e preliminary test. The task set for
the general competition was to write music for Orpheus torn by the
Bacchantes. An incompetent pianist, whose duty it was to play over the
compositions, for the judges, could seem to make nothing of Hector's
score. The six judges, headed by Cherubini, the Director of the
Conservatoire, voted against the aspirant, and he was thrown out a
second time.

And now came to Berlioz a new revelation--nothing less than the
revelation of the art of Shakespeare. An English company of actors had
come to Paris, and the first night Hamlet was given, with Henrietta
Smithson--who five years later became his wife--as Ophelia.

In his diary Berlioz writes: "Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares,
struck me down as with a thunderbolt. His lightning spirit opened to
me the highest heaven of Art, and revealed to me the best and grandest
and truest that earth can give." He began to worship both the genius
of Shakespeare and the art of the beautiful English actress. Every
evening found him at the theater, but days were spent in a kind of
dumb despair, dreaming of Shakespeare and of Miss Smithson, who had
now become the darling of Paris.

At last this sort of dumb frenzy spent itself and the musician in him
awoke and he returned to his normal self. A new plan began to take
shape in his mind. He would give a concert of his own works: up to
that time no French musician had done so. Thus he would compel her
to hear of him, although he had not yet met the object of his devoted
admiration.

It was early spring of the year 1828, when he set to work with frantic
energy, writing sixteen hours a day, in order to carry through the
wonderful plan. The concert, the result of so much labor, was given
the last of May, with varying success. But alas, Miss Smithson,
adsorbed in her own affairs, had not even heard of the excitable young
composer who had dared and risked so much to make a name that might
attract her notice.

As Berlioz pere again stopped his allowance, Hector began to write
for musical journals. At first ignorant of the ways of journalism, his
wild utterances were the despair of his friends; later his trenchant
pen was both admired and feared.

For the third time, in June of this year, he entered the Conservatoire
contest, and won a second prize, in this case a gold medal. Two years
later he won the coveted Prix de Rome, which gives the winner five
years' study, free of expense, in the Eternal City.

B