Messiaen's course in 1949–50 had covered western music from Monteverdi's Orfeo to some of his own piano pieces, played in class by Loriod, and also music from Japan and India. After spending the latter part of the next summer holiday again in Montmorency, with your cousin René and his family, you returned in late September or early October to a new home, for your father had given up the butchery business, on grounds of poor health, and you all now shared a fifth-floor apartment at 2 rue de l'Abbé Patureau, in Montmartre.

A visitor to the apartment, which was bought in your name, would arrive as did a young English student, Bill Hopkins, at 3 p.m. on 7 January 1965:

‘I was ushered through a smallish ante-room, containing an old settee, a dining table and the drawers and shelves in which he housed his library of books and scores, into his study. This housed a grand piano [a Grotrian-Steinweg], an office desk and his record player; on the wall was a portrait of the young Schubert and a framed rose “plucked from Beethoven's grave in Vienna”. Scores in evidence were Franck's Violin Sonata and a volume of Haydn sonatas. The general impression was of ordered neatness.’

These rooms of yours were reached by way of a dark hall with a spare bed. Through another door from the hall was a big kitchen, with a little door at the side giving access to your parents' room. That was where they would stay when you were entertaining friends.