Chapter IV: Part 4

Her interest in me was aroused by Hiller’s account of my mental sufferings, and--so Fate willed--we were thrown much together at a boarding-school where we both gave lessons--she on the piano and I on--the guitar! Odd though it be, I still figure in the prospectus of Madame d’Aubré as professor of that noble instrument.

Meeting Mademoiselle Moke constantly, her dainty beauty and bewitching mockery of my high-tragedy airs and dismal visage soon turned my thoughts from my absorbing passion and won her a shrine in my heart. She was but eighteen!

Hiller, poor fellow, behaved admirably. He recognised that it was Fate, not treachery on my part and, heart-broken as he was, he wished me every happiness and left for Frankfort.

This is all I need say of this violent interlude that, by stirring my senses, turned me aside for a while from the mighty love that really held my heart. In my Italian journey I will tell of the dramatic sequel. Mademoiselle Moke nearly proved the proverb that it is not well to play with fire!

* * * * *

In 1830 the Competition took place later than usual--on the 15th July. For the fifth time I went up, firmly resolved, if I should fail, to go no more.

As I finished my cantata the Revolution broke out and the Institute was a curious sight. Grape shot rattled on the barred doors, cannon balls shook the façade, women screamed and, in the momentary pauses, the interrupted swallows took up their sweet, shrill cry. I hurried over the last pages of my cantata, and on the 29th was free to maraud about the streets, pistol in hand, with the “blessed riffraff” as Barbier said.

I shall never forget the look of Paris during those few days. The frantic bravery of the gutter-snipe, the enthusiasm of the men, the calm, sad resignation of the Swiss and Royal Guards, the odd pride of the mob in being “masters of Paris and looting nothing.” One day, just after this harmonious revolution, I had a strange musical shock.

Going through the Palais Royal, I heard some young men singing a familiar air; it was my own:

“Forget not our wounded companions, who stood
In the day of distress by our side;
While the moss of the valley grew red with their blood
They stirred not, but conquered and died.”[7]

Not used to such fame I, in great delight, asked the leader whether I might join in, and incontinently began a hot argument with him as to the time at which it should be taken. Of course I was not recognised.

As we sang, three of the National Guard handed round their shakos to collect money for the wounded and there was a welcome deluge of five franc pieces. The crowd increased and our breathing space became less and less; we should have ended in being smothered had not a kindly haberdasher asked us up to her first floor windows, that looked out upon the covered gallery, whence we could rain down our music upon the crowd below, as the Pope does his blessing from the balcony of St Peter’s.

First we gave them the _Marseillaise_. At the opening bar the noisy crowd stood motionless; at the end of the second verse the same silence; even so with the third. Irate at their apparent coldness, I roared out--

“Confound it all! SING!”

And they sang.

Remember, those four or five thousand tightly packed people were--men, women and children--hot from the barricades, inflamed with lust for combat, and imagine how their

“Aux armes, citoyens!”

rolled out.

Aghast at the explosion we had provoked, our little band stood silent as birds after a thunder clap.

I, literally not metaphorically, sank on the floor.

Some time before this I had arranged the _Marseillaise_ for full orchestra and double chorus and had dedicated it to Rouget de Lisle, who wrote inviting me to go and see him at Choisy, as he had several proposals to make to me.

Unfortunately I could not go then, as I was on the point of starting for Italy, and he died before I returned. I only heard much later that he had written many fine songs besides the _Marseillaise_ and had also a libretto for _Othello_ put aside; it is probably this that he wished to discuss with me.

As soon as peace was patched up and Louis Philippe introduced by Lafayette as “the best of republics” the Academy started work once more.

And as the judges, thanks to a piece which I have since burnt, believed me reclaimed from my heresies, they gave me the first prize. Although, in former years, I had been greatly disappointed at not getting it I was not in the least pleased when I did.

Of course I appreciated its advantages; my parents’ pride, the kudos, the freedom for five years from money troubles--yet, knowing the system on which prizes were awarded, could I feel any proper pride in my success?

