As I am obliged to go to my country place to-day, I shall, perhaps, not have the pleasure of seeing you before your departure. In the uncertainty I cannot postpone telling you, my dear friend, how pleased I was last evening and how happy I was at your fine success. It is at once a serious, noble work, full of feeling. It is of _our times_, but you have proved that one can walk the path of progress and still remain clear, sober, and restrained. You have known how to move, because you have been moved yourself. I was carried away like everyone else, indeed more than anyone else. You have expressed happily the lovely poetry of that sublime drama. In a mystical subject where one is tempted to fall into an abuse of somber tones and severity of style, you have shown yourself a colorist while retaining charm and clearness. Be content; your work will be heard again and will endure. Au revoir; with all my heart I congratulate you. My affectionate congratulations to Madame Massenet. AMBROISE THOMAS. I read and re-read this dear letter. I could not get it out of my thoughts so agreeable and precious was the comfort it brought me. [Illustration: Mme. Pauline Viardot] I was lost in such delightful revery when, as we were taking the steamer for Capri, I saw a breathless hotel servant running towards me with a package of letters in his hands. They were from my friends in Paris who were delighted with my success and who were determined to express their joy to me. A copy of the _Journal des Debats_ was enclosed. It came from Ernest Reyer and contained over his signature an article which was most eulogistic of my work, one of the most moving I have ever received. I had now returned to see this charming and intoxicating country. I visited Naples and Capri, then Sorrento, all picturesque places captivatingly beautiful, perfumed with the scent of orange trees, and all this on the morrow of a never to be forgotten evening. I lived in the most unutterable raptures. A week later we were in Rome. We had scarcely reached the Hôtel de la Minerve when there arrived a gracious invitation to lunch from the director of the Académie de France, a member of the Institute, the illustrious painter Ernest Hébert. Several students were invited to this occasion. We breathed the warm air of that wholly lovely day through the open windows of the director's salon where De Troy's magnificent tapestries representing the story of Esther were hung. After lunch Hébert asked me to let him hear some of the passages from _Marie Magdeleine_. Flattering accounts of it had come to him from Paris.