In the summer and autumn of 1871 the scattered residents of Paris began to return. Fauré spent the summer with the evacuated Niedermeyer school in Switzerland, arriving back in the capital to take up a post at Saint-Sulpice under Charles Widor. (He managed to retain this job until 1874, when he joined Saint-Saëns at the Madeleine.) Chabrier, too, must have returned with his ministry to Paris in the weeks after the end of the Commune. Saint-Saëns—who had shared his brief British exile with Pauline Viardot, Charles Gounod, and the opera stars Jean-Baptiste Faure and Caroline Miolan- Carvalho—gave a few concerts in London, including one in a series inaugurating the new organ of the Royal Albert Hall. He made his way back across the Channel in late July, and his Monday soirées quickly regained their place at the centre of the city's musical conversation. On 14 October 1871 d’Indy recorded in his journal that the previous evening he had joined this prestigious circle for the first time. Two weeks later he proudly observed, ‘There's already an effective group of Musicians, such as Saint-Saëns, Franck, Castillon, Massenet, Bizet, Widor etc. Young acolytes such as Duparc and I are daily adding to their numbers.’

Brutally catapulted into adulthood by his military service, d’Indy was now twenty years old. Having returned to the capital on 23 July, by early August he was gently relinquishing his pre-war infatuation with Ellie MacSwiney, who, he wrote, ‘is more and more besotted by Duparc … I would say … that Duparc's musical talent has utterly captivated her and perhaps it will end prosaically in marriage.’ Sure enough, a week later, he recorded, ‘Ellie, the charming, the Muse, the Pride of Erin, the Poet, the Musician, the Dreamer … Ellie is getting married! And to whom? You have guessed it … to Monsieur Henricus Loci plantati arboribus.’ The engagement was officially announced on 17 August: ‘They both seem so happy! that it would be a crime to wound their happiness by the slightest trace of jealousy, and so, I don't know how I’ve managed it, but I’m no longer—not the slightest bit—jealous of Henri, very truly, I am content to see him so happy.’