's
disease at twenty.

Bizet, like Herold, died soon after his masterpiece was done. Three
months after "Carmen's" first equivocal success, Bizet was dead, not of
a broken heart, as legend tells, but of heart-disease. Six years before
he had married Genevieve, the daughter of his teacher, the composer
Halevy. In his letters to Lacombe he frequently mentions her, saying in
May, 1872: "J'attends un _baby_ dans deux ou trois semaines." His wife,
he said, was "marvellously well," and a happy result was expected--and
achieved, for in 1874 he sends Lacombe the greetings "des Bizet, pere,
mere, et enfant." He began an oratorio with the suggestive name of
"Sainte Genevieve," which his death interrupted. His widow told Gounod
that Bizet had been so devoted that there was not a moment of their six
years' life she would not gladly live over again.

Cesar Franck married and left a son. At his funeral Chabrier said, "His
family, his pupils, his immortal art: viola all his life!" But Auber,
though too timid to marry or even to conduct his own works, was brave
enough to earn the name of a "devotee of Venus."

THE PASSIONS OF BERLIOZ

Some of the most eminent musicians were strictly literary men, to whom
music was an avocation.

Thus Robert Schumann was an editor, who whiled away his leisure writing
music that almost no one approved or played for many years. Richard
Wagner was well on in life before his compositions brought him as much
money as his writing. Hector Berlioz was a prominent critic, whose
excursions into music brought him unmitigated abuse and ridicule. The
list might be multiplied.

The tempestuous Berlioz was in love at twelve. The girl was eighteen;
her name was Estelle, and he called her "the hamadryad of St. Eynard."
Years later she had grown vague in his memory, and he could only say,
"I have forgot the colour of her hair; it was black I think. But
whenever I remember her I see a vision of great brilliant eyes and of
pink shoes." When he was fifty-seven years old, he found her again and
his old love revived. But before that time there was much life to live.
And he lived it at a _tempo presto con fuoco_.

He went to Paris, which was a cyclone of conflict for him. At the age
of twenty-seven he won the Prix de Rome and went for three years to
Italy, not without the amorous adventures suitable to that sky.

Returning to Paris, he found the city in a spasm of enthusiasm over
Shakespeare, especially over the Iris