From Romain Rolland’s novel cycle Jean-Christophe:
For the moment the idol was Beethoven. Beethoven — save the mark! — was in
the fashion: at least, among literary and polite persons: for musicians had
dropped him at once, in accordance with the see-saw system which is one of
the laws of artistic taste in France. A Frenchman needs to know what his
neighbor thinks before he knows what he thinks himself, so that he can
think the same thing or the opposite…. If Beethoven had come to Paris just
then, he would have been the lion of the hour: it was such a pity that he
had been dead for more than a century. His vogue grew not so much out of
his music as out of the more or less romantic circumstances of his life
which had been popularized by sentimental and virtuous biographies. His
rugged face and lion’s mane had become a romantic figure. Ladies wept
for him: they hinted that if they had known him he should not have been
so unhappy: and in their greatness of heart they were the more ready to
sacrifice all for him, in that there was no danger of Beethoven taking them
at their word: the old fellow was beyond all need of anything. That was why
the virtuosi, the conductors, and the impresarii bowed down in pious
worship before him: and, as the representatives of Beethoven, they gathered
the homage destined for him. There were sumptuous festivals at exorbitant
prices, which afforded society people an opportunity of showing their
generosity — and incidentally also of discovering Beethoven’s symphonies.
There were committees of actors, men of the world, Bohemians, and
politicians, appointed by the Republic to preside over the destinies of
art, and they informed the world of their intention to erect a monument to
Beethoven: and on these committees, together with a few honest men whose
names guaranteed the rest, were all the riffraff who would have stoned
Beethoven if he had been alive, if Beethoven had not crushed the life out
of them.