XVII ITALY A Wild Interlude

The weather was too severe to cross the Alps, I therefore determined to out-flank them and go by sea from Marseilles. It was the first time I had seen the sea and, as some days passed before I could hear of a boat, I spent most of my time wandering over the rocks near Notre Dame de la Garde.

After a while I heard of a Sardinian brig bound for Leghorn, and engaged a passage in her in company with some decent young fellows I had met in the Cannebière.

The captain would not undertake to feed us, so, reckoning that we should make Leghorn in three or four days, we laid in provisions for a week.

In fine weather, few things are more delightful than a Mediterranean voyage—particularly one’s first. Our first few days were glorious; all my companions were Italians, and had many stories to tell—some true, some not, but all interesting. One had fought in Greece with Canaris, another—a Venetian—had commanded Byron’s yacht, and the tales he told accorded well with what one might expect of the author of Lara.

Time went on, but we got no nearer Leghorn. Each morning, going on deck, my first question was, “What town is that?” and the eternal answer was, “Nizza, signor, still Nizza.” I began to think that the charming town of Nice had some sort of magnetic attraction for our boat.

I found out my mistake when a furious Alpine wind burst down upon us. The captain, to make up for lost time, crowded on all sail and the vessel heeled over and drove furiously before the gale. Towards evening we made the Gulf of Spezzia, and the tramontana increased to such a pitch that the sailors themselves trembled at the captain’s foolhardiness. I stood by the Venetian, holding on to a bar and listening to his maledictions on the captain’s madness, when suddenly a fresh gust of wind caught the boat and sent her over on her beam-ends, the captain rolling away into the scuppers.

In a flash the Venetian was at the tiller, shouting orders to the sailors, who were by this time calling on the Madonna:

“Don’t bother about the Madonna now,” he cried, “get in the sails.”

The sails were reefed, the ship righted, and next day we reached Leghorn with only one sail, so strong was the wind.

A few hours after, our sailors came to the hotel in a body to congratulate us on our escape. And, though the poor devils hardly earned enough to keep body and soul together, nothing would induce them to take a farthing. It was only by great persuasion that we got them to share an impromptu meal. My friends had confided to me that they were on the way to join the insurrection in Modena; they had great hopes of raising Tuscany and then marching on Rome.

But alas for their young hopes! Two were arrested before reaching Florence and thrown into dungeons, where they may still lie rotting; the others, I heard later, did well in Modena, but finally shared the fate of gallant and ill-starred Menotti.

So ended their sweet dream of liberty.

I had great trouble in getting from Florence to Rome. Frenchmen were revolutionists and the Pope did not welcome them warmly. The Florentine authorities refused to viser my passport, and nothing but the energetic protests of Monsieur Horace Vernet, the director of the Roman Academy, prevailed on them to let me go.

Still alone, I made my way to Rome. My driver knew no French so I was reduced to reading the memoirs of the Empress Josephine, as we dawdled on our road. The country was not interesting; the inns were most uncomfortable; nothing gave me reason to reverse my decision that Italy was a horrid country and I most unlucky in being compelled to stay in it.

But one morning we reached a group of houses called La Storta and, as he poured out a glass of wine, my vetturino said casually, with a jerk of his head and thumb:

“There is Rome, signore.”

Strange revulsion of feeling! As I gazed down on the far-off city, standing in purple majesty in the midst of its vast desolate plain, my heart swelled with awe and reverence, and suddenly I realised all the grandeur, all the poetry, all the might of that heart of the world.

I was still lost in dreams of the past when the carriage stopped in front of the Academy.

The Villa Medici, the home of the students and director of the Académie de France, was built in 1557 by Annibale Lippi, one wing being added by Michael Angelo. It stands on the side of the Pincian, overlooking the city; on one side of it is the Pincian Way, on the other the magnificent gardens designed in Lenôtre’s style, and opposite, in the midst of the waste fields of the Villa Borghese, stands Raphael’s house.

Such are the royal quarters that France has munificently provided for her children. Yet the rooms of the pupils are mostly small, uncomfortable, and very badly furnished.

The studios of the painters and sculptors are scattered about the grounds as well as in the palace, and from a little balcony, looking over the Ursuline gardens, there is a glorious view of the Sabine range, Monte Cavo and Hannibal’s Camp.

