And together they knelt by my bed—grateful mother and wondering child. Oh Paganini! why could you not be there to see?
Naturally, my first thought was to thank him. My letter seemed so poor, so inadequate, that I am ashamed to give it here. There are feelings beyond words.
His munificent kindness was soon noised abroad and my room besieged by friends anxious to know the facts. All rejoiced and some were jealous—not of me, but of Paganini, who was rich enough to do such deeds. Then began the comments, fury and lies of my opponents, followed by the congratulatory letter of Janin and his eloquent article in the Débats.
For a week I lay in bed, burning with impatience to see and thank my benefactor. Then I hurried to his house and found him in the billiard-room. We embraced in silence then, as I poured forth broken thanks, he spoke and—thanks to the silence of the room—I was able to make out his words.
“Not a word! It is so little and has given me the greatest pleasure of my life. You cannot tell how much your music moves me. Ah!” he cried, with a blow of his fist on the table, “now your enemies will be silenced for they know I understand and am not easily satisfied.”
But great as was his name it was not great enough to silence the dogs of Paris; in a few weeks they were again baying at my heels.
My earnest wish, now that all debts were paid and a handsome sum remained in hand, was to write a masterpiece, grand, impassioned, original, worthy of dedication to the master to whom I owed so much.
But Paganini, growing worse, had left for Nice, whence alas! he returned no more. I consulted him as to a suitable theme, but he replied:
“I cannot advise you. You best know what suits you best.”
After much wavering I fixed on a choral symphony on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and wrote the prose words for the choral portion, which Emile Deschamps, with his usual kindness and extraordinary versatility, put into poetry for me.