When I compare to-day with that far-off time when, regularly each Sunday, I went to the Tuileries chapel to hear them, how old, how tired, how bereft of illusions I feel. That was the day of great enthusiasms, of rich musical passions, of beautiful dreams, of ineffable, infinite joys.
As I usually arrived early at the Chapel Royal, my master would spend the time before service began in explaining the meaning of his composition. It was as well, for the music had no earthly connection with the words of the mass!
Lesueur inclined mostly to the sweet pastorals of the Old Testament—idylls of Naomi, Ruth, Rachel—and I shared his taste. The calm of the unchanging East, the mysterious grandeur of its ruins, its majestic history, its legends—these were the magnetic pole of my imagination. He often allowed me to join him in his walks, telling me of his early struggles, his triumphs and the favour of Napoleon. He even let me, up to a certain point, discuss his theories, but we usually ended on our common meeting-ground of Gluck, Virgil and Napoleon. After these long talks along the edge of the Seine or under the leafy shade of the Tuileries gardens, I would leave him to take the solitary walks which had become to him a necessity of daily life.
Some months after I had become his pupil, but before my admission to the Conservatoire, I took it into my head to write an opera, and nothing would do but that I must get my witty literary master, Andrieux, to write me a libretto. I cannot remember what I wrote to him, but he replied:
“Monsieur,—Your letter interests me greatly. You cannot but succeed in the glorious art you have chosen, and it would afford me the greatest pleasure to be your collaborateur. But, alas! I am too old, my studies and thoughts are turned in quite other directions. You would call me an outer barbarian if I told you how long it is since I set foot in the Opera. At sixty-four I can hardly be expected to write love songs, a requiem would be more appropriate. If only you had come into the world thirty years earlier, or I thirty years later, we might have worked together. With heartiest good wishes,
“Andrieux.”
“17th June 1823.”
M. Andrieux kindly brought his own letter, and stayed a long time chatting. As he was leaving he said:
“Ah! I, too, was an ardent lover of Gluck ... and of Piccini,[2] too!!”
This failure discouraged me, so I turned to Gerono, who was something of a poetaster, and asked him (innocent that I was) to dramatise Estelle for me. Luckily no one ever heard this lucubration, for my ditties were a fair match for his words.