and Monteverde and Palestrina and all the great souls whose names still
live among men, but whose thoughts are only felt by a handful of the
initiated, who try in vain to revive the past. You, also, are already of
the past, though you were the steady light of our youth, the strong
source of life and death, of desire and renouncement, whence we drew our
moral force and our power of resistance against the world. And the
world, ever greedy for new sensations, goes on its way amid the
unceasing ebb and flow of its desires. Already its thoughts have
changed, and new musicians are making new songs for the future. But it
is the voice of a century of tempest that passes with you.

CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS

M. Saint-Saens has had the rare honour of becoming a classic during his
lifetime. His name, though it was long unrecognised, now commands
universal respect, not less by his worth of character than by the
perfection of his art. No artist has troubled so little about the
public, or been more indifferent to criticism whether popular or expert.
As a child he had a sort of physical repulsion for outward success:

"De l'applaudissement
J'entends encor le bruit qui, chose assez etrange,
Pour ma pudeur d'enfant etait comme une fange
Dont le flot me venait toucher; je redoutais
Son contact, et parfois, malin, je l'evitais,
Affectant la raideur."[110]

[Footnote 110:

Of applause
I still hear the noise; and, strangely enough,
In my childish shyness it seemed like mire
About to spot me; I feared
Its touch, and secretly shunned it,
Affecting obstinacy.

These verses were read by M. Saint-Saens at a concert given on 10 June,
1896, in the Salle Pleyel, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his
_debut_, which he made in 1846. It was in this same Salle Pleyel that he
gave his first concert.]

Later on, he achieved success by a long and painful struggle, in which
he had to fight against the kind of stupid criticism that condemned him
"to listen to one of Beethoven's symphonies as a penance likely to give
him the most excruciating torture."[111] And yet after this, and after
his admission to the Academy, after _Henry VIII_ and the _Symphonie avec
orgue_, he still remained aloof from praise or blame, and judged his
triumphs with sad severity:

"Tu connaitras les yeux menteurs, l'hypocrisie
Des serrements de mains,