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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jean Christophe: In Paris, by Romain Rolland
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+
+Title: Jean Christophe: In Paris
+       The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House
+
+Author: Romain Rolland
+
+Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8149]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEAN CHRISTOPHE: IN PARIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders.
+
+
+
+
+JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
+
+In Paris
+
+The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House
+
+by Romain Rolland
+
+Translated by Gilbert Cannan
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE
+
+ANTOINETTE
+
+THE HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Disorder in order. Untidy officials offhanded in manner. Travelers
+protesting against the rules and regulations, to which they submitted all
+the same. Christophe was in France. After having satisfied the curiosity of
+the customs, he took his seat again in the train for Paris. Night was over
+the fields that were soaked with the rain. The hard lights of the stations
+accentuated the sadness of the interminable plain buried in darkness.
+The trains, more and more numerous, that passed, rent the air with their
+shrieking whistles, which broke upon the torpor of the sleeping passengers.
+The train was nearing Paris.
+
+Christophe was ready to get out an hour before they ran in; he had jammed
+his hat down on his head; he had buttoned his coat up to his neck for fear
+of the robbers, with whom he had been told Paris was infested; twenty times
+he had got up and sat down; twenty times he had moved his bag from the
+rack to the seat, from the seat to the rack, to the exasperation of his
+fellow-passengers, against whom he knocked, every time with his usual
+clumsiness.
+
+Just as they were about to run into the station the train suddenly stopped
+in the darkness. Christophe flattened his nose against the window and tried
+vainly to look out. He turned towards his fellow-travelers, hoping to find
+a friendly glance which would encourage him to ask where they were. But
+they were all asleep or pretending to be so: they were bored and scowling:
+not one of them made any attempt to discover why they had stopped.
+Christophe was surprised by their indifference: these stiff, somnolent
+creatures were so utterly unlike the French of his imagination! At last he
+sat down, discouraged, on his bag, rocking with every jolt of the train,
+and in his turn he was just dozing off when he was roused by the noise of
+the doors being opened.... Paris!... His fellow-travelers were already
+getting out.
+
+Jostling and jostled, he walked towards the exit of the station, refusing
+the porter who offered to carry his bag. With a peasant's suspiciousness he
+thought every one was going to rob him. He lifted his precious bag on to
+his shoulder and walked straight ahead, indifferent to the curses of the
+people as he forced his way through them. At last he found himself in the
+greasy streets of Paris.
+
+He was too much taken up with the business in hand, the finding of
+lodgings, and too weary of the whirl of carriages into which he was swept,
+to think of looking at anything. The first thing was to look for a room.
+There was no lack of hotels: the station was surrounded with them on all
+sides: their names were flaring in gas letters. Christophe wanted to find
+a less dazzling place than any of these: none of them seemed to him to
+be humble enough for his purse. At last in a side street he saw a dirty
+inn with a cheap eating-house on the ground floor. It was called _Hôtel
+de la Civilisation_. A fat man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting smoking
+at a table: he hurried forward as he saw Christophe enter. He could not
+understand a word of his jargon: but at the first glance he marked and
+judged the awkward childish German, who refused to let his bag out of his
+hands, and struggled hard to make himself understood in an incredible
+language. He took him up an evil-smelling staircase to an airless room
+which opened on to a closed court. He vaunted the quietness of the room, to
+which no noise from outside could penetrate: and he asked a good price for
+it. Christophe only half understood him; knowing nothing of the conditions
+of life in Paris, and with his shoulder aching with the weight of his
+bag, he accepted everything: he was, eager to be alone. But hardly was he
+left alone when he was struck by the dirtiness of it all: and to avoid
+succumbing to the melancholy which was creeping over him, he went out again
+very soon after having dipped his face in the dusty water, which was greasy
+to the touch. He tried hard not to see and not to feel, so as to escape
+disgust.
+
+He went down into the street. The October mist was thick and keenly cold:
+it had that stale Parisian smell, in which are mingled the exhalations of
+the factories of the outskirts and the heavy breath of the town. He could
+not see ten yards in front of him. The light of the gas-jets flickered like
+a candle on the point of going out. In the semi-darkness there were crowds
+of people moving in all directions. Carriages moved in front of each other,
+collided, obstructed the road, stemming the flood of people like a dam. The
+oaths of the drivers, the horns and bells of the trams, made a deafening
+noise. The roar, the clamor, the smell of it all, struck fearfully on the
+mind and heart of Christophe. He stopped for a moment, but was at once
+swept on by the people behind him and borne on by the current. He went down
+the _Boulevard de Strasbourg_, seeing nothing, bumping awkwardly into the
+passers-by. He had eaten nothing since morning. The cafés, which he found
+at every turn, abashed and revolted him, for they were all so crowded. He
+applied to a policeman; but he was so slow in finding words that the man
+did not even take the trouble to hear him out, and turned his back on him
+in the middle of a sentence and shrugged his shoulders. He went on walking
+mechanically. There was a small crowd in front of a shop-window. He
+stopped mechanically. It was a photograph and picture-postcard shop: there
+were pictures of girls in chemises, or without them: illustrated papers
+displayed obscene jests. Children and young girls were looking at them
+calmly. There was a slim girl with red hair who saw Christophe lost in
+contemplation and accosted him. He looked at her and did not understand.
+She took his arm with a silly smile. He shook her off, and rushed away,
+blushing angrily. There were rows of café concerts: outside the doors were
+displayed grotesque pictures of the comedians. The crowd grew thicker and
+thicker. Christophe was struck by the number of vicious faces, prowling
+rascals, vile beggars, painted women sickeningly scented. He was frozen by
+it all. Weariness, weakness, and the horrible feeling of nausea, which more
+and more came over him, turned him sick and giddy. He set his teeth and
+walked on more quickly. The fog grew denser as he approached the Seine.
+The whirl of carriages became bewildering. A horse slipped and fell on its
+side: the driver flogged it to make it get up: the wretched beast, held
+down by its harness, struggled and fell down again, and lay still as though
+it were dead. The sight of it--common enough--was the last drop that
+made the wretchedness that filled the soul of Christophe flow over. The
+miserable struggles of the poor beast, surrounded by indifferent and
+careless faces, made him feel bitterly his own insignificance among these
+thousands of men and women--the feeling of revulsion, which for the last
+hour had been choking him, his disgust with all these human beasts, with
+the unclean atmosphere, with the morally repugnant people, burst forth in
+him with such violence that he could not breathe. He burst into tears. The
+passers-by looked in amazement at the tall young man whose face was twisted
+with grief. He strode along with the tears running down his cheeks, and
+made no attempt to dry them. People stopped to look at him for a moment:
+and if he had been able to read the soul of the mob, which seemed to him
+to be so hostile, perhaps in some of them he might have seen--mingled, no
+doubt, with a little of the ironic feeling of the Parisians for any sorrow
+so simple and ridiculous as to show itself--pity and brotherhood. But he
+saw nothing: his tears blinded him.
+
+He found himself in a square, near a large fountain. He bathed his hands
+and dipped his face in it. A little news-vendor watched him curiously and
+passed comment on him, waggishly though not maliciously: and he picked up
+his hat for him--Christophe had let it fall. The icy coldness of the water
+revived Christophe. He plucked up courage again. He retraced his steps, but
+did not look about him: he did not even think of eating: it would have been
+impossible for him to speak to anybody: it needed the merest trifle to set
+him off weeping again. He was worn out. He lost his way, and wandered about
+aimlessly until he found himself in front of his hotel, just when he had
+made up his mind that he was lost. He had forgotten even the name of the
+street in which he lodged.
+
+He went up to his horrible room. He was empty, and his eyes were burning:
+he was aching body and soul as he sank down into a chair in the corner of
+the room: he stayed like that for a couple of hours and could not stir. At
+last he wrenched himself out of his apathy and went to bed. He fell into
+a fevered slumber, from which he awoke every few minutes, feeling that he
+had been asleep for hours. The room was stifling: he was burning from head
+to foot: he was horribly thirsty: he suffered from ridiculous nightmares,
+which clung to him even after he had opened his eyes: sharp pains thudded
+in him like the blows of a hammer. In the middle of the night he awoke,
+overwhelmed by despair, so profound that he all but cried out: he stuffed
+the bedclothes into his mouth so as not to be heard: he felt that he was
+going mad. He sat up in bed, and struck a light. He was bathed in sweat. He
+got up, opened his bag to look for a handkerchief. He laid his hand on an
+old Bible, which his mother had hidden in his linen. Christophe had never
+read much of the Book: but it was a comfort beyond words for him to find
+it at that moment. The Bible had belonged to his grandfather and to his
+grandfather's father. The heads of the family had inscribed on a blank page
+at the end their names and the important dates of their lives--births,
+marriages, deaths. His grandfather had written in pencil, in his large
+hand, the dates when he had read and re-read each chapter: the Book was
+full of tags of yellowed paper, on which the old man had jotted down his
+simple thoughts. The Book used to rest on a shelf above his bed, and he
+used often to take it down during the long, sleepless nights and hold
+converse with it rather than read it. It had been with him to the hour
+of his death, as it had been with his father. A century of the joys and
+sorrows of the family was breathed forth from the pages of the Book.
+Holding it in his hands, Christophe felt less lonely.
+
+He opened it at the most somber words of all:
+
+_Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also
+like the days of an hireling?
+
+When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise and the night be gone? and I am
+full of tossings to and fro unto the dawn of the day.
+
+When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint,
+then Thou searest me with dreams and terrifiest me through visions.... How
+long wilt Thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my
+spittle? I have sinned; what shall I do unto Thee, O Thou preserver of men?
+
+Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him._
+
+All greatness is good, and the height of sorrow tops deliverance. What
+casts down and overwhelms and blasts the soul beyond all hope is mediocrity
+in sorrow and joy, selfish and niggardly suffering that has not the
+strength to be rid of the lost pleasure, and in secret lends itself to
+every sort of degradation to steal pleasure anew. Christophe was braced up
+by the bitter savor that he found in the old Book: the wind of Sinai coming
+from vast and lonely spaces and the mighty sea to sweep away the steamy
+vapors. The fever in Christophe subsided. He was calm again, and lay down
+and slept peacefully until the morrow. When he opened his eyes again it was
+day. More acutely than ever he was conscious of the horror of his room: he
+felt his loneliness and wretchedness: but he faced them. He was no longer
+disheartened: he was left only with a sturdy melancholy. He read over now
+the words of Job:
+
+_Even though God slay me yet would I trust in Him._
+
+He got up. He was ready calmly to face the fight.
+
+He made up his mind there and then to set to work. He knew only two people
+in Paris: two young fellow-countrymen: his old friend Otto Diener, who was
+in the office of his uncle, a cloth merchant in the _Mail_ quarter: and a
+young Jew from Mainz, Sylvain Kohn, who had a post in a great publishing
+house, the address of which Christophe did not know.
+
+He had been very intimate with Diener when he was fourteen or fifteen.
+He had had for him one of those childish friendships which precede love,
+and are themselves a sort of love. [Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I:
+"The Morning."] Diener had loved him too. The shy, reserved boy had been
+attracted by Christophe's gusty independence: he had tried hard to imitate
+him, quite ridiculously: that had both irritated and flattered Christophe.
+Then they had made plans for the overturning of the world. In the end
+Diener had gone abroad for his education in business, and they did not see
+each other again: but Christophe had news of him from time to time from the
+people in the town with whom Diener remained on friendly terms.
+
+As for Sylvain Kohn, his relation with Christophe had been of another kind
+altogether. They had been at school together, where the young monkey had
+played many pranks on Christophe, who thrashed him for it when he saw
+the trap into which he had fallen. Kohn did not put up a fight: he let
+Christophe knock him down and rub his face in the dust, while he howled;
+but he would begin again at once with a malice that never tired--until the
+day when he became really afraid, Christophe having seriously threatened to
+kill him.
+
+Christophe went out early. He stopped to breakfast at a café. In spite
+of his self-consciousness, he forced himself to lose no opportunity of
+speaking French. Since he had to live in Paris, perhaps for years, he had
+better adapt himself as quickly as possible to the conditions of life
+there, and overcome his repugnance. So he forced himself, although he
+suffered horribly, to take no notice of the sly looks of the waiter as
+he listened to his horrible lingo. He was not discouraged, and went on
+obstinately constructing ponderous, formless sentences and repeating them
+until he was understood.
+
+He set out to look for Diener. As usual, when he had an idea in his head,
+he saw nothing of what was going on about him. During that first walk his
+only impression of Paris was that of an old and ill-kept town. Christophe
+was accustomed to the towns of the new German Empire, that were both very
+old and very young, towns in which there is expressed a new birth of pride:
+and he was unpleasantly surprised by the shabby streets, the muddy roads,
+the hustling people, the confused traffic--vehicles of every sort and
+shape: venerable horse omnibuses, steam trams, electric trams, all sorts
+of trams--booths on the pavements, merry-go-rounds of wooden horses (or
+monsters and gargoyles) in the squares that were choked up with statues of
+gentlemen in frock-coats: all sorts of relics of a town of the Middle Ages
+endowed with the privilege of universal suffrage, but quite incapable of
+breaking free from its old vagabond existence. The fog of the preceding day
+had turned to a light, soaking rain. In many of the shops the gas was lit,
+although it was past ten o'clock.
+
+Christophe lost his way in the labyrinth of streets round the _Place des
+Victoires_, but eventually found the shop he was looking for in the _Rue
+de la Banque_. As he entered he thought he saw Diener at the back of the
+long, dark shop, arranging packages of goods, together with some of the
+assistants. But he was a little short-sighted, and could not trust his
+eyes, although it was very rarely that they deceived him. There was a
+general movement among the people at the back of the shop when Christophe
+gave his name to the clerk who approached him: and after a confabulation a
+young man stepped forward from the group, and said in German:
+
+"Herr Diener is out."
+
+"Out? For long?"
+
+"I think so. He has just gone."
+
+Christophe thought for a moment; then he said:
+
+"Very well. I will wait."
+
+The clerk was taken aback, and hastened to add:
+
+"But he won't be back before two or three."
+
+"Oh! That's nothing," replied Christophe calmly. "I haven't anything to do
+in Paris. I can wait all day if need be."
+
+The young man looked at him in amazement, and thought he was joking. But
+Christophe had forgotten him already. He sat down quietly in a corner, with
+his back turned towards the street: and it looked as though he intended to
+stay there.
+
+The clerk went back to the end of the shop and whispered to his colleagues:
+they were most comically distressed, and cast about for some means of
+getting rid of the insistent Christophe.
+
+After a few uneasy moments, the door of the office was opened and Herr
+Diener appeared. He had a large red face, marked with a purple scar down
+his cheek and chin, a fair mustache, smooth hair, parted on one side, a
+gold-rimmed eyeglass, gold studs in his shirt-front, and rings on his
+fat fingers. He had his hat and an umbrella in his hands. He came up to
+Christophe in a nonchalant manner. Christophe, who was dreaming as he sat,
+started with surprise. He seized Diener's hands, and shouted with a noisy
+heartiness that made the assistants titter and Diener blush. That majestic
+personage had his reasons for not wishing to resume his former relationship
+with Christophe: and he had made up his mind from the first to keep him at
+a distance by a haughty manner. But he had no sooner come face to face with
+Christophe than he felt like a little boy again in his presence: he was
+furious and ashamed. He muttered hurriedly:
+
+"In my office.... We shall be able to talk better there."
+
+Christophe recognized Diener's habitual prudence.
+
+But when they were in the office and the door was shut, Diener showed no
+eagerness to offer him a chair. He remained standing, making clumsy
+explanations:
+
+"Very glad.... I was just going out.... They thought I had gone.... But I
+must go ... I have only a minute ... a pressing appointment...."
+
+Christophe understood that the clerk had lied to him, and that the lie
+had been arranged by Diener to get rid of him. His blood boiled: but he
+controlled himself, and said dryly:
+
+"There is no hurry."
+
+Diener drew himself up. He was shocked by such off-handedness.
+
+"What!" he said. "No hurry! In business..." Christophe looked him in the
+face.
+
+"No."
+
+Diener looked away. He hated Christophe for having so put him to shame. He
+murmured irritably. Christophe cut him short:
+
+"Come," he said. "You know..."
+
+(He used the "_Du_," which maddened Diener, who from the first had been
+vainly trying to set up between Christophe and himself the barrier of the
+"_Sie_")
+
+"You know why I am here?"
+
+"Yes," said Diener. "I know."
+
+(He had heard of Christophe's escapade, and the warrant out against him,
+from his friends.)
+
+"Then," Christophe went on, "you know that I am not here for fun. I have
+had to fly. I have nothing. I must live."
+
+Diener was waiting for that, for the request. He took it with a mixture of
+satisfaction--(for it made it possible for him to feel his superiority over
+Christophe)--and embarrassment--(for he dared not make Christophe feel his
+superiority as much as he would have liked).
+
+"Ah!" he said pompously. "It is very tiresome, very tiresome. Life here
+is hard. Everything is so dear. We have enormous expenses. And all these
+assistants..."
+
+Christophe cut him short contemptuously:
+
+"I am not asking you for money."
+
+Diener was abashed. Christophe went on:
+
+"Is your business doing well? Have you many customers?"
+
+"Yes. Yes. Not bad, thank God!..." said Diener cautiously. (He was on his
+guard.)
+
+Christophe darted a look of fury at him, and went on:
+
+"You know many people in the German colony?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well: speak for me. They must be musical. They have children. I will
+give them lessons."
+
+Diener was embarrassed at that.
+
+"What is it?" asked Christophe. "Do you think I'm not competent to do the
+work?"
+
+He was asking a service as though it were he who was rendering it. Diener,
+who would not have done a thing for Christophe except for the sake of
+putting him under an obligation, was resolved not to stir a finger for him.
+
+"It isn't that. You're a thousand times too good for it. Only..."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"Well, you see, it's very difficult--very difficult--on account of your
+position."
+
+"My position?"
+
+"Yes.... You see, that affair, the warrant.... If that were to be known....
+It is difficult for me. It might do me harm."
+
+He stopped as he saw Christophe's face go hot with anger: and he added
+quickly:
+
+"Not on my own account.... I'm not afraid.... Ah! If I were alone!... But
+my uncle ... you know, the business is his. I can do nothing without
+him...."
+
+He grew more and more alarmed at Christophe's expression, and at the
+thought of the gathering explosion he said hurriedly--(he was not a bad
+fellow at bottom: avarice and vanity were struggling in him: he would have
+liked to help Christophe, at a price):
+
+"Can I lend you fifty francs?"
+
+Christophe went crimson. He went up to Diener, who stepped back hurriedly
+to the door and opened it, and held himself in readiness to call for help,
+if necessary. But Christophe only thrust his face near his and bawled:
+
+"You swine!"
+
+And he flung him aside and walked out through the little throng of
+assistants. At the door he spat in disgust.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He strode along down the street. He was blind with fury. The rain sobered
+him. Where was he going? He did not know. He did not know a soul. He
+stopped to think outside a book-shop, and he stared stupidly at the rows
+of books. He was struck by the name of a publisher on the cover of one of
+them. He wondered why. Then he remembered that it was the name of the house
+in which Sylvain Kohn was employed. He made a note of the address.... But
+what was the good? He would not go.... Why should he not go?... If that
+scoundrel Diener, who had been his friend, had given him such a welcome,
+what had he to expect from a rascal whom he had handled roughly, who had
+good cause to hate him? Vain humiliations! His blood boiled at the thought.
+But his native pessimism, derived perhaps from his Christian education,
+urged him on to probe to the depths of human baseness.
+
+"I have no right to stand on ceremony. I must try everything before I give
+in."
+
+And an inward voice added:
+
+"And I shall not give in."
+
+He made sure of the address, and went to hunt up Kohn He made up his mind
+to hit him in the eye at the first show of impertinence.
+
+The publishing house was in the neighborhood of the Madeleine. Christophe
+went up to a room on the second floor, and asked for Sylvain Kohn. A man in
+livery told him that "Kohn was not known." Christophe was taken aback, and
+thought his pronunciation must be at fault, and he repeated his question:
+but the man listened attentively, and repeated that no one of that name was
+known in the place. Quite out of countenance, Christophe begged pardon, and
+was turning to go when a door at the end of the corridor opened, and he saw
+Kohn himself showing a lady out. Still suffering from the affront put upon
+him by Diener, he was inclined to think that everybody was having a joke at
+his expense. His first thought was that Kohn had seen him, and had given
+orders to the man to say that he was not there. His gorge rose at the
+impudence of it. He was on the point of going in a huff, when he heard his
+name: Kohn, with his sharp eyes, had recognized him: and he ran up to him,
+with a smile on his lips, and his hands held out with every mark of
+extraordinary delight.
+
+Sylvain Kohn was short, thick-set, clean-shaven, like an American; his
+complexion was too red, his hair too black; he had a heavy, massive face,
+coarse-featured; little darting, wrinkled eyes, a rather crooked mouth,
+a heavy, cunning smile. He was modishly dressed, trying to cover up the
+defects of his figure, high shoulders, and wide hips. That was the only
+thing that touched his vanity: he would gladly have put up with any insult
+if only he could have been a few inches taller and of a better figure.
+For the rest, he was very well pleased with himself: he thought himself
+irresistible, as indeed he was. The little German Jew, clod as he was, had
+made himself the chronicler and arbiter of Parisian fashion and smartness.
+He wrote insipid society paragraphs and articles in a delicately involved
+manner. He was the champion of French style, French smartness, French
+gallantry, French wit--Regency, red heels, Lauzun. People laughed at him:
+but that did not prevent his success. Those who say that in Paris ridicule
+kills do not know Paris: so far from dying of it, there are people who live
+on it: in Paris ridicule leads to everything, even to fame and fortune.
+Sylvain Kohn was far beyond any need to reckon the good-will that every day
+accumulated to him through his Frankfortian affectations.
+
+He spoke with a thick accent through his nose.
+
+"Ah! What a surprise!" he cried gaily, taking Christophe's hands in his
+own clumsy paws, with their stubby fingers that looked as though they were
+crammed into too tight a skin. He could not let go of Christophe's hands.
+It was as though, he were encountering his best friend. Christophe was so
+staggered that he wondered again if Kohn was not making fun of him. But
+Kohn was doing nothing of the kind--or, rather, if he was joking, it was
+no more than usual. There was no rancor about Kohn: he was too clever for
+that. He had long ago forgotten the rough treatment he had suffered at
+Christophe's hands: and if ever he did remember it, it did not worry him.
+He was delighted to have the opportunity of showing his old schoolfellow
+his importance and his new duties, and the elegance of his Parisian
+manners. He was not lying in expressing his surprise: a visit from
+Christophe was the last thing in the world that he expected: and if he was
+too worldly-wise not to know that the visit was of set material purpose,
+he took it as a reason the more for welcoming him, as it was, in fact, a
+tribute to his power.
+
+"And you have come from Germany? How is your mother?" he asked, with a
+familiarity which at any other time would have annoyed Christophe, but now
+gave him comfort in the strange city.
+
+"But how was it," asked Christophe, who was still inclined to be
+suspicious, "that they told me just now that Herr Kohn did not belong
+here?"
+
+"Herr Kohn doesn't belong here," said Sylvain Kohn, laughing. "My name
+isn't Kohn now. My name is Hamilton."
+
+He broke off.
+
+"Excuse me," he said.
+
+He went and shook hands with a lady who was passing and smiled grimacingly.
+Then he came back. He explained that the lady was a writer famous for her
+voluptuous and passionate novels. The modern Sappho had a purple ribbon
+on her bosom, a full figure, bright golden hair round a painted face; she
+made a few pretentious remarks in a mannish fashion with the accent of
+Franche-Comté.
+
+Kohn plied Christophe with questions. He asked about all the people at
+home, and what had become of so-and-so, pluming himself on the fact that he
+remembered everybody. Christophe had forgotten his antipathy; he replied
+cordially and gratefully, giving a mass of detail about which Kohn cared
+nothing at all, and presently he broke off again.
+
+"Excuse me," he said.
+
+And he went to greet another lady who had come in.
+
+"Dear me!" said Christophe. "Are there only women writers in France?"
+
+Kohn began to laugh, and said fatuously:
+
+"France is a woman, my dear fellow. If you want to succeed, make up to the
+women."
+
+Christophe did not listen to the explanation, and went on with his own
+story. To put a stop to it, Kohn asked:
+
+"But how the devil do you come here?"
+
+"Ah!" thought Christophe, "he doesn't know. That is why he was so amiable.
+He'll be different when he knows."
+
+He made it a point of honor to tell everything against himself: the brawl
+with the soldiers, the warrant out against him, his flight from the
+country.
+
+Kohn rocked with laughter.
+
+"Bravo!" he cried. "Bravo! That's a good story!"
+
+He shook Christophe's hand warmly. He was delighted by any smack in the eye
+of authority: and the story tickled him the more as he knew the heroes of
+it: he saw the funny side of it.
+
+"I say," he said, "it is past twelve. Will you give me the pleasure ...?
+Lunch with me?"
+
+Christophe accepted gratefully. He thought:
+
+"This is a good fellow--decidedly a good fellow. I was mistaken."
+
+They went out together. On the way Christophe put forward his request:
+
+"You see how I am placed. I came here to look for work--music
+lessons--until I can make my name. Could you speak for me?"
+
+"Certainly," said Kohn. "To any one you like. I know everybody here. I'm at
+your service."
+
+He was glad to be able to show how important he was.
+
+Christophe covered him with expressions of gratitude. He felt that he was
+relieved of a great weight of anxiety.
+
+At lunch he gorged with the appetite of a man who has not broken fast for
+two days. He tucked his napkin round his neck, and ate with his knife.
+Kohn-Hamilton was horribly shocked by his voracity and his peasant manners.
+And he was, hurt, too, by the small amount of attention that his guest gave
+to his bragging. He tried to dazzle him by telling of his fine connections
+and his prosperity: but it was no good: Christophe did not listen, and
+bluntly interrupted him. His tongue was loosed, and he became familiar. His
+heart was full, and he overwhelmed Kohn with his simple confidences of his
+plans for the future. Above all, he exasperated him by insisting on taking
+his hand across the table and pressing it effusively. And he brought him to
+the pitch of irritation at last by wanting to clink glasses in the German
+fashion, and, with sentimental speeches, to drink to those at home and
+to _Vater Rhein_. Kohn saw, to his horror, that he was on the point of
+singing. The people at the next table were casting ironic glances in their
+direction. Kohn made some excuse on the score of pressing business, and got
+up. Christophe clung to him: he wanted to know when he could have a letter
+of introduction, and go and see some one, and begin giving lessons.
