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Superb ALS in French, signed “H. Berlioz,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 5.25 x 8.25, December 5, 1849. Handwritten letter to his sister, Nanci Pal, in part (translated): "This morning, I had an audience with the President [the future Napoleon III]. I got up early, dressed, and shaved; I stood around the Élysée Palace for an hour and a half, surrounded by sixty hideous deputies from three departments (my God, how ugly humankind is!). After these deputations were successively admitted and dismissed, the Prince came to offer us his apologies and send us back for another day."
He comments on the possibility of a reduction in the allowances of the people's representatives, and the constant change of ministers, and confesses: "I don't know who our Director of Fine Arts is at the moment. They will soon no longer need to be directed. I have such a need to make great music, or at least to hear about it, that it has made me ill for the past few weeks; my whole nervous system is in a state of exasperation. The opera is a disgrace and I only set foot in it to suffer martyrdom at the behest of the serialized drama. Must we then bid farewell forever to music in our sad country? It is much worse in Germany, it seems."
He worries about his friends in Vienna: "The King of Prussia is beginning to regain some of his composure. God grant that he may keep it!… He is the only king whose memory our art will preserve." He gives news of Harriet, who has recently suffered several strokes, she is a little better each day. He is also worried about his son Louis, whom the headmaster says is making no progress.
Berlioz himself is on donkey milk and seltzer water, and suffers from a migraine after every dinner out: "If I could only put on a concert of my own choosing, I feel it would cure me completely. If you want to know why I don't tempt fate by trying to give at least one, read my serial, which will probably appear tomorrow. Oh, what a country! What a people! What weather! Farewell! Be patient! And give me good news directly, of your health. (An Englishman in France!)…O Lord God! Wicked fortune! To speak like d'Orléans in Shakespeare, I am very sad." In fine condition.
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