This meant another metamorphosis for the work and new and considerable work for the musician. And this work was by no means easy. Until this time Barbier and Carre had been as close friends as Orestes and Pylades, but now they had a falling out. What one proposed, the other systematically refused. One lived in Paris; the other in the country. I went from Paris to the country and from the country to Paris trying to get these warring brothers to agree. This going to and fro lasted all summer, and then the temporary enemies came to an understanding and became as friendly as ever. We seemed to be nearly at the end of our troubles. Du Locle had found a wonderful dancer in Italy on whom we depended, but the dancer turned out not to be one at all. She was a _mime_, and did not dance. As there was no time to look for another dancer that season du Locle, to keep me patient, had me write with Louis Gallet _La Princesse Jaune_, with which I made my debut on the stage. I was thirty-five! This harmless little work was received with the fiercest hostility. "It is impossible to tell," wrote Jouvin, a much feared critic of the time, "in what key or in what time the overture is written." And to show me how utterly wrong I was, he told me that the public was "a compound of angles and shadows." His prose was certainly more obscure than my music. Finally, a real dancer was engaged in Italy. It seemed as though nothing more could prevent the appearance of the unfortunate _Timbre_. "I can't believe it," I said. "Some catastrophe will put us off again." War came! When that frightful crisis was at an end, the dancer was re-engaged. The parts were read to the artists, and the next day Amede Achard threw up his role, declaring that it belonged to grand opera and was beyond the powers of an opera-comique tenor. It is well known that he ended his career at the Opera. Another tenor had to be found, but tenors are rare birds and we were unable to get one. To use the dancer he had engaged du Locle had Gallet and Guiraud improvise a short act, _Le Kobold_, which met with great success. The dancer was exquisite. Then du Locle lost interest in _Le Timbre d'Argent_ and then came the failure of the Opera-Comique. During all these tribulations I was preparing _Samson_, although I could find no one who even wanted to hear me speak of it. They all thought that I must be mad to attempt a Biblical subject. I gave a hearing of the second act at my house, but no one understood it at all. Without the aid of Liszt, who did not know a note of it, but who engaged me to finish it and put it on at Weimar, _Samson_. would never have seen the light. Afterwards it was refused in succession by Halanzier, Vaucorbeil, and Ritt and Gailhard, who decided to take it only after they had heard it sung by that admirable singer Rosine Bloch.