The Blessing of the Daggers from the _Huguenots_ was given with an imposing effect that surpassed my expectations. I wished Meyerbeer could have heard it. It worked upon me so that my teeth chattered and I shook with nervous ague. The concert had to be stopped while they brought me some punch and a change of clothes, and by making a little screen of the harps in their linen covers, I was enabled to dress right before the audience without being seen. The concert finished triumphantly with the utmost satisfaction to artists and audience but, as I went out, I had the gruesome pleasure of seeing the hospital authorities counting our receipts and walking off with the _eighth gross_--that is, four thousand francs--which left me, when all was paid, with eight hundred francs for all my trouble and anxiety. This mad experiment was hardly over when M. Amussat, my anatomy master and friend, called. “Why, Berlioz!” he said, “what on earth is the matter? You are as yellow as a guinea and look thoroughly overdone.” He felt my pulse. “You are on the verge of typhoid and must be bled.” “Very well, do it now.” He did, and then said: “You will please leave Paris at once and go to the Riviera or somewhere south by the sea and forget all these exciting topics. Be off at once.” With my eight hundred francs I went to Nice. It moved me strangely to see those haunts of thirteen years earlier--the days of my youth. I bathed, explored the well-known cliffs, paid my respects to the old cannon, still asleep in the sun; the room in which I wrote _King Lear_ was let to an English family so I found shelter in an old tower adjoining the Ponchettes Rocks. After a month’s lotus-eating I turned my face once more to Paris and took up again my Sisyphus burden. After giving some concerts in the circus of the Champs Elysées, which fatigued me greatly I again took a rest on the Mediterranean shores then gave some more concerts in Marseilles, Lyons and Lille of which I have given a full account in my _Grotesques de la Musique_. Shortly afterwards I started on my tour through Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. XXIX THE RAKOCZY MARCH Of my journey from Paris to Vienna I only have two distinct impressions--one of a violent pain in my side that I thought would be the death of me and the other of a species of god I saw at Augsbourg. This worthy man had founded a sort of neo-christianity which was rather popular: he looked a decent sort of fellow. At Ratisbon the steamer had gone, so I was obliged to wait two days and then go on in a diligence, which made me feel as if I had gone back into the Dark Ages. At Linz, however, I set foot on a fine steam-boat, and found myself once more in A.D. 1845.