as exhortation and example. From every country and from every race of Europe, voices rise to greet the man who is one day to speak for them all. CHAPTER VII THE CONSECRATION The two years in Italy, a time of free receptivity and creative enjoyment, were over. A summons now came from Paris; the Normal School, which Rolland had left as pupil, required his services as teacher. The parting was a wrench, and Malwida von Meysenbug's farewell was designed to convey a symbolical meaning. She invited her young friend to accompany her to Bayreuth, the chief sphere of the activities of the man who, with Tolstoi, had been the leading inspiration of Rolland during early youth, the man whose image had been endowed with more vigorous life by Malwida's memories of his personality. Rolland wandered on foot across Umbria, to meet his friend in Venice. Together they visited the palace in which Wagner had died, and thence journeyed northward to the scene of his life's work. "My aim," writes Malwida in her characteristic style, which seldom attains strong emotional force, but is none the less moving, "was that Romain should have these sublime impressions to close his years in Italy and the fecund epoch of youth. I likewise wished the experience to be a consecration upon the threshold of manhood, with its prospective labors and its inevitable struggles and disillusionments." Olivier had entered the country of Jean Christophe! On the first morning of their arrival, before introducing her friend at Wahnfried, Malwida took him into the garden to see the master's grave. Rolland uncovered as if in church, and the two stood for a while in silence meditating on the hero, to one of them a friend, to the other a leader. In the evening they went to hear Wagner's posthumous work _Parsifal_. This composition, which, like the visit to Bayreuth, is strangely interconnected with the genesis of _Jean Christophe_, is as it were a consecrational prelude to Rolland's future. For life was now to call him from these great dreams. Malwida gives a moving description of their good-by. "My friends had kindly placed their box at my disposal. Once more I went to hear _Parsifal_ with Rolland, who was about to return to France in order to play an active part in the work of life. It was a matter of deep regret to me that this gifted friend was not free to lift himself to 'higher spheres,' that he could not ripen from youth to manhood while wholly devoted to the unfolding of his artistic impulses. But I knew that none the less he would work at the roaring loom of time, weaving the living garment of divinity. The tears with which his eyes were filled at the close of the opera made me feel once more that my faith in him would be justified. Thus I bade him farewell with heartfelt thanks for the time filled with poesy which his talents had bestowed on me. I dismissed him with the blessing that age gives to youth entering upon life."