My Recollections Part 11

I stopped at the Hotel de Rome, opposite the San Carlo, on the Corso.

The morning after the first performance, they brought a note to my rooms--I was hardly awake, for we had come in very late--which bore these words:

"The next time you stay at a hotel, let me know beforehand, for I haven't slept all night with all their serenading and toasting you!

What a row! But I am pleased for your sake.

"Your old friend,

"DU LOCLE."

Du Locle! How could it be he! But there he was--my conductor at the birth of _Don Cesar de Bazan_. I hastened to embrace him.

The morning of March 21 brought hours of magical delight and alluring charm. I count them as among the best that I remember.

I had obtained an audience with the newly enthroned Pope Leo XIII. The grand salon where I was introduced was preceded by a long antechamber.

Those who had been admitted like myself were kneeling in a row on each side of the room. The Pope blessed the faithful with his right hand and spoke a few words to them. His chamberlain told him who I was and why I had come to Rome, and the Sovereign Pontiff added to his benediction words of good wishes for my art.

Leo XIII combined an unusual dignity with a simplicity which reminded me forcibly of Pius IX.

After leaving the Vatican I went at eleven o'clock to the Quirinal Palace. The Marchese di Villamarina was to present me to Queen Margherita. We pa.s.sed through a suite of five or six rooms and in the one where we waited was a c.r.a.pe-covered gla.s.s case in which were souvenirs of Victor Emanuel who had died only recently. There was an upright piano between the windows. The following detail was almost theatrical in its impression. I had noticed that an usher was stationed at the door of each of the salons through which I had come, and I heard a distant voice, evidently in the first room, announce loudly, La Regina, then nearer, La Regina, then nearer still, La Regina, and again and louder, La Regina, and finally in the next salon, in ringing tones, La Regina. And the Queen appeared in the salon where we were.

The Marchese di Villamarina presented me, bowed to the Queen, and went out.

Her Majesty, in a charming voice, asked me to excuse her for not going to the opera the evening before to hear _Il Capolavoro_ of the French master, and, pointing to the gla.s.s case, said, "We are in mourning."

Then she added, "As I was deprived of the evening, will you not let me hear some of the motifs of the opera?"

As there was no chair beside the piano, I began to play standing. Then I saw the Queen looking about for a chair and I sprang towards one, placed it in front of the piano and continued playing as she had asked so adorably.

I was much moved when I left her Majesty and I was deeply gratified by her gracious reception. I pa.s.sed through the numerous salons and found the Marchese di Villamarina whom I thanked heartily for his great courtesy.

A quarter of an hour later I was in the Via delle Carozze, visiting Menotti Garibaldi to whom I had a letter of introduction from a friend in Paris.

That was no ordinary morning. Indeed it was unusual in view of the personages I had the honor to see: His Holiness the Pope, her Majesty the Queen, and the son of Garibaldi.

I was presented during the day to Prince Ma.s.simo of the oldest Roman n.o.bility. When I asked, perhaps indiscreetly but with genuine curiosity nevertheless, whether he were descended from Emperor Maximus, he replied, simply and modestly, "I do not know certainly, but they have been sure of it in my family for eighteen hundred years."

After the theater that evening (a superb success), I went to supper at the house of our amba.s.sador, the Duke de Montebello. At the request of the d.u.c.h.ess I began to play the same motifs I had given in the morning before her Majesty the Queen. The d.u.c.h.ess smoked, and I remember that I smoked many cigarettes while I played. That gave me the opportunity, as the smoke rose to the ceiling, to contemplate the marvellous paintings of the immortal Carrache, the creator of the famous Farnese Gallery.

Again, what never to be forgotten hours!

I returned to my hotel about three in the morning where the serenade with which they entertained me kept my friend du Locle awake.

Spring pa.s.sed rapidly on account of my memories of my brilliant winter in Italy. I set to work at Fontainebleau and finished _La Vierge_. Then my dear wife and I set out for Milan and the Villa d'Este.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _By permission of Ad. Braun and Cie., Paris_

t.i.tta Ruffo, Caruso and Chaliapine, three artists who sang in Ma.s.senet's works]

That was a year of enthusiasms, of pure, radiant joy, and its hours of unutterable good fortune left a mark on my career, which was never to be erased.

Giulio Ricordi had invited Mme. Ma.s.senet and me, together with our dear daughter, still quite a child, to spend the month of August at the Villa d'Este in that marvellously picturesque country about Lake Como. We found there Mme. Giuditta Ricordi, the wife of our amiable and gracious host, their daughter Ginette, a delightful playmate for my little girl; and their sons t.i.to and Manuel, small boys then but tall gentlemen since. We also met there a lovely young girl, a rose that had as yet scarcely blossomed, who during our stay worked at singing with a renowned Italian professor.

