Now of a sudden, as had happened twenty-five years earlier when the vision of _Jean Christophe_ had come to him on the Janiculum, in the course of sleepless nights he was visited by a strange and yet familiar figure, that of a countryman from ancestral days whose expansive personality thrust all other plans aside. Shortly before, Rolland had revisited Clamecy. The old town had awakened memories of his childhood. Almost unawares, home influences were at work, and his native province had begun to insist that its son, who had described so many distant scenes, should depict the land of his birth. The Frenchman who had so vigorously and passionately transformed himself into a European, the man who had borne his testimony as European before the world, was seized with a desire to be, for a creative hour, wholly French, wholly Burgundian, wholly Nivernais. The musician accustomed to unite all voices in his symphonies, to combine in them the deepest expressions of feeling, was now longing to discover a new rhythm, and after prolonged tension to relax into a merry mood. For ten years he had been dominated by a sense of strenuous responsibility; the equipment of Jean Christophe had been, as it were, a burden which his soul had had to bear. Now it would be a pleasure to pen a scherzo, free and light, a work unconcerned with the stresses of politics, ethics, and contemporary history. It should be divinely irresponsible, an escape from the exactions of the time spirit. During the day following the first night on which the idea came to him, he had exultantly dismissed other plans. The rippling current of his thoughts was effortless in its flow. Thus, to his own astonishment, during the summer months of 1913, Rolland was able to complete his light-hearted novel _Colas Breugnon_, the French intermezzo in the European symphony. CHAPTER II THE BURGUNDIAN BROTHER It seemed at first to Rolland as if a stranger, though one from his native province and of his own blood, had come cranking into his life. He felt as though, out of the clear French sky, the book had burst like a meteor upon his ken. True, the melody is new; different are the tempo, the key, the epoch. But those who have acquired a clear understanding of the author's inner life cannot fail to realize that this amusing book does not constitute an essential modification of his work. It is but a variation, in an archaic setting, upon Romain Rolland's leit-motif of faith in life. Prince Aërt and King Louis were forefathers and brothers of Olivier. In like manner Colas Breugnon, the jovial Burgundian, the lusty wood-carver, the practical joker always fond of his glass, the droll fellow, is, despite his old-world costume, a brother of Jean Christophe looking at us adown the centuries.