As that place, then so delightfully alive, is to-day a desert which has been abandoned for other quarters, I will describe what the place was in which I grew up and lived for so many years. The room of which I have spoken was reached by a great staircase entered through a vestibule of columns. As one reached the landing he saw two large pictures done by some painter or other of the First Empire. The door opposite opened on a room ornamented by a large mantelpiece and lighted by a glass ceiling in the style of the ancient temples. The furniture was in the style of Napoleon I. A door opened into the office of the director of the Conservatoire, a room large enough to hold ten or a dozen people seated about the green cloth table or seated or standing at separate tables. The decoration of the great hall of the Conservatoire was in the Pompeiian style in harmony with the room I have described. Ambroise Thomas was leaning on the mantelpiece. When he saw me, he smiled joyfully, held out his arms into which I flung myself, and said with an appearance of resignation, delightful at the time, "Accept it; it is the first rung." "What shall I accept?" I asked. "What, you don't know? They gave you the cross yesterday?" Émile Réty, the valued general secretary of the Conservatoire, took the ribbon from his buttonhole and put it in mine, but not without some difficulty. He had to open it with an ink eraser which he found on the jury's table near the president's desk. That phrase "the first rung," was delightful and profoundly encouraging. Now, I had only one urgent errand--to see my publisher. I must confess to a feeling which enters into my tastes to such an extent as to be indicative of my character. I was still so youthful that I felt uneasy about the ribbon which seemed to blaze and draw all eyes. My face was still moist from those lavish embraces and I was planning to go home to the country when I was stopped on the corner of the Rue de la Paix by M. Halanzier, the director of the Opéra. I was surprised the more, for I believed that I was only moderately thought of at the Great House as a result of the refusal of my ballet, _Le Preneur de Rats_. But M. Halanzier had a frank and open mind. "What are you doing?" he asked. "I hear nothing of you." I may add that he had never spoken to me before. "How could I dare to speak of my work to the director of the Opéra?" I replied, thoroughly confused. "And if I want you to?" "Well, I have a simple work in five acts, _Le Roi de Lahore_, with Louis Gallet." "Come to my house, 18 Place Vendome, to-morrow and bring your manuscript." I rushed to tell Gallet, and then went home to Fontainebleau, carrying my wife the two bits of news, one obvious in my buttonhole, and the other the greatest hope I had ever had. I was at the Place Vendome the next morning at nine o'clock. Gallet was there already.