Part 8

“I am shut up in the Institute _for the last time_, for the prize _shall_ be mine this year, our happiness hangs on it. Every other day Madame Moke sends her maid with messages. Can you credit it, Humbert? This angel, with the finest talent in Europe, is mine! I hear that M. de Noailles, in whom her mother believes greatly, has pleaded my cause, despite my want of money. If only you could hear my Camille _thinking aloud_ in the divine works of Beethoven and Weber, you would lose your head as I do.”

“_23rd August 1830._

“I have gained the Prix de Rome. It was awarded unanimously--a thing that has never been known before. What a joy it is to be successful when it gives pleasure to those one adores!

“My sweet Ariel was dying of anxiety when I took her the news, her dainty wings were all ruffled until I smoothed them with a word. Even her mother, who does not look too favourably on our love, was touched to tears.

“On the 1st November there is to be a concert at the Théâtre Italien. The new conductor, Girard, whom I know well, has asked me to write him an overture for it. I am going to take Shakespeare’s _Tempest_; it will be quite a new style of thing.

“My great concert with the _Symphonie Fantastique_ is to be on the 14th November, but I must have a _theatrical_ success; Camilla’s parents insist upon that as a condition of our marriage. I hope I shall succeed.

“I do not want to go to Italy. I shall go and ask the King to let me off. It is a ridiculous journey for me to take, and I might just as well be allowed my scholarship in Paris.

“As soon as I have collected the money you so kindly lent me, you shall have it. Good-bye, good-bye. I have just come from Madame Moke’s, from touching the hand of my adored Camille, that is why mine trembles and my writing is so bad. Yet to-day she has not played me either Beethoven or Weber.

“_P.S._--That wretched Smithson girl is still here. I have not seen her.”

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“_October 1830._--You will be glad to hear that I am to be heard at the Opera. All thanks to Camille! In her slender form, witching grace, and musical genius I found Ariel personified. I have planned a tremendous overture, which I have submitted to the director. Ariel! Ariel! Camille! I bless, I adore, I love thee more than poor language can express. Give me a hundred musicians, a hundred and fifty voices, then can I tell thee all!

* * * * *

“That poor Ophelia comes again and again to my mind. She has lost more than six thousand francs in the Opéra Comique venture. She is still here, and met me the other day quite calmly. I was utterly miserable the whole evening, and went and told Ariel, who laughed at me tenderly.”

In spite of all my eloquence, I could not get out of that tiresome journey to Rome. But I would not leave Paris without having _Sardanapalus_ performed properly, and for the third time my artist friends most generously offered me their aid, and Habeneck consented to conduct.

The day before the concert Liszt came to see me. We had not, so far, met. We began talking of _Faust_, which he had not read, but which he afterwards got to love as I did. We were so thoroughly sympathetic to each other that, from that day, our friendship neither faltered nor waned. At my concert everyone noticed his enthusiasm and vociferous applause.

As my work is exceedingly complicated, it is not surprising that the execution was by no means perfect; yet some parts of the Symphony made a sensation. The _Scène aux Champs_ fell quite flat, and, on the advice of Ferdinand Hiller, I afterwards entirely rewrote it.

_Sardanapalus_ was well done, and the _Conflagration_ came off magnificently. It raised a conflagration in Paris too, in the shape of a war of musicians and critics.

Naturally the younger men--particularly those with that sixth sense, artistic instinct--were on my side, but Cherubini and his gang were wild with rage.

He happened to pass the concert-room doors as people were going in, and a friend stopped him, asking:

“Are you not coming to hear Berlioz’s new thing?”

“I need not zat I go hear how sings should not be done,” he replied.

He was much worse after the concert, and sent for me.

“You go soon,” he said.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“It vill be zat you are cross off ze register of Conservatoire, zat your studies are finish. But it seem to me zat you should make visit to me. One goes not out of Conservatoire like out of a stable.”

I very nearly said:

“Why not, since we are treated like horses?” but luckily had the good sense merely to say that I had not the slightest intention of leaving Paris without saying farewell to him.

So to Rome, _nolens volens_, I had to go, useless as it seemed.