There is a fair library of standard classics, but no modern books whatever; studiously-minded people may go and kill time there up to three in the afternoon, for there is really nothing to do. The sole obligation of the students is, once a year, to send a sample of their work to the Academy in Paris; for the rest of the time they do exactly as they please.

The director simply has to see that rules are kept and the whole establishment well managed; with the inmates’ work he has nothing to do whatever.

It would be hardly fair that he should; to overlook and advise twenty-two young men in five different branches of art would hardly be within one man’s compass.

The Ave Maria was ringing as I entered the portals of the Villa and, as that was the dinner-hour, I went straight to the refectory. As soon as I appeared in the doorway there was a hurrah that raised the roof.

“Ho! ho! Berlioz! Oh that blessed head! that fiery mop! that dainty nose! I say, Jalay, his nose knocks spots out of yours; take a back-seat, my good man!”

“He can give you points in hair anyway.”

“Ye gods, what a crop!”

“Heigh, Berlioz! how about those infernal side-drums that wouldn’t start the Fire! By Jove! he was in a wax. Good reason, too! I say, have you forgotten me?”

“I know your face well enough, but your name——”

“He says ‘you.’ Don’t give yourself airs, old boy, we are all ‘thou’ here.”

“Well, what is thy name?”

“Signol.”

“No, it isn’t; it’s Rossignol.”[9]

“Lord, what a beastly bad pun!”

“Do let him sit down.”

“Whom? The pun?”

“Get out! Berlioz, of course.”

“I say, Fleury, bring us some punch—real good stuff. We’ll stop this idiot’s mouth.”

“Now our musical section is complete.”

“Montfort” (the laureate of the year before me), “embrace your comrade.”

“No, he sha’n’t!”

“Yes, he shall!” and they all yelled together.

“Look here; while you others are fighting, he’s eating all the macaroni. Leave me a bit!”

“Well, embrace him all round and get it done with.”

“Oh, bother! Now it’s going to begin all over again.”

“I say, I’m not going to drink wine when there’s punch.”

“Not much! Break the bottles. Look out, Fleury!”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Don’t break the glasses, please! You will want them for the punch. You would not like to drink punch out of little glasses.”

“Perish the thought! You are a man of sense, Fleury. You were only just in time, though.”

Fleury was the prop of the house; a thoroughly good fellow, who well deserved the trust of the Academy directors. Nothing ruffled him; he was so used to our scenes that he kept the aspect of a graven image, which made it all the funnier for us.

When I had got over my tempestuous reception, I looked round the hall. On one wall were about fifty portraits of former students, on the other a series of the most outrageous life-sized caricatures, also of inmates of the Academy. Unluckily, for want of wall-space, these soon came to an end.

That evening, after an interview with M. Vernet, I followed my comrades to the Café Greco—the dirtiest, darkest, dampest hole imaginable. How it justifies its existence as the artist’s favourite café I cannot imagine. We smoked abominable cigars and drank coffee that was none the nicer for being served on dirty little wooden tables, as sticky and greasy as the walls.

Next day I made Mendelssohn’s acquaintance; but more of this when I come to write of Germany.[10]

For a while I got on fairly well in this new life, then gradually my anxiety about my Paris letters, which were not forthcoming, increased to such an extent that, in defiance of the kindly expostulations of M. Horace Vernet, who tried to restrain me by saying that I must be struck off the list of pensionnaires if I broke the Academy’s most stringent rule, I decided to return to Paris.

I started, but at Florence was kept in bed a week by quinsy, and so made the acquaintance of Schlick, the Danish sculptor, a thoroughly good fellow of much talent. During this week I rewrote the Ball Scene for my Symphonie Fantastique, and added the present Coda.

It was not quite finished when, the first time I was able to go out, I fetched my letters from the post. Among them was one of such unparalleled impudence that I fairly took leave of my senses. Needless to say, it was from Camilla’s mother. In it, after accusing me of bringing annoyance into her household, she announced the marriage of my fiancée to M. Pleyel.

In two minutes my plans were laid. I must hurry to Paris to kill two guilty women and one innocent man; for, this act of justice done, I, too, must die!

