So off we went, the two—master and servant—hot foot after me round the tables. We knocked over desks and stools in our headlong flight, to the amazement of the quiet onlookers, but I dodged them successfully, crying mockingly as I reached the door:
“You shan’t have either me or my name, and I shall soon be back here studying Gluck.”
That was my first meeting with Cherubini, and I rather wondered whether he would remember it when I met him next in a less irregular manner. It is odd that, twelve years later, in spite of him, I should have been appointed first curator, then librarian of that very library. As for Hotin, he is now my devoted slave and a rabid admirer of my music. I have many other Cherubini stories to tell. Any way, if he chastised me with whips, I certainly returned the compliment with scorpions.
VI
MY FATHER’S DECISION
The hostility of my people had somewhat died down, thanks to the success of my mass, but, naturally another reverse started it with renewed fury.
In the 1826 preliminary examination of candidates for admission to the Institute I was hopelessly plucked. Of course my father heard of it, and promptly wrote that, if I persisted in staying on in Paris, my allowance would stop.
My dear master kindly wrote asking him to reconsider his letter, saying that my eventual success was certain, since I oozed music at every pore. But, by ill luck, he brought in religious arguments—about the worst thing he could have done with my free-thinking father, whose blunt—almost rude—answer could not but wound Lesueur on his most susceptible side. From the beginning:
“Monsieur, I am an atheist,” the rest may be guessed. The forlorn hope of gaining my end by personal pleading sent me back to La Côte, where I was received frostily and left to my own reflections for some days, during which I wrote to Ferrand:
“No sooner away from the capital than I want to talk to you. My journey was tiresome as far as Tarare, where I began a conversation with two young men, whom I had, so far, avoided, thinking they looked dilettanti. They told me they were artists, pupils of Guérin and Gros, so I told them I was a pupil of Lesueur. They said all sorts of nice things of him, and one of them began humming a chorus from the Danaïdes.
“The Danaïdes!” I cried, “then you are not a mere trifler?”