The Roman Academy may be of service to painters and sculptors, but, as far as music is concerned, it is lost time, considering the state of music in Italy. Neither is the life led by the students exactly conducive to study and progress.

Usually the five or six laureates arrange to travel in company, and share expenses. A coach-driver agrees, for a modest sum, to take charge of this cargo of great men, and dump it down in Italy. As he never changes horses it takes a long time, and must be rather amusing.

I did not try it, as I had to stay in Paris for various reasons till the middle of January and then wished to go round by La Côte Saint-André--where my laurel wreath earned me a warm welcome--after which, alone, and dreary, I turned my face towards Italy.

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“_November 1830._--Just a few lines in haste to tell you that I am giving a gigantic concert at the Conservatoire--the _Francs-Juges_ overture, the _Sacred Song_ and _Warrior’s Song_ from the Melodies, and _Sardanapalus_ with one hundred performers for the CONFLAGRATION, and last of all, the _Symphonie Fantastique_.

“Come, oh, do come. It will be terrible. Habeneck conducts. The _Tempest_ is to be played a second time at the Opera. It is new, fresh, strange, grand, sweet, tender, surprising. Fétis wrote two splendid articles on it for the _Revue Musicale_. Some one said to him the other day that I was possessed of a devil. ‘The devil may possess his body, but, by Jove! a god possesses his head,’ he retorted.

“_December._--You really must come; I had a frantic success. They actually encored the _Marche au Supplice_. I am mad! mad! My marriage is fixed for Easter 1832, on condition that I do not lose my pension, and that I go to Italy for a year. My blessed symphony has done the deed, and won this concession from Camille’s mother.

“My guardian angel! for months I shall not see her. Why cannot I--cradled by the wild north wind upon some desolate heath--fall into the eternal sleep with her arms around me!”

_To_ FERDINAND HILLER.

“LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ, _January 1831_.--I am at home once more, deluged with compliments, caresses, and tender solicitude by my family, yet I am miserable; my heart barely beats, the oppression of my soul suffocates me. My parents understand and forgive.

“I have been to Grenoble, where I spent half my time in bed, the other half in calling upon people who bored me to extinction. On my return I found awaiting me my longed-for letter from Paris.

“Now comes yours, to spoil all! Devil take you! Was it necessary to tell me that I am luxuriating in despair, that _no one_ cares twopence for me, least of all the people for whom I am pining?

* * * * *

“In the first place, I am not pining for _people_, but for one person; in the second, if you have your reasons for judging her severely I have mine for believing in her implicitly, and I understand her better than any one.

“How can you tell what she thinks? What she feels? Because you saw her gay, and apparently happy, at a concert why should you draw conclusions adverse to me? If it comes to that, you might have said the same of me if you had seen me at a family dinner at Grenoble, with a pretty young cousin on either side of me.

“My letter is brusque, my friend, but you have upset me terribly. Write by return and tell me what the world says of my marriage.”

“_31st January 1831._--Although my overpowering anxiety still endures, I can write more calmly to-day. I am still too ill to get up, and the cold is frightful here.

“Tell me what you mean by this sentence in your last letter: ‘You wish to make a sacrifice; I fear me sadly that, ere long, you will be forced to make a most painful one.’ For heaven’s sake never use ambiguous words to me, above all in connection with _her_. It tortures me. Tell me frankly what you mean.”

XVII

ITALY

A WILD INTERLUDE

The weather was too severe to cross the Alps, I therefore determined to out-flank them and go by sea from Marseilles. It was the first time I had seen the sea and, as some days passed before I could hear of a boat, I spent most of my time wandering over the rocks near Notre Dame de la Garde.

After a while I heard of a Sardinian brig bound for Leghorn, and engaged a passage in her in company with some decent young fellows I had met in the Cannebière.

The captain would not undertake to feed us, so, reckoning that we should make Leghorn in three or four days, we laid in provisions for a week.

In fine weather, few things are more delightful than a Mediterranean voyage--particularly one’s first. Our first few days were glorious; all my companions were Italians, and had many stories to tell--some true, some not, but all interesting. One had fought in Greece with Canaris, another--a Venetian--had commanded Byron’s yacht, and the tales he told accorded well with what one might expect of the author of _Lara_.