Two months after came the distribution of prizes and the performance of the successful work. It was all very hackneyed.

Every year the same musicians perform pieces turned out on the same pattern; the same prizes, awarded with the same discrimination, are handed over with the same ceremony. Every year on the same day, at the same time, standing on the same step of the same staircase, the same Academician repeats the same words to the winner.

Day, first Saturday in October; time, four in the afternoon; step, the third; the Academician--we all know who.

Then comes the performance with full orchestra (in my case it was not quite full, for there was only a clarinet and a half, the old boy who played the first--having only one tooth and being asthmatic besides--being only able to squeeze out a note here and there). The conductor raises his baton----

The sun rises; ’cello solo, gentle crescendo.

The little birds wake; flute solo, violin tremolo.

The little rills gurgle; alto solo.

The little lambs bleat; oboe solo.

And as the crescendo goes on and the little birds and little brooks and little beasts finish their performance, one suddenly discovers that it is noon; then follow the successive airs up to the third, with which the hero usually expires and the audience once more breathes freely.

Then the secretary, holding in one hand the artificial laurel wreath and in the other the gold medal, worth enough to keep the recipient until he leaves for Rome (in point of fact, I have proved that it is worth exactly a hundred and sixty francs) pompously enunciates the name of the author.

The laureate rises,

“His smooth, chaste forehead, newly shorn,
is wreathed with modest blushes.”

He embraces the secretary--faint applause. He embraces his master, seated close by--more applause. Next come his mother, his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts to the tune of more applause; then his fiancée, after which--treading on people’s toes and tearing ladies’ dresses in the blind confusion of his headlong career--he regains his seat, bathed in perspiration. Loud applause and laughter.

This is the crowning moment, and I know lots of people who go for nothing but the fun of it.

I do not say this in bitterness of spirit, although, when my turn came, neither father nor mother, nor fiancée[8] were there to congratulate me. My master was ill, my parents estranged, my mistress--ah!

So I only embraced the secretary, and I do not fancy that my “modest blushes” were noticed because, instead of being “newly shorn,” my forehead was buried in a shock of long red hair, which, in conjunction with certain other points in my physiognomy certainly earned me a place in the owl tribe.

Besides, I was not in at all an embrace-inspiring humour that day. Truth obliges me to confess that I was in a howling, rampant rage.

I must go back a little and explain why.

The subject set was the _Last Night of Sardanapalus_, and it ended with his gathering his most beautiful slaves around him and, with them, mounting the funeral pyre.

I was just going to write a symphonic description of the scene--the cries of the unwilling victims; the king’s proud defiance of the flames, the crash of the falling palace--when I suddenly bethought me that that way lay suicide--since the piano, as usual, would be the only means of interpretation.

I therefore waited and, as soon as the prize was awarded and I knew I could not be deprived of it, I wrote my CONFLAGRATION.

At the final orchestral rehearsal it made such a sensation that several of the Academicians came up and congratulated me most warmly, without a trace of pique at the trick I had played upon them. The rumour of it having gone abroad, the hall was packed--for I found I had already made a sort of bizarre reputation.

Not feeling particularly confident in the powers of Grasset, the conductor, I stood close beside him, manuscript in hand, while Madame Malibran, who had been unable to find a seat in the hall, sat on a stool at my elbow between two double-basses. That was the last time I ever saw her.

All went smoothly; Sardanapalus assembled his slaves, the fire was kindled, everyone listened intently, and those who had been at rehearsal whispered:

“Now it’s coming. Just listen. It’s simply wonderful!”

Curses and excommunications upon those musicians who do not count their rests!! That damned horn, that should have given the signal to the side-drums, never came in. The drums were afraid to begin, so gave no signal to the cymbals, nor the cymbals to the big-drum.

The violins went wobbling on with their futile tremolo and my fire went out without one crackle!

Only a composer who has been through a like experience can appreciate my fury.

