That long scheduled visit to Germany continued to be deferred. Meantime Berlioz had been appointed assistant librarian at the Paris Conservatoire, a small distinction, to be sure; but offering at any rate a few additional francs. A more ponderable achievement was the composition for band of a three movement “Symphonie funèbre et triomphale”, planned for performance in the open air in memory of those fallen in the Revolution of 1830. The “Funeral and Triumphal Symphony” was one of the first compositions of Berlioz which Wagner heard when he arrived in Paris in 1840. Wagner was struck by the nobility of the work, ranked it among the loftiest achievements of its composer and retained an undissembled admiration for it all his days. Berlioz had reason to believe that, after this official labor, he might be called to step into the shoes of Cherubini at the Conservatoire when that worthy went to his reward in 1842. But the choice fell upon Georges Onslow and Hector, realizing that if he was ever to obtain in Paris the distinction to which he felt himself entitled, he would have to enhance his French reputation by properly publicized successes abroad. So he began by giving several concerts in Brussels, the second of which was destined to be important—less so for musical reasons than because of domestic entanglements it initiated.
Knowing Harriet’s jealousy Hector seems to have been strangely incautious about keeping secret the identity of his “traveling companion”. It did not take his alternately maudlin and aciduous Irish wife many days to find out from the papers that a certain Marie Recio was the snake in the grass. The Recio was a second rate singer, whose real name was Marie Genevieve Martin. Hector had met her in 1841. We are told that she rekindled in his heart those romantic emotions the now slatternly and alcoholic Harriet could no longer feed. Marie’s mother encouraged the liaison because she realized the power Berlioz had come to be in the journalistic field. He had been so imprudent as to impose her on one operatic management and the game had turned out badly. Before long poor Hector found himself as luckless in his second love affair as he had been in his first.