Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/67

Rh did not die, in the midst of his career, of poverty and mortification. Twice he was bankrupt; and once he was stricken down by apoplexy, amid the ruins of his company. But he always found his feet again; he never gave in. "To re-establish his fortunes he need only have made certain concessions; but his character rebelled against such a course. He had a hatred of all that might restrict his liberty, and was intractable in matters affecting the honour of his art. He was not willing that he should owe his fortune to any but himself." An English caricaturist represented him under the title of "The Bewitching Brute," trampling underfoot a banner on which was written: Pension, Privilege, Nobility, Favours; and in the face of disaster he laughed with a laugh of a Cornelian Pantagruel. Finding himself, on the evening of a concert, confronted by an empty hall, he said: "My music will sound the better so!"

This masterful character, with its violence and its transports of anger and of genius, was governed by a supreme self-control. In Händel that tranquillity prevailed which is sometimes met with in the offspring of certain sound, but late marriages. All his life he preserved this profound serenity in his art. While his mother, whom he