alas! dire poverty stared him in the face. The
history of his shifts and privations for some months is a sad one. He
slept in an old, unfurnished garret, and shivered under insufficient
bedclothing, ate his bread and grapes on the Pont Neuf, and sometimes
debated whether a plunge into the Seine would not be the easiest way
out of it all. No mongrel cur in the capital but had a sweeter bone to
crunch than he. But the young fellow for all this stuck to his work with
dogged tenacity, managed to get a mass performed at St. Roch church, and
soon finished the score of an opera, "Les Francs Juges." Flesh and
blood would have given way at last under this hard diet, if he had
not obtained a position in the chorus of the Theatre des Noveauteaus.
Berlioz gives an amusing account of his going to compete with the horde
of applicants--butchers, bakers, shop-apprentices, etc.--each one with
his roll of music under his arm.

The manager scanned the raw-boned starveling with a look of wonder.
"Where's your music?" quoth the tyrant of a third-class theatre. "I
don't want any, I can sing anything you can give me at sight," was the
answer. "The devil!" rejoined the manager; "but we haven't any music
here." "Well, what do you want?" said Berlioz. "I sing every note of all
the operas of Gluck, Piccini, Salieri, Rameau, Spontini, Gretry, Mozart,
and Cimarosa, from memory." At hearing this amazing declaration, the
rest of the competitors slunk away abashed, and Berlioz, after singing
an aria from Spontini, was accorded the place, which guaranteed him
fifty francs per month--a pittance, indeed, and yet a substantial
addition to his resources. This pot-boiling connection of Berlioz was
never known to the public till after he became a distinguished man,
though he was accustomed to speak in vague terms of his early dramatic
career as if it were a matter of romantic importance.

At last, however, he was relieved of the necessity of singing on the
stage to amuse the Paris _bourgeoisie_, and in a singular fashion. He
had been put to great straits to get his first work, which had won him
his way into the Conservatoire, performed. An application to the great
Chateaubriand, who was noted for benevolence, had failed, for the author
of "La Genie de Christianisme" was then almost as poor as Berlioz. At
last a young friend, De Pons, advanced him twelve hundred francs. Part
of this Berlioz had repaid, but the creditor, put to it for money, wrote
to Berlioz