One day that same summer I was walking on the Boulevard des Capuchines, not far from the Rue Daunou; my publisher, George Hartmann, lived in a ground-floor apartment at the end of the court at No. 20 of this street. My thoughts were terribly dark. I went along with careworn face and fainting heart deploring the deceitful promises the directors had sprinkled on me like holy water, when I was suddenly saluted and stopped by one whom I recognized as M. Calabrési, director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie at Brussels. I stopped nonplussed. Must I put him too in my collection of wooden-faced directors? "I know," said M. Calabrési, as he accosted me, "that you have a great work, _Hérodiade_. If you will give it to me, I will put it on at once at the Théâtre de la Monnaie." "But you don't know it," I said. "I would never dream of asking a hearing--of you!" "Well," I replied at once, "I will inflict it on you." "But I am going back to Brussels to-morrow morning." "This evening, then," I retorted. "I shall expect you at eight o'clock in Hartmann's shop. It will be closed by that time ... we shall be alone." I hurried to Hartmann's, radiant, and told him, laughing and crying, what had happened to me. A piano was brought immediately, and Paul Milliet was hurriedly informed. Alphonse de Rothschild, my colleague at the Académie des Beaux Arts, knew that I had to go to Brussels very often for the rehearsals of _Hérodiade_. They were about to begin at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, and he wanted me to avoid delays at the stations so he gave me a pass. They became so accustomed to seeing me cross the frontier at Feignies and Quevy that I became a real friend of the customs' officers, especially of those on the Belgian side. I remember that to thank them for their kind attentions I sent them seats for the Théâtre de la Monnaie. A real ceremony took place at the Théâtre Royal in the month of October of this same year 1881. As a matter of fact _Hérodiade_ was the first French work to be created on the superb stage of the capital of Belgium. On the appointed day, my two excellent directors, Stoumon and Calabrési, went with me as far as the great public foyer. It was a vast place with gilt paneling and was lighted from the colonnaded peristyle of the theater on the Place de la Monnaie. On the other side of the Place (a relic of old Brussels) was the Mint and, in a corner, the Stock Exchange. These buildings have since disappeared and have been replaced by a magnificent Post Office. The Exchange has been moved to a magnificent palace a short ways away.