"I saw a man enter unexpectedly. He was miserably clad, but his face shone with a strange rapture. When he saw me, he threw himself upon me and embraced me with fervour; his eyes filled with tears, and he was hardly able to get out the words, 'Ah, monsieur, monsieur! moi Hongrois ... pauvre diable ... pas parler Français ... un poco Italiano. Pardonnez mon extase.... Ah! ai compris votre canon.... Oui, oui, la grande-bataille.... Allemands chiens!' And then striking his breast violently: 'Dans le coeur, moi ... je vous porte.... Ah! Français ... révolutionnaire ... savoir faire la musique des révolutions!'"
[104] Written 5 May, 1841.
[105] Berlioz never ceased to inveigh against the Revolution of 1848—which should have had his sympathies. Instead of finding material, like Wagner, in the excitement of that time for impassioned compositions, he worked at L'Enfance du Christ. He affected absolute indifference—he who was so little made for indifference. He approved the State's action, and despised its visionary hopes.
[106] "My musical career would finish very pleasingly if only I could live for a hundred and forty years" (Mémoires, II, 390).
[107] This solitude struck Wagner. "Berlioz's loneliness is not only one of external circumstances; its origin is in his temperament. Though he is a Frenchman, with quick sympathies and interests like those of his fellow-citizens, yet he is none the less alone. He sees no one before him who will hold out a helping hand, there is no one by his side on whom he may lean" (Article written 5 May, 1841). As one reads these words, one feels it was Wagner's lack of sympathy and not his intelligence that prevented him from understanding Berlioz. In his heart I do not doubt that he knew well who was his great rival. But he never said anything about it—unless perhaps one counts an odd document, certainly not intended for publication, where he (even he) compares him to Beethoven and to Bonaparte (Manuscript in the collection of Alfred Bovet, published by Mottl in German magazines, and by M. Georges de Massougnes in the Revue d'art dramatique, 1 January, 1902).
[108] F. Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner.
[109] The quotations from Wagner are taken from his letters to Roeckel, Uhlig, and Liszt, between 1851 and 1856.
Of applause
I still hear the noise; and, strangely enough,
In my childish shyness it seemed like mire
About to spot me; I feared
Its touch, and secretly shunned it,
Affecting obstinacy.
These verses were read by M. Saint-Saëns at a concert given on 10 June, 1896, in the Salle Pleyel, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his début, which he made in 1846. It was in this same Salle Pleyel that he gave his first concert.