Only great artists have such inborn gifts of instinctive emotion. Witness Mme. Fidès Devriès who asked me to re-write the aria of Chimène, _"Pleurez mes yeux_." She found that while she was singing it she thought only of her dead father and almost forgot her friend, Rodriguez.
A sincere touch was suggested by the tenor, Talazac, the creator of Des Grieux. He wanted to add _toi_ before _vous_ which he uttered on finding Manon in the seminaire of Saint Sulpice. Does not that _toi_ indicate the first cry of the old lover on seeing his mistress again?
The preliminary rehearsals of _Thérèse_ took place in the fine apartment, richly decorated with old pictures and work of art, which Raoul Gunsbourg had in the Rue de Rivoli.
It was New Year's and we celebrated by working in the salon from eight o'clock in the evening until midnight.
Outside it was cold, but a good fire made us forget that, as we drank in that fine exquisite atmosphere champagne to the speedy realization of our common hopes.
How exciting and impressive those rehearsals were as they brought together such fine artists as Lucy Arbell, Edmond Clément and Dufranne!
The first performance of _Thérèse_ came the next month, February 7, 1907, at the Monte Carlo Opéra.
That year my dear wife and I were again the guests of the Prince in that magnificent palace my admiration for which I have already told.
His Highness invited us to his box--the one where I had been called at the end of the première of _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_ and where the Prince of Monaco himself had publicly invested me with the Grand Cordon of the Order of St. Charles.
It is a fine thing to go to the theater, but it is an entirely different thing to be present at a performance and listen to it. So the evening of _Thérèse_ I again took my accustomed place in the Prince's salon. Tapestries and doors separated it from the box. I was alone there in silence, at least I might expect to be.
Silence? The roar of applause which greeted our artists was so great that neither doors nor hangings could muffle it.
At the official dinner given at the palace the next day our applauded creators were invited and fêted. My celebrated confrère Louis Diémer, the marvellous virtuoso, who had consented to play the harpsichord in the first act of _Thérèse_, Mme. Louise Diemér, Mme. Massent and I were there. To reach the banquet hall my wife and I had to go up the Stairs of Honor. It was near our apartment--that ideally beautiful apartment, truly a place of dreams.