The final decision was made the next day in the hall used for the regular sittings of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. My interpreters were Mme. Van den Heuvel-Duprez, Roger and Bonnehée, all three from the Opéra. With such artists I had to triumph. And that is what happened! I went in first--there were six competitors--and as at that time one could not listen to the work of the other candidates--I went wandering haphazard down to the Rue Mazarine ... on the Pont des Arts ... and, finally, in the square court of the Louvre where I sat down on one of the iron seats. I heard five o'clock strike. I was very anxious. "All must be over by now," I said to myself. I had guessed right, for suddenly I saw under the arch three people chatting together and recognized Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas and Monsieur Auber. Flight was impossible. They were in front of me almost as if they barred my escape. Ambroise Thomas, my beloved master, came towards me and said, "Embrace Berlioz, you owe him a great deal for your prize." "The _prize_," I cried, bewildered, my face shining with joy. "I have the prize!!!" I was deeply moved and I embraced Berlioz, then my master, and finally Monsieur Auber. Monsieur Auber comforted me. Did I need comforting? Then he said to Berlioz pointing to me, "He'll go far, the young rascal, when he's had _less_ experience!" CHAPTER IV THE VILLA MEDICI The winners of the Grand Prix de Rome for 1863 in painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving, were Layraud and Monchablon, Bourgeois, Brune and Chaplain. Custom decreed--it still does--that we should all go to the Villa Medici together and should visit Italy. What a changed and ideal life mine now was! The Minister of Finance sent me six hundred francs and a passport in the name of Napoleon III, signed by Drouyns de Luys, Minister of Foreign Affairs. I then met my new companions and we went to pay the formal calls on the members of the Institute before our departure for the Académie de France at Rome. On the day after Christmas, in three open carriages, we started to pay our official calls which took us into every quarter of Paris where our patrons lived. The three carriages, crowded with young men, real _rapins_, I had almost said gamins, mad with success and intoxicated by thoughts of the future, made a veritable scandal in the streets. Nearly all the gentlemen of the Institute sent out word that they were not at home--to avoid making a speech. M. Hirtoff, the famous architect, who lived in the Rue Lamartine, put on less airs and shouted out to his servant from his bedroom, "Tell them I'm not in."