The opera ended in sympathetic applause, whereupon the stage manager came out to announce the names of the authors. Just then a cat walked across the stage. This was the cause of fresh hilarity which was so great that the authors' names went unheard. It was a day of mishaps. Two accidents on the same evening gave grounds for fear that the piece would fail. There was nothing in it, however, and the press showed itself really indulgent. It sheathed its claws in velvet in its appreciation. Théophile Gautier, a great poet and an eminent critic, was kind enough to fling a few of his sparkling bits at the work, proof of his obvious good feeling. _La Grand'Tante_ was played with _La Voyage en Chine_, a great financial success, and I lived fourteen evenings. I was in raptures. I no longer consider only fourteen performances; they scarcely count. The orchestral score (it was not engraved) was lost in the fire at the Opéra-Comique in 1887. It was no great loss to music, but I should be happy to have the evidence of the first steps in my career. At this time I was giving lessons in a family at Versailles, with which I am still in touch. I was caught in a heavy shower on my way there one day. That rain was good to me, verifying the adage, "Every cloud has a silver lining." I waited patiently in the station for the rain to stop, when I saw near me Pasdeloup who was also waiting until the shower was over. He had never spoken to me. The wait at the station and the bad weather were an easy and natural excuse for the conversation we had together. On his asking me whether in my work at Rome I had not written something for the orchestra, I replied that I had a _Suite d'Orchestra_ in five parts (the one I had written in Venice in 1865); he begged me point blank to send it to him. I sent it the same week. I take extreme pleasure in paying homage to Pasdeloup. He not only aided me generously on this occasion, but he was also the creative genius of the first popular concerts which aided so powerfully in making music understood outside the theater. [Illustration: One of the last portraits of Massenet] In the Rue des Martyrs one rainy day (Always rain! Truly Paris is not Italy!) I met one of my confrères, a violoncellist in Pasdeloup's orchestra. While we were chatting, he said, "This morning we read a very remarkable _Suite d'Orchestra_. We wanted to know the author's name, but it wasn't on the orchestral parts." I jumped up at once. I was greatly excited. Was it my work or that of some one else? "In this _Suite_," I asked him with a start, "is there a fugue, a march, and a nocturne?" "Exactly," he replied. "Then," I said, "it is mine." I rushed to the Rue Lafitte and flew up the stairs like a madman to tell my wife and her mother. Pasdeloup had given me no warning. On the program for the next day but one, Sunday, I saw my first orchestral suite announced. How was I to hear what I had written?