(_Mémoires_, II, 263). Compare the shouts of excitement and the tears
that were drawn from the dilettanti of 1830 (_Mémoires_, I, 81), at the
performances of Italian operas or Gluck's works, with the coldness of
the public between 1840 and 1870. A mantle of ice covered art then. How
much Berlioz must have suffered. In Germany the great romantic age was
dead. Only Wagner remained to give life to music; and he drained all
that was left in Europe of love and enthusiasm for music. Berlioz died
truly of asphyxia.]

[Footnote 32: Here is an official list of the towns where _Benvenuto_
has been played since 1879 (I am indebted for this information to M.
Victor Chapót, Berlioz's grandnephew). They are, in alphabetical order:
Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, Dresden, Frankfort-On-Main,
Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Hamburg, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Mannheim,
Metz, Munich, Prague, Schwerin, Stettin, Strasburg, Stuttgart, Vienna,
and Weimar.]

He was the captain of a merchant vessel; a clever, good-hearted boy,
but restless and nervous, irresolute and unhappy, like his father. "He
has the misfortune to resemble me in everything," said Berlioz; "and we
love each other like a couple of twins."[33] "Ah, my poor Louis," he
wrote to him, "what should I do without you?" A few months afterwards he
learnt that Louis had died in far-away seas.

He was now alone.[34] There were no more friendly voices; all that he
heard was a hideous duet between loneliness and weariness, sung in his
ear during the bustle of the day and in the silence of the night.[35] He
was wasted with disease. In 1856, at Weimar, following great fatigue, he
was seized with an internal malady. It began with great mental distress;
he used to sleep in the streets. He suffered constantly; he was like "a