| . . . . l'obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles |
| Bientôt avec la nuit.... |
as our great Corneille said.
Need I add that I was unable to resist the desire to go to work immediately and that during the following days I wrote the whole scene for Posthumia in the fourth act? One might say that in this way I worked by chance, as I had not yet distributed the scenes in accord with the necessities of an opera. All the same I had already decided on a title: Roma.
The complete concentration with which I threw myself into this work did not prevent my realizing that in default of Alexandre Parodi who died in 1901, I needed the authority of the heirs. I wrote, but my letter brought no response.
I owed this contretemps to a wrong address. Indeed the widow of the illustrious poet of tragedy told me afterwards that my request never reached its destination.
Parodi! Truly he was the vir probus dicendi peritus of the ancients. What memories I have of our strolls along the Boulevard des Batignolles! How eloquently he narrated the life of the Vestals which he had read in Ovid, their great historian!
I listened eagerly to his colorful talk, so enthusiastic about things of the past. Ah, his outbursts against all that was not elevated in thought, his noble pride in his intentions, dignified and simple in form—how superb, I say, these outbursts were, and how one felt that his soul thrilled in the Beyond! It was as if a flame burned in him searing on his cheeks the signs of his inward tortures.
I admired him and loved him deeply. It seems to me that our work together is not finished, but that some day we shall be able to take it up again in that mysterious realm whither we go but from which none ever returns.
I was entirely led astray by the silence which followed the sending of my letter and I was going to abandon the project of writing Roma, when a master poet came into my life. He offered me five acts—Ariane—for the Opéra, as I have said already.
Five years later, in 1907, my friend Henri Cain asked me if I intended to resume my faithful collaboration with him.