needed encouragement to flourish. I read by chance in an old Bible this
wonderful phrase,

"And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth," and so I
proposed to Gallet that we do a Deluge. At first he wanted to introduce
characters. "No," I said, "put the Bible narrative into simple verse,
and I will do the rest." We know with what care and success he
accomplished his delicate task. Meanwhile he gave Massenet the texts for
_Marie-Madeleine_ and _Le Roi de Lahore_, and these two works created a
great stir in the operatic world.

We had dreams of historical opera, for we were quite without the
prejudice against this form of drama which afflicts the present school.
But I was not _persona grata_ to the managers and I did not know at what
door to knock, when one of my friends, Aimé Gros, took the management of
the Grand-Théâtre at Lyons and asked me for a work. This was a fine
opportunity and we grasped it. We put together, with difficulty but with
infinite zest, our historical opera, _Etienne Marcel_, in which Louis
Gallet endeavored to respect as far as is possible in a theatrical work
the facts of history. Despite illustrious examples to the contrary he
did not believe that it was legitimate to attribute to a character who
has actually lived acts and opinions that are entirely fanciful. I was
in full agreement with him in that as in so many other things. I go even
farther and cannot accustom myself to the queer sauces in which
legendary characters are often served. It seems to me that the legend is
the interesting thing, and not the character, and that the latter loses
all its value when the legend which surrounds it is destroyed. But
everyone knows that I am a crank.

Some time after my _Henri VIII_, in which Vaucorbeil had imposed