Nothing helps one to grasp the essence of M. d’Indy’s personality more than his last dramatic work.  His personality shows itself plainly in all his compositions, but nowhere is it more evident than in L’Etranger.[160]

[Footnote 159:  Id., September, 1899.]

[Footnote 160:  L’Etranger, “action musicale” in two acts.  Poem and music by M. Vincent d’Indy.  Played for the first time at Brussels in the Theatre de la Monnaie, 7 January, 1903.  The quotations from the drama, whose poetry is not as good as its music, are taken from the score.]

The scene of L’Etranger is laid in France, by the sea, whose murmuring calm we hear in a symphonic introduction.  The fishermen are coming back to port; the fishing has been bad.  But one among them, “a man about forty years old, with a sad and dignified air,” has been more fortunate than the others.  The fishermen envy him, and vaguely suspect him of sorcery.  He tries to enter into friendly conversation with them, and offers his catch to a poor family.  But in vain; his advances are repulsed and his generosity is eyed with suspicion.  He is a stranger—­the Stranger.[161] Evening falls, and the angelus rings.  Some work-girls come trooping out of their workshop, singing a merry folk-song.[162] One of the young girls, Vita, goes up to the Stranger and speaks to him, for she alone, of all the village, is his friend.  The two feel themselves drawn together by a secret sympathy.  Vita confides artlessly in the unknown man; they love each other though they do not admit it.  The Stranger tries to repress his feelings; for Vita is young and already affianced, and he thinks that he has no right to claim her.  But Vita, offended by his coldness, seeks to wound him, and succeeds.  In the end he betrays himself.  “Yes, he loves her, and she knew it well.  But now that he has told her so, he will never see her again; and he bids her good-bye.”

[Footnote 161:  There is a certain likeness in the subject to Herr Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot.  There, too, the hero is a stranger who is persecuted, and treated as a sorcerer in the very town to which he has brought honour.  But the denouement is not the same; and the fundamental difference of temperament between the two artists is strongly marked.  M. d’Indy finishes with the renouncement of a Christian, and Herr Richard Strauss by a proud and joyous affirmation of independence.]

[Footnote 162:  Found by M. d’Indy in his own province, as he tells us in his Chansons populaires du Vivarais.]

That is the first act.  Up to this point we seem to be witnessing a very human and realistic drama—­the ordinary story of the man who tries to do good and receives ingratitude, and the sad tragedy of old age that comes to a heart still young and unable to resign itself to growing old.  But the music puts us on our guard.  We had heard its religious tone when the Stranger was speaking, and it seemed to us that we recognised a liturgical melody in the principal theme.  What secret is being hidden from us?  Are we not in France?  Yet, in spite of the folk-song and a passing breath of the sea, the atmosphere of the Church and Cesar Franck is evident.  Who is this Stranger?