Which brings to mind the fidelity with which the Lionnet brothers attended burials. Was it sympathy for the departed or ambition to see their names among those distinguished persons mentioned as having been present? We shall never know. One day in a funeral procession Victorien Sardou heard one of the Lionnets say to one of his neighbors, with a broken-hearted air, while giving the sad news about a friend's health, "Well, it will be his turn soon." These words aroused Sardou's attention, and he exclaimed, pointing to the brothers, "They not only go to all the burials; they announce them!" CHAPTER XXVIII DEAR EMOTIONS During the summer of 1902 I left Paris and went to my home in Égreville. Among the books and pamphlets I took with me was _Rome Vaincue_ by Alexandre Parodi. That magnificent tragedy had had a never to be forgotten success when it was played on the stage of the Comédie-Française in 1876. Sarah Bernhardt and Mounet-Sully, then in their youth, were the protagonists in the two most impressive acts of the work; Sarah Bernhardt incarnated the blind grandmother, Posthumia, and Mounet-Sully interpreted the Gallic slave Vestapor. Sarah in all the flower of her radiant beauty had demanded the rôle of the old woman, so true is it that the real artiste does not think of herself, but knows when it is necessary to abstract from self, to sacrifice her charms, her grace and the light of her allurements to the higher exigencies of art. The same remark could be applied at the Opéra thirty years later. I remember those tall bay windows through which the sunshine came into my great room at Égreville. After dinner I read the engaging brochure, _Rome Vaincue_, until the last beams of daylight. I could not get away from it I became so enthusiastic. My reading was stopped only by ... l'obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles Bientôt avec la nuit.... as our great Corneille said. Need I add that I was unable to resist the desire to go to work immediately and that during the following days I wrote the whole scene for Posthumia in the fourth act? One might say that in this way I worked by chance, as I had not yet distributed the scenes in accord with the necessities of an opera. All the same I had already decided on a title: _Roma_. The complete concentration with which I threw myself into this work did not prevent my realizing that in default of Alexandre Parodi who died in 1901, I needed the authority of the heirs. I wrote, but my letter brought no response. I owed this contretemps to a wrong address. Indeed the widow of the illustrious poet of tragedy told me afterwards that my request never reached its destination. Parodi! Truly he was the _vir probus dicendi peritus_ of the ancients. What memories I have of our strolls along the Boulevard des Batignolles! How eloquently he narrated the life of the Vestals which he had read in Ovid, their great historian!