When one of the surviving Gallifet emigrés returned to Paris in 1798, his first thought was to go and see the family home. He was greatly surprised when the faithful servant whose vigorous speech had prevented its destruction received him and said, falling at his master's feet, "Monseigneur, I have taken care of your property. I give it back to you."
The text of Thérèse was foretold. That revelation was its presentiment.
I had the first vision of the music of the work at Brussels in the Bois de la Cambre in November of that year.
It was a beautiful afternoon under a dim autumnal sun. One knew that the beneficent sap was slowly running down in the beautiful trees. The gay green foliage which had crowned their tops had disappeared. One by one at the caprice of the wind the leaves fell, dried up, reddened and yellowed by the cold, taking in the gold, irony of Nature! its very brilliance, and shadings and most varied tints.
Nothing resembled less the poor sorry trees of our Bois de Boulogne. In the mighty spread of their branches those magnificent trees remind one of those which are so much admired in the parks at Windsor and Richmond. I walked on the dead leaves, scuffling them with my feet. Their rustling pleased me and were a delightful accompaniment to my thoughts.
I was closer to the heart of my work, "in the bowels of the subject," for among the four or five people with me was the future heroine of Thérèse.
I searched everywhere, greedily, for all that had to do with the horrible period of the Terror, in all the engravings which would give me the sinister dark story of that epoch, in order to make the scenes in the second act as true as possible, and I confess that I like it.
I returned to Paris to my room Rue de Vaugirard, and wrote the music of Thérèse during the winter and spring (I finished it in the summer at the seashore).
I remember that one morning the work on one situation demanded the immediate assistance of my collaborator, Jules Claretie, and that it unnerved me a good deal. I decided forthwith to write to the Minister of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones and ask him to grant me an almost impossible thing: to place a telephone in my room before four o'clock.
Naturally the tone of my letter reflected that of a deferential petition.