"But I am going back to Brussels to-morrow morning."
"This evening, then," I retorted. "I shall expect you at eight o'clock in Hartmann's shop. It will be closed by that time ... we shall be alone."
I hurried to Hartmann's, radiant, and told him, laughing and crying, what had happened to me.
A piano was brought immediately, and Paul Milliet was hurriedly informed.
Alphonse de Rothschild, my colleague at the Académie des Beaux Arts, knew that I had to go to Brussels very often for the rehearsals of Hérodiade. They were about to begin at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, and he wanted me to avoid delays at the stations so he gave me a pass.
They became so accustomed to seeing me cross the frontier at Feignies and Quevy that I became a real friend of the customs' officers, especially of those on the Belgian side. I remember that to thank them for their kind attentions I sent them seats for the Théâtre de la Monnaie.
A real ceremony took place at the Théâtre Royal in the month of October of this same year 1881. As a matter of fact Hérodiade was the first French work to be created on the superb stage of the capital of Belgium.
On the appointed day, my two excellent directors, Stoumon and Calabrési, went with me as far as the great public foyer. It was a vast place with gilt paneling and was lighted from the colonnaded peristyle of the theater on the Place de la Monnaie. On the other side of the Place (a relic of old Brussels) was the Mint and, in a corner, the Stock Exchange. These buildings have since disappeared and have been replaced by a magnificent Post Office. The Exchange has been moved to a magnificent palace a short ways away.
In the middle of the foyer to which I was taken was a grand piano about which there were twenty chairs arranged in a semi-circle. Besides the directors, there were my publisher and my collaborator, as well as the artists we had selected to create the parts. At the head of these artists was Martha Duvivier, whose talent, fame, and beauty fitted her for the rôle of Salome; Mlle. Blanche Deschamps, later the wife of the famous orchestra leader Leon Jehin, had the rôle of Hérodiade; Vernet, Jean; Manoury, Herod; the elder Gresse, Phanuel. I went to the piano, turned my back towards the windows, and sang all the rôles including the choruses.
I was young, eager, happy, and, I add to my shame, very greedy. But if I accuse myself, it is to excuse myself—for leaving the piano so often to get a bite at a table laden with exquisite food spread out on a plentiful buffet in the same foyer. Every time I got up, the artists stopped me as if to say, "Have pity.... Keep on.... Continue.... Don't stop again." I ate almost all the food which had been prepared for us all. The artists were so much pleased that they thought more of embracing me than of eating. Why should I complain?