+
+"I'll see about it. To-day--this evening," said Kohn. "I'll talk about you
+at once. You can be easy on that score."
+
+Christophe insisted.
+
+"When shall I know?"
+
+"To-morrow ... to-morrow ... or the day after."
+
+"Very well. I'll come back to-morrow."
+
+"No, no!" said Kohn quickly. "I'll let you know. Don't you worry."
+
+"Oh! it's no trouble. Quite the contrary. Eh? I've nothing else to do in
+Paris in the meanwhile."
+
+"Good God!" thought Kohn.... "No," he said aloud. "But I would rather write
+to you. You wouldn't find me the next few days. Give me your address."
+
+Christophe dictated it.
+
+"Good. I'll write you to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow. You can count on it"
+
+He cut short Christophe's hand-shaking and escaped.
+
+"Ugh!" he thought. "What a bore!"
+
+As he went into his office he told the boy that he would not be in when
+"the German" came to see him. Ten minutes later he had forgotten him.
+
+Christophe went back to his lair. He was full of gentle thoughts.
+
+"What a good fellow! What a good fellow!" he thought. "How unjust I was
+about him. And he bears me no ill-will!"
+
+He was remorseful, and he was on the point of writing to tell Kohn how
+sorry he was to have misjudged him, and to beg his forgiveness for all the
+harm he had done him. The tears came to his eyes as he thought of it. But
+it was harder for him to write a letter than a score of music: and after he
+had cursed and cursed the pen and ink of the hotel--which were, in fact,
+horrible--after he had blotted, criss-crossed, and torn up five or six
+sheets of paper, he lost patience and dropped it.
+
+The rest of the day dragged wearily: but Christophe was so worn out by his
+sleepless night and his excursions in the morning that at length he dozed
+off in his chair. He only woke up in the evening, and then he went to bed:
+and he slept for twelve hours on end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next day from eight o'clock on he sat waiting for the promised letter. He
+had no doubt of Kohn's sincerity. He did not go out, telling himself that
+perhaps Kohn would come round by the hotel on his way to his office. So as
+not to be out, about midday he had his lunch sent up from the eating-house
+downstairs. Then he sat waiting again. He was sure Kohn would come on his
+way back from lunch. He paced up and down his room, sat down, paced up and
+down again, opened his door whenever he heard footsteps on the stairs.
+He had no desire to go walking about Paris to stay his anxiety. He lay
+down on his bed. His thoughts went back and back to his old mother, who
+was thinking of him too--she alone thought of him. He had an infinite
+tenderness for her, and he was remorseful at having left her. But he did
+not write to her. He was waiting until he could tell her that he had found
+work. In spite of the love they had for each other, it would never have
+occurred to either of them to write just to tell their love: letters were
+for things more definite than that. He lay on the bed with his hands locked
+behind his head, and dreamed. Although his room was away from the street,
+the roar of Paris invaded the silence: the house shook. Night came again,
+and brought no letter.
+
+Came another day like unto the last.
+
+On the third day, exasperated by his voluntary seclusion, Christophe
+decided to go out. But from the impression of his first evening he was
+instinctively in revolt against Paris. He had no desire to see anything:
+no curiosity: he was too much taken up with the problem of his own life
+to take any pleasure in watching the lives of others: and the memories of
+lives past, the monuments of a city, had always left him cold. And so,
+hardly had he set foot out of doors, than, although he had made up his mind
+not to go near Kohn for a week, he went straight to his office.
+
+The boy obeyed his orders, and said that M. Hamilton had left Paris on
+business. It was a blow to Christophe. He gasped and asked when M. Hamilton
+would return. The boy replied at random:
+
+"In ten days."
+
+Christophe went back utterly downcast, and buried himself in his room
+during the following days. He found it impossible to work. His heart sank
+as he saw that his small supply of money--the little sum that his mother
+had sent him, carefully wrapped up in a handkerchief at the bottom of his
+bag--was rapidly decreasing. He imposed a severe régime on himself. He
+only went down in the evening to dinner in the little pot-house, where
+he quickly became known to the frequenters of it as the "Prussian" or
+"Sauerkraut." With frightful effort, he wrote two or three letters to
+French musicians whose names he knew hazily. One of them had been dead
+for ten years. He asked them to be so kind as to give him a hearing. His
+spelling was wild, and his style was complicated by those long inversions
+and ceremonious formulæ which are the custom in Germany. He addressed his
+letters: "To the Palace of the Academy of France." The only man to read his
+gave it to his friends as a joke.
+
+After a week Christophe went once more to the publisher's office. This time
+he was in luck. He met Sylvain Kohn going out, on the doorstep. Kohn made a
+face as he saw that he was caught: but Christophe was so happy that he did
+not see that. He took his hands in his usual uncouth way, and asked gaily:
+
+"You've been away? Did you have a good time?"
+
+Kohn said that he had had a very good time, but he did not unbend.
+Christophe went on:
+
+"I came, you know.... They told you, I suppose?... Well, any news? You
+mentioned my name? What did they say?"
+
+Kohn looked blank. Christophe was amazed at his frigid manner: he was not
+the same man.
+
+"I mentioned you," said Kohn: "but I haven't heard yet. I haven't had time.
+I have been very busy since I saw you--up to my ears in business. I don't
+know how I can get through. It is appalling. I shall be ill with it all."
+
+"Aren't you well?" asked Christophe anxiously and solicitously.
+
+Kohn looked at him slyly, and replied:
+
+"Not at all well. I don't know what is the matter, the last few days. I'm
+very unwell."
+
+"I'm so sorry," said Christophe, taking his arm. "Do be careful. You must
+rest. I'm so sorry to have been a bother to you. You should have told me.
+What is the matter with you, really?"
+
+He took Kohn's sham excuses so seriously that the little Jew was hard put
+to it to hide his amusement, and disarmed by his funny simplicity. Irony is
+so dear a pleasure to the Jews--(and a number of Christians in Paris are
+Jewish in this respect)--that they are indulgent with bores, and even with
+their enemies, if they give them the opportunity of tasting it at their
+expense. Besides, Kohn was touched by Christophe's interest in himself. He
+felt inclined to help him.
+
+"I've got an idea," he said. "While you are waiting for lessons, would you
+care to do some work for a music publisher?"
+
+Christophe accepted eagerly.
+
+"I've got the very thing," said Kohn. "I know one of the partners in a big
+firm of music publishers--Daniel Hecht. I'll introduce you. You'll see what
+there is to do. I don't know anything about it, you know. But Hecht is a
+real musician. You'll get on with him all right."
+
+They parted until the following day. Kohn was not sorry to be rid of
+Christophe by doing him this service.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next day Christophe fetched Kohn at his office. On his advice, he had
+brought several of his compositions to show to Hecht. They found him in his
+music-shop near the Opéra. Hecht did not put himself out when they went
+in: he coldly held out two fingers to take Kohn's hand, did not reply to
+Christophe's ceremonious bow, and at Kohn's request he took them into the
+next room. He did not ask them to sit down. He stood with his back to the
+empty chimney-place, and stared at the wall.
+
+Daniel Hecht was a man of forty, tall, cold, correctly dressed, a marked
+Phenician type; he looked clever and disagreeable: there was a scowl on his
+face: he had black hair and a beard like that of an Assyrian King, long
+and square-cut. He hardly ever looked straight forward, and he had an
+icy brutal way of talking which sounded insulting even when he only said
+"Good-day." His insolence was more apparent than real. No doubt it emanated
+from a contemptuous strain in his character: but really it was more a part
+of the automatic and formal element in him. Jews of that sort are quite
+common: opinion is not kind towards them: that hard stiffness of theirs is
+looked upon as arrogance, while it is often in reality the outcome of an
+incurable boorishness in body and soul.
+
+Sylvain Kohn introduced his protégé, in a bantering, pretentious voice,
+with exaggerated praises. Christophe was abashed by his reception, and
+stood shifting from one foot to the other, holding his manuscripts and his
+hat in his hand. When Kohn had finished, Hecht, who up to then had seemed
+to be unaware of Christophe's existence, turned towards him disdainfully,
+and, without looking at him, said:
+
+"Krafft ... Christophe Krafft.... Never heard the name."
+
+To Christophe it was as though he had been struck, full in the chest. The
+blood rushed to his cheeks. He replied angrily:
+
+"You'll hear it later on."
+
+Hecht took no notice, and went on imperturbably, as though Christophe did
+not exist:
+
+"Krafft ... no, never heard it."
+
+He was one of those people for whom not to be known to them is a mark
+against a man.
+
+He went on in German:
+
+"And you come from the _Rhine-land_?... It's wonderful how many people
+there are there who dabble in music! But I don't think there is a man among
+them who has any claim to be a musician."
+
+He meant it as a joke, not as an insult: but Christophe did not take it so.
+He would have replied in kind if Kohn had not anticipated him.
+
+"Oh, come, come!" he said to Hecht. "You must do me the justice to admit
+that I know nothing at all about it."
+
+"That's to your credit," replied Hecht.
+
+"If I am to be no musician in order to please you," said Christophe dryly,
+"I am sorry, but I'm not that."
+
+Hecht, still looking aside, went on, as indifferently as ever.
+
+"You have written music? What have you written? _Lieder_, I suppose?"
+
+"_Lieder_, two symphonies, symphonic poems, quartets, piano suites, theater
+music," said Christophe, boiling.
+
+"People write a great deal in Germany," said Hecht, with scornful
+politeness.
+
+It made him all the more suspicious of the newcomer to think that he had
+written so many works, and that he, Daniel Hecht, had not heard of them.
+
+"Well," he said, "I might perhaps find work for you as you are recommended
+by my friend Hamilton. At present we are making a collection, a 'Library
+for Young People,' in which we are publishing some easy pianoforte pieces.
+Could you 'simplify' the _Carnival_ of Schumann, and arrange it for six and
+eight hands?"
+
+Christophe was staggered.
+
+"And you offer that to me, to me--me...?"
+
+His naïve "Me" delighted Kohn: but Hecht was offended.
+
+"I don't see that there is anything surprising in that," he said. "It is
+not such easy work as all that! If you think it too easy, so much the
+better. We'll see about that later on. You tell me you are a good musician.
+I must believe you. But I've never heard of you."
+
+He thought to himself:
+
+"If one were to believe all these young sparks, they would knock the
+stuffing out of Johannes Brahms himself."
+
+Christophe made no reply--(for he had vowed to hold himself in
+check)--clapped his hat on his head, and turned towards the door. Kohn
+stopped him, laughing:
+
+"Wait, wait!" he said. And he turned to Hecht: "He has brought some of his
+work to give you an idea."
+
+"Ah!" said Hecht warily. "Very well, then: let us see them."
+
+Without a word Christophe held out his manuscripts. Hecht cast his eyes
+over them carelessly.
+
+"What's this? A _suite for piano_ ... (reading): _A Day_.... Ah! Always
+program music!..."
+
+In spite of his apparent indifference he was reading carefully. He was an
+excellent musician, and knew his job: he knew nothing outside it: with the
+first bar or two he gauged his man. He was silent as he turned over the
+pages with a scornful air: he was struck by the talent revealed in them:
+but his natural reserve and his vanity, piqued by Christophe's manner, kept
+him from showing anything. He went on to the end in silence, not missing a
+note.
+
+"Yes," he said, in a patronizing tone of voice, "they're well enough."
+
+Violent criticism would have hurt Christophe less.
+
+"I don't need to be told that," he said irritably.
+
+"I fancy," said Hecht, "that you showed me them for me to say what I
+thought."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Then," said Hecht coldly, "I fail to see what you have come for."
+
+"I came to ask for work, and nothing else."
+
+"I have nothing to offer you for the time being, except what I told you.
+And I'm not sure of that. I said it was possible, that's all."
+
+"And you have no other work to offer a musician like myself?"
+
+"A musician like you?" said Hecht ironically and cuttingly. "Other
+musicians at least as good as yourself have not thought the work beneath
+their dignity. There are men whose names I could give you, men who are now
+very well known in Paris, have been very grateful to me for it."
+
+"Then they must have been--swine!" bellowed Christophe.--(He had already
+learned certain of the most useful words in the French language)--"You are
+wrong if you think you have to do with a man of that kidney. Do you think
+you can take me in with looking anywhere but at me, and clipping your
+words? You didn't even deign to acknowledge my bow when I came in.... But
+what the hell are you to treat me like that? Are you even a musician? Have
+you ever written anything?... And you pretend to teach me how to write--me,
+to whom writing is life!... And you can find nothing better to offer me,
+when you have read my music, than a hashing up of great musicians, a filthy
+scrabbling over their works to turn them into parlor tricks for little
+girls!... You go to your Parisians who are rotten enough to be taught their
+work by you! I'd rather die first!"
+
+It was impossible to stem the torrent of his words.
+
+Hecht said icily:
+
+"Take it or leave it."
+
+Christophe went out and slammed the doors. Hecht shrugged, and said to
+Sylvain Kohn, who was laughing:
+
+"He will come to it like the rest."
+
+At heart he valued Christophe. He was clever enough to feel not only the
+worth of a piece of work, but also the worth of a man. Behind Christophe's
+outburst he had marked a force. And he knew its rarity--in the world of
+art more than anywhere else. But his vanity was ruffled by it: nothing
+would ever induce him to admit himself in the wrong. He desired loyally
+to be just to Christophe, but he could not do it unless Christophe came
+and groveled to him. He expected Christophe to return: his melancholy
+skepticism and his experience of men had told him how inevitably the will
+is weakened and worn down by poverty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe went home. Anger had given place to despair. He felt that he
+was lost. The frail prop on which he had counted had failed him. He had no
+doubt but that he had made a deadly enemy, not only of Hecht, but of Kohn,
+who had introduced him. He was in absolute solitude in a hostile city.
+Outside Diener and Kohn he knew no one. His friend Corinne, the beautiful
+actress whom he had met in Germany, was not in Paris: she was still touring
+abroad, in America, this time on her own account: the papers published
+clamatory descriptions of her travels. As for the little French governess
+whom he had unwittingly robbed of her situation,--the thought of her had
+long filled him with remorse--how often had he vowed that he would find
+her when he reached Paris. [Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I: "Revolt."]
+But now that he was in Paris he found that he had forgotten one important
+thing: her name. He could not remember it. He could only recollect her
+Christian name: Antoinette. And then, even if he remembered, how was he to
+find a poor little governess in that ant-heap of human beings?
+
+He had to set to work as soon as possible to find a livelihood. He had five
+francs left. In spite of his dislike of him, he forced himself to ask the
+innkeeper if he did not know of anybody in the neighborhood to whom he
+could give music-lessons. The innkeeper, who had no great opinion of a
+lodger who only ate once a day and spoke German, lost what respect he had
+for him when he heard that he was only a musician. He was a Frenchman of
+the old school, and music was to him an idler's job. He scoffed:
+
+"The piano!... I don't know. You strum the piano! Congratulations!... But
+'tis a queer thing to take to that trade as a matter of taste! When I hear
+music, it's just for all the world like listening to the rain.... But
+perhaps you might teach me. What do you say, you fellows?" he cried,
+turning to some fellows who were drinking.
+
+They laughed loudly.
+
+"It's a fine trade," said one of them. "Not dirty work. And the ladies like
+it."
+
+Christophe did not rightly understand the French or the jest: he floundered
+for his words: he did not know whether to be angry or not. The innkeeper's
+wife took pity on him:
+
+"Come, come, Philippe, you're not serious," she said to her husband. "All
+the same," she went on, turning to Christophe, "there is some one who might
+do for you."
+
+"Who?" asked her husband.
+
+"The Grasset girl. You know, they've bought a piano."
+
+"Ah! Those stuck-up folk! So they have."
+
+They told Christophe that the girl in question was the daughter of a
+butcher: her parents were trying to make a lady of her; they would perhaps
+like her to have lessons, if only for the sake of making people talk. The
+innkeeper's wife promised to see to it.
+
+Next day she told Christophe that the butcher's wife would like to see him.
+He went to her house, and found her in the shop, surrounded with great
+pieces of meat. She was a pretty, rather florid woman, and she smiled
+sweetly, but stood on her dignity when she heard why he had come. Quite
+abruptly she came to the question of payment, and said quickly that she did
+not wish to give much, because the piano is quite an agreeable thing, but
+not necessary: she offered him fifty centimes an hour. In any case, she
+would not pay more than four francs a week. After that she asked Christophe
+a little doubtfully if he knew much about music. She was reassured, and
+became more amiable when he told her that not only did he know about music,
+but wrote it into the bargain: that flattered her vanity: it would be a
+good thing to spread about the neighborhood that her daughter was taking
+lessons with a composer.
+
+Next day, when Christophe found himself sitting by the piano--a horrible
+instrument, bought second-hand, which sounded like a guitar--with the
+butcher's little daughter, whose short, stubby fingers fumbled with the
+keys; who was unable to tell one note from another; who was bored to tears;
+who began at once to yawn in his face; and he had to submit to the mother's
+superintendence, and to her conversation, and to her ideas on music and the
+teaching of music--then he felt so miserable, so wretchedly humiliated,
+that he had not even the strength to be angry about it. He relapsed into a
+state of despair: there were evenings when he could not eat. If in a few
+weeks he had fallen so low, where would he end? What good was it to have
+rebelled against Hecht's offer? The thing to which he had submitted was
+even more degrading.
+
+One evening, as he sat in his room, he could not restrain his tears: he
+flung himself on his knees by his bed and prayed.... To whom did he pray?
+To whom could he pray? He did not believe in God; he believed that there
+was no God.... But he had to pray--he had to pray within his soul. Only
+the mean of spirit never need to pray. They never know the need that comes
+to the strong in spirit of taking refuge within the inner sanctuary of
+themselves. As he left behind him the humiliations of the day, in the vivid
+silence of his heart Christophe felt the presence of his eternal Being, of
+his God. The waters of his wretched life stirred and shifted above Him and
+never touched Him: what was there in common between that and Him? All the
+sorrows of the world rushing on to destruction dashed against that rock.
+Christophe heard the blood beating in his veins, beating like an inward
+voice, crying:
+
+"Eternal ... I am ... I am...."
+
+Well did he know that voice: as long as he could remember he had heard
+it. Sometimes he forgot it: often for months together he would lose
+consciousness of its mighty monotonous rhythm: but he knew that it was
+there, that it never ceased, like the ocean roaring in the night. In the
+music of it he found once more the same energy that he gained from it
+whenever he bathed in its waters. He rose to his feet. He was fortified.
+No: the hard life that he led contained nothing of which he need be
+ashamed: he could eat the bread he earned, and never blush for it: it was
+for those who made him earn it at such a price to blush and be ashamed.
+Patience! Patience! The time would come....
+
+But next day he began to lose patience again: and, in spite of all his
+efforts, he did at last explode angrily, one day during a lesson, at the
+silly little ninny, who had been maddeningly impertinent and laughed at his
+accent, and had taken a malicious delight in doing exactly the opposite
+of what he told her. The girl screamed in response to Christophe's angry
+shouts. She was frightened and enraged at a man whom she paid daring to
+show her no respect. She declared that he had struck her--(Christophe had
+shaken her arm rather roughly). Her mother bounced in on them like a Fury,
+and covered her daughter with kisses and Christophe with abuse. The butcher
+also appeared, and declared that he would not suffer any infernal Prussian
+to take upon himself to touch his daughter. Furious, pale with rage,
+itching to choke the life out of the butcher and his wife and daughter,
+Christophe rushed away. His host and hostess, seeing him come in in an
+abject condition, had no difficulty in worming the story out of him: and it
+fed the malevolence with which they regarded their neighbors. But by the
+evening the whole neighborhood was saying that the German was a brute and a
+child-beater.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe made fresh advances to the music-vendors: but in vain. He found
+the French lacking in cordiality: and the whirl and confusion of their
+perpetual agitation crushed him. They seemed to him to live in a state of
+anarchy, directed by a cunning and despotic bureaucracy.
+
+One evening, he was wandering along the boulevards, discouraged by the
+futility of his efforts, when he saw Sylvain Kohn coming from the opposite
+direction. He was convinced that they had quarreled irrevocably and looked
+away and tried to pass unnoticed. But Kohn called to him:
+
+"What became of you after that great day?" he asked with a laugh. "I've
+been wanting to look you up, but I lost your address.... Good Lord, my dear
+fellow, I didn't know you! You were epic: that's what you were, epic!"
+
+Christophe stared at him. He was surprised and a little ashamed.
+
+"You're not angry with me?"
+
+"Angry? What an idea!"
+
+So far from being angry, he had been delighted with the way in which
+Christophe had trounced Hecht: it had been a treat to him. It really
+mattered nothing to him whether Christophe or Hecht was right: he only
+regarded people as source of entertainment: and he saw in Christophe a
+spring of high comedy, which he intended to exploit to the full.
+
+"You should have come to see me," he went on. "I was expecting you. What
+are you doing this evening? Come to dinner. I won't let you off. Quite
+informal: just a few artists: we meet once a fortnight. You should know
+these people. Come. I'll introduce you."
+
+In vain did Christophe beg to be excused on the score of his clothes.
+Sylvain Kohn carried him off.
+
+They entered a restaurant on one of the boulevards, and went up to the
+second floor. Christophe found himself among about thirty young men, whose
+ages ranged from twenty to thirty-five, and they were all engaged in
+animated discussion. Kohn introduced him as a man who had just escaped
+from a German prison. They paid no attention to him and did not stop their
+passionate discussion, and Kohn plunged into it at once.
+
+Christophe was shy in this select company, and said nothing: but he was
+all ears. He could not grasp--he had great difficulty in following the
+volubility of the French--what great artistic interests were in dispute.
+He listened attentively, but he could only make out words like "trust,"
+"monopoly," "fall in prices," "receipts," mixed up with phrases like "the
+dignity of art," and the "rights of the author." And at last he saw that
+they were talking business. A certain number of authors, it appeared,
+belonged to a syndicate and were angry about certain attempts which had
+been made to float a rival concern, which, according to them, would dispute
+their monopoly of exploitation. The defection of certain of their members
+who had found it to their advantage to go over bag and baggage to the rival
+house had roused them, to the wildest fury. They talked of decapitation.
+"... Burked.... Treachery.... Shame.... Sold...."
+
+Others did not worry about the living: they were incensed against the dead,
+whose sales without royalties choked up the market. It appeared that the
+works of De Musset had just become public property, and were selling far
+too well. And so they demanded that the State should give them rigorous
+protection, and heavily tax the masterpieces of the past so as to check
+their circulation at reduced prices, which, they declared, was unfair
+competition with the work of living artists.
+
+They stopped each other to hear the takings of such and such a theater on
+the preceding evening. They all went into ecstasies over the fortune of
+a veteran dramatist, famous in two continents--a man whom they despised,
+though they envied him even more. From the incomes of authors they passed
+to those of the critics. They talked of the sum--(pure calumny, no
+doubt)--received by one of their colleagues for every first performance
+at one of the theaters on the boulevards, the consideration being that he
+should speak well of it. He was an honest man: having made his bargain he
+stuck to it: but his great secret lay--(so they said)--in so eulogizing the
+piece that it would be taken off as quickly as possible so that there might
+be many new plays. The tale--(or the account)--caused laughter, but nobody
+was surprised.
+
+And mingled with all that talk they threw out fine phrases: they talked of
+"poetry" and "art for art's sake." But through it all there rang "art for
+money's sake"; and this jobbing spirit, newly come into French literature,
+scandalized Christophe. As he understood nothing at all about their talk of
+money he had given it up. But then they began to talk of letters, or rather
+of men of letters.--Christophe pricked up his ears as he heard the name of
+Victor Hugo.
+
+They were debating whether he had been cuckolded: they argued at length
+about the love of Sainte-Beuve and Madame Hugo. And then they turned to
+the lovers of George Sand and their respective merits. That was the chief
+occupation of criticism just then: when they had ransacked the houses of
+great men, rummaged through the closets, turned out the drawers, ransacked
+the cupboards, they burrowed down to their inmost lives. The attitude
+of Monsieur de Lauzun lying flat under the bed of the King and Madame
+de Montespan was the attitude of criticism in its cult of history and
+truth--(everybody just then, of course, made a cult of truth). These young
+men were subscribers to the cult: no detail was too small for them in their
+search for truth. They applied it to the art of the present as well as to
+that of the past: and they analyzed the private life of certain of the more
+notorious of their contemporaries with the same passion for exactness.
+It was a queer thing that they were possessed of the smallest details of
+scenes which are usually enacted without witnesses. It was really as though
+the persons concerned had been the first to give exact information to the
+public out of their great devotion to the truth.
+
+Christophe was more and more embarrassed and tried to talk to his neighbors
+of something else; but nobody listened to him. At first they asked him
+a few vague questions about Germany--questions which, to his amazement,
+displayed the almost complete ignorance of these distinguished and
+apparently cultured young men concerning the most elementary things of
+their work--literature and art--outside Paris; at most they had heard of a
+few great names: Hauptmann, Sudermann, Liebermann, Strauss (David, Johann,
+Richard), and they picked their way gingerly among them for fear of getting
+mixed. If they had questioned Christophe it was from politeness rather than
+from curiosity: they had no curiosity: they hardly seemed to notice his
+replies: and they hurried back at once to the Parisian topics which were
+regaling the rest of the company.
+
+Christophe timidly tried to talk of music. Not one of these men of letters
+was a musician. At heart they considered music an inferior art. But the
+growing success of music during the last few years had made them secretly
+uneasy: and since it was the fashion they pretended to be interested in it.
+They frothed especially about a new opera and declared that music dated
+from its performance, or at least the new era in music. This idea made
+things easy for their ignorance and snobbishness, for it relieved them
+of the necessity of knowing anything else. The author of the opera, a
+Parisian, whose name Christophe heard for the first time, had, said some,
+made a clean sweep of all that had gone before him, cleaned up, renovated,
+and recreated music. Christophe started at that. He asked nothing better
+than to believe in genius. But such a genius as that, a genius who had at
+one swoop wiped out the past.... Good heavens! He must be a lusty lad: how
+the devil had he done it? He asked for particulars. The others, who would
+have been hard put to it to give any explanation and were disconcerted by
+Christophe, referred him to the musician of the company, Théophile Goujart,
+the great musical critic, who began at once to talk of sevenths and ninths.
