WE left Paris, Lefuel and Vauthier and I, on December 5th, 1839, by the mail-coach which started from the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau.

My brother was the only person there to bid us farewell. Our first stage took us to Lyons. Thence we followed the course of the RhÔne, by Avignon, Arles, &c., till we reached Marseilles.

At Marseilles we took a "vetturino."

"Vetturino!" What memories the word recalls! Alas for the poor old travelling carriage long since shouldered out of existence, crushed and smothered under the hurrying feet of the iron horse!

The good-natured old conveyance which one stopped at will, whenever one wanted peacefully to admire those beautiful bits of scenery through or mayhap underneath which the snorting steam horse, devouring space like any meteor, now whisks you like a parcel! In those days men travelled gradually, insensibly from one impression to another; now this railway mortar fires us from Paris, in our sleep, to wake under some Eastern sky. No imperceptible mental transition or climatic change! We are shot out roughly, treated as a British merchant treats his merchandise. Close packed like bales down in a hold, and delivered with all speed, like fish sent on by express train to make sure of its arriving fresh! If only progress, that remorseless conqueror, would even spare its victims' lives! But no, the vetturino has departed utterly. Yet I bless his memory. But for his aid, I should have never had the joy of seeing that wonderful Corniche, the ideal introduction to the delicious climate and the picturesque charms of Italy—Monaco, Mentone, Sestri, Genoa, Spezzia, Trasimeno, Tuscany, Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, Perugia, Florence. A progressive and many-sided education, Nature's explanation of the existence of the great masters, while they in turn teach man to look at Nature. For close on two happy months we dallied over all this loveliness, leisurely tasting and enjoying it, till finally, on January 27th, 1840, we entered the great city which was to be our home, our teacher, our initiator into the noblest and severest beauties of nature and of art.

The Director of the French Academy at that time was Monsieur Ingres. He had been one of my father's early friends. On our arrival, we called, as in duty bound, to pay him our respects. As soon as he saw me he cried—

"You are Gounod, I am sure! Goodness! how like your father you are!"

He spoke of my father's talent as a draughtsman, of his kind disposition, of his brilliant wit and conversational powers, with an admiration which, coming as it did from the lips of so distinguished an artist, constituted the most delightful welcome I could have had. Soon we were established in our different quarters, consisting in each case of a single large apartment, called a Loggia, which served alike as bedroom and as studio.

My first thought was of the length of time which must elapse before I saw my mother again. I wondered whether my work as an art student would suffice to enable me to bear with any sort of patience a separation which, between Rome and Germany, must cover quite three years.

Gazing from my window on the dome of St. Peter's in the distance, I readily yielded to the melancholy aroused by my first taste of solitude—though solitude is hardly a word applicable to this palace, where twenty-two of us dwelt, and where we all met at least twice daily at the common board, in that splendid dining-hall, the walls of which are covered with the portraits of every student since the foundation of the Academy. Besides, it was my nature to make friends quickly, and live on excellent terms with those about me.

I must admit, too, that my low spirits were in great part due to my first impressions of Rome itself. I was utterly disappointed. Instead of the city of my dreams, majestic and imposing, full of ancient temples, antique monuments, and picturesque ruins, I saw a mere provincial town, vulgar, characterless, and, in most places, very dirty.

My disenchantment was complete, and it would have required but little persuasion to make me throw up the sponge, pack my traps, and hurry back to Paris and all I cared for as quickly as wheels could take me there. As a matter of fact, Rome does possess all the beauties I had dreamt of, but the eye of a new-comer cannot at first perceive them. They must be sought out, felt for, here and there, until by slow degrees the sleeping glories of the splendid past awake, and the dumb ruins and dry bones arise once more to life before their patient student's eyes.

I was still too young, not only in years, but also and especially in character, to grasp or understand at the first glance the deep significance of the solemn, austere city, whose whisper is so low that only ears accustomed to deep silence and sharpened by seclusion can catch its tones. Rome is the echo of the Scriptural words of the Maker of the human soul to His own handiwork: "I will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her." So various is she in herself, and in such deep calm is everything about her lapped, that no conception of her immense ensemble and prodigious wealth of treasures is possible at first. The Past, the Present, and the Future alike crown her the capital not of Italy only, but of the human race in general. This fact is recognised by all who have lived there long; for whatever the country whence the wanderer comes, whatever tongue he speaks, Rome has a universal language understood by all, so that the thoughtful traveller, leaving her, feels he leaves home behind him.

Little by little I felt my low spirits evaporate and a new feeling take their place. I began to know Rome better, and cast aside the winding-sheet which had enwrapped me, as it were. But even up to this I had not been living in downright idleness.

My favourite amusement was reading Goethe's "Faust," in French of course, as I knew no German. I read too, with great interest, "Lamartine's Poems." Before I began to think about sending home my first batch of work, for which I still had plenty of time before me, I busied myself in composing a number of melodies, among others "Le Vallon" and also "Le Soir," the music of which I incorporated ten years afterwards into a scene in the first act of my opera "Sappho," to the beautiful lines written by my dear friend and famous colleague, Emile Augier, "HÉro sur la tour solitaire."

I wrote both these songs at a few days' interval, almost as soon as I arrived at the Villa Medecis.

Six weeks or so slipped away. My eyes had grown accustomed to the silent city, which at first had seemed so like a desert to me. The very silence ended by having its own charm, by becoming an actual pleasure to me; and I took particular delight in roaming about the Forum, the ruins of the Palatine Hill, and the Coliseum, those glorious relics of a power and splendour departed, which have rested now for centuries under the august and peaceful rule of the universal Shepherd, and the Empress city of the world.

A very worthy and pleasant family of the name of Desgoffe was at that time staying with Monsieur and Madame Ingres. I had made their acquaintance, and gradually became very intimate with them. Alexandre Desgoffe was not an Academy student like myself, but a private pupil of Monsieur Ingres, and a very fine landscape painter. Yet he lived in the Academy buildings with his wife and daughter, a charming child of nine, who afterwards became Madame Paul Flandrin, and retained as a wife and mother the sweetness which characterised her girlhood. Desgoffe himself was a man in ten thousand; downright and honest, modest and unselfish, simple and pure-minded as a child, the kindest and most faithful soul on earth. It may easily be guessed that my mother was very glad to learn that I had such good people near me to show me true affection, and not only comfort my loneliness, but, if necessary, give me kind and devoted care.

