He was evidently too worn and weak to take the Riviera journey alone.
Although warmly welcomed and cared for at his hotel, his two falls could not but use up his little remaining strength, and that little was cruelly drained by the last journey to Grenoble—a strangely weird and dramatic episode, a worthy conclusion to his stormy, overcast life. The scene is well described by M. Bernard:—
“In a brilliantly lighted hall, hung with magnificent draperies, at a richly spread table a gay crowd awaits the chief guest of the evening.
“The curtains are torn aside, and a phantom appears. The ghost of Banquo? No, the skeleton form of Berlioz, his face pale and thin, his eyes vacant and wandering, his head trembling, his lips drawn in a bitter smile.
“They crowd around him and press his hands—those palsied hands that have so often led the armies of music to victory. A crown is placed upon his silver locks.
“Vacantly he gazes round upon these fellow-citizens, gathered to do him homage—sincere, but how belated!—mechanically he rises to reply to words of which he has hardly grasped the meaning.
“Suddenly a furious Alpine gale dashes down into the hall, tearing at the curtains, extinguishing the lights; outside the squall whistles shrilly, the lightning cuts the blackness of the clouds, casting sinister gleams on the faces of the dumb and startled assembly.
“Alone, amid the howls of the tempest, Berlioz stands, wrapped in flashes of vivid green—the spirit of symphony—colossal musician, whose apotheosis is heralded by Nature with her wildest, grandest music.”
That was the end.
On Monday morning, the 8th March 1869, Hector Berlioz died.