These hurricanes are let loose in order to speak to the people, to stir
and rouse the dull ocean of humanity. The _Requiem_ is a Last Judgment,
not meant, like that of the Sixtine Chapel (which Berlioz did not care
for at all) for great aristocracies, but for a crowd, a surging,
excited, and rather savage crowd. The _Marche de Rakoczy_ is less an
Hungarian march than the music for a revolutionary fight; it sounds the
charge; and Berlioz tells us it might bear Virgil's verses for a
motto:--

" ... Furor iraque mentes
Praecipitant, pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis."[103]

When Wagner heard the _Symphonic funèbre et triomphale_ he was forced to
admit Berlioz's "skill in writing compositions that were popular in the
best sense of the word."

"In listening to that symphony I had a lively impression that any
little street boy in a blue blouse and red bonnet would understand
it perfectly. I have no hesitation in giving precedence to that
work over Berlioz's other works; it is big and noble from the first
note to the last; a fine and eager patriotism rises from its first
expression of compassion to the final glory of the apotheosis, and
keeps it from any unwholesome exaggeration. I want gladly to
express my conviction that that symphony will fire men's courage
and will live as long as a nation bears the name of France."[104]

[Footnote 103: Letter to some young Hungarians, 14 February, 1861. See
the _Mémoires_, II, 212, for the incredible emotion which the _Marche de
Rakoczy_ roused in the audience at Budapest, and, above all, for the
astonishing scene at the end:--