When I was appointed organ professor at the Conservatory, I had to leave my residence at [8] rue Garancière and move to the ground floor of [3] rue de l’Abbaye, where I enjoyed a vast living room that was quite suitable to the installation of a grand orgue. Later, the parish priest of Saint-Germaindes-Prés bought the palace and set up an asylum for old women. At his insistence, Eugène Guillaume and I had to give up the place. But we still deeply regret that this historic building had this fate because its architecture has suffered from it, and, since then, even a dispensary was set up there, whereas it would have been interesting to make it a museum.

The Hôtel de Chimay where the Comtesse Elisabeth de Greffuhle was born is inhabited by Mlle de Caraman-Chimay, daughter of the Duke of Caraman-Chimay. Joseph Fouché lived in a house, now demolished, that was part of the group of buildings of the … and the offices of the police headquarters located on the ground floor with a small garden at 7 rue des Saints-Peres where I lived. This garden was connected to the offices. As for the executive at the time, he was in the house of the publisher Garnier. My former house, 7 rue des Saints-Pères, is set back from the street, with a courtyard in front. Under this courtyard is the beginning of an underground passage that connects the two houses, where orders were transmitted under ground.

The beautiful actress Cécile Sorel lived on the quai in the building next to the Hôtel de Bugeaud. It can be said that Sorel has become an important personality. She already had many admirers at that time, including one of our colleagues, the great American architect Whitney Warren, and this is perhaps the reason for many of his stays in Paris. François-Léopold Flameng, Théodore Reinach, Whitney Warren, Gabriele d’Annunzio, etc. were often invited to the beautiful second-floor residence where she lived. Sorel often came to my house with her friends during the war, and she never failed to bring Robert de Ségur, whom she has since married. A curious detail, Sorel was born in the impasse du Maine where Cavaillé-Coll had long had his private villa, as did Antoine Bourdelle.