To continue the record of Berlioz’s life in consecutive narrative would be without significance, for it contains but little for many years except the same indomitable battle against circumstance and enmity, never yielding an inch, and always keeping his eyes bent on his own lofty ideal.  In all of art history is there no more masterful heroic struggle than Berlioz waged for thirty-five years, firm in his belief that some time, if not during his own life, his principles would be triumphant, and his name ranked among the immortals.  But what of the mean while?  This problem Berlioz solved, in his later as in earlier years, by doing the distasteful work of the literary scrub.  But never did he cease composing; though no one would then have his works, his clear eye perceived the coming time when his genius would not be denied, when an apotheosis should comfort his spirit wandering in Hades.

Among Berlioz’s later works was an opera of which he had composed both words and music, consisting of two parts, “The Taking of Troy,” and “The Trojans at Carthage,” the latter of which at last secured a few representations at a minor theatre in 1863.  The plan of this work required that it should be carried out under the most perfect conditions.  “In order,” says Berlioz, “to properly produce such a work as ‘Les Trojans,’ I must be absolute master of the theatre, as of the orchestra in directing a symphony.  I must have the good-will of all, be obeyed by all, from prima donna to scene-shifter.  A lyrical theatre, as I conceive it, is a great instrument of music, which, if I am to play, must be placed unreservedly in my hands.”  Wagner found a King of Bavaria to help him carry out a similar colossal scheme at Bayreuth, but ill luck followed a man no less great through life.  His grand “Trojans” was mutilated, tinkered, patched, and belittled, to suit the Theatre Lyrique.  It was a butchery of the work, but still it yielded the composer enough to justify his retirement from the “Journal des Debats,” after thirty years of slavery.

Berlioz was now sixty years old, a lonely man, frail in body, embittered in soul by the terrible sense of failure.  His wife, with whom he had lived on terms of alienation, was dead; his only son far away, cruising on a man-of-war.  His courage and ambition were gone.  To one who remarked that his music belonged to the future, he replied that he doubted if it ever belonged to the past.  His life seemed to have been a mistake, so utterly had he failed to impress himself on the public.  Yet there were times when audiences felt themselves moved by the power of his music out of the ruts of preconceived opinion into a prophecy of his coming greatness.  There is an interesting anecdote told by a French writer: