But you must not accuse me of contradicting myself if in another work, which will appear at the same time as this one,[203] I indulge in some sarcasm over the failings and absurdities of French music to-day.  I think that for the last ten years French musicians have rather imprudently and prematurely proclaimed their victory, and that, in a general way, their works—­apart from three or four—­are not worth as much as their endeavours.  But their endeavours are heroic; and I know nothing finer in the whole history of France.  May they continue!  But that is only possible by practising a virtue—­modesty.  The completion of a part is not the completion of the whole.

[Footnote 203:  Jean-Christophe a Paris, 1904.]

PARIS AND MUSIC

The nature of Paris is so complex and unstable that one feels it is presumptuous to try to define it.  It is a city so highly-strung, so ingrained with fickleness, and so changeable in its tastes, that a book that truly describes it at the moment it is written is no longer accurate by the time it is published.  And then, there is not only one Paris; there are two or three Parises—­fashionable Paris, middle-class Paris, intellectual Paris, vulgar Paris—­all living side by side, but intermingling very little.  If you do not know the little towns within the great Town, you cannot know the strong and often inconsistent life of this great organism as a whole.

If one wishes to get an idea of the musical life of Paris, one must take into account the variety of its centres and the perpetual flow of its thought—­a thought which never stops, but is always over-shooting the goal for which it seemed bound.  This incessant change of opinion is scornfully called “fashion” by the foreigner.  And there is, without doubt, in the artistic aristocracy of Paris, as in all great towns, a herd of idle people on the watch for new fashions—­in art, as well as in dress—­who wish to single out certain of them for no serious reason at all.  But, in spite of their pretensions, they have only an infinitesimal share in the changes of artistic taste.  The origin of these changes is in the Parisian brain itself—­a brain that is quick and feverish, always working, greedy of knowledge, easily tired, grasping to-day the splendours of a work, seeing to-morrow its defects, building up reputations as rapidly as it pulls them down, and yet, in spite of all its apparent caprices, always logical and sincere.  It has its momentary infatuations and dislikes, but no lasting prejudices; and, by its curiosity, its absolute liberty, and its very French habit of criticising everything, it is a marvellous barometer, sensitive to all the hidden currents of thought in the soul of the West, and often indicating, months in advance, the variations and disturbances of the artistic and political world.