The time following the war saw a succession of almost all the allied kings and princes at the Elysée Palace, each sovereign reading a carefully prepared speech and Poincaré answering all of them by heart. There were also more intimate dinners, notably the one given in honor of Queen Elena of Italy and her daughters, after which I took the liberty of dedicating to Her Majesty a “Little Suite for Piano and Violin [or Flute]” that I had just composed and that Pascal played for us. I dedicated it to her under the title of Suite florentine. It was published by Hamelle.

Here begins the story of a brave warrior and his amazing adventures. It is well worth paying attention and giving it due consideration, because it is a really inspiring tale of boldness and bravery. After all, there are plenty of stay-at-home types whose secret sorrow it is that they never dared to try out the hard but adventurous life of a warrior for themselves. They are the losers in this, as far as noble behavior is concerned, because they never suffered these hardships and, indeed, kept well clear of them, simply because that is the sort of people they are. People like that are forever saying that the kind of story I’m going to tell is all a pack of lies, and they make every effort to belittle and even to suppress tales like this, just as if they actually were nothing but lies. But people like that are really not worth bothering about. Decent honest warriors, on the other hand, don't take the slightest notice of their put-downs. They themselves will set out on hazardous journeys in strange lands to prove what they are, and will suffer the bad times with the good out there among the most outlandish peoples. They, of course, would not cast doubt on adventure stories of this kind, because they have themselves experienced that kind of thing. I’m telling you all this now so that you will pay proper attention to the story I am about to tell you, and because I have no intention of playing down the sufferings and hardships that had to be faced by Duke Ernst when he was driven out of Bavaria. [1–37]

It is well documented that Ernst, our hero, once ruled as duke of Bavaria, and took admirable care of both the poor and the rich in his lands, so that in all his deeds he was held in considerable esteem. The young man had ruled highly competently over the inheritance that his father had left him, until an emperor— with the full power of the empire behind him—drove him out and put such fear into many of Ernst's followers that they deserted him.

Since the decree of the first consul that in 1803 reorganized the Academy, eight Permanent Secretaries have succeeded one another: Joachim Lebreton [1760–1819], Quatremère de Quincy [1755–1849], Raoul-Rochette [1789–1854], Fromental Halévy [1799–1862], Count Henri Delaborde [1811–99], Gustave Larroumet [1852–1903], and Henry Roujon [b. 1853], who died in 1914.

The eminent architect of the Château de Chantilly, Honoré Daumet [1826–1911], had only deputized for Roujon during his long illness: “Gentlemen,” he told us in session, “I was replacing a patient, but my task is over; it is up to you to provide for his succession.” With that, without prior agreement, somewhat at random, and with a show of hands, my colleagues assigned to me the said succession. It was July 18, 1914; I would certainly have declined the great honor had I been able to foresee the threat of the hour, and the burdens and responsibilities it was about to impose.

At the Institute, the Music Composition Section has six members, who were then: Camille Saint-Saëns, elected in 1881, Émile Paladilhe (1891), Théodore Dubois (1894), Gabriel Fauré (1909), Widor (1910), and Gustave Charpentier (1912, succeeding Massenet). Appointed permanent secretary, I left the section where my chair became vacant.1 On July 23, I received this kind card:

To which I replied:

Alas, tomorrow was the mobilization, the war. In the arts as well as in politics, in the Chambers and at the Hôtel-de-Ville, life came to a standstill: no more candidatures, no more elections. Paris became depopulated. Almost the whole of 1915, Debussy spent at Pourville. In 1916, the first attacks of the illness occurred which were to prevail. In a letter of July 3, after being interested in Francis Planté's [1839–1934] concert, he speaks of his sufferings and desire to be healed.

On June 28, 1926, we received the King of Spain in the [Institute] library. While going down the stairs, I said to him: “It was Mazarin who founded the college, but we lost Mazarin.” The King replied, “We lost de Castro in Mexico.”

