Cholera was raging in Paris. I fell ill and the neighbors were afraid to come and see how I was. However, Ambroise Thomas learned of my dangerous illness and my helpless distress and visited me in my room accompanied by his doctor, the Emperor's physician. This brave and fatherly act on the part of my beloved master affected me so much that I fainted in bed. I must add that this illness was only fleeting and that I finished ten pieces for the piano for which Girod, the publisher, paid me two hundred francs. A louis a page! To that benevolent publisher I owed the first money I made from music. * * * * * The health of Paris improved. On the eighth of October I was married in the little old church in the village of Avon near Fontainebleau. My wife's brother and my new cousin, the eminent violinist Armingaud, the founder of the famous quartet, were my witnesses. However, there were others too. A flock of sparrows came in through a broken window and out-chirped one another so that we could scarcely hear the words of the good curé. His words were a kindly homage to my new companion and encouragement for my still uncertain future. After the wedding ceremony we walked in the beautiful forest of Fontainebleau, where I seemed to hear, in the midst of the magnificence of nature, verdant and purple in the warm rays of the bright sun, caressed by the songs of the birds, the words of that great poet Alfred de Musset: "_Aime et tu renaîtrais; fais-toi fleur pour éclore._" We left Avon to pass a week at the seashore, in a charming solitude _à deux_, often the most enviable solitude. While I was there, I corrected the proofs of the _Poème d'Avril_ and the ten piano pieces. To correct proofs! To see my music in print! Had my career as a composer really begun? CHAPTER VIII MY DÉBUT AT THE THEATER On my return to Paris I lived with my wife's family in a lovely apartment whose brightness was calculated to delight the eye and charm the thoughts. Ambroise Thomas sent me word that at his request the directors of the Opéra-Comique, Ritt and de Lewen, wanted to entrust to me a one-act work. This was _La Gran'Tante_, an opéra-comique by Jules Adenis and Charles Grandvallet. This was bewildering good fortune and I was almost overcome by it. To-day I regret that at that time I was unable to put into the work all of myself that I might have wished. The preliminary rehearsals began the next year. How proud I was when I received my first notices of rehearsals and when I sat in the same place on the famous stage which had known Boïeldieu, Herold, M. Auber, Ambroise Thomas, Victor Massé, Gounod, Meyerbeer!... I was about to learn an author's trials. But I was so happy in doing so! A first work is the first cross of honor. A first love. I had everything except the cross.