At that time I wrote my beloved master Ambroise Thomas as follows: "Last Sunday Bourgault got up an entertainment to which he invited twenty Transtévérins and Transtévérines--plus six musicians, also from the Transtérvère. All in costume! "The weather was fine and the scene was simply wonderful when we were in the 'Bosco,' my sacred grove. The setting sun lighted up the old walls of ancient Rome. The entertainment ended in Falguière's studio, lighted _a giorno_, our doing. There the dance became so captivating and intoxicating that we finished vis-à-vis to the Transtévérines in the final _salturrele_. They all smoked, ate, and drank--the women especially liked our punch." One of the greatest and most thrilling periods of my life was now at hand. It was Christmas Eve. We arranged an outing so that we might follow the midnight masses in the churches. The night ceremonies at Sainte Marie Majeure and at Saint Jean de Latran impressed me most. Shepherds with their flocks, cows, goats, sheep and pigs were in the public square, as if to receive the benediction of the Savior, recalling in this way His birth in a manger. The touching simplicity of these beliefs really affected me and I entered Sainte Marie Majeure accompanied by a lovely goat which I embraced and which did not want to leave me. This in no way astonished any of the crowd of men and women packed in that church, kneeling on those beautiful Mosaic pavements, between a double row of columns--relics taken from the ancient temples. The next day--a day to be marked with a cross--on the staircase with its three hundred steps which leads to the church of Ara Coeli, I passed two women, obviously fashionable foreigners. I was especially charmed by the appearance of the younger. Several days later I was at Liszt's who was preparing for his ordination, and I recognized among the famous master's visitors the two women whom I had seen at Ara Coeli. I learned almost at once that the younger had come to Rome with her family on a sightseeing trip and that she had been recommended to Liszt so that he might select for her a musician capable of directing her studies. She did not want to interrupt them while she was away from Paris. Liszt at once proposed me. I was a pensionnaire at the Académie de France and was supposed to work there, so that I did not want to devote my time to lessons. The young girl's charm, however, overcame my reluctance.