I worked on this during the summer and winter of 1869 and during the spring of 1870. On the twelfth of July of that year the work had been done for several days, and Michel Carré made an appointment to meet me at the Opéra. He intended to tell the director, Emile Perrin, that he must put the work on and that it would pay him to do so. Emile Perrin was not there. I left Michel Carré, who embraced me heartily and said, "Au revoir. On the stage of the Opéra." I went to Fontainebleau where I was living, that same evening. I was going to be happy.... But the future was too lovely! The next morning the papers announced the declaration of war between France and Germany and I never saw Michel Carré again. He died some months after this touching meeting which seemed so decisive to me. Good-by to my fine plans for Weimar, my hopes at the Opéra, and my own hopes too. War, with all its alarms and horrors, had come to drench the soil of France with blood. I went. * * * * * I will not take up my recollections again until after that utterly terrible year. I do not want to make such cruel hours live again; I want to spare my readers their mournful tale. CHAPTER IX THE DAYS AFTER THE WAR The Commune had just gasped its last breath when we found ourselves again at the family abode in Fontainebleau. Paris breathed once more after a long period of trouble and agony; gradually calm returned. As if the lesson of that bloody time would never fade away and as if its memory would be perpetual, bits of burnt paper were brought into our garden from time to time on the wings of the wind. I kept one piece. It bore traces of figures and probably came from the burning of the Ministry of Finance. As soon as I saw again my dear little room in the country, I found courage to work and in the peace of the great trees which spread over us with their sweetly peaceful branches I wrote the _Scénes Pittoresques_. I dedicated them to my good friend Paladilhe, author of _Patrie_, later my confrère at the Institute. As I had undergone all kinds of privation for so many months, the life I was now living seemed to me most exquisite; it brought back my good humor and gave me a calm and serene mind. On this account I was able to write my second orchestral suite which was played some years later at the Chatelet concerts. But I went back to Paris before long, for I wanted to see, as soon as possible, the great city which had been so sorely tried. I had hardly got back when I met Emile Bergerat, the bright and delightful poet, who later became Théophile Gautier's son-in-law. How dear a name in French letters is that of Théophile Gautier! What glory he heaped on them--that illustrious Benvenuto of style as they called him! Bergerat took me with him one day to visit his future father-in-law.