"In this _Suite_," I asked him with a start, "is there a fugue, a march, and a nocturne?"
I rushed to the Rue Lafitte and flew up the stairs like a madman to tell my wife and her mother.
On the program for the next day but one, Sunday, I saw my first orchestral suite announced.
I paid for a place in the third balcony and listened, lost in that dense crowd, as it was every Sunday, in that gallery where they even had to stand. Each passage was well received. The last had just ended when a young fellow near me hissed twice. Both times, however, the audience protested and applauded all the more heartily. So the kill-joy did not gain the effect he wanted.
I went back home all of a tremble. My family had also gone to the Cirque Napoléon and came to find me at once. If my people were happy at my success, they were still more pleased to have heard my work.
One would have thought no more about that misguided hisser, except that the next day Albert Wolf devoted a long article on the front page of the _Figaro_, as unkind as it could be, to breaking my back. His brilliant, cutting wit was amusing reading for his public. My friend, Theodore Dubois, as young as I was in his career, had the fine courage to reply to Wolf at the risk of losing his position. He wrote a letter worthy in every way of his great, noble heart.
Reyer for his part consoled me for the _Figaro_ article by this curious, piquant bon-mot: "Let him talk. Wits, like imbeciles, can be mistaken."
I owe it to the truth to say that Albert Wolf regretted what he had written without attaching any importance to it except to please his readers, and never thinking that at the same time he might kill the future of a young musician. Afterwards he became one of my warmest friends.
Emperor Napoleon III opened three competitions, and I did not wait a single day to enter them.
I competed for the cantata _Prométhée_, the opéra-comique _Le Florentin_, and the opera _La Coupe du Roi de Thulé_.
Saint-Saëns won the prize with his _Prométhée_; Charles Lenepveu was crowned for his _Le Florentin_--I was third--and Diaz got first place with _La Coupe du Roi de Thulé_. It was given at the Opéra under marvellous conditions of interpretation.
Saint-Saëns knew that I had competed and that the award had wavered between me and Diaz who had won. Shortly after this he met me and said: