“I am so sorry to hear that your husband has become deaf. How did it happen?” one sympathetic lady says to a friend, who replies, “Well, you see he _would_ go to that last concert of Berlioz!” Another picture shows two street venders looking at one of their tribe flaunting a rich dress. “How did she become so rich?” one asks the other; and the latter explains: “Why, she sells cotton at the door of Berlioz’s concerts for people to stuff in their ears!” Berlioz’s symphony _Harold in Italy_, written in 1834, at Paganini’s request for a solo part in which he could exhibit his fine Stradivari viola, attracted some attention when it was performed at the Conservatory. His dramatic symphony _Roméo et Juliette_, performed at the Conservatory in 1839, won him fresh laurels. It was dedicated to Paganini, who having heard the _Fantastic Symphony_ and _Harold in Italy_ given under Berlioz’s direction at a concert in Paris in 1838, dropped on his knees before the composer, kissed his hand and the next day sent him a cheque for twenty thousand francs ($4,000). Berlioz spent much time polishing this score; and of all his compositions he preferred the _Adagio_ (love scene) of _Roméo et Juliette Symphony_. Berlioz’s life was comparatively uneventful. His operas, _Benvenuto Cellini_ and _Béatrice et Bénédict_ (_Much Ado about Nothing_) and his two works on the Trojan War were unsuccessful. His gigantic works such as the _Damnation of Faust_ and _Requiem_ were also failures. His success was gained outside of his beloved Paris in 1843 and 1847, when he gave concerts in Germany and Russia. His extraordinary reception amazed his own countrymen, with whom Berlioz was never popular. In 1852 he became Librarian at the Paris Conservatory. France gave him the cross of the Legion of Honor and other countries bestowed decorations upon him. “Liszt was at first a pianist, the most extraordinary and fascinating ever known, and one of the most wonderful of improvisators. Yielding to the taste of the time, he composed _Fantasias_, arrangements, or paraphrases, upon fashionable operas, bristling with difficulties of execution so extreme that no one but himself could attempt to play them. “It was not until a later period that he began really to compose and then he brought into his work the quality of mysticism which was in his own nature.”[77] Franz Liszt (1811-1886), is another phenomenon in musical history. He was great as a pianist, great as a composer, great as a conductor, great as a man, great as a friend. In looking over his life it seems incredible that any man could have accomplished so much and in so many varied directions.