Yes, Boïeldieu was right. The Parisians liked soothing music, even for the most dramatic and harrowing situations. Pretty, innocent, gentlemanly music, pleasant and making no demand upon one’s deepest feelings.
Later on they wanted something different, and now they do not know what they want, or rather they want nothing at all. Ah me! what was the good God thinking of when He dropped me down in this pleasant land of France?
Yet I love her whenever I can forget her idiotic politics. How gay she is, how dainty in wit, how bright in retort—how she boasts and swaggers and humbugs, royally and republicanly! I am not sure, though, that this last is amusing.
XV
A NEW LOVE
To Humbert Ferrand.
“July 1829.—I am sorry I did not send your music before, but I may as well own that I am short of money. My father has taken another whim and sends me nothing, so I could not afford the thirty or forty francs for the copying. I could not do it myself, as I was shut up in the Institute. That abominable but necessary competition! My only chance of getting the filthy lucre, without which life is impossible.
‘Auri sacra fames quid non mortalia pectora cogis!’
My father would not even pay my expenses in the Institute. M. Lesueur did so for me.”
“August.—Forgive my negligence. My only excuses are the Academy competition and the new pangs of my despised love. My heart can be likened only to a virgin forest, struck and kindled by the thunderbolt; now and again the fire smoulders, then comes the whirlwind, and in a second the trees are a mass of living, hissing flame and all is death and desolation.
“I will spare you a description of the latest blows.