I cannot express my tender regrets for those good Bohemians.
“O Prague! when shall I see thee again?”
XXX
PARIS—RUSSIA—LONDON
While trailing round Germany in my old post-chaise I composed my Damnation de Faust. Each movement is punctuated by memories of the place where it was written. For instance, the Peasant’s Dance was written by the light of a shop gas-jet one night when I had lost myself in Pesth, and I got up in the middle of the night in Prague to write the song of the angelic choir.
Thinking that my foreign tour might have enhanced my home reputation, on my return to Paris I ventured to put it in rehearsal, going to enormous expense for copying and for the hire of the Opera Comique. Fatal reasoning! The indifference of the Parisians to art had increased by leaps and bounds, the weather in November 1846 was vile, and they preferred their warm homes to the unfashionable Opera Comique.
It was twice performed to half empty houses and elicited no more attention than if I had been the least of Conservatoire students. Nothing in all my career has wounded me as this did. The lesson was cruel but useful; I vowed that never again would I trust to the tender mercies of Paris.
I did not keep my vow, for later on I could not resist letting it hear my Childhood of Christ, which proved a great success.
[Berlioz does not mention the domestic troubles that added greatly to his dejection. His wife was paralysed and his son Louis, brought up in a divided household, naturally gave him anxiety, as the following letter shows]:
To Louis Berlioz.
“October 1846.—Your mother is a little better, but she is still in bed and unable to speak. As the least agitation would be fatal to her, do not write to her as you have done to me.