Part 19

So much the better! Could I but live a hundred and forty years my musical life would become distinctly interesting.

* * * * *

I had married again--_it was my duty_, and after eight years my wife died suddenly of heart disease. Some time after her burial in the great cemetery at Montmartre, my dear friend, Edouard Alexandre (the organ builder, whose goodness to me has been unbounded), thinking her grave too humble, made me a present of a plot of ground _in perpetuity_. There a vault was built and I was obliged to be present at the re-interment. It was a heart-rending scene and quite broke me down; I seemed to have touched the lowest depths of misery, but this was nothing to what followed soon after.

I was officially notified that the small cemetery at Montmartre, where Henriette lay, was to be closed and that I must remove her dear body. I gave the necessary orders and one gloomy morning set out alone for the deserted burial-ground. A municipal officer awaited me and as I came up a sexton jumped down into the open grave. The ten years buried coffin was still intact with the exception of the cover, decayed by damp, and the man, instead of lifting it to the surface, pulled at the rotten boards, which tearing asunder with a hideous noise, left the remains exposed.

Stooping, he took in his hands that fleshless head, discrowned and gaunt, the head of poor Ophelia and placed it in the new coffin lying on the brink of the grave--alas! alas! Again he stooped and raised the headless trunk, a black repulsive mass in its discoloured shroud--it fell with a dull, hopeless sound into its place. The officer a few paces off, stood watching. Seeing me leaning against a cypress tree he cried:

“Come nearer, M. Berlioz, come nearer.”

And, to add a grotesque weirdness to this horrible spectacle he added, misusing a word:

“Ah, poor _inhumanity_!”

In a few moments we followed the hearse down the hill to the great cemetery, where the new vault yawned before us. Henriette was laid within and there those dear dead women await me.

* * * * *

I am nearly sixty-one; past hope, past visions, past high thoughts; my son is far away; I am alone; my scorn for the dishonesty and imbecility of men, my hatred of their insane malignity are at their height; and every day I say again to Death:

“When thou wilt!”

Why does he tarry?

XXXVI

ESTELLE ONCE MORE

_To_ M. and Mme MASSART.

“PARIS, _August 1864_.--Yes, really and truly! Marshal Vaillant has written a charming letter to tell me that the Emperor has appointed us officers of the Legion of Honour[30]--yes, madame, both you and me. So arrange about changing your ribbon, etc.

“You would not go and dine with the Minister. Sixty of us were there, including His Excellency’s dog, who drank coffee out of his master’s cup.

“A great author, M. Mérimée, said to me:

“‘You ought to have been made an officer long ago, which shows that I am not in the Ministry.’

“You see I am a little better to-day and therefore more idiotic than usual; I hope this will find you the same.

“Paris is _en fête_ and you are not here! The Villerville beach must be very dismal, how can you stay on there?

“Massart goes shooting--he kills sea-gulls or perhaps an occasional sperm-whale--God only knows how you kill time! You have deserted your piano and I would not mind betting that when you come home you will hardly be able to play that easiest of scales--B natural major!

“Shall I come and see you? You may safely say ‘yes’ for I shall not come. Forgive me! I am getting serious again, the pain is beginning and I most go to bed. Heartiest greetings to you both.”

_To_ A. MOREL.

“_August 1864._--Thank you for your cordial letter. The officer’s cross and Vaillant’s letter pleased me--both for my friends’ sake and my enemies’. How _can_ you keep any illusions about music in France? Everything is dead except stupidity.

“I am almost alone. Louis has gone back to St Nazaire and all my friends are scattered except Heller, whom I see sometimes. We dine together at Asnières and are about as lively as owls; I read and re-read; in the evenings I stroll past the theatres in order to enjoy the pleasure of not going in. Yesterday I found a comfortable seat on a tomb in Montmartre cemetery and slept for two hours.

“Sometimes I go and see Madame Erard at Passy, where I am welcomed with open arms; I relish having no articles to write and being thoroughly lazy.

“Paris gets daily more beautiful; it is a pleasure to watch her blossoming out.

