Verona, Löwenberg was gone. At the end Seifriz rose and, after waiting
a moment to conquer his emotion, cried in French: “There is nothing
finer in music!”
Then the orchestra burst into storms of applause, and I bit my lip....
Messengers passed constantly back and forth to the poor Prince in his
bed to report progress, but nothing consoled him for his absence.
Every few minutes during dinner he would either send for me or a big,
powdered lacquey would bring me a pencilled note on a silver salver.
Sometimes I would spend half an hour at his bedside and listen to his
praises. He knows all that I have written, both prose and music.
On the day of the concert a brilliant audience filled the hall; by
their enthusiasm one could see that my music was an old friend. After
the _Pilgrim’s March_ an officer came on to the platform and pinned on
my coat the cross of Hohenzollern. The secret had been so well guarded
that I had not the slightest idea of such an honour.
But it pleased me so greatly that, just for my own satisfaction, and
without thought of the public, I played the orgie from _Harold_ in my
very own style--furiously--so that it made me grind my teeth.
I might say much more of this charming interlude of my life, but I
must only mention the exquisite cordiality of the Prince’s circle and
particularly of the family of Colonel Broderotti, whose perfect French
was a real relief to me, since I dislike to hear my own language badly
spoken yet know no German. As I took leave of the Prince he embraced
me, saying:
“You are going to Paris, my dear Berlioz, where many love you. Tell
them I love them for it.”
But I must go back to _Beatrice_.
To my mind it is one of the liveliest and most original things I have
ever done, although it is difficult--especially in the men’s parts.
Unlike _The Trojans_ it is inexpensive to mount; but they will take
precious care not to have it in Paris; they are right, it is not
Parisian music at all. With his usual generosity, M. Benazet paid me
four thousand francs for the music and the same for the words--eight
thousand in all, and gave me another thousand to conduct it the
following year.
The Maidens’ duet became very popular in Germany and I remember making
the Grand Duke laugh heartily about it one night at supper. He had been
catechising me on my life in Paris and my revelations anent our musical
world sadly disillusioned him.
“How, when and where did you write that lovely duet?” he asked, “surely
by moonlight in some romantic spot----”
“Sir,” I replied, “it was one of those scenes that artists mark and
store up for future use and which come forth when needed, no matter
amid what surroundings. I sketched it in at the Institute during an
oration of one of my colleagues.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed he, “that speaks well for the orator. His eloquence
must have been great.”
Later on it was performed at one of our Conservatoire concerts and
made an unheard-of sensation. Even my faithful hissers dared not
uplift their voices. Mesdames Viardot and Vanderheufel-Duprez sang it
deliciously, and the marvellous orchestra was dainty and graceful.
It was one of those performances one sometimes hears--in dreams. The
Conservatoire Society, directed by my friend, Georges Hainl, was no
longer inimical to me and proposed to give excerpts from my scores
occasionally. I have now presented it with my whole musical library,
with the exception of the operas; it ought some day to be fairly
valuable and it could not be in better hands.
I must not forget to mention the Strasburg festival, where I conducted
my _Childhood of Christ_ in a vast building seating six thousand
people. I had five hundred performers, and to my surprise, this
work--written almost throughout in a quiet, tender vein--made a
tremendous impression, the mystic, unaccompanied chorus, “O my soul!”
even causing tears.
Ah! how happy am I when my audience weeps!
I have heard since that many of my works have been given in America,
Russia and Germany.
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----”
[Illustration: GRENOBLE]
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.”