The Académie des Beaux-Arts expressed its gratitude to Alfonso XIII by asking José Quiñones de Léon, the Spanish ambassador and special friend of the King, if it would please His Majesty to take a place among us as an associate member. At the same time, the Academy asked Mr. Rockefeller, an American citizen, if he would also like to be an associate member of our Academy in gratitude for the sums that he had recently generously spent for the benefit of the restoration of the Palace of Versailles and its park, as well as at Reims. As we know, he has an immense fortune and has not hesitated to spend a large part of it for art in general.

On the occasion of the appointment of Alfonso XIII as a member of the Academy, there was a special rare session where the King was received among us in the presence of all our colleagues from the other academies under the dome [of the Institute]. The room was full and there were many women.

The Paris Conservatory organs, 1872

Lady Hersint chased him into the burrow, but only her front part went in, and this would be a great cause of shame for her. She could neither move forward nor go back, and Reynard took full advantage of this situation. He rushed out of another hole in the burrow, jumped up onto his kinswoman and coupled with her. Isengrim saw this happening before his eyes, and it broke his heart.

“Dearest,” said Reynard, “from now on, you should stay with me. In God's name no one knows about it, and for the sake of your reputation I shall keep quiet about it.”

The shame felt by Lady Hersint was enormous. In her fury she bit on stones, but her great strength could not help her. At this point Reynard saw Isengrim coming, wild with anger. “I think I had better get away,” said Reynard, and went back into the burrow.

Isengrim had his sons with him, and a lot of fearsome animals came, too, and Isengrim was able to testify to them that his beloved wife had been raped. Isengrim wept, and Hersint was pulled free by her back legs. “Reynard had tricked me countless times,” declared Isengrim, “but I could let them all pass except for this shame, which I was forced to see. That is just too much.”

Reynard came to the door of the lair and said: “I have done you no harm. My kinswoman wanted to come in and I welcomed her. My patron can testify that I did nothing to him.”

“In all truth,” replied his relative and patron, “I can no longer be your sponsor. I have no choice but to be your enemy, and your death shall be by my hand.”

“No, no, my patron,” said Reynard, “that would not be a sensible move. You would not get away with it, and you would spend all your time in chains.”

“My lady Hersint,” said Isengrim, “in truth it has been seven years since I first took you as my wife. Many fine beasts from both of our families were present, and since then we have been completely happy together. But now Reynard has brought shame upon us—alas that we ever accepted him as a family member. I shall regret that forever.”

On April 18, 1918, Conte d’Avril had the great honor of being performed in De Panne [Belgium] for the opening of a hall [Théâtre de la Reine] being inaugurated by Her Majesty Elisabeth, Queen of the Belgians; it could hold [2,000] soldiers. During the war, it is known that Queen Elizabeth resided in De Panne where she ran the hospitals and gave her all to the wounded. I was supposed to go there on that occasion, but in the end I didn't because of Mme Auguste Dorchain, who didn't want to let me go alone. Nonetheless, she went with Dorchain.

Reynard was a master of trickery, but today was not a day on which things were going to work out well for him. He now spotted, high above him, a crow called Dizelin, who had cunningly managed to get hold of some fresh cheese, and wicked Reynard was disinclined to let the crow eat it on his own. Accordingly, he applied his mind fully to how he could trick him out of it with a cunning lie. Reynard sat down under the tree in which the crow was about to gobble up the cheese and said: “Is that you, Dizelin! Your old pal is really pleased to find himself in your company—there is nothing in the world that could give me greater pleasure! What I would like most is for you to sing, so I can hear if you are as good as your father, who could really belt it out!”

“Nothing against my father,” replied Dizelin, “but I am happy to say, and can do so without fear of contradiction, that not one of my forebears could sing better than I can.” With that he began to sing, and the entire forest shook with the noise. Reynard begged him to sing one of his own tunes for him. When he started to sing up in the branches, the bird forgot about the cheese. Reynard, however, had no intention of eating it up immediately, even though it had fallen right by his mouth. Let me tell you how the false trickster Reynard plotted the death of the bird, even though he had no need to do so.