“I hear there is to be a mighty festival at Carlsruhe; Liszt has gone there from Rome and they are going to discourse ear-splitting music. It is the pow-wow of young Germany presided over by Hans von Bulow.”

Rarely have I suffered from _ennui_ so terribly as I did during the beginning of September 1864.

My friends were away except Stephen Heller, the delicate wit and learned musician, who has written so much lovely music for the piano and whose gentle melancholy and devotion to the true deities of Art made him to me such a grateful companion. My son was home from Mexico, he, too, was not lively and we often pooled our gloom and dined together.

One day, after dinner at Asnières, we walked beside the river and discussed Shakespeare and Beethoven, my son taking part in the Shakespeare portion, since, unfortunately, he was then unacquainted with Beethoven. We finally agreed that it was worth while living in order to worship the Beautiful, and if we could not annihilate all that is inimical to it we must be content to despise the commonplace and recognise it as little as possible. The sun was setting; we sat on the river-bank opposite the isle of Neuilly, and, as we watched the wayward wheeling of the swallows over the water, I suddenly remembered where I was.

I looked at my son--I thought of his mother.

Once more, in spirit, I lay half asleep in the snow as I had done in that very spot thirty-six years before, during those frenzied wanderings around Paris.

Once again I recalled Hamlet’s cold remark over the Ophelia he loved no longer, “What! the fair Ophelia?”

“Long ago,” I said to my companion, “one winter’s day, I was nearly drowned here trying to cross the Seine on the ice. I had walked aimlessly since early morning----” Louis sighed.

The following week he left me, and a great yearning for Vienne, Grenoble, above all, Meylan, came over me. I wished to see my nieces and--one other woman, if I could get her address.

I left Paris. My brother-in-law, Suat, and his two daughters met me with joy. But my joy was chastened, for on entering their drawing-room the portrait of my dear Adèle--now four years dead--faced me. It was a terrible blow, and my nieces looked on in sorrowful amazement at my grief.

Daily familiarity with the room, its furniture, the portrait, had already softened their loss to them; to me all was fresh.

Dear tender-hearted Adèle! my willing slave, my indulgent guardian. How well I remember one day, after I came from Italy, that it rained in torrents, and I said:

“Adèle, come for a walk.”

“Certainly, dear boy,” she said, promptly; “wait till I get my galoshes.”

“Really,” said my elder sister, “you must be quite crazy to want to paddle about the fields in such weather.”

But, despite mockery and jokes, we took a big umbrella and arm-in-arm walked about six miles without speaking a word. We loved each other.

After spending a peaceful fortnight with my brother-in-law, during which he got me Madame F.’s address in Lyons, I could no longer resist a pilgrimage to St Eynard, such as I had made sixteen years before.

There soared the ancient rock, there stood the small white house ... to-day, her old home; to-morrow, perhaps, Estelle herself! Sixteen years had passed as one night, all was unchanged. The little shady path, the old tower, the leafy vines, the glorious view over the valley. Till then I had kept calm, only murmuring, “Estelle! Estelle! Estelle!” but now, overcome with emotion, I fell prone on my face, hearing with each heart-beat the fatal words:

“Past! Past! Gone for ever!”

I arose, and chipping from the tower a morsel of stone that she perchance may have touched, went on my way.

There is the rock whereon I laid my posy of pink peas--but where are the flowers? Gone, or perhaps only past their flowering stage. Here is the cherry tree. How grown!

I break off a fragment of bark and, passing my arms around the trunk, press it passionately to my breast.

Dear tree, you remember her! You understand!

At the avenue gate I resolved to go up to the house; perhaps the new owners would not be too suspicious of me. In the garden I met an old lady who seemed startled at the sight of a stranger.

“Pardon me, madame,” I stammered, “might I go through your garden--in memory of--old friends?”

“Certainly, monsieur, go where you will.”

Further on a girl was on a ladder gathering pears. I bowed and passed on, pushing my way through the bushes, now so neglected, and cutting a branch of syringa to hide next my heart. As I came to the open door, I paused on the threshold to look in. The maiden of the pear tree, no doubt warned by her mother, came forward and courteously asked me in.

