refinement, and his poetry, in spite of fantastic passages which no one
could admire, was sonorous in tone, contained precious material, and was
both interesting and highly individual. What allured me in _Proserpine_
was the amount of inner emotion there was in the drama, which is very
advantageous to the music. Music gives expression to feelings which the
characters cannot express, and accentuates and develops the
picturesqueness of the piece; it makes acceptable what would not even
exist without it.

Vacquerie approved highly the convent scene which Gallet invented. This
introduced a quiet and peaceful note amidst the violence of the original
work. Gallet wrote a sonnet in Alexandrine verse for Sabatino's
declaration of his love. I was unable to set this to music, for the
twelve feet embarrassed me and prevented my getting into my stride. As I
did not know what else to do, I took the sonnet and by main force
reduced the verse to ten feet with a caesura at the fifth foot. I took
this to my dear collaborator in fear and trembling, and, as I had
feared, he at once fell into the depths of despair.

"That was the best thing in my work," he said. "I nursed and caressed
that sonnet, and now you have ruined it."

In the face of this despair, I screwed up my courage. As I had
previously cut down the verse, I now tried lengthening out the music.
Then, I sang both versions to the disconsolate poet.

And what a miracle! He was altogether reconciled, approved both
versions, and did not know which one to choose. We ended with a
patchwork. The two quatrains are in verses of ten feet, and the two
tiercets in Alexandrine metre.

Outside of our work, too, our relations were delightful. We wrote to
each other constantly in both prose and verse; we bombarded each other
with sonnets; his letters were sometimes ornamented with water colors,
for he drew very well and one of his joys was to cover white paper with
color. Gallet drew the sketches for the desert in _Le Roi de Lahore_ and
the cloister in _Proserpine_.

When Madame Adam founded the _Nouvelle Revue_ she offered me the
position of musical critic, which I did not think I ought to accept. She
did not know where to turn. "Take Gallet," I advised her. "He is an
accomplished man of letters. He is not a musician in the sense that he
has studied music, but he has the soul of a musician, which is worth
much more." Madame Adam followed my advice and found it good.

At this period,