After his separation from Lilly, Debussy's relocation to a private mansion away from the center of Paris represented an abrupt change in his life—quite different from his former lifestyle. Emma was accustomed to living in comfort; the birth of Chouchou, in addition to the presence of Emma's daughter Dolly, led to the employment of a nurse and a housekeeper. While Debussy's copyright revenues had increased, and the income and the amounts stipulated in the contracts with Durand for each work were much more substantial than those the composer had received before 1905, his expenses had become onerous and would weigh more and more heavily on his daily life.

All of Debussy's biographers have reiterated that Emma had been expecting to inherit the fortune of her uncle, the financier Osiris, and that he likely disinherited her when she decided to begin a new life with the composer. A reading of the fourth and final will and testament of Daniel Iffla Osiris, drafted on 20 July 1906, provides a completely different view of the facts. Given that the Pasteur Institute was the financier's chief beneficiary (for about forty million francs), Emma had no reason to hope that she would receive his entire inheritance. Among numerous private bequests, Osiris granted a yearly annuity of 3,000 francs to his nephew (the composer Raoul Bardac) and a sum of 100,000 francs to Dolly (Raoul's sister) which, however, she could not access until she turned twenty-one or married. “Mme Emma Moyse, divorced from M. Bardac,” was to receive “an annual sum of no more than 5,000 francs.”

New Relationships

From then on, Debussy would lead a life of hard work, with little exposure to the outside world; he would sit at his desk, on which his favorite objects, such as the wooden toad he called Arkel, were placed. His parents now lived nearby, on the rue La Fontaine, and several photographs from 1906 (no doubt taken by Emma) show their happiness in visiting their son at his beautiful home. Manuel had just retired.

Among Debussy's new acquaintances was a young Portuguese composer, Francisco de Lacerda, who was born in the Azores.