one end of Paris to the other giving lessons.
During his lifetime he had to content himself with half-prepared
performances of his works, had to resign himself to having composers of
operettas preferred to him when chairs at the _Conservatoire_ became
vacant, to receiving practically no recognition from a government
pretending with hue and cry to protect and encourage the arts. Had it
not been for the fervor and faithfulness with which Ysaye labored to
spread his renown, practically cramming down the throats of an unwilling
public the violin sonata and the quartet, the man would not have known
any success at all even during the very last years of his career. As it
was, his reputation spread only after he was dead. Then, of course, the
inevitable monument was erected to him.

Still, the future was with Cesar Franck as it has been with few artists.
The timeliness of his art was almost miraculous. Without a doubt, during
the years of his labor, the French were most ready for a musical
renaissance. The defeat of 1870 had, after all, braced the nation,
summoned its dormant energies. It had not been severe enough to destroy,
and only fierce enough to force folk to shake off the torpor that had
lain upon them during the two previous regimes. People began to work
again, bellies were somewhat emptier and heads somewhat fuller than they
had been under Louis-Philippe and Louis-Napoleon. Above all, the vapid
and superficial life of the Second Empire was ended. People were more
sober and inward and realistic than they had been. There was an unusual
activity in all the arts. Painting, fiction, poetry, sculpture had or
were having new births. A single creative spark was sure to set the very
recalcitrant musicians ablaze. Vast talents such as those of Bizet and
Chabrier were making themselves felt. But given a single powerful and
constructive influence, a single classic expression of the French
musical feeling, and a score of gifted musicians were ready to spring
into life. And that example was set by Franck. For, Belgian in part
though his music indubitably is, Belgian of Antwerp and Brussels as well
as of Liege and the Walloon country, Flemish almost in its broad and
gorgeous passages, it is what the work of the superficially Parisian
Saint-Saens never attains to being. It is representative of the great
classical tradition of France, deeply expressive of the French spirit.
It must have been some profound kinship with the neighboring p