A quarter of an hour later I was in the Via delle Carozze, visiting Menotti Garibaldi to whom I had a letter of introduction from a friend in Paris.
That was no ordinary morning. Indeed it was unusual in view of the personages I had the honor to see: His Holiness the Pope, her Majesty the Queen, and the son of Garibaldi.
I was presented during the day to Prince Massimo of the oldest Roman nobility. When I asked, perhaps indiscreetly but with genuine curiosity nevertheless, whether he were descended from Emperor Maximus, he replied, simply and modestly, "I do not know certainly, but they have been sure of it in my family for eighteen hundred years."
After the theater that evening (a superb success), I went to supper at the house of our ambassador, the Duke de Montebello. At the request of the duchess I began to play the same motifs I had given in the morning before her Majesty the Queen. The duchess smoked, and I remember that I smoked many cigarettes while I played. That gave me the opportunity, as the smoke rose to the ceiling, to contemplate the marvellous paintings of the immortal Carrache, the creator of the famous Farnese Gallery.
Again, what never to be forgotten hours!
I returned to my hotel about three in the morning where the serenade with which they entertained me kept my friend du Locle awake.
Spring passed rapidly on account of my memories of my brilliant winter in Italy. I set to work at Fontainebleau and finished La Vierge. Then my dear wife and I set out for Milan and the Villa d'Este.
By permission of Ad. Braun and Cie., Paris
Titta Ruffo, Caruso and Chaliapine, three artists who sang in Massenet's works
That was a year of enthusiasms, of pure, radiant joy, and its hours of unutterable good fortune left a mark on my career, which was never to be erased.