So Meyerbeer took the score to the Mediterranean where he spent the winter.

The next spring he brought back the work developed into three acts with choruses and minor characters.
Besides these additions he had written the words which Barbier and Carre should have done.
The rehearsals were tedious.

Meyerbeer wanted Faure and Madame Carvalho in the leading roles but one was at the Opera-Comique and the other at her own house, the Theatre-Lyrique.

The work went back and forth from the Place Favart to the Place du Chatelet.

But the author's hesitancy was at bottom only a pretext.