every human being who passes through this life from the tyranny of the past
to the service of the future.

The book contains a host of characters who become as friends, or, at least,
as interesting neighbors, to the reader. Jean-Christophe gathers people
in his progress, and as they are all brought to the test of his genius,
they appear clearly for what they are. Even the most unpleasant of them is
human, and demands sympathy.

The recognition of Jean-Christophe as a book which marks a stage in
progress was instantaneous in France. It is hardly possible yet to judge
it. It is impossible to deny its vitality. It exists. Christophe is as real
as the gentlemen whose portraits are posted outside the Queen's Hall, and
much more real than many of them. The book clears the air. An open mind
coming to it cannot fail to be refreshed and strengthened by its voyage
down the river of a man's life, and if the book is followed to its end, the
voyager will discover with Christophe that there is joy beneath sorrow, joy
through sorrow ("Durch Leiden Freude").

Those are the last words of M. Rolland's life of Beethoven; they are words
of Beethoven himself: "La devise de tout ame heroique."

In his preface, "To the Friends of Christophe," which precedes the seventh
volume, "Dans la Maison," M. Rolland writes:

"I was isolated: like so many others in France I was stifling in a world
morally inimical to me: I wanted air: I wanted to react against an
unhealthy civilization, against ideas corrupted by a sham elite: I wanted
to say to them: 'You lie! You do not represent France!' To do so I needed a
hero with a pure heart and unclouded vision, whose soul would be stainless