We students always spent our Sunday evenings in the Director's drawing-room, to which we had the right of entrÉe on that day. Generally there was music. Monsieur Ingres had taken a fancy to me, and he was music mad. He particularly affected Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and above all Gluck, whose noble style, with its touch of pathos, stamped him in his mind as something of the ancient Greek, a worthy scion of Æschylus, of Sophocles, or Euripides.

Monsieur Ingres played the violin. He was no finished performer, still less was he an artist; but in his youth he had played in the orchestra of his native town, Montauban, and taken part in the performance of Gluck's operas.

I had read and studied the German composer's works. As to Mozart's "Don Giovanni," I knew it all by heart; so, although not a very good pianist, I was quite up to treating Monsieur Ingres to recollections of his favourite score.

Beethoven's symphonies I knew by heart, too, and these he passionately admired; we often spent the greater part of the night deep in talk over the great master's works, and before long I stood high in his good graces.

Nobody who was not intimately acquainted with Monsieur Ingres can have any correct idea of what he really was. I lived in close familiarity with him for some considerable time, and I can testify to the simplicity, uprightness, and frankness of his nature. He was full of candour and of noble impulse, enthusiastic, even eloquent at times. He could be as tender and gentle as a child, and then again he would pour out a torrent of apostolic wrath. His unaffectedness and sensitive delicacy were touching, and there was a freshness of feeling about the man which has never yet been found in any poseur, as some people have elected to call him.

Humble and modest in the presence of a master-mind, he stood up proudly and boldly against foolish arrogance and self-sufficiency. He was fatherly in his treatment of his students, whom he looked on as his children, giving each his appointed rank with jealous care, whatever that of the visitors in his drawing-room might be. Such were the characteristics of the excellent noble-minded artist, whose invaluable tuition I was about to have the good fortune of receiving.

I was deeply attached to him, and I shall always remember his dropping in my hearing one or two of those luminous sentences which, when properly understood, cast so much light upon the artistic life. Every one knows that famous saying of his, "Drawing is the honesty of art." He said another thing before me once, which is a perfect volume in itself, "There is no grace where there is no strength." True, indeed! for grace and strength are the two complementary constituents of perfect beauty. Strength saves grace from degenerating into mere wanton charm, while grace purifies strength from all its coarseness and brutality—the perfect harmony of the two thus marking the highest level art can reach, and giving it the stamp of genius.

It has been said and frequently repeated, parrot-wise, that Monsieur Ingres was intolerant and exclusive. That is utterly untrue. If he had a way of imposing his opinions, it was because of his intense belief—the surest means of influencing others. I never knew any one with such a power of universal admiration, simply because he knew better than most what to admire, and wherein beauty lay. But he was discreet. He knew full well how prone youthful enthusiasm is to fall down and worship unreasoningly before the personal peculiarities of an artist or composer. He knew these same peculiarities—which are, as it were, the individual characteristics and facial features whereby we recognise them, as we recognise each other—are, for that very reason, the most incommunicable qualities about them, and thence he deduced the fact, first, that any imitation of them amounts to plagiarism, and, further, that such imitation must infallibly end in exaggeration, degenerating into absolute artistic vice.

This explanation of Monsieur Ingres's real character will partially account for the unjust accusation of intolerance and exclusiveness levelled against him.

The following anecdote proves how loyally he could abandon a hastily formed opinion, and how little obstinacy there was about any dislike he might chance to take.

I had just sung him that wonderful scene of "Charon and the Shades" from "Alcestis;" not Gluck's "Alcestis," but Lulli's. It was the first time he had heard it, and his primary impression was that the music was hard, dry, and stern. So much did he dislike it that he cried, "It's horrible! It's dreadful! It isn't music at all! It's iron!"

Young and inexperienced as I felt myself to be, I naturally refrained from arguing the point with a man I held in such profound respect, so I waited till the storm blew over. Some time after, Monsieur Ingres referred again to his first impression of this work, an impression which I believe had already undergone some change, and said—

"By the bye! that scene of Lulli's 'Charon and the Shades'—I should like to hear it again."

I sang it over to him once more; and this time, more accustomed no doubt to that striking composer's rugged and uneven style, he grasped the irony and banter in Charon's part, and the plaintive pleadings of the wandering Shades, who cannot get across the river, not having wherewithal to pay the ferryman.

By degrees he got so fond of the scene that it became one of his favourites, and I was often called upon to sing it.

But his prime favourite was Mozart's "Don Giovanni," over which we often sat till two in the morning. Poor Madame Ingres, dropping with sleep, used to be driven to locking up the piano and sending us off to our respective beds. Although he preferred German music, and had no particular affection for Rossini, he considered the "Barbiere" as a masterpiece. He had the highest admiration, too, for another Italian maistro, Cherubini, of whom he has left such a magnificent portrait, and whom Beethoven held to be the first musician of his age; no slight praise from such a man. Well, we all have our tastes; why should not Monsieur Ingres have his? To prefer one thing does not involve condemning everything else.

A chance incident brought me into closer and more frequent intercourse with Monsieur Ingres. Being very fond of drawing, I used often to carry a sketch-book with me in my expeditions about Rome. One day coming back from a stroll, I came face to face with Monsieur Ingres at the door of the Academy. He caught sight of the sketch-book under my arm, and with that bright and piercing glance of his, he said—

"What's that under your arm?"

I was rather confused, and made answer, "Why, Monsieur Ingres, it's a—it's a sketch-book."

"A sketch-book! What for? Do you know how to draw?"

"Oh, Monsieur Ingres, no—I mean—yes—I can draw a little—but only a very little."

"Is that so? Come, show me your book." He opened it, and came across a little sketch of St. Catherine, which I had just copied from a fresco said to be by Masaccio, in the old basilica of St. Clement, not far from the Coliseum.

"Did you do this?" said Monsieur Ingres.

"Yes, sir."

"Alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"But—do you know you draw like your father?"

"Oh, Monsieur Ingres!"

Then he added, looking at me gravely—

"You must do some tracings for me."

Make tracings for Monsieur Ingres! work beside him, perhaps! Bask in the sunshine of his talent! Warm myself in the glow of his enthusiasm! The thought transported me with joy.

So every evening we worked side by side in the lamplight at this most interesting occupation, I drawing as much profit from the study of the masterpieces over which my careful pencil passed as from Monsieur Ingres's delightful conversation.

