d
story. He fell in love with an English actress who played Juliet (Was it
she or Juliet whom he loved?). He caught but a glance of her, and it was
all over with him. He cried out, "Ah, I am lost!" He desired her; she
repulsed him. He lived in a delirium of suffering and passion; he
wandered about for days and nights like a madman, up and down Paris and
its neighbourhood, without purpose or rest or relief, until sleep
overcame him wherever it found him--among the sheaves in a field near
Villejuif, in a meadow near Sceaux, on the bank of the frozen Seine near
Neuilly, in the snow, and once on a table in the Cafe Cardinal, where he
slept for five hours, to the great alarm of the waiters, who thought he
was dead.[17] Meanwhile, he was told slanderous gossip about Henrietta,
which he readily believed. Then he despised her, and dishonoured her
publicly in his _Symphonie fantastique_, paying homage in his bitter
resentment to Camille Moke, a pianist, to whom he lost his heart without
delay.

[Footnote 17: _Memoires_, I, 98.]

After a time Henrietta reappeared. She had now lost her youth and her
power; her beauty was waning, and she was in debt. Berlioz's passion was
at once rekindled. This time Henrietta accepted his advances. He made
alterations in his symphony, and offered it to her in homage of his
love. He won her, and married her, with fourteen thousand francs debt.
He had captured his dream--Juliet! Ophelia! What was she really? A
charming Englishwoman, cold, loyal, and sober-minded, who understood
nothing of his passion; and who, from the time she became his wife,
loved him jealously and sincerely, and thought to confine him within the
narrow world of domestic life. But his affections became restive, and he
lost his heart to a Spanish actress (it was always an actress, a
virtuoso, or a part) and left poor Ophelia, and went off with Marie
Recio, the Ines of _Favorite_, the page of _Comte Ory_--a practical,
hardheaded woman, an indifferent singer with a mania for singing. The
haughty Berlioz was forced to fawn upon the directors of the theatre in
order to get her parts, to write flattering notices in praise of her
talents, and even to let her make his own melodies discordant at the
concerts he arranged.[18] It would all be dreadfully ridiculous if this
weakness of character had not brought tragedy in its train.

So the one he really loved, and who always loved him, remained alone,
without friends, in Paris, where she