Beethoven comes back only rarely to my mind, but when his music does
awake in me, it touches something so vital that it is always as though a
hand were drawing aside a curtain from the mystery of the Creation.

Poor dear Great Masters! Shall it be counted a crime against them that
they were Germans? How is it possible to think of Schumann as a
barbarian?

Yesterday this country recalled to my mind what you played to me ten
years ago, the Rheingold: 'Libre étendu sur la hauteur.' But the outlook
of our French art had this superiority over the beautiful music of that
wretched man--it had composure and clarity and reason. Yes, our French
art was never turbid.

As for Wagner, however beautiful his music, and however irresistible and
attractive his genius, I believe it would be a less substantial loss to
French taste to be deprived of him than of his great classical
compatriots.

* * * * *

I can say with truth that in those moments when the idea of a possible
return comes to me, it is never the thought of the comfort or the
well-being that preoccupies me. It is something higher and nobler which
turns my thoughts towards this form of hope. Can I say that it is even
something different from the immense joy of our meeting again? It is
rather the hope of taking up again our common effort, our association,
of which the aim is the development of our souls, and the best use we
can make of them upon earth.