As soon as peace was patched up and Louis Philippe introduced by Lafayette as “the best of republics” the Academy started work once more. And as the judges, thanks to a piece which I have since burnt, believed me reclaimed from my heresies, they gave me the first prize. Although, in former years, I had been greatly disappointed at not getting it I was not in the least pleased when I did. Of course I appreciated its advantages; my parents’ pride, the kudos, the freedom for five years from money troubles--yet, knowing the system on which prizes were awarded, could I feel any proper pride in my success? Two months after came the distribution of prizes and the performance of the successful work. It was all very hackneyed. Every year the same musicians perform pieces turned out on the same pattern; the same prizes, awarded with the same discrimination, are handed over with the same ceremony. Every year on the same day, at the same time, standing on the same step of the same staircase, the same Academician repeats the same words to the winner. Day, first Saturday in October; time, four in the afternoon; step, the third; the Academician--we all know who. Then comes the performance with full orchestra (in my case it was not quite full, for there was only a clarinet and a half, the old boy who played the first--having only one tooth and being asthmatic besides--being only able to squeeze out a note here and there). The conductor raises his baton---- The sun rises; ’cello solo, gentle crescendo. The little birds wake; flute solo, violin tremolo. The little rills gurgle; alto solo. The little lambs bleat; oboe solo. And as the crescendo goes on and the little birds and little brooks and little beasts finish their performance, one suddenly discovers that it is noon; then follow the successive airs up to the third, with which the hero usually expires and the audience once more breathes freely. Then the secretary, holding in one hand the artificial laurel wreath and in the other the gold medal, worth enough to keep the recipient until he leaves for Rome (in point of fact, I have proved that it is worth exactly a hundred and sixty francs) pompously enunciates the name of the author. The laureate rises, “His smooth, chaste forehead, newly shorn, is wreathed with modest blushes.” He embraces the secretary--faint applause. He embraces his master, seated close by--more applause. Next come his mother, his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts to the tune of more applause; then his fiancée, after which--treading on people’s toes and tearing ladies’ dresses in the blind confusion of his headlong career--he regains his seat, bathed in perspiration. Loud applause and laughter. This is the crowning moment, and I know lots of people who go for nothing but the fun of it.