 
 gram arrived and ended our intense alarm. 
 
 ^ curious coincidence which I did not learn 
 226
 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 until long afterwards was that the heroine (Lucy 
 Arbell) of Persephone and Therese, as well as 
 the beautiful Dulcinee (in Don Quichotte) was 
 also among the salesgirls. She was only twelve 
 or thirteen at the time, but in the midst of the 
 general panic she found an exit behind the Hotel 
 du Palais and succeeded in saving her mother and 
 several others. This showed rare decision and 
 courage for a child. 
 
 Since I have spoken of La Terre Promise, I 
 may add that I had an entirely unexpected "hear- 
 ing." Eugene d'Harcourt, who was so well 
 thought of as a musician and a critic, the greatly 
 applauded composer of Tasse which was put on 
 at Monte Carlo, proposed to me that he direct a 
 performance at the church of Sainte Eustache 
 with an immense orchestra and chorus. 
 
 The second part was devoted to the taking of 
 Jericho. A march seven times interrupted by 
 the resounding outbursts from seven great trum- 
 pets ended with the collapse of the walls of that 
 famous city which the Jews had to take and de- 
 stroy. The resounding clamor of all the voices 
 together was joined to the formidable thunder 
 of the great organ of Saint Eustache. 
 
 With my wife I attended the final rehearsal 
 227
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 in a large pulpit to which the venerable cure had 
 done us the honor of inviting us. 
 
 That was the fifteenth of March, 1900. 
 
 I return to Cendrillon. Albert Carre put on 
 this opera with a stage setting which was as novel 
 as it was marvellous. 
 
 Julia Guiraudon was exquisite in the role of 
 Cendrillon. Mme. Deschamps Jehin was aston- 
 ishing as a singer and as a comedienne, pretty 
 Mile. Emelen was our Prince Charming and the 
 great Fugere showed himself an indescribable ar- 
 tist in the role of Pandolphe. He sent me the 
 news of "victory" which I received the next 
 morning at Enghien-les-Bains, which with my 
 wife I had chosen as a refuge near Paris from the 
 dress rehearsal and the first performance. 
 
 More than sixty continuous performances, in- 
 cluding matinees, followed the Premiere. The 
 Isola brothers, managers of the Gaite, later gave a 
 large number of performances, and a curious 
 thing for so Parisian a work was that Italy gave 
 Cendrillon a fine reception. This lyric work was 
 given at Rome thirty times a rare number. 
 The following cablegram came to me from Amer- 
 ica: 
 
 228
 
 WORK! ALWAYS WORK! 
 
 Cendrillon hier, success phe.no menal. 
 The last word was too long and the sending 
 office had cut it in two. 
 
 It was now 1900, the memorable time of the 
 Great Exposition. 
 
 I had scarcely recovered from the fine emotion 
 of La Terre Promise at Saint Eustache than I fell 
 seriously ill. They were then going on with the 
 rehearsals of Le Cid at the Opera which they in- 
 tended to revive. The hundredth performance 
 was reached in October of the same year. 
 
 All Paris was en fete. The capital, one of the 
 most frequented places in the world, became even 
 more and better than that: it was the world itself, 
 for all people met there. All nations jostled one 
 another; all tongues were heard and all costumes 
 were set off against each other. 
 
 Though the Exposition sent its million of joy- 
 ful notes skyward and could not fail to obtain a 
 place of honor in history, at nightfall the im- 
 mense crowd sought rest from the emotions of the 
 day by swarming to the theaters which were 
 everywhere open, and it invaded the magnificent 
 palace which our dear great Charles Gamier had 
 
 229
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 raised for the manifestations of Lyric Art and the 
 religion of the Dance. 
 
 Gailhard had come to call on me in May when 
 I was so ill and had made me promise to be pres- 
 ent in his box at the hundredth performance 
 which he more than hoped to give and which as a 
 matter of fact took place in October. That day 
 I yielded to his invitation. 
 
 Mile. Lucienne Breval and Mm. Saleza and 
 Frederic Delmas were applauded with delirious 
 enthusiasm on the night of the hundredth per- 
 formance. At the recall at the end of the third 
 act, Gailhard, in spite of my resistance, pushed 
 me to the front of his box. . . . 
 
 It is easy to imagine what happened on the 
 stage, in the Opera's superb orchestra, and in the 
 audience packed to the roof. 
 
 230
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 I became very ill at Paris. I felt that the 
 path from life to death was so easy, the way 
 seemed so gentle, so restful, that I was sorry to 
 find myself back in the harsh, cutting troubles 
 of life. 
 
 I had escaped the sharp cold of winter; it was 
 now spring, and I went to my old home at gre- 
 ville to find nature, the great consoler, in her soli- 
 tude and peace. 
 
 I brought with me a voluminous correspond- 
 ence, letters, pamphlets and rolls of manuscript 
 which I had never opened. I intended doing so 
 on the way as a distraction from the boredom of 
 the journey. I had opened several letters and 
 was about to unroll a manuscript, "Oh, no," I 
 said, "that's enough." As a matter of fact I 
 had happened on a work for the stage. 
 
 Must the stage follow me everywhere, I 
 thought. I longed to have nothing more to do 
 with it. So I put the importunate thing aside. 
 Yet as I journeyed along, to kill time, as they say, 
 
 231
 
 ^ 
 
 y~\v v-v 
 
 /" PN^ 
 
 \ 
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I took it up again and settled myself to run 
 through that famous manuscript notwithstanding 
 whatever desire I may have had to the contrary. 
 
 My attention was at first superficial and inat- 
 tentive, but gradually it became fixed. Insen- 
 sibly I began to read with interest; so much so 
 that I ended by feeling real surprise I must con- 
 fess that it even became stupefaction. 
 
 "What," I exclaimed, "a play without a part 
 for a woman except for the speechless apparition 
 of the Virgin!" 
 
 If I was surprised and stupefied, what would be 
 the feelings of those who were used to seeing me 
 put on the stage Manon, Sapho, Thai's and other 
 lovable ladies. That was true, but in that they 
 would forget that the most sublime of women, 
 the Virgin, was bound to sustain me in my work, 
 even as she showed herself charitable to the re- 
 pentant Juggler. 
 
 I had scarcely run through the first scenes, 
 when I felt that I was face to face with the work 
 of a true poet who was familiar with the archaism 
 of the literature of the Middle Ages. The manu- 
 script bore no author's name. 
 
 I wrote to my concierge to find out the origin 
 of this mysterious package, and he told me that 
 
 232
 
 IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the author had left his name and address with 
 explicit instructions not to divulge them to me 
 unless and until I had agreed to write the music 
 for the work. 
 
 The title Le Jongleur de Notre Dame followed 
 by the sub-title "Miracle in Three Acts" en- 
 chanted me. 
 
 The character of my home, a relic of the same 
 Middle Ages, the surroundings in which I found 
 myself at figreville, were exactly suited to give 
 me the desired atmosphere for my work. 
 
 The score was finished and the time came to 
 communicate with my unknown. 
 
 At last I learned his name and address and 
 wrote to him. 
 
 There is no doubt about the joy with which I 
 did so, for the author was none other than Maur- 
 ice Lena, the devoted friend I had known at Lyons 
 where he held the chair of Philosophy. 
 
 My dear Lena then came to figreville on 
 August 14, 1900. We hurried to my place from 
 the little station. We found in my room spread 
 out on the large table (I flatter myself it was a 
 famous table for it had belonged to the illustrious 
 Diderot) the engraved piano and vocal score for 
 Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. 
 
 233
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Lena was dumfounded at sight of it. He was 
 choked by the most delightful of emotions. 
 
 Both of us had been happy in the work. Now 
 the unknown faced us. Where and in what thea- 
 ter were we to be played? 
 
 It was a radiant day. Nature with her intox- 
 icating odors, the fair season of the fields, the 
 flowers in the meadows, the agreeable union 
 which had grown up between us in producing the 
 work, everything in fact spoke of happiness. 
 Such fleeting happiness, as the poetess Mme. 
 Daniel Lesaeur has told us, is worth all eternity. 
 
 The fields recalled to us that we were on the 
 eve of the fifteenth of August, the Feast of the 
 Virgin, whom we had sung in our work. 
 
 As I never had a piano at home, especially at 
 figreville, I was unable to satisfy my dear Lena's 
 curiosity and let him hear the music of this or 
 that scene. 
 
 We were strolling together near the hour of 
 vespers towards the old, venerable church, and 
 we could hear from a distance the chords of its 
 little harmonium. A mad idea struck me. 
 "Hey! What if I should suggest to you," I said 
 to my friend, "what if I propose to you something 
 which would be impossible in that sacred place 
 
 234
 
 IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 in any other way, but certainly very tempting! 
 Suppose we go into the church as soon as it is 
 deserted and returned to holy obscurity. What 
 if I should let you hear fragments of our Le Jon- 
 gleur de Notre Dame? Wouldn't it be a divine 
 moment which would leave its impression on us 
 forever?" And we continued our stroll, the 
 complacent shade of the great trees protecting 
 the paths and roads from the sting of a too ardent 
 sun. 
 
 On the morrow sad morrow we parted. 
 
 The following autumn, the winter, and finally 
 the spring of the succeeding year passed without 
 any one coming to me from anywhere with an 
 offer to produce the work. 
 
 When I least thought of it, I had a visit as 
 unexpected as it was flattering from M. Raoul 
 Gunsbourg. 
 
 I delight in recalling here the great worth of 
 that close friend, his individuality as a manager, 
 and his talent as a musician, whose works tri- 
 umph on the stage. 
 
 Raoul Gunsbourg brought me the news that on 
 his advice H. S. H. the Prince of Monaco had des- 
 ignated me for a work to be put on the stage of 
 the theater at Monte Carlo. 
 
 235
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Le Jongleur de Notre Dame was ready and I 
 offered it. It was arranged that his Serene High- 
 ness should deign to come to Paris and hear the 
 work in person. That hearing occurred, as a 
 matter of fact, in the beautiful, artistic home 
 of my publisher Henri Heugel. The Prince was 
 entirely satisfied ; he did me the honor to express 
 several times his sincere pleasure. The work 
 was put in study and the later rehearsals were in 
 Paris under Raoul Gunsbourg's direction. 
 
 In January, 1902, my wife and I left Paris for 
 the Palace of Monaco, where his Serene High- 
 ness had most cordially invited us to be his 
 guests. What a contrast it was to the life we 
 had left behind! 
 
 One evening we left Paris buried in glacial 
 cold beneath the snow, and, behold, some hours 
 later we found ourselves in an entirely different 
 atmosphere. It was the South, La Belle Prov- 
 ence, the Azure Coast. It was ideal! For me 
 it was the East almost at the gates of Paris ! 
 
