His munificent kindness was soon noised abroad and my room besieged by friends anxious to know the facts. All rejoiced and some were jealous--not of me, but of Paganini, who was rich enough to do such deeds. Then began the comments, fury and lies of my opponents, followed by the congratulatory letter of Janin and his eloquent article in the _Débats_. For a week I lay in bed, burning with impatience to see and thank my benefactor. Then I hurried to his house and found him in the billiard-room. We embraced in silence then, as I poured forth broken thanks, he spoke and--thanks to the silence of the room--I was able to make out his words. “Not a word! It is so little and has given me the greatest pleasure of my life. You cannot tell how much your music moves me. Ah!” he cried, with a blow of his fist on the table, “now your enemies will be silenced for they know I understand and am not easily satisfied.” But great as was his name it was not great enough to silence the dogs of Paris; in a few weeks they were again baying at my heels. My earnest wish, now that all debts were paid and a handsome sum remained in hand, was to write a masterpiece, grand, impassioned, original, worthy of dedication to the master to whom I owed so much. But Paganini, growing worse, had left for Nice, whence alas! he returned no more. I consulted him as to a suitable theme, but he replied: “I cannot advise you. You best know what suits you best.” After much wavering I fixed on a choral symphony on Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_, and wrote the prose words for the choral portion, which Emile Deschamps, with his usual kindness and extraordinary versatility, put into poetry for me. Ah! the joy of no more newspaper articles!--or at least hardly any. Paganini had given me money to make music, and I made it. For seven months, with only a few days’ intermission, did I work at my symphony. And, during those months, what a burning, exhilarating life I led! Ah! the joy of floating on the halcyon sea of poetry; wafted onward by the sweet soft breeze of imagination; warmed by the rays of that golden sun of love unveiled by Shakespeare! I felt within me the god-like strength to win my way to that blessed hidden isle, where the temple of pure art raises its soaring columns to the sky. To others must I leave it to say whether I ever truly looked upon its glories. Such as it was, my symphony was performed three times running, and each time appeared to be a great success. To my sorrow, Paganini never heard it nor read it. I hoped to see him again in Paris; then to send him the printed score; but he died at Nice leaving to me the poignant sorrow that he would never judge whether the work, undertaken to please him and to justify his faith in its author, was worthy of his great trust. He, too, seemed sorry not to have known it, and in his letter of the 7th January 1840, he wrote: “Now it is well done; jealousy can but be silent.”