been on speaking terms
with him for three years, he at first refused; but subsequently
consented, on condition that he should conduct at one full rehearsal.
Berlioz says:--

"The day of the performance arrived in the Church of the Invalides,
before all the princes, peers, and deputies, the French press, the
correspondents of foreign papers, and an immense crowd. It was
absolutely essential for me to have a great success; a moderate one
would have been fatal, and a failure would have annihilated me
altogether.

"Now, listen attentively.

"The various groups of instruments in the orchestra were tolerably
widely separated, especially the four brass bands introduced in the
'Tuba mirum,' each of which occupied a corner of the entire orchestra.
There is no pause between the 'Dies Irae' and 'Tuba mirum,' but the pace
of the latter movement is reduced to half what it was before. At this
point the whole of the brass enters, first altogether, and then in
passages, answering and interrupting, each a third higher than the
last. It is obvious that it is of the greatest importance that the four
beats of the new tempo should be distinctly marked, or else the
terrible explosion which I had so carefully prepared, with combinations
and proportions never attempted before or since, and which, rightly
performed, gives such a picture of the Last Judgment as I believe is
destined to live, would be a mere enormous and hideous confusion.

"With my habitual mistrust, I had stationed myself behind Habeneck,
and, turning my back on him, overlooked the group of kettledrums, which
he could not see, when the moment approached for them to take part in
the general _melee_. There are perhaps one thousand bars in my Requiem.
Precisely in that of which I have just been speaking, when the movement
is retarded and the wind instruments burst in with their terrible
flourish of trumpets; in fact, just in _the_ one bar where the
conductor's motion is absolutely indispensable,--Habeneck _puts down
his baton, quietly takes out his snuffbox_, and proceeds to take a
pinch of snuff. I always had my eye in his direction, and instantly
turned rapidly on one heel, and, springing before him, I stretched out
my arm and marked the four great beats of the new movement. The
orchestras followed me each in order. I conducted the piece to the end,
and the effect which I had longed for was produced. When, a