y do you get no help from Berlioz in this way, but he is the
first to lead you astray and wander with you in the paths of error. To
understand his genius you must seize hold of it unaided. His genius was
really great, but, as I shall try to show you, it lay at the mercy of a
weak character.

* * * * *

Everything about Berlioz was misleading, even his appearance. In
legendary portraits he appears as a dark southerner with black hair and
sparkling eyes. But he was really very fair and had blue eyes,[5] and
Joseph d'Ortigue tells us they were deep-set and piercing, though
sometimes clouded by melancholy or languor.[6] He had a broad forehead
furrowed with wrinkles by the time he was thirty, and a thick mane of
hair, or, as E. Legouve puts it, "a large umbrella of hair, projecting
like a movable awning over the beak of a bird of prey."[7]

[Footnote 5: "I was fair," wrote Berlioz to Buelow (unpublished letters,
1858). "A shock of reddish hair," he wrote in his _Memoires_, I, 165.
"Sandy-coloured hair," said Reyer. For the colour of Berlioz's hair I
rely upon the evidence of Mme. Chapot, his niece.]

[Footnote 6: Joseph d'Ortigue, _Le Balcon de l'Opera_, 1833.]

[Footnote 7: E. Legouve, _Soixante ans de souvenirs_. Legouve describes
Berlioz here as he saw him for the first time.]

His mouth was well cut, with lips compressed and puckered at the
corners in a severe fold, and his chin was prominent. He had a deep
voice,[8] but his speech was halting and often tremulous with emotion;
he would speak passionately of what interested him, and at times be
effusive in manner, but more often he was ungracious and reserved. He
was of medium height, rather thin and angular in figure, and when seated
he seemed much taller than he really was.[9] He was very restless, and
inherited from his native land, Dauphine, the mountaineer's passion for
walking and climbing, and the love of a vagabond life, which remained
with him nearly to his death.[10] He had an iron constitution, but he
wrecked it by privation and excess, by his walks in the rain, and by
sleeping out-of-doors in all weathers, even when there was snow on the
ground.[11]

[Footnote 8: "A passable baritone," says Berlioz _(Memoires_, I, 58). In
1830, in the streets of Paris, he sang "a bass part" _(Memoires_, I,
156). During his first visit to Germany the Prince of Hechingen made him
sing "the part of the violoncello" in one of his compositio