The next day the Villa's students invited me in their turn. It was with the keenest emotion that I found myself once more in that dining room with its arched ceiling, where my portrait was hung beside those of the other Grand Prixs. After lunch I saw in a studio opening into the garden the "Gloria Victis," the splendid masterpiece which was destined to make the name of Mercié immortal. I must confess in speaking of _Marie Magdeleine_ that I had a presentiment that the work would in the end gain honors on the stage. However I had to wait twenty years before I had that pleasant satisfaction. It verified the opinion I had formed of that sacred drama. M. Saugey, the able director of the Opéra at Nice, was the first to have the audacity to try it and he could not but congratulate himself. On my part I tender him my sincere thanks. Our first _Marie Magdeleine_ on the stage was Lina Pacary. That born artist, in voice, beauty and talent was fitted for the creation of this part, and when the same theater later put on _Ariane_, Lina Pacary was again selected as the interpreter. Her uninterrupted success made her theatrical life really admirable. The year following my dear friend and director Albert Carré put the work on at the Opéra-Comique. It was my good fortune to have as my interpreters Mme. Marguerite Carré, Mme. Aïno Ackté, and Salignac. So I lived again in Rome in the most pleasant thoughts of _Marie Magdeleine_. Naturally it was the topic of conversation on the ideal walks I took with Hébert in the Roman Campagna. Hébert was not only a great painter but also a distinguished poet and musician. In the latter capacity he played in a quartet which was often heard at the Académie. Ingres, also a director of the Académie, played the violin. Delacroix was asked one day what he thought of Ingres's violin playing. "He plays like Raphael," was the amusing answer of this brilliant colorist. So delightful was our stay in Rome that it was with regret that we left that city so dear to our memories and went back to Paris. I had hardly got back to No. 46 Rue du General Foy--where I lived for thirty years--than I became absorbed in a libretto by Jules Adenis--_Les Templiers_. I had hardly written two acts when I began to worry about it. The piece was extremely interesting, but its historical situations took me along the road already travelled by Meyerbeer. Hartmann agreed with me; indeed my publisher was so outspoken about it that I tore into bits the two hundred pages which I had submitted to him. In deep trouble, hardly knowing where I was going, I happened to think of calling on Louis Gallet, my collaborator in _Marie Magdeleine_. I came from this interview with him with the plan of _Le Roi de Lahore_. From the funeral pyre of the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jean Jacques de Molay, whom I had given up, I found myself in the Paradise of India. It was the seventh heaven of bliss for me.