As I sprinkled holy water on the casket, I recalled my last visit to the Rue de Bellechasse where Daudet lived. I had gone to give him news of the theater and carried him sprays of eucalyptus, one of the trees of the South he adored. I knew what intense pleasure that would give him. * * * * * Meanwhile _Sapho_ went on its way. I went to Saint Raphael, the country where Carvalho had liked to live. I relied on an apartment which I had engaged in advance, but the landlord told me that he had let it to two ladies who seemed very busy. I started to hunt another lodging when I was called back. I learned that the two who had taken my rooms were Emma Calvé and one of her friends. The two ladies doubtless heard my name mentioned and changed their itinerary. However, their presence in that place so far from Paris showed me that our _Sapho_ had necessarily suspended her run of performances. What whims will not one pardon in such an artiste? I learned that in two days everything was in order again at the theater in Paris. Would that I had been there to embrace our adorable fugitive! Two weeks later I learned from the papers in Nice that Albert Carré had been made manager of the Opéra-Comique. Until then the house had been temporarily under the direction of the Beaux-Arts. Who would have thought that it would have been our new manager who would revive _Sapho_ considerably later with that beautiful artiste who became his wife. But it was she who incarnated the Sapho of Daudet with an unusually appealing interpretation. Salignac, the tenor, had a considerable success in the rôle of Jean Gaussin. At the revival Carré asked me to interweave a new act, the act of the Letters, and I carried out the idea with enthusiasm. _Sapho_ was also sung by that unusual artiste Mme. Georgette Leblanc, later the wife of that great man of letters Maeterlinck. Mme. Bréjean-Silver also made this rôle an astonishingly lifelike figure. How many other artists have sung this work! The first opera put on under the new management was Reynaldo Hahn's _L'Ile de Rêve_. He dedicated that exquisite score to me. That music is pervading for it was written by a real master. What a gift he has of wrapping us in warm caresses! That was not the case with the music of some of our confrères. Reyer found it unbearable and made this image-raising remark about it: "I just met Gretry's statue on the stairs; he had enough and fled." That brings to mind another equally witty sally which du Locle made to Reyer the day after Berlioz's death, "Well, my dear fellow, Berlioz has got ahead of you." Du Locle could permit himself this inoffensive joke for he was Reyer's oldest friend. I find this word from the author of _Louise_ whom I knew as a child in my classes at the Conservatoire and who always felt a family affection for me: Midnight, New Year's Eve. _Dear Master_: