But if my body was lulled to sleep, my mind remained active; it seemed never to stop working. Indeed my ideas seemed to profit from this involuntary rest imposed by Nature to put themselves in order. I heard as in a dream my third act, the Paradise of India, played on the stage of the Opéra. The intangible performance had, as it were, filled my mind. The same phenomenon happened to me on several subsequent occasions. I never would have dared to hope it. That day and those which followed I began to write the rough draft of the instrumental music for that scene in Paradise. Between times I continued to give numerous lessons in Paris, which I found equally oppressive and enervating. I had long since formed the habit of getting up early. My work absorbed me from four o'clock in the morning until midday and lessons took up the six hours of the afternoon. Most of the evenings were given to my pupils' parents. We had music at their homes and we were made much of and entertained. I have been accustomed to working in the morning like this all my life, and I still continue the practice. After spending the winter and spring in Paris we returned to our calm and peaceful family home in Fontainebleau. At the beginning of the summer of 1876 I finished the whole of the orchestral score for _Le Roi de Lahore_ on which I had now spent several years. Finishing a work is to bid good-by to the indescribable pleasure which the labor gives one! I had on my desk eleven hundred pages of orchestral score and my arrangement for the piano, which I had just finished. What would become of this work was the question I asked myself anxiously. Would it ever be played? As a matter of fact it was written for a large stage--that was the danger, the dark spot in the future. During the preceding winter I had become acquainted with that soulful poet Charles Grandmougin. The delightful singer of the Promenades and the impassioned bard of the French Patrie had written a sacred legend in four parts, _La Vierge_, which he intended for me. I have never been able to let my mind lie idle, and I at once started in on Grandmougin's beautiful verses. Why then should bitter discouragement arise? I will tell you later. As a matter of fact I could stand it no longer. I must see Paris again. It seemed to me that I would come back relieved of my weak heartedness which I had undergone without noticing it much. I went to Paris on the twenty-sixth of July intending to bother Hartmann with my troubles by confessing them to him. But I did not find him in. I strolled to the Conservatoire to pass the time. A competition on the violin was in progress. When I got there, they were taking a ten minute rest, and I took advantage of it to pay my respects to my master Ambroise Thomas in the large room just off the jury-room.