The next morning the papers announced the declaration of war between France and Germany and I never saw Michel Carré again. He died some months after this touching meeting which seemed so decisive to me.
Good-by to my fine plans for Weimar, my hopes at the Opéra, and my own hopes too. War, with all its alarms and horrors, had come to drench the soil of France with blood.
I went.
I will not take up my recollections again until after that utterly terrible year. I do not want to make such cruel hours live again; I want to spare my readers their mournful tale.
CHAPTER IX
THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR
The Commune had just gasped its last breath when we found ourselves again at the family abode in Fontainebleau.
Paris breathed once more after a long period of trouble and agony; gradually calm returned. As if the lesson of that bloody time would never fade away and as if its memory would be perpetual, bits of burnt paper were brought into our garden from time to time on the wings of the wind. I kept one piece. It bore traces of figures and probably came from the burning of the Ministry of Finance.
As soon as I saw again my dear little room in the country, I found courage to work and in the peace of the great trees which spread over us with their sweetly peaceful branches I wrote the Scénes Pittoresques.
I dedicated them to my good friend Paladilhe, author of Patrie, later my confrère at the Institute.
As I had undergone all kinds of privation for so many months, the life I was now living seemed to me most exquisite; it brought back my good humor and gave me a calm and serene mind.