Although the receipts were eight thousand five hundred francs, the sum put aside to pay the musicians was not sufficient to fulfil my promises to them, and I had to supplement it by three hundred and fifty out of my own pocket, as the red ink entry in the cashier’s book at the Opera testifies to this day.
Thus I organised the most tremendous concert Paris had ever known, and was three hundred and fifty francs put of pocket for my pains. I was likely to grow rich!
M. Pillet is a gentleman and I never could understand how he allowed it; perhaps the cashier never told him.
I left for Germany a few days later on my pilgrimage. It was hard work truly, but it was at least musical hard work, and I had the untold happiness of being safe away from the intrigues and platitudes of Paris and among sympathetic musical people.
XXVI
HECHINGEN—WEIMAR
My tour began with trouble; I had intended giving a concert in Brussels, as Madame Nathan-Treillet, the idol of the Bruxellois, had kindly promised to come from Paris purposely to sing for me. But she fell seriously ill, and we knew that not all the symphonies in the world would make up for her absence.
When the catastrophe was announced the Grande Harmonie promptly fainted en bloc, pipes went out as if from want of air, and people dispersed groaning. In vain did I say, “Be calm! There will be no concert; you will be spared the misery of listening to my music. Surely that compensation is not to be despised!” It availed naught. Their eyes wept tears of beer et nolebant consolari because she came not. So my concert went to the devil.
Time passed; I was obliged to go on leaving the poor Belgians to their fate. My anxiety for them, however, soon melted as I embarked on my Rhine journey and went up to Mainz, hoping to be able to arrange a concert there.
I first went to Schott, patriarch of music publishers, who seemed rather as if he belonged to the household of the Sleeping Beauty, his somnolent sentences being interspersed with long silences.
“I don’t think—you hardly will be able—give a concert—there is—no orchestra—no public—no money.”