Needless to say, I was brought up in the Catholic faith. This--of all religions the most charming, since it gave up burning people--was for seven years the joy of my life, and although we have since fallen out, I still retain my tender memories of it. Indeed, so greatly am I in sympathy with its creed that, had I had the misfortune to be born in the clutches of one of the dreary schisms hatched by Luther and Calvin, I should certainly, at the first awakening of my poetic instinct, have thrown off its benumbing grasp and have flung myself into the arms of the fair Roman. My sweet remembrance of my first communion is probably due to my having made it with my elder sister at the Ursuline convent, where she was a boarder. At early morn, accompanied by the almoner, I made my way to that holy house. The soft spring sunlight, the murmuring poplars swaying in the whispering breeze, the dainty fragrance of the morning air, all worked upon my sensitive mind, until, as I knelt among those fair white maidens, and heard their fresh young voices raised in the eucharistic hymn, my whole soul was filled with mystic passion. Heaven opened before me--a heaven of love and pure delight, a thousand times more glorious than tongue has told--and thus I gave myself to God. Such is the marvellous power of genuine melody, of heart-felt expression! Ten years later I recognised that air--so innocently adapted to a religious ceremony--as “When my beloved shall return,” from d’Aleyrac’s opera _Nina_. Dear, dead d’Aleyrac! Even your name is forgotten now! This was my musical awakening. Thus abruptly I became a saint, and such a desperate saint! Every day I went to mass, every Sunday I took the communion, every week I went to confession in order to say to my director: “Father, I have done nothing.” “Well, my son,” would the worthy man reply, “continue.” I followed his advice strictly for many years. Louis Berlioz, my father, was a doctor. It is not my place to sing his praises. I need, therefore, only say that he was looked upon as an honoured friend, not only in our little town, but throughout the whole country side. Feeling acutely his responsibility as the steward of a difficult and dangerous profession, every minute he could spare from his sick people was given to arduous study, and never did the thought of gain turn him aside from his disinterested service to the poor and needy. In 1810, the medical society of Montpellier offered a prize for the best treatise on a new and important point in medicine, which was gained by my father’s monograph on Chronic Diseases. It was printed in Paris, and many of its theories adopted by physicians, who had not the common honesty to acknowledge their source. This somewhat surprised my dear, unsophisticated father, but he only said, “If truth prevails, nothing else matters.” Now (I write in 1848) he has long since ceased to practise, and spends his time in reading and peaceful thought.