I made about a hundred tracings for him of original prints, which I am proud to think found place in his portfolios, and some of which were not less than eighteen inches high.

One day Monsieur Ingres said to me, "If you like I will get you back to Rome with the Grand Prix for painting."

"Oh, Monsieur Ingres!" I answered, "I could not give up my career and take up a new one. Besides, I could never leave my mother a second time."

However, as after all it was music I had come to Rome to study and not painting, it behoved me to seriously seek for opportunities of hearing some. Such opportunities were not exactly numerous, and, it must be confessed, not particularly profitable nor useful either. In the first place, as regarded religious music, the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the only place where it was possible to hear anything decent, to say nothing of its being instructive. What they called music in the other churches was enough to make one shiver! Except in the Sistine Chapel, and in that called the "Canon's Chapel" in St. Peter's, the music was not merely worthless, it was vile. It is hard to imagine how such a chamber of horrors could ever have come to be offered up to the glory of God within those sacred walls. All the shabbiest tinsel and trappings of secular music passed across the trestles of this religious masquerade. So no wonder I never tried it twice.

I generally went on Sundays to the musical mass at the Sistine Chapel, often in the company of my friend and comrade HÉbert.

But the Sistine! How shall I describe it as it deserves? That is a task more appropriate to the authors of what we see and hear there, or rather of what was heard there formerly. For if the sublime though, alas! perishable work of Michael Angelo the immortal, already sorely damaged, is still to be seen, the hymns of the divine Palestrina no longer resound under those vaulted roofs, struck dumb by the political captivity of the Sovereign Pontiff, the lack of whose sacred presence their empty recesses seem so bitterly to mourn.

I went then to the Sistine, as often as I possibly could. The severe, ascetic music, level and calm like an ocean horizon, serene even to monotony, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its fervour of religious contemplation as sometimes to rise to ecstasy, had a strange, almost a disagreeable effect on me at first.

Whether it was the actual style of composition, then quite new to me—the distinctive sonority of those peculiar voices, now heard for the first time—or the firm, almost harsh attack, the strong accentuation which gives such a startling effect to the general execution of the score, by the way it marks the opening of each vocal part in the closely woven web of sound—I know not. The first impression, unpleasant as it was, did not dismay me. I returned again and again, until at last I could not stay away.

There are certain works which ought to be seen or heard in the place for which they were written. The Sistine Chapel, which stands unique upon the earth, is one of the spots in question. The Genius who decorated roof and altar-screen with his marvellous conceptions of the Genesis and the Last Judgment, this painter of the prophets, himself a prophet in his art, will doubtless be as eternally unmatched as even Homer or Phidias. Men of that power and stature never have their equals. Each is a being apart from every other. Each grasps a world of thought, exhausts it, closes the book, and that which he has said, no man can ever say again.

Palestrina gives, as it were, the musical translation of Michael Angelo's great poem. I believe the two masters cast a mutual light on our intelligence. The eyes' delight sharpens the oral comprehension, and vice versÂ, so that one ends by wondering whether the Sistine, with its music and its painting, is not the fruit of one and the same artistic inspiration? Both are so perfectly and sublimely blended as to appear the double expression of one thought—a single chant sung with a twofold voice—the music in the air a kind of echo of the beauty which enchants the eye.

Between the masterpieces of Michael Angelo and Palestrina such close analogy of thought, such kinship of expression exist, that one is almost forced to recognise the identity of the talents—I had almost said the virtues—which each master-mind displays. Both have the same simplicity, even humility of manner; the same seeming indifference to effect, the same scorn for methods of seduction. There is nothing artificial or mechanical about them; the Soul, wrapped in ecstatic contemplation of a higher world, describes in humble and submissive language the sublime visions that pass before its eyes.

Even the very character and colour of the music and painting in question seem to indicate a deliberate renunciation. The art of the two masters is a sort of sacrament, whose outward and visible sign is but a transparent veil stretched between man and the divine and living Truth. Wherefore neither of the two mighty artists attract at the first blush.

Generally speaking, exterior glitter is what charms the eye; but here we have none of that. All the treasure lies beneath the surface. The impression produced on the mind by one of Palestrina's works is much the same as that given by one of Bossuet's most eloquent pages. There is no specially striking detail, apparently, yet one is lifted into a higher atmosphere. Language, the obedient and faithful exponent of thought, leads the mind gently onward, without any temptation to turn aside until the goal is reached and you are on the upper summit, led by a mysterious guide, gentle, unwavering, unswerving, who hides the mark of his footsteps, and leaves no trace behind.

It is this absence of visible effort, of worldly trick, and of conceited affectation which makes the greatest works so unapproachable. The intellect which conceives them, and the raptures they express, are alike indispensable to their production.

But what shall I say of the prodigious, the gigantic talent of Michael Angelo! The amount of genius he heaped up and lavished, both as a painter and a poet, on the walls of this unique building, is beyond anything man can measure.

What a masterly grouping of the events and personages which sum up and symbolise the whole essential history of the human race! What a wonderful conception is that double row of prophets and sibyls, those seers of either sex, whose gaze pierces the darkness of the future, and in whose persons the omniscient Spirit is carried through the ages! What a volume of teaching is that vaulted ceiling covered with the pictured story of our human origin, and whereon the colossal figure of the prophet Jonah, cast out of the belly of the whale, is linked with the triumph of that other Jonah, snatched by the power of His own might out of the darkness of the tomb, and victorious over death itself!

What a sublime and gorgeous Hosanna seems to rise from the legion of angels twisting, as it were, and wreathed in ecstasy about the sacred instruments of His Passion as they bear them across the luminous sky, right up into the highest places of the heavenly glory; while in the lower spaces of the picture the cohorts of the lost stand out, gloomy and despairing, against the last livid gleams of a light that seems to bid them farewell to all eternity. And on the vault itself again, what an eloquent and pathetic reproduction do we see of our first parents' early days! What a revelation in that tremendous creative gesture, which gives the "living soul" to the inanimate image of the first man, thus putting him in conscious relation with the principle of his being! What a sense of spiritual power in the empty space, so significant in its very narrowness, left by the painter between the finger of the Creator and the form of the creature; as though he would bid us mark that the Divine will knows neither distance nor impediment, and that for the Deity desire and accomplishment are but one act.

What beauty in the submissive attitude of the first woman, drawn from Adam's side in his deep slumber, as she stands for the first time before her Creator and Father! How wonderful is the transport of filial confidence and passionate gratitude in which she bends before the Hand which beckons, and blesses her, with such calm and sovereign tenderness!