Arrigo Boito, the famous author of _Mefistole_, who was also a guest at the Villa d'Este, was as impressed as I was with the unusual quality of her voice. That prodigious voice, already so wonderfully flexible, was that of the future artiste who was never to be forgotten in her creation of _Lakme_ by the glorious and regretted Leo Delibes. I have named Marie Van Zandt.

One evening as I entered the Hotel Bella Venezia, on the Piazza San Fedele at Milan (where even to-day I should be glad to alight) Giulio Ricordi came to see me and introduced me to a man of great distinction, an inspired poet, who read me a scenario in four acts on the story of Herodias, which was tremendously interesting. That remarkable man of letters was Zanardini, a descendant of one of the greatest families of Venice.

It is easy to see how suggestive and inspiring the story of the Tetrach of Galilee, of Salome, of John, and of Herodias would become under a pen so rich in colors as that of the man who had painted it.

On the fifteenth of August during our stay in Italy, _Le Roi de Lah.o.r.e_ was put on at the Vienza Theater, and on the third of October came the first performance at the Communal Theater at Bologna. That was the reason for our prolonged stay in Italy.

Our return to Fontainebleau followed immediately and I had to take up my normal life again and my unfinished work.

To my surprise I received a visit from M. emile Rety the day after my return! He came from Ambroise Thomas to offer me the place of professor of counterpoint, fugue and composition at the Conservatoire to replace Francois Bazin who had died some months before. He advised me at the same time to become a candidate for the Academie des Beaux Arts as the election of a successor to Bazin was at hand.

What a contrast to the months of agreeable nonsense and applause in Italy! I thought that I was forgotten in France, whereas the truth was the direct opposite.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CONSERVATOIRE AND THE INSt.i.tUTE

I received the official notice of my nomination as professor at the Conservatoire and I went to Paris. I would have hardly imagined that I had said good-by to my beloved house at Fontainebleau with no hope of seeing it again.

The life which had now begun for me transplanted my summers of work in the midst of quiet and peaceful solitude--those summers which I had pa.s.sed so happily far from the noise and tumult of the city. If books have their destiny as the poet says (_habent sua fata libelli_), does not each one of us follow a destiny which is just as certain and irrevocable? One cannot swim against the stream. It is easy to swim with it, especially if it carries one to a longed for sh.o.r.e.

I gave my course at the Conservatoire twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays at half past one.

I confess that I was both proud and happy to sit in that chair, in the same cla.s.sroom where as a child I had received the advice and lessons of my master. I looked upon my pupils as other or as new children--grandchildren rather--who received the teaching which had come to me and which seemed to filter through the memories of the master who had imbued me with it.

The young people with whom I had to do seemed nearly my own age, and I said to them by way of encouraging them and urging them on to work: "You have but one companion the more, who tries to be as good a pupil as you are yourselves."

It was touching to see the deferential affection which they showed me from the first day. I was completely happy when I surprised them sometimes chatting and telling their impressions of the work given the day before or to be given to-morrow. At the beginning of my professorship that work was _Le Roi de Lah.o.r.e_.

Thus I continued for eighteen years to be both friend and "patron," as they called me, of a considerable number of young composers.

Since I took such joy in it, I may perhaps recall the successes they won each year in the contests in fugue, and how useful this teaching was to me, for it obliged me to be very clever, face to face with a task, in finding quickly what should be done in accordance with the rigorous precepts of Cherubini.

How delighted I was for eighteen years when nearly annually the Grand Prix de Rome was awarded to a pupil in my cla.s.s! I longed to go to the Conservatoire and heap the honors on my master.

I can still see, at evening in his peaceful salon with the windows overlooking the Conservatoire's courtyard--deserted at that hour--the good Administrator-General emile Rety listening to me as I told him of my happiness in having a.s.sisted in the success of "my children."

A few years ago I received a touching expression of their feeling toward me.

In the month of December, 1900, I saw come to my publishers, where they knew they could find me, Lucien Hillemacher, since dead, alas, accompanied by a group of old Grand Prix. He delivered to me on parchment the signatures of more than five hundred of my old pupils. The pages were bound into a thin octavo volume, bound luxuriously in Levant morocco, spangled with stars. On the fly-leaves in brilliant illumination, along with my name, were the two dates: 1878-1900.