“But we missed you for our accompaniments.
“I am just pouring out news as it comes into my head. Hiller has sent me part of his Romilda from Milan. One of our enemies wished to throw himself off the Vendome Column the other day. He gave the keeper forty francs to let him go up—then changed his mind and walked down again.
“Chopin is still away; they said he was very ill, but there is no truth in it. Dumas has just written an exquisite thing—Mademoiselle de Belle Isle—but that is out of my province. There! no more news.
“My indifferentism does not extend to you and your long absence. Come back soon. It is high time you did, both for us and, I hope, for yourself too. Adieu.”
In 1840 the Government proposed celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Revolution by exceptional ceremonies, and the Minister of the Interior, M. de Remusat, who, like M. de Gasparin, had a soul for music, commissioned me to write a symphony, leaving form and all details entirely to me.
I planned a great symphony, on broad, simple lines, and as it was to be played in the open air where delicate orchestral effects would be lost, I engaged a military band of two hundred men.
Habeneck was anxious to conduct but, remembering the snuff trick, I preferred to do my own conducting.
Most fortunately, I invited a large audience to the final rehearsal, feeling sure that my work could not be properly judged on the day of performance.
And so it proved. On the great Place de la Bastille, ten yards away, you could make out nothing, and to make things worse, the legions of the National Guard marched off right in the middle, to the rattle of fifty kettledrums. That is the way music is always honoured in France at public fêtes, apparently they think it is meant to please—the eye.
Towards the end of this year I made my first musical venture out of France, as M. Snel, of Brussels, asked me to direct some of my works for the Société de la Grande Harmonie in the Belgian capital.