Will that revolution still be accomplished? Perhaps; but it has suffered
half a century's delay. Berlioz bitterly calculated that people would
begin to understand him about the year 1940.[106]

After all, why be astonished that his mighty mission was too much for
him? He was so alone.[107] As people forsook him, his loneliness stood
out in greater relief. He was alone in the age of Wagner, Liszt,
Schumann, and Franck; alone, yet containing a whole world in himself, of
which his enemies, his friends, his admirers, and he himself, were not
quite conscious; alone, and tortured by his loneliness. Alone--the word
is repeated by the music of his youth and his old age, by the _Symphonie
fantastique_ and _Les Troyens_. It is the word I read in the portrait
before me as I write these lines--the beautiful portrait of the
_Mémoires_, where his face looks out in sad and stern reproach on the
age that so misunderstood him.

[Footnote 106: "My musical career would finish very pleasingly if only I
could live for a hundred and forty years" _(Mémoires_, II, 390).]

[Footnote 107: This solitude struck Wagner. "Berlioz's loneliness is not
only one of external circumstances; its origin is in his temperament.
Though he is a Frenchman, with quick sympathies and interests like those
of his fellow-citizens, yet he is none the less alone. He sees no one
before him who will hold out a helping hand, there is no one by his side
on whom he may lean" (Article written 5 May, 1841). As one reads these
words, one feels it was Wagner's lack of sympathy and not his
intelligence that prevented him from understanding Berlioz. In his heart
I do not doubt that he knew well who was his great rival. But he never
said anything about it--unless perhaps one counts an odd document,