another collaborator on me, Ritt asked me for a new work. We were
looking about for a subject, when Gallet came to my house and timidly,
as if fearing a rebuff, proposed _Benvenuto Cellini_. I had thought of
that for a long time, and the idea had come to me of putting into
musical form that fine drama, which had had its hours of glory, where
Mélingue modeled the statue of Hebe before the populace. I, therefore,
accepted the suggestion with pleasure. This enterprise brought me in
touch with Paul Meurice, whom I had known in my childhood, when he was
wooing Mlle. Granger, his first wife and an intimate friend of my
mother's. Paul Meurice revealed a secret to me: that the romance
_Ascanio_, attributed to Alexander Dumas, had been entirely written by
Meurice. The work met with a great success, and out of gratitude, Dumas
offered to help Meurice in constructing a drama from the romance, which
was to be signed by Meurice alone. So it is easy for one who knows
Dumas's dramas to find traces of his handiwork in _Benvenuto Cellini_.

It was not particularly easy to make an opera out of the play, and
Gallet and I worked together at it with considerable difficulty. We soon
saw that we should have to eliminate the famous scene of the casting of
the statue. When we reached this point in the play, Benvenuto had
already done a good deal of singing, and this scene with its violence
seemed certain to exceed the strength of the most valiant artist. In
connection with our _Proserpine_, I have been accused of supposing that
Vacquerie had genius. It would be too much to say that he had genius,
but he certainly had great talent. His prose showed a classical
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