THE SOLITARY
Rolland's life was now in touch with the life of the whole world. It
radiated influence in all directions. Yet how lonely was this man during
the five years of voluntary exile. He dwelt apart at Villeneuve by the
lake of Geneva. His little room resembled that in which he had lived in
Paris. Here, too, were piles of books and pamphlets; here was a plain
deal table; here was a piano, the companion of his hours of relaxation.
His days, and often his nights were spent at work. He seldom went for a
walk, and rarely received a visitor, for his friends were cut off from
him, and even his parents and his sister could only get across the
frontier about once a year. But the worst feature of this loneliness was
that it was loneliness in a glass house. He was continually spied upon:
his least words were listened for by eavesdroppers; provocative agents
sought him out, proclaiming themselves revolutionists and sympathizers.
Every letter was read before it reached him; every word he spoke over
the telephone was recorded; every interview was kept under observation.
Romain Rolland in his glass prison-house was the captive of unseen
powers.
[Illustration: Rolland's Mother]
It seems hardly credible to-day that during the last two years of the
war Romain Rolland, to whose words the world is now eager to listen,
should have had no facility for expressing his ideas in the newspapers,
no publisher for his books, no possibility of printing anything beyond
an occasional review article. His homeland had repudiated him; he was
the "fuoruscito" of the middle ages, was placed under a ban. The more
unmistakably he proclaimed his spiritual independence, the less did he
find himself regarded as a welcome guest in Switzerland. He was
surrounded by an atmosphere of secret suspicion. By degrees, open
attacks had been replaced by a more dangerous form of persecution. A
gloomy silence was established around his name and works. His earlier
companions had more and more withdrawn from him. Many of the new
friendships had been dissolved, for the younger men in especial were
devoting their interest to political questions instead of to things of
the spirit. The more stormy the outside world, the more oppressive the
stillness of Rolland's existence. He had no wife as helpmate. What to
him was the best of all companionship, the companionship of his own
writings, was now unattainable, for he had no freedom of publication in
France. His country was closed to him, his place of refuge was beset
with a hundred eyes. Most homeless among the homeless, he lived, as his
beloved Beethoven had said, "in the air," lived in the realm of the
ideal, in invisible Europe. Nothing shows better the energy of his
living goodness than that he was no whit embittered by his experience,
and that the ordeal has served but to strengthen his faith. For this
utter solitude among men was a true fellowship with mankind.