“Monsieur,—If I had twelve thousand francs you should have them. Neither have I any influence with the ministers. I am indeed sorry for your difficulties, for I love art and artists. However, it is through trial that success comes, and the day of triumph is a thorough compensation for past sufferings. With most sincere regret,
“Châteaubriand.”
Thus I was completely disheartened, and had no plausible answer to make when my parents wrote threatening to stop the modest sum that alone made life in Paris possible.
Fortunately I met, at the opera, a young and clever music-lover, Augustin de Pons, belonging to a Faubourg St Germain family, who, stamping with impotent rage, had witnessed my disaster at St Roch. He was fairly well off then, but, in defiance of his mother, he later on married a second-rate singer, who left him after long wanderings through France and Italy.
Entirely ruined he returned to Paris to vegetate by giving singing lessons. I was able to be of some use to him when I was on the staff of the Journal des Débats, and I greatly wish I could have done more, for his generous and unasked help was the turning-point of my career, and I shall never forget it.
Even last year he found life very hard; I tremble to think what may have become of him since the February revolution took away his pupils.
Seeing me one day in the foyer, he shouted:
“I say, what about your mass? When shall we have another go at it?”
“It is done,” I answered, “but what chance have I of getting it performed?”
“Chance? Why, confound it all, you have only got to pay the performers. How much do you want? Twelve or fifteen hundred francs? Two thousand?”