Time went on, but we got no nearer Leghorn. Each morning, going on deck, my first question was, “What town is that?” and the eternal answer was, “Nizza, signor, still Nizza.” I began to think that the charming town of Nice had some sort of magnetic attraction for our boat.

I found out my mistake when a furious Alpine wind burst down upon us. The captain, to make up for lost time, crowded on all sail and the vessel heeled over and drove furiously before the gale. Towards evening we made the Gulf of Spezzia, and the tramontana increased to such a pitch that the sailors themselves trembled at the captain’s foolhardiness. I stood by the Venetian, holding on to a bar and listening to his maledictions on the captain’s madness, when suddenly a fresh gust of wind caught the boat and sent her over on her beam-ends, the captain rolling away into the scuppers.

In a flash the Venetian was at the tiller, shouting orders to the sailors, who were by this time calling on the Madonna:

“Don’t bother about the Madonna now,” he cried, “get in the sails.”

The sails were reefed, the ship righted, and next day we reached Leghorn with only one sail, so strong was the wind.

A few hours after, our sailors came to the hotel in a body to congratulate us on our escape. And, though the poor devils hardly earned enough to keep body and soul together, nothing would induce them to take a farthing. It was only by great persuasion that we got them to share an impromptu meal. My friends had confided to me that they were on the way to join the insurrection in Modena; they had great hopes of raising Tuscany and then marching on Rome.

But alas for their young hopes! Two were arrested before reaching Florence and thrown into dungeons, where they may still lie rotting; the others, I heard later, did well in Modena, but finally shared the fate of gallant and ill-starred Menotti.

So ended their sweet dream of liberty.

I had great trouble in getting from Florence to Rome. Frenchmen were revolutionists and the Pope did not welcome them warmly. The Florentine authorities refused to _viser_ my passport, and nothing but the energetic protests of Monsieur Horace Vernet, the director of the Roman Academy, prevailed on them to let me go.

Still alone, I made my way to Rome. My driver knew no French so I was reduced to reading the memoirs of the Empress Josephine, as we dawdled on our road. The country was not interesting; the inns were most uncomfortable; nothing gave me reason to reverse my decision that Italy was a horrid country and I most unlucky in being compelled to stay in it.

But one morning we reached a group of houses called La Storta and, as he poured out a glass of wine, my _vetturino_ said casually, with a jerk of his head and thumb:

“There is Rome, signore.”

Strange revulsion of feeling! As I gazed down on the far-off city, standing in purple majesty in the midst of its vast desolate plain, my heart swelled with awe and reverence, and suddenly I realised all the grandeur, all the poetry, all the might of that heart of the world.

I was still lost in dreams of the past when the carriage stopped in front of the Academy.

The Villa Medici, the home of the students and director of the _Académie de France_, was built in 1557 by Annibale Lippi, one wing being added by Michael Angelo. It stands on the side of the Pincian, overlooking the city; on one side of it is the Pincian Way, on the other the magnificent gardens designed in Lenôtre’s style, and opposite, in the midst of the waste fields of the Villa Borghese, stands Raphael’s house.

Such are the royal quarters that France has munificently provided for her children. Yet the rooms of the pupils are mostly small, uncomfortable, and very badly furnished.

The studios of the painters and sculptors are scattered about the grounds as well as in the palace, and from a little balcony, looking over the Ursuline gardens, there is a glorious view of the Sabine range, Monte Cavo and Hannibal’s Camp.

There is a fair library of standard classics, but no modern books whatever; studiously-minded people may go and kill time there up to three in the afternoon, for there is really nothing to do. The sole obligation of the students is, once a year, to send a sample of their work to the Academy in Paris; for the rest of the time they do exactly as they please.

The director simply has to see that rules are kept and the whole establishment well managed; with the inmates’ work he has nothing to do whatever.

It would be hardly fair that he should; to overlook and advise twenty-two young men in five different branches of art would hardly be within one man’s compass.