That little room, looking over the wide valley, that _she_ had so proudly shown me when I was twelve years old--the same furniture, the same----I tore my handkerchief with my teeth. The girl watched me uneasily.

“Do not mind me, mademoiselle. All is so strange--I have not--been here for forty-nine years!”

And, bursting into tears, I fled.

What could those ladies have thought of that strange scene, to which they never got a key?

Reader, do I repeat myself? In sooth it is always so; remembrance, regret, a weary soul clutching at the past, fighting despairingly to retain the flying present. Always this useless struggle against time, always this wild desire to realise the impossible, always this frantic thirst for perfect love! How can I help repeating myself? The sea repeats itself; are not all its waves akin?

* * * * *

That night I reached Lyons and spent a sleepless night thinking of my meeting with Madame F.

I decided to go at noon, and to send the following letter to prepare her for her visitor:

“MADAME,--I have just come from Meylan, from my second pilgrimage to the hallowed haunts of my childhood’s dreams. It has been even more painful than that of sixteen years ago, after which I wrote to you at Vif. This time I ask for more; I dare to beg you to see me. I can control myself; you need fear no transports from a heart out-worn and crushed by the pressure of cruel Fate. Give me but a few moments! Let me see you, I implore.

“_23rd September 1864._ HECTOR BERLIOZ.”

I could not wait till noon. At half-past eleven I rang; gave her maid my card and the letter. She was at home. I ought only to have sent up the letter, but I was past knowing what I was doing. Without hesitation she came to meet me. I at once recognised her graceful yet stately air--the step of a goddess. But, ah! how changed her face! Her complexion darkened, her hair silvered.

Yet my heart went out to my idol as though she had been in all the freshness of her youthful beauty.

Holding my note, she led the way to her drawing-room. My emotions choked me, I was dumb; with gentle dignity she began:

“We are old acquaintances, M. Berlioz----” Silence.

“We were but children then----” Still silence.

Feeble as the cry of a drowning man came my halting voice:

“My letter--madame--explains this visit; would you but read it----”

She opened and read it, then laid it on the chimney-piece.

“Then you have been in Meylan; by chance, no doubt?”

“Oh, madame, can you believe it needed chance to take me there? For how long had I not yearned to see it once more?”

Again silence.

“Your life has been a stirring one, M. Berlioz.”

“How do you know, madame?”

“I have read your biography--by Méry, I think. I bought it some years ago.”

“Pray, do not think that my friend Méry, an artist and a clever man, is guilty of such a tissue of fables and nonsense as that! I believe I can guess the real author. But I shall soon have a true biography ready, one I have written myself.”

“And you write so well!”

“Nay, madame, I do not mean to praise the style, but simply to say that at least it will be true. In it, without naming you, I have been able to tell all my feeling for you without restraint.”

Silence.

“I have also heard of you,” went on Madame F., “from a friend of yours who married my husband’s niece.”

“Yes, it is he whom I asked to tell me the fate of a letter I wrote you sixteen years ago. I longed to know whether you received it. I never saw him again, and now he is dead.”

Silence.

“My life has been very quiet, very sad. I lost some of my children, and my husband died while the others were very young. I did my best alone to bring them up well.”

Silence.

“I am indeed grateful, M. Berlioz, for the kind thoughts you have kept of me.”

At her gentle words my heart beat yet more violently.

With hungry eyes I gazed and gazed, clothing her once more in the beauty of long past days. At length I said:

“Madame, give me your hand.”

Pressing it to my lips, my heart turned to water within me, the world sank away, a long and blessed silence brooded over us.

“Dare I hope,” I murmured, “that I may write to you? That, at long distant intervals, I may even see you?”

“Oh, certainly; but I am leaving Lyons soon to live with my son who, after his marriage, is to settle in Geneva.”

I rose, not daring to stay longer. She came with me to the door, saying, “Good-bye, M. Berlioz, good-bye. I am more grateful than I can tell you for your long and sweet memory of me.”

Once more I bent over her hand, pressing it to my burning forehead, then tore myself away but only to wander, aimlessly and feverishly, near her dwelling.