+Goujart knew music much as Sganarelle knew Latin....
+
+"_... You don't know Latin?_"
+
+"_No._"
+
+_(With enthusiasm) "Cabricias, arci thuram, catalamus, singulariter ...
+bonus, bona, bonum."_
+
+Finding himself with a man who "understood Latin" he prudently took refuge
+in the chatter of esthetics. From that impregnable fortress he began to
+bombard Beethoven, Wagner, and classical art, which was not before the
+house (but in France it is impossible to praise an artist without making
+as an offering a holocaust of all those who are unlike him). He announced
+the advent of a new art which trampled under foot the conventions of the
+past. He spoke of a new musical language which had been discovered by the
+Christopher Columbus of Parisian music, and he said it made an end of the
+language of the classics: that was a dead language.
+
+Christophe reserved his opinion of this reforming genius to wait until
+he had seen his work before he said anything: but in spite of himself he
+felt an instinctive distrust of this musical Baal to whom all music was
+sacrificed. He was scandalized to hear the Masters so spoken of: and he
+forgot that he had said much the same sort of thing in Germany. He who at
+home had thought himself a revolutionary in art, he who had scandalized
+others by the boldness of his judgments and the frankness of his
+expressions, felt, as soon as he heard these words spoken in France, that
+he was at heart a conservative. He tried to argue, and was tactless enough
+to speak, not like a man of culture, who advances arguments without
+exposition, but as a professional, bringing out disconcerting facts. He did
+not hesitate to plunge into technical explanations: and his voice, as he
+talked, struck a note which was well calculated to offend the ears of a
+company of superior persons to whom his arguments and the vigor with which
+he supported them were alike ridiculous. The critic tried to demolish
+him with an attempt at wit, and to end the discussion which had shown
+Christophe to his stupefaction that he had to deal with a man who did
+not in the least know what he was talking about. And so they came to
+the opinion that the German was pedantic and superannuated: and without
+knowing anything about it they decided that his music was detestable. But
+Christophe's bizarre personality had made an impression on the company of
+young men, and with their quickness in seizing on the ridiculous they had
+marked the awkward, violent gestures of his thin arms with their enormous
+hands, and the furious glances that darted from his eyes as his voice rose
+to a falsetto. Sylvain Kohn saw to it that his friends were kept amused.
+
+Conversation had deserted literature in favor of women. As a matter of
+fact they were only two aspects of the same subject: for their literature
+was concerned with nothing but women, and their women were concerned with
+nothing but literature, they were so much taken up with the affairs and men
+of letters.
+
+They spoke of one good lady, well known in Parisian society, who had, it
+was said, just married her lover to her daughter, the better to keep him.
+Christophe squirmed in his chair, and tactlessly made a face of disgust.
+Kohn saw it, and nudged his neighbor and pointed out that the subject
+seemed to excite the German--that no doubt he was longing to know the lady.
+Christophe blushed, muttered angrily, and finally said hotly that such
+women ought to be whipped. His proposition was received with a shout of
+Homeric laughter: and Sylvain Kohn cooingly protested that no man should
+touch a woman, even with a flower, etc., etc. (In Paris he was the very
+Knight of Love.) Christophe replied that a woman of that sort was neither
+more nor less than a bitch, and that there was only one remedy for vicious
+dogs: the whip. They roared at him. Christophe said that their gallantry
+was hypocritical, and that those who talked most of their respect for women
+were those who possessed the least of it: and he protested against these
+scandalous tales. They replied that there was no scandal in it, and that it
+was only natural: and they were all agreed that the heroine of the story
+was not only a charming woman, but _the_ Woman, _par excellence_. The
+German waxed indignant. Sylvain Kohn asked him slyly what he thought Woman
+was like. Christophe felt that they were pulling his leg and laying a trap
+for him: but he fell straight into it in the violent expression of his
+convictions. He began to explain his ideas on love to these bantering
+Parisians. He could not find his words, floundered about after them, and
+finally fished up from the phrases he remembered such impossible words,
+such enormities, that he had all his hearers rocking with laughter, while
+all the time he was perfectly and admirably serious, never bothered about
+them, and was touchingly impervious to their ridicule: for he could not
+help seeing that they were making fun of him. At last he tied himself up
+in a sentence, could not extricate himself, brought his fist down on the
+table, and was silent.
+
+They tried to bring him back into the discussion: he scowled and did not
+flinch, but sat with his elbows on the table, ashamed and irritated. He
+did not open his lips again, except to eat and drink, until the dinner was
+over. He drank enormously, unlike the Frenchmen, who only sipped their
+wine. His neighbor wickedly encouraged him, and went on filling his glass,
+which he emptied absently. But, although he was not used to these excesses,
+especially after the weeks of privation through which he had passed, he
+took his liquor well, and did not cut so ridiculous a figure as the others
+hoped. He sat there lost in thought: they paid no attention to him: they
+thought he was made drowsy by the wine. He was exhausted by the effort of
+following the conversation in French, and tired of hearing about nothing
+but literature--actors, authors, publishers, the chatter of the _coulisses_
+and literary life: everything seemed to be reduced to that. Amid all these
+new faces and the buzz of words he could not fix a single face, nor a
+single thought. His short-sighted eyes, dim and dreamy, wandered slowly
+round the table, and they rested on one man after another without seeming
+to see them. And yet he saw them better than any one, though he himself was
+not conscious of it. He did not, like these Jews and Frenchmen, peck at
+the things he saw and dissect them, tear them to rags, and leave them in
+tiny, tiny pieces. Slowly, like a sponge, he sucked up the essence of men
+and women, and bore away their image in his soul. He seemed to have seen
+nothing and to remember nothing. It was only long afterwards--hours, often
+days--when he was alone, gazing in upon himself, that he saw that he had
+borne away a whole impression.
+
+But for the moment he seemed to be just a German boor, stuffing himself
+with food, concerned only with not missing a mouthful. And he heard nothing
+clearly, except when he heard the others calling each other by name, and
+then, with a silly drunken insistency, he wondered why so many Frenchmen
+have foreign names: Flemish, German, Jewish, Levantine, Anglo- or
+Spanish-American.
+
+He did not notice when they got up from the table. He went on sitting
+alone: and he dreamed of the Rhenish hills, the great woods, the tilled
+fields, the meadows by the waterside, his old mother. Most of the others
+had gone. At last he thought of going, and got up, too, without looking
+at anybody, and went and took down his hat and cloak, which were hanging
+by the door. When he had put them on he was turning away without saying
+good-night, when through a half-open door he saw an object which fascinated
+him: a piano. He had not touched a musical instrument for weeks. He went in
+and lovingly touched the keys, sat down just as he was, with his hat on his
+head and his cloak on his shoulders, and began to play. He had altogether
+forgotten where he was. He did not notice that two men crept into the room
+to listen to him. One was Sylvain Kohn, a passionate lover of music--God
+knows why! for he knew nothing at all about it, and he liked bad music
+just as well as good. The other was the musical critic, Théophile Goujart.
+He--it simplifies matters so much--neither understood nor loved music: but
+that did not keep him from talking about it. On the contrary: nobody is so
+free in mind as the man who knows nothing of what he is talking about: for
+to such a man it does not matter whether he says one thing more than
+another.
+
+Théophile Goujart was tall, strong, and muscular: he had a black beard,
+thick curls on his forehead, which was lined with deep inexpressive
+wrinkles, short arms, short legs, a big chest: a type of woodman or porter
+of the Auvergne. He had common manners and an arrogant way of speaking. He
+had gone into music through politics, at that time the only road to success
+in France. He had attached himself to the fortunes of a Minister to whom he
+had discovered that he was distantly related--a son "of the bastard of his
+apothecary." Ministers are not eternal, and when it seemed that the day of
+his Minister was over Théophile Goujart deserted the ship, taking with him
+all that he could lay his hands on, notably several orders: for he loved
+glory. Tired of politics, in which for some time past he had received
+various snubs, both on his own account and on that of his patron, he
+looked out for a shelter from the storm, a restful position in which he
+could annoy others without being himself annoyed. Everything pointed to
+criticism. Just at that moment there fell vacant the post of musical critic
+to one of the great Parisian papers. The previous holder of the post, a
+young and talented composer, had been dismissed because he insisted on
+saying what he thought of the authors and their work. Goujart had never
+taken any interest in music, and knew nothing at all about it: he was
+chosen without a moment's hesitation. They had had enough of competent
+critics: with Goujart there was at least nothing to fear: he did not attach
+an absurd importance to his opinions: he was always at the editor's orders,
+and ready to comply with a slashing article or enthusiastic approbation.
+That he was no musician was a secondary consideration. Everybody in
+France knows a little about music. Goujart quickly acquired the requisite
+knowledge. His method was quite simple: it consisted in sitting at every
+concert next to some good musician, a composer if possible, and getting him
+to say what he thought of the works performed. At the end of a few months
+of this apprenticeship, he knew his job: the fledgling could fly. He did
+not, it is true, soar like an eagle: and God knows what howlers Goujart
+committed with the greatest show of authority in his paper! He listened and
+read haphazard, stirred the mixture up well in his sluggish brains, and
+arrogantly laid down the law for others; he wrote in a pretentious style,
+interlarded with puns, and plastered over with an aggressive pedantry: he
+had the mind of a schoolmaster. Sometimes, every now and then, he drew down
+on himself cruel replies: then he shammed dead, and took good care not to
+answer them. He was a mixture of cunning and thick-headedness, insolent or
+groveling as circumstances demanded. He cringed to the masters who had an
+official position or an established fame (he had no other means of judging
+merit in music). He scorned everybody else, and exploited writers who were
+starving. He was no fool.
+
+In spite of his reputation and the authority he had acquired, he knew in
+his heart of hearts that he knew nothing about music: and he recognized
+that Christophe knew a great deal about it. Nothing would have induced him
+to say so: but it was borne in upon him. And now he heard Christophe play:
+and he made great efforts to understand him, looking absorbed, profound,
+without a thought in his head: he could not see a yard ahead of him through
+the fog of sound, and he wagged his head solemnly as one who knew and
+adjusted the outward and visible signs of his approval to the fluttering of
+the eyelids of Sylvain Kohn, who found it hard to stand still.
+
+At last Christophe, emerging to consciousness from the fumes of wine and
+music, became dimly aware of the pantomime going on behind his back: he
+turned and saw the two amateurs of music. They rushed at him and violently
+shook hands with him--Sylvain Kohn gurgling that he had played like a god,
+Goujart declaring solemnly that he had the left hand of Rubinstein and the
+right hand of Paderewski (or it might be the other way round). Both agreed
+that such talent ought not to be hid under a bushel, and they pledged
+themselves to reveal it. And, incidentally, they were both resolved to
+extract from it as much honor and profit as possible.
+
+From that day on Sylvain Kohn took to inviting Christophe to his rooms,
+and put at his disposal his excellent piano, which he never used himself.
+Christophe, who was bursting with suppressed music, did not need to be
+urged, and accepted: and for a time he made good use of the invitation.
+
+At first all went well. Christophe was only too happy to play: and
+Sylvain Kohn was tactful enough to leave him to play in peace. He enjoyed
+it thoroughly himself. By one of those queer phenomena which must be
+in everybody's observation, the man, who was no musician, no artist,
+cold-hearted and devoid of all poetic feeling and real kindness, was
+enslaved sensually by Christophe's music, which he did not understand,
+though he found in it a strongly voluptuous pleasure. Unfortunately, he
+could not hold his tongue. He had to talk, loudly, while Christophe was
+playing. He had to underline the music with affected exclamations, like a
+concert snob, or else he passed ridiculous comment on it. Then Christophe
+would thump the piano, and declare that he could not go on like that. Kohn
+would try hard to be silent: but he could not do it: at once he would
+begin again to sniffle, sigh, whistle, beat time, hum, imitate the various
+instruments. And when the piece was ended he would have burst if he had not
+given Christophe the benefit of his inept comment.
+
+He was a queer mixture of German sentimentality, Parisian humbug, and
+intolerable fatuousness. Sometimes he expressed second-hand precious
+opinions; sometimes he made extravagant comparisons; and then he would
+make dirty, obscene remarks, or propound some insane nonsense. By way of
+praising Beethoven, he would point out some trickery, or read a lascivious
+sensuality into his music. The _Quartet in C Minor_ seemed to him jolly
+spicy. The sublime _Adagio of the Ninth Symphony_ made him think of
+Cherubino. After the three crashing chords at the opening of the _Symphony
+in C Minor_, he called out: "Don't come in! I've some one here." He admired
+the Battle of _Heldenleben_ because he pretended that it was like the noise
+of a motor-car. And always he had some image to explain each piece, a
+puerile incongruous image. Really, it seemed impossible that he could have
+any love for music. However, there was no doubt about it: he really did
+love it: at certain passages to which he attached the most ridiculous
+meanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved by
+a scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing some
+music-hall ditty after the _Ode to Joy_. Then Christophe would bob about
+and roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohn
+was absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when he
+was trying to impress Christophe, when it was Hamilton speaking, and not
+Sylvain Kohn. Then Christophe would scowl blackly at him, and squash him
+with cold contempt, which hurt Hamilton's vanity: very often these musical
+evenings would end in a quarrel. But Kohn would forget it next day, and
+Christophe, sorry for his rudeness, would make a point of going back.
+
+That would not have mattered much if Kohn had been able to refrain from
+inviting his friends to hear Christophe. But he could not help wanting to
+show off his musician. The first time Christophe found in Kohn's rooms
+three or four little Jews and Kohn's mistress--a large florid woman, all
+paint and powder, who repeated idiotic jokes and talked about her food, and
+thought herself a musician because she showed her legs every evening in the
+Revue of the Variétés--Christophe looked black. Next time he told Sylvain
+Kohn curtly that he would never again play in his rooms. Sylvain Kohn swore
+by all his gods that he would not invite anybody again. But he did so by
+stealth, and hid his guests in the next room. Naturally, Christophe found
+that out, and went away in a fury, and this time did not return.
+
+And yet he had to accommodate Kohn, who had introduced him to various
+cosmopolitan families, and found him pupils.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few days after Théophile Goujart hunted Christophe up in his lair. He did
+not seem to mind his being in such a horrible place. On the contrary, he
+was charming. He said:
+
+"I thought perhaps you would like to hear a little music from time to time:
+and as I have tickets for everything, I came to ask if you would care to
+come with me."
+
+Christophe was delighted. He was glad of the kindly attention, and thanked
+him effusively. Goujart was a different man from what he had been at their
+first meeting. He had dropped his conceit, and, man to man, he was timid,
+docile, anxious to learn. It was only when they were with others that he
+resumed his superior manner and his blatant tone of voice. His eagerness to
+learn had a practical side to it. He had no curiosity about anything that
+was not actual. He wanted to know what Christophe thought of a score he had
+received which he would have been hard put to it to write about, for he
+could hardly read a note.
+
+They went to a symphony concert. They had to go in by the entrance to a
+music-hall. They went down a winding passage to an ill-ventilated hall:
+the air was stifling: the seats were very narrow, and placed too close
+together: part of the audience was standing and blocking up every way
+out:--the uncomfortable French. A man who looked as though he were
+hopelessly bored was racing through a Beethoven symphony as though he
+were in a hurry to get to the end of it. The voluptuous strains of a
+stomach-dance coming from the music-hall next door were mingled with the
+funeral march of the _Eroica_. People kept coming in and taking their
+seats, and turning their glasses on the audience. As soon as the last
+person had arrived, they began to go out again. Christophe strained every
+nerve to try and follow the thread of the symphony through the babel;
+and he did manage to wrest some pleasure from it--(for the orchestra was
+skilful, and Christophe had been deprived of symphony music for a long
+time)--and then Goujart took his arm and, in the middle of the concert,
+said:
+
+"Now let us go. We'll go to another concert."
+
+Christophe frowned: but he made no reply and followed his guide. They went
+half across Paris, and then reached another hall, that smelled of stables,
+in which at other times fairy plays and popular pieces were given--(in
+Paris music is like those poor workingmen who share a lodging: when one
+of them leaves the bed, the other creeps into the warm sheets). No air,
+of course: since the reign of Louis XIV the French have considered air
+unhealthy: and the ventilation of the theaters, like that of old at
+Versailles, makes it impossible for people to breathe. A noble old man,
+waving his arms like a lion-tamer, was letting loose an act of Wagner: the
+wretched beast--the act--was like the lions of a menagerie, dazzled and
+cowed by the footlights, so that they have to be whipped to be reminded
+that they are lions. The audience consisted of female Pharisees and foolish
+women, smiling inanely. After the lion had gone through its performance,
+and the tamer had bowed, and they had both been rewarded by the applause of
+the audience, Goujart suggested that they should go to yet another concert.
+But this time Christophe gripped the arms of his stall, and declared that
+he would not budge: he had had enough of running from concert to concert,
+picking up the crumbs of a symphony and scraps of a concert on the way.
+In vain did Goujart try to explain to him that musical criticism in Paris
+was a trade in which it was more important to see than to hear. Christophe
+protested that music was not written to be heard in a cab, and needed more
+concentration. Such a hotch-potch of concerts was sickening to him: one at
+a time was enough for him.
+
+He was much surprised at the extraordinary number of concerts in Paris.
+Like most Germans, he thought that music held a subordinate place in
+France: and he expected that it would be served up in small delicate
+portions. By way of a beginning, he was given fifteen concerts in seven
+days. There was one for every evening in the week, and often two or three
+an evening at the same time in different quarters of the city. On Sundays
+there were four, all at the same time. Christophe marveled at this appetite
+for music. And he was no less amazed at the length of the programs. Till
+then he had thought that his fellow-countrymen had a monopoly of these
+orgies of sound which had more than once disgusted him in Germany. He
+saw now that the Parisians could have given them points in the matter of
+gluttony. They were given full measure: two symphonies, a concerto, one
+or two overtures, an act from an opera. And they came from all sources:
+German, Russian, Scandinavian, French--beer, champagne, orgeat, wine--they
+gulped down everything without winking. Christophe was amazed that these
+indolent Parisians should have had such capacious stomachs. They did not
+suffer for it at all. It was the cask of the Danaïdes. It held nothing.
+
+It was not long before Christophe perceived that this mass of music
+amounted to very little really. He saw the same faces and heard the
+same pieces at every concert. Their copious programs moved in a circle.
+Practically nothing earlier than Beethoven. Practically nothing later than
+Wagner. And what gaps between them! It seemed as though music were reduced
+to five or six great German names, three or four French names, and, since
+the Franco-Russian alliance, half a dozen Muscovites. None of the old
+French Masters. None of the great Italians. None of the German giants of
+the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. No contemporary German music,
+with the single exception of Richard Strauss, who was more acute than the
+rest, and came once a year to plant his new works on the Parisian public.
+No Belgian music. No Tschek music. But, most surprising of all, practically
+no contemporary French music. And yet everybody was talking about it
+mysteriously as a thing that would revolutionize the world. Christophe was
+yearning for an opportunity of hearing it: he was very curious about it,
+and absolutely without prejudice: he was longing to hear new music, and to
+admire the works of genius. But he never succeeded in hearing any of it:
+for he did not count a few short pieces, quite cleverly written, but cold
+and brain-spun, to which he had not listened very attentively.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While he was waiting to form an opinion, Christophe tried to find out
+something about it from musical criticism.
+
+That was not easy. It was like the Court of King Pétaud. Not only did
+the various papers lightly contradict each other: but they contradicted
+themselves in different articles--almost on different pages. To read
+them all was enough to drive a man crazy. Fortunately, the critics only
+read their own articles, and the public did not read any of them. But
+Christophe, who wanted to gain a clear idea about French musicians, labored
+hard to omit nothing: and he marveled at the agility of the critics, who
+darted about in a sea of contradictions like fish in water.
+
+But amid all these divergent opinions one thing struck him: the pedantic
+manner of most of the critics. Who was it said that the French were amiable
+fantastics who believed in nothing? Those whom Christophe saw were more
+hag-ridden by the science of music--even when they knew nothing--than all
+the critics on the other side of the Rhine.
+
+At that time the French musical critics had set about learning what music
+was. There were even a few who knew something about it: they were men of
+original thought, who had taken the trouble to think about their art, and
+to think for themselves. Naturally, they were not very well known: they
+were shelved in their little reviews: with only one or two exceptions,
+the newspapers were not for them. They were honest men--intelligent,
+interesting, sometimes driven by their isolation to paradox and the habit
+of thinking aloud, intolerance, and garrulity. The rest had hastily learned
+the rudiments of harmony: and they stood gaping in wonder at their newly
+acquired knowledge. Like Monsieur Jourdain when he learned the rules of
+grammar, they marvelled at their knowledge:
+
+"_D, a, Da; F, a, Fa; R, a, Ra.... Ah! How fine it is!... Ah! How splendid
+it is to know something!..._"
+
+They only babbled of theme and counter-theme, of harmonies and resultant
+sounds, of consecutive ninths and tierce major. When they had labeled the
+succeeding harmonies which made up a page of music, they proudly mopped
+their brows: they thought they had explained the music, and almost believed
+that they had written it. As a matter of fact, they had only repeated it
+in school language, like a boy making a grammatical analysis of a page of
+Cicero. But it was so difficult for the best of them to conceive music as
+a natural language of the soul that, when they did not make it an adjunct
+to painting, they dragged it into the outskirts of science, and reduced it
+to the level of a problem in harmonic construction. Some who were learned
+enough took upon themselves to show a thing or two to past musicians. They
+found fault with Beethoven, and rapped Wagner over the knuckles. They
+laughed openly at Berlioz and Gluck. Nothing existed for them just then but
+Johann Sebastian Bach, and Claude Debussy. And Bach, who had lately been
+roundly abused, was beginning to seem pedantic, a periwig, and in fine, a
+hack. Quite distinguished men extolled Rameau in mysterious terms--Rameau
+and Couperin, called the Great.
+
+There were tremendous conflicts waged between these learned men. They were
+all musicians: but as they all affected different styles, each of them
+claimed that his was the only true style, and cried "Raca!" to that of
+their colleagues. They accused each other of sham writing and sham culture,
+and hurled at each other's heads the words "idealism" and "materialism,"
+"symbolism" and "verism," "subjectivism" and "objectivism." Christophe
+thought it was hardly worth while leaving Germany to find the squabbles
+of the Germans in Paris. Instead of being grateful for having good music
+presented in so many different fashions, they would only tolerate their own
+particular fashion: and a new _Lutrin_, a fierce war, divided musicians
+into two hostile camps, the camp of counterpoint and the camp of harmony.
+Like the _Gros-boutiens_ and the _Petits-boutiens_, one side maintained
+with acrimony that music should be read horizontally, and the other that
+it should be read vertically. One party would only hear of full-sounding
+chords, melting concatenations, succulent harmonies: they spoke of music as
+though it were a confectioner's shop. The other party would not hear of the
+ear, that trumpery organ, being considered: music was for them a lecture,
+a Parliamentary assembly, in which all the orators spoke at once without
+bothering about their neighbors, and went on talking until they had done:
+if people could not hear, so much the worse for them! They could read their
+speeches next day in the _Official Journal_: music was made to be read, and
+not to be heard. When Christophe first heard of this quarrel between the
+_Horizontalists_ and the _Verticalists_, he thought they were all mad. When
+he was summoned to join in the fight between the army of _Succession_ and
+the army of _Superposition_, he replied, with his usual formula, which was
+very different from that of Sosia:
+
+"Gentlemen, I am everybody's enemy."
+
+And when they insisted, saying:
+
+"Which matters most in music, harmony or counterpoint?"
+
+He replied:
+
+"Music. Show me what you have done."
+
+They were all agreed about their own music. These intrepid warriors who,
+when they were not pummeling each other, were whacking away at some dead
+Master whose fame had endured too long, were reconciled by the one passion
+which was common to them all: an ardent musical patriotism. France was to
+them _the_ great musical nation. They were perpetually proclaiming the
+decay of Germany. That did not hurt Christophe. He had declared so himself,
+and therefore was not in a position to contradict them. But he was a little
+surprised to hear of the supremacy of French music: there was, in fact,
+very little trace of it in the past. And yet French musicians maintained
+that their art had been admirable from the earliest period. By way of
+glorifying French music, they set to work to throw ridicule on the famous
+men of the last century, with the exception of one Master, who was very
+good and very pure--and a Belgian. Having done that amount of slaughter,
+they were free to admire the archaic Masters, who had been forgotten, while
+a certain number of them were absolutely unknown. Unlike the lay schools
+of France which date the world from the French Revolution, the musicians
+regarded it as a chain of mighty mountains, to be scaled before it could
+be possible to look back on the Golden Age of music, the Eldorado of art.
+After a long eclipse the Golden Age was to emerge again: the hard wall
+was to crumble away: a magician of sound was to call forth in full flower
+a marvelous spring: the old tree of music was to put forth young green
+leaves: in the bed of harmony thousands of flowers were to open their
+smiling eyes upon the new dawn: and silvery trickling springs were to
+bubble forth with the vernal sweet song of streams--a very idyl.
+
+Christophe was delighted. But when he looked at the bills of the Parisian
+theaters, he saw the names of Meyerbeer, Gounod, Massenet, and Mascagni and
+Leoncavallo--names with which he was only too familiar: and he asked his
+friends if all this brazen music, with its girlish rapture, its artificial
+flowers, like nothing so much as a perfumery shop, was the garden of Armide
+that they had promised him. They were hurt and protested: if they were to
+be believed, these things were the last vestiges of a moribund age: no
+one attached any value to them. But the fact remained that _Cavalleria
+Rusticana_ flourished at the Opéra Comique, and _Pagliacci_ at the Opéra:
+Massenet and Gounod were more frequently performed than anybody else, and
+the musical trinity--_Mignon_, _Les Huguenots_, and _Faust_--had safely
+crossed the bar of the thousandth performance. But these were only trivial
+accidents: there was no need to go and see them. When some untoward fact
+upsets a theory, nothing is more simple than to ignore it. The French
+critics shut their eyes to these blatant works and to the public which
+applauded them: and only a very little more was needed to make them ignore
+the whole music-theater in France. The music-theater was to them a literary
+form, and therefore impure. (Being all literary men, they set a ban on
+literature.) Any music that was expressive, descriptive, suggestive--in
+short, any music with any meaning--was condemned as impure. In every
+Frenchman there is a Robespierre. He must be for ever chopping the head
+off something or somebody to purify it. The great French critics only
+recognized pure music: the rest they left to the rabble.
