Hérodiade, which made its first appearance on the stage of the Monnaie December 19, 1881, under the exceptionally brilliant circumstances just quoted from the newspapers of Belgium as well as of other countries, reappeared at this theater, after many revivals, during the first fortnight of November, 1911—nearly thirty years later. Hérodiade long ago passed its hundredth performance at Brussels.
And I was already thinking of a new work.
CHAPTER XV
THE ABBE PREVOST AT THE OPÉRA-COMIQUE
One autumn morning in 1881 I was much disturbed, even anxious. Carvalho, the director of the Opéra-Comique, had entrusted to me the three acts of Phoebé by Henri Meilhac. I had read and re-read them, but nothing in them appealed to me; I clashed with the work which I had to do; I was nervous and impatient.
With fine bravery I went to see Meilhac. The happy author of so many delightful works, of so many successes, was in his library, among his rare books in marvellous bindings, a fortune piled up in his rooms on the mezzanine floor in which he lived at 30 Rue Drouot.
I can still see him writing on a small round table beside a large table of the purest Louis XIV style. He had hardly seen me than he smiled his good smile, as if pleased, in the belief that I brought news of our Phoebé.
"Is it finished?" he asked.
I retorted illico to this greeting, in a less assured tone:
"Yes, it is finished; we will never speak of it again."
A lion in his cage could not have been more abashed. My perplexity was extreme; I saw a void, nothingness, about me, when the title of a work struck me as a revelation.