Henri Heugel and his nephew Paul-Émile Chevalier, owners of the great firm Le Ménestrel, were my saviors. They were the pilots who kept all the works of my past life from shipwreck, prevented their being scattered, and running the risks of adventure and chance. They acquired all of Hartmann's assets and paid a considerable price for them. In May, 1911, I congratulated them on the twentieth anniversary of the good and friendly relations which had existed between us and at the same time I expressed the deep gratitude I cherish towards them. How many times I had passed by Le Ménestrel, and envied without hostility those masters, those published, all those favored by that great house! My entrance to Le Ménestrel began a glorious era for me, and every time I go there I feel the same deep happiness. All the satisfactions I enjoy as well as the disappointments I experience find a faithful echo in the hearts of my publishers. * * * * * Some years later Léon Carvalho again became the manager at the Opéra-Comique. M. Paravey's privilege had expired. I recall this card from Carvalho the day after he left in 1887. He had erased his title of "directeur." It expressed perfectly his sorrowful resignation: "_My dear Master_, "I scratch out the title, but I retain the memory of my great artistic joys where _Manon_ holds a first place.... "What a fine diamond! "LEON CARVALHO." His first thought was to revive _Manon_ which had disappeared from the bills since the fire of mournful memory. This revival was in October, 1892. Sibyl Sanderson, as I have said, had been engaged for a year at the Théâtre de la Monnaie at Brussels. She played _Esclarmonde_ and _Manon_. Carvalho took her from the Monnaie to revive _Manon_ in Paris. The work has never left the bills since and, as I write it, has reached its 763rd performance. At the beginning of the same year _Werther_ was given at Vienna as well as a ballet: _Le Carillon_. The applauded collaborators were our Des Grieux and our German Werther: Ernest Van Dyck and de Roddaz. It was on my return from another visit to Vienna that my faithful and precious collaborator Louis Gallet paid me a visit one day at Le Ménestrel. My publishers had arranged a superb study where I could rehearse my artists from Paris and elsewhere in their parts. Louis Gallet and Heugel proposed to me a work on Anatole France's admirable romance _Thaïs_. I was immediately carried away by the idea. I could see Sanderson in the rôle of Thaïs. She belonged to the Opéra-Comique so I would do the work for that house. Spring at last permitted me to go to the seashore where I have always liked to live and I left Paris with my wife and daughter, taking with me all that I had composed of the work with so much happiness. I took with me a friend who never left me day or night--an enormous gray Angora cat with long silky hair.