They would expect me, therefore I must go disguised. I hurried to Schlick and showed him the letter.

“It is scandalous,” he said. “What will you do?”

I thought it best to deceive him so as to be absolutely free.

“Do? Why, return to France. But I will go to my father’s, not to Paris.”

“Right!” he replied. “Your own home will best soothe your wounded heart. Keep up your spirits.”

“I will; but I must go at once.”

“You can easily go this evening. I know the official people here, and will get your passport and a seat for you in the mail. Go and pack.”

Instead of packing, I went to a milliner in the Lung ‘Arno.

“Madame,” I said, “I want a lady’s-maid’s outfit by five o’clock—dress, hat, green veil, everything. Money is no object. Can you do it?”

She agreed, and leaving a deposit, I went back to the hotel. Taking the score of the Ball Scene, I wrote across it:

“I have not time to finish, but if the Concert Society will perform the piece in the absence of the composer, I beg that Habeneck will double the flute passage at the last entry of the theme, and will write the following chords for full orchestra. That will be sufficient finale,” threw it into a valise with a few clothes, loaded my pistols, put into my pockets two little bottles, one of strychnine, the other of laudanum; then, conscience-clear with regard to my arsenal, spent the rest of the time raging up and down the streets of Florence like a mad dog.

At five, I went back to the shop to try on my clothes, which were satisfactory, and with the modiste’s “good wishes for the success of my little comedy,” I went back to say good-bye to Schlick, who looked upon me as a lost sheep returning to the fold!

A farewell glance at Cellini’s Perseus, and we were off.

League after league went by and I sat with clenched teeth. I could neither eat nor speak. About midnight the driver and I exchanged a few words about my pistols, he remarking that, if brigands attacked us, we must on no account attempt to defend ourselves, proceeded to take off the caps and hide them under the cushions.

“As you like,” I said, indifferently. “I have no wish to compromise you.”

On our arrival at Genoa (I having tasted nothing but the juice of an orange, to the astonishment of the courier, who could not make out whether I belonged to this world or the next), I found that, in changing carriages at Pietra Santa, my finery had been left behind.

“Confound it all!” I thought; “this looks as if some cursed good angel stood in the way of my plan.”

Again I hunted up a dressmaker, and after trying three, succeeded in getting a new outfit. Meanwhile, the Sardinian people, seeing me trotting after work-girls like this, took it into their sapient heads that I must be a conspirator, a carbonero, a liberator, and refused to viser my passport for Turin. I must go by Nice.

“Then, for heaven’s sake, viser it for Nice. I don’t care. I’ll go viâ the infernal regions so long as I get through.”

Which was the greater fool—the policeman, who saw in every Frenchman an emissary of the Revolution, or myself, who thought I could not set foot in Paris undisguised; forgetting that, by hiding for a day in a hotel, I could have found fifty women to rig me out perfectly?

Self-engrossed people are really delightful. They fancy everyone is thinking about them, and the deadly earnest with which they act up to the idea is simply delicious!

So, behold me on my way to Nice, going over and over my little Parisian drama.

Disguised as the Countess de M.’s lady’s-maid, I would go to the house about nine o’clock with an important letter. While it was being read, I would pull out my double-barrelled pistols, kill number one and number two, seize number three by the hair and finish her off likewise; after which, if this vocal and instrumental concert had gathered an audience, I would turn the fourth barrel upon myself. Should it miss fire (such things happen occasionally), I had a final resource in my little bottles.

Grand climax! It seems rather a pity it never came off.

Now, despite my rage, I began to say:

“Yes, it will be most agreeable, but—to have to kill myself too, is distinctly annoying. To say farewell to earth, to art; to leave behind me only the reputation of a churl, who did not understand the gentle art of living; to leave my symphony unfinished, the scores unwritten—those glorious scores that float through my brain.... Ah!”

“But no; they shall, they must all die!”

Each minute I drew nearer to France.

That night, on the Cornice road, love of life and love of art whispered sweet promises of days to come, and I sat listening, vaguely, dreamily, when the driver stopped to put on the drag. Roused mentally by the thunder of the waves upon the iron cliffs below, the stupendous majesty of Nature burst upon me with greater force than ever before, and woke anew the tempest in my heart—the awful wrestling of Life and Death.

