ed likely to go well.

The day of the performance arrived, in the Church of the Invalides,
before all the princes, peers, and deputies, the French press, the
correspondents of foreign papers, and an immense crowd. It was
absolutely essential for me to have a great success; a moderate one
would have been fatal, and a failure would have annihilated me
altogether.

Now listen attentively.

The various groups of instruments in the orchestra were tolerably widely
separated, especially the four brass bands introduced in the 'Tuba
mirum,' each of which occupied a corner of the entire orchestra. There
is no pause between the 'Dies Irae' and the 'Tuba mirum,' but the pace of
the latter movement is reduced to half what it was before. At this point
the whole of the brass enters, first all together, and then in passages,
answering and interrupting, each a third higher than the last. It is
obvious that it is of the greatest importance that the four beats of the
new _tempo_ should be distinctly marked, or else the terrible explosion,
which I had so carefully prepared with combinations and proportions
never attempted before or since, and which, rightly performed, gives
such a picture of the Last Judgment as I believe is destined to live,
would be a mere enormous and hideous confusion.

With my habitual mistrust, I had stationed myself behind Habeneck, and
turning my back on him, overlooked the group of kettle-drums, which he
could not see, when the moment approached for them to take part in the
general melee. There are perhaps one thousand bars in my Requiem.
Precisely in that of which I have just been speaking, when the movement
is retarded, and the wind instruments burst in with their terrible
flourish of trumpets; in fact, just in _the_ one bar where the
conductor's motion is absolutely indispensable, Habeneck _puts down his
baton, quietly takes out his snuff box_, and proceeds to take a pinch
of snuff. I always had my eye in his direction, and instantly turned
rapidly on one heel, and springing forward before him, I stretched out
my arm and marked the four great beats of the new movement. The
orchestras followed me, each in order. I conducted the piece to the end,
and the effect which I had longed for was produced. When, at the last
words of the chorus, Habeneck saw that the 'Tuba mirum' was saved, he
said, "What a cold perspiration I have been in! Without you we should
have been lost." "Yes, I know," I answered, looking fixed