But even were I to pause at every step, I could touch no more than the fringe of this wondrous poem, the vastness of which fairly turns one giddy. This huge collection of biblical pictures might almost be called the Bible of the art of painting. Ah! if young people only guessed what an education for their intelligence, what mental pabulum for all their future, this sanctuary of the Sistine Chapel holds, they would spend their days in drinking in its lessons. Characters formed in such a noble school of fervour and contemplation will soar far above any self-interest or regard for notoriety.

It was my duty to study opera, as well the sacred music of which the services in the Pontifical Chapel preserved the best traditions. The operatic repertoire at that date consisted mostly of works by Bellini, Donizetti, and Mercadante. All these, though full of characteristic qualities, and even marked from time to time by the personal inspiration of their authors, were, as their general outline and ensemble will prove, little more than parasitic creepers round that vigorous trunk, the genius of Rossini. Neither its vigorous strength nor its majestic stature were theirs, yet it was often hidden, for the time being, under the passing splendour of their ephemeral foliage.

There was but little advantage, from a musical point of view, in listening to these operas. The performances were very inferior to those at the ThÉÂtre Italien in Paris, where the same works were interpreted by the best artists of the day. The stage-management, too, was often literally grotesque. I remember going to a performance of "Norma," at the Apollo Theatre in Rome, at which the Roman warriors wore firemen's helmets and tunics, and yellow nankeen trousers with cherry-coloured stripes. It was utterly ridiculous, and might have been a Punch and Judy show.

Consequently I did not patronise the theatre much, and found I did far better to study my favourite scores—Lulli's "Alcestis," Gluck's "Iphigenia," Mozart's "Don Giovanni," Rossini's "William Tell"—in my own rooms.

Over and above the time I spent in close companionship with Monsieur Ingres during the famous "tracing" period, I had the good luck to get his leave to watch him in his studio. It may be imagined I made the most of the permission. I used to read to him while he was painting, and many a time have I dropped my book and watched him at his work. Thus I had the good fortune to see him resume and finish his exquisite picture "Stratonice," which was acquired by the Duc d'OrlÉans, and also his "Vierge À l'Hostie," intended for Count Demidoff's gallery.

An interesting incident, of which I was an eye-witness, occurred in connection with this latter picture. In the original composition, the foreground contained, instead of the Pyx with the holy elements, an exquisite figure of the Holy Child lying asleep on a cushion, one hand still holding the tassel with which it had been playing. The exquisite little creature, with its tender plump body, was (or, at all events, seemed to me) a perfect gem, not only in ease and beauty of attitude, but in grace of drawing and charm of colour.

Monsieur Ingres himself appeared pleased with it, and when the waning daylight forced him to stop painting, I left him well content with his day's work. Next afternoon I went back to the studio, and, to my horror, the figure was gone! He had destroyed the whole of his work, and removed every trace of it with the palette-knife.

"Oh, Monsieur Ingres!" I cried in dismay.

"Well, yes," he said; and then again decisively, "Yes, I was right!"

The glory of the divine symbol had come to him as something higher than the bright human reality of the infant figure, and therefore more worthy of the Virgin's adoration of her Son. He had not shrunk from sacrificing a masterpiece to truth.

This noble choice, this disinterested integrity, stamp him as one of those whose privilege and reward it is to enjoy unquestioned authority as a guide and teacher of man.

Among my contemporaries at the AcadÉmie de France at Rome were a number of young fellows who have grown famous since those days, among them Lefuel, HÉbert, and Ballu the architect, all of them members of the Institut de France at this present time, as well as many others who have either gained distinction or been snatched away by an early death before they could realise their country's hopes. I will instance Papety the painter, Octave Blanchard, Buttura, Lebouy, Brisset, Pils, the sculptors DiÉbolt and Godde, the musicians Georges Bousquet and AimÉ Maillard—all of them sons of that much-abused Alma Mater which, in succession to Hyppolyte Flandrin and Ambroise Thomas, produced Cabanel, Victor MassÉ, Guillaume, Cavelier, Georges Bizet, Baudry, Massenet, and a host of other eminent artists whose names I might add to this list, already long enough, in all conscience.

We students were often asked to parties at the French Embassy. It was there I met Gaston de SÉgur for the first time. He was then an attachÉ, but, as everybody knows, he afterwards became the saintliest of bishops, and, as I thankfully recollect, one of my best and dearest friends.

Though our headquarters were at Rome, we were allowed and expected to travel about and visit other parts of Italy.

I shall never forget the impression Naples made on me on my first arrival with my comrade, Georges Bousquet, now no more. He had won the Grand Prix for music the year before. We had travelled with the Marquis AmÉdÉe de Pastoret, who had written the words of the cantata which had won my prize for me.

It all seemed to me like a vision or a fairy tale. The bewitching climate, which sets one a dreaming of Grecian skies; the sapphire bay, set in its frame of isles and mountains, whose slopes and peaks glow in the sunset with tints so magic and ever changing, that the rarest stuffs and brightest jewels are colourless and dull beside them. All around one the endless wonders of Vesuvius, Portici, Castellamare, Sorrento, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, of Ischia, Capri, and Posilipo, Amalfi and Salerno; and PÆstum, with its splendid Doric temples, once lapped by the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

It was the absolute reverse of the effect produced by the first sight of Rome! Here the charm was instantaneous.

When to all these natural fascinations we add the interest attaching to the museum (the "Studii" or Museo Borbonico), crammed with a unique collection of masterpieces of antique art unearthed for the most part at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Nola—cities which lay buried for more than eighteen centuries beneath the lava of Vesuvius—the immense attraction this city presents to any artist may be conceived.

I was lucky enough to visit Naples thrice during my residence in Rome, and among the most vivid and striking recollections I took away with me was my memory of beautiful Capri, so wild and yet so smiling, with its rugged rocks and verdant slopes.

It was summer time when I first went there, under brilliant sunshine and in torrid heat. The only possible way of existing in the daytime was either to shut oneself up in one's room and try to get a little coolness and sleep in the dark, or else to jump into the sea and stay there, which I was always delighted to do. The beauty of the night in such a climate, and at that season, is well-nigh unimaginable. The vault of heaven literally quivers with stars like an ocean with waves of light, so full does infinite space appear of twinkling tremulous luminaries. During my fortnight's stay I often sat listening to the eloquent silence of these phosphorescent nights. I would perch myself on some steep rock, and stay for hours gazing out on the horizon, rolling a big stone down the precipitous slope from time to time, to hear it bound and bound till it struck the sea below and raised a ruffle of foam. Now and again a solitary night-bird uttered its mournful note, and made me think of those weird precipices whose horror Weber has rendered with such marvellous power in that immortal incantation scene in "Der FreischÜtz."

