Such is the marvellous power of genuine melody, of heart-felt expression! Ten years later I recognised that air—so innocently adapted to a religious ceremony—as “When my beloved shall return,” from d’Aleyrac’s opera Nina.
Dear, dead d’Aleyrac! Even your name is forgotten now!
This was my musical awakening.
Thus abruptly I became a saint, and such a desperate saint! Every day I went to mass, every Sunday I took the communion, every week I went to confession in order to say to my director:
“Father, I have done nothing.”
“Well, my son,” would the worthy man reply, “continue.”
I followed his advice strictly for many years.
Louis Berlioz, my father, was a doctor. It is not my place to sing his praises. I need, therefore, only say that he was looked upon as an honoured friend, not only in our little town, but throughout the whole country side. Feeling acutely his responsibility as the steward of a difficult and dangerous profession, every minute he could spare from his sick people was given to arduous study, and never did the thought of gain turn him aside from his disinterested service to the poor and needy.
In 1810, the medical society of Montpellier offered a prize for the best treatise on a new and important point in medicine, which was gained by my father’s monograph on Chronic Diseases. It was printed in Paris, and many of its theories adopted by physicians, who had not the common honesty to acknowledge their source. This somewhat surprised my dear, unsophisticated father, but he only said, “If truth prevails, nothing else matters.”
Now (I write in 1848) he has long since ceased to practise, and spends his time in reading and peaceful thought.