rist_. He affected absolute
indifference--he who was so little made for indifference. He approved
the State's action, and despised its visionary hopes.] What
ingratitude! He owed to these revolutions, to these democratic storms,
to these human tempests, the best of all his genius--and he disowned it
all. This musician of a new era took refuge in the past.

* * * * *

Well, what did it matter? Whether he wished it or not, he opened out
some magnificent roads for Art. He has shown the music of France the way
in which her genius should tread; he has shown her possibilities she had
never before dreamed of. He has given us a musical utterance at once
truthful and expressive, free from foreign traditions, coming from the
depths of our being, and reflecting our spirit; an utterance which
responded to his imagination, to his instinct for what was picturesque,
to his fleeting impressions, and his delicate shades of feeling. He has
laid the strong foundation of a national and popular music for the
greatest republic in Europe.

These are shining qualities. If Berlioz had had Wagner's reasoning power
and had made the utmost use of his intuitions, if he had had Wagner's
will and had shaped the inspirations of his genius and welded them into
a solid whole, I venture to say that he would have made a revolution in
music greater than Wagner's own; for Wagner, though stronger and more
master of himself, was less original and, at bottom, but the close of a
glorious past.

Will that revolution still be accomplished? Perhaps; but it has suffered
half a century's delay. Berlioz bitterly calculated that people would
begin to understand him about the year 1940.[106]

After all, why be astonished that his mighty mission was too much for
him? He was so alone.[107] As people forsook him, his loneliness stood
out in greater relief. He was alone in the age of Wagner, Liszt,
Schumann, and Franck; alone, yet containing a whole world in himself, of
which his enemies, his friends, his admirers, and he himself, were not
quite conscious; alone, and tortured by his loneliness. Alone--the word
is repeated by the music of his youth and his old age, by the _Symphonie
fantastique_ and _Les Troyens_. It is the word I read in the portrait
before me as I write these lines--the beautiful portrait of the
_Memoires_, where his face looks out in sad and stern reproach on the
age that so misunderstood him.

[Footnote 106: "My mus