Romain Rolland was born on January 29, 1866, a year of strife, the year when Sadowa was fought. His native town was Clamecy, where another imaginative writer, Claude Tillier, author of _Mon Oncle Benjamin_, was likewise born. An ancient city, within the confines of old-time Burgundy, Clamecy is a quiet place, where life is easy and uneventful. The Rollands belong to a highly respected middle-class family. His father, who was a lawyer, was one of the notables of the town. His mother, a pious and serious-minded woman, devoted all her energies to the upbringing of her two children; Romain, a delicate boy, and his sister Madeleine, younger than he. As far as the environment of daily life was concerned, the atmosphere was calm and untroubled; but in the blood of the parents existed contrasts deriving from earlier days of French history, contrasts not yet fully reconciled. On the father's side, Rolland's ancestors were champions of the Convention, ardent partisans of the Revolution, and some of them sealed their faith with their blood. From his mother's family he inherited the Jansenist spirit, the investigator's temperament of Port-Royal. He was thus endowed by both parents with tendencies to fervent faith, but tendencies to faith in contradictory ideals. In France this cleavage between love for religion and passion for freedom, between faith and revolution, dates from centuries back. Its seeds were destined to blossom in the artist. His first years of childhood were passed in the shadow of the defeat of 1870. In _Antoinette_, Rolland sketches the tranquil life of just such a provincial town as Clamecy. His home was an old house on the bank of a canal. Not from this narrow world were to spring the first delights of the boy who, despite his physical frailty, was so passionately sensitive to enjoyment. A mighty impulse from afar, from the unfathomable past, came to stir his pulses. Early did he discover music, the language of languages, the first great message of the soul. His mother taught him the piano. From its tones he learned to build for himself the infinite world of feeling, thus transcending the limits imposed by nationality. For while the pupil eagerly assimilated the easily understood music of French classical composers, German music at the same time enthralled his youthful soul. He has given an admirable description of the way in which this revelation came to him: "We had a number of old German music books. German? Did I know the meaning of the word? In our part of the world I believe no one had ever seen a German ... I turned the leaves of the old books, spelling out the notes on the piano, ... and these runnels, these streamlets of melody, which watered my heart, sank into the thirsty ground as the rain soaks into the earth. The bliss and the pain, the desires and the dreams, of Mozart and Beethoven, have become flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. I am them, and they are me.... How much do I owe them.