 The dream began. It is hardly necessary for 
 me to tell of all the marvelous days which went 
 like a dream in that Dantesque Paradise, amid 
 that splendid scenery, in that luxurious, sumptu- 
 
 236
 
 IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ous palace, all balmy with the vegetation of the 
 Tropics. 
 
 The first performance of Le Jongleur de Notre 
 Dame was given at the Monte Carlo Opera on 
 Tuesday, February 18, 1902. The superb pro- 
 tagonists were Mm. Renaud, of the Opera, and 
 Marechal, of the Opera-Comique. 
 
 A detail which shows the favor with which the 
 work was received is that it was given four times 
 in succession during the same season. 
 
 Two years later my dear director Albert Carre 
 gave the first performance of Le Jongleur de No- 
 tre Dame at the Opera-Comique with this ideal 
 cast: Lucien Fugere, Marechal, the creator of the 
 part, and Allard. 
 
 The work long ago passed its hundredth per- 
 formance at Paris, and as I write these lines Le 
 Jongleur de Notre Dame has had a place in the 
 repertoire of the American houses for several 
 years. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the Juggler wa 
 created at the Metropolitan Opera House by 
 Mary Garden, the dazzling artist who is admired 
 as much in Paris as in the United States. 
 
 My feelings are somewhat bewildered, I con- 
 237
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 fess, at seeing the monk discard his frock after 
 the performance and resume an elegant costume 
 from the Rue de la Paix. However, in the face 
 of the artist's triumph I bow and applaud. 1 
 
 As I have said, this work had to wait its turn, 
 and as Carvalho had previously engaged me to 
 write the music for Griseldis, a work by Eugene 
 Morand and Armand Silvestre, which was much 
 applauded at the Theatre-Frangais. I wrote the 
 score at intervals between my journeys to the 
 South and to Cap d'Antibes. Ah, that hotel on 
 the Cap d'Antibes ! That was an unusual stay. 
 It was an old property built by Villemessant, who 
 had christened it correctly and happily "Villa 
 Soliel," and which he planned for journalists 
 overtaken by poverty and old age. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, a large villa with white 
 
 1 The transposition of the tenor part to the soprano 
 register seems an intolerable musical solecism, and a 
 woman playing a serious and inevitably male character 
 grotesquely absurd. The terms in which Massenet here 
 expresses his objections to this indefensible procedure are 
 gentle and but mildly ironical compared with those he 
 used to the translator. Massenet was simply furious. 
 With flaming eyes and how his wonderful eyes could 
 flame! and voice vehement with indignation and unutter- 
 able scorn, he said to me, "When I wrote that work I little 
 thought the monk's habit would ever be disguised in a petti- 
 
 >at from the Rue de la Paix." 
 
 238
 
 IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 walls all purple from the fires of the bright sun 
 of the South and surrounded by a grove of euca- 
 lyptus trees, myrtles and laurels. It was reached 
 by shady paths, suffused with the most fragrant 
 perfumes, and faced the sea that sea which rolls 
 its clear waters from the Azure Coast and the 
 Riviera along the indented shores of Italy as far 
 as ancient Hellas, as if to carry thither on its 
 azured waves which bathe Provence the far off 
 salutation of the Phocean city. 
 
 How pleased I was with my sun-flooded room, 
 where I worked in peace and quiet and in the en- 
 joyment of perfect health ! 
 
 As I have spoken of Griseldis., I will add that 
 as I had two works free, that and Le Jongleur de 
 Notre Dame., my publisher offered Albert Carre 
 his choice and he took Griseldis. That is why, 
 as I have said, Le Jongleur de Notre Dame was 
 put on at Monte Carlo in 1902. 
 
 So Griseldis got the first start and was given at 
 the Opera-Comique November 20, 1901. 
 
 Mile. Lucienne Breval made a superb creation 
 of it. The baritone, Dufranne, made his first 
 appearance in the role of the marquis, Griseldis's 
 husband, and made a brilliant success from the 
 moment he came on the stage; Fugere was ex- 
 
 '239
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 traordinary in the role of the Devil, and Marechal 
 was a tender lover in the part of Alain. 
 
 I was very fond of this piece. Everything 
 about it pleased me. 
 
 It brought together so many touching senti- 
 ments: the proud chivalric appearance of the 
 great, powerful seigneur going on the Crusades, 
 the fantastic appearance of the Green Devil who 
 might be said to have come from a window of 
 a medieval cathedral, the simplicity of young 
 Alain, and the delightful little figure of the child 
 of Griseldis! For that part we had a tiny girl 
 of three who was the very spirit of the theater. 
 As in the second act the child on Griseldis's knees 
 should give the illusion of falling asleep, the little 
 artiste discovered all by herself the proper ges- 
 ture which would be understood by the distant 
 audience; she let her arms fall as if overcome 
 with weariness. Delightful little mummer! 
 
 Albert Carre had found an archaic and his- 
 toric oratory which was artistically perfect, and 
 when the curtain rose on Griseldis's garden, it 
 was a delight. What a contrast between the 
 lilies blooming in the foreground and the dismal 
 castle on the horizon ! 
 
 240
 
 IN THE MIDST OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 And the scene of the prologue with its living 
 background was a fortunate discovery. 
 
 What joys I promised myself in being able to 
 work at the theater with my old friend Armand 
 Silvestre. A year before he had written me, 
 "Are you going to let me die without seeing Gris- 
 eldis at the Opera-Comique?" Alas, that was 
 the case, and my dear collaborator, Eugene 
 Morland, helped with his poetical and artistic 
 advice. 
 
 As I was working on Griseldis, a scholar who 
 was entirely wrapped up in the literature of the 
 Middle Ages and was interested in a subject on 
 that period, entrusted me with a work which he 
 had written on that time, a very labored work of 
 which I was not able to make much use. 
 
 I had shown it to Gerome, whose mind was 
 curious about everything, and as Gerome, the 
 author and I were together, our great painter 
 whose remarks were always so apropos, ready 
 and amusing said to the author who was waiting 
 for his opinion, "How pleasantly I fell asleep 
 reading your book yesterday." 
 
 And the author bowed entirely satisfied. 
 
 241
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 I happened to see played at the Theatre-Fran- 
 ais three entirely novel acts which interested me 
 very much. It was Le Cherubin by Francis de 
 Croisset. Two days later I was at the author's 
 house and asked him for the work. His talent, 
 which was so marked then, has never ceased 
 highly to confirm itself. 
 
 I remember that it was a rainy day, as we were 
 coming back by the Champs filysees from the 
 glorious ceremony at the unveiling of the statue 
 of Alphonse Daudet, that we settled the terms of 
 our agreement. 
 
 Title, subject, action, everything in that de- 
 lightful Cherubin charmed me. I wrote the mu- 
 sic at figreville. 
 
 His Serene Highness the Prince of Monaco 
 heard that Le Cherubin was set to music, and he 
 remembered Le Jongleur de Notre Dame which 
 he had welcomed so splendidly and which I had 
 respectfully dedicated to him. He had M. Raoul 
 
 242
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 Gunsbourg propose to me that the first perform- 
 ance be given at Monte Carlo. It is not difficult 
 to imagine with what enthusiasm I accepted this 
 offer. Mme. Massenet and I went again to that 
 ideal country in that fairy-like palace of which 
 we have retained such imperishable memories. 
 
 Le Cherubin was created by Mary Garden, the 
 tender Nina by Marguerite Carre, the bewitching 
 Ensoleillad by Cavalieri, and the part of the 
 philosopher was filled by Maurice Renaud. 
 
 It was a really delightful interpretation. The 
 evening was much drawn out by the applause and 
 the constant encores which the audience de- 
 manded of the artists. It literally held them in 
 an atmosphere of the wildest enthusiasm. 
 
 Our stay at the palace was one continual series 
 of inexpressible delights which we were to ex- 
 perience again as the guests of that high-souled 
 prince of science. 
 
 Henri Cain, who had been my collaborator 
 with Francis de Croisset in Le Cherubin, amused 
 me between times by making me write the music 
 for a pretty, picturesque ballet in one act, Cigale. 
 The Opera-Comique gave it February 4, 1904. 
 The bewitching, talented Mile. Chasle was our 
 Cigale, and Messmaecker, of the Opera-Comique, 
 
 243
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 clowned the role of Mme. Fourmi, Rentiere, in 
 a mirth provoking manner ! 
 
 I was by far the most entertained of those 
 who attended the rehearsals of Cigale. At the 
 end was a scene which was very touching and 
 exquisitely poetical, where an angel with a divine 
 voice appears and sings in the distance. The 
 angel's voice was Mile. Guiraudon who became 
 Mme. Henri Cain. 
 
 A year later, as I have said, on February 14, 
 1905, Le Cherubin was sung at Monte Carlo and 
 on the twenty-third of the following May the 
 Opera-Comique in Paris closed its season with 
 the same piece. The only changes at the latter 
 were that Lucien Fugere took the role of the 
 philosopher and added a new success to the many 
 that artist had already achieved and that the role 
 of Ensoleillad was given to the charming Mile. 
 Vallandri. 
 
 You will perhaps observe that I have said noth- 
 ing about Ariane. The reason for this is that I 
 never talk about a work until it is finished and 
 engraved. I have said nothing about Ariane or 
 about Roma, the first scenes of which I wrote in 
 
 244
 
 Persephone in Ariane
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 1902, enraptured by the sublime tragedy, Rome 
 Vaincue by Alexandre Parodi. As I write these 
 words the five acts of Roma are in rehearsal at 
 Monte Carlo and the Opera, but I have already 
 said too much. 
 
 So I resume the current of my life. 
 
 Ariane! Arianel The work which made me 
 live in such lofty spheres! How could it have 
 been otherwise with the superb, inspired collabo- 
 ration of Catulle Mendes, the poet of ethereal 
 hopes and dreams! 
 
 It was a memorable day in my life when my 
 friend Heugel told me that Catulle Mendes was 
 ready to read the text of Ariane to me. 
 
 For a long time I had wanted to weep the tears 
 of Ariane. I was thrilled with all the strength 
 of mind and heart before I even knew the first 
 word of the first scene. 
 
 We engaged to meet for this reading at Catulle 
 Mendes's house, in the artistic lodging of that 
 great scholar and his exquisite wife who was also 
 a most talented and real poet. 
 
 I came away actually feverish with excitement. 
 The libretto was in my pocket, against my heart, 
 as if to make it feel the throbs, as I got into a 
 
 245
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 victoria to go home. Rain fell in torrents but 
 I did not notice it. Surely Ariane's tears per- 
 meated my whole being with delight. 
 
