And all this shows such a marvellous activity and gives evidence of such whole-hearted enthusiasm that I cannot bring myself to join issue with the critics who have lately attacked the Schola, though their attacks have been in some degree merited.  Pettiness is to be found even in great artists, and imperfection in every human work; and defects reveal themselves most clearly after a victory has been won.  The Schola has not escaped the critical periods that accompany growth, through which every work must pass if it is to triumph and endure.  Without doubt, the sudden illness and premature retirement of the founder of the work, M. Charles Bordes, deprived the Schola of one of its most active forces—­a force that was perhaps necessary for the school’s successful development.  For this man had been the school’s life and soul, and retired, worn out by the heavy labours which he had borne alone during ten years.[235]

[Footnote 235:  M. Charles Bordes did not even then give up his labours altogether.  Though obliged to retire to the south of France for his health’s sake, he founded, in November, 1905, the Schola of Montpellier.  This Schola has given about fifteen concerts a year, and has performed some of Bach’s cantatas, scenes from Rameau’s and Gluck’s operas, Franck’s oratorios, and Monteverde’s Orfeo.  In 1906 M. Bordes organised an open-air performance of Rameau’s Guirlande.  In January, 1908, he produced Castor et Pollux at the Montpellier theatre.  The man’s activity was incredible, and nothing seemed to tire him.  He was planning to start a dramatic training-school at Montpellier for the production of seventeenth and eighteenth century operas, when he died, in November, 1909, at the age of forty-four, and so deprived French art of one of its best and most unselfish servants.]

But M. d’Indy, like a courageous apostle, has continued the direction of the Schola with a firm hand and unwearying care, despite his varied activities as composer, professor, and Kapellmeister; and he is one of the surest and most reliable guides for a young school of French music.  And if his mind is rather given to abstractions, and his moods are sometimes rather combative, and certain prejudices (which are not always musical ones) make him lean towards ideals of reason and immovable faith—­and if at times his followers unconsciously distort his ideas, and try to dam the stream which flows from life itself, I am convinced it is only the passing evidence of a reaction, perhaps a natural one, against the exaggerations they have encountered, and that the Schola will always know how to avoid the rocks where revolutionaries of the past have run aground and become the conservatives of the morrow.  I hope the Schola will never grow into the kind of aristocratic school that builds walls about itself, but will always open wide its doors and welcome every new force in music, even to such as have ideals opposed to its own.  Its future renown and the well-being of French art can only thus be maintained.