+
+Christophe was rather mortified when he thought how vulgar his taste must
+be. But he found some comfort in the discovery that all these musicians who
+despised the theater spent their time in writing for it: there was not one
+of them who did not compose operas. But no doubt that was also a trivial
+accident. They were to be judged, as they desired, by their pure music.
+Christophe looked about for their pure music.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Théophile Goujart took him to the concerts of a Society dedicated to
+the national art. There the new glories of French music were elaborated
+and carefully hatched. It was a club, a little church, with several
+side-chapels. Each chapel had its saint, each saint his devotees, who
+blackguarded the saint in the next chapel. It was some time before
+Christophe could differentiate between the various saints. Naturally
+enough, being accustomed to a very different sort of art, he was at first
+baffled by the new music, and the more he thought he understood it, the
+farther was he from a real understanding.
+
+It all seemed to him to be bathed in a perpetual twilight. It was a dull
+gray ground on which were drawn lines, shading off and blurring into
+each other, sometimes starting from the mist, and then sinking back into
+it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped
+designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square--patterns with sharp
+corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves
+floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped
+in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only
+had rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined to believe so; but
+it is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails. These
+men lit up their little lanterns, it is true: but they were like the
+glow-worm's lamp, giving no warmth and very little light. The titles of
+their works were changed: they dealt with Spring, the South, Love, the Joy
+of Living, Country Walks; but the music never changed: it was uniformly
+soft, pale, enervated, anemic, wasting away. It was then the mode in
+France, among the fastidious, to whisper in music. And they were quite
+right: for as soon as they tried to talk aloud they shouted: there was no
+mean. There was no alternative but distinguished somnolence and
+melodramatic declamation.
+
+Christophe shook off the drowsiness that was creeping over him, and looked
+at his program; and he was surprised to read that the little puffs of cloud
+floating across the gray sky claimed to represent certain definite things.
+For, in spite of theory, all their pure music was almost always program
+music, or at least music descriptive of a certain subject. It was in vain
+that they denounced literature: they needed the support of a literary
+crutch. Strange crutches they were, too, as a rule! Christophe observed
+the odd puerility of the subjects which they labored to depict--orchards,
+kitchen-gardens, farmyards, musical menageries, a whole Zoo. Some musicians
+transposed for orchestra or piano the pictures in the Louvre, or the
+frescoes of the Opéra: they turned into music Cuyp, Baudry, and Paul
+Potter: explanatory notes helped the hearer to recognize the apple of
+Paris, a Dutch inn, or the crupper of a white horse. To Christophe it was
+like the production of children obsessed by images, who, not knowing how to
+draw, scribble down in their exercise-books anything that comes into their
+heads, and naïvely write down under it in large letters an inscription to
+the effect that it is a house or a tree.
+
+But besides these blind image-fanciers who saw with their ears, there were
+the philosophers: they discussed metaphysical problems in music: their
+symphonies were composed of the struggle between abstract principles and
+stated symbols or religions. And in their operas they affected to study the
+judicial and social questions of the day: the Declaration of the Rights of
+Woman and the Citizen, elaborated by the metaphysicians of the Butte and
+the Palais-Bourbon. They did not shrink from bringing the question of
+divorce on to the platform together with the inquiry into the birth-rate
+and the separation of the Church and State. Among them were to be found
+lay symbolists and clerical symbolists. They introduced philosophic
+rag-pickers, sociological grisettes, prophetic bakers, and apostolic
+fishermen to the stage. Goethe spoke of the artists of his day, "who
+reproduced the ideas of Kant in allegorical pictures." The artists of
+Christophe's day wrote sociology in semi-quavers. Zola, Nietzsche,
+Maeterlinck, Barrès, Jaurès, Mendès, the Gospel, and the Moulin Rouge, all
+fed the cistern whence the writers of operas and symphonies drew their
+ideas. Many of them, intoxicated by the example of Wagner, cried: "And I,
+too, am a poet!" And with perfect assurance they tacked on to their music
+verses in rhyme, or unrhymed, written in the style of an elementary school
+or a decadent feuilleton.
+
+All these thinkers and poets were partisans of pure music. But they
+preferred talking about it to writing it. And yet they did sometimes manage
+to write it. Then they wrote music that was not intended to say anything.
+Unfortunately, they often succeeded: their music was meaningless--at least,
+to Christophe. It is only fair to say that he had not the key to it.
+
+In order to understand the music of a foreign nation a man must take the
+trouble to learn the language, and not make up his mind beforehand that he
+knows it. Christophe, like every good German, thought he knew it. That was
+excusable. Many Frenchmen did not understand it any more than he. Like the
+Germans of the time of Louis XIV, who tried so hard to speak French that
+in the end they forgot their own language, the French musicians of the
+nineteenth century had taken so much pains to unlearn their language that
+their music had become a foreign lingo. It was only of recent years that a
+movement had sprung up to speak French in France. They did not all succeed:
+the force of habit was very strong: and with a few exceptions their French
+was Belgian, or still smacked faintly of Germany. It was quite natural,
+therefore, that a German should be mistaken, and declare, with his usual
+assurance, that it was very bad German, and meant nothing, since he could
+make nothing of it.
+
+Christophe was in exactly that case. The symphonies of the French seemed
+to him to be abstract, dialectic, and musical themes were opposed and
+superposed arithmetically in them: their combinations and permutations
+might just as well have been expressed in figures or the letters of the
+alphabet. One man would construct a symphony on the progressive development
+of a sonorous formula which did not seem to be complete until the last page
+of the last movement, so that for nine-tenths of the work it never advanced
+beyond the grub stage of its existence. Another would erect variations on a
+theme which was not stated until the end, so that the symphony gradually
+descended from the complex to the simple. They were very clever toys. But a
+man would need to be both very old and very young to be able to enjoy them.
+They had cost their inventors untold effort. They took years to write a
+fantasy. They worried their hair white in the search for new combinations
+of chords--to express ...? No matter! New expressions. As the organ creates
+the need, they say, so the expression must in the end create the idea: the
+chief thing is that the expression should be novel. Novelty at all costs!
+They had a morbid horror of anything that "had been said." The best of them
+were paralyzed by it all. They seemed always to be keeping a fearful guard
+on themselves, and crossing out what they had written, wondering: "Good
+Lord! Where did I read that?" ... There are some musicians--especially in
+Germany--who spend their time in piecing together other people's music. The
+musicians of France were always looking out at every bar to see that they
+had not included in their catalogues melodies that had already been used by
+others, and erasing, erasing, changing the shape of the note until it was
+like no known note, and even ceased to be like a note at all.
+
+But they did not take Christophe in: in vain did they muffle themselves
+up in a complicated language, and make superhuman and prodigious efforts,
+go into orchestral fits, or cultivate inorganic harmonies, an obsessing
+monotony, declamations à la Sarah Bernhardt, beginning in a minor key, and
+going on for hours plodding along like mules, half asleep, along the edge
+of the slippery slope--always under the mask Christophe found the souls of
+these men, cold, weary, horribly scented, like Gounod and Massenet, but
+even less natural. And he repeated the unjust comment on the French of
+Gluck:
+
+"Let them be: they always go back to their giddy-go-round."
+
+Only they did try so hard to be learned. They took popular songs as themes
+for learned symphonies, like dissertations for the Sorbonne. That was the
+great game at the time. All sorts and kinds of popular songs, songs of all
+nations, were pressed into the service. And they worked them up into things
+like the _Ninth Symphony_ and the _Quartet_ of César Franck, only much more
+difficult. A musician would conceive quite a simple air. At once he would
+mix it up with another, which meant nothing at all, though it jarred
+hideously with the first. And all these people were obviously so calm, so
+perfectly balanced!...
+
+And there was a young conductor, properly haggard and dressed for the part,
+who produced these works: he flung himself about, darted lightnings, made
+Michael Angelesque gestures as though he were summoning up the armies of
+Beethoven or Wagner. The audience, which was composed of society people,
+was bored to tears, though nothing would have induced them to renounce the
+honor of paying a high price for such glorious boredom: and there were
+young tyros who were only too glad to bring their school knowledge into
+play as they picked up the threads of the music, and they applauded with
+an enthusiasm as frantic as the gestures of the conductor, and the fearful
+noise of the music....
+
+"What rot!" said Christopher. (For he was well up in Parisian slang by
+now.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it is easier to penetrate the mystery of Parisian slang than the
+mystery of Parisian music. Christophe judged it with the passion which he
+brought to bear on everything, and the native incapacity of the Germans to
+understand French art. At least, he was sincere, and only asked to be put
+right if he was mistaken. And he did not regard himself as bound by his
+judgment, but left it open to any new impression that might alter it.
+
+As matters stood, he readily admitted that there was much talent in the
+music he heard, interesting stuff, certain odd happy rhythms and harmonies,
+an assortment of fine materials, mellow and brilliant, glittering colors,
+a perpetual outpouring of invention and cleverness. Christophe was
+entertained by it, and learned a thing or two. All these small masters had
+infinitely more freedom of thought than the musicians of Germany: they
+bravely left the highroad and plunged through the woods. They did their
+best to lose themselves. But they were so clever that they could not manage
+it. Some of them found themselves on the road again in twenty yards. Others
+tired at once, and stopped wherever they might be. There were a few who
+almost discovered new paths, but instead of following them up they sat down
+at the edge of the wood and fell to musing under a tree. What they most
+lacked was will-power, force: they had all the gifts save one--vigor and
+life. And all their multifarious efforts were confusedly directed, and were
+lost on the road. It was only rarely that these artists became conscious of
+the nature of their efforts, and could join forces to a common and a given
+end. It was the usual result of French anarchy, which wastes the enormous
+wealth of talent and good intentions through the paralyzing influence of
+its uncertainty and contradictions. With hardly an exception, all the great
+French musicians, like Berlioz and Saint-Saens--to mention only the most
+recent--have been hopelessly muddled, self-destructive, and forsworn, for
+want of energy, want of faith, and, above all, for want of an inward guide.
+
+Christophe, with the insolence and disdain of the latter-day German,
+thought:
+
+"The French do no more than fritter away their energy in inventing things
+which they are incapable of using. They need a master of another race, a
+Gluck or a Napoleon, to turn their Revolutions to any account."
+
+And he smiled at the notion of an Eighteenth of Brumaire.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And yet, in the midst of all this anarchy, there was a group striving to
+restore order and discipline to the minds of artists and public. By way
+of a beginning, they had taken a Latin name reminiscent of a clerical
+institution which had flourished thirteen or fourteen centuries ago at the
+time of the great Invasion of the Goths and Vandals. Christophe was rather
+surprised at their going back so far. It was a good thing, certainly, to
+dominate one's generation. But it looked as though a watch-tower fourteen
+centuries high might be, a little inconvenient, and more suitable perhaps
+for observing the movements of the stars than those of the men of the
+present day. But Christophe was soon reassured when he saw that the sons of
+St. Gregory spent very little time on their tower: they only went up it to
+ring the bells, and spent the rest of their time in the church below. It
+was some time before Christophe, who attended some of their services, saw
+that it was a Catholic cult: he had been sure at the outset that their
+rites were those of some little Protestant sect. The audience groveled: the
+disciples were pious, intolerant, aggressive on the smallest provocation:
+at their head was a man of a cold sort of purity, rather childish and
+wilful, maintaining the integrity of his doctrine, religious, moral, and
+artistic, explaining in abstract terms the Gospel of music to the small
+number of the Elect, and calmly damning Pride and Heresy. To these two
+states of mind he attributed every defect in art and every vice of
+humanity: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and present-day Judaism, which
+he lumped together in one category. The Jews of music were burned in
+effigy after being ignominiously dressed. The colossal Handel was soundly
+trounced. Only Johann Sebastian Bach attained salvation by the grace of the
+Lord, who recognized that he had been a Protestant by mistake.
+
+The temple of the _Rue Saint-Jacques_ fulfilled an apostolic function:
+souls and music found salvation there. The rules of genius were taught
+there most methodically. Laborious pupils applied the formulas with
+infinite pains and absolute certainty. It looked as though by their pious
+labors they were trying to regain the criminal levity of their ancestors:
+the Aubers, the Adams, and the trebly damned, the diabolical Berlioz, the
+devil himself, _diabolus in musica_. With laudable ardor and a sincere
+piety they spread the cult of the acknowledged masters. In ten years the
+work they had to show was considerable: French music was transformed. Not
+only the French critics, but the musicians themselves had learned something
+about music. There were now composers, and even virtuosi, who were
+acquainted with the works of Bach. And that was not so common even in
+Germany! But, above all, a great effort had been made to combat the
+stay-at-home spirit of the French, who will shut themselves up in their
+homes, and cannot be induced to go out. So their music lacks air: it is
+sealed-chamber music, sofa music, music with no sort of vigor. Think
+of Beethoven composing as he strode across country, rushing down the
+hillsides, swinging along through sun and rain, terrifying the cattle with
+his wild shouts and gestures! There was no danger of the musicians of Paris
+upsetting their neighbors with the noise of their inspiration, like the
+bear of Bonn. When they composed they muted the strings of their thought:
+and the heavy hangings of their rooms prevented any sound from outside
+breaking in upon them.
+
+The _Schola_ had tried to let in fresh air, and had opened the windows upon
+the past. But only on the past. The windows were opened upon a courtyard,
+not into the street. And it was not much use. Hardly had they opened the
+windows than they closed the shutters, like old women afraid of catching
+cold. And there came up a gust or two of the Middle Ages, Bach, Palestrina,
+popular songs. But what was the good of that? The room still smelt of stale
+air. But really that suited them very well: they were afraid of the great
+modern draughts of air. And if they knew more than other people, they also
+denied more in art. Their music took on a doctrinal character: there was no
+relaxation: their concerts were history lectures, or a string of edifying
+examples. Advanced ideas became academic. The great Bach, he whose music is
+like a torrent, was received into the bosom of the Church and then tamed.
+His music was submitted to a transformation in the minds of the _Schola_
+very like the transformation to which the savagely sensual Bible has been
+submitted in the minds of the English. As for modern music, the doctrine
+promulgated was aristocratic and eclectic, an attempt to compound the
+distinctive characteristics of the three or four great periods of music
+from the sixth to the twentieth century. If it had been possible to carry
+it out, the resulting music would have been like those hybrid structures
+raised by a Viceroy of India on his return from his travels, with rare
+materials collected in every corner of the earth. But the good sense of
+the French saved them from any such barbarically erudite excesses: they
+carefully avoided any application of their theories: they treated them as
+Molière treated his doctors: they took their prescriptions, but did not
+carry them out. The best of them went their own way. The rest of them
+contented themselves in practice with very intricate and difficult
+exercises in counterpoint: they called them sonatas, quartets, and
+symphonies.... "Sonata, what do you desire of me?" The poor thing desired
+nothing at all except to be a sonata. The idea behind it was abstract
+and anonymous, heavy and joyless. So might a lawyer conceive an art.
+Christophe, who had at first been by way of being pleased with the French
+for not liking Brahms, now thought that there were many, many little
+Brahms in France. These laborious, conscientious, honest journeymen had
+many qualities and virtues. Christophe left them edified, but bored to
+distraction. It was all very good, very good....
+
+How fine it was outside!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And yet there were a few independent musicians in Paris, men belonging to
+no school; They alone were interesting to Christophe. It was only through
+them that he could gauge the vitality of the art. Schools and coteries only
+express some superficial fashion or manufactured theory. But the
+independent men who stand apart have more chance of really discovering the
+ideas of their race and time. It is true that that makes them all the more
+difficult for a foreigner to understand.
+
+That was, in fact, what happened when Christophe first heard the famous
+work which the French had so extravagantly praised, while some of them were
+announcing the coming of the greatest musical revolution of the last ten
+centuries. (It was easy for them to talk about centuries: they knew hardly
+anything of any except their own.)
+
+Théophile Goujart and Sylvain Kohn took Christophe to the Opéra Comique
+to hear _Pelleas and Melisande_. They were proud to display the opera
+to him--as proud as though they had written it themselves. They gave
+Christophe to understand that it would be the road to Damascus for him. And
+they went on eulogizing it even after the piece had begun. Christophe shut
+them up and listened intently. After the first act he turned to Sylvain
+Kohn, who asked him, with glittering eyes:
+
+"Well, old man, what do you think of it?"
+
+And he said:
+
+"Is it like that all through?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But it's nothing."
+
+Kohn protested loudly, and called him a Philistine.
+
+"Nothing at all," said Christophe. "No music. No development. No sequence.
+No cohesion. Very nice harmony. Quite good orchestral effects, quite good.
+But it's nothing--nothing at all...."
+
+He listened through the second act. Little by little the lantern gathered
+light and glowed: and he began to perceive something through the twilight.
+Yes: he could understand the sober-minded rebellion against the Wagnerian
+ideal which swamped the drama with floods of music; but he wondered a
+little ironically if the ideal of sacrifice did not mean the sacrifice of
+something which one does not happen to possess. He felt the easy fluency
+of the opera, the production of an effect with the minimum of trouble, the
+indolent renunciation of the sturdy effort shown in the vigorous Wagnerian
+structures. And he was quite struck by the unity of it, the simple, modest,
+rather dragging declamation, although it seemed monotonous to him, and, to
+his German ears, it sounded false:--(and it even seemed to him that the
+more it aimed at truth the more it showed how little the French language
+was suited to music: it is too logical, too precise, too definite,--a world
+perfect in itself, but hermetically sealed).--However, the attempt was
+interesting, and Christophe gladly sympathized with the spirit of revolt
+and reaction against the over-emphasis and violence of Wagnerian art.
+The French composer seemed to have devoted his attention discreetly and
+ironically to all the things that sentiment and passion only whisper. He
+showed love and death inarticulate. It was only by the imperceptible
+throbbing of a melody, a little thrill from the orchestra that was no more
+than a quivering of the corners of the lips, that the drama passing through
+the souls of the characters was brought home to the audience. It was as
+though the artist were fearful of letting himself go. He had the genius of
+taste--except at certain moments when the Massenet slumbering in the heart
+of every Frenchman awoke and waxed lyrical. Then there showed hair that was
+too golden, lips that were too red--the Lot's wife of the Third Republic
+playing the lover. But such moments were the exception: they were a
+relaxation of the writer's self-imposed restraint: throughout the rest of
+the opera there reigned a delicate simplicity, a simplicity which was not
+so very simple, a deliberate simplicity, the subtle flower of an ancient
+society. That young Barbarian, Christophe, only half liked it. The whole
+scheme of the play, the poem, worried him. He saw a middle-aged Parisienne
+posing childishly and having fairy-tales told to her. It was not the
+Wagnerian sickliness, sentimental and clumsy, like a girl from the Rhine
+provinces. But the Franco-Belgian sickliness was not much better, with
+its simpering parlor-tricks:--"the hair," "the little father," "the
+doves,"--and the whole trick of mystery for the delectation of society
+women. The soul of the Parisienne was mirrored in the little piece, which,
+like a flattering picture, showed the languid fatalism, the boudoir
+Nirvana, the soft, sweet melancholy. Nowhere a trace of will-power. No one
+knew what he wanted. No one knew what he was doing.
+
+"It is not my fault! It is not my fault!" these grown-up children groaned.
+All through the five acts, which took place in a perpetual
+half-light--forests, caves, cellars, death-chambers--little sea-birds
+struggled: hardly even that. Poor little birds! Pretty birds, soft, pretty
+birds.... They were so afraid of too much light, of the brutality of deeds,
+words, passions--life! Life is not soft and pretty. Life is no kid-glove
+matter....
+
+Christophe could hear in the distance the rumbling of cannon, coming to
+batter down that worn-out civilization, that perishing little Greece.
+
+Was it that proud feeling of melancholy and pity that made him in spite of
+all sympathize with the opera? It interested him more than he would admit.
+Although he went on telling Sylvain Kohn, as they left the theater, that it
+was "very fine, very fine, but lacking in _Schwung_ (impulse), and did not
+contain enough music for him," he was careful not to confound _Pelleas_
+with the other music of the French. He was attracted by the lamp shining
+through the fog. And then he saw other lights, vivid and fantastic,
+flickering round it. His attention was caught by these will-o'-the-wisps:
+he would have liked to go near them to find out how it was that they
+shone: but they were not easy to catch. These independent musicians, whom
+Christophe did not understand, were not very approachable. They seemed to
+lack that great need of sympathy which possessed Christophe. With a few
+exceptions they seemed to read very little, know very little, desire very
+little. They almost all lived in retirement, some outside Paris, others in
+Paris, but isolated, by circumstances or purposely, shut up in a narrow
+circle--from pride, shyness, disgust, or apathy. There were very few of
+them, but they were split up into rival groups, and could not tolerate
+each other. They were extremely susceptible, and could not bear with their
+enemies, or their rivals, or even their friends, when they dared to admire
+any other musician than themselves, or when they admired too coldly,
+or too fervently, or in too commonplace or too eccentric a manner. It
+was extremely difficult to please them. Every one of them had actually
+sanctioned a critic, armed with letters patent, who kept a jealous watch
+at the foot of the statue. Visitors were requested not to touch. They did
+not gain any greater understanding from being understood only by their own
+little groups. They were deformed by the adulation and the opinion that
+their partisans and they themselves held of their work, and they lost
+grip of their art and their genius. Men with a pleasing fantasy thought
+themselves reformers, and Alexandrine artists posed as rivals of Wagner.
+They were almost all the victims of competition. Every day they had to leap
+a little higher than the day before, and, especially, higher than their
+rivals, These exercises in high jumping were not always successful, and
+were certainly not attractive except to professionals. They took no account
+of the public, and the public never bothered about them. Their art was
+out of touch with the people, music which was only fed from music. Now,
+Christophe was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that there was no
+music that had a greater need of outside support than French music. That
+supple climbing plant needed a prop: it could not do without literature,
+but did not find in it enough of the breath of life. French music was
+breathless, bloodless, will-less. It was like a woman languishing for her
+lover. But, like a Byzantine Empress, slender and feeble in body, laden
+with precious stones, it was surrounded with eunuchs: snobs, esthetes,
+and critics. The nation was not musical: and the craze, so much talked of
+during the last twenty years, for Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, or Debussy,
+never reached farther than a certain class. The enormous increase in the
+number of concerts, the flowing tide of music at all costs, found no real
+response in the development of public taste. It was just a fashionable
+craze confined to the few, and leading them astray. There was only a
+handful of people who really loved music, and these were not the people
+who were most occupied with it, composers and critics. There are so few
+musicians in France who really love music!
+
+So thought Christophe: but it did not occur to him that it is the same
+everywhere, that even in Germany there are not many more real musicians,
+and that the people who matter in art are not the thousands who understand
+nothing about it, but the few who love it and serve it in proud humility.
+Had he ever set eyes on them in France? Creators and critics--the best of
+them were working in silence, far from the racket, as César Franck had
+done, and the most gifted composers of the day were doing, and a number of
+artists who would live out their lives in obscurity, so that some day in
+the future some journalist might have the glory of discovering them and
+posing as their friend--and the little army of industrious and obscure men
+of learning who, without ambition and careless of their fame, were building
+stone by stone the greatness of the past history of France, or, being vowed
+to the musical education of the country, were preparing the greatness of
+the France of the future. There were minds there whose wealth and liberty
+and world-wide curiosity would have attracted Christophe if he had been
+able to discover them! But at most he only caught a cursory glimpse of
+two or three of them: he only made their acquaintance in the villainous
+caricatures of their ideas. He saw only their defects copied and
+exaggerated by the apish mimics of art and the bagmen of the Press.
+
+But what most disgusted him with these vulgarians of music was their
+formalism. They never seemed to consider anything but form. Feeling,
+character, life--never a word of these! It never seemed to occur to them
+that every real musician lives in a world of sound, as other men live in a
+visible world, and that his days are lived in and borne onward by a flood
+of music. Music is the air he breathes, the sky above him. Nature wakes
+answering music in his soul. His soul itself is music: music is in all that
+it loves, hates, suffers, fears, hopes. And when the soul of a musician
+loves a beautiful body, it sees music in that, too. The beloved eyes are
+not blue, or brown, or gray: they are music: their tenderness is like
+caressing, notes, like a delicious chord. That inward music is a thousand
+times more rich than the music that finds expression, and the instrument
+is inferior to the player. Genius is measured by the power of life, by the
+power of evoking life through the imperfect instrument of art. But to how
+many men in France does that ever occur? To these chemists music seems to
+be no more than the art of resolving sounds. They mistake the alphabet
+for a book. Christophe shrugged his shoulders when he heard them say
+complacently that to understand art it must be abstracted from the man.
+They were extraordinarily pleased with this paradox: for by it they fancied
+they were proving their own musical quality. And even Goujart subscribed
+to it--Goujart, the idiot who had never been able to understand how people
+managed to learn by heart a piece of music--(he had tried to get Christophe
+to explain the mystery to him)--and had tried to prove to him that
+Beethoven's greatness of soul and Wagner's sensuality had no more to do
+with their music than a painter's model has to do with his portraits.
+
+Christophe lost patience with him, and said:
+
+"That only proves that a beautiful body is of no more artistic value to
+you than a great passion. Poor fellow!... You have no notion of the beauty
+given to a portrait by the beauty of a perfect face, or of the glow of
+beauty given to music by the beauty of the great soul which is mirrored in
+it?... Poor fellow!... You are interested only in the handiwork? So long
+as it is well done you are not concerned with the meaning of a piece of
+work.... Poor fellow!... You are like those people who do not listen to
+what an orator says, but only to the sound of his voice, and watch his
+gestures without understanding them, and then say he speaks devilish
+well.... Poor fellow! Poor wretch!... Oh, you rotten swine!"
