Chapter XVI: 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.

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 By degrees, open attacks had been replaced by a more dangerous form of persecution.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 His earlier companions had more and more withdrawn from him.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.