"'Coward!' some young enthusiast will say, 'you ought to have written
it; you should have been bold.' Ah, young man, you who call me coward
did not have to look upon what I did; had you done so you, too, would
have had no choice. My wife was there, half dead, only able to moan; she
had to have three nurses, and a doctor every day to visit her; and I was
sure of the disastrous result of any musical adventure. No, I was not a
coward; I know I was only human. I like to believe that I honoured art
in proving that she had left me enough reason to distinguish between
courage and cruelty" (_Mémoires_, II, 350).]

And in spite of all this material misery and the sorrow of being
misunderstood, people speak of the glory he enjoyed. What did his
compeers think of him--at least, those who called themselves such? He
knew that Mendelssohn, whom he loved and esteemed, and who styled
himself his "good friend," despised him and did not recognise his
genius.[25] The large-hearted Schumann, who was, with the exception of
Liszt,[26] the only person who intuitively felt his greatness, admitted
that he used sometimes to wonder if he ought to be looked upon as "a
genius or a musical adventurer."[27]

[Footnote 25: In a note in the _Mémoires_, Berlioz publishes a letter of
Mendelssohn's which protests his "good friendship," and he writes these
bitter words: "I have just seen in a volume of Mendelssohn's Letters
what his friendship for me consisted of. He says to his mother, in what
is plainly a description of myself, '---- is a perfect caricature,
without a spark of talent ... there are times when I should like to
swallow him up'" (_Mémoires_, 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