 Dear, good tears, with what gladness you must 
 have fallen during the rehearsals! I was over- 
 whelmed with esteem and attention by my dear 
 director, Gailhard, as well as by my remarkable 
 interpreters. 
 
 In August, 1905, 1 was walking pensively un- 
 der the pergola of our house at figreville, when 
 suddenly an automobile horn woke the echoes of 
 that peaceful country. 
 
 Was not Jupiter thundering in the heavens, 
 Caelo tonantem Jovem, as Horace says in the 
 Odes. For a moment I could believe that such 
 was the case, but what was my surprise my very 
 agreeable surprise when I saw get down from 
 that thundering sixty miles an hour two travel- 
 ers, who, if they did not come from heaven, 
 nevertheless let me hear the accents of Paradise 
 in their friendly voices. 
 
 One was Gailhard, the director of the Opera, 
 and the other the learned architect of the Gamier 
 monument. My director had come to ask me 
 how I was getting on with Ariane and if I were 
 willing to let the Opera have it. 
 
 246
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 We went up to my large room which with its 
 yellow hangings of the period might have easily 
 been taken for that of a general of the First Em- 
 pire. I at once pointed out a heap of pages on a 
 large black marble table the whole of the fin- 
 ished score. 
 
 At lunch, between the sardines of the hors 
 d'oeuvre and the cheese of the dessert, I de- 
 claimed several situations in the work. Then 
 my guests, put in a charming humor, were good 
 enough to accept my invitation to make a tour of 
 the property. 
 
 It was while we paced under the pergola of 
 which I have spoken, in the delightfully fresh, 
 thick shade of the vines whose leaves formed a 
 verdant network that we settled on the cast. 
 
 Lucienne Breval was to have the role of Ari- 
 ane; Louise Grandjean that of the dramatic 
 Phedre, and by common consent, in view of her 
 talent for tragedy and her established success at 
 the Opera, we decided on Lucy Arbell for the role 
 of the somber, beautiful Queen of Hell. 
 
 Muratore and Delmas were plainly indicated 
 for Thesee and Pirithoiis. 
 
 As he was going away, Gailhard, remembering 
 the simple, confiding formula by which our 
 
 247
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 fathers made contracts in the good old days, 
 plucked a branch from a eucalyptus in the gar- 
 den and said, waving it at me: 
 
 "This is the token of the promises we have 
 exchanged to-day. I carry it with me." 
 
 Then my guests got into their auto and dis- 
 appeared in the whirling dust of the road. Did 
 they carry away to the great city the near realiza- 
 tion of my dearest hopes, was what I asked myself 
 as I climbed to my room. I was tired and worn 
 out by the emotions of the day and I went to bed. 
 The sun still shone on the horizon in all the 
 glory of its fire. It crimsoned my bed with its 
 dazzling rays. I dreamt as I slept the most beau- 
 tiful dream that can delude us when a task has 
 been fulfilled. 
 
 I now record a detail which is of some im- 
 portance. 
 
 My little Marie Magdeleine came to figreville 
 to spend a few days with her grandparents. I 
 yielded to her curiosity and told her the story of 
 the piece. I had reached the place where Ariane 
 is drawn into Hell to find the wandering soul of 
 her sister Phedre, and as I stopped, my grand- 
 child exclaimed at once : 
 
 248
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 "And now grandpapa we are going to be in 
 Hell!" 
 
 The silvery wheedling voice of the dear child, 
 her sudden, natural question produced a strange, 
 almost magical, effect on me. I had had the in- 
 tention of asking them to suppress that act, but 
 now I suddenly decided to keep it, and I answered 
 the child's fair question, "Yes, we are going into 
 Hell." And I added, "We shall see there the 
 affecting figure of Persephone finding again with 
 delight the roses, the divine roses which remind 
 her of the beloved earth where she lived of old, 
 ere she became the Queen of that terrible place 
 with a black lily in her hand for a scepter." 
 
 That visit to Avernus necessitates a stage set- 
 ting and an interpretation which I will deliber- 
 ately designate as intensive. I had to go to 
 Turin (my last journey to that beautiful country) 
 in pretty cold weather, December 14, 1907, ac- 
 companied by my dear Henri Heugel to be pres- 
 ent at the last rehearsals at the Regio, the royal 
 theater, where they were putting on Ariane for 
 the first time in Italy. The work had a luxuri- 
 ous stage setting and remarkable interpreters. 
 The great artiste Maria Farneti had the role of 
 Ariane. I noticed particularly the special care 
 
 249
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 with which Serafin, the eminent conductor who 
 was acting as stage manager, staged the act in 
 Hell. Our Persephone was as tragic as one pos- 
 sibly could be; the aria of the Roses, however, 
 seemed to me to be lacking in emotion. I re- 
 member that I told her at the rehearsal, throwing 
 an armful of roses into her wide open arms, to 
 press them to her heart ardently, as she would 
 do, I added, with a husband or a beloved sweet- 
 heart whom she had not seen for twenty years! 
 "From the roses which disappeared so long ago 
 to the dear adored one who is at last found again 
 is not so far ! Think of that, Signorina, and the 
 effect will be sure!" The charming artiste 
 smiled, but had she understood? 
 
 So Ariane was finished. My illustrious 
 friend, Jules Claretie, learned of this and recalled 
 to me the promise I had made him of writing 
 Therese, a lyric drama in three acts. He added: 
 
 "The work will be short, for the emotion it lets 
 loose cannot be prolonged." 
 
 I went to work on it, but I will deal with that 
 presently. 
 
 I have alluded to the pleasure I felt at every 
 rehearsal at the constant happy discoveries in 
 scenery or in feeling. Ah, with what constantly 
 
 250
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 alert and devoted intelligence our artists followed 
 the precious advice of Gailhard ! 
 
 The month of June was, however, marked by 
 dark days. One of our artistes fell seriously ill 
 and they fought with death for thirty-six hours in 
 order to save her. The work was all ready for 
 the stage and as that artiste was necessarily miss- 
 ing for several weeks, they suspended the re- 
 hearsals during the summer. They were re- 
 sumed at the end of September when our artists 
 were all well and together again. These re- 
 hearsals were in a general way to go on during 
 the month of October and we were to appear at 
 the end of the month. 
 
 What was said was done; rare promptness for 
 the stage. The first performance was on Oc- 
 tober 31, 1906. 
 
 Catulle Mendes, who had often been severe on 
 me in his criticisms in the press, had become my 
 ardent collaborator, and, something worth not- 
 ing, he appreciated joyfully the reverence I had 
 brought to the delivery of his verses. 
 
 In our common toil, as well as in our studies 
 with the artists at the playhouse, I delighted in 
 his outbursts of devotion and affection and in the 
 esteem in which he held me. 
 
 251
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 The performances followed each other ten 
 times a month, a unique fact in the annals of the 
 theater for a new work, and this went on up to 
 the sixtieth performance. 
 
 Apropos of this, they asked Lucy Arbell, our 
 Persephone, how many times she had sung the 
 work, feeling sure that her answer would be 
 wrong. 
 
 "Why," she exclaimed, "sixty times!" 
 
 "No," replied her questioner, "you have sung 
 it one hundred and twenty times, for you are al- 
 ways encored in the aria of the Roses." 
 
 I owed that sixtieth performance to the new 
 directors, Mm. Messager and Broussan, and that 
 seems to be the last of a work which started off so 
 brilliantly. 
 
 What a difference, I say again, between the 
 manner in which my works have been mounted 
 for some years and the way they were put on 
 when I was beginning ! 
 
 My first works were put on in the provinces 
 with old scenery, and I was compelled to hear the 
 stage manager say things like this : 
 
 "For the first act we have found an old back- 
 ground from La Favorita; for the second two sets 
 from Rigoletto," etc., etc. 
 
 252
 
 FROM CHERUBIN TO THERESE 
 
 I recall an obliging director who on the eve 
 of a first performance, knowing that I lacked a 
 tenor, offered me one, but warning me, "This 
 artist knows the part, but I ought to tell you that 
 he is always flat in the third act." 
 
 Which reminds me that in the same house I 
 knew a basso who had a strange pretension, still 
 more strangely expressed, "My voice," said our 
 basso, "goes down so far that they can't find the 
 note on the piano." 
 
 Oh, well, they were all valiant and honest 
 artists. They did me service and had their years 
 of success. 
 
 But I see that I am loitering on the way in 
 telling of these old times. I have to tell of the 
 new work which was in rehearsal in Monte Carlo 
 I mean Therese. 
 
 253
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 One summer morning in 1905 my great frienid, 
 Georges Cain, the eminent and eloquent historian 
 of Old Paris, got together the beautiful, charm- 
 ing Mme. Georges Cain, Mile. Lucy Arbell, of the 
 Opera, and a few others to visit what had once 
 been the convent of the Carmelites in the Rue de 
 Vaugirard. 
 
 We had gone through the cells of the ancient 
 cloister, seen the wells into which the blood 
 stained horde of Septembrists had thrown the 
 bodies of the slaughtered priests, and we had 
 come to the gardens which remain so mournfully 
 famous for those frightful butcheries. Georges 
 Cain stopped in the middle of his recital of these 
 dismal events, and pointed out to us a white figure 
 wandering alone in the distance. 
 
 "It is the ghost of Lucile Desmoulins," he 
 said. Poor Lucile Desmoulins so strong and 
 courageous beside her husband on his way to the 
 scaffold where she was so soon to follow him! 
 
 254
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 It was neither shade nor phantom. The 
 white figure was very much alive ! It was Lucy 
 Arbell who had heen overcome by deep emotion 
 and who had turned away to hide the tears. 
 
 Therese was already revealed. . . . 
 
 A few days afterwards I was lunching at the 
 Italian Embassy. At dessert the kindly Com- 
 tessa Tornielli told us, with that charming grace 
 and delightful eloquence which were so charac- 
 teristic of her, the story of the ambassorial pal- 
 ace, Rue de Crenelle. 
 
 In 1793 the palace belonged to the Gallifet 
 family. Some of the members of that illustrious 
 house were guillotined, while others went abroad. 
 It was determined to sell the building as the 
 property of the people, but this was opposed by 
 a servant of firm and decided character. "I am 
 the people," he said, "and you shall not take 
 from the people what belongs to it. I am in my 
 own place here!" 
 
 When one of the surviving Gallifet emigres 
 returned to Paris in 1798, his first thought was 
 to go and see the family home. He was greatly 
 surprised when the faithful servant whose vigor- 
 ous speech had prevented its destruction received 
 him and said, falling at his master's feet, "Mon- 
 
 255
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 seigneur, I have taken care of your property. 
 I give it back to you." 
 
