In the Rue des Martyrs one rainy day (Always rain! Truly Paris is not Italy!) I met one of my confrères, a violoncellist in Pasdeloup's orchestra. While we were chatting, he said, "This morning we read a very remarkable Suite d'Orchestra. We wanted to know the author's name, but it wasn't on the orchestral parts."
I jumped up at once. I was greatly excited. Was it my work or that of some one else?
"In this Suite," I asked him with a start, "is there a fugue, a march, and a nocturne?"
"Exactly," he replied.
"Then," I said, "it is mine."
I rushed to the Rue Lafitte and flew up the stairs like a madman to tell my wife and her mother.
Pasdeloup had given me no warning.
On the program for the next day but one, Sunday, I saw my first orchestral suite announced.
How was I to hear what I had written?
I paid for a place in the third balcony and listened, lost in that dense crowd, as it was every Sunday, in that gallery where they even had to stand. Each passage was well received. The last had just ended when a young fellow near me hissed twice. Both times, however, the audience protested and applauded all the more heartily. So the kill-joy did not gain the effect he wanted.