Then contrast Berlioz with Wagner.  Wagner, too, was stirred by violent passions, but he was always master of himself, and his reason remained unshaken by the storms of his heart or those of the world, by the torments of love or the strife of political revolutions.  He made his experiences and even his errors serve his art; he wrote about his theories before he put them into practice; and he only launched out when he was sure of himself, and when the way lay clear before him.  And think how much Wagner owes to this written expression of his aims and the magnetic attraction of his arguments.  It was his prose works that fascinated the King of Bavaria before he had heard his music; and for many others also they have been the key to that music.  I remember being impressed by Wagner’s ideas when I only half understood his art; and when one of his compositions puzzled me, my confidence was not shaken, for I was sure that the genius who was so convincing in his reasoning would not blunder; and that if his music baffled me, it was I who was at fault.  Wagner was really his own best friend, his own most trusty champion; and his was the guiding hand that led one through the thick forest and over the rugged crags of his work.

Not only do you get no help from Berlioz in this way, but he is the first to lead you astray and wander with you in the paths of error.  To understand his genius you must seize hold of it unaided.  His genius was really great, but, as I shall try to show you, it lay at the mercy of a weak character.

* * * * *

Everything about Berlioz was misleading, even his appearance.  In legendary portraits he appears as a dark southerner with black hair and sparkling eyes.  But he was really very fair and had blue eyes,[5] and Joseph d’Ortigue tells us they were deep-set and piercing, though sometimes clouded by melancholy or languor.[6] He had a broad forehead furrowed with wrinkles by the time he was thirty, and a thick mane of hair, or, as E. Legouve puts it, “a large umbrella of hair, projecting like a movable awning over the beak of a bird of prey."[7]

[Footnote 5:  “I was fair,” wrote Berlioz to Buelow (unpublished letters, 1858).  “A shock of reddish hair,” he wrote in his Memoires, I, 165.  “Sandy-coloured hair,” said Reyer.  For the colour of Berlioz’s hair I rely upon the evidence of Mme. Chapot, his niece.]

[Footnote 6:  Joseph d’Ortigue, Le Balcon de l’Opera, 1833.]

[Footnote 7:  E. Legouve, Soixante ans de souvenirs.  Legouve describes Berlioz here as he saw him for the first time.]