+
+But it was not only a particular theory that irritated Christophe; it was
+all their theories. He was appalled by their unending arguments, their
+Byzantine discussions, the everlasting talk, talk, talk, of musicians
+about music, and nothing else. It was enough to make the best of musicians
+heartily sick of music. Like Moussorgski, Christophe thought that it would
+be as well for musicians every now and then to leave their counterpoint and
+harmony in favor of books or experience of life. Music is not enough for a
+present-day musician; not thus will he dominate his age and raise his head
+above the stream of time.... Life! All life! To see everything, to know
+everything, to feel everything. To love, to seek, to grasp Truth--the
+lovely Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, whose teeth bite in answer to a
+kiss!
+
+Away with your musical discussion-societies, away with your
+chord-factories! Not all the twaddle of the harmonic kitchens would ever
+help him to find a new harmony that was alive, alive, and not a monstrous
+birth.
+
+He turned his back on these Doctor Wagners, brooding on their alembics to
+hatch out some homunculus in bottle: and, running away from French music,
+he sought to enter literary circles and Parisian society. Like many
+millions of people in France, Christophe made his first acquaintance
+with modern French literature through the newspapers. He wanted to get
+the measure of Parisian thought as quickly as possible, and at the same
+time to perfect his knowledge of the language. And so he set himself
+conscientiously to read the papers which he was told were most Parisian. On
+the first day after a horrific chronicle of events, which filled several
+pages with paragraphs and snapshots, he read a story about a father and a
+daughter, a girl of fifteen: it was narrated as though it were a matter
+of course, and even rather moving. Next day, in the same paper, he read a
+story about a father and a son, a boy of twelve, and the girl was mixed up
+in it again. On the following day he read a story about a brother and a
+sister. Next day, the story was about two sisters. On the fifth day.... On
+the fifth day he hurled the paper away with a shudder, and said to Sylvain
+Kohn:
+
+"But what's the matter with you all? Are you ill?"
+
+Sylvain Kohn began to laugh, and said:
+
+"That is art."
+
+Christophe shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"You're pulling my leg."
+
+Kohn laughed once more:
+
+"Not at all. Read a little more."
+
+And he pointed to the report of a recent inquiry into Art and Morality,
+which set out that "Love sanctified everything," that "Sensuality was
+the leaven of Art," that "Art could not be Immoral," that "Morality was
+a convention of Jesuit education," and that nothing mattered except "the
+greatness of Desire." A number of letters from literary men witnessed
+the artistic purity of a novel depicting the life of bawds. Some of the
+signatories were among the greatest names in contemporary literature, or
+the most austere of critics. A domestic poet, _bourgeois_ and a Catholic,
+gave his blessing as an artist to a detailed description of the decadence
+of the Greeks. There were enthusiastic praises of novels in which the
+course of Lewdness was followed through the ages: Rome, Alexandria,
+Byzantium, the Italian and French Renaissance, the Age of Greatness ...
+Nothing was omitted. Another cycle of studies was devoted to the various
+countries of the world: conscientious writers had devoted their energies,
+with a monkish patience, to the study of the low quarters of the five
+continents. And it was no matter for surprise to discover among these
+geographers and historians of Pleasure distinguished poets and very
+excellent writers. They were only marked out from the rest by their
+erudition. In their most impeccable style they told archaic stories, highly
+spiced.
+
+But what was most alarming was to see honest men and real artists, men who
+rightly enjoyed a high place in French literature, struggling in such a
+traffic, for which they were not at all suited. Some of them with great
+travail wrote, like the rest, the sort of trash that the newspapers
+serialize. They had to produce it by a fixed time, once or twice a week:
+and it had been going on for years. They went on producing and producing,
+long after they had ceased to have anything to say, racking their brains to
+find something new, something more sensational, more bizarre: for the
+public was surfeited and sick of everything, and soon wearied of even the
+most wanton imaginary pleasures: they had always to go one better--better
+than the rest, better than their own best--and they squeezed out their very
+life-blood, they squeezed out their guts: it was a pitiable sight, a
+grotesque spectacle.
+
+Christophe, who did not know the ins and outs of that melancholy traffic,
+and if he had known them would not have been more indulgent; for in his
+eyes nothing in the world could excuse an artist for selling his art for
+thirty pieces of silver....
+
+(Not even to assure the well-being of those whom he loves?
+
+Not even then.
+
+That is not human.
+
+It is not a question of being human; it is a question of being a man....
+Human!... May God have mercy on your white-livered humanitarianism, it is
+so bloodless!... No man loves twenty things at once, no man can serve many
+gods!...)
+
+... Christophe, who, in his hard-working life, had hardly yet seen beyond
+the limits of his little German town, could have no idea that this artistic
+degradation, which showed so rawly in Paris, was common to nearly all the
+great towns: and the hereditary prejudices of chaste Germany against Latin
+immorality awoke in him once more. And yet Sylvain Kohn might easily have
+pointed to what was going on by the banks of the Spree, and the impurity
+of Imperial Germany, where brutality made shame and degradation even more
+repulsive. But Sylvain Kohn never thought of it: he was no more shocked by
+that than by the life of Paris. He thought ironically: "Every nation has
+its little ways," and the ways of the world in which he lived seemed so
+natural to him that Christophe could be excused for thinking it was in the
+nature of the people. And so, like so many of his compatriots, he saw in
+the secret sore which is eating away the intellectual aristocracies of
+Europe the vice proper to French art, and the bankruptcy of the Latin
+races.
+
+Christophe was hurt by his first encounter with French literature, and it
+took him some time to get over it. And yet there were plenty of books which
+were not solely occupied with what one of these writers has nobly called
+"the taste for fundamental entertainments." But he never laid hands on
+the best and finest of them. Such books were not written, for the like of
+Sylvain Kohn and his friends: they did not bother about them, and certainly
+Kohn and the rest never bothered about the better class of books: they
+ignored each other. Sylvain Kohn would never have thought of mentioning
+them to Christophe. He was quite sincerely convinced that his friends
+and himself were the incarnation of French Art, and thought there was no
+talent, no art, no France outside the men who had been consecrated as great
+by their opinion and the press of the boulevards. Christophe knew nothing
+about the poets who were the glory of French literature, the very crown of
+France. Very few of the novelists reached him, or emerged from the ocean of
+mediocre writers: a few books of Barrès and Anatole France. But he was not
+sufficiently familiar with the language to be able to enjoy the universal
+dilettantism, and erudition, and irony of the one, or the unequal but
+superior art of the other. He spent some time in watching the little
+orange-trees in tubs growing in the hothouse of Anatole France, and the
+delicate, perfect flowers clambering over the gravelike soul of Barrès. He
+stayed for a moment or two before the genius, part sublime, part silly, of
+Maeterlinck: from that there issued a polite mysticism, monotonous, numbing
+like some vague sorrow. He shook himself, and plunged into the heavy,
+sluggish stream, the muddy romanticism of Zola, with whom he was already
+acquainted, and when he emerged from that it was to sink back and drown in
+a deluge of literature.
+
+The submerged lands exhaled an _odor di femina_. The literature of the day
+teemed with effeminate men and women. It is well that women should write if
+they are sincere enough to describe what no man has yet seen: the depths
+of the soul of a woman. But only very few dared do that: most of them only
+wrote to attract the men: they were as untruthful in their books as in
+their drawing-rooms: they jockeyed their facts and flirted with the reader.
+Since they were no longer religious, and had no confessor to whom to tell
+their little lapses, they told them to the public. There was a perfect
+shower of novels, almost all scabrous, all affected, written in a sort of
+lisping style, a style scented with flowers and fine perfumes--sometimes
+too fine--sometimes not fine at all--and the eternal stale, warm, sweetish
+smell. Their books reeked of it. Christophe thought, like Goethe: "Let
+women do what they like with poetry and writing: but men must not write
+like women! That I cannot stand." He could not help being disgusted by
+their tricks, their sly coquetry, their sentimentality, which seemed to
+expend itself by preference upon creatures hardly worthy of interest,
+their style crammed with metaphor, their love-making and sensuality, their
+hotch-potch of subtlety and brutality.
+
+But Christophe was ready to admit that he was not in a position to judge.
+He was deafened by the row of this babel of words. It was impossible to
+hear the little fluting sounds that were drowned in it all. For even among
+such books as these there were some, from the pages of which, behind all
+the nonsense, there shone the limpid sky and the harmonious outline of the
+hills of Attica--so much talent, so much grace, a sweet breath of life, and
+charm of style, a thought like the voluptuous women or the languid boys of
+Perugino and the young Raphael, smiling, with half-closed eyes, at their
+dream of love. But Christophe was blind to that. Nothing could reveal
+to him the dominant tendencies, the currents of public opinion. Even a
+Frenchman would have been hard put to it to see them. And the only definite
+impression that he had at this time was that of a flood of writing which
+looked like a national disaster. It seemed as though everybody wrote: men,
+women, children, officers, actors, society people, blackguards. It was an
+epidemic.
+
+For the time being Christophe gave it up. He felt that such a guide as
+Sylvain Kohn must lead him hopelessly astray. His experience of a literary
+coterie in Germany gave him very properly a profound distrust of the people
+whom he met: it was impossible to know whether or no they only represented
+the opinion of a few hundred idle people, or even, in certain cases,
+whether or no the author was his own public. The theater gave a more exact
+idea of the society of Paris. It played an enormous part in the daily life
+of the city. It was an enormous kitchen, a Pantagruelesque restaurant,
+which could not cope with the appetite of the two million inhabitants.
+There were thirty leading theaters, without counting the local houses, café
+concerts, all sorts of shows--a hundred halls, all giving performances
+every evening, and, every evening, almost all full. A whole nation of
+actors and officials. Vast sums were swallowed up in the gulf. The four
+State-aided theaters gave work to three thousand people, and cost the
+country ten million francs. The whole of Paris re-echoed with the glory
+of the play-actors. It was impossible to go anywhere without seeing
+innumerable photographs, drawings, caricatures, reproducing their features
+and mannerisms, gramophones reproducing their voices, and the newspapers
+their opinions on art and politics. They had special newspapers devoted
+to them. They published their heroic and domestic Memoirs. These big
+self-conscious children, who spent their time in aping each other, these
+wonderful apes reigned and held sway over the Parisians: and the dramatic
+authors were their chief ministers. Christophe asked Sylvain Kohn to
+conduct him into the kingdom of shadows and reflections.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Sylvain Kohn was no safer as a guide in that world than in the world
+of books, and, thanks to him, Christophe's first impression was almost as
+repulsive as that of his first essay in literature. It seemed that there
+was everywhere the same spirit of mental prostitution.
+
+The pleasure-mongers were divided into two schools. On the one hand there
+was the good old way, the national way, of providing a coarse and unclean
+pleasure, quite frankly; a delight in ugliness, strong meat, physical
+deformities, a show of drawers, barrack-room jests, risky stories, red
+pepper, high game, private rooms--"a manly frankness," as those people
+say who try to reconcile looseness and morality by pointing out that,
+after four acts of dubious fun, order is restored and the Code triumphs
+by the fact that the wife is really with the husband whom she thinks
+she is deceiving--(so long as the law is observed, then virtue is all
+right):--that vicious sort of virtue which defends marriage by endowing it
+with all the charm of lewdness:--the Gallic way.
+
+The other school was in the modern style. It was much more subtle and much
+more disgusting. The Parisianized Jews and the Judaicized Christians who
+frequented the theater had introduced into it the usual hash of sentiment
+which is the distinctive feature of a degenerate cosmopolitanism. Those
+sons who blushed for their fathers set themselves to abnegate their racial
+conscience: and they succeeded only too well. Having plucked out the soul
+that was their birthright, all that was left them was a mixture of the
+moral and intellectual values of other races: they made a _macédoine_ of
+them, an _olla podrida_: it was their way of taking possession of them.
+The men who who were at that time in control of the theaters in Paris were
+extraordinarily skilful at beating up filth and sentiment, and giving
+virtue a flavoring of vice, vice a flavoring of virtue, and turning upside
+down every human relation of age, sex, the family, and the affections.
+Their art, therefore, had an odor _sui generis_, which smelt both good and
+bad at once--that is to say, it smelled very bad indeed: they called it
+"amoralism."
+
+One of their favorite heroes at that time was the amorous old man. Their
+theaters presented a rich gallery of portraits of the type: and in painting
+it they introduced a thousand pretty touches. Sometimes the sexagenarian
+hero would take his daughter into his confidence, and talk to her about
+his mistress: and she would talk about her lovers: and they would give
+each other friendly advice: the kindly father would aid his daughter in
+her indiscretions: and the precious daughter would intervene with the
+unfaithful mistress, beg her to return, and bring her back to the fold.
+Sometimes the good old man would listen to the confidences of his
+mistress: he would talk to her about her lovers, or, if nothing better
+was forthcoming, he would listen to the tale of her gallantries, and even
+take a delight in them. And there were portraits of lovers, distinguished
+gentlemen, who presided in the houses of their former mistresses, and
+helped them in their nefarious business. Society women were thieves. The
+men were bawds, the girls were Lesbian. And all these things happened in
+the highest society: the society of rich people--the only society that
+mattered. For that made it possible to offer the patrons of the theater
+damaged goods under cover of the delights of luxury. So tricked out, it was
+displayed in the market, to the joy of old gentlemen and young women. And
+it all reeked of death and the seraglio.
+
+Their style was not less mixed than their sentiments. They had invented a
+composite jargon of expressions from all classes of society and every
+country under the sun--pedantic, slangy, classical, lyrical, precious,
+prurient, and low--a mixture of bawdy jests, affectations, coarseness, and
+wit, all of which seemed to have a foreign accent. Ironical, and gifted
+with a certain clownish humor, they had not much natural wit: but they were
+clever enough, and they manufactured their goods in imitation of Paris. If
+the stone was not always of the first water, and if the setting was always
+strange and overdone, at least it shone in artificial light, and that was
+all it was meant to do. They were intelligent, keen, though short-sighted
+observers--their eyes had been dulled by centuries of the life of the
+counting-house--turning the magnifying-glass on human sentiments, enlarging
+small things, not seeing big things. With a marked predilection for finery,
+they were incapable of depicting anything but what seemed to their upstart
+snobbishness the ideal of polite society: a little group of worn-out rakes
+and adventurers, who quarreled among themselves for the possession of
+certain stolen moneys and a few virtueless females.
+
+And yet upon occasion the real nature of these Jewish writers would
+suddenly awake, come to the surface from the depths of their being, in
+response to some mysterious echo called forth by some vivid word or
+sensation. Then there appeared a strange hotch-potch of ages and races, a
+breath of wind from the Desert, bringing over the seas to their Parisian
+rooms the musty smell of a Turkish bazaar, the dazzling shimmer of the
+sands, the mirage, blind sensuality, savage invective, nervous disorder
+only a hair's-breadth away from epilepsy, a destructive frenzy--Samson,
+suddenly rising like a lion--after ages of squatting in the shade--and
+savagely tearing down the columns of the Temple, which comes crashing down
+on himself and on his enemies.
+
+Christophe blew his nose and said to Sylvain Kohn:
+
+"There's power in it: but it stinks. That's enough! Let's go and see
+something else."
+
+"What?" asked Sylvain Kohn.
+
+"France."
+
+"That's it!" said Kohn.
+
+"Can't be," replied Christophe. "France isn't like that."
+
+"It's France, and Germany, too."
+
+"I don't believe it. A nation that was anything like that wouldn't last for
+twenty years: why, it's decomposing already. There must be something else."
+
+"There's nothing better."
+
+"There must be something else," insisted Christophe.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Sylvain Kohn. "We have fine people, of course, and theaters
+for them, too. Is that what you want? We can give you that."
+
+He took Christophe to the Théâtre Français.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening they happened to be playing a modern comedy, in prose, dealing
+with some legal problem.
+
+From the very beginning Christophe was baffled to make out in what sort of
+world the action was taking place. The voices of the actors were out of all
+reason, full, solemn, slow, formal: they rounded every syllable as though
+they were giving a lesson in elocution, and they seemed always to be
+scanning Alexandrines with tragic pauses. Their gestures were solemn and
+almost hieratic. The heroine, who wore her gown as though it were a Greek
+peplus, with arm uplifted, and head lowered, was nothing else but Antigone,
+and she smiled with a smile of eternal sacrifice, carefully modulating
+the lower notes of her beautiful contralto voice. The heavy father
+walked about like a fencing-master, with automatic gestures, a funereal
+dignity,--romanticism in a frock-coat. The juvenile lead gulped and gasped
+and squeezed out a sob or two. The piece was written in the style of a
+tragic serial story: abstract phrases, bureaucratic epithets, academic
+periphrases. No movement, not a sound unrehearsed. From beginning to end it
+was clockwork, a set problem, a scenario, the skeleton of a play, with not
+a scrap of flesh, only literary phrases. Timid ideas lay behind discussions
+that were meant to be bold: the whole spirit of the thing was hopelessly
+middle-class and respectable.
+
+The heroine had divorced an unworthy husband, by whom she had had a child,
+and she had married a good man whom she loved. The point was, that even in
+such a case as this divorce was condemned by Nature, as it is by prejudice.
+Nothing could be easier than to prove it: the author contrived that the
+woman should be surprised, for one occasion only, into yielding to the
+first husband. After that, instead of a perfectly natural remorse, perhaps
+a profound sense of shame, together with a greater desire to love and
+honor the second and good husband, the author trotted out an heroic case
+of conscience, altogether beyond Nature. French writers never seem to be
+on good terms with virtue: they always force the note when they talk of
+it: they make it quite incredible. They always seem to be dealing with
+the heroes of Corneille, and tragedy Kings. And are they not Kings and
+Queens, these millionaire heroes, and these heroines who would not be
+interesting unless they had at least a mansion in Paris and two or three
+country-houses? For such writers and such a public wealth itself is a
+beauty, and almost a virtue.
+
+The audience was even more amazing than the play. They were never bored
+by all the tiresomely repeated improbabilities. They laughed at the good
+points, when the actors said things that were _meant_ to be laughed at: it
+was made obvious that they were coming, so that the audience could be ready
+to laugh. They mopped their eyes and coughed, and were deeply moved when
+the puppets gasped, and gulped, and roared, and fainted away in accordance
+with the hallowed tragic ritual.
+
+"And people say the French are gay!" exclaimed Christophe as they left the
+theater.
+
+"There's a time for everything," said Sylvain Kohn chaffingly. "You wanted
+virtue. You see, there's still virtue in France."
+
+"But that's not virtue!" cried Christophe. "That's rhetoric!"
+
+"In France," said Sylvain Kohn. "Virtue in the theater is always
+rhetorical."
+
+"A pretorium virtue," said Christophe, "and the prize goes to the best
+talker. I hate lawyers. Have you no poets in France?"
+
+Sylvain Kohn took him to the poetic drama.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were poets in France. There were even great poets. But the theater
+was not for them. It was for the versifiers. The theater is to poetry what
+the opera is to music. As Berlioz said: _Sicut amori lupanar._
+
+Christophe saw Princesses who were virtuously promiscuous, who prostituted
+themselves for their honor, who were compared with Christ ascending
+Calvary:--friends who deceived their friends out of devotion to
+them:--glorified triangular relations:--heroic cuckoldry: (the cuckold,
+like the blessed prostitute, had become a European commodity: the example
+of King Mark had turned the heads of the poets: like the stag of Saint
+Hubert, the cuckold never appeared without a halo.) And Christophe saw
+also lovely damsels torn between passion and duty: their passion bade them
+follow a new lover: duty bade them stay with the old one, an old man who
+gave them money and was deceived by them. And in the end they plumped
+heroically for Duty. Christophe could not see how Duty differed from sordid
+interest: but the public was satisfied. The word Duty was enough for them:
+they did not insist on having the thing itself; they took the author's word
+for it.
+
+The summit of art was reached and the greatest pleasure was given when,
+most paradoxically, sexual immorality and Corneillian heroics could be
+combined. In that way every need of the Parisian public was satisfied:
+mind, senses, rhetoric. But it is only just to say that the public was
+fonder even of words than of lewdness. Eloquence could send it into
+ecstasies. It would have suffered anything for a fine tirade. Virtue or
+vice, heroics hobnobbing with the basest prurience, there was no pill that
+it would not swallow if it were gilded with sonorous rhymes and redundant
+words. Anything that came to hand was ground into couplets, antitheses,
+arguments: love, suffering, death. And when that was done, they thought
+they had felt love, suffering, and death. Nothing but phrases. It was all
+a game. When Hugo brought thunder on to the stage, at once (as one of
+his disciples said) he muted it so as not to frighten even a child. (The
+disciple fancied he was paying him a compliment.) It was never possible to
+feel any of the forces of Nature in their art. They made everything polite.
+Just as in music--and even more than in music, which was a younger art
+in France, and therefore relatively more simple--they were terrified of
+anything that had been "already said." The most gifted of them coldly
+devoted themselves to working contrariwise. The process was childishly
+simple: they pitched on some beautiful legend or fairy-story, and turned
+it upside down. Thus, Bluebeard was beaten by his wives, or Polyphemus
+was kind enough to pluck out his eye by way of sacrificing himself to the
+happiness of Acis and Galatea. And they thought of nothing but form. And
+once more it seemed to Christophe (though he was not a good judge) that
+these masters of form were rather coxcombs and imitators than great writers
+creating their own style and giving breadth and depth to their work.
+
+They played at being artists. They played at being poets. Nowhere was the
+poetic lie more insolently reared than in the heroic drama. They put up a
+burlesque conception of a hero:
+
+  "_The great thing is to have a soul magnificent.
+  An eagel's eye; broad brow like portico; present
+  An air of strength, grave mien, most touchingly to show
+  A heart that throbs, eyes full of dreams of worlds they know._"
+
+Verses like that were taken seriously. Behind the hocus-pocus of such
+fine-sounding words, the bombast, the theatrical clash and clang of the
+swords and pasteboard helmets, there was always the incurable futility of a
+Sardou, the intrepid vaudevillist, playing Punch and Judy with history.
+When in the world was the like of the heroism of Cyrano ever to be found?
+These writers moved heaven and earth; they summoned from their tombs the
+Emperor and his legions, the bandits of the Ligue, the _condottieri_ of
+the Renaissance, called up the human cyclones that once devastated the
+universe:--just to display a puppet, standing unmoved through frightful
+massacres, surrounded by armies, soldiers, and whole hosts of captive
+women, dying of a silly calfish love for a woman whom he had seen ten or
+fifteen years before--or King Henri IV submitting to assassination because
+his mistress no longer loved him.
+
+So, and no otherwise, did these good people present their parlor Kings,
+and _condottieri_, and heroic passion. They were worthy scions of the
+illustrious nincompoops of the days of _Grand Cyrus_, those Gascons of the
+ideal--Scudéry, La Calprenède--an everlasting brood, the songsters of sham
+heroism, impossible heroism, which is the enemy of truth. Christophe
+observed to his amazement that the French, who are said to be so clever,
+had no sense of the ridiculous.
+
+He was lucky when religion was not dragged in to fit the fashion! Then,
+during Lent, certain actors read the sermons of Bossuet at the Gaîté
+to the accompaniment of an organ. Jewish authors wrote tragedies about
+Saint Theresa for Jewish actresses. The _Way of the Cross_ was acted at
+the Bodinière, the _Child Jesus_ at the Ambigu, the _Passion_ at the
+Porte-Saint-Martin, _Jesus_ at the Odéon, orchestral suites on the subject
+of _Christ_ at the Botanical Gardens. And a certain brilliant talker--a
+poet who wrote passionate love-songs--gave a lecture on the _Redemption_
+at the Châtelet. And, of course, the passages of the Gospel that were most
+carefully preserved by these people were those relating to Pilate and
+Mary Magdalene:--"_What is truth_?" and the story of the blessed foolish
+virgin.--And their boulevard Christs were horribly loquacious and well up
+in all the latest tricks of worldly casuistry.
+
+Christophe said:
+
+"That is the worst yet. It is untruth incarnate. I'm stifling. Let's get
+out."
+
+And yet there was a great classic art that held its ground among all these
+modern industries, like the ruins of the splendid ancient temples among all
+the pretentious buildings of modern Rome. But, outside Molière, Christophe
+was not yet able to appreciate it. He was not yet familiar enough with the
+language, and, therefore, could not grasp the genius of the race. Nothing
+baffled him so much as the tragedy of the seventeenth century--one of the
+least accessible provinces of French art to foreigners, precisely because
+it lies at the very heart of France. It bored him horribly; he found it
+cold, dry, and revolting in its tricks and pedantry. The action was thin or
+forced, the characters were rhetorical abstractions or as insipid as the
+conversation of society women. They were caricatures of the ancient legends
+and heroes: a display of reason, arguments, quibbling, and antiquated
+psychology and archeology. Speeches, speeches, speeches; the eternal
+loquacity of the French. Christophe ironically refused to say whether it
+was beautiful or not: there was nothing to interest him in it: whatever the
+arguments put forward in turn by the orators of _Cinna_, he did not care a
+rap which of the talking-machines won in the end.
+
+However, he had to admit that the French audience was not of his way of
+thinking, and that they did applaud these plays that bored him. But that
+did not help to dissipate his confusion: he saw the plays through the
+audience: and he recognized in the modern French certain of the features,
+distorted, of the classics. So might a critical eye see in the faded charms
+of an old coquette the clear, pure features of her daughter:--(such a
+discovery is not calculated to foster the illusion of love). Like the
+members of a family who are used to seeing each other, the French could not
+see the resemblance. But Christophe was struck by it, and exaggerated it:
+he could see nothing else. Every work of art he saw seemed to him to be
+full of old-fashioned caricatures of the great ancestors of the French;
+and he saw these same great ancestors also in caricature. He could not see
+any difference between Corneille and the long line of his followers, those
+rhetorical poets whose mania it was to present nothing but sublime and
+ridiculous cases of conscience. And Racine he confounded with his offspring
+of pretentiously introspective Parisian psychologists.
+
+None of these people had really broken free from the classics. The critics
+were for ever discussing _Tartuffe_ and _Phèdre_. They never wearied of
+hearing the same plays over and over again. They delighted in the same old
+words, and when they were old men they laughed at the same jokes which had
+been their joy when they were children. And so it would be while the French
+nation endured. No country in the world has so firmly rooted a cult of its
+great-great-grandfathers. The rest of the universe did not interest them.