The Ave Maria was ringing as I entered the portals of the Villa and, as that was the dinner-hour, I went straight to the refectory. As soon as I appeared in the doorway there was a hurrah that raised the roof.

“Ho! ho! Berlioz! Oh that blessed head! that fiery mop! that dainty nose! I say, Jalay, his nose knocks spots out of yours; take a back-seat, my good man!”

“He can give _you_ points in hair anyway.”

“Ye gods, _what_ a crop!”

“Heigh, Berlioz! how about those infernal side-drums that wouldn’t start the _Fire_! By Jove! he was in a wax. Good reason, too! I say, have you forgotten me?”

“I know your face well enough, but your name----”

“He says ‘you.’ Don’t give yourself airs, old boy, we are all ‘thou’ here.”

“Well, what is _thy_ name?”

“Signol.”

“No, it isn’t; it’s _Ros_signol.”[9]

“Lord, what a beastly bad pun!”

“Do let him sit down.”

“Whom? The pun?”

“Get out! Berlioz, of course.”

“I say, Fleury, bring us some punch--real good stuff. We’ll stop this idiot’s mouth.”

“Now our musical section is complete.”

“Montfort” (the laureate of the year before me), “embrace your comrade.”

“No, he sha’n’t!”

“Yes, he shall!” and they all yelled together.

“Look here; while you others are fighting, he’s eating all the macaroni. Leave me a bit!”

“Well, embrace him all round and get it done with.”

“Oh, bother! Now it’s going to begin all over again.”

“I say, I’m not going to drink wine when there’s punch.”

“Not much! Break the bottles. Look out, Fleury!”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Don’t break the glasses, please! You will want them for the punch. You would not like to drink punch out of little glasses.”

“Perish the thought! You are a man of sense, Fleury. You were only just in time, though.”

Fleury was the prop of the house; a thoroughly good fellow, who well deserved the trust of the Academy directors. Nothing ruffled him; he was so used to our scenes that he kept the aspect of a graven image, which made it all the funnier for us.

When I had got over my tempestuous reception, I looked round the hall. On one wall were about fifty portraits of former students, on the other a series of the most outrageous life-sized caricatures, also of inmates of the Academy. Unluckily, for want of wall-space, these soon came to an end.

That evening, after an interview with M. Vernet, I followed my comrades to the Café Greco--the dirtiest, darkest, dampest hole imaginable. How it justifies its existence as the artist’s favourite café I cannot imagine. We smoked abominable cigars and drank coffee that was none the nicer for being served on dirty little wooden tables, as sticky and greasy as the walls.

Next day I made Mendelssohn’s acquaintance; but more of this when I come to write of Germany.[10]

For a while I got on fairly well in this new life, then gradually my anxiety about my Paris letters, which were not forthcoming, increased to such an extent that, in defiance of the kindly expostulations of M. Horace Vernet, who tried to restrain me by saying that I must be struck off the list of _pensionnaires_ if I broke the Academy’s most stringent rule, I decided to return to Paris.

I started, but at Florence was kept in bed a week by quinsy, and so made the acquaintance of Schlick, the Danish sculptor, a thoroughly good fellow of much talent. During this week I rewrote the Ball Scene for my _Symphonie Fantastique_, and added the present Coda.

It was not quite finished when, the first time I was able to go out, I fetched my letters from the post. Among them was one of such unparalleled impudence that I fairly took leave of my senses. Needless to say, it was from Camilla’s mother. In it, after accusing me of _bringing annoyance_ into her household, she announced the marriage of my _fiancée_ to M. Pleyel.

In two minutes my plans were laid. I must hurry to Paris to kill two guilty women and one innocent man; for, this act of justice done, I, too, must die!

They would expect me, therefore I must go disguised. I hurried to Schlick and showed him the letter.

“It is scandalous,” he said. “What will you do?”

I thought it best to deceive him so as to be absolutely free.

“Do? Why, return to France. But I will go to my father’s, not to Paris.”

“Right!” he replied. “Your own home will best soothe your wounded heart. Keep up your spirits.”

“I will; but I must go at once.”

“You can easily go this evening. I know the official people here, and will get your passport and a seat for you in the mail. Go and pack.”

