Although an epoch that had been rich for both was now closed, their friendship was by no means over. For years to come, down to the end of her life, Rolland wrote to Malwida once a week. These letters, which were returned to him after her death, contain a biography of his early manhood perhaps fuller than that which is available in the case of any other notable personality. Inestimable was the value of what he had learned from this encounter. He had now acquired an extensive knowledge of reality and an unlimited sense of human continuity. Whereas he had gone to Rome to study the art of the dead past, he had found the living Germany, and could enjoy the companionship of her undying heroes. The triad of poesy, music, and science, harmonizes unconsciously with that other triad, France, Germany, and Italy. Once and for all, Rolland had acquired the European spirit. Before he had written a line of _Jean Christophe_, that great epic was already living in his blood. CHAPTER VIII YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP The form of Rolland's career, no less than the substance of his inner life, was decisively fashioned by these two years in Italy. As happened in Goethe's case, so in that with which we are now concerned, the conflict of the will was harmonized amid the sublime clarity of the southern landscape. Rolland had gone to Rome with his mind still undecided. By genius, he was a musician; by inclination, a poet; by necessity, a historian. Little by little, a magical union had been effected between music and poesy. In his first dramas, the phrasing is permeated with lyrical melody. Simultaneously, behind the winged words, his historic sense had built up a mighty scene out of the rich hues of the past. After the success of his thesis _Les origines du théâtre lyrique moderns_ (_Histoire de l'opéra en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti_), he became professor of the history of music, first at the Normal School, and from 1903 onwards at the Sorbonne. The aim he set before himself was to display "_l'éternelle floraison_," the sempiternal blossoming, of music as an endless series through the ages, while each age none the less puts forth its own characteristic shoots. Discovering for the first time what was to be henceforward his favorite theme, he showed how, in this apparently abstract sphere, the nations cultivate their individual characteristics, while never ceasing to develop unawares the higher unity wherein time and national differences are unknown. A great power for understanding others, in association with the faculty for writing so as to be readily understood, constitutes the essence of his activities. Here, moreover, in the element with which he was most familiar, his emotional force was singularly effective. More than any teacher before him did he make the science he had to convey, a living thing. Dealing with the invisible entity of music, he showed that the greatness of mankind is never concentrated in a single age, nor