Giving vent to a wild yell of rage, I flung my score smash into the middle of the band and knocked over two desks. Madame Malibran jumped as if she had been shot, and the whole place was in an uproar.

It was a regular catastrophe--worst and cruellest of all I had hitherto borne; but alas! by no means the last.

XVI

LISZT

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“_24th July 1830._

“DEAR FRIEND,--All that the most tender delicate love can
give is mine. My exquisite sylph, my Ariel, loves me more than ever
and her mother says that, had she read of love like mine, she could
not have believed it.

“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!”

I found one. We stopped to change horses at a little Sardinian village--Ventimiglia, I believe[11]--and, begging five minutes from the guard, I hurried into a café, seized a scrap of paper, and wrote to M. Vernet, praying him to keep me on the roll of students, if I were not already crossed off, assuring him that I had not yet broken the rule, and promising not to cross the frontier until I received his answer at Nice, where I would await it.

Temporarily safeguarded by my word of honour, yet free to take up my Red Indian scheme of vengeance again, should I be excluded from the Academy, I got quietly into the carriage and suddenly discovered that ... I was hungry, having eaten nothing since leaving Florence.

Oh, good, gross Nature! I was positively reviving!

I got to Nice, still growling at intervals; but, after a few days came M. Vernet’s answer--a friendly paternal letter that touched me deeply.

Though ignorant of the reason of my trouble, the great artist gave me the best advice, showing me that hard work and love of art were the sovereign remedies for a mind diseased; telling me that the Minister knew nothing of my escapade, and that I should be received with open arms in Rome.

“They are saved!” I sighed. “Suppose I live too?--live quietly, happily, musically? Why not? Let’s try!”

So for a month I dwelt alone at Nice, writing the _King Lear_ overture, bathing in the sea, wandering through orange groves, and sleeping on the healthy slopes of the Villefranche hills.

Thus passed the twenty happiest days of my life.

Oh, Nizza!

But the King of Sardinia’s police put an end to this idyllic life. I had spoken to one or two officers of the garrison, and had even played billiards with them. This was sufficient to rouse the darkest suspicions.

“This musician cannot have come to hear _Mathilde de Sabran_” (the only opera given just then), “since he never goes near the theatre. He wanders alone on the hills, no doubt expecting a signal from some revolutionary vessel; he never dines at _table d’hôte_ in order to avoid spies; he is ingratiating himself with our officers in order to start negotiations with them in the name of Young Italy. It is a flagrant conspiracy!”

I was summoned to the police office.

“What are you doing here, sir?”

“Recruiting after a terrible illness. I compose, I dream, I thank God for the glorious sun, the sea, the flower-clothed hillsides----”

“You are not an artist?”

“No.”

“Yet you wander about with a book in your hand. Are you making plans?”

“Yes, the plan of an overture to _King Lear_--at least the instrumentation is nearly finished, and I believe its reception will be tremendous.”

“What do you mean by reception? Who is this King Lear?”

“Oh, a wretched old English king.”

“English king?”

“Yes; according to Shakespeare he lived about eighteen hundred years ago, and was idiotic enough to divide his kingdom between two wicked daughters, who kicked him out when he had nothing more to give them. You see, there are few kings that----”

“Never mind kings now. What do you mean by instrumentation?”

“It is a musical term.”

“Same excuse again! Sir, I know that you cannot possibly compose wandering about the beach with only a pencil and paper, and no piano, so tell me where you wish to go, and your passport shall be made out. You cannot remain here.”

“Then I will go back to Rome, and, by your leave, continue to compose without a piano.”

Next day I left Nice, greatly against the grain, but I was brisk and light-hearted, well and thoroughly cured. Thus once more loaded pistols missed fire.

Never mind. My little drama was interesting, and I cannot help regretting it--just a little!

_To_ H. FERRAND.

“_11th May 1831._--Well, Ferrand, I am getting on. Rage, threats of
vengeance, grinding of teeth, tortures of hell--all over and done
with!

