The following year Gounod presented himself again at the _Opéra_. For a long time past he had felt the desire to attempt one of the Corneille’s masterpieces, and he had formed the plan of setting “Polyeucte” to music, and transforming it into a lyric drama. It was a subject half religious, half profane, which seemed peculiarly suited to his intellectual temperament. He charged his friend, Jules Barbier, with fashioning a libretto from Corneille’s celebrated tragedy, which the latter followed step by step, even preserving some of the great poet’s verses, and he wrote the music of this new “Polyeucte,” which was performed at the _Opéra_, Oct. 7, 1878. But it was said that the author of “Faust” and “Roméo,” both so successful at the _Opéra_, after having been born and bred elsewhere, could never succeed at that theatre with a work written expressly for it. “Polyeucte,” indeed, was not well received, and scarcely deserved to be, and its career ended with a series of twenty-nine performances. The composer was not much more fortunate with “Le Tribut de Zamora,” another work which he gave to the _Opéra_, April 1, 1881. This work, however, had been staged with great splendor and magnificence, the costumes and decorations were very rich and elaborate, and what was still more important, the two principal rôles were taken by artists of the first rank, M. Lassalle and Mme. Gabrielle Krauss, the latter especially being very fine in the character of Xaïma. But nothing could counteract the insipidity and insignificance of the work, and notwithstanding the luxury brought to its support, notwithstanding the incontestable talent of its interpreters, “Le Tribut de Zamora” scarcely lived through fifty performances. This was the last dramatic effort of Charles Gounod, who seems to-day to have finally given up the theatre, and whose health has been steadily declining for a number of years.