If you do not know the little towns within
the great Town, you cannot know the strong and often inconsistent life
of this great organism as a whole.
If one wishes to get an idea of the musical life of Paris, one must take
into account the variety of its centres and the perpetual flow of its
thought--a thought which never stops, but is always over-shooting the
goal for which it seemed bound. This incessant change of opinion is
scornfully called "fashion" by the foreigner. And there is, without
doubt, in the artistic aristocracy of Paris, as in all great towns, a
herd of idle people on the watch for new fashions--in art, as well as in
dress--who wish to single out certain of them for no serious reason at
all. But, in spite of their pretensions, they have only an infinitesimal
share in the changes of artistic taste. The origin of these changes is
in the Parisian brain itself--a brain that is quick and feverish, always
working, greedy of knowledge, easily tired, grasping to-day the
splendours of a work, seeing to-morrow its defects, building up
reputations as rapidly as it pulls them down, and yet, in spite of all
its apparent caprices, always logical and sincere.
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