The last twelve years of Meyerbeer’s life were spent, with the exception of brief residences in Germany and Italy, in Paris, the city of his adoption, where all who were distinguished in art and letters paid their court to him.  When he was seized with his fatal illness he was hard at work on “L’Africaine,” for which Scribe had also furnished the libretto.  His heart was set on its completion, and his daily prayer was that his life might be spared to finish it.  But it was not to be.  He died May 2, 1864.  The same morning Rossini called to inquire after the health of the sick man, equally his friend and rival.  When he heard the sad news he sank into a fit of profound despondency and grief, from which he did not soon recover.  All Paris mourned with him, and even Germany forgot its critical dislike to join in regret at the loss of one who, with all his defects, was so great an artist and so good a man.

Meyerbeer seems to have been greatly afraid of being buried alive.  In his pocketbook after his death was found a paper giving directions that small bells should be attached to his hands and feet, and that his body should be carefully watched for four days, after which it should be sent to Berlin to be interred by the side of his mother, to whom he had been most tenderly attached.

The composer was the intimate friend of most of the celebrities of his time in art and literature.  Victor Hugo, Lamartine, George Sand, Balzac, Alfred de Musset, Delacroix, Jules Janin, and Theophile Gautier were his familiar intimates; and the reunions between these and other gifted men, who then made Paris so intellectually brilliant, are charmingly described by Liszt and Moscheles.  Meyerbeer’s correspondence, which was extensive, deserves publication, as it displays marked literary faculty, and is full of bright sympathetic thought, vigorous criticism, and playful fancy.  The following letter to Jules Janin, written from Berlin a few years before his death, gives some pleasant insight into his character: 

Your last letter was addressed to me at Konigsberg; but I was in Berlin working—­working away like a young man, despite my seventy years, which somehow certain people, with a peculiar generosity, try to put upon me.  As I am not at Konigsberg, where I am to arrange for the Court concert for the eighteenth of this month, I have now leisure to answer your letter, and will immediately confess to you how greatly I was disappointed that you were so little interested in Rameau; and yet Rameau was always the bright star of your French opera, as well as your master in the music.  He remained to you after Lulli, and it was he who prepared the way for the Chevalier Gluck:  therefore his family have a right to expect assistance from the Parisians, who on several occasions have cared for the descendants of Racine and the grandchildren of the great Corneille.  If I had been in Paris, I certainly would have given two hundred francs for a seat; and I take this opportunity