Alas for youthful illusions!
This great artist—author of the Death of Abel, on which I had written him heaven only knows what nonsense some months before—received me most rudely.
“My good friend” (he did not know me in the least), he said shortly, turning his back on me, “we can’t try new things at sacred concerts—no time to work at them. Lesueur knows that perfectly well.”
With a swelling heart I went away.
The following Sunday Lesueur had it out with him in the Chapel Royal, where he was first violin. Turning on my master in a temper, he said:
“Confound it all! If we let in all these young folks, what is to become of us?”
He was at least plain spoken!
Winter came on apace. In working at my opera I had rather neglected my pupils, and my Pont Neuf dining-room, growing cold and damp, was no longer suitable for my feasts of Lucullus.
How should I get warm clothes and firewood? Hardly from my lessons at a franc a piece, since they might stop any day.
Should I write to my father and acknowledge myself beaten, or die of hunger in Paris? Go back to La Côte to vegetate? Never. The mere idea filled me with maddening energy, and I resolved to go abroad to join some orchestra in New York or Mexico, to turn sailor, buccaneer, savage, anything, rather than give in.