+There were many, many men and women, even intelligent men and women, who
+had never read anything, and never wanted to read anything outside the
+works that had been written in France under the Great King! Their theaters
+presented neither Goethe, nor Schiller, nor Kleist, nor Grillparzer,
+nor Hebbel, nor any of the great dramatists of other nations, with the
+exception of the ancient Greeks, whose heirs they declared themselves to
+be--(like every other nation in Europe). Every now and then they felt they
+ought to include Shakespeare. That was the touchstone. There were two
+schools of Shakespearean interpreters: the one played _King Lear_, with
+a commonplace realism, like a comedy of Emile Augier: the other turned
+_Hamlet_ into an opera, with bravura airs and vocal exercises à la Victor
+Hugo. It never occurred to them that reality could be poetic or that poetry
+was the spontaneous language of hearts bursting with life. Shakespeare
+seemed false. They very quickly went back to Rostand.
+
+And yet, during the last twenty years, there had been sturdy efforts made
+to vitalize the theater: the narrow circle of subjects drawn from Parisian
+literature had been widened: the theater laid hands on everything with a
+show of audacity. Two or three times even the outer world, public life, had
+torn down the curtain of convention. But the theatrists made haste to piece
+it together again. They lived in blinkers, and were afraid of seeing things
+as they are. A sort of clannishness, a classical tradition, a routine
+of form and spirit, and a lack of real seriousness, held them back from
+pushing their audacity to its logical extremity. They turned the acutest
+problems into ingenious games: and they always came back to the problem of
+women--women of a certain class. And what a sorry figure did the phantoms
+of great men cut on their boards: the heroic Anarchy of Ibsen, the Gospel
+of Tolstoy, the Superman of Nietzsche!...
+
+The literary men of Paris took a great deal of trouble to seem to be
+advanced thinkers. But at heart they were all conservative. There was no
+literature in Europe in which the past, the old, the "eternal yesterday,"
+held a completer and more unconscious sway: in the great reviews, in the
+great newspapers, in the State-aided theaters, in the Academy, Paris
+was in literature what London was in Politics: the check on the mind of
+Europe. The French Academy was a House of Lords. A certain number of the
+institutions of the _Ancien Régime_ forced the spirit of the old days on
+the new society. Every revolutionary element was rejected or promptly
+assimilated. They asked nothing better. In vain did the Government pretend
+to a socialistic polity. In art it truckled under to the Academies and the
+Academic Schools. Against the Academies there was no opposition save from
+a few coteries, and they put up a very poor fight. For as soon as a member
+of a coterie could, he fell into line with an Academy, and became more
+academic than the rest. And even if a writer were in the advance guard or
+in the van of the army, he was almost always trammeled by his group and the
+ideas of his group. Some of them were hidebound by their academic _Credo_,
+others by their revolutionary _Credo_: and, when all was done, they both
+amounted to the same thing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By way of rousing Christophe, on whom academic art had acted as a
+soporific, Sylvain Kohn proposed to take him to certain eclectic
+theaters,--the very latest thing. There they saw murder, rape, madness,
+torture, eyes plucked out, bellies gutted--anything to thrill the nerves,
+and satisfy the barbarism lurking beneath a too civilized section of
+the people. It had a great attraction for pretty women and men of the
+world--the people who would go and spend whole afternoons in the stuffy
+courts of the Palais de Justice, listening to scandalous cases, laughing,
+talking, and eating chocolates. But Christophe indignantly refused. The
+more closely he examined that sort of art, the more acutely he became
+aware of the odor that from the very first he had detected, faintly in the
+beginning, then more strongly, and finally it was suffocating: the odor of
+death.
+
+Death: it was everywhere beneath all the luxury and uproar. Christophe
+discovered the explanation of the feeling of repugnance with which certain
+French plays had filled him. It was not their immorality that shocked him.
+Morality, immorality, amorality,--all these words mean nothing. Christophe
+had never invented any moral theory: he loved the great poets and great
+musicians of the past, and they were no saints: when he came across a great
+artist he did not inquire into his morality: he asked him rather:
+
+"Are you healthy?"
+
+To be healthy was the great thing. "If the poet is ill, let him first of
+all cure himself," as Goethe says. "When he is cured, he will write."
+
+The writers of Paris were unhealthy: or if one of them happened to be
+healthy, the chances were that he was ashamed of it: he disguised it, and
+did his best to catch some disease. Their sickness was not shown in any
+particular feature of their art:--the love of pleasure, the extreme license
+of mind, or the universal trick of criticism which examined and dissected
+every idea that was expressed. All these things could be--and were, as the
+case might be--healthy or unhealthy. If death was there, it did not come
+from the material, but from the use that these people made of it; it was
+in the people themselves. And Christophe himself loved pleasure. He, too,
+loved liberty. He had drawn down upon himself the displeasure of his little
+German town by his frankness in defending many things, which he found here,
+promulgated by these Parisians, in such a way as to disgust him. And yet
+they were the same things. But nothing sounded the same to the Parisians
+and to himself. When Christophe impatiently shook off the yoke of the
+great Masters of the past, when he waged war against the esthetics and the
+morality of the Pharisees, it was not a game to him as it was to these men
+of intellect: and his revolt was directed only towards life, the life of
+fruitfulness, big with the centuries to come. With these people all tended
+to sterile enjoyment. Sterile, Sterile, Sterile. That was the key to the
+enigma. Mind and senses were fruitlessly debauched. A brilliant art, full
+of wit and cleverness--a lovely form, in truth, a tradition of beauty,
+impregnably seated, in spite of foreign alluvial deposits--a theater which
+was a theater, a style which was a style, authors who knew their business,
+writers who could write, the fine skeleton of an art, and a thought that
+had been great. But a skeleton. Sonorous words, ringing phrases, the
+metallic clang of ideas hurtling down the void, witticisms, minds haunted
+by sensuality, and senses numbed with thought. It was all useless, save
+for the sport of egoism. It led to death. It was a phenomenon analogous
+to the frightful decline in the birth-rate of France, which Europe was
+observing--and reckoning--in silence. So much wit, so much cleverness, so
+many acute senses, all wasted and wasting in a sort of shameful onanism!
+They had no notion of it, and wished to have none. They laughed. That was
+the only thing that comforted Christophe a little: these people could still
+laugh: all was not lost. He liked them even less when they tried to take
+themselves seriously: and nothing hurt him more than to see writers, who
+regarded art as no more than an instrument of pleasure, giving themselves
+airs as priests of a disinterested religion:
+
+"We are artists," said Sylvain Kohn once more complacently. "We follow art
+for art's sake. Art is always pure: everything in art is chaste. We explore
+life as tourists, who find everything amusing. We are amateurs of rare
+sensations, lovers of beauty."
+
+"You are hypocrites," replied Christophe bluntly. "Excuse my saying so. I
+used to think my own country had a monopoly. In Germany our hypocrisy
+consists in always talking about idealism while we think of nothing but
+our interests, and we even believe that we are idealists while we think
+of nothing but ourselves. But you are much worse: you cover your national
+lewdness with the names of Art and Beauty (with capitals)--when you do not
+shield your Moral Pilatism behind the names of Truth, Science, Intellectual
+Duty, and you wash your hands of the possible consequences of your haughty
+inquiry. Art for art's sake!... That's a fine faith! But it is the faith
+of the strong. Art! To grasp life, as the eagle claws its prey, to bear it
+up into the air, to rise with it into the serenity of space!... For that
+you need talons, great wings, and a strong heart. But you are nothing but
+sparrows who, when they find a piece of carrion, rend it here and there,
+squabbling for it, and twittering ... Art for art's sake!... Oh! wretched
+men! Art is no common ground for the feet of all who pass it by. Why, it is
+a pleasure, it is the most intoxicating of all. But it is a pleasure which
+is only won at the cost of a strenuous fight: it is the laurel-wreath that
+crowns the victory of the strong. Art is life tamed. Art is the Emperor
+of life. To be Cæsar a man must have the soul of Cæsar. But you are
+only limelight Kings: you are playing a part, and do not even deceive
+yourselves. And, like those actors, who turn to profit their deformities,
+you manufacture literature out of your own deformities and those of your
+public. Lovingly do you cultivate the diseases of your people, their fear
+of effort, their love of pleasure, their sensual minds, their chimerical
+humanitarianism, everything in them that drugs the will, everything in them
+that saps their power for action. You deaden their minds with the fumes
+of opium. Behind it all is death: you know it: but you will not admit it.
+Well, I tell you: Where death is, there art is not. Art is the spring of
+life. But even the most honest of your writers are so cowardly that even
+when the bandage is removed from their eyes they pretend not to see: they
+have the effrontery to say:
+
+"'It is dangerous, I admit: it is poisonous: but it is full of talent.'
+
+"It is as if a judge, sentencing a hooligan, were to say:
+
+"'He's a blackguard, certainly: but he has so much talent!...'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe wondered what was the use of French criticism. There was no lack
+of critics: they swarmed all over and about French art. It was impossible
+to see the work of the artists: they were swamped by the critics.
+
+Christophe was not indulgent towards criticism in general. He found it
+difficult to admit the utility of these thousands of artists who formed a
+Fourth or Fifth Estate in the modern community: he read in it the signs of
+a worn-out generation which relegates to others the business of regarding
+life--feeling vicariously. And, to go farther, it seemed to him not a
+little shameful that they could not even see with their own eyes the
+reflection of life, but must have yet more intermediaries, reflections
+of the reflection--the critics. At least, they ought to have seen to it
+that the reflections were true. But the critics reflected nothing but the
+uncertainty of the mob that moved round them. They were like those trick
+mirrors which reflect again and again the faces of the sightseers who gaze
+into them against a painted background.
+
+There had been a time when the critics had enjoyed a tremendous authority
+in France. The public bowed down to their decrees: and they were not
+far from regarding them as superior to the artists, as artists with
+intelligence:--(apparently the two words do not go together naturally).
+Then they had multiplied too rapidly: there were too many oracles: that
+spoiled the trade. When there are so many people, each of whom declares
+that he is the sole repository of truth, it is impossible to believe them:
+and in the end they cease to believe it themselves. They were discouraged:
+in the passage from night to day, according to the French custom, they
+passed from one extreme to the other. Where they had before professed
+to know everything, they now professed to know nothing. It was a point
+of honor with them, quite fatuously. Renan had taught those milksop
+generations that it is not correct to affirm anything without denying it at
+once, or at least casting a doubt on it. He was one of those men of whom
+St. Paul speaks: "For whom there is always Yes, Yes, and then No, No." All
+the superior persons in France had wildly embraced this amphibious _Credo_.
+It exactly suited their indolence of mind and weakness of character. They
+no longer said of a work of art that it was good or bad, true or false,
+intelligent or idiotic. They said:
+
+"It may be so.... Nothing is impossible.... I don't know.... I wash my
+hands of it."
+
+If some objectionable piece were put up, they did not say:
+
+"That is nasty rubbish!"
+
+They said:
+
+"Sir Sganarelle, please do not talk like that. Our philosophy bids us talk
+of everything open-mindedly: and therefore you ought not to say: 'That is
+nasty rubbish!' but: 'It seems to me that that is nasty rubbish.... But it
+is not certain that it is so. It may be a masterpiece. Who can say that it
+is not?'"
+
+There was no danger of their being accused of tyranny over the arts.
+Schiller once taught them a lesson when he reminded the petty tyrants of
+the Press of his time of what he called bluntly:
+
+"_The Duty of Servants.
+
+"First, the house must be clean that the Queen is to enter. Bustle about,
+then! Sweep the rooms. That is what you are there for, gentlemen!
+
+"But as soon as She appears, out you go! Let not the serving-wench sit in
+her lady's chair!_"
+
+But, to be just to the critics of that time, it must be said that they
+never did sit in their lady's chair. It was ordered that they should be
+servants: and servants they were. But bad servants: they never took a broom
+in their hands: the room was thick with dust. Instead of cleaning and
+tidying, they folded their arms, and left the work to be done by the
+master, the divinity of the day:--Universal Suffrage.
+
+In fact, there had been for some time a wave of reaction passing through
+the popular conscience. A few people had set out--feebly enough--on a
+campaign of public health: but Christophe could see no sign of it among the
+people with whom he lived. They gained no hearing, and were laughed at.
+When every now and then some honest man did raise a protest against unclean
+art, the authors replied haughtily that they were in the right, since the
+public was satisfied. That was enough to silence every objection. The
+public had spoken: that was the supreme law of art! It never occurred to
+anybody to impeach the evidence of a debauched public in favor of those
+who had debauched them, or that it was the artist's business to lead the
+public, not the public the artist. A numerical religion--the number of the
+audience, and the sum total of the receipts--dominated the artistic thought
+of that commercialized democracy. Following the authors, the critics
+docilely declared that the essential function of a work of art was to
+please. Success is law: and when success endures, there is nothing to be
+done but to bow to it. And so they devoted their energies to anticipating
+the fluctuations of the Exchange of pleasure, in trying to find out what
+the public thought of the various plays. The joke of it was that the public
+was always trying frantically to find out what the critics thought. And so
+there they were, looking at each, other: and in each other's eyes they saw
+nothing but their own indecision.
+
+And yet never had there been such crying need of a fearless critic. In an
+anarchical Republic, fashion, which is all-powerful in art, very rarely
+looks backward, as it does in a conservative State: it goes onwards always:
+and there is a perpetual competition of libertinism which hardly anybody
+dare resist. The mob is incapable of forming an opinion: at heart it is
+shocked: but nobody dares to say what everybody secretly feels. If the
+critics were strong, if they dared to be strong, what a power they would
+have! A vigorous critic would in a few years become the Napoleon of public
+taste, and sweep away all the diseases of art. But there is no Napoleon in
+France, All the critics live in that vitiated atmosphere, and do not notice
+it. And they dare not speak. They all know each other. They are a more or
+less close company, and they have to consider each other: not one of them
+is independent. To be so, they would have to renounce their social life,
+and even their friendships. Who is there that would have the courage, in
+such a knock-kneed time, when even the best critics doubt whether a just
+notice is worth the annoyance it may cause to the writer and the object of
+it? Who is there so devoted to duty that he would condemn himself to such a
+hell on earth: dare to stand out against opinion, fight the imbecility of
+the public, expose the mediocrity of the successes of the day, defend the
+unknown artist who is alone and at the mercy of the beasts of prey, and
+subject the minds of those who were born to obey to the dominion of the
+master-mind? Christophe actually heard the critics at a first night in the
+vestibule of the theater say: "H'm! Pretty bad, isn't it? Utter rot!" And
+next day in their notices they talked of masterpieces, Shakespeare, the
+wings of genius beating above their heads.
+
+"It is not so much talent that your art lacks as character," said
+Christophe to Sylvain Kohn. "You need a great critic, a Lessing, a ..."
+
+"A Boileau?" said Sylvain quizzically.
+
+"A Boileau, perhaps, more than these artists of genius."
+
+"If we had a Boileau," said Sylvain Kohn, "no one would listen to him."
+
+"If they did not listen to him," replied Christophe, "he would not be
+a Boileau. I bet you that if I set out and told you the truth about
+yourselves, quite bluntly, however clumsy I might be, you would have to
+gulp it down."
+
+"My dear good fellow!" laughed Sylvain Kohn.
+
+That was all the reply he made.
+
+He was so cocksure and so satisfied with the general flabbiness of the
+French that suddenly it occurred to Christophe that Kohn was a thousand
+times more of a foreigner in France than himself: and there was a catch at
+his heart.
+
+"It is impossible," he said once more, as he had said that evening when he
+had left the theater on the boulevards in disgust. "There must be something
+else."
+
+"What more do you want?" asked Sylvain Kohn.
+
+"France."
+
+"We are France," said Sylvain Kohn, gurgling with laughter.
+
+Christophe stared hard at him for a moment, then shook his head, and said
+once more:
+
+"There must be something else."
+
+"Well, old man, you'd better look for it," said Sylvain Kohn, laughing
+louder than ever.
+
+Christophe had to look for it. It was well hidden.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The more clearly Christophe saw into the vat of ideas in which Parisian art
+was fermenting, the more strongly he was impressed by the supremacy of
+women in that cosmopolitan community. They had an absurdly disproportionate
+importance. It was not enough for woman to be the helpmeet of man. It was
+not even enough for her to be his equal. Her pleasure must be law both
+for herself and for man. And man truckled to it. When a nation is growing
+old, it renounces its will, its faith, the whole essence of its being,
+in favor of the giver of pleasure. Men make works of art: but women make
+men,--(except when they tamper with the work of the men, as happened in
+France at that time):--and it would be more just to say that they unmake
+what they make. No doubt the Eternal Feminine has been an uplifting
+influence on the best of men: but for the ordinary men, in ages of
+weariness and fatigue, there is, as some one has said, another Feminine,
+just as eternal, who drags them down. This other Feminine was the mistress
+of Parisian thought, the Queen of the Republic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe closely observed the Parisian women at the houses at which
+Sylvain Kohn's introduction or his own skill at the piano had made him
+welcome. Like most foreigners, he generalized freely and unsparingly about
+French women from the two or three types he had met: young women, not very
+tall, and not at all fresh, with neat figures, dyed hair, large hats on
+their pretty heads that were a little too large for their bodies: they had
+trim features, but their faces were just a little too fleshy: good noses,
+vulgar sometimes, characterless always: quick eyes without any great depth,
+which they tried to make as brilliant and large as possible: well-cut lips
+that were perfectly under control: plump little chins; and the lower part
+of their faces revealed their utter materialism; they were elegant little
+creatures who, amid all their preoccupations with love and intrigue, never
+lost sight of public opinion and their domestic affairs. They were pretty,
+but they belonged to no race. In all these polite ladies there was the
+savor of the respectable woman perverted, or wanting to be so, together
+with all the traditions of her class; prudence, economy, coldness,
+practical common sense, egoism. A poor sort of life. A desire for pleasure
+emanating rather from a cerebral curiosity than from a need of the senses.
+Their will was mediocre in quality, but firm. They were very well dressed,
+and had little automatic gestures. They were always patting their hair
+or their gowns with the backs or the palms of their hands, with little
+delicate movements. And they always managed to sit so that they could
+admire themselves--and watch other women--in a mirror, near or far, not to
+mention, at tea or dinner, the spoons, knives, silver coffee-pots, polished
+and shining, in which they always peeped at the reflections of their faces,
+which were more interesting to them than anything or anybody else. At meals
+they dieted sternly: drinking water and depriving themselves altogether of
+any food that might stand in the way of their ideal of a complexion of a
+floury whiteness.
+
+There was a fairly large proportion of Jewesses among Christophe's
+acquaintance: and he was always attracted by them, although, since his
+encounter with Judith Mannheim, he had hardly any illusions about them.
+Sylvain Kohn had introduced him to several Jewish houses where he was
+received with the usual intelligence of the race, which loves intelligence.
+Christophe met financiers there, engineers, newspaper proprietors,
+international brokers, slave-dealers of a sort from Algiers--the men of
+affairs of the Republic. They were clear-headed and energetic, indifferent
+to other people, smiling, affable, and secretive. Christophe felt sometimes
+that behind their hard faces was the knowledge of crime in the past, and
+the future, of these men gathered round the sumptuous table laden with
+food, flowers, and wine. They were almost all ugly. But the women, taken
+as a whole, were quite brilliant, though it did not do to look at them too
+closely: in most of them there was a want of subtlety in their coloring.
+But brilliance there was, and a fair show of material life, beautiful
+shoulders generously exposed to view, and a genius for making their beauty
+and even their ugliness a lure for the men. An artist would have recognized
+in some of them the old Roman type, the women of the time of Nero, down
+to the time of Hadrian. And there were Palmaesque faces, with a sensual
+expression, heavy chins solidly modeled with the neck, and not without a
+certain bestial beauty. Some of them had thick curly hair, and bold, fiery
+eyes: they seemed to be subtle, incisive, ready for everything, more virile
+than other women. And also more feminine. Here and there a more spiritual
+profile would stand out. Those pure features came from beyond Rome, from
+the East, the country of Laban: there was expressed in them the poetry of
+silence, of the Desert. But when Christophe went nearer, and listened to
+the conversations between Rebecca and Faustina the Roman, or Saint Barbe
+the Venetian, he found her to be just a Parisian Jewess, just like the
+others, even more Parisian than the Parisian women, more artificial and
+sophisticated, talking quietly, and maliciously stripping the assembled
+company, body and soul, with her Madonna's eyes.
+
+Christophe wandered from group to group, but could identify himself with
+none of them. The men talked savagely of hunting, brutally of love, and
+only of money with any sort of real appreciation. And that was cold and
+cunning. They talked business in the smoking-room. Christophe heard some
+one say of a certain fop who was sauntering from one lady to another, with
+a buttonhole in his coat, oozing heavy compliments:
+
+"So! He is free again?"
+
+In a corner of the room two ladies were talking of the love-affairs of a
+young actress and a society woman. There was occasional music. Christophe
+was asked to play. Large women, breathless and heavily perspiring,
+declaimed in an apocalyptic tone verses of Sully-Prudhomme or Auguste
+Dorchain. A famous actor solemnly recited a _Mystic Ballad_ to the
+accompaniment of an American organ. Words and music were so stupid that
+they turned Christophe sick. But the Roman women were delighted, and
+laughed heartily to show their magnificent teeth. Scenes from Ibsen were
+performed. It was a fine epilogue to the struggle of a great man against
+the Pillars of Society that it should be used for their diversion!
+
+And then they all began, of course, to prattle about art. That was
+horrible. The women especially began to talk of Ibsen, Wagner, Tolstoy,
+flirtatiously, politely, boredly, or idiotically. Once the conversation had
+started, there was no stopping it. The disease was contagious. Christophe
+had to listen to the ideas of bankers, brokers, and slave-dealers on art.
+In vain did he refuse to speak or try to turn the conversation: they
+insisted on talking about music and poetry. As Berlioz said: "Such people
+use the words quite coolly: just as though they were talking of wine,
+women, or some such trash." An alienist physician recognized one of his
+patients in an Ibsen heroine, though to his way of thinking she was
+infinitely more silly. An engineer quite sincerely declared that the
+husband was the sympathetic character in the _Doll's House_. The famous
+actor--a well-known Comedian--brayed his profound ideas on Nietzsche
+and Carlyle: he assured Christophe that he could not see a picture of
+Velasquez--(the idol of the hour)--"without the tears coursing down his
+cheeks." And he confided--still to Christophe's private ear--that, though
+he esteemed art very highly, yet he esteemed still more highly the art of
+living, acting, and that if he were asked to choose what part he would
+play, it would be that of Bismarck.... Sometimes there would be of the
+company a professed wit, but the level of the conversation was not
+appreciably higher for that. Generally they said nothing; they confined
+themselves to a jerky remark or an enigmatic smile: they lived on their
+reputations, and were saved further trouble. But there were a few
+professional talkers, generally from the South. They talked about anything
+and everything. They had no sense of proportion: everything came alike
+to them. One was a Shakespeare. Another a Molière. Another a Pascal, if
+not a Jesus Christ. They compared Ibsen with Dumas _fils_, Tolstoy with
+George Sand: and the gist of it all was that everything came from France.
+Generally they were ignorant of foreign languages. But that did not disturb
+them. It mattered so little to their audience whether they told the truth
+or not! What did matter was that they should say amusing things, things as
+flattering as possible to national vanity. Foreigners had to put up with
+a good deal--with the exception of the idol of the hour: for there was
+always a fashionable idol: Grieg, or Wagner, or Nietzsche, or Gorki, or
+D'Annunzio. It never lasted long, and the idol was certain one fine morning
+to be thrown on to the rubbish-heap.
+
+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. Thus, when they saw Beethoven in
+popular favor, the most distinguished musicians began to discover that he
+was not distinguished enough for them: they claimed to lead opinion, not to
+follow it: and rather than be in agreement with it they turned their backs
+on it. They began to regard Beethoven as a man afflicted with deafness,
+crying in a voice of bitterness: and some of them declared that he might be
+an excellent moralist, but that he was certainly overpraised as a musician.
+That sort of joke was not at all to Christophe's taste. Still less did he
+like the enthusiasm of polite society. 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. Christophe watched and listened. He ground his teeth to keep
+himself from saying anything outrageous. He was on tenterhooks the whole
+evening. He could not talk, nor could he keep silent. It seemed to him
+humiliating and shameful to talk neither for pleasure nor from necessity,
+but out of politeness, because he had to talk. He was not allowed to say
+what he thought, and it was impossible for him to make conversation. And
+he did not even know how to be polite without talking. If he looked at
+anybody, he glared too fixedly and intently: in spite of himself he studied
+that person, and that person was offended. If he spoke at all, he believed
+too much in what he was saying; and that was disturbing for everybody, and
+even for himself. He quite admitted that he was out of his element: and, as
+he was clever enough to sound the general note of the company, in which his
+presence was a discord, he was as upset by his manners as his hosts. He was
+angry with himself and with them.
+
+When, at last he stood in the street once more, very late at night, he was
+so worn out with the boredom of it all that he could hardly drag himself
+home: he wanted to lie down just where he was, in the street, as he had
+done many times when he was returning as a boy from his performances at the
+Palace of the Grand Duke. Although he had only five or six francs to take
+him to the end of the week, he spent two of them on a cab. He flung himself
+into it the more quickly to escape: and as he drove along he groaned aloud
+from sheer exhaustion. When he reached home and got to bed, he groaned in
+his sleep.... And then, suddenly, he roared with laughter as he remembered
+some ridiculous saying. He woke up repeating it, and imitating the features
+of the speaker. Next day, and for several days after, as he walked about,
+he would suddenly bellow like a bull.... Why did he visit these people?
+Why did he go on visiting them? Why force himself to gesticulate and make
+faces, like the rest, and pretend to be interested in things that did not
+appeal to him in the very least? Was it true that he was not in the least
+interested? A year ago he would not have been able to put up with them for
+a moment. Now, at heart, he was amused by it all, while at the same time it
+exasperated him. Was a little of the indifference of the Parisians creeping
+over him? He would sometimes wonder fearfully whether he had lost strength.
+But, in truth, he had gained in strength. He was more free in mind in
+strange surroundings. In spite of himself, his eyes were opened to the
+great Comedy of the world.
+
+Besides, whether he liked it or not, he had to go on with it if he wanted
+his art to be recognized by Parisian society, which is only interested in
+art in so far as it knows the artist. And he had to make himself known if
+he were to find among these Philistines the pupils necessary to keep him
+alive.
