The Meylan that Berlioz knew lay on a steep hill on the slopes of Mt Saint Eynard, and is known nowadays as Haut Meylan High Meylan , a small community distinct from the present day Meylan which lies lower down in the valley; the earliest buildings in modern Meylan date from the s. Estelle and her sister Ninon would normally pass part of the summer with their maternal grandmother Madame Anne Gautier in Replat, above Meylan.
In the late s Estelle married a man considerably older than herself, a rich lawyer called Casimir Fornier, who became president of the High Court in Grenoble. She had six children, of whom four survived into adulthood. Her husband died in The writing of the Memoirs stretched over many years: Berlioz started writing them in while in London, but the work was only concluded at the beginning of Their character evolved in time, but it was only late in the day, in , that the Memoirs received their final shape and Estelle became retrospectively the central figure in the work.
It is not clear how many times Berlioz met Estelle, though visits came to an end already the following year Memoirs , chapter 3 ; for him she was a remote and idealised figure, but he never forgot her, and the figure of Estelle continued to haunt his imagination throughout his life. He saw her by accident very briefly again in on his return from his trip to Italy, though she may not have recognised him on that occasion chapter 3 , end.
He briefly mentions her in relation to his infatuation with the actress Harriet Smithson in beginning of chapter At the time of the writing of his Requiem in he mentions having twice had a dream concerning Estelle footnote to chapter He wanted to see once again the place where he had first seen Estelle, and also to enquire about her; the visit is related in detail in the Memoirs chapter Berlioz even wrote a letter to her, the text of which he reproduces at the end of the chapter.
The letter remained unanswered, but a footnote to the chapter shows that subsequently in Berlioz continued to enquire about her. He found out that she was still alive and residing in Lyon, though a passing reference in the following chapter, which is dated 18 October , implies that at the time of writing he did not expect to see her ever again. Yet in , almost at the end of his active career, Berlioz was seized again with a longing to revisit Meylan.
