The hotel was surrounded by a fine park which afforded the guests the shade of its large trees and led to a small harbor where they could embark for excursions on the lake. In August, 1887, I wanted to pay a visit to my master Ambroise Thomas. He had bought a group of islands in the sea near the North Coast and I had been there to see him. Doubtless my visit was pleasant to him, for I received from him the next summer in Switzerland the following pages: ILLIEC, Monday, August 20, 1888 Thanks for your good letter, my dear friend. It has been forwarded to me in this barbarous island where you came last year. You remind me of that friendly visit of which we often speak, but we regret that we were only able to keep you two days. It was too short! Will you be able to come again, or rather, shall I see you here again? You say you work with pleasure and you appear content.... I congratulate you on it, and I can say without envy that I wish I were able to say as much for myself. At your age one is filled with confidence and zeal; but at mine!... I am taking up again, not without some difficulty, a work which has been interrupted for a long time, and what is better, I find that I am already rested in my solitude from the excitement and fatigue of life in Paris. I send you the affectionate regards of Mme. Ambroise Thomas, and I say au revoir, dear friend, with a good grip of the hand. Yours with all my heart, AMBROISE THOMAS. Yes, as my master said, I did work with pleasure. Mlle. Sibyl Sanderson, her mother and three sisters were also living at the Grand Hotel at Vevey and every evening from five o'clock until seven I made our future Esclarmonde work on the scene I had written that day. After _Esclarmonde_ I did not wait for my mind to grow fallow. My publisher knew my sad feelings about _Werther_ which I persisted in being unwilling to have given to a theater (no management had then made advances to obtain the work) and he opened negotiations with Jean Richepin. They decided to offer me a great subject for the Opéra on the story of Zoroaster, entitled _Le Mage_. In the course of the summer of 1889 I already had several scenes of the work planned out. My excellent friend the learned writer on history, Charles Malherbe, was aware of the few moments I made no use of, and I found him a real collaborator in these circumstances. Indeed, he chose among my scattered papers a series of manuscripts which he indicated to me would serve in the different acts of _Le Mage_. P. Gailhard, our director at the Opéra, was as ever the most devoted of friends. He put the work on with unheard of elaborateness. I owed to him a magnificent cast with Mmes. Fierens and Lureau Escalaïs and Mm. Vergnet and Delmas. The ballet was important and was staged in a fairylike way and had as its star Rosita Mauri.