Instead of packing, I went to a milliner in the Lung ‘Arno.

“Madame,” I said, “I want a lady’s-maid’s outfit by five o’clock--dress, hat, green veil, everything. Money is no object. Can you do it?”

She agreed, and leaving a deposit, I went back to the hotel. Taking the score of the Ball Scene, I wrote across it:

“I have not time to finish, but if the Concert Society will perform the piece in the absence of the composer, I beg that Habeneck will double the flute passage at the last entry of the theme, and will write the following chords for full orchestra. That will be sufficient finale,” threw it into a valise with a few clothes, loaded my pistols, put into my pockets two little bottles, one of strychnine, the other of laudanum; then, conscience-clear with regard to my arsenal, spent the rest of the time raging up and down the streets of Florence like a mad dog.

At five, I went back to the shop to try on my clothes, which were satisfactory, and with the modiste’s “good wishes for the success of my little comedy,” I went back to say good-bye to Schlick, who looked upon me as a lost sheep returning to the fold!

A farewell glance at Cellini’s _Perseus_, and we were off.

League after league went by and I sat with clenched teeth. I could neither eat nor speak. About midnight the driver and I exchanged a few words about my pistols, he remarking that, if brigands attacked us, we must on no account attempt to defend ourselves, proceeded to take off the caps and hide them under the cushions.

“As you like,” I said, indifferently. “I have no wish to compromise you.”

On our arrival at Genoa (I having tasted nothing but the juice of an orange, to the astonishment of the courier, who could not make out whether I belonged to this world or the next), I found that, in changing carriages at Pietra Santa, my finery had been left behind.

“Confound it all!” I thought; “this looks as if some cursed good angel stood in the way of my plan.”

Again I hunted up a dressmaker, and after trying three, succeeded in getting a new outfit. Meanwhile, the Sardinian people, seeing me trotting after work-girls like this, took it into their sapient heads that I must be a conspirator, a _carbonero_, a liberator, and refused to _viser_ my passport for Turin. I must go by Nice.

“Then, for heaven’s sake, _viser_ it for Nice. I don’t care. I’ll go _viâ_ the infernal regions so long as I get through.”

Which was the greater fool--the policeman, who saw in every Frenchman an emissary of the Revolution, or myself, who thought I could not set foot in Paris undisguised; forgetting that, by hiding for a day in a hotel, I could have found fifty women to rig me out perfectly?

Self-engrossed people are really delightful. They fancy everyone is thinking about them, and the deadly earnest with which they act up to the idea is simply delicious!

So, behold me on my way to Nice, going over and over my little Parisian drama.

Disguised as the Countess de M.’s lady’s-maid, I would go to the house about nine o’clock with an important letter. While it was being read, I would pull out my double-barrelled pistols, kill number one and number two, seize number three by the hair and finish her off likewise; after which, if this vocal and instrumental concert had gathered an audience, I would turn the fourth barrel upon myself. Should it miss fire (such things happen occasionally), I had a final resource in my little bottles.

Grand climax! It seems rather a pity it never came off.

Now, despite my rage, I began to say:

“Yes, it will be most agreeable, but--to have to kill myself too, is distinctly annoying. To say farewell to earth, to art; to leave behind me only the reputation of a churl, who did not understand the gentle art of living; to leave my symphony unfinished, the scores unwritten--those glorious scores that float through my brain.... Ah!”

“But no; they shall, they must all die!”

Each minute I drew nearer to France.

That night, on the Cornice road, love of life and love of art whispered sweet promises of days to come, and I sat listening, vaguely, dreamily, when the driver stopped to put on the drag. Roused mentally by the thunder of the waves upon the iron cliffs below, the stupendous majesty of Nature burst upon me with greater force than ever before, and woke anew the tempest in my heart--the awful wrestling of Life and Death.

Holding with both hands on to my seat, I let out a wild “Ha!” so hoarse, so savage, so diabolic that the startled driver bounced aside as if he had indeed had a demon for his fellow-traveller.

In my first lucid moments I remember thinking, “If only I could find some solid point of rock to cling to before the next wave of fury and madness sweeps over my head, I might yet be saved!”