I must rush out and work off this horror in the fresh air.
Lesueur, seeing how well I got on, thought it best for me to become a regular Conservatoire student and, with the consent of Cherubini, the director, I was enrolled.
It was a mercy I had not to appear before the formidable author of Medea, for the year before I had put him into one of his white rages by thwarting him.
Now the Conservatoire had not been run on precisely Puritanic lines, so, when Cherubini succeeded Perne as director, he thought proper to begin by making all sorts of vexatious rules. For instance, men must use only the door into the Faubourg Poissonière and women that into the Rue Bergère—which were at opposite ends of the building.
One day, knowing nothing of the new rule, I went in by the feminine door, but was stopped by a porter in the middle of the courtyard and told to go back and all round the streets to the masculine door. I told the man I would be hanged if I did, and calmly marched on.
I had been buried in Alcestis for a quarter of an hour, when in burst Cherubini, looking more wicked and cadaverous and dishevelled even than usual. With my enemy, the porter, at his heels, he jerked round the tables, narrowly eyeing each student, and coming at last to a dead stop in front of me.
“That’s him,” said the porter.
Cherubini was so furious that, for a time, he could not speak, and, when he did, his Italian accent made the whole thing more comical than ever—if possible.
“Eh! Eh! Eh!” he stuttered, “so it is you vill come by ze door I vill not ’ave you?”
“Monsieur, I did not know of the new rule; next time——”