We had dreams of historical opera, for we were quite without the prejudice against this form of drama which afflicts the present school.  But I was not persona grata to the managers and I did not know at what door to knock, when one of my friends, Aime Gros, took the management of the Grand-Theatre at Lyons and asked me for a work.  This was a fine opportunity and we grasped it.  We put together, with difficulty but with infinite zest, our historical opera, Etienne Marcel, in which Louis Gallet endeavored to respect as far as is possible in a theatrical work the facts of history.  Despite illustrious examples to the contrary he did not believe that it was legitimate to attribute to a character who has actually lived acts and opinions that are entirely fanciful.  I was in full agreement with him in that as in so many other things.  I go even farther and cannot accustom myself to the queer sauces in which legendary characters are often served.  It seems to me that the legend is the interesting thing, and not the character, and that the latter loses all its value when the legend which surrounds it is destroyed.  But everyone knows that I am a crank.

Some time after my Henri VIII, in which Vaucorbeil had imposed another collaborator on me, Ritt asked me for a new work.  We were looking about for a subject, when Gallet came to my house and timidly, as if fearing a rebuff, proposed Benvenuto Cellini.  I had thought of that for a long time, and the idea had come to me of putting into musical form that fine drama, which had had its hours of glory, where Melingue modeled the statue of Hebe before the populace.  I, therefore, accepted the suggestion with pleasure.  This enterprise brought me in touch with Paul Meurice, whom I had known in my childhood, when he was wooing Mlle. Granger, his first wife and an intimate friend of my mother’s.  Paul Meurice revealed a secret to me:  that the romance Ascanio, attributed to Alexander Dumas, had been entirely written by Meurice.  The work met with a great success, and out of gratitude, Dumas offered to help Meurice in constructing a drama from the romance, which was to be signed by Meurice alone.  So it is easy for one who knows Dumas’s dramas to find traces of his handiwork in Benvenuto Cellini.

It was not particularly easy to make an opera out of the play, and Gallet and I worked together at it with considerable difficulty.  We soon saw that we should have to eliminate the famous scene of the casting of the statue.  When we reached this point in the play, Benvenuto had already done a good deal of singing, and this scene with its violence seemed certain to exceed the strength of the most valiant artist.  In connection with our Proserpine, I have been accused of supposing that Vacquerie had genius.  It would be too much to say that he had genius, but he certainly had great talent.  His prose showed a classical refinement, and his poetry,