It was during one of these nocturnal rambles that the first idea for the "Walpurgis Night" in Goethe's "Faust" struck me.

I never parted with the score; I carried it about with me everywhere, and jotted down in stray notes any idea which I thought might be useful whenever I made an attempt to use the subject for an opera. This I did not attempt until seventeen years afterwards.

However, back to Rome and to the Academy I had to go. Pleasant and seductive as Naples was, I never stopped there for any length of time without wanting to get back to Rome. A kind of home-sickness would seize me, and I would leave without a shadow of regret the spot where I had spent so many happy hours. In point of fact, and in spite of all her splendour and prestige, Naples is a noisy, shrill-voiced town, restless and riotous. Her inhabitants squabble and talk and quarrel and argue from dawn till dark, and from dark till dawn, on those quays of hers, where rest and silence are equally unknown. Wrangling is the normal condition of the Neapolitan. You are fallen upon, besieged, haunted by the indefatigable persecutions of facchini, shopkeepers, drivers, and boatmen, who would think but little of carrying you off by force, and every one of whom offers to serve you for less money than his fellow.[3]

Once back in Rome, I set seriously to work. This was in the autumn of 1840.

In spite of her professional duties, which engaged her on week-days from morn till night, my mother still found time to write to me often and fully. She must frequently have cut short her hours of sleep so as to give me this proof of her constant and tender care. The very length of her letters bore sufficient witness to the amount of time, robbed from her nightly rest, she had devoted to them. I knew she had to rise every morning at five, to be ready for her first pupil, who came at six, and that often her breakfast hour was absorbed by another lesson, during which, instead of a proper meal, she would swallow a bowl of soup, or perhaps take nothing but a crust of bread and a glass of wine and water. I knew her daily round lasted till six o'clock every evening, and that after her dinner she had a hundred and one household duties to attend to. Besides, she had many people to write to as well as me, and, what is more, she was a Dame de CharitÉ, and often worked with her own hands to clothe her poor. Nothing but the complete orderliness and method with which she laid out her time could ever have enabled her to do so much; but those two essential and fundamental qualities, without which life can be neither occupied nor useful, were hers in the highest degree.

But she had quite given up that pestilential habit of "paying visits," which simply means wasting one's time from Monday morning to Saturday night in going to other people's houses and wasting theirs; killing that time, in fact, which kills those who misuse it with sheer weariness.

And so we were brought up on short but pithy maxims, flung to us, as it were, with the brevity of a woman who could not spare time to chatter. "Waste not, want not," and so forth.

A family friend once said to me, "Your mother is not one wonder to me, but two; I cannot conceive how she finds time to do so much, or all the money she gives away." I know well enough how she found both. In her own good sense and powerful will. The more she had to do, the more she did. Just the converse of Emile Augier's clever saying, which has much the same meaning, "I have been so idle, I haven't had time to do a single thing."

Now and again my dear excellent brother would slip a word of good and friendly advice into my mother's letters to me. I stood much in need of it, for steadiness was never my strong point, I fear; and weakness, uncounterbalanced by good sense, becomes a power for evil. Alas! I know too well how little I profited by all his warnings, and I cry, Mea culpa.

There is a church in the Corso at Rome, called San Luigi dei Francesi, and served by a French canon and priests. Every year, on the 1st of May (the feast of the patron saint of Louis-Philippe), a musical Mass was performed there. The duty of writing the music for the occasion devolved on the Academy musical prize-holder for the previous year. The year I went to Rome, the Mass (with full orchestral accompaniment) was written by my comrade, Georges Bousquet. The following one, it would be my turn. My mother, fearing my other duties at the Academy would not allow me sufficient leisure to compose so important a work, sent me the Mass I had written for St. Eustache. She had copied it herself from my manuscript score, not caring to let that out of her own keeping or risk losing it in the post.

My feelings when this fresh token of my mother's goodness and patience reached me at Rome may easily be imagined. However, I did not do what she suggested, for I considered it my bounden duty, as a conscientious artist, to try and do still better work (no difficult matter, indeed), and I worked on stoutly at the new Mass I had begun composing for the King's fÊte-day. I finished it in due course, and conducted it myself.

This work brought me luck, and earned me the kindest of congratulations. To it I owe my life appointment of "Honorary Chapel-master" to the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. Little did I foresee I should be asked to give a performance of the work and conduct it in person the very next year in Germany. Later on I will detail the consequences of this second performance, and the benefits it brought me.[4]

The longer I stayed at Rome, the more irresistible I found the mystic charm and matchless calm that reign within its walls.

Coming from the jagged, bold volcanic outline of the crater of Naples, the simple, quiet, solemn lines of the Campagna, framed by the Alban, the Latian, and the Sabine hills, Soracte the majestic, the mountains of Viterbo, Monte Mario, and Janiculum, made me think of some open-air cloister, quiet and serene. The village of Nemi, with its pretty lake sunk in a great crater, and fringed with luxuriant vegetation, was one of my favourite spots near Rome. The walk round the lake by the upper road is one of the most beautiful that can possibly be imagined. I shall never forget the beauty of that view, as I had the good luck to see it one lovely day, at the close of which I watched the sun go down into the sea from the heights of Gensano.

But the neighbourhood of Rome abounds in such exquisite scenes, objects of endless pleasure trips for travellers and tourists—Tivoli, Subiaco, Frascati, Albano, Ariccia, and a hundred other places, the happy hunting grounds of landscape painters, not to mention the Tiber, many spots on the banks of which are full of majestic beauty and grandeur.

In this memoir of my youthful days, I must not omit to mention, among the artistic treasures which are Rome's special glory, a set of masterpieces which share with the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel the proud boast of being the glory of the Vatican. I mean those immortal pictures by the painter Raphael, forming the collection known as "Le Loggie e le Stanze." In the Stanza della Segnatura hang the immortal canvases of the "School of Athens" and the "Disputa del Sacramento." These two masterpieces, like many others from this unrivalled painter's brush, are of a beauty which appears absolutely unapproachable.

Yet so irresistible is the ascendency of genius, that this Raphael, this matchless painter whom history has set on the very pinnacle of fame, was himself influenced by Michael Angelo. He felt the mighty Titan's grip, he bowed before the giant's power, and his later works give ocular proof of the homage he paid the sublime and almost supernatural genius that dwelt within that powerful and gigantic brain.

Raphael may be the first of painters—Michael Angelo stands alone. In Raphael's case, power expands and blossoms into charm; in Michael Angelo's, on the other hand, charm seems to subjugate and govern power. Raphael enraptures and captivates, while Michael Angelo fascinates and overwhelms. One paints the earthly paradise; the other, like the prisoner of Patmos, gazes with eagle eye even into the recesses of the bright abode of the Archangels and the Seraphim.

These two great apostles would seem to have been called to stand side by side in the high noontide of art, so that the calm and perfect beauty of the younger might serve to temper the dazzling splendour revealed to the poet-painter of the Apocalypse.

A detailed description of the innumerable art treasures of Rome would be out of place in these recollections, of which the sole object has been to relate the principal incidents of my early artistic career.

In the winter of 1840-41 I had the privilege of seeing and hearing the sister of Madame Malibran, Pauline Garcia, who had just married Louis Viardot, then Director of the ThÉÂtre Italien in Paris; they were, in fact, on their honeymoon.

She was not yet eighteen, and her first appearance on the boards had been a great success. I had the honour and pleasure, in the drawing-room at the Academy, of accompanying her performance of the well-known and immortal air from "Robin Hood." I was amazed by the already majestic talent of this mere child, who then promised to be, and eventually became, a great celebrity.

I did not meet her again until ten years later. It is a curious fact, that at the age of twelve, when I first heard Malibran sing in Rossini's "Otello," I made up my mind to embrace a musical career; ten years later, when I was twenty-two, I made the acquaintance of her sister, Madame Viardot; ten years later again, when I was thirty-two, I wrote the part of "Sappho," which she created with such brilliant success on the operatic stage, for the same lady.

That same winter I had the good fortune to meet Fanny Henzel, Mendelssohn's sister. She was spending the winter at Rome with her husband, who was painter to the Prussian court, and her son, who was still a young child.

Madame Henzel was a first-rate musician—a very clever pianiste, physically small and delicate, but her deep eyes and eager glance betrayed an active mind and restless energy. She had rare powers of composition, and many of the "Songs without Words," published among the works and under the name of her brother, were hers.

Monsieur and Madame Henzel often came to the "Sunday evenings" at the Academy, and she would sit down to the piano with the readiness and simplicity of one who played because she loved it. Thanks to her great gifts and wonderful memory, I made the acquaintance of various masterpieces of German music which I had never heard before, among them a number of the works of Sebastian Bach—sonatas, fugues, preludes, and concertos—and many of Mendelssohn's compositions, which were like a glimpse of a new world to me.

Monsieur and Madame Henzel left Rome to return to Berlin, and there I met them again two years later.

Before he left the Academy, Monsieur Ingres was good enough to make me a parting gift, which I value both as a proof of his regard and as a specimen of his talent. He did a pencil portrait of me, sitting at the piano with Mozart's "Don Giovanni" open before me.

I was deeply conscious of the loss his departure would be to me, and of how much I should miss the healthy influence of an instructor whose artistic faith was so strong, whose enthusiasm was so infectious, and whose teaching was so trustworthy and aimed so high. Every art demands something beyond mere technical knowledge and special handicraft, beyond the fullest, nay, the most absolutely perfect acquaintance with and practice in the various processes. These are absolutely necessary, of course, but they are only the tools with which the artist works, the outward form and envelopment of each particular branch. But in each art there is a something, the exclusive property of none, still common to them all, higher than all, in default of which they fall to the level of mere handicrafts. This something, which, itself unseen, imbues the whole with life and soul—this constitutes the art itself.

Art is one of the three great transformations which reality, brought into contact with the human mind, and looked at in the ideal and all-powerful light of the good, the beautiful, and the true, is bound to undergo. Art is neither an utter dream nor an exact copy; it is neither the mere ideal nor the merely real. It is like man himself—the meeting and fusion of the two. It is unity in duality. Inasmuch as it is ideal, it soars above us. Were it only real, it would be below us. Morality is the humanisation, the incarnation of good; science is that of truth, and art is that of beauty.

And Monsieur Ingres was a true apostle of the beautiful. It was the breath of his nostrils; his lectures proved it as well as his works—more so indeed, perhaps; for, as a man with a strong creed is generally a man full of great longings, the very fervour of those aspirations will often carry him far above the ordinary beaten track. From the heights thus gained he shed as much light on a musician's as on a painter's work, ushering us all into the presence of the universal sources of the highest truths. By showing me the real nature of true art, he taught me more about my own than any number of merely technical masters could have done.

Though time allowed of my deriving but little benefit from our invaluable intercourse, yet that little made a permanent impression on me, and left a precious memory to console me for the loss of his actual presence.

In the month of April 1841, Monsieur Ingres was succeeded by Monsieur Schnetz, a well-known painter, whose success and popularity were mostly earned by his qualities of feeling and expression. He was a kind and amiable man, full of mother-wit, very cheerful and cordial with the students. In spite of a pair of bushy black eyebrows, which lost themselves in a thick head of hair and almost concealed his forehead, Monsieur Schnetz's expression was gentle and good-humoured, and he was the essence of a thoroughly "good fellow."

My second and third years at the Academy were spent under his rule. He was very fond of Rome, and circumstances helped him to indulge his preference, for he was Director of the Academy of France three times, and left none but kindly memories behind him.

By rights my residence in Rome should have ended with the year 1841, but I could not make up my mind to depart, and obtained the Director's permission to prolong my stay. I remained at the Academy five months beyond the regulation period, and did not leave it until forced to move by the fact that the state of my finances only barely permitted my getting on to Vienna, where the money for the first six months of the third year of my scholarship was to be remitted to me.

I will not attempt to describe my grief at quitting the Academy, at parting with my beloved fellow-students, and leaving Rome itself, where I felt my affections were so deeply rooted. My comrades accompanied me as far as Ponte Molle (Pons Milvius), and after the most cordial of farewells, I climbed into the post-cart which was to tear me (there is no other word) from my two happy years in that land of promise.

