Berlioz was probably one of the least attractive of musicians. As a man, he was entirely detestable. He despised (from jealous rather than critical motives) all music that was not his own; or if he chose to applaud, his applause was certain to be for some obscure person without ability, in order that there might be no unfavourable comparisons drawn between his own work and that which he was praising. Beyond doubt he was the greatest instrumentalist of Europe, but he was _bizarre_, and none too lucid. His method of showing his contempt for other great composers like Beethoven, Mozart, and the like, was to conduct their music upon important occasions, without having given himself or any one else a rehearsal. He called Haydn a "pedantic old baby," and refused as long as he lived to hear Elijah (Mendelssohn). In short, he was one of the vastly disagreeable people of the earth, who believe that their own genius excuses everything. The story of his behaviour at a performance of Cherubini's Ali Baba will serve as an illustration of his bad taste. Cherubini had become old, and was even more anxious about the fate of his compositions than he had been in his youth, having less confidence in himself as he declined in years, and on the occasion of Ali Baba he was especially overwrought. Berlioz got a seat in the house, and made his disapproval of the performance very marked by his manner. Finally he cried out toward the end of the first act, "Twenty francs for an idea!" During the second act he called, "Forty francs for an idea!" and at the finale he screeched, "Eighty francs for an idea!" When all was over, he rose wearily and said, loud enough to be heard all over the place, "I give it up--I'm not rich enough!" and went out. There is hardly an anecdote of Berlioz extant that does not deal with his cynicism or displeasing qualities, therefore we may more or less assume that they pretty correctly reflect the man. One of the stories which well illustrates his love of "showing up" his fellows, concerns his Fuite en Egypte. When it was produced he had put upon the programme as the composer one Pierre Ducre "of the seventeenth century." The critics, one and all, wrote of the old and worthless score that Berlioz had unearthed and foisted upon the suffering public. Some of them wrote voluminously and knowingly of the life of Pierre Ducre, and hinted at other productions of his, which they said demonstrated his puerility. Then when he had roused all the discussion he pleased, Berlioz came forward and announced that there never had been any such personage as Ducre, and that it was himself who had written Fuite en Egypte. He had made everybody appear as absurd as possible, and there is no sign that he ever did that sort of thing for the pure love of a joke. He was malicious, born so, lived so, and died so. However great his music, he was unworthy of it. DAMNATION OF FAUST CHARACTERS OF THE OPERA