"In March 1924 Roger Ducasse brought me the staggering message with which Gabriel Fauré had entrusted him: "I would like to die without leaving any 'scratches' and see Marguerite Long again." And he repeated once again: "No one has played my music like she has and no one has written about my music like her husband." In these last moments he wanted to erase the shadows that had tarnished our feelings. "Come and see him," Roger Ducasse insisted. "He will be waiting for you tomorrow afternoon." It was a Tuesday, I have not forgotten. When I got to his house, my heart beating, I learned that that very day, at five o'clock in the morning, Gabriel Fauré had passed away. I saw him anyway. He lay on his death bed, his features ravaged but still recognizable. This was the last time I saw him, and I cannot say what it meant to me, because Fauré's music was one of the reasons for living, because it was tied to everything that was my musical youth. I shall always remain loyal to it. For his music I have joined my belief in Fauré with an infinite gentleness, forgiveness, pardon. With it I have rejected the idea of eternal flames and unattainable Paradise. In Paradisum. It is true, as Georges Duhamel wrote in La Musique Consolatrice, that "music watches with us among the ruins and ashes of all our former happiness."