When Wagner heard the Symphonic funebre et triomphale he was forced to admit Berlioz’s “skill in writing compositions that were popular in the best sense of the word.”

“In listening to that symphony I had a lively impression that any little street boy in a blue blouse and red bonnet would understand it perfectly.  I have no hesitation in giving precedence to that work over Berlioz’s other works; it is big and noble from the first note to the last; a fine and eager patriotism rises from its first expression of compassion to the final glory of the apotheosis, and keeps it from any unwholesome exaggeration.  I want gladly to express my conviction that that symphony will fire men’s courage and will live as long as a nation bears the name of France."[104]

[Footnote 103:  Letter to some young Hungarians, 14 February, 1861.  See the Memoires, II, 212, for the incredible emotion which the Marche de Rakoczy roused in the audience at Budapest, and, above all, for the astonishing scene at the end:—­

“I saw a man enter unexpectedly.  He was miserably clad, but his face shone with a strange rapture.  When he saw me, he threw himself upon me and embraced me with fervour; his eyes filled with tears, and he was hardly able to get out the words, ’Ah, monsieur, monsieur! moi Hongrois ... pauvre diable ... pas parler Francais ... un poco Italiano.  Pardonnez mon extase....  Ah! ai compris votre canon....  Oui, oui, la grande-bataille....  Allemands chiens!’ And then striking his breast violently:  ’Dans le coeur, moi ... je vous porte.... Ah!  Francais ... revolutionnaire ... savoir faire la musique des revolutions!’”]

[Footnote 104:  Written 5 May, 1841.]

How do such works come to be neglected by our Republic?  How is it they have not a place in our public life?  Why are they not part of our great ceremonies?  That is what one would wonderingly ask oneself if one had not seen, for the last century, the indifference of the State to Art.  What might not Berlioz have done if the means had been given him, or if his works had found a place in the fetes of the Revolution?  Unhappily, one must add that here again his character was the enemy of his genius.  As this apostle of musical freedom, in the second part of his life, became afraid of himself and recoiled before the results of his own principles, and returned to classicism, so this revolutionary fell to sullenly disparaging the people and revolutions; and he talks about “the republican cholera,” “the dirty and stupid republic,” “the republic of street-porters and rag-gatherers,” “the filthy rabble of humanity a hundred times more stupid and animal in its twitchings and revolutionary grimacings than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo."[105]