“Why, suppose a friend lent it to you?”
“What friend could I ask for such a sum?”
“You needn’t ask when I offer it——”
Think of my relief! In real truth, next day Legouvé lent me two thousand francs, and I finished Benvenuto. His noble heart—writer and artist as he was—guessed my trouble and feared to wound me by his offer! I have been fortunate in having many staunch friends.
Paganini was back in Paris when Benvenuto was slaughtered; he felt for me deeply and said:
“If I were a manager I would commission that young man to write me three operas. He should be paid in advance, and I should make a splendid thing by it.”
Mortification and the suppressed rage in which I had lived during those everlasting rehearsals, brought on a bad attack of bronchitis that kept me in bed, unable to work.
But we had to live, and I determined to give two concerts at the Conservatoire. The first barely paid its expenses so, as an attraction, I advertised the Fantastique and Harold together for the 16th December 1838.
Now Paganini, although it was written at his desire, had never heard Harold, and, after the concert, as I waited—trembling, exhausted, bathed in perspiration—he, with his little son, Achille, appeared at the orchestra door, gesticulating violently. Consumption of the throat, of which he afterwards died, prevented his speaking audibly and Achille alone could interpret his wishes.
He signed to the child, who climbed on a chair and put his ear close to his father’s mouth, then turning to me he said: