sly, "Pimmalione." Napoleon was delighted, and even affected to
tears. Instantly, however, that Cherubini's name was uttered, he became
dumb and cold. Nevertheless, as if ashamed of his injustice, he sent
Cherubini a large sum of money, and a commission to write the music for
his marriage ode. Several fine works followed in the next two years,
among them the Mass in D, regarded by some of his admirers as his
ecclesiastical masterpiece. Miel claims that in largeness of design and
complication of detail, sublimity of conception and dramatic intensity,
two works only of its class approach it, Beethoven's Mass in D and
Niedermeyer's Mass in D minor.

In 1811 Halevy, the future author of "La Juive," became Cherubini's
pupil, and a devoted friendship ever continued between the two. The
opera of "Les Abencerages" was also produced, and it was pronounced
nowise inferior to "Medee" and "Les Deux Journees." Mendelssohn many
years afterward, writing to Moscheles in Paris, asked: "Has Onslow
written anything new? And old Cherubini? There's a matchless fellow!
I have got his 'Abencerages,' and can not sufficiently admire the
sparkling fire, the clear original phrasing, the extraordinary delicacy
and refinement with which it is written, or feel grateful enough to the
grand old man for it. Besides, it is all so free and bold and spirited."
The work would have had a greater immediate success, had not Paris been
in profound gloom from the disastrous results of the Moscow campaign and
the horrors of the French retreat, where famine and disease finished the
work of bayonet and cannon-ball.

The unsettled and disheartening times disturbed all the relations of
artists. There is but little record of Cherubini for several years. A
significant passage in a letter written in 1814, speaking of several
military marches written for a Prussian band, indicates the occupation
of Paris by the allies and Napoleon's banishment in Elba. The period of
"The Hundred Days" was spent by Cherubini in England; and the world's
wonder, the battle of Waterloo, was fought, and the Bourbons were
permanently restored, before he again set foot in Paris. The restored
dynasty delighted to honor the man whom Napoleon had slighted, and gifts
were showered on him alike by the Court and by the leading academies of
Europe. The walls of his studio were covered with medals and diplomas;
and his appointment as director of the King's chapel (which, however, he
refused unless sh