 The text of Therese was foretold. That reve- 
 lation was its presentiment. 
 
 I had the first vision of the music of the work 
 at Brussels in the Bois de la Cambre in Novem- 
 ber of that year. 
 
 It was a beautiful afternoon under a dim au- 
 tumnal sun. One knew that the beneficent sap 
 was slowly running down in the beautiful trees. 
 The gay green foliage which had crowned their 
 tops had disappeared. One by one at the caprice 
 of the wind the leaves fell, dried up, reddened 
 and yellowed by the cold, taking in the gold, 
 irony of Nature ! its very brilliance, and shadings 
 and most varied tints. 
 
 Nothing resembled less the poor sorry trees of 
 our Bois de Boulogne. In the mighty spread of 
 their branches those magnificent trees remind 
 one of those which are so much admired in the 
 parks at Windsor and Richmond. I walked on 
 the dead leaves, scuffling them with my feet. 
 Their rustling pleased me and were a delightful 
 accompaniment to my thoughts. 
 
 I was closer to the heart of my work, "in the 
 bowels of the subject," for among the four or 
 
 256
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 five people with me was the future heroine of 
 Therese. 
 
 I searched everywhere, greedily, for all that 
 had to do with the horrible period of the Terror, 
 in all the engravings which would give me the 
 sinister dark story of that epoch, in order to make 
 the scenes in the second act as true as possible, 
 and I confess that I like it. 
 
 I returned to Paris to my room Rue de Vau- 
 girard, and wrote the music of Therese during 
 the winter and spring (I finished it in the sum- 
 mer at the seashore) . 
 
 I remember that one morning the work on one 
 situation demanded the immediate assistance of 
 my collaborator, Jules Claretie, and that it un- 
 nerved me a good deal. I decided forthwith to 
 write to the Minister of Posts, Telegraphs and 
 Telephones and ask him to grant me an almost 
 impossible thing: to place a telephone in my 
 room before four o'clock. 
 
 Naturally the tone of my letter reflected that 
 of a deferential petition. 
 
 How could I have hoped for it? When I re- 
 turned from my affairs, I found on my mantel a 
 pretty telephone apparatus which was quite new. 
 
 The Minister, M. Berard, one of our most dis- 
 257
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 tinguished men of letters, had felt bound to in- 
 terest himself in my capricious wish on the spot. 
 He had sent a crew of twenty men with every- 
 thing required for a rapid installation. 
 
 Dear, charming minister! I love him the 
 more for his kindly word one day. "I was 
 happy," he said, "to give you such pleasure, to 
 you who have given me so much pleasure at the 
 theater with your works." 
 
 Pan pari refertur, yes, it was returning like 
 for like, but done with a grace and kindness 
 which I appreciated highly. 
 
 Hello! . . . Hello! At the first attempt I 
 was very clumsy of course. All the same I man- 
 aged to hold a conversation. 
 
 I also learned, another useful kindness, that 
 my number would not appear in the Annuaire. 
 Consequently nobody could call me up. I was 
 the only one who could use the marvellous in- 
 strument. 
 
 I did not wait long to call up Claretie and he 
 was much surprised by the call from the Rue 
 Vaugirard. I told him my ideas about the diffi- 
 cult scene which had brought about the installa- 
 tion of the telephone. 
 
 The difficulty was in the final scene. 
 258
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 I telephoned to him, 
 
 "Cut Therese's throat and it will be all right." 
 
 I heard an unknown voice crying excitedly 
 (our wire was crossed) : 
 
 "Oh, if I only knew who you were, you scoun- 
 drel, I would denounce you to the police. A 
 crime like that! Who is to be the victim?" 
 
 Suddenly Claretie's voice: 
 
 "Once her throat is cut she will be put in the 
 cart with her husband. I prefer that to poison." 
 
 The other man's voice: 
 
 "Oh, that's too much ! Now the rascals want 
 to poison her. I'll call the superintendent. I 
 want an inquiry!" 
 
 A terrible buzzing ensued; then a blissful 
 calm. 
 
 It was time; with a subscriber roused to such 
 a pitch, Claretie and I ran the chance of a bad 
 quarter of an hour! I still tremble at the 
 thought of it. 
 
 After that I often worked with Claretie over 
 the wire. The Ariane thread also took my voice 
 to Persephone, I should say . . . Therese, 
 whom I let hear in this way this or that vocal 
 ending, so as to have her opinion before I wrote 
 down the notes. 
 
 259
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 One beautiful spring day I went to revisit the 
 Garden at Bagatelle and its pretty pavilion, then 
 still abandoned, which the Comte d'Artois had 
 built under Louis XVI. I fixed thoroughly in 
 my memory that delightful little chateau which 
 the triumphant Revolution allowed to be ex- 
 ploited for picnic parties after despoiling its old- 
 time owner of it. When he got it back under the 
 Restoration, the Comte d'Artois called it Babiole, 
 Bagatelle or Babiole it's all the same; and this 
 same pavilion was occupied almost to our own 
 time by Sir Richard Wallace, the famous million- 
 aire, philanthropist and collector. 
 
 Later on I wanted the scenery of the first act 
 of Therese to reproduce it exactly. Our artiste 
 (Lucy Arbell) was especially impressed with the 
 idea. It is well known that her ancestry makes 
 her one of the descendants of the Marquis of 
 Hertford. 
 
 When the score was finished and we knew the 
 intentions of Raoul Gunsbourg, who wanted the 
 work for the Monte Carlo Opera, Mme. Massenet 
 and I were informed that H. S. H. the Prince of 
 Monaco would honor our modest home with his 
 presence, and with the chief of his household, 
 the Comte de Lamotte d'Allogny, would lunch 
 
 260
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 with us. We immediately invited my collabo- 
 rator and Mme. Claretie and my excellent pub- 
 lisher and Mme. Heugel. 
 
 The Prince of Monaco with his deep simplicity 
 was good enough to sit near a piano I had got in 
 for the occasion and listen to passages from 
 Therese. He learned the following detail from 
 us. During the first reading Lucy Arbell, a true 
 artist, stopped me as I was singing the last scene, 
 where Therese gasps with horror as she sees the 
 awful cart bringing her husband, Andre Thorel, 
 to the scaffold and cries with all her might, 
 "Vive le Roi!" so as to ensure that she shall be 
 reunited with her husband in death. Just then, 
 our interpreter, who was deeply affected, stopped 
 me and said in a burst of rapture, "I can never 
 sing that scene through, for when I recognize my 
 husband who has given me his name and saved 
 Armand de Clerval, I ought to lose my voice. 
 So I ask you to declaim all of the ending of the 
 piece." 
 
 Only great artists have such inborn gifts of 
 instinctive emotion. Witness Mme. Fides De- 
 vries who asked me to rewrite the aria of Chi- 
 mene, "Pleurez mes yeux" She found that 
 while she was singing it she thought only of her 
 
 261
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 dead father and almost forgot her friend, Rodri- 
 guez. 
 
 A sincere touch was suggested by the tenor, 
 Talazac, the creator of Des Grieux. He wanted 
 to add toi before vous which he uttered on finding 
 Manon in the seminaire of Saint Sulpice. Does 
 not that toi indicate the first cry of the old lover 
 on seeing his mistress again? 
 
 The preliminary rehearsals of Therese took 
 place in the fine apartment, richly decorated with 
 old pictures and work of art, which Raoul Guns- 
 bourg had in the Rue de Rivoli. 
 
 It was New Year's and we celebrated by work- 
 ing in the salon from eight o'clock in the evening 
 until midnight. 
 
 Outside it was cold, but a good fire made us 
 forget that, as we drank in that fine exquisite at- 
 mosphere champagne to the speedy realization 
 of our common hopes. 
 
 How exciting and impressive those rehearsals 
 were as they brought together such fine artists as 
 Lucy Arbell, Edmond Clement and Dufranne ! 
 
 The first performance of Therese came the 
 next month, February 7, 1907, at the Monte 
 Carlo Opera. 
 
 That year my dear wife and I were again the 
 262
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 guests of the Prince in that magnificent palace 
 my admiration for which I have already told. 
 
 His Highness invited us to his box the one 
 where I had heen called at the end of the premiere 
 of Le Jongleur de Notre Dame and where the 
 Prince of Monaco himself had publicly invested 
 me with the Grand Cordon of the Order of St. 
 Charles. 
 
 It is a fine thing to go to the theater, but it is 
 an entirely different thing to be present at a per- 
 formance and listen to it. So the evening of 
 Therese I again took my accustomed place in the 
 Prince's salon. Tapestries and doors separated 
 it from the box. I was alone there in silence, 
 at least I might expect to be. 
 
 Silence ? The roar of applause which greeted 
 our artists was so great that neither doors nor 
 hangings could muffle it. 
 
 At the official dinner given at the palace the 
 next day our applauded creators were invited and 
 feted. My celebrated confrere Louis Diemer, 
 the marvellous virtuoso, who had consented to 
 play the harpsichord in the first act of Therese, 
 Mme. Louise Diemer, Mme. Massent and I were 
 there. To reach the banquet hall my wife and 
 I had to go up the Stairs of Honor. It was near 
 
 263
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 our apartment that ideally beautiful apart- 
 ment, truly a place of dreams. 
 
 For two consecutive years Therese was played 
 at Monte Carlo and with Lucy Arbell, the cre- 
 ator, we had the brilliant tenor, Rousseliere and 
 the master professor, Bouvet. 
 
 In March, 1910, fetes of unusual and unheard 
 of splendor were given at Monaco at the opening 
 of the colossal palace of the Oceanographic Mu- 
 seum. 
 
 Therese was given at the gala performance be- 
 fore an audience which included members of the 
 Institute, confreres of his Serene Highness, a 
 member of the Academic des Sciences. Many 
 illustrious persons, savants from the whole world, 
 representatives of the Diplomatic Corps, as well 
 as M. Loubet, ex-president of the Republic, were 
 there. 
 
 The morning of the formal inauguration the 
 Prince delivered an admirable address, to which 
 the presidents of the foreign academies replied. 
 
 I was already much indisposed and I could 
 not take my place at the banquet at the palace, 
 after which the guests attended the gala perform- 
 ance of which I have spoken. 
 
 Henry Roujon, my confrere at the Institute, 
 264
 
 SPEAKING OF 1793 
 
 was good enough at the banquet the following 
 day, to read the speech I would have delivered 
 myself had I not been obliged to stay in bed. 
 
 To be read by Henri Roujon is both honor and 
 success. 
 
