One evening we left Paris buried in glacial cold beneath the snow, and, behold, some hours later we found ourselves in an entirely different atmosphere. It was the South, La Belle Provence, the Azure Coast. It was ideal! For me it was the East almost at the gates of Paris! The dream began. It is hardly necessary for me to tell of all the marvelous days which went like a dream in that Dantesque Paradise, amid that splendid scenery, in that luxurious, sumptuous palace, all balmy with the vegetation of the Tropics. The first performance of _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ was given at the Monte Carlo Opéra on Tuesday, February 18, 1902. The superb protagonists were Mm. Renaud, of the Opéra, and Maréchal, of the Opéra-Comique. A detail which shows the favor with which the work was received is that it was given four times in succession during the same season. Two years later my dear director Albert Carré gave the first performance of _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ at the Opéra-Comique with this ideal cast: Lucien Fugère, Maréchal, the creator of the part, and Allard. The work long ago passed its hundredth performance at Paris, and as I write these lines _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ has had a place in the repertoire of the American houses for several years. It is interesting to note that the Juggler was created at the Metropolitan Opera House by Mary Garden, the dazzling artist who is admired as much in Paris as in the United States. My feelings are somewhat bewildered, I confess, at seeing the monk discard his frock after the performance and resume an elegant costume from the Rue de la Paix. However, in the face of the artist's triumph I bow and applaud.[1] [1] The transposition of the tenor part to the soprano register seems an intolerable musical solecism, and a woman playing a serious and inevitably male character grotesquely absurd. The terms in which Massenet here expresses his objections to this indefensible procedure are gentle and but mildly ironical compared with those he used to the translator. Massenet was simply furious. With flaming eyes--and how his wonderful eyes could flame!--and voice vehement with indignation and unutterable scorn, he said to me, "When I wrote that work I little thought the monk's habit would ever be disguised in a petticoat from the Rue de la Paix."] As I have said, this work had to wait its turn, and as Carvalho had previously engaged me to write the music for _Griseldis_, a work by Eugene Morand and Armand Silvestre, which was much applauded at the Théâtre-Français. I wrote the score at intervals between my journeys to the South and to Cap d'Antibes. Ah, that hotel on the Cap d'Antibes! That was an unusual stay. It was an old property built by Villemessant, who had christened it correctly and happily "Villa Soliel," and which he planned for journalists overtaken by poverty and old age.