“DEAR FRIEND,--Do not worry over my aberrations--the crisis is past. I cannot explain in a letter, which might go astray; but I beg you will not breathe a word of my state of mind to anyone, it might get round to my father and distress him. All that I can do is suffer in silence until time changes my fate. “Yesterday’s wild excursion did for me entirely. I can hardly move.--_Adieu._” In an artist’s life sometimes wild tempests succeed each other with bewildering rapidity, and so it was with me about this time. Hardly had I recovered from the successive shocks of Weber and Shakespeare, when above my horizon burst the sun of glorious Beethoven to melt for me that misty inmost veil of the holiest shrine in music, as Shakespeare had lifted that of poetry. To Habeneck, with all his shortcomings, is due the credit of introducing the master he adored to Paris. In order to found the Conservatoire concerts, now of world-wide fame, he had to face opposition, abuse and irony, and to inspire with his own ardour a set of men who, not being Beethoven enthusiasts, did not see the force of slaving for poor pay at music that, to them, appeared simply eccentric. Oh! the nonsense I have heard them airing on those miracles of inspiration and learning--the symphonies! Even Lesueur--honest, but devoted to antiquated dogmas--stood aside with Cherubini, Päer, Kreutzer and Catel, until, one day, I swept him off to hear the great C minor symphony. I told him it was his duty to know and appreciate personally such a notable fact as this revelation of a new and glorious style to us, the children of the old classicism. Conscientiously anxious to judge fairly, he would not have me by to distract him, but shut himself up with strangers at the back of a box. The symphony over, I hurried round to hear his verdict, and found him, with flushed face, striding up and down a passage. “Ouf!” he cried, “let me get out; I must have air! It’s incredible! Marvellous! It has so upset and bewildered me, that when I wanted to put on my hat I _couldn’t find my head_. Let me go by myself. I will see you to-morrow.” I felt triumphant, and took care to go round next day. We spoke of nothing but the masterpiece we had heard; yet he seemed to reply to my ravings rather constrainedly. Still I persevered, until, after dragging out of him another acknowledgment of his heart-felt appreciation, he ended, with a curious smile: “Yes, it’s all very well; but such music ought not to be written.” “No fear, dear master,” I retorted; “there will never be too much of it!” Poor human nature! Poor master! How much regret, envy, narrow-mindedness; what a dread of the unknown and confession of incapacity lay beneath your words! “Such music should not be written,” because the speaker knows instinctively that he himself could never write it. Thus do all great men suffer from their contemporaries. Haydn said much the same of Beethoven, whom he called a _great pianist_.