“Why were you not here five minutes sooner? Weber has been playing our French scores by heart to me.”
A few hours later in a music shop—
“Whom do you think we had here just now? Why, Weber!”
At the Odéon people were saying:
“Weber has just gone by. He is up in one of the boxes.”
It was maddening—I, alone, never saw him. Unlike Shakespeare’s apparitions, he was visible to all but one.
Too obscure to dare to write, without a friend who could introduce me, he passed out of my world.
Ah, why do not the thrice-gifted ones of this world know of the passionate love and devotion their works inspire! If they could but divine the suppressed admiration of a few faithful hearts! Would they not gladly gather these chosen disciples about them to become a bulwark against the shafts of envy, hatred, malice, and luke-warm tolerance of which a thoughtless world makes them the target!
Weber was justly angry when he found out how Castilblaze—veterinary surgeon of music—had butchered his beautiful work, and he published a complaint before leaving Paris. Castilblaze actually had the audacity to play the injured innocent, and to say that it was entirely owing to his adaptation that Freyschütz had succeeded at all!
The wretch!—--yet a poor sailor gets fifty lashes for the slightest insubordination.