Far from carrying out his agreement as to superintending the production of the work, Gounod did not arrive in London until nearly seven o'clock on the night of production; and all I heard from him was that he wanted a good pit box in the centre of the house. With this, for reasons which I will at once explain, I had no difficulty whatever in providing him. One afternoon, a few days before the day fixed for the production of the opera, I looked in upon Mr. Nugent at the box-office and asked how the sale of places was going on. "Very badly indeed," he replied. Only thirty pounds' worth of seats had been taken. This presaged a dismal failure, and I had set my mind upon a brilliant success. I told Mr. Nugent in the first place that I had decided to announce Faust for four nights in succession. He thought I must be mad, and assured me that one night's performance would be more than enough, and that to persist in offering to the public a work in which it took no interest was surely a deplorable mistake. I told him that not only should the opera be played for four nights in succession, but that for the first three out of these four not one place was to be sold beyond those already disposed of. That there might be no mistake about the matter, I had all the remaining tickets for the three nights in question collected and put away in several carpet bags, which I took home with me that I might distribute them far and wide throughout the Metropolis and the Metropolitan suburbs. At last, after a prodigious outlay in envelopes, and above all postage stamps, nearly the whole mass of tickets for the three nights had been carefully given away. I at the same time advertised in the _Times_ that in consequence of a death in the family, two stalls secured for the first representation of _Faust_--the opera which was exciting so much interest that all places for the first three representations had been bought up--could be had at twenty-five shillings each, being but a small advance on the box-office prices. The stalls thus liberally offered were on sale at the shop of Mr. Phillips, the jeweller, in Cockspur Street, and I told Mr. Phillips that if he succeeded in selling them I would present him with three for the use of his own family. Mr. Phillips sold them three times over, and a like success was achieved by Mr. Baxter, the stationer, also in Cockspur Street. Meanwhile demands had been made at the box-office for places, and when the would-be purchasers were told that "everything had gone," they went away and repeated it to their friends, who, in their turn, came to see whether it was quite impossible to obtain seats for the first performance of an opera which was now beginning to be seriously talked about. As the day of production approached the inquiries became more and more numerous. "If not for the first night, there must surely be places somewhere for the second," was the cry.