Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/66

 holds them there, I would say, all the more firmly because that work has a strongly systematic character. They do not detest the society of men, but they habitually prefer the society of their ideas. They find the latter lively and the former wearisome, whereas with the generality of mortals the opposite is the case. The soliloquy to which they give themselves up has a passionate interest, an inexhaustible wealth of material, and the conversations and visits which tear them away bring them no adequate compensation, at least in the majority of cases. But is soliloquy the right word? The work that these superior mortals elaborate in their meditations and vigils is addressed to the human race, and is accomplished for the human race. Humanity will be eager for it. will delight in it; such work will form one of the instruments of its education, will become part of the heritage of civilisation. Let us not then call such men solitaries, it is they who have the wide strange of company; in their semi-seclusion they might be called the most ubiquitous and sociable of men. Too much intimacy with a few individuals would spoil for them that intimacy with humanity which alone contents their vast desire. Nothing could be more crowded than Rameau's long provincial solitude; perhaps to his neighbours he seemed aloof and preoccupied—but he was living with all those to whom the creations he was preparing would bring sunlight and enchantment.

In Paris, in the midst of the bustle of the town, the thousand claims upon an artist in the public eye, the intrigues of the world of theatres, we find him still the same man. He went unending solitary walks, striding along the paths in the public gardens apart, and if anyone forced him to speak to him he seemed,