I always had the glorious good fortune to have as my interpreter of _Sapho_ in Italy La Bellincioni, the Duse of opera. In 1911 she continued her triumphal career at the Opéra in Paris. I have mentioned that Cavalieri was to create _Thaïs_ in Milan. Sonzogno insisted strongly that I should let her see the part before I left. I remember the considerable success she had in the work--_al teatro lirico_ of Milan. Her beauty, her admirable plasticity, the warmth and color of her voice, her passionate outbursts simply gripped the public which praised her to the skies. She invited me to a farewell dinner at the Hotel de Milan. The table was covered with flowers and it was laid in a large room adjoining the bedroom where Verdi had died two years before. The room was still furnished just as it had been when the illustrious composer lived there. The great master's grand piano was still there, and on the table where he had worked were the inkstand, the pen and the blotting paper which still bore the marks of the notes he had traced. The dress shirt--the last one he wore--hung on the wall and one could still see the lines of the body it had covered.... A detail which hurt my feelings and which only the greedy curiosity of strangers can account for, was that bits of the linen had been boldly cut off and carried away as relics. Verdi! The name signifies the whole of victorious Italy from Victor Emanuel II down to our own times. Bellini, on the other hand, is the image of unhappy Italy under the yoke of the past. A little while after the death of Bellini in 1835--that never to be forgotten author of _La Somnanbula_ and _La Norma_--Verdi, the immortal creator of so many masterpieces, came on the scene and with rare fertility never ceased to produce his marvellous works which are in the repertoire of all the theaters in the world. About two weeks before Verdi's death I found at my hotel the great man's card with his regards and best wishes. In a remarkable study of Verdi Camille Bellaigue uses the following words about the great master. They are as just as they are beautiful. "He died on January 27, 1901, in his eighty-eighth year. In him music lost some of its strength, light and joy. Henceforth a great, necessary voice will be missing from the balance of the European 'concert.' A splendid bower has fallen from the chaplet of Latin genius. I cannot think of Verdi without recalling that famous phrase of Nietzsche, who had come back from Wagnerism and had already turned against the composer: 'Music must be Mediterraneanized.' Certainly not all music. But to-day as the old master has departed, that glorious host of the Doria palace, from which each winter his deep gaze soared over the azure of the Ligurian sea, one may well ask who is to preserve the rights and influence of the Mediterranean in music?" * * * * * To add another of my memories of _Thaïs_ I recall two letters which must have touched me deeply.