Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/81

Rh .... My opera and my symphony are both of them en train. But when, oh when, shall I finish them? Yet I do nothing but work, and I come only once a week to Paris. Here I am well out of the way of all flaneurs, raseurs, diseurs de riens, du monde enfin, hèlas"; Then a few days later: "I am completely prostrate with fatigue. I can do nothing. I have even been obliged to give up orchestrating my symphony; and now I feel it will be too late for this winter. I am going to lie down, for I have not slept for three nights, and all seems so dark to me. To-morrow, too, I have la musique gaie to write."

Just then time was pressing him hard. He was under contract to produce "La Jolie Fille de Perth" by the end of the year, and he was already well into October. It became a matter of fifteen and sixteen hours work a day; for there were lessons to be given, proofs to be corrected, piano transcriptions to be made, and the rest. And, truth to tell, he was terribly lacking in method. He was choke-full of ideas, he was indeed borne along by a very torrent of them; and if only he could have stopped to collect himself it would have been well for him. But no; before he realised it, "La Jolie Fille" was finished and in rehearsal. Then for the time he was able to put enough distance between himself and his work to value it. And it seems to have pleased him. "The final rehearsal," he writes to Galabert (by this time his confidant in most things), "has produced a great effect. The piece is really highly interesting, the interpretation is excellent, and the costumes are splendid. The scenery is new and the orchestra and the artists are full of enthusiasm. But more than all this, cher ami, the score of La Jolie Fille is une bonne chose. The orchestra lends to all a colour and relief for which, I confess, I never dared to hope. I think I have arrived this time. Now, il faut monter, monter, monter, toujours." Rh