“If your silence means laziness on your part, it is too bad of you.
When one comes back to life, as I have done, one feels the need of
a friendly arm, of an outstretched hand.

“Yes, Camille has married Pleyel, and I am glad of it. I see now
the perils that I have escaped.

“What meanness! what shabbiness! what apathy! what infinite--almost
sublime--villainy, if sublime can agree with ignobility (I have
stolen that newly coined word from you).

“_P.S._--I have just finished a new overture--to _King Lear_.”

XVIII

ITALIAN MUSIC

I did not hurry back to Rome, but spent some time in Genoa, where I heard Paër’s _Agnese_, and where I could find no trace of bust or statue or tradition of Columbus. I also tried in vain to hear something of Paganini, who at that moment was electrifying Paris, while I--with my usual luck--was kicking my heels in his native town.

Thence I went back to Florence, which of all Italian cities appeals to me most. There the spleen that devours me in Rome and Naples takes flight. With barely a handful of francs--since my little excursion had made a big hole in my income, knowing no one and being consequently entirely free--I passed delicious days visiting odd corners, dreaming of Dante and Michael Angelo, and reading Shakespeare in the shady woods on the Arno bank.

Knowing, however, that the Tuscan capital could not compare with Naples and Milan in opera, I took no thought for music until I heard people at _table d’hôte_ talking of Bellini’s _Montecchi_, which was soon to be given. Not only did they praise the music, but also the libretto. Italians, as a rule, care so little for the words of an opera that I was surprised, and thought:

“At last I shall hear an opera worthy of that glorious play. What a subject it is! Simply made for music. The ball at Capulet’s house, where young Romeo first sees his dazzling love; the street fight whereat Tybalt presides--patron of anger and revenge; that indescribable night scene at Juliet’s balcony; the witty sallies of Mercutio; the prattle of the nurse; the solemnity of the friar trying to soothe these conflicting elements; the awful catastrophe and the reconciliation of the rival families above the bodies of the ill-fated lovers.”

I hurried to the Pergola Theatre.

What a disappointment! No ball, no Mercutio, no babbling nurse, no balcony scene, no Shakespeare!

And Romeo sung by a small thin _woman_, Juliet by a tall stout one. Why--in the name of all things musical--why?

Do they think that women’s voices sound best together? Then why not do away with men’s entirely?

Why should Juliet’s lover be deprived of all virility? Could a woman or a child have slain Tybalt, having burst the gates of Juliet’s tomb and stretched County Paris a corpse at his feet?

Surely Othello and Moses with high women’s voices would not be more utterly incongruous.

In justice, I must say that Bellini has got a most beautiful effect in a really powerful incident. The lovers, dragged apart by angry parents, tear themselves free and rush into each other’s arms, crying: “We meet again in heaven.”

He has used a quick, impassioned _motif_, sung in unison, that expresses most eloquently the idea of perfect union.

I was unwontedly moved, and applauded heartily. Thinking that I had better know the worst that Italian opera could perpetrate, had better--as it were--drink the cup to the dregs, I went to hear Paccini’s _Vestal_. Although I knew it had nothing in common with Spontini’s opera, I little dreamed of the bitterness of the cup I had to face. Licinius, again, was a woman.... After a few minutes’ painfully strained attention I cried, with Hamlet, “Wormwood! wormwood!” and fled, feeling I could swallow no more, and stamping so hard that my great toe was sore for three days after.

Poor Italy!

At least, thought I, it will be better in the churches. This was what I heard.

A funeral service for the elder son of Louis Bonaparte and Queen Hortense was being held.

What thoughts crowded into my mind as I stood amid the flaming torches in the crape-hung church! A Bonaparte! _His_ nephew, almost his grandson, dead at twenty; his mother, with his only brother, an exile in England.

I thought of the gay creole child dancing on the deck of the ship that carried her to France, untitled daughter of Madame Beauharnais, adopted daughter of the master of Europe, Queen of Holland, exiled, forgotten, bereft, without a kingdom, without a home!

