was a stranger. She drooped in
silence and pined slowly away, bedridden, paralysed, and unable to speak
during eight years of suffering. Berlioz suffered too, for he loved her
still and was torn with pity--"pity, the most painful of all
emotions."[19] But of what use was this pity? He left Henrietta to
suffer alone and to die just the same. And, what was worse, as we learn
from Legouve, he let his mistress, the odious Recio, make a scene before
poor Henrietta.[20] Recio told him of it and boasted about what she had
done.

[Footnote 18: "Isn't it really devilish," he said to Legouve, "tragic
and silly at the same time? I should deserve to go to hell if I wasn't
there already."]

[Footnote 19: _Memoires_, II, 335. See the touching passages he wrote on
Henrietta Smithson's death.]

[Footnote 20: "One day, Henrietta, who was living alone at Montmartre,
heard someone ring the bell, and went to open the door.

"'Is Mme. Berlioz at home?'

"'I am Mme. Berlioz.'

"'You are mistaken; I asked for Mme. Berlioz.'

"'And I tell you, I am Mme. Berlioz.'

"'No, you are not. You are speaking of the old Mme. Berlioz, the one who
was abandoned; I am speaking of the young and pretty and loved one.
Well, that is myself!'

"And Recio went out and banged the door after her.

"Legouve said to Berlioz, 'Who told you this abominable thing? I suppose
she who did it; and then she boasted about it into the bargain. Why
didn't you turn her out of the house?' 'How could I?' said Berlioz in
broken tones, 'I love her'" _(Soixante ans de souvenirs_).]

And Berlioz did nothing--"How could I? I love her."

One would be hard upon such a man if one was not disarmed by his own
sufferings. But let us go on. I should have liked to pass over these
traits, but I have no right to; I must show you the extraordinary
feebleness of the man's character. "Man's character," did I say? No, it
was the character of a woman without a will, the victim of her
nerves.[21]

[Footnote 21: From this woman's nature came his love of revenge, "a
thing needless, and yet necessary," he said to his friend Hiller, who,
after having made him write the _Symphonie fantastique_ to spite
Henrietta Smithson, next made him write the wretched fantasia _Euphonia_
to spite Camille Moke, now Mme. Pleyel. One would feel obliged to draw
more attention to the way he often adorned or perverted the truth if one
did not feel it arose from his irrepressible and glowing imagination far