_ As much as to say he was a Catholic without
knowing it. And that is what a friend of the _Schola_, M. Edgar Tinel,
declares: "Bach is a truly Christian artist and, without doubt, _a
Protestant by mistake_, since in his immortal _Credo_ he confesses his
faith in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" (_Tribune de
Saint-Gervais_, August-September, 1902). M. Edgar Tinel was, as you
know, one of the principal masters of Belgian oratorio.]
So the old Gothic spirit still lives among us, and informs the mind of
one of our best-known artists, and also, without doubt, the minds of
hundreds of those who listen to him and admire him. M. Louis Laloy has
shown the persistence of certain forms of plain-song in M. Debussy's
_Pelleas_; and in a dim sense of far-away kinship he finds the cause of
the mysterious charm that such music holds for some of us.[152] This
learned paradox is possible. Why not? The mixtures of race and the
vicissitudes of history have given us so full and complex a soul that we
may very well find its beginnings there, if it pleases us--or the
beginnings of quite other things. Of beginnings there is no end; the
choice is quite embarrassing, and I imagine one's inclination has as
much to do with the matter as one's temperament.
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