 Saint-Saens was also invited to the fetes and 
 he too stayed in the palace. He lavished the 
 most affectionate care on me constantly. The 
 Prince himself deigned to visit me in my sick 
 room and both told me of the success of the per- 
 formance and of our Therese, Lucy Arbell. 
 
 The doctor had left me quieter in the evening 
 and he too opened my door about midnight. He 
 doubtless did so to see how I was, but he also told 
 me of the fine performance. He knew it would 
 be balm of certain efficacy for me. 
 
 Here is a detail which gave me great satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 They had given Le Vieil Aigle by Raoul Guns- 
 bourg in which Mme. Marguerite Carre, the wife 
 of the manager of the Opera-Comique, was highly 
 applauded. Albert Carre had been present at 
 the performance and he met one of his friends 
 from Paris and told him that he was going to put 
 on Therese at the Opera-Comique with its dra- 
 matic creatrix. 
 
 265
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 As a matter of fact four years after the premi- 
 ere at Monte Carlo and after many other houses 
 had performed the work, the first performance 
 of Therese was given at the Opera-Comique on 
 May 28, 1911. L'Echo de Paris was so kind as 
 to publish for the occasion a wonderfully got up 
 supplement. 
 
 As I write these lines, I read that the second 
 act of Therese is a part of that rare program of 
 the fete offered to me at the Opera on Sunday, 
 December 10, 1911, by the organizers of the 
 pious French popular charity, "Trente Ans de 
 Theatre," the useful creation of my friend, 
 Adrian Bernheim, whose mind is as generous as 
 his soul is great and good. 
 
 A dear friend said to me recently, "If you 
 wrote Le Jongleur de Notre Dame with faith, you 
 wrote Therese with all your heart." 
 
 Nothing could be said more simply, and noth- 
 ing could touch me more. 
 
 266
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE 
 
 I never deliver a work until I have kept it by 
 me for months, even for years. 
 
 I had finished Therese long before it was 
 produced when my friend Heugel told me that 
 he had already made arrangements with Catulle 
 Mendes to write a sequel to Ariane. 
 
 Although to our way of thinking Bacchus was 
 a distinct work, it should form a whole with 
 Ariane. 
 
 The text for it was written in a few months 
 and I took great interest in it. 
 
 And yet and this is entire accord with my 
 character hesitation and doubt often bothered 
 me. 
 
 Of all the fabulous stories of the gods and 
 demigods of antiquity those which relate to the 
 Hindu heroes are perhaps the least known. 
 
 The study of the fables of mythology, which 
 has had until recently only the interest of curi- 
 osity in even the most classical learning, has, 
 thanks to the work of modem scholars, acquired 
 
 267
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 a higher import as they have discovered its role 
 in the history of religion. 
 
 To allow the inspiration of his poetic muse, 
 which was always so ardent and finely colored, 
 wander at will in such a region was bound to de- 
 light the well informed mind of Catulle Mendes. 
 
 Palmiki's Sanscrit poem, the Ramayana, is at 
 once religious and epic. For those who have 
 read that sublime poem it is more curious and 
 greater than even the Nibelungen, Germany's epic 
 of the Middle Ages, which traces the struggle be- 
 tween the family of the Nibelungen with Etzel or 
 Attila and their consequent destruction. There 
 is nothing exaggerated in calling the Ramayana 
 the Iliad or Odyssey of India. It is as divinely 
 beautiful as the immortal work of old Homer 
 which has come down through the centuries. 
 
 I knew the legend through reading and re- 
 reading it, but what I had to do in my work was 
 to add to my thought what the words, the verses, 
 and the situations even could not explain clearly 
 enough to the often inattentive public. 
 
 My work this time was intense, obstinate, im- 
 placable. I literally fought; I cut out, and I 
 replaced. At last I finished Bacchus after de- 
 voting many days and months to it. 
 
 268
 
 Queen Amahelly (Bacchus)
 
 FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE 
 
 The cast selected by the new management at 
 the Opera, Mm. Messager and Broussan, was as 
 follows: Lucienne Breval reappeared as Ari- 
 ane; Lucy Arbell, in memory of her success as 
 Persephone was Queen Amahelly in love with 
 Bacchus; Muratore, our Thesus, doubled in the 
 part of Bacchus, and Gresse accepted the role of 
 the fanatical priest. 
 
 The new management was not yet firmly in the 
 saddle and wanted to give our work a magnificent 
 setting. 
 
 Even as they had been previously cruel to 
 Le Mage and to our excellent director, Gailhard 
 (which did not prevent his going back there soon 
 afterwards, better liked than ever) now they were 
 hard on Bacchus. 
 
 When Bacchus went on both the press and the 
 public were undecided about the real worth of the 
 new management. 
 
 Giving a work under such conditions was run- 
 ning a danger a second time. I saw it, but too 
 late; for the work, in spite of its faults, did not 
 seem to warrant such an amount of abuse. 
 
 The public, however, which lets itself go in 
 the sincerity of its feelings, showed a very com- 
 forting enthusiasm in certain parts of the work. 
 
 269
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 It received the first scene of the third act, espe- 
 cially, with applause and numerous recalls. 
 The ballet in the forests of India was highly ap- 
 preciated. The entrance of Bacchus in his car 
 (admirably staged) was a great success. 
 
 With a little patience the good public would 
 have triumphed over the ill will of which I had 
 been forewarned. 
 
 One day in February, 1909, 1 had finished an 
 act of Don Quichotte (I will speak of that later 
 on) it was four o'clock in the afternoon and 
 I rushed to my publishers to keep an appoint- 
 ment with Catulle Mendes. I thought I was 
 late, and as I went in I expressed my regret at 
 keeping my collaborator waiting. An employee 
 answered me in these words: 
 
 "He will not come. He is dead." 
 
 My brain reeled at the terrible news. I would 
 not have been more knocked out if some one had 
 hit me over the head with a club. In an instant 
 I learned the details of the appalling catastrophe. 
 
 When I came to myself I could only say, "We 
 are lost as far as Bacchus is concerned at the 
 Opera. Our most precious support is gone." 
 
 The anger his keen, fine criticism aroused 
 270
 
 FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE 
 
 against Catulle Mendes was a pretext for revenge 
 on the part of the slaughtered. 
 
 These fears were only too well justified by the 
 doubts of which I have spoken and if, in the se- 
 quel, Catulle Mendes had been present at our 
 rehearsals he would have been of great assistance. 
 
 My gratitude to those great artists Breval, 
 Arbell, Muratore, Gresse is very great. They 
 fought brilliantly and their talents inspired faith 
 in a fine work. It was often planned to try to 
 counteract the ill feeling. I thank Mm. Messa- 
 ger and Broussan for the thought although it 
 came to nothing. 
 
 I wrote an important bit of orchestration (with 
 the curtain down) to accompany the victorious 
 fight of the apes in the Indian forests with the 
 heroic army of Bacchus. I managed to make 
 real at least I think I did in the midst of the 
 symphonic developments the cries of the terrible 
 chimpanzees armed with stones which they 
 hurled from the tops of the rocks. 
 
 Mountain passes certainly don't bring good 
 luck. Thermopylae and Ronceval as Roland 
 and Leonidas learned to their cost. All their 
 yalor was in vain. 
 
 271
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 While I was writing this music I went many 
 times to the Jardin des Plantes to study the habits 
 of these mammals. I loved these friends of 
 which Schopenhauer spoke so evilly when he 
 said that if Asia has her monkeys Europe has her 
 French. The German Schopenhauer was not 
 very friendly to us. 
 
 Long before they decided, after many discus- 
 sions, to start rehearsing Bacchus (it did not ap- 
 pear until the end of the season of 1909) it was 
 my good fortune to begin work on the music in 
 three acts for Don Quichotte. Raoul Guns- 
 bourg was exceedingly anxious to have both the 
 subject and the cast at the Monte Carlo Opera. 
 
 I was in very bad humor when I thought of the 
 tribulations Bacchus had brought on me without 
 there being anything with which I could reproach 
 myself either as a man or as a musician. 
 
 So Don Quichotte came into my life as a sooth- 
 ing balm. I had great need of it. Since the 
 preceding September I had suffered acute rheu- 
 matic pains and I had passed much more of my 
 existence in bed than out of it. I had found a 
 device which enabled me to write in bed. 
 
 I put Bacchus and its uncertain future out of 
 272
 
 FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE 
 
 my thoughts, and day by day I advanced the com- 
 position of Don Quichotte. 
 
 Henri Cain, as is his way, built up very clev- 
 erly a scenario out of the heroic play by Le Lor- 
 aine, the poet whose fine future was killed by the 
 poverty which preceded his death. I salute that 
 hero to art whose physiognomy resembled so 
 much that of our "Knight of the Doleful Counte- 
 
 nance." 
 
 What charmed me and decided me to write this 
 work was Le Loraine's stroke of genius in substi- 
 tuting for the coarse wench at the inn, Cervantes's 
 Dulcinee, the original and picturesque La Belle 
 Dulcinee. The most renowned French authors 
 had not had that idea. 
 
 It brought to our piece an element of deep 
 beauty in the woman's role and a potent poetical 
 touch to our Don Quixote dying of love real 
 love this time for a Belle Dulcinee who justified 
 the passion. 
 
 So it was with infinite delight that I waited for 
 the day of the performance which came in Feb- 
 ruary, 1910. Oh beautiful, magnificent pre- 
 miere ! 
 
 They welcomed our marvellous artists with 
 great enthusiasm. Lucy Arbell was dazzling 
 
 273
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 and extraordinary as La Belle Dulcinee and 
 Greese was an extremely comical Sancho. 
 
 In thinking over this work which they gave five 
 times in the same season at Monte Carlo a 
 unique record in the annals of that house I feel 
 my whole being thrill with happiness at the 
 thought of seeing again that dreamland, the Pal- 
 ace of Monaco, and his Serene Highness on the 
 approaching occasion of Roma. 
 
 New joys were realized at the rehearsals of 
 Don Quichotte at the Theatre Lyrique de la Gaite, 
 where I knew I should receive the frankest, most 
 open and affectionate welcome from the directors, 
 the Isola brothers. 
 
 The cast we had at Monte Carlo was changed 
 and at Paris we had for Don Quixote that superb 
 artist Vanni Narcoux and for Sancho that mas- 
 terly comedian Lucien Fugere. Lucy Arbell 
 owed to her triumph at Monte Carlo her engage- 
 ment as La Belle Dulcinee at the Theatre Lyrique 
 de la Gaite. 
 
 But was there ever unalloyed bliss? 
 
