Henry Roujon, my confrère at the Institute, was good enough at the banquet the following day, to read the speech I would have delivered myself had I not been obliged to stay in bed.
To be read by Henri Roujon is both honor and success.
Saint-Saëns was also invited to the fêtes and he too stayed in the palace. He lavished the most affectionate care on me constantly. The Prince himself deigned to visit me in my sick room and both told me of the success of the performance and of our Thérèse, Lucy Arbell.
The doctor had left me quieter in the evening and he too opened my door about midnight. He doubtless did so to see how I was, but he also told me of the fine performance. He knew it would be balm of certain efficacy for me.
Here is a detail which gave me great satisfaction.
They had given Le Vieil Aigle by Raoul Gunsbourg in which Mme. Marguerite Carré, the wife of the manager of the Opéra-Comique, was highly applauded. Albert Carré had been present at the performance and he met one of his friends from Paris and told him that he was going to put on Thérèse at the Opéra-Comique with its dramatic creatrix.
As a matter of fact four years after the première at Monte Carlo and after many other houses had performed the work, the first performance of Thérèse was given at the Opéra-Comique on May 28, 1911. L'Echo de Paris was so kind as to publish for the occasion a wonderfully got up supplement.
As I write these lines, I read that the second act of Thérèse is a part of that rare program of the fête offered to me at the Opéra on Sunday, December 10, 1911, by the organizers of the pious French popular charity, "Trente Ans de Théâtre," the useful creation of my friend, Adrian Bernheim, whose mind is as generous as his soul is great and good.
A dear friend said to me recently, "If you wrote Le Jongleur de Notre Dame with faith, you wrote Thérèse with all your heart."
Nothing could be said more simply, and nothing could touch me more.