[18] It would all be dreadfully ridiculous if this
weakness of character had not brought tragedy in its train.
So the one he really loved, and who always loved him, remained alone,
without friends, in Paris, where she 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.
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