music; but how can we do otherwise when we are told by
Franck's followers that the expression of the soul is the only end and
aim of music? Do we find his faith, as expressed through his music
always full of peace and calm?[156] I ask those who love that music
because they find some of their own sadness reflected there. Who has not
felt the secret tragedies that some of his musical passages
enfold--those short, characteristically abrupt phrases which seem to
rise in supplication to God, and often fall back in sadness and in
tears? It is not all light in that soul; but the light that is there
does not affect us less because it shines from afar,

"Dans un ecartement de nuages, qui laisse
Voir au-dessus des mers la celeste allegresse...."[157]

[Footnote 156: I speak of the passages where he expresses himself
freely, and is not interpreting a dramatic situation necessary to his
subject, as in that fine symphonic part of the _Redemption_, where he
describes the triumph of Christ. But even there we find traces of
sadness and suffering.]

[Footnote 157: Through a break in the clouds, revealing Celestial joy
shining above the deeps.]

And so Franck seems to me to differ from M. d'Indy in that he has not
the latter's urgent desire for clearness.

* * * * *

Clearness is the distinguishing quality of M. d'Indy's mind. There are
no shadows about him. His ideas and his art are as clear as the look
that gives so much youth to his face. For him to examine, to arrange,
to classify, to combine, is a necessity. No one is more French in
spirit. He has sometimes been taxed with Wagnerism, and it is true that
he has felt Wagner's influence very strongly. But even when this
influence is most apparent it is only superficial: his true spirit is
remote from Wagner's. You may find in _Fervaal_ a few trees like those
in _Siegfried's_ forest; but the forest itself is not the same; broad
avenues have been cut in it, and daylight fills the caverns of the
Niebelungs.

This love of clearness is the ruling factor of M. d'Indy's artistic
nature. And this is the more remarkable, for his nature is far from
being a simple one. By his wide musical education and his constant
thirst for knowledge he has acquired a very varied and almost
contradictory learning. It must be remembered that M. d'Indy is a
musician familiar with the music of other countries and other times; all
kinds of musical forms are floating i