 I certainly do not make that bitter reflection 
 in regard to the brilliant success of our artists or 
 about the staging of the Isola brothers which was 
 
 274
 
 FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE 
 
 so well seconded by the stage manager Labis. 
 
 But judge for yourselves. The rehearsals had 
 to be postponed for three weeks on account of the 
 severe and successive illnesses of our three artists. 
 A curious thing, however, and worthy of remark 
 was that our three interpreters all got well at 
 almost the same time, and left their rooms on the 
 very morning of the general rehearsal. 
 
 The frantic applause of the audience must 
 have been a sweet and altogether exquisite rec- 
 ompense for them when it broke out at the dress 
 rehearsal, December 28, 1910, which lasted from 
 one till five in the afternoon. 
 
 My New Year's Day was very festive. I was 
 ill and was on my bed of pain when they brought 
 me the visiting cards of my faithful pupils, happy 
 at my success, beautiful flowers for my wife, and 
 a delightful bronze statuette, a gift from Raoul 
 Gunsbourg, which recalled to me all that I owed 
 him for Don Quichotte at Monte Carlo, for the 
 first performances and the revivals of the same 
 house. 
 
 The first year of Don Quichotte at the Theatre 
 Lyrique de la Gaite there were eighty consecutive 
 performances of the work. 
 
 275
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 It is a pleasure to recall certain picturesque 
 details which interested me intensely during the 
 preliminary rehearsals. 
 
 First of all, the curious audacity of Lucy Ar- 
 bell, our La Belle Dulcinee, in wanting to accom- 
 pany herself on the guitar in the song in the 
 fourth act. In a remarkably short time, she 
 made herself a virtuoso on the instrument with 
 which they accompany popular songs in Spain, 
 Italy, and even in Russia. It was a charming 
 innovation. She relieved us of that banality of 
 the artist pretending to play a guitar, while a real 
 instrumentalist plays in the wings, thus making 
 a discord between the gestures of the singer and 
 the music. None of the other Dulcinees have 
 been able to achieve this tour de force of the crea- 
 trix. I recall, too, that knowing her vocal abili- 
 ties I brightened the role with daring vocaliza- 
 tions which afterwards surprised more than one 
 interpreter; and yet a contralto ought to know 
 how to vocalize as well as a soprano. Le Pro- 
 phete and The Barber of Seville prove this. 
 
 The staging of the windmill scene, so ingen- 
 iously invented by Raoul Gunsbourg, was more 
 complicated at the Gaite, although they kept the 
 effect produced at Monte Carlo. 
 
 276
 
 FROM ARIANE TO DON QUICHOTTE 
 
 A change of horses, cleverly hidden from the 
 audience, made them think that Don Quixote and 
 the dummy were one and the same man ! 
 
 Gunsbourg's inspiration in staging the fifth, 
 act was also a happy chance. Any artist, even 
 though he is the first in the world, in a scene of 
 agony wants to die lying on the ground. With 
 a flash of genius Gunsbourg cried, "A knight 
 should die standing!" And our Don Quixote 
 (then Chaliapine) leaned against a great tree in 
 the forest and so gave up his proud and love lorn 
 soul. 
 
 '277
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 A SOIREE 
 
 In the spring of 1910 my health was some- 
 what uncertain. Roma had been engraved long 
 before and was available material; Panurge was 
 finished and I felt a rare thing for me the im- 
 perative need of resting for some months. 
 
 But it was impossible for me to do absolutely 
 nothing, to give myself up completely to dolce 
 farniente, delightful as that might be. I looked 
 around and found an occupation which would 
 weary neither my mind nor heart. 
 
 I have told you that in May, 1891, when the 
 house of Hartmann went under, I entrusted to a 
 friend the scores of Werther and Amadis. I am 
 speaking now only of Amadis. I went to my 
 friend who opened his strong box and brought 
 out, not banknotes, but seven hundred pages (the 
 rough draft of the orchestration) which formed 
 the score of Amadis and which had been com- 
 posed at the end of 1889 and during 1890. The 
 work had waited there in silence for twenty-one 
 
 years ! 
 
 278
 
 A SOIREE 
 
 Amadis! What a pretty libretto I had in 
 Amadis! What a really novel viewpoint ! The 
 Knight of the Lily is poetically and emotionally 
 attractive and still remains the type of the con- 
 stant, respectful lover. The situations are en- 
 chanting. In short what resurrection could be 
 more pleasing than that of the noble heroes of the 
 Middle Ages those doughty, valiant, coura- 
 geous knights. 
 
 I took this score from the safe and left in its 
 place a work for a quartet and two choruses for 
 male voices. Amadis was to be my work for that 
 summer. I began to copy it cheerfully at Paris 
 and went to greville to continue on it. 
 
 In spite of the fact that this work was easy and 
 seemed to me such a soothing and perfect seda- 
 tive for the discomfort I felt, I found that I was 
 really very ill. I said to myself that I had done 
 well in giving up composing in my precarious 
 state of health. 
 
 I went to Paris to consult my physician. He 
 listened to my heart, and then, without hiding 
 from me what his diagnosis had revealed, said, 
 
 "You are very sick." 
 
 "What," I exclaimed, "it is impossible. I 
 was still copying when you came." 
 
 279
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 "You are seriously ill," he insisted. 
 
 The next morning the doctors and surgeons 
 made me leave my dear quiet home and my be- 
 loved room. 
 
 A motor ambulance took me to the hospital in 
 the Rue de la Chaise. It was some consolation 
 not to leave my quarter! I was entered on the 
 hospital records under an assumed name for the 
 physicians feared interviews, however friendly, 
 which would have been demanded and which I 
 was absolutely forbidden to grant. 
 
 My bed, through a most gracious care, was in 
 the best room in the place and I was much moved 
 by this attention. 
 
 Surgeon Professor Pierre Duval and Drs. Rich- 
 ardiere and Laffitte gave me the most admirable 
 and devoted care. And there I was in a quiet 
 which wrapped me in a tranquillity the value of 
 which I appreciated. 
 
 My dearest friends came to see me whenever 
 they were allowed. My wife was much upset 
 and had hurried from figreville bringing me her 
 tender affection. 
 
 I was better in a few days, but the compulsory 
 rest imposed on my body did not prevent my 
 mind working. 
 
 280
 
 A SOIREE 
 
 I did not wait for my condition to improve be- 
 fore I busied myself with the speeches I would 
 have to deliver as president of the Institute and 
 of the Academic des Beaux- Arts (the double pres- 
 idency fell to me that year) and though I was in 
 bed packed in ice, I sent directions for the scenery 
 of Don Quichotte. 
 
 Finally I got back home. 
 
 What a joy it was to see my home again, my 
 furniture, to find the books whose pages I loved 
 to turn, all the objects that delighted my eyes and 
 to which I was accustomed, to see again those 
 who were dear to me, and the servants overflow- 
 ing with attentions. My joy was so intense that 
 I burst into tears. 
 
 How happy I was to take up again my walks, 
 although I was still uncertain from weakness and 
 had to lean on the arm of my kind brother and on 
 that of a dear lady! How happy I was during 
 my convalescence to walk through the shady 
 paths of the Luxembourg amid the joyous laugh- 
 ter of children gamboling there in all their youth- 
 fulness, the bright singing of the birds hopping 
 from branch to branch, content to live in that 
 beautiful garden, their delightful kingdom. . . . 
 
 greville, which I had deserted when I so little 
 281
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 dreamed of what was to happen to me, resumed 
 its ordinary life as soon as my beloved wife, now 
 tranquil about my fate, was able to return. 
 
 The summer which had been so sad came to 
 an end and autumn came with its two public ses- 
 sions of the Institute and the Academic des 
 Beaux- Arts, as well as the rehearsals of Don Qai- 
 chotte. 
 
 An idea of real interest was submitted to me 
 between times by the artiste to whom the mission 
 of making it triumph was to fall later. I turned 
 the idea to account and wrote a set of composi- 
 tions with the title proposed by the interpretess, 
 Les Expressions Lyriques. This combination of 
 two forces of expression, singing and speaking, 
 interested me greatly ; especially in making them 
 vibrate in one and the same voice. 
 
 Moreover, the Greeks did the same thing in 
 the interpretation of their hymns, alternating the 
 chant with declamation. 
 
 And as there is nothing new under the sun, 
 what we deemed a modern invention was merely 
 a revival from the Greeks. Nevertheless we hon- 
 ored ourselves in doing so. 
 
 Since then and ever since I have seen audi- 
 ences greatly captivated by these compositions 
 
 282
 
 Dulcinee (Don Quichotte)
 
 A SOIREE 
 
 and deeply affected by the admirable personal 
 expression of the interpretess. 
 
 As I was correcting the last proofs of Panurge 
 one morning, I received a kindly visit from 0. 
 de Lagoanere, the general manager of the Thea- 
 tre Lyrique de la Gaite. The libretto of Panurge 
 had been entrusted to me by my friend Heugel 
 and its authors were Maurice Boukay, the pseu- 
 donym of Couyba, later Minister of Commerce, 
 and Georges Spitzmuller. De Lagoanere came 
 in behalf of the Isola brothers to ask me to let 
 them have Panurge. 
 
 I answered to this proceeding, which was as 
 spontaneous as it was flattering, that the gentle- 
 men's interest in me was very kind but that they 
 did not know the work. 
 
 "That is true," the amiable M. Lagoanere an- 
 swered at once, "but it is a work of yours." 
 
 We fixed on a date and before we separated the 
 agreement was signed, including the names of the 
 artists proposed by the directors. 
 
 Some weeks ago my good friend Adrien Bern- 
 heim came to see me and between two sugar 
 plums (he is as much of a gourmand as I am) 
 proposed that I should take part in a great per- 
 
 283
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 formance he was organizing in my honor to cele- 
 brate the tenth anniversary of that French popu- 
 lar charity "Trente Ans de Theatre." "In my 
 honor!" I cried in the greatest confusion. 
 
 No artist, even the greatest, could help being 
 delighted at lending his presence at such an eve- 
 ning. 
 
 After that, day by day, and always at my house, 
 in the sitting room in the Rue de Vaugirard, I saw 
 gathered together, animated by an equal devotion 
 of making a success, the general secretaries of the 
 Opera and the Opera-Comique, Mm. Stuart and 
 Carbonne, and the manager of the Theatre Ly- 
 rique de la Gaite, M. 0. de Lagoanere. My dear 
 Paul Vidal, leader of the orchestra at the Opera 
 and professor of composition at the Conserva- 
 toire, was also there. 
 
