I was young, eager, happy, and, I add to my shame, very greedy. But if I accuse myself, it is to excuse myself--for leaving the piano so often to get a bite at a table laden with exquisite food spread out on a plentiful buffet in the same foyer. Every time I got up, the artists stopped me as if to say, "Have pity.... Keep on.... Continue.... Don't stop again." I ate almost all the food which had been prepared for us all. The artists were so much pleased that they thought more of embracing me than of eating. Why should I complain?
I lived at the Hotel de la Poste, Rue Fossé-aux-Loups, beside the theater. In the same room, on the ground floor on the corner of the hotel overlooking the Rue d'Argent, I wrote, the following autumn, the rough draft of the Seminaire act of _Manon_. Later on I preferred to live in the dear kindly Hotel du Grand-Monarque, Rue des Fripiers, and I continued to do so until 1910.
This hotel plays a part in my deepest memories. I lived there often with Reyer, the author of _Sigurd_ and of _Salammbo_, my colleague at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. There, we both lost our collaborator and friend Ernest Blau. He died here, and in spite of the custom that no funeral black shall be hung in front of a hotel, Mlle. Wanters, the proprietress, insisted that the obsequies should be public and should not be concealed from the people who lived there. In the salon among strangers we said the tender words of farewell to the collaborator on _Sigurd_ and _Esclarmonde_.
A grim detail! Our poor friend Blau dined the evening of his death at the house of Stoumon, the director. As he was early, he stopped in the Rue des Sablons to look at some luxurious coffins displayed in an undertaker's shop. As we had just paid our last farewell and had placed the mortal remains of Blau in a temporary vault beside the casket of a young girl, which was covered with white roses, one of the bearers observed that if he had been consulted the deceased could not have chosen a better neighborhood. The head undertaker reflected: "We have done things well. M. Blau noticed a fine coffin and we let him have it cheap."
As we came from that vast cemetery, comparatively empty at that time, we were all impressed by the poignant grief of Mme. Jeanne Raunay, the great artiste. She walked slowly by the side of the great master Gevaert.