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STORIES OF
himself as he told it to a Paris journalist whom I knew well: ' A good many years afterwards I (meaning Boucher) was seated next to Rouget de Lisle at a dinner-party in Paris. We had never met before, and, as you may easily imagine, I was rather interested in the gentle-man, whom, with many others at the same board, I complimented on his production; only I confined myself to complimenting him on his poem. " You don't say a word about the music," he replied; "and yet, being a celebrated musician, that ought to interest you. Do you not like it?" "Very much indeed," I said, in a some-what significant tone. " Well, let me be frank with you. The music is not mine. It was that of a march which came, heaven knows whence, and which they kept on playing at Marseilles during the Terror, when I was a prisoner at the fortress of St. Jean. I made a few alterations necessitated by the words, and there it is." Thereupon, to his great surprise, I hummed the march as I had originally written it. " Wonder-ful !" he exclaimed; " how did you come by it?" he asked. When I told him he threw himself round my neck. But the next moment he said: "I am very sorry, my dear Boucher, but I am afraid that you will be despoiled for ever, do what you will; for your music and my
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