Mendelssohn received me wonderfully—I use the expression advisedly, to describe the condescension extended by such an illustrious man to a youth who could not in his eyes have been more than a novice. I can truly say that for the four days I spent at Leipzig he devoted himself to me. He questioned me about my studies and my works with the keenest and sincerest interest. He made me play some of my later efforts to him, and gave me precious words of approbation and encouragement. One sentence only will I quote; I am too proud of it ever to have forgotten it. I had just played him the "Dies Iræ" from my Vienna Requiem. He laid his finger on a passage written for five voices without accompaniment, and said—
"My boy, that might have been written by Cherubini!"
Such words from such a master are better than any decoration—more precious to their recipient than all the ribbons and stars in Europe.
Mendelssohn was Director of the "Gewandhaus" Philharmonic Society. As the concert season was over, there were no meetings of the society going on, but he showed me the delicate kindness of calling its members together for my benefit. Thus I heard his beautiful work known as the "Scotch Symphony" in A Minor, and he afterwards gave me the full score endorsed with a few kind words in his own handwriting.
Too soon, alas! the early death of that splendid genius, in the heyday of his beauty and his charm, was to transform this friendly memento into a treasured and precious relic. He died only six months after the charming woman to whom I owed my acquaintance with her gifted brother.
Mendelssohn did not confine himself to calling the Philharmonic Society together for my benefit. An admirable organist himself, he was anxious I should make acquaintance with some of the numerous and admirable works composed by the mighty Sebastian Bach for the instrument over which he reigned supreme. With this object, he had the old organ at St. Thomas's—the very instrument Bach himself used—examined and repaired, and there for two long hours and more he revealed an unknown world of beauty to my wondering ears.
Finally, to crown it all, he presented me with a collection of motets by this same Bach, who was a sort of god to him, in whose school he had been formed from infancy, and whose Passion music, "according to St. Matthew," he had conducted and accompanied by heart before he was fifteen.
Such was the kind treatment I received at the hands of that most lovable of men, that splendid artist, that magnificent musician, cut off, alas! in the flower of his age (just eight-and-thirty), snatched from the plaudits he had earned so well, and from the yet more glorious results the later efforts of his talent might have yielded. Strange is the fate of genius, even when endued with the charm possessed by his! It was not till Mendelssohn himself was dead that the ears which would not hearken in his lifetime learnt to appreciate the exquisite works which are now the joy and delight of every subscriber to the Conservatoire concerts.
Once I had seen Mendelssohn I could think of nothing except of getting back as fast as possible to Paris and to my beloved mother. I left Leipzig on May 18, 1843. I changed carriages seventeen times on the road, and travelled four nights out of six. At length, on May 25, I reached Paris, where my life was to enter on a new and different phase. I found my brother waiting for me when the mail-coach arrived, and together we hurried to that beloved home into which I was about to carry so much new happiness, and return to so much that I had left behind.