 The program was settled out of hand. The 
 private rehearsals began at once. Nevertheless 
 the fear that I felt and that I have always had 
 when I make a promise, that I may be ill when the 
 moment for fulfilment comes, caused me more 
 than one sleepless night. 
 
 "All's well that ends well," says the wisdom of 
 the nations. I was wrong, as you will see, to tor- 
 ture myself through so many nights. 
 
 284
 
 A SOIREE 
 
 As I have said, no artist would have felt happy, 
 if he had not shared in that evening by giving his 
 generous assistance. Our valiant president, 
 Adrien Bernheim, by a few words of patriotism 
 induced all the professors of the Opera orchestra 
 to come and rehearse the various acts inter- 
 spersed through the program at six twenty-five in 
 the evening. Nobody dined; everyone kept the 
 appointment. 
 
 To you all, my friends and confreres, my sin- 
 cere thanks. 
 
 I cannot properly appraise this celebration in 
 which I played so personal a part. . . . 
 
 There is no circumstance in life, however beau- 
 tiful or serious, without some incident to mar it 
 or to provide a contrast. 
 
 All my friends wanted to give evidence of their 
 enthusiasm by being present at the soiree at the 
 Opera. Among them was a faithful frequenter 
 of the theaters who made a point of coming to 
 express his regret at not being able to be present 
 at this celebration. He had recently lost his un- 
 cle, who was a millionaire and whose heir he 
 was. 
 
 I offered my condolences and he went. 
 
 What is funnier is that I was obliged to hear 
 285
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 fortuitously the strange conversation about his 
 uncle's funeral he had with the head undertaker. 
 
 "If," said the latter, "Monsieur wants a first 
 class funeral, he will have the entire church hung 
 in black and with the arms of the deceased, the 
 Opera orchestra, the leading singers, the most 
 imposing catafalque, according to the price." 
 
 The heir hesitated. 
 
 "Then, sir, it will be second class; the orches- 
 tra from the Opera-Comique, second rate singers 
 according to the amount." 
 
 Further hesitation. 
 
 Whereupon the undertaker added in a sad 
 tone, 
 
 "Then it will be third class; but I warn you, 
 Monsieur, it will not be gay!" (sic). 
 
 As I am on this topic I will add that I have re- 
 ceived a letter of congratulations from Italy which 
 concludes with the usual salutations, but this 
 time conceived as follows : 
 
 "Believe, dear sir, in my most sincere obse- 
 quies." (Free translation of ossequiosita.) 
 
 Sometimes death has as amusing sides as life 
 has sad ones. 
 
 Which brings to mind the fidelity with which 
 the Lionnet brothers attended burials. 
 
 236
 
 A SOIREE 
 
 Was it sympathy for the departed or ambition 
 to see their names among those distinguished per- 
 sons mentioned as having been present? We 
 shall never know. 
 
 One day in a funeral procession Victorien Sar- 
 dou heard one of the Lionnets say to one of his 
 neighbors, with a broken-hearted air, while giv- 
 ing the sad news about a friend's health, "Well, 
 it will be his turn soon." 
 
 These words aroused Sardou's attention, and 
 he exclaimed, pointing to the brothers, 
 
 "They not only go to all the burials ; the*; an- 
 nounce them!" 
 
 287
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 During the summer of 1902 I left Paris and 
 went to my home in figreville. Among the 
 books and pamphlets I took with me was Rome 
 Vaincue by Alexandre Parodi. That magnifi- 
 cent tragedy had had a never to be forgotten suc- 
 cess when it was played on the stage of the Com- 
 edie-Frangaise in 1876. 
 
 Sarah Bernhardt and Mounet-Sully, then in 
 their youth, were the protagonists in the two most 
 impressive acts of the work; Sarah Bernhardt in- 
 carnated the blind grandmother, Posthumia, and 
 Mounet-Sully interpreted the Gallic slave Vesta- 
 por. 
 
 Sarah in all the flower of her radiant beauty 
 had demanded the role of the old woman, so true 
 is it that the real artiste does not think of herself, 
 but knows when it is necessary to abstract from 
 self, to sacrifice her charms, her grace and the 
 light of her allurements to the higher exigencies 
 of art. 
 
 288
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 The same remark could be applied at the 
 Opera thirty years later. 
 
 I remember those tall bay windows through 
 which the sunshine came into my great room at 
 greville. 
 
 After dinner I read the engaging brochure, 
 Rome Vaincue, until the last beams of daylight. 
 I could not get away from it I became so enthusi- 
 astic. My reading was stopped only by 
 
 , . . . 1'obscure clarte qui tombe des etoiles 
 Bientot avec la nuit . . . 
 
 as our great Corneille said. 
 
 Need I add that I was unable to resist the de- 
 sire to go to work immediately and that during the 
 following days I wrote the whole scene for Post- 
 humia in the fourth act? One might say that in 
 this way I worked by chance, as I had not yet dis- 
 tributed the scenes in accord with the necessities 
 of an opera. All the same I had already de- 
 cided on a title: Roma. 
 
 The complete concentration with which I 
 threw myself into this work did not prevent my 
 realizing that in default of Alexandre Parodi who 
 died in 1901, I needed the authority of the 
 heirs. I wrote, but my letter brought no re- 
 sponse. 
 
 289
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I owed this contretemps to a wrong address. 
 Indeed the widow of the illustrious poet of trag- 
 edy told me afterwards that my request never 
 reached its destination. 
 
 Parodi! Truly he was the vir probus dicendi 
 peritus of the ancients. What memories I have 
 of our strolls along the Boulevard des Batig- 
 nolles ! How eloquently he narrated the life of 
 the Vestals which he had read in Ovid, their great 
 historian ! 
 
 I listened eagerly to his colorful talk, so en- 
 thusiastic about things of the past. Ah, his out- 
 hursts against all that was not elevated in 
 thought, his noble pride in his intentions, digni- 
 fied and simple in form how superb, I say, these 
 outbursts were, and how one felt that his soul 
 thrilled in the Beyond! . It was as if a flame 
 burned in him searing on his cheeks the signs 
 of his inward tortures. 
 
 I admired him and loved him deeply. It 
 seems to me that our work together is not fin- 
 ished, but that some day we shall be able to take 
 it up again in that mysterious realm whither we 
 go but from which none ever returns. 
 
 I was entirely led astray by the silence which 
 followed the sending of my letter and I was going 
 
 290
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 to abandon the project of writing Roma, when a 
 master poet came into my life. He offered me 
 five acts Ariane for the Opera, as I have said 
 already. 
 
 Five years later, in 1907, my friend Henri 
 Cain asked me if I intended to resume my faithful 
 collaboration with him. 
 
 As he chatted with me, he remarked that my 
 thoughts were elsewhere and that I was preoccu- 
 pied with another idea. That was it exactly. I 
 was drawn to confess my adventure with Roma. 
 
 My desire to find in that work the text of my 
 dreams was immediately shared by Henri Cain; 
 forty-eight hours afterwards he brought me the 
 authorization of the heirs. They had signed an 
 agreement which gave me five years in which to 
 write and put on the work. 
 
 It is an agreeable thing to thank again Mme. 
 Parodi, a woman of unusual and real distinc- 
 tion, and her sons, one of whom holds a high 
 place in the Department of Public Instruction. 
 
 As I have already said, I found myself in Feb- 
 ruary, 1910, at Monte Carlo for the rehearsals 
 and first performance of Don Quichotte. I again 
 lived as before in that apartment in the Hotel du 
 Prince de Galles which has always pleased me so 
 
 291
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 much. I always returned to it with joy. How 
 could it be otherwise? 
 
 The room in which I worked looked out on the 
 level of the boulevards of the city and I had an 
 incomparable view from my windows. 
 
 In the foreground were orange, lemon, and 
 olive trees; on the horizon the great rock rising 
 out of the azure waves, and on the rock the old 
 palace modernized by the Prince of Monaco. 
 
 In this quiet peaceful home an exceptional 
 thing for a hotel in spite of the foreign families 
 installed there, I was stirred to work. During 
 my hours of freedom from rehearsals I busied my- 
 self in writing an overture for Roma. I had 
 brought with me the eight hundred pages of or- 
 chestration in finished manuscript. 
 
 The second month of my stay at Monte Carlo 
 I spent at the Palace of Monaco. I finished the 
 composition there amidst enchantment, in its 
 deeply poetic splendor. 
 
 When I was present at the rehearsals of Roma 
 two years later and first heard the work played at 
 sight by the artists of the Opera conducted with 
 an extraordinary art by that master Leon Jehin, 
 I thought of the coincidence that these pages had 
 
 292
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 been written on the spot so near where they were 
 to be played. 
 
 When I returned to Paris in April, after the 
 sumptuous fetes with which the Oceanographic 
 Museum was opened, I received a call from Raoul 
 Gunsbourg. He came in the name of his Serene 
 Highness to learn whether I had a work I could 
 let him have for 1912. Roma had been finished 
 for some time ; the material for it was all ready, 
 and in consequence I could promise it to him and 
 wait two years more. I offered it to him. 
 
 My custom, as I have said, is never to speak 
 of a work until it is entirely finished, and the ma- 
 terials which are always important are engraved 
 and corrected. It is a considerable task, for 
 which I want to thank my dear publishers, Henri 
 Heugel and Paul-mile Chevalier, as well as my 
 rigid correctors at the head of whom I love to 
 place Ed. Laurens, a master musician. If I in- 
 sist on this, it is because up to now, nothing has 
 been able to prevent the persistence of this form- 
 ula, "M. Massenet is hurrying to finish his score 
 in order to be ready for the first performance." 
 Let us record it and get on ! 
 
 It was not until December, 1911, that the re- 
 293
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 hearsals of the artists in Roma began at Raoul 
 Gunsbourg's, Rue de Rivoli. 
 
 It was fine to see our great artists enamored 
 of the teachings of Gunsbourg who lived the 
 roles and put his life into it in putting them on 
 the stage. 
 
 Alas for me ! An accident put me in bed at 
 the beginning of those impassioned studies. 
 However, every evening from five to seven I fol- 
 lowed from my bed, thanks to the telephone, the 
 progress of the rehearsals of Roma. 
 
 The idea of not being able, perhaps, to go to 
 Monte Carlo bothered me, but finally my excel- 
 lent friend, the eminent Dr. Richardiere, author- 
 ized my departure. On January 29 my wife and 
 I started for that country of dreams. 
 
 At the station in Lyons, an excellent dinner! 
 A good sign. Things look well. 
 
 The night, always fatiguing in a train, was en- 
 dured by means of the joy of the future rehears- 
 als. Things looked better ! 
 
 The arrival in my beloved room at the Prince 
 de Galles. An intoxication. Things look bet- 
 ter still! 
 