As I watched the swirling Rhone rush under the Pont Morand, M. Strakosch, brother-in-law of Adelina Patti, came up to me.

“You!” he cried, “Good-luck! Adelina will be so glad to see you. She is singing to-morrow in the _Barbiere_; will you have a box?”

“Many thanks, I may be leaving this evening.”

“Well, anyway come to dinner with us to-day. You know how much pleasure it gives us.”

“I dare not promise--It depends--I am not very well--Where are you staying?”

“Grand Hotel.”

“So am I. Well, if I am not too unsociable this evening I will come. But don’t wait.”

I suddenly thought of an excuse to see Madame F. once more. If she would go to the theatre I would stay also, if she would allow me the honour of escorting her. If she would not I would leave at once.

I hurried round to her house. She was out but I left a message with her maid and then went off to pass a day of torturing uncertainty. Hour after hour went by and no answer came, time after time I returned to find the house shut up and to get no answer to my ring.

Could it be that she had told her people not to admit me?

What would become of me! Where should I go! What do! There seemed no refuge for me but the Rhone!

Finally in one last despairing attempt I heard ladies’ voices above me on the stairs and saw her coming down, a note in her hand.

“Oh, M. Berlioz, I am so sorry I have only just got your message and here is my answer. Unfortunately I shall be away from home to-morrow; a thousand pardons for the inconvenience I have caused you.”

She was putting the letter in her pocket when I cried:

“Oh, please let me have it!”

“It is hardly worth while----”

“I beg of you, since it was meant for me.”

She gave it me and for the first time I saw her writing.

“Then I shall see you no more?”

“Not if you leave to-night. May your journey be pleasant.”

Pressing my hand, she and her two friends passed on, leaving me--can it be believed?--almost happy.

I had seen, had spoken to her again, I had a letter from her in which she sent me her _kindest regards_.

With my unhoped-for treasure I went back to the hotel to dine with Mademoiselle Patti.

As I entered her _salon_ the charming diva clapped her hands joyously and danced up to me, holding up her lovely forehead for my accustomed kiss.

During dinner she spoilt me with her dainty coaxing attentions.

“There is something wrong with you,” she said, “what are you thinking of? I can’t have you miserable.”

They came with me to the station, she, with a friend and Strakosch, and they were allowed to go on to the platform. Adelina, dear child, clung to me until the signal was given, then the winsome creature flung both arms round my neck and kissed me, crying gaily:

“Good-bye, good-bye just for a week. We shall be in Paris on Tuesday and you must come and see us on Thursday.”

Why could I not claim such affection from Madame F. and mere politeness from Mademoiselle Patti?

Adelina was like a brilliant, diamond-eyed humming-bird fluttering round me; I was enchanted but not touched. Though I liked her greatly, I did not _love_ her.

My soul was given to that old, sad, unsought after woman, hers it has always been and will be to my dying day.

Balzac and even Shakespeare--master painters of passions--knew nothing of love like this. Tom Moore alone has imagined and voiced it in--

“Believe me if all those endearing young charms.”

How often, through that long night journey, did I repeat:

“Idiot! why did you leave? You might have seen her again to-morrow.” True, but the fear of being troublesome restrained me and what could I have done in Lyons during the hours we were apart? it would have been but torture.

After a few miserable days of indecision in Paris I wrote the following letter, which shows my deplorable state and her beautiful calm.

How much worse off am I now that I cannot even write to her! To enjoy that romantic friendship to the end would have been too great a blessing. Wounded, torn, alone, unsatisfied must I totter to my grave!

“PARIS, _27th September 1864_.--Madame! A thousand blessings on you for your gentle reception of me! Few women could have done as much; yet since our meeting, I suffer most cruelly. It is useless to repeat to myself that you could not have done more than you have; my wounded heart bleeds on unstaunched. I ask, why? why? and my only answer is: because I saw you so little; because I said but a tithe of all I wished; because we parted as if for ever.

“Yet I held your hand, I pressed it to my lips--to my forehead and kept back my tears as I had promised.

“And now the inexorable thirst for another word from you has conquered me; in pity grant it!

