Meanwhile _Marie Magdeleine_ went on its career in the great festivals abroad. I recall the following letter which Bizet wrote me some years before with deep pride. Our school has not produced anything like it. You give me the fever, brigand. You are a proud musician, I'll wager. My wife has just put _Marie Magdeleine_ under lock and key! That detail is eloquent, is it not? The devil! You've become singularly disturbing. As to that, believe me that no one is more sincere in his admiration and in his affection than your, BIZET. That is the testimony of my excellent comrade and affectionate friend, George Bizet--a friend and comrade who would have remained steadfast had not blind destiny torn him from us in the full bloom of his prodigious and marvelous talent. Still in the dawn of life when he passed from this world, he could have compassed everything in the art to which he devoted himself with so much love. CHAPTER XVI FIVE COLLABORATORS As is my custom, I did not wait for _Manon's_ fate to be decided before I began to plague my publisher, Hartmann, to wake up and find me a new subject. I had hardly finished my plaint, to which he listened in silence with a smile on his lips, than he went to a desk and took out five books of manuscript written on the yellow paper which is well known to copyists. It was _Le Cid_, an opera in five acts by Louis Gallet and Edouard Blatt. As he offered me the manuscript, Hartmann made this comment to which I had nothing to reply, "I know you. I had foreseen this outburst." I was bound to be pleased at writing a work based on the great Corneille's masterpiece, the libretto due to the fellow workers I had had in the competition for the Imperial Opera, _La Coup de roi de Thulé_, in which, as I have said, I failed to win the first prize. I learned the words by heart, as I always did. I wanted to have it constantly in my thoughts, without being compelled to keep the text in my pocket, so as to be able to work at it away from home, in the streets, in society, at dinner, at the theater, anywhere that I might find time. I get away from a task with difficulty, especially when, as in this case, I am gripped by it. As I worked I remembered that d'Ennery sometime before had entrusted to me an important libretto and that I had found a very moving situation in the fifth act. While the words did not appear sufficiently worth while to lead me to write the music, I wanted to keep this situation. I told the famous dramatist and I obtained his consent to interpolate this scene in the second act of _Le Cid_. Thus d'Ennery became a collaborator. This scene is where Chimène finds that Rodriguez is her father's murderer.