“I have decided, after many sleepless nights, that you shall go back to Paris, but only for a time. If you should fail on further trial, I think you will do me the justice to own that I have done all that can be expected, and will consent to try some other career. You know my opinion of second-rate poets--every sort of mediocrity is contemptible--and it would be a deadly humiliation to feel that you were numbered among the failures of the world.” Without waiting to hear more, I promised all he wished. “But,” he continued, “since your mother’s point of view is diametrically opposed to mine, I desire, in order to avoid trouble, that you do not mention this, and that you start for Paris secretly.” But it was impossible to hide this sudden bound from utter despair to delirious joy and Nanci, my sister, with many promises not to tell, wormed my secret out of me. Of course she kept it as well as I did, and by nightfall, everyone, including my mother, knew my plans. Now it will hardly be believed that there are still people in France who look upon anyone connected with theatres or theatrical art as doomed to everlasting perdition, and since, according to French ideas, music hardly exists outside a theatre, it, too, shares the same fate. Apropos of this I nearly made Lesueur die of laughing over a reply of one of my aunts. We were arguing on this very point, and I said at last: “Come, Auntie, I believe you would object to have even Racine a member of your family!” “Well, Hector,” she said seriously, “we _must_ be respectable before everything.” Lesueur insisted that such sentiments could only emanate from an elderly maiden aunt, in spite of my asseverations that she was young and as pretty as a flower. Needless to say, my mother believed I was setting my feet in the broad road that led not only to destruction in the next world, but to social ruin in this. I quickly saw by her wrathful face that she knew all, and did my best to slink out of her way, but it was useless. Trembling with rage and using “you” instead of the old familiar “thou,” she said: “Hector, since your father countenances your folly I must speak and save you from this mortal sin. You shall not go; I forbid it. See, here I--your mother--kneel at your feet to beg you humbly to give up this mad design and----” “Mother! mother!” I interrupted, “I cannot bear it! For pity’s sake don’t kneel to me.” But she knelt on, looking up at me as I stood in miserable silence, and finally she said: “You refuse, wretched boy? Then go! Drag our honoured name through the fetid mud of Paris; kill your parents with shame and disgrace. Curses on you! You are no more my son, and never again will I look upon your face.” Could narrow-mindedness towards Art and provincial prejudice go farther? I truly believe that my hatred of these mediæval doctrines dates from that horrible day. But that was not the end of the trial.