I should have been less down-hearted had I been going straight home to my beloved mother and brother, but I was faring alone into a country of strangers, of whose very language I was utterly ignorant; no wonder the outlook was cheerless and dark to me. As long as I could see it from the road, I kept my eyes on the dome of St. Peter's—the crown of Rome and of the universe—then the hills hid it utterly. I fell into deepest musing, and wept like any child.

LETTERS

I
Monsieur Lefuel, Artist, Poste Restante,
Nice-maritime.

Rome, 21st June, Monday.

Dear Good Friend,—As it is much more natural and proper for a child to hasten to answer his father, than a father his child, I will begin by apologising for not having sooner acknowledged your last letter dated from Mantua. But it has been in spite of myself, I do assure you. I have had a great deal of writing to do lately, and it is not finished even yet. It is really quite a business (and something else as well) to have to thank people in writing for an interest they merely express through a third person, and which you cannot acknowledge in the same coin. However, I ought to be thankful, and I must not turn up my nose at the idea of bestirring myself a little. Otherwise people might say, "Well, it's easy enough to rid him of that trouble." Eh, dear boy? So I confide this to nobody but yourself and trusted friends like you.

Let me tell you I have done your commission about that coat of yours, which we had been wandering round and round for ever so long, "getting hot," as they say at hide and seek. It has seen daylight at last, and is none the worse; no ugly creases, nor moth of any sort. Likewise I gave your friendly messages to our comrades, who all wanted to know where you wrote from.... I replied that your letter came from Mantua. Whereupon ensued various conversations, both private and general, anent your specially favoured position, especially since a like favour has been refused to GruyÈre, who also applied for leave to travel, and declares he brought very good reasons to support his request. I did not choose to talk too much about you, for fear of heating opinions which were already unfriendly, but I did reply at once to a remark made by a person who shall be nameless, to the effect that it was neither very delicate nor very straightforward on your part, last year, to go to Florence in the first instance, when you had been granted permission, by special favour, to go to Naples.

I combatted that idea with all my might, at the same time refusing to be drawn into a discussion which might have degenerated into a dispute. And then, dear Hector, if you only knew how some people's tempers have altered since you went away! If it goes on, I really believe you will find some individuals with their noses in the air, as people call it. I am not the only person that strikes, and I think it can hardly escape your notice too.

As to myself, in another ten days I shall start for Naples, and I expect to spend six weeks or two months, not at Naples itself, but in the kingdom and the islands. The month of September I shall probably spend at Frascati, so as to get a good look, and a last one, at that splendid Monte Cavi, of which I am very anxious to make some studies. If you write to me, direct to the Poste Restante at Naples. I will go and fetch my letters when I am in town, and have them sent after me wherever I may be. I have been making a tour, quite lately, in the mountains near Subiaco, Civitella, Olevano, &c. I saw much that was beautiful, but what interested me most was the Convent of San Benedetto at Subiaco. I saw and felt things there that I shall never forget.

I have had news from home lately. They are all well, and send you affectionate messages. They tell me Urbain had written you to Genoa, so that you might find the letter there on the 15th. I don't know how he makes out you will be at Genoa then, but, anyhow, I fancy his reckoning is at fault. However, the letter had better be there before you than after. You are sure to get it when you leave Milan, or you could, if you liked, have it sent you by some friend. Then my mother says Blanchard has been so excessively kind as to make a small drawing of your portrait for Urbain, which has touched both mother and son immensely. Blanchard, so my mother tells me, has had a bad attack of fever since he got back to Paris, but he is much better now. He has dined with my people several times since his return, and my mother says he is very pleasant, has very nice ways, and she likes him because he strikes her as being very good-natured.

You doubtless know, if you have come across any French newspaper, that our friend, Jules Richomme, has not been admitted to compete for the Grand Prix. I am very much distressed at the news, for his sake and that of his family, who so greatly desired to see him win the Prize and come to Rome. I am sure now to see him in Paris, for even if he won the Prize next year, he would not start until after my return. And how goes your work, my dear fellow? Your portfolios must be getting handsomely filled, methinks! Write me all about it—how you are—what you are doing. Though I'm not absolutely sharp in your line of occupation, I think my eagerness to know about everything that interests and pleases you will rub up my wits to a certain extent, at all events. Anyhow, I put myself into your hands to tell me what you like. So long as it does not bore you nor waste your time, tell on!

Farewell, dear Hector. Keep well, and keep me in your affection—that last being a good work, which shall bring you manifold reward!

Mind you are as exact in giving me your successive addresses as I shall be in sending you mine, during my journey and after it.

I salute you, with all filial fondness.

Ch. Gounod.

II
Monsieur H. Lefuel, Architect, AcadÉmie
de France, Villa Medicis, Rome.

Naples, Tuesday, July 14, 1840.

My dear Hector,—I wish I could have written these few lines which I now send you by Murat[5] sooner. But the fact is that up to the present I have barely had time to write a tolerable scrawl to my brother; and here in Naples, where I made some acquaintances three months ago, my first duty has been to go round and pay calls. However, I hope to have more time to spare in future. I have written to Desgoffe also, and would gladly have done as much by our good HÉbert; please make all sorts of excuses to him for me. He will certainly hear from me direct one of these days, almost at once indeed, for I am thinking, though not quite decidedly as yet, of starting on Wednesday or Thursday in next week to see Ischia and Capri, returning to Naples by PÆstum, Salerno, Amalfi, Sorrento, and Pompeii. A twelve days' trip or thereabouts.

I hope, my dear fellow, your health has been good since I left,—Desgoffe's as well. I beg he'll see you do not work too hard! It must be very hot now where you are. Here in Naples it is sometimes very close; to-day, for instance, it is overwhelmingly thundery and oppressive, but the sea-breeze is not unpleasant, and as we live almost on the sea-shore, we get the benefit of it, and make the most of its freshness.

Naples (I mean the town, of course) bores me more than ever. I am very curious to see Capri and Ischia, and also PÆstum. Yesterday at long last I went up to the Camaldoli; the view is wonderful, especially over the wide expanse of sea. You know how I love the sea. The longer one looks at it, the better one understands that simple horizontal line beyond which one can fancy infinite space stretching away for ever. To-morrow afternoon at four, if the weather keeps fine, we mean to go up Vesuvius and watch the sunset; we shall spend the night there, to see the moonlight on the bay, and the sunrise next morning. You see our expedition promises to be delightful.

