As ever, we find the same theme underlying the novel. The author shows us how a creative human being (those who are not creative, hardly count for Rolland) comes to terms with life, and above all with the tragedy of his own life. _Colas Breugnon_, like _Jean Christophe_, is the romance of an artist's life. But the Burgundian is an artist of a vanished type, such as could not without anachronism have been introduced into _Jean Christophe_. Colas Breugnon is an artist only through fidelity, diligence, and fervor. In so far as he is an artist, it is in the faithful performance of his daily task. What raises him to the higher levels of art is not inspiration, but his broad humanity, his earnestness, and his vigorous simplicity. For Rolland, he was typical of the nameless artists who carved the stone figures that adorn French cathedrals, the artist-craftsmen to whom we owe the beautiful gateways, the splendid castles, the glorious wrought ironwork of the middle ages. These artificers did not fashion their own vanity into stone, did not carve their own names upon their work; but they put something into that work which has grown rare to-day, the joy of creation. In _Jean Christophe_, on one occasion, Romain Rolland had indited an ode to the civic life of the old masters who were wholly immersed in the quiet artistry of their daily occupations. He had drawn attention to the life of Sebastian Bach and his congeners. In like manner, he now wished to display anew what he had depicted in so many portraits of the artists, in the studies of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Tolstoi, and Handel. Like these sublime figures, Colas Breugnon took delight in his creative work. The magnificent inspiration that animated them was lacking to the Burgundian, but Breugnon had a genius for straightforwardness and for sensual harmony. Without aspiring to bring salvation to the world, not attempting to wrestle with the problems of passion and the spiritual life, he was content to strive for that supreme simplicity of craftsmanship which has a perfection of its own and thus brings the craftsman into touch with the eternal. The primitive artist-artisan is contrasted with the comparatively artificialized artist of modern days; Hephaistos, the divine smith, is contrasted with the Pythian Apollo and with Dionysos. The simpler artist's sphere is perforce narrower, but it is enough that an artist should be competent to fill the sphere for which he is pre-ordained.