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