Oh, Beethoven! Great soul! Titan, who couldst conceive the _Eroica_ and the _Funeral March_, is not this a meet subject for thy genius?...

The organist pulled out the small flute stops and fooled about over twittering little airs at the top of the key-board, exactly like wrens preening themselves on a sunny wall in winter!

Again, hearing great things of the Corpus Christi music in Rome, I hurried there in company with several Italians bent on the same errand.

They raved all the way of the wonders we should see, dangling before my eyes tiaras, mitres, chasubles, etc., etc.

“But the music?” I asked.

“Oh, signor, there will be an immense choir,” then they went back to their crosses and incense, and bell-ringing and cannon.

“But the music?” I repeated.

“Oh, there will be a gigantic choir.”

“Well, anyway,” I thought, “things will be on a magnificent scale,” and my vivid imagination raced off to the glories of Solomon’s Temple and the colossal pageants of ancient Egypt. Cruel gift of Nature that clothes dull life in a golden veil! It simply made more appalling and impossible the shrill nasal voices of the singers, the quacking clarinets, the bellowing trombones, and the rampant vulgarity of the big drums. It was brutal unadulterated cacophony.

Rome calls this military music!

Then, behold me once more safe at the Villa Medici, welcomed by the director and my comrades, who most kindly and tactfully hid their curiosity concerning my crazy journey. I had gone off having good reason to go; I had come back--so much the better. No remarks, no questions.

_To_ GOUNET, HILLER, ETC.

“_6th May 1831._--I have made acquaintance with Mendelssohn;
Monfort knew him before.

“He is a charming fellow; his execution is as perfect as his
genius, and that is saying a good deal. All I have heard of his is
splendid, and I believe him to be one of the great musicians of his
time.

“He has been my cicerone. Every morning I hunt him up; he plays me
Beethoven; we sing _Armida_; then he takes me to see ruins that,
I must candidly own, do not impress me much. His is one of those
clear pure souls one does not often come across; he believes firmly
in his Lutheran creed, and I am afraid I shocked him terribly by
laughing at the Bible.

“I have to thank him for the only pleasant moments I had during the
anxious days of my first stay in Rome.

“You may imagine what I felt like when I received that astonishing
letter from Madame Moke announcing her daughter’s marriage. She
calmly said that she never agreed to our engagement, and begs me,
dear kind creature! not to kill myself.

“Hiller knows the whole story, and how I left Paris with her ring
upon my finger, given in exchange for mine. However, I am quite
recovered and can eat as usual. I am saved, they are saved! I threw
myself into the arms of music, and felt how blessed it is to have
friends.

“I am working hard at _King Lear_.

“Write to me, each of you, a particular and separate and individual
letter.”

_To_ F. HILLER.

“Has Mendelssohn arrived yet? His talent is wonderful,
extraordinary, sublime. You need not suspect me of partiality
in saying this, for he frankly owns that he cannot in the least
understand my

music. Greet him for me; he does not think so, but I truly like him
thoroughly.”

XIX

IN THE MOUNTAINS

I quickly fell into the Academy routine. A bell called us to meals, and we went as we were--with straw hats, blouses plastered with clay, slippered feet, no ties--in fact, in studio undress.

After breakfast we lounged about the garden at quoits, tennis, target practice, shooting the misguided blackbirds who came within range, or trained our puppies; in all of which amusements M. Horace often joined us.

In the evening, at that everlasting Café Greco, we smoked the pipe of peace with the “men down below,” as we dubbed artists not attached to the Academy. After which we dispersed; those who virtuously returned to the Academy barracks gathering in the garden portico, where my bad guitar and worse voice were in great request, and where we sang _Freyschütz_, _Oberon_, _Iphigenia_ or _Don Giovanni_, for, to the credit of my messmates be it spoken, their musical taste was far from low.

