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When Spontini returned to Paris, though he was appointed member of the Academy of Fine Arts, he was received with some coldness by the musical world. He had no little difficulty in getting a production of his operas; only the Conservatory remained faithful to him, and in their hall large audiences gathered to hear compositions to which the opera-house denied its stage.
She saw vaguely through the clouds the little room of the Rue Spontini transported by angels to one of the summits of the Himalaya Mountains, and Robert Le Menil in the quaking of a sort of world's end had disappeared while putting on his gloves. She felt her pulse to see whether she were feverish. A rattle of silverware on the table awoke her.
From Berlioz, who was at Spontini's deathbed until the end, I heard that the master had struggled most determinedly against death, and had cried repeatedly, 'Je ne veux pas mourir, je ne veux pas mourir! When Berlioz tried to comfort him by saying, 'Comment pouvez-vous penser mourir vous, mon maitre, qui etes immortel! Spontini retorted angrily, 'Ne faites pas de mauvaises plaisanteries! In spite of all the extraordinary experiences I had had with him, the news of his death, which I received in Zurich, touched me very deeply.
Furthermore, Spontini in his later years, when deafness saddened his lot, deserted the halls of fame and the palaces of royalty, where he had been prominent, and retired with his wife to the little Italian village where he had been born of the peasantry. And there he spent years founding schools and doing other works for the public good.
I shall be every day, at three o'clock, at our home, in the Rue Spontini." At this moment, as she made a motion with her head to receive the cloak, she saw Dechartre with his hand on the knob of the door. He had heard. He looked at her with all the reproach and suffering that human eyes can contain. Then he went into the dim corridor.
The thought that they might meet again in the small apartment of the Rue Spontini was so painful to her that she discarded it at once. She preferred to think that an unforeseen event would prevent their meeting again the end of the world, for example.
It was no longer daylight when they came out of the little apartment in the Rue Spontini. Robert Le Menil made a sign to a coachman, and entered the carriage with Therese. Close together, they rolled among the vague shadows, cut by sudden lights, through the ghostly city, having in their minds only sweet and vanishing impressions while everything around them seemed confused and fleeting.
I love only you. I never have loved any one except you." He replied slowly, with cruel heaviness: "'I shall be every day, at three o'clock, at our home, in the Rue Spontini. It was not a lover, your lover, who said these things? No! it was a stranger, an unknown person." She straightened herself, and with painful gravity said: "Yes, I had been his. You knew it.
Had Wagner pleased, there was nothing to hinder his writing a succession of 'Rienzis, and ending his days, like Spontini, rich and ennobled. To his eternal honour he rejected the prospect, and chose the strait and narrow way which led, through poverty and disgrace, to immortality.
Spontini had, in fact, urged us to use all possible despatch in the execution of our project, for, as he was impatiently awaited in Paris, he could spare us but little time. It fell to my lot to weave the tissue of innocent deceptions by which we hoped to divert the master from a definite acceptance of our invitation. Now we could breathe again, and duly began rehearsing.
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