“Oh, that’s all right. Our property man knows his business.” The day of rehearsal arrived, and so did my hundred and thirty musicians--with nowhere to put them! I just managed to squeeze the violins into the orchestra, and then arose an uproar that would have driven a calmer man than myself out of his senses. Cries for chairs, desks, candles, strings, room for the drums, etc., etc. Scene shifters tore up and down improvising desks and seats, Bloc and I worked like sixty--but it was all useless; a regular rout; a passage of the Bérésina. However Bloc insisted on trying two movements to give the directors some idea of the whole. So, all in a muddle, we struggled through the _Ball Scene_ and the _Marche au Supplice_, the latter calling forth frantic applause. But my concert never came off. The directors said that “they had no idea so many arrangements were necessary for a symphony.” Thus my hopes were dashed, and all for want of a few desks. Since then I always look into the smallest details for myself. Wishing to console me for this disappointment, Girard, conductor of the Théâtre Italien, asked me to write something shorter than my unlucky symphony, that he could have carefully performed at his theatre. I therefore wrote a dramatic fantasia with choruses on the _Tempest_, but no sooner did he see it than he said: “This is too big for us; it must go to the opera.” Without loss of time I interviewed M. Lubbert, director of the Royal Academy. To my relief and delight, he at once agreed to have it played at a concert for the Artists’ Benevolent Fund that was to take place shortly. My name was known to him through my Conservatoire concert, and he had seen notices of me in the papers. He, therefore, believed in me, put me through no humiliating examination, gave me his word, and kept it religiously. “He was a man, Horatio.” All went splendidly at rehearsal; Fétis did his best for me, and everything seemed to smile, when, with my usual luck, an hour before the concert there broke over Paris the worst storm that had been known for fifty years. The streets were flooded and practically impassable, and during the first half of the concert, when my _Tempest_--damned tempest!--was being played, there were not more than three hundred people in the place. _Extracts from Letters to_ H. FERRAND. “_April 1829._--Here is _Faust_, dear friend. Could you, without stinting yourself, lend me another hundred francs to pay the printer? I would rather borrow from you than from anyone else; yet had you not offered, I should not have dared to ask. Your opera (_Franc-Juges_) is splendid. You are indeed a poet! That finale of the Bohemians at the end of the first act is a master stroke. I do not believe anything so original has ever been done in a libretto before. And I repeat, it is magnificent.”