After the wedding ceremony we walked in the beautiful forest of Fontainebleau, where I seemed to hear, in the midst of the magnificence of nature, verdant and purple in the warm rays of the bright sun, caressed by the songs of the birds, the words of that great poet Alfred de Musset:
"Aime et tu renaîtrais; fais-toi fleur pour éclore."
We left Avon to pass a week at the seashore, in a charming solitude à deux, often the most enviable solitude. While I was there, I corrected the proofs of the Poème d'Avril and the ten piano pieces.
To correct proofs! To see my music in print! Had my career as a composer really begun?
CHAPTER VIII
MY DÉBUT AT THE THEATER
On my return to Paris I lived with my wife's family in a lovely apartment whose brightness was calculated to delight the eye and charm the thoughts. Ambroise Thomas sent me word that at his request the directors of the Opéra-Comique, Ritt and de Lewen, wanted to entrust to me a one-act work. This was La Gran'Tante, an opéra-comique by Jules Adenis and Charles Grandvallet.
This was bewildering good fortune and I was almost overcome by it. To-day I regret that at that time I was unable to put into the work all of myself that I might have wished. The preliminary rehearsals began the next year. How proud I was when I received my first notices of rehearsals and when I sat in the same place on the famous stage which had known Boïeldieu, Herold, M. Auber, Ambroise Thomas, Victor Massé, Gounod, Meyerbeer!...
I was about to learn an author's trials. But I was so happy in doing so!
A first work is the first cross of honor. A first love.
I had everything except the cross.