CHAPTER V.
LOUIS GALLET As _Dejanire_, cast in a new form, has again appeared in the vast frame of the Opera stage, I may be allowed to recall my recollections of my friend and collaborator, Louis Gallet, the diligent and chosen companion of my best years, whose support was so dear and precious to me.
Collaboration for some reason unknown to me is deprecated.

Opera, it is said, should spring from the brain like Minerva, fully armed.

So much the better if such divine intellects can be found, but they are rare and always will be.

For dramatic and literary art on the one hand and musical art on the other require different powers, which are not ordinarily found in the same person.
I first met Louis Gallet in 1871.

Camille du Locle, who was the manager of the Opera-Comique at the time, could not put on _Le Timbre d'Argent_, and while he waited for better days, which never came, to do that, he offered me a one-act work.