together with moral or even religious teaching. His
heart, represented by the musician, is romantic; and if he followed it
altogether he would wander off to any subject that enabled him to
indulge in his love of the picturesque, such as the descriptive
symphony, or even the old form of opera.

For myself, I am in sympathy with his heart; and I find his heart is in
the right, and his reason in the wrong. There is nothing that M. d'Indy
has made more his own than the art of painting landscapes in music.
There is one page in _Fervaal_ at the beginning of Act II which calls up
misty mountain tops covered with pine forests; there is another page in
_L'Etranger_ where one sees strange lights glimmering on the sea while a
storm is brooding.[164] I should like to see M. d'Indy give himself up
freely, in spite of all theories, to this descriptive lyricism, in which
he so excels; or I wish at least he would seek inspiration in a subject
where both his religious beliefs and his imagination could find
satisfaction: a subject such as one of the beautiful episodes of the
Golden Legend, or the one which _L'Etranger_ itself recalls--the
romantic voyage of the Magdalen in Provence. But it is foolish to wish
an artist to do anything but the thing he likes; he is the best judge
of what pleases him.

[Footnote 164: Act III, scene 3. The power of that evocation is so
strong that it carries the poet along with it. It would seem that part
of the action had only been conceived with a view to the final effect of
the sudden colouring of the waves.]

* * * * *

In this sketchy portrait I must not forget one of the finest of this
composer's gifts--his talent as a teacher of music. Everything has
fitted M. d'Indy for this part. By his knowledge and his precise,
orderly mind he must be a perfect teacher of composition. If I submit
some question of harmony or melodic phrasing to his analysis, the result
is the essence of clear, logical reasoning; and if the reasoning is a
little dry and simplifies the thing almost too much, it is still very
illuminating and from the hand of a master of French prose. And in this
I find him exercising the same consistent instinct of good sense and
sincerity, the same art of development, the same seventeenth and
eighteenth century principles of classic rhetoric that he applies to his
music. In truth, M. d'Indy could write a musical _Discourse on Style_,
if he wished.

But, above all,