ay difficult
concertos on the flute. The elder regarded music only as a graceful
ornament to life, and in no wise encouraged his son in thinking of music
as a profession. So it was not long before Hector found his attention
directed to anatomy, physiology, osteology, etc. In his father's library
he had already read of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, etc., and had found a
manuscript score of an opera which he had committed to memory. His
soul revolted more and more from the path cut out for him. "Become a
physician!" he cried, "study anatomy; dissect; take part in horrible
operations? No! no! That would be a total subversion of the natural
course of my life."

But parental resolution carried the day, and, after he had finished the
preliminary course of study, he was ordered up to Paris to join the army
of medical students. So at the age of nineteen we find him lodged in
the Quartier Latin. His first introduction to medical studies had been
unfortunate. On entering a dissecting-room he had been so convulsed with
horror as to leap from the window, and rush to his lodgings in an agony
of dread and disgust, whence he did not emerge for twenty-four hours.
At last, however, by dint of habit he became somewhat used to the
disagreeable facts of his new life, and, to use his own words, "bade
fair to add one more to the army of bad physicians," when he went to
the opera one night and heard "Les Danaides," Salieri's opera, performed
with all the splendid completeness of the Academie Royale. This awakened
into fresh life an unquenchable thirst for music, and he neglected his
medical studies for the library of the Conservatoire, where he learned
by heart the scores of Gluck and Rameau. At last, on coming out one
night from a performance of "Iphigenie," he swore that henceforth music
should have her divine rights of him, in spite of all and everything.
Henceforth hospital, dissecting-room, and professor's lectures knew him
no more.

But to get admission to the Conservatoire was now the problem; Berlioz
set to work on a cantata with orchestral accompaniments, and in the mean
time sent the most imploring letters home asking his father's sanction
for this change of life. The inexorable parent replied by cutting off
his son's allowance, saying that he would not help him to become one
of the miserable herd of unsuccessful musicians. The young enthusiast's
cantata gained him admission to the classes of Le Sueur and Reicha at
the Conservatoire, but