On the great day princes, ministers, peers, deputies, the press—home and foreign—and a mighty crowd gathered in the Invalides. It was most important that I should have a real success, failure would have crushed me irretrievably.
My performers were rather curiously arranged. To get the right effect in the Tuba mirum, the four brass bands were placed one at each corner of the enormous body of instrumentalists and choristers. As they join in, the tempo doubles, and it is, of course, of the utmost importance that the time should be absolutely clearly indicated. Otherwise, my Titanic cataclysm—prepared with so much thought and care by means of original and hitherto unknown combinations of instruments to represent the Last Judgment—becomes merely a hideous pandemonium.
Suspicious as usual, I took care to be close to Habeneck—in fact, back to back with him—keeping an eye on the group of kettledrums (which he could not see) as the critical moment drew near.
There are about a thousand bars in my Requiem; will it be believed that at this—the most important of all—Habeneck calmly laid down his baton and, with the utmost deliberation, took a pinch of snuff.
But my eye was upon him; turning on my heel, in a flash I stretched out my arm and marked the four mighty beats. The executants followed me, all went right, and my long-dreamed-of effect was a magnificent triumph.
“Dear me,” bleated Habeneck, “I was quite in a perspiration; without you we should have been done for.”
“Yes, we should,” I answered, eyeing him steadily.
Could it be that this man, in conjunction with M. X. and Cherubini, planned this dastardly stroke?
I do not like to think so, yet I have not the slightest doubt. God forgive me if I wrong them.
The Requiem had succeeded, but then began the usual sordid trouble about payment.