We rented two small rooms in the Rue de la Harpe and, since Antoine was used to the management of retorts and crucibles, we made him cook. Every morning we went marketing and I, to his intense disgust, would insist on bringing back our purchases under my arm without trying to hide them. Oh, pharmaceutical gentility! it nearly landed us in a quarrel. We lived like princes--exiled ones--on thirty francs a month each. Never before in Paris had I been so comfortable. I began to develop extravagant ideas, bought a piano--_such_ a thing! it cost a hundred and ten francs. I knew I could not play it, but I like trying chords now and then. Besides, I love to be surrounded by musical instruments and, were I only rich enough, would work in company with a grand piano, two or three Erard harps, some wind instruments and a whole crowd of Stradivarius violins and ’cellos. I decorated my room with framed portraits of my musical gods, and Antoine, who was as clever as a monkey with his fingers (not a very good simile, by-the-way, since monkeys only destroy) made endless little useful things--amongst others a net with which, in spring-time, he caught quails at Montrouge, to vary our Spartan fare. But the humour of the whole situation lay in the fact that, although I was out every evening at the theatre, Antoine never guessed--during the whole time we lived together--that I had the ill-luck to _tread the boards_ and, not being exactly proud of my position, I did not see the force of enlightening him. He supposed I was giving lessons at the other end of Paris. It seems as if his silly pride and mine were about on a par. Yet no; mine was not all foolish vanity. In spite of my parents’ harshness, for nothing in the world would I have given them the intense pain of knowing how I gained my living. So I held my tongue and they only heard of my theatrical career--as did Antoine Charbonnel--some seven or eight years after it ended, through biographical notices in some of the papers. VIII FAILURE It was at this time that I wrote the _Francs-Juges_ and, after it, _Waverley_. Even then, I was so ignorant of the scope of certain instruments that, having written a solo in D flat for the trombones in the introduction to the _Francs-Juges_, I got into a sudden panic lest it should be unplayable. However one of the trombone players at the opera, to whom I showed it, set my mind at rest. “On the contrary,” said he, “D flat is a capital key for the trombone; that passage ought to be most effective.” Overjoyed, I went home with my head so high in the air that I could not look after my feet, whereby I sprained my ankle. I never hear that thing now without feeling my foot ache; probably other people get the ache in their heads.