Rolland, Romain, born 1866: “as homage to the exalted idealism in his authorship, and also to the sympathy and truth with which he has drawn different types of people.”[101] There was no prize money awarded in literature for 1914. The announcement that the winner for 1915 was Romain Rolland, author of _Jean-Christophe_, was generally approved. Here was an instance when a single book had focussed attention of readers and the judges; this masterpiece, which had appeared in France at intervals from 1904 to 1912, had been translated into many languages and much discussed. It was a mirror of the conditions of society, especially in France and Germany at the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it was an exhaustive, vital life story of a musician with aspirations, struggles, loves, defeats, revolts, friendships, and tragic, but triumphant, end. In the biography of Rolland by Stefan Zweig, emphasis is laid upon the period of nearly fifty years of the author’s life as a quiet scholar and musician, “an artist working without serious interruption or serious recognition,” and then a sudden, disturbing publicity which followed in the wake of this novel.[102] Clamecy, a little town of the Morvan on the Nivernais canal, was the birthplace of Romain Rolland, January 29, 1866. His father was a notary; his mother was daughter of a magistrate; she was musical and religious, devoted to her son and the younger child, Madelaine. Their happy home life is reflected in pages of the section, “Antoinette,” in _Jean-Christophe_. When he was young, Romain Rolland showed taste for music and his mother taught him and told him stories about great musicians. When his school days ended at the Communal College in his native town, his father, with rare self-sacrifice, gave up his law practice in Clamecy and went to Paris, becoming clerk in a bank that the boy might be educated in the best schools. After attendance at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand until he was twenty, he entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure where he specialized in history. Gabriel Monod was a teacher of surpassing influence over the minds and characters of his students. Rolland was enthusiastic about Tolstoy, both as reformer and writer.[103] For Shakespeare he had ardent admiration, especially for the historical plays and sonnets. [Illustration: _By courtesy of Henry Holt & Co._ ROMAIN ROLLAND]