Some years later Léon Carvalho again became the manager at the Opéra-Comique. M. Paravey's privilege had expired.
I recall this card from Carvalho the day after he left in 1887. He had erased his title of "directeur." It expressed perfectly his sorrowful resignation:
"My dear Master,
"I scratch out the title, but I retain the memory of my great artistic joys where Manon holds a first place....
"What a fine diamond!
"LEON CARVALHO."
His first thought was to revive Manon which had disappeared from the bills since the fire of mournful memory. This revival was in October, 1892.
Sibyl Sanderson, as I have said, had been engaged for a year at the Théâtre de la Monnaie at Brussels. She played Esclarmonde and Manon. Carvalho took her from the Monnaie to revive Manon in Paris. The work has never left the bills since and, as I write it, has reached its 763rd performance.
At the beginning of the same year Werther was given at Vienna as well as a ballet: Le Carillon. The applauded collaborators were our Des Grieux and our German Werther: Ernest Van Dyck and de Roddaz.
It was on my return from another visit to Vienna that my faithful and precious collaborator Louis Gallet paid me a visit one day at Le Ménestrel. My publishers had arranged a superb study where I could rehearse my artists from Paris and elsewhere in their parts. Louis Gallet and Heugel proposed to me a work on Anatole France's admirable romance Thaïs.