“Cherubini in society was outwardly silent, modest, unassuming, pleasing, obliging, and possessed of the finest manners.  At the same time, he who did not know that he was with Cherubini would think him stern and reserved, so well did the composer know how to conceal everything, if only to avoid ostentation.  He truly shunned brag or speaking of himself.  Cherubini’s voice was feeble, probably from narrow-chestedness, and somewhat hoarse, but was otherwise soft and agreeable.  His French was Italianized....  His head was bent forward, his nose was large and aquiline; his eyebrows were thick, black, and somewhat bushy, overshadowing his eyes.  His eyes were dark, and glittered with an extraordinary brilliancy that animated in a wonderful way the whole face.  A thin lock of hair came over the center of his forehead, and somehow gave to his countenance a peculiar softness.”

The picture painted by Ingres, the great artist, now in the Luxembourg gallery, represents the composer with Polyhymnia in the background stretching out her hand over him.  His face, framed in waving silvery hair, is full of majesty and brightness, and the eye of piercing luster.  Cherubini was so gratified by this effort of the painter that he sent him a beautiful canon set to wrords of his own.  Thus his latter years were spent in the society of the great artists and wits of Paris, revered by all, and recognized, after Beethoven’s death, as the musical giant of Europe.  Rossini, Meyerbeer, Weber, Schumann—­in a word, the representatives of the most diverse schools of composition—­bowed equally before this great name.  Rossini, who was his antipodes in genius and method, felt his loss bitterly, and after his death sent Cherubini’s portrait to his widow with these touching words:  “Here, my dear madam, is the portrait of a great man, who is as young in your heart as he is in my mind.”

Actively engaged as Director of the Conservatory, which he governed with consummate ability, his old age was further employed in producing that series of great masses which rank with the symphonies of Beethoven.  His creative instinct and the fire of his imagination remained unimpaired to the time of his death.  Mendelssohn in a letter to Moscheles speaks of him as “that truly wonderful old man, whose genius seems bathed in immortal youth.”  His opera of “Ali Baba,” composed at seventy-six, though inferior to his other dramatic works, is full of beautiful and original music, and was immediately produced in several of the principal capitals of Europe; and the second Requiem mass, written in his eightieth year, is one of his masterpieces.