In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Georgina was still convinced at the end of 1873 that everything was working out for the best. She and Harry had tamed the ‘old man’: he no longer spat all over the place, he took baths, and he changed his clothes regularly. Instead of his brown suit, he had acquired a taste for exotic garments, wearing ‘a red flannel blouse and a loose jacket with flowing necktie’, which made him look like Garibaldi. Georgina had even made Gounod grow his hair and ‘cultivate a saint-like appearance’. He was ‘very much changed for the better’ and she hoped that he would become ‘calmer, happier and gooder, year by year’.

All was quiet until the third week in January, when the composer had another of his ‘cerebral attacks’ and was ‘off his head all day’. In his delirium he recognised nobody and believed that he was in Antoine Blanche's clinic at Passy. He claimed that ‘they’ wanted to take him and put him in a hole’ and only ‘Mimi’ (Georgina) could save him. The only way that Georgina could persuade him to stay in bed was by lying down on the bedclothes by his side. After her furious outburst a few weeks earlier, Gounod was still somewhat in awe of Georgina and inclined – for the time being – to do as he was told. He seemed to be entirely dependent on her, telling her several times that he saw her ‘covered in white light’. He was better in the evening, after Georgina and Harry had given him an ‘injection’ of warm water and turpentine. On the following day he was weak, but his head was ‘right’.

The first concert of the year took place at St James's Hall on 7 February. It did not go entirely according to plan: Gounod made ‘an awful mistake’ in Jeanne d’Arc and the whole performance lasted much too long, not ending until almost eleven. The critic from the Examiner wrote that it was ‘a fortunate thing’ for Gounod that his European reputation did not depend on this concert.