critical motives) all music that was not his own; or if he chose to
applaud, his applause was certain to be for some obscure person
without ability, in order that there might be no unfavourable
comparisons drawn between his own work and that which he was praising.
Beyond doubt he was the greatest instrumentalist of Europe, but he was
_bizarre_, and none too lucid.

His method of showing his contempt for other great composers like
Beethoven, Mozart, and the like, was to conduct their music upon
important occasions, without having given himself or any one else a
rehearsal. He called Haydn a "pedantic old baby," and refused as long
as he lived to hear Elijah (Mendelssohn). In short, he was one of the
vastly disagreeable people of the earth, who believe that their own
genius excuses everything.

The story of his behaviour at a performance of Cherubini's Ali Baba
will serve as an illustration of his bad taste.

Cherubini had become old, and was even more anxious about the fate of
his compositions than he had been in his youth, having less confidence
in himself as he declined in years, and on the occasion of Ali Baba he
was especially overwrought. Berlioz got a seat in the house, and made
his disapproval of the performance very marked by his manner. Finally
he cried out toward the end of the first act, "Twenty francs for an
idea!" During the second act he called, "Forty francs for an idea!"
and at the finale he screeched, "Eighty francs for an idea!" When all
was over, he rose wearily and said, loud enough to be heard all over
the place, "I give it up--I'm not rich enough!" and went out.

There is hardly an anecdote of Berlioz extant that does not deal with
his cynicism or displeasing qualities, therefore we may more or less
assume that they pretty correctly reflect the man. One of the stories
which well illustrates his love of "showing up" his fellows, concerns
his Fuite en Egypte. When it was produced he had put upon the
programme as the composer one Pierre Ducre "of the seventeenth
century." The critics, one and all, wrote of the old and worthless
score that Berlioz had unearthed and foisted upon the suffering
public. Some of them wrote voluminously and knowingly of the life of
Pierre Ducre, and hinted at other productions of his, which they said
demonstrated his puerility. Then when he had roused all the discussion
he pleased, Berlioz came forward and announced that there never had
been any such personage as Ducre, a