The hostility of Hector’s family to music as a profession, died down a bit, owing to the success of the mass, but started up with renewed vigor when the son and brother failed to pass the entrance examinations at the Conservatoire.  His father wrote that if he persisted in staying on in Paris his allowance would be stopped.  Lesueur, his teacher, promised to intercede and wrote an appealing letter, which really made matters worse instead of better.  Then Hector went home himself, to plead his cause in person.  He was coldly received by his family; his father at last consented to his return to Paris for a time, but his mother forbade it absolutely.  In case he disobeyed her will, she would disown him and never again wished to see his face.  So Hector at last set out again for Paris with no kind look or word from his mother, but reconciled for the time being with the rest of the family.

The young enthusiast began life anew in Paris, by being very economical, as he must pay back the loan made for his mass.  He found a tiny fifth floor room, gave up restaurant dinners and contented himself with plain bread, with the addition of raisins, prunes or dates.  He also secured some pupils, which helped out in this emergency, and even got a chance to sing in vaudeville, at the enormous sum of 50 francs per month!

These were strenuous days for the eager ardent musician.  Teaching from necessity, in order to live, spending every spare moment on composing; attending opera whenever he got a free ticket; yet, in spite of many privations there was happiness too.  With score under arm, he always made it a point to follow the performance of any opera he heard.  And so in time, he came to know the sound—­the voice as it were, of each instrument in the orchestra.  The study of Beethoven, Weber and Spontini—­watching for rare and unusual combinations of sounds, being with artists who were kind enough to explain the compass and powers of their instruments, were the ways and means he used to perfect his art.

When the Conservatoire examinations of 1827, came on, Hector tried again, and this time passed the preliminary test.  The task set for the general competition was to write music for Orpheus torn by the Bacchantes.  An incompetent pianist, whose duty it was to play over the compositions, for the judges, could seem to make nothing of Hector’s score.  The six judges, headed by Cherubini, the Director of the Conservatoire, voted against the aspirant, and he was thrown out a second time.

And now came to Berlioz a new revelation—­nothing less than the revelation of the art of Shakespeare.  An English company of actors had come to Paris, and the first night Hamlet was given, with Henrietta Smithson—­who five years later became his wife—­as Ophelia.

In his diary Berlioz writes:  “Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me down as with a thunderbolt.  His lightning spirit opened to me the highest heaven of Art, and revealed to me the best and grandest and truest that earth can give.”  He began to worship both the genius of Shakespeare and the art of the beautiful English actress.  Every evening found him at the theater, but days were spent in a kind of dumb despair, dreaming of Shakespeare and of Miss Smithson, who had now become the darling of Paris.