 What an incomparable health bulletin, is it 
 not? 
 
 294
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 Finally, the reading of Roma, in Italian with 
 the orchestra, artists and chorus. There were 
 so many fine, kindly manifestations, that I paid 
 for my warm emotions by catching cold. 
 
 What a contrast; what irony! However why 
 be surprised? Are not all contrasts of that 
 kind? 
 
 Happily my cold did not last long. Two days 
 later I was up again, better than ever. I profited 
 by this by going with my wife, always curious and 
 eager to see picturesque places, to wander in an 
 abandoned park. We were there in the solitude 
 of that rich, luxuriant nature, in the olive groves, 
 which let us see through their grayish green 
 leaves, so tender and sweet, the sea in its change- 
 less blue, when I discovered . . . a cat ! 
 
 Yes, a cat, a real cat, and a very friendly one ! 
 Knowing without a doubt that I had always been 
 friendly with his kind, he honored me with his 
 society and his insistent and affectionate mewings 
 never left me. I poured out my anxious heart to 
 this companion. Indeed, it was during my hours 
 of isolation that the dress rehearsal of Roma was 
 at its height. Yes, I said to myself, just now 
 Lentulus has arrived. Now Junia. Behold 
 Fausta in the arms of Fabius. At this very mo- 
 
 295
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Monte Carlo, 
 Feb. 29, 1912. 
 Dear great friend, 
 
 You do me the honor to ask me for these lines 
 for reproduction in America. 
 
 In America ! . . * 
 
 It will be my glory to send thither my thought, 
 full of admiration for that great country, for its 
 choice public, for its theaters in which my works 
 have been given. You honor my artists and my- 
 self so much by speaking of Roma, and I am the 
 prouder of your words because they will present 
 that tragic opera with your talent's high au- 
 thority. 
 
 MASSENET. 
 
 296
 
 DjfWi, hltuMt bMn 
 
 I 
 
 y 
 tiMfriJjto. v 
 
 * < tvfyv tw iU 
 \ j ^ v 
 
 (f 
 
 v 
 
 
 frtywfwtrut ^^ 
 t lit Vffa 
 
 Facsimile of Massenet's Reply to an Invitation to Visit 
 
 America
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 ment Posthumia drags herself to the feet of the 
 cruel senators. For we, we others, have, and it 
 is a strange fact, an intuition of the exact moment 
 when this or that scene is played, a sort of divina- 
 tion of the mathematical division of time applied 
 to the action of the theater. It was the four- 
 teenth of February. The sun of that splendid 
 day could not but brighten the joy of all my fine 
 artists. 
 
 I cannot speak of the superb first performance 
 of Roma without a certain natural embarrass- 
 ment. I leave that task to others, but I permit 
 myself to reproduce what anyone could read in 
 the next day's papers. 
 
 The interpretation one of the most beautiful 
 that it has been our lot to applaud was in every 
 way worthy of this new masterpiece of Mas- 
 senet's. 
 
 A remarkable thing which must be noted in 
 the first place is that all the parts are what are 
 termed in theatrical parlance "good roles." 
 Every one of them gives its interpreter chances 
 for effects in singing and acting which are cal- 
 culated to win the admiration and applause of the 
 audience. 
 
 297
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Having said this much in praise of the work, 
 let us congratulate the marvellous interpreters in 
 their order on the program. 
 
 Mile. Kousnezoff with her youth, fresh beauty 
 and superb dramatic soprano voice was a feast to 
 the eyes and the ears and she will continue to 
 be for a long time the prettiest and most seduc- 
 tive Fausta that one might wish for. 
 
 The particularly dramatic part of the blind 
 Posthumia was the occasion of a creation which 
 will rank among the most extraordinary in the 
 brilliant career of that great operatic tragedienne 
 Lucy Arbell. Costumed with perfect esthetic 
 appreciation in a beautiful dark robe of iron gray 
 silk, with her face artificially aged but beautiful 
 along classic lines, Lucy Arbell moved and stirred 
 the audience profoundly, as much by her impres- 
 sive acting as by the deep velvety notes of her con- 
 tralto voice. 
 
 Mme. Guiraudon in her scene in the second act 
 achieved a great personal success, and never so 
 much as yesterday did the Paris critic regret that 
 this young, exquisite artist had abandoned pre- 
 maturely her career as an artist and consents to 
 appear hereafter but rarely and ... at Monte 
 Carlo. 
 
 298
 
 DEAR EMOTIONS 
 
 Mme. Eliane Peltier (the High Priestess) and 
 Mile. Doussot (Galla) completed excellently a 
 female cast of the first order. 
 
 Furthermore the male parts were no less re- 
 markable or less applauded. 
 
 M. Muratore, a grand opera tenor of superb 
 appearance and generous voice, invested the role 
 of Lentulus with a vigor and manly beauty which 
 won all hearts, and which, in Paris as at Monte 
 Carlo, will ensure him a brilliant and memorable 
 triumph. 
 
 M. J. F. Delmas with his clear diction and lyr- 
 ical declamation, which is so properly theatrical, 
 was an incomparable Fabius and was no less 
 applauded than his comrades from the Opera, 
 Muratore and Note. The latter in fact was mar- 
 vellous in the part of the slave Vestapor whose 
 wild imprecations resounded to the utmost in his 
 great sonorous baritone. 
 
 Finally, M. Clauzure, whose Roman mask was 
 perfect, achieved a creation the first in his ca- 
 reer which places this young Premier Prix of 
 the Conservatoire on an equal footing with the fa- 
 mous veterans of the Paris Opera beside whom 
 last night he fought the good fight of art. 
 
 The chorus, both men and women, patiently 
 299
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 trained by their devoted master M. Louis Vialet, 
 and the artists of the Opera, who anew affirmed 
 their mastery and homogeneity, were irreproach- 
 able under the supreme direction of the master 
 Leon Jehin. All the composers whose works he 
 conducts justly load him down with thanks and 
 felicitations, and his talent and indefatigable 
 power are acclaimed constantly by all the dilet- 
 tanti of Monte Carlo. 
 
 M. Visconti, who in his way is one of the indis- 
 pensable artistic mainsprings of the Theatre de 
 Monte Carlo, painted five scenes of Roma, better 
 five masterly paintings, which were greatly ad- 
 mired and which won great admiration and pro- 
 longed applause. His "Forum" and "Sacred 
 Grove" are among the most beautiful theatrical 
 paintings ever seen here. 
 
 As for M. Raoul Gunsbourg, the stage mana- 
 ger in whose praise it is henceforth superfluous 
 to speak, it is sufficient to say that Roma is one of 
 the scores he has put on with the most pleasure 
 and the most sincere veneration. That is to say 
 that he brought to bear on it all his care, and all 
 his dictatorial and artistic mind. 
 
 With such a combination of the elements of 
 success put into Roma, victory was certain. Last 
 
 300
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 night's triumph was one of the most complete 
 that we have had to chronicle here for fifteen 
 years. And it is with joy that we affirm this to 
 the glory of the Master, Massenet, and of the 
 Monte Carlo Opera. 
 
 That year the days passed at the Palace were 
 all the sweeter to my heart as the Prince showed 
 me an even more touching affection, if that were 
 possible. 
 
 I was honored by the duty of attending in the 
 salon adjoining the Prince's box (everyone knows 
 that I do not attend first performances) and I 
 recall that his Serene Highness at the end of the 
 first act, in front of the attentive assemblage, said 
 to me, "I have given you all I could; I have not 
 yet embraced you." And as he said this his 
 Highness embraced me with keen emotion. 
 
 Here I am in Paris, on the eve of the rehearsals 
 and first performance of Roma at the Opera. I 
 have hope ... I have such admirable artists. 
 They have already won the first battle for me. 
 Will they not be able to triumph in the second? 
 
 301
 
 CHAPTER XXDC 
 
 THOUGHTS AFTER DEATH 
 
 I have departed from this planet and I have 
 left behind my poor earthly ones with their occu- 
 pations which are as many as they are useless ; at 
 last I am living in the scintillating splendor of 
 the stars, each of which used to seem to me as 
 large as millions of suns. Of old I was never 
 able to get such lighting for my scenery on the 
 great stage at the Opera where the backdrops 
 were too often in darkness. Henceforth there 
 will be no letters to answer ; I have bade farewell 
 to first performances and the literary and other 
 discussions which come from them. 
 
 Here there are no newspapers, no dinners, no 
 sleepless nights. Ah ! if I could but counsel my 
 friends to join me here, I would not hesitate to 
 call them to me. But would they come? 
 
 Before I came to this distant place where I 
 now sojourn, I wrote out my last wishes (an un- 
 happy husband would have taken advantage of 
 the occasion to write with joy, "my first wishes"). 
 
 302
 
 THOUGHTS AFTER DEATH 
 
 I had indicated that above all I wanted to be 
 buried at greville, near the family abode in 
 which I had lived so long. Oh, the good ceme- 
 tery in the open fields, silent as befits those who 
 live there ! 
 
 I asked that they should refrain from hanging 
 black draperies on my door, ornaments worn 
 threadbare by use. I expressed the wish that a 
 suitable carriage should take me from Paris, the 
 journey, with my consent, to begin at eight in the 
 morning. 
 
 An evening paper (perhaps two) felt it to be 
 its duty to inform its readers of my decease. A 
 few friends I still had some the day before 
 came and asked my concierge if the news were 
 true, and he replied, "Alas, Monsieur went with- 
 out leaving his address." And his reply was 
 true for he did not know where that obliging car- 
 riage was taking me. 
 
 At lunch acquaintances honored me among 
 themselves with their condolences, and during 
 the day here and there in the theaters they spoke 
 of the adventure, 
 
 "Now that he is dead, they'll play him less, 
 won't they?" 
 
 "Do you know he left still another work?" 
 303
 
 MY RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 "Ah, believe me, I loved him well! I have 
 always had such great success in his works." 
 
 A woman's lovely voice said that. 
 
 They wept at my publishers, for there they 
 loved me dearly. 
 
 At home, Rue de Vaugirard, my wife, daugh- 
 ter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gath- 
 ered and almost found consolation in their sobs. 
 
 The family was to reach figreville the same 
 evening, the night before my burial. 
 
 And my soul (the soul survives the body) lis- 
 tened to all these sounds from the city left behind. 
 As the carriage took me farther and farther away, 
 the talking and the noises grew fainter and 
 fainter, and I knew, for I had my vault built long 
 ago, that the heavy stone once sealed would be a 
 few hours later the portal of oblivion. 
 
 THE END 
 
 304
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
 A 000 774 347 9