Then du Locle lost interest in _Le Timbre d'Argent_ and then came the failure of the Opera-Comique.
During all these tribulations I was preparing _Samson_, although I could find no one who even wanted to hear me speak of it.

They all thought that I must be mad to attempt a Biblical subject.

I gave a hearing of the second act at my house, but no one understood it at all.
Without the aid of Liszt, who did not know a note of it, but who engaged me to finish it and put it on at Weimar, _Samson_.

would never have seen the light.

Afterwards it was refused in succession by Halanzier, Vaucorbeil, and Ritt and Gailhard, who decided to take it only after they had heard it sung by that admirable singer Rosine Bloch.
But to return to _Le Timbre d'Argent_.