ncouraging." But his
Germanic laurels did him no good in France. The Parisians would have
none of him except as a writer of _feuilletons_, who pleased them by
the vigor with which he handled the knout, and tickled the levity of
the million, who laughed while they saw the half-dozen or more victims
flayed by merciless satire. Berlioz wept tears of blood because he had
to do such executioner's work, but did it none the less vigorously for
all that.

The composer made another musical journey in Austria and Hungary in
1844-'45, where he was again received with the most enthusiastic praise
and pleasure. It was in Hungary, especially, that the warmth of his
audiences overran all bounds. One night, at Pesth, where he played the
"Rackoczy Indule," an orchestral setting of the martial hymn of the
Magyar race, the people were worked into a positive frenzy, and they
would have flung themselves before him that he might walk over their
prostrate bodies. Vienna, Pesth, and Prague, led the way, and the other
cities followed in the wake of an enthusiasm which has been accorded
to not many artists. The French heard these stories with amazement, for
they could not understand how this musical demigod could be the same
as he who was little better than a witty buffoon. During this absence
Berlioz wrote the greater portion of his "Damnation de Faust," and, as
he had made some money, he obeyed the strong instinct which always ruled
him, the hope of winning the suffrages of his own countrymen.

An eminent French critic claims that this great work, of which we shall
speak further on, contains that which Gounod's "Faust" lacks--insight
into the spiritual significance of Goethe's drama. Berlioz exhausted all
his resources in producing it at the Opera Comique in 1846, but again
he was disappointed by its falling stillborn on the public interest.
Berlioz was utterly ruined, and he fled from France in the dead of
winter as from a pestilence.

The genius of this great man was recognized in Holland, Russia, Austria,
and Germany, but among his own countrymen, for the most part, his name
was a laughing-stock and a by-word. He offended the pedants and the
formalists by his daring originality, he had secured the hate of rival
musicians by the vigor and keenness of his criticisms. Berlioz was in
the very heat of the artistic controversy between the classicists and
romanticists, and was associated with Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas,
Delacroix, Liszt, Chop