Holding with both hands on to my seat, I let out a wild “Ha!” so hoarse, so savage, so diabolic that the startled driver bounced aside as if he had indeed had a demon for his fellow-traveller.

In my first lucid moments I remember thinking, “If only I could find some solid point of rock to cling to before the next wave of fury and madness sweeps over my head, I might yet be saved!”

I found one. We stopped to change horses at a little Sardinian village—Ventimiglia, I believe[11]—and, begging five minutes from the guard, I hurried into a café, seized a scrap of paper, and wrote to M. Vernet, praying him to keep me on the roll of students, if I were not already crossed off, assuring him that I had not yet broken the rule, and promising not to cross the frontier until I received his answer at Nice, where I would await it.

Temporarily safeguarded by my word of honour, yet free to take up my Red Indian scheme of vengeance again, should I be excluded from the Academy, I got quietly into the carriage and suddenly discovered that ... I was hungry, having eaten nothing since leaving Florence.

Oh, good, gross Nature! I was positively reviving!

I got to Nice, still growling at intervals; but, after a few days came M. Vernet’s answer—a friendly paternal letter that touched me deeply.

Though ignorant of the reason of my trouble, the great artist gave me the best advice, showing me that hard work and love of art were the sovereign remedies for a mind diseased; telling me that the Minister knew nothing of my escapade, and that I should be received with open arms in Rome.

“They are saved!” I sighed. “Suppose I live too?—live quietly, happily, musically? Why not? Let’s try!”

So for a month I dwelt alone at Nice, writing the King Lear overture, bathing in the sea, wandering through orange groves, and sleeping on the healthy slopes of the Villefranche hills.

Thus passed the twenty happiest days of my life.

Oh, Nizza!

But the King of Sardinia’s police put an end to this idyllic life. I had spoken to one or two officers of the garrison, and had even played billiards with them. This was sufficient to rouse the darkest suspicions.

“This musician cannot have come to hear Mathilde de Sabran” (the only opera given just then), “since he never goes near the theatre. He wanders alone on the hills, no doubt expecting a signal from some revolutionary vessel; he never dines at table d’hôte in order to avoid spies; he is ingratiating himself with our officers in order to start negotiations with them in the name of Young Italy. It is a flagrant conspiracy!”

I was summoned to the police office.

“What are you doing here, sir?”

“Recruiting after a terrible illness. I compose, I dream, I thank God for the glorious sun, the sea, the flower-clothed hillsides——”

“You are not an artist?”

“No.”

“Yet you wander about with a book in your hand. Are you making plans?”

“Yes, the plan of an overture to King Lear—at least the instrumentation is nearly finished, and I believe its reception will be tremendous.”

“What do you mean by reception? Who is this King Lear?”

“Oh, a wretched old English king.”

“English king?”

“Yes; according to Shakespeare he lived about eighteen hundred years ago, and was idiotic enough to divide his kingdom between two wicked daughters, who kicked him out when he had nothing more to give them. You see, there are few kings that——”

“Never mind kings now. What do you mean by instrumentation?”

“It is a musical term.”

“Same excuse again! Sir, I know that you cannot possibly compose wandering about the beach with only a pencil and paper, and no piano, so tell me where you wish to go, and your passport shall be made out. You cannot remain here.”

“Then I will go back to Rome, and, by your leave, continue to compose without a piano.”

Next day I left Nice, greatly against the grain, but I was brisk and light-hearted, well and thoroughly cured. Thus once more loaded pistols missed fire.

Never mind. My little drama was interesting, and I cannot help regretting it—just a little!

To H. Ferrand.

“11th May 1831.—Well, Ferrand, I am getting on. Rage, threats of vengeance, grinding of teeth, tortures of hell—all over and done with!

“If your silence means laziness on your part, it is too bad of you. When one comes back to life, as I have done, one feels the need of a friendly arm, of an outstretched hand.

“Yes, Camille has married Pleyel, and I am glad of it. I see now the perils that I have escaped.

“What meanness! what shabbiness! what apathy! what infinite—almost sublime—villainy, if sublime can agree with ignobility (I have stolen that newly coined word from you).

“P.S.—I have just finished a new overture—to King Lear.”