M. Massenet had recently produced his "Marie Madeleine" and, curiously enough, it had been successful. This seems to have spurred Bizet on to emulation. With his usual happy knack of hitting on a subject, he wrote off to Gallet, requesting him to do a book with Geneviève de Paris--the holy Geneviève of legendary lore--for heroine. And Gallet, accommodating creature that he was, forthwith proceeded to construct his tableaux. Together they went off to Lamoureux and read the synopsis to him. He approved it heartily, and Bizet got to work. "Carmen" was then finished and was undergoing the usual stage of adjournment _sine die_. Three times it had been put into rehearsal, only to be withdrawn for apparently no reason, and poor Bizet was wearying of opera and its ways. This sacred work was relief to him. But hardly had he settled down to it when up came "Carmen" once again, this time in good earnest. He was forced to leave "Geneviève" and come to Paris for rehearsals. It was much against his inclination that he did so, for his health was failing fast. For long he had suffered from an abscess which had made his life a burden to him. Nor had his terrible industry been without its effect upon his physique. He did not know it, but he had sacrificed to his work the very things he had worked for. He felt exhausted, enfeebled, shattered. Probably the excitement of rehearsing "Carmen" kept him up the while; but it had its after-effect, and the strain proved all the more disastrous. A profound melancholy, too, had come over him; and do what he would he could not beat it off. A young singer (some aspirant for lyric fame) came one day to sing to him. "Ich grölle nicht" and "Aus der Heimath" were chosen. "Quel chef d'oeuvre," said he, "mais quelle désolation, c'est à vous donner la nostalgie de la mort." Then he sat down to the piano and played the "Marche Funèbre" of Chopin. That was the frame of mind he was in. In his gayer moments he would often long for Italy. He had never forgotten the happy days passed there with Guiraud. "I dreamed last night" (he is writing to Guiraud) "that we were all at Naples, installed in a most lovely villa, and living under a government purely artistic. The Senate was made up by Beethoven, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Giorgione, _e tutti quanti_. The National Guard was no more. In place of it there was a huge orchestra of which Litolff was the conductor. All suffrage was denied to idiots, humbugs, schemers, and ignoramuses--that is to say, suffrage was cut down to the smallest proportions imaginable. Geneviève was a little too amiable for Goethe, but despite this trifling circumstance the awakening was terribly bitter."