“My mother-in-law came back yesterday just after I had left home to find only her daughter’s body. She is nearly frantic and is constantly watched by a friend who came to our help. Think of the anguish! Write soon, my dear, dear boy.”
“Baden, 10th August 1862.—Beatrice was applauded from end to end, and I was recalled more times than I could count. My friends were delighted, but I was quite unmoved, for it was one of my days of excruciating pain and nothing seemed to matter.
“To-day I am better and can enjoy their congratulations.
“You will be pleased too, but why have you left me so long without a letter? Why do they keep transferring you from boat to boat? Do not write here again as I soon go back to Paris. Now I am called and must go and thank my radiant singers.”
To H. Ferrand.
“Paris, 21st August 1862.—I am just home from Baden, where Beatrice obtained a real triumph.
“I always fly to you, be my news good or evil, I am so sure of your loving interest. Would you had been there! it would have recalled the night of the Childhood of Christ.
“Foes and conspirators stayed in Paris, artists and authors journeyed to Baden to be present; Madame Charton-Demeur was perfect, both as singer and actress.
“But can you believe that my neuralgia was too bad that day for me to take interest in anything? I took my place at the conductor’s desk, before that cosmopolitan audience, to direct an opera of which I had written both words and music, absolutely, deadly impassible. Whereby I conducted better than usual. I was much more nervous at the second performance.
“Benazet, who always does things royally, spent outrageously in every department. He has splendidly inaugurated the new theatre and has created a furore. They want to give Beatrice at the Opera Comique, but there is no one to do the heroine since Madame Charton-Demeur is going to America.