Granger, his first wife and an intimate friend of my mother's.

Paul Meurice revealed a secret to me: that the romance _Ascanio_, attributed to Alexander Dumas, had been entirely written by Meurice.

The work met with a great success, and out of gratitude, Dumas offered to help Meurice in constructing a drama from the romance, which was to be signed by Meurice alone.

So it is easy for one who knows Dumas's dramas to find traces of his handiwork in _Benvenuto Cellini_.
It was not particularly easy to make an opera out of the play, and Gallet and I worked together at it with considerable difficulty.

We soon saw that we should have to eliminate the famous scene of the casting of the statue.