Somehow he managed to scrape along. He had a tiny room, five flights up, in the Cité, at the corner of the Quai des Orfèvres and the Rue de Harley; he gave up dining in restaurants and confined his diet to dry bread and salt, with now and then raisins or dates. When the weather was favorable he took this meal on the Pont Neuf, beside the statue of Henri IV, watching the passersby or gazing at the muddy waters of the Seine. He worked tirelessly at his music. Cherubini, now apparently mollified, put the youth into Reicha’s class for counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire, even while he continued with Lesueur. Hector struck up a life-long friendship with young Humbert Ferrand, who wrote him an opera book, “Les Franc-Juges”—“The Judges of the Secret Court”—which he enthusiastically set to music but of which only the overture remains. It is a fine thing of its type, bearing melodically, instrumentally and harmonically, the unmistakable imprint of Berlioz even to the reminders of Gluck. One of its most striking themes survives from the boyish quintet of Hector’s and anticipates in a fashion the “idée fixe” of the “Symphonie Fantastique”, not very far ahead.
Working on his opera young Berlioz had somewhat neglected his flute and guitar pupils and once more needed money. Even a franc a lesson would not help greatly when it became a question of winter clothes and firewood. Far from capitulating and returning, beaten, to Dauphiné, he first toyed with the idea of seeking a position as first or second flute in some orchestra “in New York, Mexico, Sydney or Calcutta, of becoming a sailor, filibuster, buccaneer or savage in China” or attempting any other wild scheme since “it is futile and dangerous to thwart my will when I am resolved on anything”. In the end he tried a safer, less exciting method. Aided by a streak of luck and an exceptionally good musical memory, he obtained an engagement as a chorus singer at the Théâtre des Nouveautés, where basses were wanted but where a passable baritone could also be of use. By singing as a trial piece a recitative from Sacchini’s “Oedipe” he prevailed over a weaver, a blacksmith, an actor and a choir member from St. Eustache. The job paid him fifty francs a month. Hector had not only to sing all manner of rubbish but “the colossal manager”, a Mr. St. Léger, sometimes obliged him to be “the rear leg of an artificial camel”! Even so, it was luck of a sort. At the same time, two new pupils applied for lessons and he met Antoine Charbonnel, a young man from La Côte-Saint-André, whose father had often scandalized Mme. Berlioz because, being a tireless woman chaser, he flew in the face of her family’s ancient motto, “respectability above everything”. Charbonnel, a budding pharmacist, found it advisable to share economics with Hector and the pair set up bachelor quarters in two little rooms in the Rue de la Harpe. Charbonnel cooked and Hector marketed, grossly violating the hygienic codes of his friend by carrying the day’s provisions unwrapped under his arm.