“Listen, Dizelin,” he said, “you have to help me, dear friend. You don't know that unfortunately I have a serious problem. Earlier today I hurt myself. That cheese is right next to me, and it smells really strongly, and I’m worried that it might affect the wound I got. My dear friend, help me out. Your father was always very loyal, and they say that you can't water down a good bloodline. You friend could well die, but you could easily do something about it. The stench is really making me suffer.”

INTRODUCTION

On 31 January 1917 the German Ambassador in Washington, Count Johann von Bernstorff, informed President Wilson that on 1 February Germany would resume unrestricted submarine warfare against all shipping, neutral and Allied. The German high command recognised that this presented Wilson with a casus belli but did so in the firm belief that Britain would have been starved into surrender within six months and that her defeat would precipitate the collapse of the other Entente powers, long before the United States could mobilise her enormous resources, a process estimated accurately at eighteen months. For his part, the pacific Wilson moved slowly and reluctantly towards hostilities, hoping against hope that the Germans did not mean what they said and that it was still possible to shore up the fragile modus vivendi which had endured virtually since the Lusitania Notes of 1915. Wilson, who was determined to carry a united nation with him, waited for 'overt acts' of war, that is for American ships to be sunk without warning. In the meantime, he adopted means short of war to express his disgust at the German policy and to protect American shipping. Diplomatic relations with Germany were broken off on 3 February [1] and on 26 February Congress was asked for authority to arm merchant vessels. When eleven non-interventionist senators filibustered the bill to death, Wilson exercised his executive powers and ordered the arming of merchantmen on 9 March. From then until 20 March Wilson underwent what Arthur Link has called his own Gethsemane, waiting for news of sinkings and noting the public's overwhelming clamour for peace. On 18 March, three American steamers were sunk without warning and with heavy casualties; their twisted plates formed Wilson's cross. With as heavy a heart as history can have known, the man who had for two years pursued peace with unexampled zeal now decided that the nation could no longer avoid war and on 21 March he called Congress into special session for 2 April. Following Wilson's call for a crusade not only against German militarism but also to 'make the world safe for democracy', prominent figures in both houses rejected belligerency but the President's confidence that events had united the nation behind him was borne out. By 82 votes to six the Senate supported him on 4 April and the House of Representatives, by 373 votes to 50, followed on 6 April.

Soon after this, Reynard came across Baldwin the ass, who was very heavily laden. His master had let him go on ahead. Reynard stopped him and said: “Baldwin, why do you put up with this? How can you live with such a heavy burden? If you come with me, I can rescue you from all this and can give you enough …” [552–562 (There is a gap in the manuscripts here. The French texts do not have the incident, and it varies elsewhere, but in one known version, Baldwin is used in a complicated trick, which ends up, significantly, with Isengrim the wolf being castrated in a trap.)]

[see Figs. 24 and 25]

During Widor's 1896 trip to Russia, he became acquainted with Vasily Safonov (1852–1918), a pianist, conductor, and director of the Moscow Conservatory. Safonov planned to construct a new conservatory building with a grand concert hall. Upon Widor's recommendation, a Cavaillé-Coll/Mutin organ was commissioned and installed in 1901; Widor inaugurated the instrument on April 11 (see Near, Widor: A Life, 274–75). He returned to Russia again in 1903, which was announced in Ménestrel 69 (February 1, 1903): 40.

On the passport issued to Widor on January 22, 1903, the passport agency described his physical characteristics: “height: 172 centimeters [5ʹ7¾ʺ]; hair: gray; forehead: high; eyebrows: gray; eyes: dark; nose: roman; mouth: average; beard: gray; chin: round; face: oval; complexion: clear.”

In May 1929, I was having lunch at the Elysée Palace, and I took the liberty of asking President Gaston Doumergue for the Grand Cross to be bestowed on the former prime minister of the Polish Republic who was on our side. We know all that he did for the resurrection of his country. Doumergue did not hesitate. “When you leave here,” he told me, “you can go to the telegraph office and tell Paderewski that we have just given him the grand cordon rouge (grand cross).”

