“PARIS, _21st August 1868_. “DEAR STASSOFF,--You see I leave out the _Monsieur_. “I have just come from Grenoble, where they had almost forced me to go and preside at a sort of musical festival and to be present at the unveiling of a statue of Napoleon I. “They ate and drank and did a hundred and fifty other things and I felt so ill.... “They fetched me in a carriage and toasted me, but I could not reply. The Mayor of Grenoble was full of compliments, he presented me with a gilt crown, but I had to sit a whole hour at that banquet. “Next day I left and arrived home at eleven at night, more dead than alive. “I feel good for nothing and I get such letters--asking me to do impossibilities. They want me to say nice things of a German artist, which is right enough since I agree thoroughly, but at the expense of a Russian artist of whom I think well also and whom they want to oust in favour of the German. “I cannot lend myself to it. What a devil of a world this is! “I feel that I am dying; I believe in nothing; but I long to see you, you might perhaps cheer me up--you and Cui. I am beyond measure bored and weary. All my friends are away in the country or shooting. They ask me to go and visit them, but I have not the spirit. “Write, I beg; as shortly as you will, but write! I still feel the effects of my Monaco and Nice accidents. “If you are in St Petersburg write me even _six lines_, I shall be so grateful. “You are so kind; show it now. “I press your hands.” Berlioz lived seven months longer. On returning from Russia he consulted a physician who asked: “Are you a philosopher?” “Yes,” he replied. “Then gather all the courage you can from philosophy, for you are incurable.” He was evidently too worn and weak to take the Riviera journey alone. Although warmly welcomed and cared for at his hotel, his two falls could not but use up his little remaining strength, and that little was cruelly drained by the last journey to Grenoble--a strangely weird and dramatic episode, a worthy conclusion to his stormy, overcast life. The scene is well described by M. Bernard:-- “In a brilliantly lighted hall, hung with magnificent draperies, at a richly spread table a gay crowd awaits the chief guest of the evening. “The curtains are torn aside, and a phantom appears. The ghost of Banquo? No, the skeleton form of Berlioz, his face pale and thin, his eyes vacant and wandering, his head trembling, his lips drawn in a bitter smile. “They crowd around him and press his hands--those palsied hands that have so often led the armies of music to victory. A crown is placed upon his silver locks. “Vacantly he gazes round upon these fellow-citizens, gathered to do him homage--sincere, but how belated!--mechanically he rises to reply to words of which he has hardly grasped the meaning.