“Think! for forty-five years I have loved you; you are my childhood’s dream that has weathered all the storms of my most stormy life. It _must_ be true--this love of a life-time--could it, else, master me as it still does?

“Do not take me for an eccentric, a plaything of my own imagination; I am but a man of intense sensibility, of eternal constancy and of overwhelmingly strong affections. I loved you, I love you still, I shall always love you, although I am sixty-one and for me the world has no more illusions.

“Grant me, I pray you, not as a nurse, from a sense of duty to her sick patient, but as a noble woman stooping to heal wounds she has unwittingly given--grant me those three things that, alone, can give me peace: permission to write sometimes, your undertaking to reply and a promise that once a year, at least, you will allow me to visit you.

“If I called without your permission I might arrive at the wrong time, therefore I shall not venture near you unless you say: ‘Come.’

“Surely there is nothing strange or wrong in this? Could there be a purer or more beautiful bond? Who shall say us nay? Still, I must own that it would be painful to meet you only amongst others, therefore if you bid me come it will be that we may talk as we did last Friday when, so deeply was I moved, that I could not savour the sweet sad charm by reason of my terror lest emotion should get beyond control. Oh, madame! madame! I have but one end in life--to gain your affection!

“Give me but leave to try! I will be so humble, so restrained; my letters shall be as infrequent as you wish lest they become a burden to you; five lines only from you will suffice me. My visits will be but rare; yet, if our thoughts may meet, I shall feel that--after these long and dreary years during which I have been nothing to you--I may in time become your friend. Friends with such devotion as mine are not too often found. I will encircle you with love so sweet, so tender, with affection so compounded of all that is simplest in a child and all that is best and grandest in a man that, surely, in time you will feel its charm and turn to me one day, saying:

“I am in very deed your friend.”

“Adieu, madame, once more I read your note of the 23rd with its assurance of your _sentiments affectueux_. Surely this is no mere formality? Tell me truly--truly!--Yours to eternity,

HECTOR BERLIOZ.”

“_P.S._--I send you three books; perhaps you will glance at them in your leisure moments. Do you see the author’s device to make you take a little interest in him?”

MADAME F.’S _Answer_.

“LYONS, _29th September 1864_.

“MONSIEUR,--I should wrong both you and myself did I not reply at once to your dream of our future friendship; believe me, I speak from my heart.

“I am an old woman (remember I am six years your senior), worn and withered by bodily pain and mental anguish, with all my earthly illusions swept away.

“Since the fatal day, twenty years ago, that I lost my best friend, I have said good-bye to worldly pleasures, and have found my sole consolation in a few old friends and in my children.

“In this absolute calm, alone, can I find rest, and to upset it would be burdensome indeed.

“In your letter of the 27th you say you have but one wish--that I may become your friend. Do you believe, monsieur, that this could possibly be? I hardly know you, I have seen you but once in forty-nine years; how can I understand your tastes, your character, your capacities--all those hundred and one points upon which, alone, friendship can be based?

“With two people of like affinities, sympathy may be born and grow into friendship, but, far apart as we are, no correspondence could bring about what you desire.

“Besides, I must confess that I am most lazy about letters; my mind is as torpid as my fingers. I could not, therefore, promise to write regularly, for the promise would certainly not be kept. Still, if you feel a certain pleasure in writing, I will read your letters, although you must not expect speedy replies.

“Neither can I promise to receive you alone. At Geneva, in the house of my son and his wife, it would be impossible for me to arrange matters as you wish.

“I tell you all this with perfect frankness, for I feel so strongly that, as grey hairs come, dreams must be thrust aside--such friendships belong to the happy days of youth, not to the disenchantments of old age.

“My future is so short; why indulge in a dream that must fade so quickly? Why create these vain regrets?

“In what I say, monsieur, do not think that I wish to wound you, to belittle your remembrance of the past. I respect it, and am greatly touched.

“You are still young at heart, and I am old and good for nothing but to keep a warm place for you in my memory. In your triumphs I shall always take a cordial interest.

“Again, monsieur, I send you my affectionate regards.

ESTELLE F----.”

“I have received the books you so kindly sent. A thousand thanks.”

_Second Letter._