+
+And, then, Christophe had a heart: his heart must have affection: wherever
+he might be, there he would find food for his affections: without it he
+could not live.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the few girls of that class of society--few enough--whom Christophe
+taught, was the daughter of a rich motor-car manufacturer, Colette
+Stevens. Her father was a Belgian, a naturalized Frenchman, the son
+of an Anglo-American settled at Antwerp, and a Dutchwoman. Her mother
+was an Italian. A regular Parisian family. To Christophe--and to many
+others--Colette Stevens was the type of French girl.
+
+She was eighteen, and had velvety, soft black eyes, which she used
+skilfully upon young men--regular Spanish eyes, with enormous pupils; a
+rather long and fantastic nose, which wrinkled up and moved at the tip as
+she talked, with little fractious pouts and shrugs; rebellious hair; a
+pretty little face, rather sallow complexion, dabbed with powder; heavy,
+rather thick features: altogether she was like a plump kitten.
+
+She was slight, very well dressed, attractive, provoking: she had sly,
+affected, rather silly manners: her pose was that of a little girl, and she
+would sit rocking her chair for hours at a time, and giving little
+exclamations like: "No? Impossible...."
+
+At meals she would clap her hands when there was a dish she loved: in the
+drawing-room she would smoke cigarette after cigarette, and, when there
+were men present, display an exuberant affection for her girl-friends,
+flinging her arms round their necks, kissing their hands, whispering
+in their ears, making ingenuous and naughty remarks, doing it most
+brilliantly, in a soft, twittering voice; and in the lightest possible way
+she would say improper things, without seeming to do more than hint at
+them, and was even more skilful in provoking them from others; she had the
+ingenuous air of a little girl, who knows perfectly well what she is about,
+with her large brilliant eyes, slyly and voluptuously looking sidelong,
+maliciously taking in all the gossip, and catching at all the dubious
+remarks of the conversation, and all the time angling for hearts.
+
+All these tricks and shows, and her sophisticated ingenuity, were not at
+all to Christophe's liking. He had better things to do than to lend himself
+to the practices of an artful little girl, and did not even care to look
+on at them for his amusement. He had to earn his living, to keep his life
+and ideas from death. He had no interest in these drawing-room parakeets
+beyond the gaining of a livelihood. In return for their money, he gave them
+lessons, conscientiously concentrating all his energies on the task, to
+keep the boredom of it from mastering him, and his attention from being
+distracted by the tricks of his pupils when they were coquettes, like
+Colette Stevens. He paid no more attention to her than to Colette's little
+cousin, a child of twelve, shy and silent, whom the Stevens had adopted, to
+whom also Christophe gave lessons on the piano.
+
+But Colette was too clever not to feel that all her charms were lost on
+Christophe, and too adroit not to adapt herself at once to his character.
+She did not even need to do so deliberately. It was a natural instinct with
+her. She was a woman. She was like water, formless. The soul of every man
+she met was a vessel, whose form she took immediately out of curiosity. It
+was a law of her existence that she should always be some one else. Her
+whole personality was for ever shifting. She was for ever changing her
+vessel.
+
+Christophe attracted her for many reasons, the chief of which was that he
+was not attracted by her. He attracted her also because he was different
+from all the young men of her acquaintance: she had never tried to pour
+herself into a vessel of such a rugged form. And, finally, he attracted
+her, because, being naturally and by inheritance expert in the valuation at
+the first glance of men and vessels, she knew perfectly well that what he
+lacked in polish Christophe made up in a solidity of character which none
+of her smart young Parisians could offer her.
+
+She played as well and as badly as most idle young women. She played a
+great deal and very little--that is to say, that she was always working at
+it, but knew nothing at all about it. She strummed on her piano all day
+long, for want of anything else to do, or from affectation, or because it
+gave her pleasure. Sometimes she rattled along mechanically. Sometimes she
+would play well, very well, with taste and soul--(it was almost as though
+she had a soul: but, as a matter of fact, she only borrowed one). Before
+she knew Christophe, she was capable of liking Massenet, Grieg, Thomé. But
+after she met Christophe she ceased to like them. Then she played Bach and
+Beethoven very correctly--(which is not very high praise): but the great
+thing was that she loved them. At bottom it was not Beethoven, nor Thomé,
+nor Bach, nor Grieg that she loved, but the notes, the sounds, the fingers
+running over the keys, the thrills she got from the chords which tickled
+her nerves and made her wriggle with pleasure.
+
+In the drawing-room of the great house, decorated with faded tapestry, and
+on an easel in the middle room, a portrait of the stout Madame Stevens by
+a fashionable painter who had represented her in a languishing attitude,
+like a flower dying for want of water, with a die-away expression in her
+eyes, and her body draped in impossible curves, by way of expressing the
+rare quality of her millionaire soul--in the great drawing-room, with
+its bow-windows looking on to a clump of old trees powdered with snow,
+Christophe would find Colette sitting at her piano, repeating the
+same passage over and over again, delighting her ear with mellifluous
+dissonance.
+
+"Ah!" Christophe would say as he entered, "the cat is still purring!"
+
+"How wicked of you!" she would laugh.... (And she would hold out her soft
+little hand.)
+
+"... Listen. Isn't it pretty?"
+
+"Very pretty," he would say indifferently.
+
+"You aren't listening!... Will you please listen?"
+
+"I am listening.... It's the same thing over and over again."
+
+"Ah! you are no musician," she would say pettishly.
+
+"As if that were music or anything like it!"
+
+"What! Not music!... What is it, then, if you please?"
+
+"You know quite well: I won't tell you, because it would not be polite."
+
+"All the more reason why you should say it."
+
+"You want me to?... So much the worse for you!... Well, do you know what
+you are doing with your piano?... You are flirting with it."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Certainly. You say to it: 'Dear piano, dear piano, say pretty things to
+me; kiss me; give me just one little kiss!'"
+
+"You need not say any more," said Colette, half vexed, half laughing. "You
+haven't the least idea of respect."
+
+"Not the least."
+
+"You are impertinent.... And then, even if it were so, isn't that the right
+way to love music?"
+
+"Oh, come, don't mix music up with that."
+
+"But that is music! A beautiful chord is a kiss."
+
+"I never told you that."
+
+"But isn't it true?... Why do you shrug your shoulders and make faces?"
+
+"Because it annoys me."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"It annoys me to hear music spoken of as though it were a sort of
+indulgence.... Oh, it isn't your fault. It's the fault of the world you
+live in. The stale society in which you live regards music as a sort of
+legitimate vice.... Come, sit down! Play me your sonata."
+
+"No. Let us talk a little longer."
+
+"I'm not here to talk. I'm here to teach you the piano.... Come, play
+away!"
+
+"You're so rude!" said Colette, rather vexed--but at heart delighted to be
+handled so roughly.
+
+She played her piece carefully: and, as she was clever, she succeeded
+fairly well, and sometimes even very well. Christophe, who was not
+deceived, laughed inwardly at the skill "of the little beast, who played
+as though she felt what she was playing, while really she felt nothing
+at all." And yet he had a sort of amused sympathy for her. Colette, on
+her part, seized every excuse for going on with the conversation, which
+interested her much more than her lesson. It was no good Christophe drawing
+back on the excuse that he could not say what he thought without hurting
+her feelings: she always wheedled it out of him: and the more insulting it
+was, the less she was hurt by it: it was an amusement for her. But, as she
+was quick enough to see that Christophe liked nothing so much as sincerity,
+she would contradict him flatly, and argue tenaciously They would part very
+good friends.
+
+However, Christophe would never have had the least illusion about their
+friendship, and there would never have been the smallest intimacy between
+them, had not Colette one day taken it into her head, out of sheer
+instinctive coquetry, to confide in him.
+
+The evening before her parents had given an At Home. She had laughed,
+chattered, flirted outrageously: but next morning, when Christophe came for
+her lesson, she was worn out, drawn-looking, gray-faced, and haggard. She
+hardly spoke: she seemed utterly depressed. She sat at the piano, played
+softly, made mistakes, tried to correct them, made them again, stopped
+short, and said:
+
+"I can't.... Please forgive me.... Please wait a little...."
+
+He asked if she were unwell. She said: "No.... She was out of sorts.... She
+had bouts of it.... It was absurd, but he must not mind."
+
+He proposed to go away and come again another day: but she insisted on his
+staying:
+
+"Just a moment.... I shall be all right presently.... It's silly of me,
+isn't it?"
+
+He felt that she was not her usual self: but he did not question her: and,
+to turn the conversation, he said:
+
+"That's what comes of having been so brilliant last night. You took too
+much out of yourself."
+
+She smiled a little ironically.
+
+"One can't say the same of you," she replied.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I don't believe you said a word," she went on.
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"But there were interesting people there."
+
+"Oh yes. All sorts of lights and famous people, all talking at once. But
+I'm lost among all your boneless Frenchmen who understand everything, and
+explain everything, and excuse everything--and feel nothing at all. People
+who talk for hours together about art and love! Isn't it revolting?"
+
+"But you ought to be interested in art if not in love."
+
+"One doesn't talk about these things: one does them."
+
+"But when one cannot do them?" said Colette, pouting.
+
+Christophe replied with a laugh:
+
+"Well, leave it to others. Everybody is not fit for art."
+
+"Nor for love?"
+
+"Nor for love."
+
+"How awful! What is left for us?"
+
+"Housekeeping."
+
+"Thanks," said Colette, rather annoyed. She turned to the piano and began
+again, made mistakes, thumped the keyboard, and moaned:
+
+"I can't!... I'm no good at all. I believe you are right. Women aren't any
+good."
+
+"It's something to be able to say so," said Christophe genially.
+
+She looked at him rather sheepishly, like a little girl who has been
+scolded, and said:
+
+"Don't be so hard."
+
+"I'm not saying anything hard about good women," replied Christophe gaily.
+"A good woman is Paradise on earth. Only, Paradise on earth...."
+
+"I know. No one has ever seen it."
+
+"I'm not so pessimistic. I say only that I have never seen it: but that's
+no reason why it should not exist. I'm determined to find it, if it does
+exist. But it is not easy. A good woman and a man of genius are equally
+rare."
+
+"And all the other men and women don't count?"
+
+"On the contrary, it is only they who count--for the world."
+
+"But for you?"
+
+"For me, they don't exist."
+
+"You _are_ hard," repeated Colette.
+
+"A little. Somebody has to be hard, if only in the interest of the
+others!... If there weren't a few pebbles here and there in the world, the
+whole thing would go to pulp."
+
+"Yes. You are right. It is a good thing for you that you are strong," said
+Colette sadly. "But you must not be too hard on men,--and especially on
+women who aren't strong.... You don't know how terrible our weakness is to
+us. Because you see us flirting, and laughing, and doing silly things, you
+think we never dream of anything else, and you despise us. Ah! if you could
+see all that goes on in the minds of the girls of from fifteen to eighteen
+as they go out into society, and have the sort of success that comes
+to their youth and freshness--when they have danced, and talked smart
+nonsense, and said bitter things at which people laugh because they laugh,
+when they have given themselves to imbeciles, and sought in vain in their
+eyes the light that is nowhere to be found,--if you could see them in their
+rooms at night, in silence, alone, kneeling in agony to pray!..."
+
+"Is it possible?" said Christophe, altogether amazed. "What! you, too, have
+suffered?"
+
+Colette did not reply: but tears came to her eyes. She tried to smile and
+held out her hand to Christophe: he grasped it warmly.
+
+"What would you have us do? There is nothing to do. You men can free
+yourselves and do what you like. But we are bound for ever and ever within
+the narrow circle of the duties and pleasures of society: we cannot break
+free."
+
+"There is nothing to prevent your freeing yourselves, finding some work you
+like, and winning your independence just as we do."
+
+"As you do? Poor Monsieur Krafft! Your work is not so very certain!... But
+at least you like your work. But what sort of work can we do? There isn't
+any that we could find interesting--for, I know, we dabble in all sorts
+of things, and pretend to be interested in a heap of things that do not
+concern us: we do so want to be interested in something! I do what the
+others do. I do charitable work and sit on social work committees. I go
+to lectures at the Sorbonne by Bergson and Jules Lemaître, historical
+concerts, classical matinées, and I take notes and notes.... I never know
+what I am writing!... and I try to persuade myself that I am absorbed by
+it, or at least that it is useful. Ah! but I know that it is not true.
+I know that I don't care a bit, and that I am bored by it all!... Don't
+despise me because I tell you frankly what everybody thinks in secret I'm
+no sillier than the rest. But what use are philosophy, history, and science
+to me? As for art,--you see,--I strum and daub and make messy little
+water-color sketches;--but is that enough to fill a woman's life? There is
+only one end to our life: marriage. But do you think there is much fun in
+marrying this or that young man whom I know as well as you do? I see them
+as they are. I am not fortunate enough to be like your German Gretchens,
+who can always create an illusion for themselves.... That is terrible,
+isn't it? To look around and see girls who have married and their husbands,
+and to think that one will have to do as they have done, be cramped in body
+and mind, and become dull like them!... One needs to be stoical, I tell
+you, to accept such a life with such obligations. All women are not capable
+of it.... And time passes, the years go by, youth fades: and yet there were
+lovely things and good things in us--all useless, for day by day they die,
+and one has to surrender them to the fools and people whom one despises,
+people who will despise oneself!... And nobody understands! One would
+think that we were sphinxes. One can forgive the men who find us dull and
+strange! But the women ought to understand us! They have been like us: they
+have only to look back and remember.... But no. There is no help from them.
+Even our mothers ignore us, and actually try not to know what we are. They
+only try to get us married. For the rest, they say, live, die, do as you
+like! Society absolutely abandons us."
+
+"Don't lose heart," said Christophe. "Every one has to face the experience
+of life all over again. If you are brave, it will be all right. Look
+outside your own circle. There must be a few honest men in France."
+
+"There are. I know. But they are so tedious!... And then, I tell you, I
+detest the circle in which I live: but I don't think I could live outside
+it, now. It has become a habit. I need a certain degree of comfort, certain
+refinements of luxury and comfort, which, no doubt, money alone cannot
+provide, though it is an indispensable factor. That sounds pretty poor, I
+know. But I know myself: I am weak.... Please, please, don't draw away from
+me because I tell you of my cowardice. Be kind and listen to me. It helps
+me so to talk to you! I feel that you are strong and sound: I have such
+confidence in you. Will you be my friend?"
+
+"Gladly," said Christophe. "But what can I do?"
+
+"Listen to me, advise me, give me courage. I am often so depressed! And
+then I don't know what to do. I say to myself: 'What is the good of
+fighting? What's the good of tormenting myself? One way or the other, what
+does it matter? Nothing and nobody matters!' That is a dreadful condition
+to be in. I don't want to get like that. Help me. Help me."
+
+She looked utterly downcast; she looked older by ten years: she looked at
+Christophe with abject, imploring eyes. He promised what she asked. Then
+she revived, smiled, and was gay once more.
+
+And in the evening she was laughing and flirting as usual.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thereafter they had many intimate conversations. They were alone together:
+she confided in him: he tried hard to understand and advise her: she
+listened to his advice, or, if necessary, to his remonstrances, gravely,
+attentively, like a good little girl: it was a distraction, an interest,
+even a support for her: she thanked him coquettishly with a depth of
+feeling in her eyes.--But her life was changed in nothing: it was only a
+distraction the more.
+
+Her day was passed in a succession of metamorphoses. She got up very late,
+about midday, after a sleepless night: for she rarely went to sleep before
+dawn. All day long she did nothing. She would vaguely call to mind a poem,
+an idea, a scrap of an idea, or a face that had pleased her. She was never
+quite awake until about four or five in the afternoon. Till then her
+eyelids were heavy, her face was puffy, and she was sulky and sleepy. She
+would revive on the arrival of a few girl-friends as talkative as herself,
+and all sharing the same interest in the gossip of Paris. They chattered
+endlessly about love. The psychology of love: that was the unfailing topic,
+mixed up with dress, the indiscretions of others, and scandal. She had also
+a circle of idle young men to whom it was necessary to spend three hours a
+day among skirts: they ought to have worn them really, for they had the
+souls and the conversation of girls. Christophe had his hour as her
+confessor. At once Colette would become serious and intense. She was like
+the young Frenchwoman, of whom Bodley speaks, who, at the confessional,
+"developed a calmly prepared essay, a model of clarity and order, in
+which everything that was to be said was properly arranged in distinct
+categories."--And after that she flung herself once more into the business
+of amusement. As the day went on she grew younger. In the evening she went
+to the theater: and there was the eternal pleasure of recognizing the same
+eternal faces in the audience:--her pleasure lay not in the play that was
+performed, but in the actors whom she knew, whose familiar mannerisms she
+remarked once more. And she exchanged spiteful remarks with the people who
+came to see her in her box about the people in the other boxes and about
+the actresses. The _ingénue_ was said to have a thin voice "like sour
+mayonnaise," or the great comédienne was dressed "like a lampshade."--Or
+else she went out to a party: and there the pleasure, for a pretty girl
+like Colette, lay in being seen:--(but there were bad days: nothing is
+more capricious than good looks in Paris):--and she renewed her store of
+criticisms of people, and their dresses, and their physical defects. There
+was no conversation.--She would go home late, and take her time about going
+to bed (that was the time when she was most awake). She would dawdle about
+her dressing-table: skim through a book: laugh to herself at the memory of
+something said or done. She was bored and very unhappy. She could not go to
+sleep, and in the night there would come frightful moments of despair.
+
+Christophe, who only saw Colette for a few hours at intervals, and could
+only be present at a few of these transformations, found it difficult to
+understand her at all. He wondered when she was sincere,--or if she were
+always sincere--or if she were never sincere. Colette herself could not
+have told him. Like most girls who are idle and circumscribed in their
+desires, she was in darkness. She did not know what she was, because she
+did not know what she wanted, because she could not know what she wanted
+without having tried it. She would try it, after her fashion, with the
+maximum of liberty and the minimum of risk, trying to copy the people about
+her and to take their moral measure. She was in no hurry to choose. She
+would have liked to try everything, and turn everything to account.
+
+But that did not work with a friend like Christophe. He was perfectly
+willing to allow her to prefer people whom he did not admire, even people
+whom he despised: but he would not suffer her to put him on the same level
+with them. Everybody to his own taste: but at least let everybody have his
+own taste.
+
+He was the less inclined to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take
+a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely
+to exasperate Christophe: disgusting little snobs, most of them wealthy,
+all of them idle, or jobbed into a sinecure in some government
+office--which amounts to the same thing. They all wrote--or pretended to
+write. That was an itch of the Third Republic. It was a sort of indolent
+vanity,--intellectual work being the hardest of all to control, and most
+easily lending itself to the game of bluff. They never gave more than a
+discreet, though respectful hint, of their great labors. They seemed to be
+convinced of the importance of their work, staggering under the weight of
+it. At first Christophe was a little embarrassed by the fact that he had
+never heard of them or their works. He tried bashfully to ask about them:
+he was especially anxious to know what one of them had written, a young
+man who was declared by the others to be a master of the theater. He was
+surprised to hear that this great dramatist had written a one-act play
+taken from a novel, which had been pieced together from a number of short
+stories, or, rather, sketches, which he had published in one of the
+Reviews during the past ten years. The baggage of the others was not more
+considerable: a few one-act plays, a few short stories, a few verses. Some
+of them had won fame with an article, others with a book "which they were
+going to write." They professed scorn for long-winded books. They seemed
+to attach extreme importance to the handling of words. And yet the word
+"thought" frequently occurred in their conversation: but it did not seem
+to have the same meaning as is usually given to it: they applied it to the
+details of style. However, there were among them great thinkers, and great
+ironists, who, when they wrote, printed their subtle and profound remarks
+in _italics_, so that there might be no mistake.
+
+They all had the cult of the letter _I_: it was the only cult they had.
+They tried to proselytize. But, unfortunately, other people were
+subscribers to the cult. They were always conscious of their audience in
+their way of speaking, walking, smoking, reading a paper, carrying their
+heads, looking, bowing to each other.--Such players' tricks are natural to
+young people, and the more insignificant--that is to say, unoccupied--they
+are, the stronger hold do they have on them. They are more especially
+paraded before women: for they covet women, and long--even more--to be
+coveted by them. But even on a chance meeting they will trot out their bag
+of tricks: even for a passer-by from whom they can expect only a glance of
+amazement. Christophe often came across these young strutting peacocks:
+budding painters, and musicians, art-students who modeled their appearance
+on some famous portrait: Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Beethoven; or
+fitted it to the parts they wish to play: painter, musician, workman, the
+profound thinker, the jolly fellow, the Danubian peasant, the natural
+man.... They were always on the lookout to see if they were attracting
+attention. When Christophe met them in the street he took a malicious
+pleasure in looking the other way and ignoring them. But their discomfiture
+never lasted long: a yard or so farther on they would start strutting for
+the next comer.--But the young men of Colette's little circle were rather
+more subtle: their coxcombry was mental: they had two or three models, who
+were not themselves original. Or else they would mimic an idea: Force, Joy,
+Pity, Solidarity, Socialism, Anarchism, Faith, Liberty: all these were
+parts for their playing. They were horribly clever in making the dearest
+and rarest thoughts mere literary stuff, and in degrading the most heroic
+impulses of the human soul to the level of drawing-room commodities,
+fashionable neckties.
+
+But in love they were altogether in their element: that was their special
+province. The casuistry of pleasure had no secrets for them: they were
+so clever that they could invent new problems so as to have the honor
+of solving them. That has always been the occupation of people who have
+nothing else to do: in default of love, they "make love": above all, they
+explain it. Their notes took up far more room than their text, which, as
+a matter of fact, was very short. Sociology gave a relish to the most
+scabrous thoughts: everything was sheltered beneath the flag of sociology:
+though they might have had pleasure in indulging their vices, there would
+have been something lacking if they had not persuaded themselves that they
+were laboring in the cause of the new world. That was an eminently Parisian
+sort of socialism: erotic socialism.
+
+Among the problems that were then exercising the little Court of Love was
+the equality of men and women in marriage, and their respective rights
+in love. There had been young men, honest, protestant, and rather
+ridiculous,--Scandinavians and Swiss--who had based equality on virtue:
+saying that men should come to marriage as chaste as women. The Parisian
+casuists looked for another sort of equality, an equality based on loss
+of virtue, saying that women should come to marriage as besmirched as
+men,--the right to take lovers. The Parisians had carried adultery, in
+imagination and practice, to such a pitch that they were beginning to find
+it rather insipid: and in the world of letters attempts were being made to
+support it by a new invention: the prostitution of young girls,--I mean
+regularized, universal, virtuous, decent, domestic, and, above all, social
+prostitution.--There had just appeared a book on the question, full of
+talent, which apparently said all there was to be said: through four
+hundred pages of playful pedantry, "strictly in accordance with the rules
+of the Baconian method," it dealt with the "best method of controlling
+the relations of the sexes." It was a lecture on free love, full of talk
+about manners, propriety, good taste, nobility, beauty, truth, modesty,
+morality,--a regular Berquin for young girls who wanted to go wrong.--It
+was, for the moment, the Gospel in which Colette's little court rejoiced,
+while they paraphrased it. It goes without saying, that, like all
+disciples, they discarded all the justice, observation, and even humanity
+that lay behind the paradox, and only retained the evil in it. They
+plucked all the most poisonous flowers from the little bed of sweetened
+blossoms,--aphorisms of this sort: "The taste for pleasure can only sharpen
+the taste for work":--"It is monstrous that a girl should become a mother
+before she has tasted the sweets of life."--"To have had the love of a
+worthy and pure-souled man as a girl is the natural preparation of a woman
+for a wise and considered motherhood":--"Mothers," said this author,
+"should organize the lives of their daughters with the same delicacy and
+decency with which they control the liberty of their sons."--"The time
+would come when girls would return as naturally from their lovers as now
+they return from a walk or from taking tea with a friend."
+
+Colette laughingly declared that such teaching was very reasonable.
+
+Christophe had a horror of it. He exaggerated its importance and the evil
+that it might do. The French are too clever to bring their literature into
+practice. These Diderots in miniature are, in ordinary life, like the
+genial Panurge of the encyclopedia, honest citizens, not really a whit less
+timorous than the rest. It is precisely because they are so timid in action
+that they amuse themselves with carrying action (in thought) to the limit
+of possibility. It is a game without any risk.
+
+But Christophe was not a French dilettante.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the young men of Colette's circle, there was one whom she seemed to
+prefer, and, of course, he was the most objectionable of all to Christophe.
+
+He was one of those young parvenus of the second generation who form an
+aristocracy of letters, and are the patricians of the Third Republic. His
+name was Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He had quick eyes, set wide apart, an aquiline
+nose, a fair Van Dyck beard clipped to a point: he was prematurely bald,
+which did not become him: and he had a silky voice, elegant manners, and
+fine soft hands, which he was always rubbing together. He always affected
+an excessive politeness, an exaggerated courtesy, even with people he did
+not like, and even when he was bent on snubbing them.
+
+Christophe had met him before at the literary dinner, to which he was taken
+by Sylvain Kohn: and though they had not spoken to each other, the sound of
+Lévy-Coeur's voice had been enough to rouse a dislike which he could not
+explain, and he was not to discover the reason for it until much later.
+There are sudden outbursts of love; and so there are of hate,--or--(to
+avoid hurting those tender souls who are afraid of the word as of every
+passion)--let us call it the instinct of health scenting the enemy, and
+mounting guard against him.