Paderewski, of a most inquiring mind, rare artistic nature, and superior intelligence, resigned from all his generous works, having accomplished through his virtuosic talent an endeavor for his country that was as effective in its moral force as would be winning a great battle for Poland.

As prime minister of the Republic in Warsaw, Paderewski had bonded with the Nuncio, who was to become Pope [Pius XI]. The Pope, having learned that Paderewski was passing through Rome after the peace, asked him to come and relive his heroic memories of that time, as he had done in Warsaw. This was a great surprise for the cardinals who had never seen a piano at the Vatican.

Nietzsche's Uncanny Guest

In order to understand the relevance of nihilism to Stirner's thought, there is no more important definition of the term than the one fashioned by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) in the course of his last nine years of lucidity, from 1880 to 1889. In the nearly two and a half centuries of nihilism's semantic evolution up to the present day, Nietzsche plays the pivotal role; the concept of nihilism that bears his name has colored, to a greater or lesser degree, all but the first fifty years of the discussion around Stirner and nihilism. Nietzsche took a word that had recently undergone rapid development, both in its prevalence and complexity, and transformed it into a radical new concept that encapsulated the crisis of Western modernity. Ever since, the common perception of nihilism has been based to a large extent on Nietzsche's diagnosis, not least because of the extraordinary influence he has had on subsequent generations of thinkers, artists, and writers. As Gillespie says: “When it comes to our understanding of nihilism, we are almost all Nietzscheans.”

It is, in a sense, Stirner's misfortune to have been so closely linked to Nietzsche at the time of the decisive, so-called first Stirner renaissance, which was largely brought about by the coincidence of three events: firstly, Hartmann's attack on Nietzsche in 1891 (discussed in more detail below), in which he employed Stirner as a weapon; secondly, the publication of Lauterbach's new edition of Der Einzige in 1893 in Reclam's low-priced, high-circulation Universal-Bibliothek, where he compares the two philosophers in his short introduction; and, thirdly, Nietzsche's meteoric rise to fame in the last decade of the nineteenth century, which inadvertently shone a light on Stirner. One of the abiding outcomes of this concurrence is the assumption that Nietzsche's thought and Stirner's share characteristics and concerns, including those relating to nihilism, a belief that is reinforced by apparent similarities in their writings.

The question that arises from this supposed association is not simply whether there is a fundamental similarity between Nietzschean nihilism and Stirner's thought, but whether such an affinity derives from Nietzsche having known Stirner's writings, and then used, or even plagiarized, them as a component in or an inspiration for his description of the sinister cultural condition that he believed to be engulfing European civilization.

When I was still a very young student, it was through Aristide Cavaillé-Coll that I met Baron Émile d’Erlanger. Cavaillé-Coll had built an organ in 1861 for the music room of the music-loving banker, whose mansion was located at 20 rue Taitbout, in the part of Paris that Boulevard Haussmann crosses today. Some twenty-five or thirty years later, the mansion, its music room, and organ were relocated to 76 avenue Kléber.

One day, Cavaillé-Coll took me to rue Taitbout in order to play for Rossini an organ piece that he had just written, but whose registration he had not decided on, given his inexperience as an organist. The task accomplished, Cavaillé asked him to kindly give me a lesson, really to rebuke me, concerning a “trial piece” whose spirit he judged very disturbing for the future. After listening to it, Rossini exclaimed, “It's not bad, the piece has rhythm and will, that's a lot.” I judged Rossini very favorably.

During the summer, Baron d’Erlanger and his brother-in-law, the Comte Étienne Henri de Serre de Saint-Roman, lived in Gouvieux, near Chantilly; the musical gatherings at the rue Taitbout were transferred there. I used to go every week, and it was there that I had the opportunity to compose Italian songs for a charming Greek, Maria Caradja, whose father had been the Greek ambassador in Paris. She had an admirable mezzo-soprano voice. The first reading—for she was a very good musician—took place outdoors after dinner. I accompanied her on a small harmonium that had been carried outside for the purpose.

Born in Frankfurt, Baron d’Erlanger had been brought up to the strains of Wagner's Rienzi, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin. This is what he told me: