However, I saw from Gerono’s manner of laying down the law that I must swallow it whole, since it was religion and must be blindly followed, or else say good-bye to my chance of joining Lesueur’s class. And such is the force of example that I ended by believing in it so thoroughly and honestly that Lesueur considered me one of his most promising and fervent disciples. Do not think me ungrateful for his kindliness and for the affection he shewed me up to his last hour, but, oh! the precious time wasted in learning and unlearning his mouldy, antediluvian theories. At one time I really did admire his little oratories, and it grieved me sorely to find my admiration fading, slowly and surely. Now I can hardly bear to look at one of his scores; it is to me as the portrait of a dear friend, long loved, lost and lamented. When I compare to-day with that far-off time when, regularly each Sunday, I went to the Tuileries chapel to hear them, how old, how tired, how bereft of illusions I feel. That was the day of great enthusiasms, of rich musical passions, of beautiful dreams, of ineffable, infinite joys. As I usually arrived early at the Chapel Royal, my master would spend the time before service began in explaining the meaning of his composition. It was as well, for the music had no earthly connection with the words of the mass! Lesueur inclined mostly to the sweet pastorals of the Old Testament--idylls of Naomi, Ruth, Rachel--and I shared his taste. The calm of the unchanging East, the mysterious grandeur of its ruins, its majestic history, its legends--these were the magnetic pole of my imagination. He often allowed me to join him in his walks, telling me of his early struggles, his triumphs and the favour of Napoleon. He even let me, up to a certain point, discuss his theories, but we usually ended on our common meeting-ground of Gluck, Virgil and Napoleon. After these long talks along the edge of the Seine or under the leafy shade of the Tuileries gardens, I would leave him to take the solitary walks which had become to him a necessity of daily life. Some months after I had become his pupil, but before my admission to the Conservatoire, I took it into my head to write an opera, and nothing would do but that I must get my witty literary master, Andrieux, to write me a libretto. I cannot remember what I wrote to him, but he replied: