The choice finally fell on Blum.  He had a fine voice, and was a perfect singer but no actor.  Indeed he said he didn’t want to be an actor; his ideal was to appear in white gloves.  Each day brought new bickerings.  They made cuts despite my wishes; they left me at the mercy of the insubordination and rudeness of the stage manager and the ballet master, who would not listen to my most modest suggestions.  I had to pay the cost of extra musicians in the wings myself.  Some stage settings which I wanted for the prologue were declared impossible—­I have seen them since in the Tales of Hoffman.

Furthermore, the orchestra was very ordinary.  There had to be numerous rehearsals which they did not refuse me, but they took advantage of them to spread the report that my music was unplayable.  A young journalist who is still alive (I will not name him) wrote two advance notices which were intended to pave the way for the failure of my work.

At the last moment the director saw that he had been on the wrong tack and that he might have a success.  As they had played fairyland in the theatre in the Square des-Arts-et-Metiers, he had at hand all the needed material to give me a luxurious stage-setting without great expense.  Mlle. Caroline Salla was given the part of Helene.  With her beauty and magnificent voice she was certainly remarkable.  But the passages which had been written for the light high soprano of Madame Carvalho were poorly adapted for a dramatic soprano.  They concluded, therefore, that I didn’t know how to write vocal music.

In spite of everything the work was markedly successful, the natural result of a splendid performance in which two stars—­Melchissedech and Mlle. Adeline Theodore, at present teacher of dancing at the Opera—­shone.

Poor Vizentini!  His opinion of me has changed greatly since that time.  We were made to understand and love each other, so he has become, with years, one of my best and most devoted friends.  He first produced my ballet Javotte at the Grand-Theatre in Lyons, which the Monnaie in Brussels had ordered and then refused.  He had dreams of directing the Opera-Comique and installing Le Timbre d’Argent there.  Fate willed otherwise.

We have seen how the young French school was encouraged under the Empire.  The situation has improved and the old state of affairs has never returned.  But we find more than the analogy between the old point of view and the one that was revealed not long ago when the French musicians complained that they were more or less sacrificed in favor of their foreign contemporaries.  At bottom it is the same spirit in a modified form.

To resume.  As everyone knows, the way to become a blacksmith is by working at a forge.  Sitting in the shade does not give the experience which develops talent.  We should never have known the great days of the Italian theatre, if Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi had had to undergo our regime.  If Mozart had had to wait until he was forty to produce his first opera, we should never have had Don Giovanni or Le Nozze di Figaro, for Mozart died at thirty-five.