p'" (_Memoires_, II, 48). Berlioz did not add that
Mendelssohn also said: "They pretend that Berlioz seeks lofty ideals in
art. I don't think so at all. What he wants is to get himself married."
The injustice of these insulting words will disgust all those who
remember that when Berlioz married Henrietta Smithson she brought as
dowry nothing but debts; and that he had only three hundred francs
himself, which a friend had lent him.]

[Footnote 26: Liszt repudiated him later.]

[Footnote 27: Written in an article on the _Ouverture de Waverley_
(_Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik_).]

Wagner, who treated his symphonies with scorn before he had even read
them,[28] who certainly understood his genius, and who deliberately
ignored him, threw himself into Berlioz's arms when he met him in London
in 1855. "He embraced him with fervour, and wept; and hardly had he left
him when _The Musical World_ published passages from his book, _Oper und
Drama_, where he pulls Berlioz to pieces mercilessly."[29] In France,
the young Gounod, _doli fabricator Epeus_, as Berlioz called him,
lavished flattering words upon him, but spent his time in finding fault
with his compositions,[30] or in trying to supplant him at the theatre.
At the Opera he was passed over in favour of a Prince Poniatowski.

[Footnote 28: Wagner, who had criticised Berlioz since 1840, and who
published a detailed study of his works in his _Oper und Drama_ in 1851,
wrote to Liszt in 1855: "I own that it would interest me very much to
make the acquaintance of Berlioz's symphonies, and I should like to see
the scores. If you have them, will you lend them to me?"]

[Footnote 29: See Berlioz's letter, cited by J. Tiersot, _Hector Berlioz
et la societe de son temps_, p. 275.]

[Footnote 30: _Romeo, Faust, La Nonne sanglante_.]

He presented himself three times at the Academy, and was beaten the
first time by Onslow, the second time by Clapisson, and the third time
he conquered by a majority of one vote against Panseron, Vogel, Leborne,
and others, including, as always, Gounod. He died before the _Damnation
de Faust_ was appreciated in France, although it was the most remarkable
musical composition France had produced. They hissed its performance?
Not at all; "they were merely indifferent"--it is Berlioz who tells us
this. It passed unnoticed. He died before he had seen _Les Troyens_
played in its entirety, though it was one of the noblest works of the
French lyric theatre that