I listened eagerly to his colorful talk, so enthusiastic about things of the past. Ah, his outbursts against all that was not elevated in thought, his noble pride in his intentions, dignified and simple in form--how superb, I say, these outbursts were, and how one felt that his soul thrilled in the Beyond! It was as if a flame burned in him searing on his cheeks the signs of his inward tortures. I admired him and loved him deeply. It seems to me that our work together is not finished, but that some day we shall be able to take it up again in that mysterious realm whither we go but from which none ever returns. I was entirely led astray by the silence which followed the sending of my letter and I was going to abandon the project of writing _Roma_, when a master poet came into my life. He offered me five acts--_Ariane_--for the Opéra, as I have said already. Five years later, in 1907, my friend Henri Cain asked me if I intended to resume my faithful collaboration with him. As he chatted with me, he remarked that my thoughts were elsewhere and that I was preoccupied with another idea. That was it exactly. I was drawn to confess my adventure with _Roma_. My desire to find in that work the text of my dreams was immediately shared by Henri Cain; forty-eight hours afterwards he brought me the authorization of the heirs. They had signed an agreement which gave me five years in which to write and put on the work. It is an agreeable thing to thank again Mme. Parodi, a woman of unusual and real distinction, and her sons, one of whom holds a high place in the Department of Public Instruction. As I have already said, I found myself in February, 1910, at Monte Carlo for the rehearsals and first performance of _Don Quichotte_. I again lived as before in that apartment in the Hotel du Prince de Galles which has always pleased me so much. I always returned to it with joy. How could it be otherwise? The room in which I worked looked out on the level of the boulevards of the city and I had an incomparable view from my windows. In the foreground were orange, lemon, and olive trees; on the horizon the great rock rising out of the azure waves, and on the rock the old palace modernized by the Prince of Monaco. In this quiet peaceful home--an exceptional thing for a hotel--in spite of the foreign families installed there, I was stirred to work. During my hours of freedom from rehearsals I busied myself in writing an overture for _Roma_. I had brought with me the eight hundred pages of orchestration in finished manuscript. The second month of my stay at Monte Carlo I spent at the Palace of Monaco. I finished the composition there amidst enchantment, in its deeply poetic splendor.