The Reboul-Berlioz Collection

Abstract

Traditions preserved in families, whether about the individual members or about family matters, can sometimes be of great importance. Our curiosity naturally loves to feed on information concerning our forebears. We take pride in knowing where they came from and what they did; most men feel respect for the past. The young can be checked in their follies and excesses when they see how much it cost their ancestors to assure the affluence their descendants enjoy. They will hesitate more than once before deciding to sell property which bears on all sides the identifiable imprint of their kith and kin. On reading the record of merit and repute they will strive to emulate it; the spirit of a virtuous father, revealed to his children, must keep them in the way of duty. Sustained by these hopes, I am resolved to set down the history of my family, and I counsel my posterity to carry it on likewise. Dr Berlioz's hopes, embodied in the introductory paragraph of his Livre de Raison, were to be disappointed. His eldest child and heir, though attached all his life by strong family ties, pursued his career elsewhere, and had his fair share of follies; his younger son, Prosper, died at the age of eighteen. After the old man's death the property was split up. Within a few years, most of the accumulated labours of Louis Berlioz and his ancestors were dispersed to the winds.