heights of Montmartre, at the setting sun; reverie bore me a thousand leagues from my accursed comic opera.  And when, on turning, my eyes fell upon the accursed title at the head of the accursed sheet, blank still, and obstinately awaiting my word, despair seized upon me.  My guitar rested against the table; with a kick I crushed its side.  Two pistols on the mantel stared at me with great round eyes.  I regarded them for some time, then beat my forehead with clinched hand.  At last I wept furiously, like a schoolboy unable to do his theme.  The bitter tears were a relief.  I turned the pistols toward the wall; I pitied my innocent guitar, and sought a few chords, which were given without resentment.  Just then my son of six years knocked at the door [the little Louis whose death, years after, was the last bitter drop in the composer’s cup of life]; owing to my ill-humor, I had unjustly scolded him that morning.  ‘Papa,’ he cried, ‘wilt thou be friends?’ ’I will be friends; come on, my boy’; and I ran to open the door.  I took him on my knee, and, with his blonde head on my breast, we slept together....  Fifteen years since then, and my torment still endures.  Oh, to be always there!—­scores to write, orchestras to lead, rehearsals to direct.  Let me stand all day with baton in hand, training a chorus, singing their parts myself, and beating the measure until I spit blood, and cramp seizes my arm; let me carry desks, double basses, harps, remove platforms, nail planks like a porter or a carpenter, and then spend the night in rectifying the errors of engravers or copyists.  I have done, do, and will do it.  That belongs to my musical life, and I bear it without thinking of it, as the hunter bears the thousand fatigues of the chase.  But to scribble eternally for a livelihood—!”

It may be fancied that such a man as Berlioz did not spare the lash, once he griped the whip-handle, and, though no man was more generous than he in recognizing and encouraging genuine merit, there was none more relentless in scourging incompetency, pretentious commonplace, and the blind conservatism which rests all its faith in what has been.  Our composer made more than one powerful enemy by this recklessness in telling the truth, where a more politic man would have gained friends strong to help in time of need.  But Berlioz was too bitter and reckless, as well as too proud, to debate consequences.

In 1838 Berlioz completed his “Benvenuto Cellini,” his only attempt at opera since “Les Francs Juges,” and, wonderful to say, managed to get it done at the opera, though the director, Duponchel, laughed at him as a lunatic, and the whole company already regarded the work as damned in advance.  The result was a most disastrous and eclatant failure, and it would have crushed any man whose moral backbone was not forged of thrice-tempered steel.  With all these back-sets Hector Berlioz was not without encouragement.  The brilliant Franz Liszt, one of the musical idols of the age, had bowed before him and called him master, the great musical protagonist.  Spontini, one of the most successful composers of the time, held him in affectionate admiration, and always bade him be of good cheer.  Paganini, the greatest of violinists, had hailed him as equal to Beethoven.