I was nearly at my wits’ end when I heard that the Théâtre des Nouveautés was being opened for vaudeville and comic opera. I tore off to the manager to ask for a flautist’s place in the orchestra. All filled! A chorus singer’s? None left, confound it all! However the manager took my address and promised to let me know if, by any possibility there should be a vacancy. Some days later came a letter saying that I might go and be examined at the Freemason’s Hall, Rue de Grenelle. There I found five or six poor wights in like case with myself, waiting in sickening anxiety--a weaver, a blacksmith, an out-of-work actor and a chorister. The management wanted basses, my voice was nothing but a second-rate baritone; how I prayed that the examiner might have a deaf ear. The manager appeared with a musician named Michel, who still belongs to the Vaudeville orchestra. His fiddle was to be our only accompaniment. We began. My rivals sang, in grand style, carefully prepared songs, then came my turn. Our huge manager (appropriately blessed with the name of St Leger) asked what I had brought. “I? Why nothing.” “Then what do you mean to sing?” “Whatever you like. Haven’t you a score, some singing exercise, anything?” “No. And besides”--with resigned contempt--“I don’t suppose you could sing at sight if we had.” “Excuse me, I will sing at sight anything you give me.” “Well, since we have no music, do you know anything by heart?” “Yes. I know the _Danaïdes_, _Stratonice_, the _Vestal_, _Œdipus_, the two _Iphigenias_, _Orpheus_, _Armida_----” “There, that will do! That will do! what a devil of a memory you must have! Since you are such a prodigy, give us “_Elle m’a prodigué_” from Sacchini’s _Œdipus_. Can you accompany him, Michel?” “Certainly. In what key?” “E flat. Do you want the recitative too?” “Yes. Let’s have it all.” And the glorious melody: “Antigone alone is left me,” rolled forth, while the poor listeners, with pitifully down-cast faces, glanced at each other recognising that, though I might be bad, they were infinitely worse. The following day I was engaged at a salary of fifty francs a month. And this was the result of my parents’ efforts to save me from the bottomless pit! Instead of a cursed dramatic composer I had become a damned theatre chorus-singer, excommunicated with bell, book and candle. Surely my last state was worse than my first! One success brought others. The smiling skies rained down two new pupils and a fellow-provincial, Antoine Charbonnel, whom I met when he came up to study as an apothecary. Neither of us having any money, we--like Walter in the _Gambler_--cried out together: “What! no money either? My dear fellow, let’s go into partnership.”