On the other hand, we sometimes had what we called English concerts. We each chose a different song and sang it in a different key, beginning by signal one after another; as this concert in twenty-four keys went on crescendo, the frightened dogs in the Pincio kept up a howling obligato and the barbers on the Piazza di Spagna down below winked at each other, saying slyly, “French music!”

On Thursdays we went to Madame Vernet’s receptions, where we met the best society in Rome; and on Sundays we usually went long excursions into the country. With the director’s permission, longer journeys might be undertaken and usually several of our number were absent.

As for me, since Rome never appealed to me, I took refuge in the mountains; had I not done so, I doubt whether I could have lived through that time. It may seem strange that the mighty shade of old Rome should not impress me, but I had come from Paris, the centre of civilisation, and was at one blow severed from music, from theatres (they were only open for four months), from literature, since the Papal censor excluded almost everything that I cared to read, from excitements, from everything that, to me, meant real life.

Balls, evening parties, shooting days in the Campagna, and rides made up the inane mill-round in which I turned. Add to that the scirocco, the incessant yearning for my beloved art, my sorrowful memories, the misery of being for two years exiled from the musical world, and the utter impossibility of composing in that stagnating atmosphere, and it will hardly be wondered at that I was as savage as a trained bull-dog, and that the well-meant efforts of my friends to divert me only drove me to the verge of madness.

I remember in one of my Campagna rides with Mendelssohn expressing my surprise that no one had ever written a scherzo on Shakespeare’s sparkling little poem _Queen Mab_. He, too, was surprised, and I was very sorry I had put the idea into his head. For years I lived in dread that he had used it, for he would have made it impossible--or, at any rate, very risky--for anyone to attempt it after him. Luckily he forgot.

My usual remedy for spleen was a trip to Subiaco, which seemed to put new life into me.

An old grey suit, a straw hat, a guitar, a gun and six piastres were all my stock-in-trade. Thus I wandered, shooting or singing, careless where I might pass the night; sometimes hurrying, again stopping to investigate some ancient tomb, to listen silently to the distant bells of St Peter’s, far away in the plain; interrupting my hunt for a flock of lapwing to jot down a note for a symphony, and, in short, enjoying to the full my absolute freedom.

Sometimes--a glorious landscape spread before me--I chanted, to the guitar accompaniment, long-remembered verses of the Æneid, the death of Pallas, the despair of Evander, the sad end of Amata, and the death of Lavinia’s noble lover, and worked myself up to an incredible pitch of excitement that ended in floods of tears. Elicited originally by the woes of these mythical beings, my overwhelming grief ended by becoming personal, and my tears flowed in self-pity for my sorrows, my doubtful future, my broken career.

The odd thing was that, all the time, I was quite able to analyse my feelings, although I ended by collapsing under these chaotic miseries, murmuring a mixture of Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare--“Nessun maggior dolore--che ricordarsi--O poor Ophelia!--good-night, sweet ladies--vitaque cum gemitu--sub umbras--” and so fell fast asleep.

How crazy, you say? Yes, but how happy. Sensible people cannot understand this intensity of being, this actual joy in existing, in dragging from life the uttermost it has to give in height and depth. Here, in the Parisian whirlpool, how well I recall the wild Abruzzi country where I spent so long.

Bitter-sweet memories of days now passed for ever. Days of utter irresponsible freedom to abolish time, to scorn ambition, to forget love and glory.

Oh strong, grand Italy! Wild Italy! Heedless of that sister Italy--the Italy of Art!

In time I became friendly with many of the villagers; one in particular, named Crispino, grew very fond of me; he not only got me perfumed pipe-stems (I had not then found out that I disliked the sort of excitement produced by tobacco) but balls, powder and even percussion caps. I first won his affection by helping to serenade his mistress and by singing a duet with him to that untameable young person; then fixed them by a present of two shirts and a pair of trousers. Crispino could not write, so when he had anything to tell me he came to Rome. What were thirty leagues to him?