The day before yesterday I had a letter from my mother, forwarded from Rome. If it was you who sent it on, dear Hector, accept my best thanks. My mother and my good brother Urbain send you many friendly messages.

What do you think of Monsieur Ingres's picture? Write and tell me, or else slip a line into Desgoffe's letter, when he answers mine. Address your letters to "La Ville de Rome, Quai Santa Lucia, Naples." If I am not there when they arrive, I shall find them when I get back.

Please tell HÉbert that I should much like to have his opinion of Monsieur Ingres's picture as well as yours; although I can hardly expect to hear from him until I write myself.

Give my love to my little brother Vauthier, who will not forget me, I hope. Tell Fleury[6] how sorry I was not to say good-bye to him before starting, and finally, give all my comrades, individually and collectively, my best wishes, in our time-honoured fashion.

Farewell, dear Hector. I send you my best love, with all my heart too, for indeed I feel our common exile with threefold bitterness out here.—Your very affectionate

Charles Gounod.

GuÉnepin[7] will write to you in a day or two. He sends you many friendly greetings. He is a very good fellow, and we have had a pleasant journey, although we have never had more than three or four hours in bed. But that's a trifle. When you write, pray let me know if Desgoffe has sent again to fetch my score of "Der FreischÜtz" from Prince Soutzo's.

III
Monsieur Hector Lefuel, Poste Restante,
Venice.

Rome, April 4, 1841.

Beloved and Revered Parent,[8]—Your afflicted child has been racking his poor brain to know where he should write to you, and was beginning in fact to have serious doubts of the reality of the affection his ancient relative professes for him. However, he now rejoices to have learnt through Monsieur Schnetz that the undaunted centenarian has removed himself from Florence to Bologna, on his way to Venice as fast as he can get there.

To Venice, therefore, does his son, greatly comforted by the joyful news, indite the following epistle to inform him, firstly, that he himself is in rude health, and secondly, that his musical Mass has had a great success, not only among his fellow-students here, but also among the uninitiated vulgar. The thought of his venerable friend's delight at once occurred to the composer, and was indeed a potent factor in his legitimate joy in his success. He begs to add that he unceasingly deplores the absence of his aged kinsman, the person he naturally clung to most while he was here, and of whom Fate has so cruelly and inopportunely bereft him.

I too have news from Paris, my dear good Hector. My letters are full of friendly messages for you. My mother, why, I know not, was under the impression I should see you again within a month or two; I have undeceived her on that head, and I am very sure she regrets it much. And then you will not have heard the news I have about Urbain, news that gave me a great thrill of joy at first, which changed to deepest disappointment when the end of the paragraph appeared. It was neither more nor less than the idea of his coming out to Sicily and Rome, but it is all off now, and this is why.

The Marquis de Crillon, who has always taken a great interest in my family, being himself about to travel in Sicily, desired to find a talented and educated artist; a really earnest man, in fact, to keep him company. He thought of Urbain, so calling at our house one day, he laid his plan before my mother. She thanked him for his goodness, told him how deeply she appreciated his kind thought, and seized the earliest opportunity of speaking to my brother. He, after short though serious reflection, made up his mind to accept Monsieur de Crillon's offer. When it came to taking leave of his clients, he saw such long faces everywhere, and the regret at his departure was so general—everybody vowed it would be so impossible to find such delicacy, such integrity, and the other good and estimable qualities you know him to possess, in any other man—that getting away began to look far from easy. But there is more besides. Here is what really put the spoke in his wheel. All his future interests were suddenly threatened with compromise for lack of ten or twelve thousand francs. You will easily imagine that under such circumstances he was forced to stay in Paris. I am very uneasy about this somewhat critical state of things, and wait impatiently for news of what has happened next. I will let you know in my next letter. Poor Urbain, so good a fellow, who has worked so hard! Luckily he has plenty of pluck, and will bear the most unpleasant ordeal bravely, but all the same it is very hard on him.

I had heard, dear Hector, you had written to GruyÈre. I was beginning to grow jealous, when HÉbert said to me, "Cheer up, it's only about something he wants him to do for him!" So I took comfort in the hope that I should shortly hear from you myself. I must tell you that the proofs of friendly interest shown me by many of my comrades here, and notably our good little painter HÉbert, have made me very happy. I have the keenest sense of gratitude for the care and attention with which I saw him listen to the rehearsal of my Mass. No indifferent person would have bestowed them, and it is always a pleasure to be able to mention a case of sympathetic interest. Knowing your affection for HÉbert, I rejoice to tell you this, for I feel sure your regard for him will not be lessened on account of that he bears me. His health is as rude as mine, and, like all the rest of our comrades here, he bids me send you many greetings. I am going to see if he is at home, and try to get him to add a line or two at the end of this letter.

Bazin has not yet arrived. I haven't an idea what has become of him. I am rather afraid that, in the enthusiasm aroused by his passage through his native place, his fellow-townsmen may have laid violent hands upon his person, and nailed him on a pedestal, as a statue dedicated to his own glory! They are a hot-headed set at Marseilles, and quite capable of anything of the sort! He might send himself in as the result of his Academy work!

Good-bye, my dear Hector. You know how fond I am of you, so, as the saying is, I salute you on both cheeks and on your left eye likewise. If CourtÉpÉe[9] is still with you, tell him I grasp his hand with special fervour. I hope you are full of health and spirits, both of you, and I think if you are having the same weather as we are, you must be doing wonderful good work. Good-bye again, dear friend,—Yours always,

Charles Gounod.

My dear Architect,—I seize the opportunity our good musician's letter gives me, to let you know I am alive. Our great sculptor GruyÈre has informed me you are struggling with an accumulation of head colds. I trust the sun that shines o'er noble and voluptuous Venice will thaw the ice winter has piled within your brain!

You had a great success at the Exhibition. Everybody was much struck by your drawings, the Ambassador and his wife most of all. I do not mention my own performances; they are neither important nor well executed enough to be worth writing about. Our celebrated composer's Mass has had a great success, both amongst ourselves and with the general public. It was well performed, thanks to the activity he displayed in shaking up all the old sleepy-heads! If you see Loubens,[10] pray give him my best regards. What have you done with CourtÉpÉe? Can you get him up in the mornings when you get up yourself, you early bird?

Farewell! If I can make myself either useful or agreeable to you, command me.—E. HÉbert.

Murat absolutely refuses to write even two lines. He says he will write later on.

CHARLES GOUNOD.

That is a lie!—Murat.