I doubt if Wolf with his rough, sincere nature would have found much consolation in this tardy homage if he could have foreseen it.  He would have said to his posthumous admirers:  “You are hypocrites.  It is not for me that you raise those statues; it is for yourselves.  It is that you may make speeches, form committees, and delude yourselves and others that you were my friends.  Where were you when I had need of you?  You let me die.  Do not play a comedy round my grave.  Look rather around you, and see if there are not other Wolfs who are struggling against your hostility or your indifference.  As for me, I have come safe to port.”

DON LORENZO PEROSI

The winter that held Italian thought in its cold clasp is over, and great trees that seemed to be asleep are putting out new life in the sun.  Yesterday it was poetry that awaked, and to-day it is music—­the sweet music of Italy, calm in its passion and sadness, and artless in its knowledge.  Are we really witnessing the return of its spring?  Is it the incoming of some great tide of melody, which will wash away the gloom and doubt of our life to-day?  As I was reading the oratorios of this young priest of Piedmont, I thought I heard, far away, the song of the children of old Greece:  “The swallow has come, has come, bringing the gay seasons and glad years.  Ear ede.”  I welcome the coming of Don Lorenzo Perosi with great hope.

[Illustration:  greek207]

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The abbe Perosi, the precentor of St. Mark’s chapel at Venice and the director of the Sistine chapel, is twenty-six years old.[192] He is short in stature and of youthful appearance, with a head a little too big for his body, and open and regular features lighted up by intelligent black eyes, his only peculiarity being a projecting underlip.

[Footnote 192:  This article was written in 1899, on the occasion of Lorenzo Perosi’s coming to Paris to direct his oratorio La Resurrection.] He is simple-hearted and modest, and has a friendly warmth of affection.  When he is conducting the orchestra his striking silhouette, his slow and awkward gestures in expressive passages, and his naive movements of passion at dramatic moments, bring to mind one of Fra Angelico’s monks.

For the last eighteen months Don Perosi has been working at a cycle of twelve oratorios descriptive of the life of Christ.  In this short time he has finished four:  The Passion, The Transfiguration, The Resurrection of Lazarus, The Resurrection of Christ.  Now he is at work on the fifth—­The Nativity.