Casals was in his seventy-first year, revered for his refusal to capitulate to Franco not only by fellow Catalans but by exiles and patriots from every region of Spain. […] He had been through not exactly desperate, but hard, cold, hungry, anxious days, collecting twigs and debris to keep himself warm; once he was picked up by the SS and questioned and in the end released. He spoke about these hardships and adventures, then sat at the piano and, with tears on his cheeks, played us excerpts from his Mass.