The life which had now begun for me transplanted my summers of work in the midst of quiet and peaceful solitude—those summers which I had passed so happily far from the noise and tumult of the city. If books have their destiny as the poet says (habent sua fata libelli), does not each one of us follow a destiny which is just as certain and irrevocable? One cannot swim against the stream. It is easy to swim with it, especially if it carries one to a longed for shore.
I gave my course at the Conservatoire twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays at half past one.
I confess that I was both proud and happy to sit in that chair, in the same classroom where as a child I had received the advice and lessons of my master. I looked upon my pupils as other or as new children—grandchildren rather—who received the teaching which had come to me and which seemed to filter through the memories of the master who had imbued me with it.
The young people with whom I had to do seemed nearly my own age, and I said to them by way of encouraging them and urging them on to work: "You have but one companion the more, who tries to be as good a pupil as you are yourselves."
It was touching to see the deferential affection which they showed me from the first day. I was completely happy when I surprised them sometimes chatting and telling their impressions of the work given the day before or to be given to-morrow. At the beginning of my professorship that work was Le Roi de Lahore.
Thus I continued for eighteen years to be both friend and "patron," as they called me, of a considerable number of young composers.
Since I took such joy in it, I may perhaps recall the successes they won each year in the contests in fugue, and how useful this teaching was to me, for it obliged me to be very clever, face to face with a task, in finding quickly what should be done in accordance with the rigorous precepts of Cherubini.
How delighted I was for eighteen years when nearly annually the Grand Prix de Rome was awarded to a pupil in my class! I longed to go to the Conservatoire and heap the honors on my master.
I can still see, at evening in his peaceful salon with the windows overlooking the Conservatoire's courtyard—deserted at that hour—the good Administrator-General Émile Réty listening to me as I told him of my happiness in having assisted in the success of "my children."
A few years ago I received a touching expression of their feeling toward me.