CHAPTER XIX

A NEW LIFE

The year 1891 was marked by an event which had a profound effect on my life. In the month of May of that year the publishing house of Hartmann went out of business.

How did it happen? What brought about this catastrophe? I asked myself these questions but could get no answer. It had seemed to me that all was going as well as could be expected with my publisher. I was utterly stupefied 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 uncertainty.

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 valuables. The scores were in manuscript.

I have already written of the fortunes of _Werther_, 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 d'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, prevented 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 relations which had existed between us and at the same time I expressed the deep gratitude I cherish 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 enjoy 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. Paravey's privilege had expired.

I recall this card from Carvalho the day after he left in 1887. He had erased his title of "directeur." It expressed perfectly his sorrowful resignation:

"_My dear Master_,

"I scratch out the title, but I retain the memory 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 mournful memory. This revival was in October, 1892.

Sibyl Sanderson, as I have said, had been engaged 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 Carillon_. 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 Menestrel. 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.

Spring at last permitted me to go to the seashore 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 know that the Countess is a true Maecenas to artists.

The exquisite poet Jeanne Dortzal is also a friend of these felines with the deep-green enigmatic eyes; they are the companions of her working hours.

I finished _Thais_ at the Rue du General Foy, in my bedroom where nothing broke the silence except 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, Imbert, who was in high good standing with his clients, brought me morning greetings from Alexander 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 distraction, I had written _Le Portrait de Manon_, a delightful 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 Godard. 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 recalled 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 l'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 Provencal 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 but also that general knowledge 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 brilliant and witty pamphleteer, was a cultivator of vineyards.

We returned to Avignon full of the inexpressible enveloping charm of the hours we had passed in the house of this great, illustrious poet.

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? Sanderson was dazzled by the idea of entering the Opera, and she signed a contract with Gailhard without even taking the mere trouble of informing Carvalho first.

Heugel and I were greatly surprised when Gailhard 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, however, 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 devolved upon her.

As I listened to the final rehearsals in the depths of the empty theater, I lived over again my ecstatic moments before the remains of Thais of Antinoe, beside the anchorite, who had been bewitched 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 Pourville, 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 beforehand 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 Cailhard, 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, "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 directors 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. Mlle. Berthet created this new tableau and Zambelli incarnated the new ballet.

Later, the title role was sung in Paris by Mlles. Alice Verlet and Mary Garden and Mme. Kousnezoff. I owe some superb nights at the Opera 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.