"That was the best thing in my work," he said. "I nursed and caressed
that sonnet, and now you have ruined it."
In the face of this despair, I screwed up my courage. As I had
previously cut down the verse, I now tried lengthening out the music.
Then, I sang both versions to the disconsolate poet.
And what a miracle! He was altogether reconciled, approved both
versions, and did not know which one to choose. We ended with a
patchwork. The two quatrains are in verses of ten feet, and the two
tiercets in Alexandrine metre.
Outside of our work, too, our relations were delightful. We wrote to
each other constantly in both prose and verse; we bombarded each other
with sonnets; his letters were sometimes ornamented with water colors,
for he drew very well and one of his joys was to cover white paper with
color. Gallet drew the sketches for the desert in _Le Roi de Lahore_ and
the cloister in _Proserpine_.
When Madame Adam founded the _Nouvelle Revue_ she offered me the
position of musical critic, which I did not think I ought to accept. She
did not know where to turn. "Take Gallet," I advised her. "He is an
accomplished man of letters. He is not a musician in the sense that he
has studied music, but he has the soul of a musician, which is worth
much more.
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