Happily it is in your hands, and you are at full
liberty to do with it whatever you please: I have entirely lost sight of
the thing. I doubt not but you will have corrected all the faults which
cannot but abound in so hasty a composition of such a very simple sketch,
and am persuaded you will have supplied whatever was wanting.

"I remember that, among other stupid inattentions, no account is given in
the scenes which connect the divertissements of the manner in which the
Grenadian prince immediately passes from a prison to a garden or palace.
As it is not a magician but a Spanish nobleman who gives her the gala, I
am of opinion nothing should be effected by enchantment.

"I beg, sir, you will examine this part, of which I have but a confused
idea.

"You will likewise consider, whether or not it be necessary the prison
should be opened, and the princess conveyed from it to a fine palace,
gilt and varnished, and prepared for her. I know all this is wretched,
and that it is beneath a thinking being to make a serious affair of such
trifles; but, since we must displease as little as possible, it is
necessary we should conform to reason, even in a bad divertissement of an
opera.

"I depend wholly upon you and M. Ballot, and soon expect to have the
honor of returning you my thanks, and assuring you how much I am, etc."

There is nothing surprising in the great politeness of this letter,
compared with the almost crude ones which he has since written to me.
He thought I was in great favor with Madam Richelieu; and the courtly
suppleness, which everyone knows to be the character of this author,
obliged him to be extremely polite to a new comer, until he become better
acquainted with the measure of the favor and patronage he enjoyed.

Authorized by M. de Voltaire, and not under the necessity of giving
myself the least concern about M. Rameau, who endeavored to injure me,
I set to work, and in two months my undertaking was finished. With
respect to the poetry, it was confined to a mere trifle; I aimed at
nothing more than to prevent the difference of style from being
perceived, and had the vanity to think I had succeeded. The musical part
was longer and more laborious. Besides my having to compose several
preparatory pieces, and, amongst others, the overture, all the
recitative, with which I was charged, was extremely difficult on account
of the necessity there was of connecting, in a few verses, and by very
rapid modul