For thirty-two years, that is to say, from 1858 until his death, Franck was organist of the Église Ste. Clotilde, where his playing must have been an endless inspiration to all who heard him, though his modesty kept him personally inconspicuous. One likes to think of this quiet, devout musician, animated by the purest religious enthusiasm, advancing year by year in mastery of his art, producing without ostentation works of a novel and radical beauty. Few of his listeners could have conceived that one so benignant and courteous, but so easily forgotten, was making himself a force that modern music could not forget. They, who saw only the husk of the man, could not guess what treasures of humanity and genius it concealed. M. d'Indy well describes the two aspects. «Any one,» he says, «who had encountered this being in the street, with his coat too large, his trousers too short, his grimacing and preoccupied face framed in his somewhat gray whiskers, would not have believed in the transformation that took place when, at the piano, he explained and commented on some beautiful work of art, or when, at the organ, he put forth his inspired improvisations. Then the music enveloped him like an aureole; then one could not fail to be struck by the conscious will expressed in the mouth and chin, by the almost superhuman knowledge in his glance; then only would one observe the nearly perfect likeness of his large forehead to that of Beethoven.» And M. Derepas has the following paragraph in the same tenor: «It was there, before the keyboards, his agile and powerful feet upon the pedals, that it was necessary to see César Franck. His beautiful head with its finely developed brow crowned with naturally curling hair, his profound and contemplative expression, his features marked without exaggeration, his full, well-cut mouth breathing health, ... all wearing the aureole of genius and of faith--it was like a vision of another age in strong contrast with the turbulences of the day.» If one is sometimes sorry that Franck had to spend so much time teaching, one cannot, in the face of such descriptions as these, regret the hours he passed in the Église Ste. Clotilde. Its atmosphere was native to his genius, which was not only religious, but even ecclesiastical. In hearing his «musique cathédralesque,» as Saint-Saëns well called it, one can almost see the pillars and arches, the pure candle-flames and the bowed peasants at prayer.