+
+Lévy-Coeur was exactly the opposite of Christophe, and represented the
+spirit of irony and decay which fastened gently, politely, inexorably,
+on all the great things that were left of the dying society: the family,
+marriage, religion, patriotism: in art, on everything that was manly, pure,
+healthy, of the people: faith in ideas, feelings, great men, in Man. Behind
+that mode of thought there was only the mechanical pleasure of analysis,
+analysis pushed to extremes, a sort of animal desire to nibble at thought,
+the instinct of a worm. And side by side with that ideal of intellectual
+nibbling was a girlish sensuality, the sensuality of a blue-stocking: for
+to Lévy-Coeur everything became literature. Everything was literary copy
+to him: his own adventures, his vices and the vices of his friends. He had
+written novels and plays in which, with much talent, he described the
+private life of his relations, and their most intimate adventures, and
+those of his friends, his own, his _liaisons_, among others one with the
+wife of his best friend: the portraits were well-drawn: everybody praised
+them, the public, the wife, and his friend. It was impossible for him to
+gain the confidence or the favors of a woman without putting them into a
+book.--One would have thought that his indiscretions would have produced
+strained relations with his "friends." But there Was nothing of the kind;
+they were hardly more than a little embarrassed: they protested as a matter
+of form: but at heart they were delighted at being held up to the public
+gaze, _en déshabille_: so long as their faces were masked, their modesty
+was undisturbed. But there was never any spirit of vengeance, or even of
+scandal, in his tale-telling. He was no worse a man or lover than the
+majority. In the very chapters in which he exposed his father and mother
+and his mistress, he would write of them with a poetic tenderness and
+charm. He was really extremely affectionate: but he was one of those men
+who have no need to respect when they love: quite the contrary: they rather
+love those whom they can despise a little: that makes the object of their
+affection seem nearer to them and more human. Such men are of all the
+least capable of understanding heroism and purity. They are not far from
+considering them lies or weakness of mind. It goes without saying that such
+men are convinced that they understand better than anybody else the heroes
+of art whom they judge with a patronizing familiarity.
+
+He got on excellently well with the young women of the rich, idle
+middle-class. He was a companion for them, a sort of depraved servant, only
+more free and confidential, who gave them instruction and roused their
+envy. They had hardly any constraint with him: and, with the lamp of Psyche
+in their hands, they made a careful study of the hermaphrodite, and he
+suffered them.
+
+Christophe could not understand how a girl like Colette, who seemed to have
+so refined a nature and a touching eagerness to escape from the degrading
+round of her life, could find pleasure in such company. Christophe was
+no psychologist. Lucien Lévy-Coeur could easily beat him on that score.
+Christophe was Colette's confidant: but Colette was the confidante of
+Lucien Lévy-Coeur. That gave him a great advantage. It is very pleasant to
+a woman to feel that she has to deal with a man weaker than herself. She
+finds food in it at once for her lower and higher instincts: her maternal
+instinct is touched by it. Lucien Lévy-Coeur knew that perfectly: one of
+the surest means of touching a woman's heart is to sound that mysterious
+chord. But in addition, Colette felt that she was weak, and cowardly, and
+possessed of instincts of which she was not proud, though she was not
+inclined to deny them. It pleased her to allow herself to be persuaded by
+the audacious and nicely calculated confessions of her friend that others
+were just the same, and that human nature must be taken for what it is. And
+so she gave herself the satisfaction of not resisting inclinations that
+she found very agreeable, and the luxury of saying that it must be so,
+and that it was wise not to rebel and to be indulgent with what one could
+not--"alas!"--prevent. There was a wisdom in that, the practice of which
+contained no element of pain.
+
+For any one who can envisage life with serenity, there is a peculiar relish
+in remarking the perpetual contrast which exists in the very bosom of
+society between the extreme refinement of apparent civilization and its
+fundamental animalism. In every gathering that does not consist only of
+fossils and petrified souls, there are, as it were, two conversational
+strata, one above the other: one--which everybody can hear--between mind
+and mind: the other--of which very few are conscious, though it is the
+greater of the two--between instinct and instinct, the beast in man and
+woman. Often these two strata of conversation are contradictory. While mind
+and mind are passing the small change of convention, body and body say:
+Desire, Aversion, or, more often: Curiosity, Boredom, Disgust. The beast in
+man and woman, though tamed by centuries of civilization, and as cowed as
+the wretched lions in the tamer's cage, is always thinking of its food.
+
+But Christophe had not yet reached that disinterestedness which comes only
+with age and the death of the passions. He had taken himself very seriously
+as adviser to Colette. She had asked for his help: and he saw her in the
+lightness of her heart exposed to danger. So he made no effort to conceal
+his dislike of Lucien Lévy-Coeur, At first that gentleman maintained
+towards Christophe an irreproachable and ironical politeness. He, too,
+scented the enemy: but he thought he had nothing to fear from him: he made
+fun of him without seeming to do so. If only he could have had Christophe's
+admiration he would have been on quite good terms with him, but that he
+never could obtain: he saw that clearly, for Christophe had not the art of
+disguising his feelings. And so Lucien Lévy-Coeur passed insensibly from
+an abstract intellectual antagonism to a little, carefully veiled, war, of
+which Colette was to be the prize.
+
+She held the balance evenly between her two friends. She appreciated
+Christophe's talent and moral superiority: but she also appreciated Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur's amusing immorality and wit: and, at bottom, she found more
+pleasure in it. Christophe did not mince his protestations: she listened
+to him with a touching humility which disarmed him. She was quite a good
+creature, but she lacked frankness, partly from weakness, partly from
+her very kindness. She was half play-acting: she pretended to think with
+Christophe. As a matter of fact, she knew the worth of such a friend; but
+she was not ready to make any sacrifice for a friendship: she was not
+ready to sacrifice anything for anybody: she just wanted everything to go
+smoothly and pleasantly, And so she concealed from Christophe the fact that
+she went on receiving Lucien Lévy-Coeur: she lied with the easy charm of
+the young women of her class who, from their childhood, are expert in the
+practice which is so necessary for those who wish to keep their friends
+and please everybody. She excused herself by pretending that she wished to
+avoid hurting Christophe: but in reality it was because she knew that he
+was right and wanted to go on doing as she liked without quarreling with
+him. Sometimes Christophe suspected her tricks: then he would scold her,
+and wax indignant. She would go on playing the contrite little girl, and be
+affectionate and sorry: and she would look tenderly at him--_feminæ ultima
+ratio_.--And really it did distress her to think of losing Christophe's
+friendship: she would be charmingly serious and in that way succeed in
+disarming Christophe for a little while longer. But sooner or later there
+had to be an explosion. Christophe's irritation was fed unconsciously by a
+little jealousy. And into Colette's coaxing tricks there crept a little, a
+very little, love, all of which made the rupture only the more violent.
+
+One day when Christophe had caught Colette out in a flagrant lie he gave
+her a definite alternative: she must choose between Lucien Lévy-Coeur and
+himself. She tried to dodge the question: and, finally, she vindicated her
+right to have whatever friends she liked. She was perfectly right: and
+Christophe admitted that he had been absurd: but he knew also that he had
+not been exacting from egoism: he had a sincere affection for Colette: he
+wanted to save her even against her will. He insisted awkwardly. She
+refused to answer. He said:
+
+"Colette, do you want us not to be friends any more?"
+
+She replied:
+
+"No, no. I should be sorry if you ceased to be my friend."
+
+"But you will not sacrifice the smallest thing for our friendship."
+
+"Sacrifice! What a silly word!" she said. "Why should one always be
+sacrificing one thing for another? It's just a stupid Christian idea.
+You're nothing but an old parson at heart."
+
+"Maybe," he said. "I want one thing or another. I allow nothing between
+good and evil, not so much as the breadth of a hair."
+
+"Yes, I know," she said. "That is why I love you. For I do love you:
+but...."
+
+"But you love the other fellow too?"
+
+She laughed, and said, with a soft look in her eyes and a tender note in
+her voice:
+
+"Stay!"
+
+He was just about to give in once more when Lucien Lévy-Coeur came in: and
+he was welcomed with the same soft look in her eyes and the same tender
+note in her voice. Christophe sat for some time in silence watching Colette
+at her tricks: then he went away, having made up his mind to break with
+her. He was sick and sorry at heart. It was so stupid to grow so fond,
+always to be falling into the trap!
+
+When he reached home he toyed with his books, and idly opened his Bible and
+read:
+
+"... _The Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk
+with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go,
+and making a tinkling with their feet,
+
+"Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the
+daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts_ ..."
+
+He burst out laughing as he thought of Colette's little tricks: and he went
+to bed well pleased with himself. Then he thought that he too must have
+become tainted with the corruption of Paris for the Bible to have become a
+humorous work to him. But he did not stop saying over and over again the
+judgment of the great judiciary humorist: and he tried to imagine its
+effect on the head of his young friend. He went to sleep laughing like a
+child. He had lost all thought of his new sorrow. One more or less.... He
+was getting used to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He did not give up Colette's music-lessons: but he refused to take the
+opportunities she gave him of continuing their intimate conversations. It
+was no use her being sorry about it or offended, and trying all sorts of
+tricks: he stuck to his guns: they were rude to each other: of her own
+accord she took to finding excuses for missing the lessons: and he also
+made excuses for declining the Stevens' invitations.
+
+He had had enough of Parisian society: he could not bear the emptiness
+of it, the idleness, the moral impotence, the neurasthenia, its aimless,
+pointless, self-devouring hypercriticism. He wondered how people could
+live in such a stagnant atmosphere of art for art's sake and pleasure for
+pleasure's sake. And yet the French did live in it: they had beep, a great
+nation, and they still cut something of a figure in the world: at least,
+they seemed to do so to the outside spectator. But where were the springs
+of their life? They believed in nothing, nothing but pleasure....
+
+Just as Christophe reached this point in his reflections, he ran into a
+crowd of young men and women, all shouting at the tops of their voices,
+dragging a carriage in which was sitting an old priest casting blessings
+right and left. A little farther on he found some French soldiers battering
+down the doors of a church with axes, and there were men attacking them
+with chairs. He saw that the French did still believe in something--though
+he could not understand in what. He was told that the State and the Church
+were separated after a century of living together, and that as the Church
+had refused to go with a good grace, standing on its rights and its power,
+it was being evicted. To Christophe the proceeding seemed ungallant; but
+he was so sick of the anarchical dilettantism of the Parisian artists that
+he was delighted to find men ready to have their heads broken for a cause,
+however foolish it might be.
+
+It was not long before he discovered that there were many such people in
+France. The political journals plunged into the fight like the Homeric
+heroes: they published daily calls to civil war. It is true that it got
+no farther than words, and that they very rarely came to blows. But there
+was no lack of simple souls to put into action what the others declared in
+words. Strange things happened: departments threatened to break away from
+France, regiments deserted, prefectures were burned, tax-collectors were on
+horseback at the head of a company of gendarmes, peasants were armed with
+scythes, and put their kettles on to boil to defend the churches, which the
+Free Thinkers were demolishing in the name of liberty: there were popular
+redeemers who climbed trees to address the provinces of Wine, that had
+risen against the provinces of Alcohol. Everywhere there were millions of
+men shaking hands, all red in the face from shouting, and in the end all
+going for each other. The Republic flattered the people: and then turned
+arms against them. The people on their side broke the heads of a few of
+their own young men--officers and soldiers.--And so every one proved to
+everybody else the excellence of his cause and his fists. Looked at from
+a distance, through the newspapers, it was as though the country had
+gone back a few centuries, Christophe discovered that France--skeptical
+France--was a nation of fanatics. But it was impossible for him to find out
+the meaning of their fanaticism. For or against religion? For or against
+Reason? For or against the country?--They were for and against everything.
+They were fanatics for the pleasure of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He spoke about it one evening to a Socialist deputy whom he met sometimes
+at the Stevens'. Although he had spoken to him before, he had no idea what
+sort of man he was: till then they had only talked about music. Christophe
+was very surprised to learn that this man of the world was the leader of a
+violent party.
+
+Achille Roussin was a handsome man, with a fair beard, a burring way of
+talking, a florid complexion, affable manners, a certain polish on his
+fundamental vulgarity, certain peasant tricks which from time to time he
+used in spite of himself:--a way of paring his nails in public, a vulgar
+habit of catching hold of the coat of the man he was talking to, or
+gripping him by the arm:--he was a great eater, a heavy drinker, a high
+liver with a gift of laughter, and the appetite of a man of the people
+pushing his way into power: he was adaptable, quick to alter his manners to
+sort with his surroundings and the person he was talking to, full of ideas,
+and reasonable in expounding them, able to listen, and to assimilate at
+once everything he heard: for the rest he was sympathetic, intelligent,
+interested in everything, naturally, or as a matter of acquired habit, or
+merely out of vanity: he was honest so far as was compatible with his
+interests, or when it was dangerous not to be so.
+
+He had quite a pretty wife, tall, well made, and well set up, with a
+charming figure which was a little too much shown off by her tight dresses,
+which accentuated and exaggerated the rounded curves of her anatomy: her
+face was framed in curly black hair: she had big black eyes, a long,
+pointed chin: her face was big, but quite charming in its general effect,
+though it was spoiled by the twitch of her short-sighted eyes, and her
+silly little pursed-up mouth. She had an affected precise manner, like
+a bird, and a simpering way of talking: but she was kindly and amiable.
+She came of a rich shopkeeping family, broad-minded and virtuous, and she
+was devoted to the countless duties of society, as to a religion, not to
+mention the duties, social and artistic, which she imposed on herself:
+she had her _salon_, dabbled in University Extension movements, and was
+busy with philanthropic undertakings and researches into the psychology
+of childhood,--all without any enthusiasm or profound interest,--from a
+mixture of natural kindness, snobbishness, and the harmless pedantry of a
+young woman of education, who always seems to be repeating a lesson, and
+taking a pride in showing that she has learned it well. She needed to be
+busy, but she did not need to be interested in what she was doing. It
+was like the feverish industry of those women who always have a piece of
+knitting in their hands, and never stop clicking their needles, as though
+the salvation of the world depended on their work, which they themselves
+do not know what to do with. And then there was in her--as in women who
+knit--the vanity of the good woman who sets an example to other women.
+
+The Deputy had an affectionate contempt for her. He had chosen well both as
+regards his pleasure and his peace of mind. He enjoyed her beauty and asked
+no more of her: and she asked no more of him. He loved her and deceived
+her. She put up with that, provided she had her share of his attention.
+Perhaps also it gave her a sort of pleasure. She was placid and sensual.
+She had the attitude of mind of a woman of the harem.
+
+They had two fine children of four and five years old, whom she looked
+after, like a good mother, with the same amiable, cold attentiveness with
+which she followed her husband's political career, and the latest fashions
+in dress and art. And it produced in her the most odd mixture of advanced
+ideas, ultra-decadent art, polite restlessness, and bourgeois sentiment.
+
+They invited Christophe to go and see them. Madame Roussin was a good
+musician, and played the piano charmingly: she had a delicate, firm touch:
+with her little head bowed over the keyboard, and her hands poised above
+it and darting down, she was like a pecking hen. She was talented and knew
+more about music than most Frenchwomen, but she was as insensible as a fish
+to the deeper meaning of music: to her it was only a succession of notes,
+rhythms, and degrees of sound, to which she listened or reproduced
+carefully: she never looked for the soul in it, having no use for it
+herself. This amiable, intelligent, simple woman, who was always ready
+to do any one a kindness, gave Christophe the graceful welcome which she
+extended to everybody. Christophe was not particularly grateful to her
+for it: he was not much in sympathy with her: she hardly existed for him.
+Perhaps it was that unconsciously he could not forgive her acquiescence in
+her husband's infidelities, of which she was by no means ignorant. Passive
+acceptance was of all the vices that which he could least excuse.
+
+He was more intimate with Achille Roussin. Roussin loved music, as he loved
+the other arts, crudely but sincerely. When he liked a symphony, it became
+a thing that he could take into his arms. He had a superficial culture and
+turned it to good account: his wife had been useful to him there. He was
+interested in Christophe because he saw in him a vigorous vulgarian such
+as he was himself. And he found it absorbing to study an original of his
+stamp--(he was unwearying in his observation of humanity)--and to discover
+his impressions of Paris. The frankness and rudeness of Christophe's
+remarks amused him. He was skeptic enough to admit their truth. He was
+not put out by the fact that Christophe was a German. On the contrary: he
+prided himself on being above national prejudice. And, when all was said
+and done, he was sincerely "human"--(that was his chief quality);--he
+sympathized with everything human. But that did not prevent his being quite
+convinced of the superiority of the French--an old race, and an old
+civilization--over the Germans, and making fun of the Germans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Achille Roussin's Christophe met other politicians, the Ministers of
+yesterday, and the Ministers of to-morrow. He would have been only too glad
+to talk to each of them individually, if these illustrious persons had
+thought him worthy. In spite of the generally accepted opinion he found
+them much more interesting than the other Frenchmen of his acquaintance.
+They were more alive mentally, more open to the passions and the great
+interests of humanity. They were brilliant talkers, mostly men from the
+South, and they were amazingly dilettante: individually they were almost
+as much so as the men of letters. Of course, they were very ignorant about
+art, and especially about foreign art: but they all pretended more or
+less to some knowledge of it: and often they really loved it. There were
+Councils which were very like the coterie of some little Review. One of
+them would be a playwright: another would scrape on the violin; another
+would be a besotted Wagnerian. And they all collected Impressionist
+pictures, read decadent books, and prided themselves on a taste for some
+ultra-aristocratic art, which was almost always in direct opposition
+to their ideas. It puzzled Christophe to find these Socialist or
+Radical-Socialist Ministers, these apostles of the poor and down-trodden,
+posing as connoisseurs of eclectic art. No doubt they had a perfect right
+to do so: but it seemed to him rather disloyal.
+
+But the odd thing was when these men who in private conversation were
+skeptics, sensualists, Nihilists, and anarchists, came to action: at once
+they became fanatics. Even the most dilettante of them when they came into
+power became like Oriental despots: they had a mania for ordering
+everything, and let nothing alone: they were skeptical in mind and
+tyrannical in temper. The temptation to use the machinery of administrative
+centralization created by the greatest of despots was too great, and it was
+difficult not to abuse it. The result was a sort of republican imperialism
+on to which there had latterly been grafted an atheistic catholicism.
+
+For some time past the politicians had made no claim to do anything but
+control the body--that is to say, money:--they hardly troubled the soul
+at all, since the soul could not be converted into money. Their own souls
+were not concerned with politics: they passed above or below politics,
+which in France are thought of as a branch--a lucrative, though not very
+exalted branch--of commerce and industry: the intellectuals despised the
+politicians, the politicians despised the intellectuals.--But lately there
+had been a closer understanding, then an alliance, between the politicians
+and the lowest class of intellectuals. A new power had appeared upon the
+scene, which had arrogated to itself the absolute government of ideas: the
+Free Thinkers. They had thrown in their lot with the other power, which had
+seen in them the perfect machinery of political despotism. They were trying
+not so much to destroy the Church as to supplant it: and, in fact, they
+created a Church of Free Thought which had its catechisms, and ceremonies,
+its baptisms, its confirmations, its marriages, its regional councils,
+if not its ecumenicals at Rome. It was most pitifully comic to see these
+thousands of poor wretches having to band themselves together in order to
+be able to "think freely." True, their freedom of thought consisted in
+setting a ban on the thought of others in the name of Reason: for they
+believed in Reason as the Catholics believed in the Blessed Virgin without
+ever dreaming for a moment that Reason, like the Virgin, was in itself
+nothing, or that the real thing lay behind it. And, just as the Catholic
+Church had its armies of monks and its congregations stealthily creeping
+through the veins of the nation, propagating its views and destroying every
+other sort of vitality, so the Anti-Catholic Church had its Free Masons,
+whose chief Lodge, the Grand-Orient, kept a faithful record of all the
+secret reports with which their pious informers in all quarters of France
+supplied them. The Republican State secretly encouraged the sacred
+espionage of these mendicant friars and Jesuits of Reason, who terrorized
+the army, the University, and every branch of the State: and it was never
+noticed that while they pretended to serve the State, they were all the
+time aiming at supplanting it, and that the country was slowly moving
+towards an atheistic theocracy; very little, if anything, different from
+that of the Jesuits of Paraguay.
+
+Christophe met some of these gentry at Roussin's. They were all blind
+fetish-worshippers. At that time they were rejoicing at having removed
+Christ from the Courts of Law. They thought they had destroyed religion
+because they had destroyed a few pieces of wood and ivory. Others were
+concentrating on Joan of Arc and her banner of the Virgin, which they had
+just wrested from the Catholics. One of the Fathers of the new Church,
+a general who was waging war on the French of the old Church, had just
+given utterance to an anti-clerical speech in honor of Vercingetorix: he
+proclaimed the ancient Gaul, to whom Free Thought had erected a statue,
+to be a son of the people, and the first champion against (the Church
+of) Rome. The Ministers of the Marine, by way of purifying the fleet and
+showing their horror of war, called their cruisers _Descartes_ and _Ernest
+Renan_. Other Free Thinkers had set themselves to purify art. They
+expurgated the classics of the seventeenth century, and did not allow the
+name of God to sully the _Fables_ of La Fontaine. They did not allow it
+in music either: and Christophe heard one of them, an old radical,--("_To
+be a radical in old age_," says Goethe, "_is the height of folly_")--wax
+indignant at the religious _Lieder_ of Beethoven having been given at a
+popular concert. He demanded that other words should be used instead of
+"God."
+
+"What?" asked Christophe in exasperation. "The Republic?"
+
+Others who were even more radical would accept no compromise and wanted
+purely and simply to suppress all religious music and all schools in which
+it was taught. In vain did a director of the University of Fine Arts, who
+was considered an Athenian in that Boeotia, try to explain that musicians
+must be taught music: for, as he said, with great loftiness of thought,
+"when you send a soldier to the barracks, you teach him how to use a gun
+and then how to shoot. And so it is with a young composer: his head is
+buzzing with ideas: but he has not yet learned to put them in order." And,
+being a little scared by his own courage, he protested with every sentence:
+"I am an old Free Thinker.... I am an old Republican..." and he declared
+audaciously that "he did not care much whether the compositions of
+Pergolese were operas or Masses: all that he wanted to know was, were they
+human works of art?"--But his adversary with implacable logic answered "the
+old Free Thinker and Republican" that "there were two sorts of music: that
+which was sung in churches and that which was sung in other places." The
+first sort was the enemy of Reason and the State: and the Reason of the
+State ought to suppress it.
+
+All these silly people would have been more ridiculous than dangerous if
+behind them there had not been men of real worth, supporting them, who
+were, like them--and perhaps even, more--fanatics of Reason. Tolstoy
+speaks somewhere of those "epidemic influences" which prevail in religion,
+philosophy, politics, art, and science, "insensate influences, the folly of
+which only becomes apparent to men when they are clear of them, while as
+long as they are under their dominion they seem so true to them that they
+think them beyond all argument." Instances are the craze for tulips, belief
+in sorcery, and the aberrations of literary fashions.--The religion of
+Reason was such a craze. It was common to the most ignorant and the most
+cultured, to the "sub-veterinaries" of the Chamber, and certain of the
+keenest intellects of the University. It was even more dangerous in the
+latter than in the former: for with the latter it was mixed up with a
+credulous and stupid optimism, which sapped its energy: while with the
+others it was fortified and given a keener edge by a fanatical pessimism
+which was under no illusion as to the fundamental antagonism of Nature and
+Reason, and they were only the more desperately resolved to wage the war of
+abstract Liberty, abstract Justice, abstract Truth, against the malevolence
+of Nature. There was behind it all the idealism of the Calvinists, the
+Jansenists, and the Jacobins, the old belief in the fundamental perversity
+of mankind, which can and must be broken by the implacable pride of the
+Elect inspired by the breath of Reason,--the Spirit of God. It was a very
+French type, the type of intelligent Frenchman, who is not at all "human."
+A pebble as hard as iron: nothing can penetrate it: it breaks everything
+that it touches.
+
+Christophe was appalled by the conversations that he had at Achille
+Roussin's with some of these fanatics. It upset all his ideas about France.
+He had thought, like so many people, that the French were a well-balanced,
+sociable, tolerant, liberty-loving people. And he found them lunatics with
+their abstract ideas, their diseased logic, ready to sacrifice themselves
+and everybody else for one of their syllogisms. They were always talking of
+liberty, but there never were men less able to understand it or to stand
+it. Nowhere in the world were there characters more coldly and atrociously
+despotic in their passion for intellect or their passion for always being
+in the right.
+
+And it was not only true of one party. Every party was the same. They
+could not--they would not--see anything above or beyond their political or
+religious formula, or their country, their province, their group, or their
+own narrow minds. There were anti-Semites who expended all the forces of
+their being in a blind, impotent hatred of all the privileges of wealth:
+for they hated all Jews, and called those whom they hated "Jews." There
+were nationalists who hated--(when they were kinder they stopped short
+at despising)--every other nation, and even among their own people, they
+called everybody who did not agree with them foreigners, or renegades, or
+traitors. There were anti-protestants who persuaded themselves that all
+Protestants were English or Germans, and would have them all expelled from
+France. There were men of the West who denied the existence of anything
+east of the Rhine: men of the North who denied the existence of everything
+south of the Loire: men of the South who called all those who lived north
+of the Loire Barbarians: and there were men who boasted of being of Gallic
+descent: and, craziest of all, there were "Romans" who prided themselves on
+the defeat of their ancestors: and Bretons, and Lorrainians, and Félibres,
+and Albigeois; and men from Carpentras, and Pontoise, and Quimper-Corentin:
+they all thought only of themselves, the fact of being themselves was
+sufficient patent of nobility, and they wild not put up with the idea of
+people being anything else. There is nothing to be done with such people:
+they will not listen to argument from any other point of view: they must
+burn everybody else at the stake, or be burned themselves.
+
+Christophe thought that it was lucky that such people should live under a
+Republic: for all these little despots did at least annihilate each other.
+But if any one of them had become Emperor or King, it would have been the
+end of him.
+
+He did not know that there is one virtue left to work the salvation of
+people of that temper of mind:--inconsequence.
+
+The French politicians were no exception. Their despotism was tempered
+with anarchy: they were for ever swinging between two poles. On one hand
+they relied on the fanatics of thought, on the other they relied on the
+anarchists of thought. Mixed up with them was a whole rabble of dilettante
+Socialists, mere opportunists, who held back from taking any part in the
+fight until it was won, though they followed in the wake of the army of
+Free Thought, and, after every battle won, they swooped down on the spoils.
+These champions of Reason did not labor in the cause of Reason.... _Sic
+vos non vobis_ ... but in the cause of the Citizens of the World, who with
+glad shouts trampled under foot the traditions of the country, and had no
+intention of destroying one Faith in order to set up another, but in order
+to set themselves up and break away from all restraint.
+
+There Christophe marked the likeness of Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He was not
+surprised to learn that Lucien Lévy-Coeur was a Socialist. He only thought
+that Socialists must be fairly on the road to success to have enrolled
+Lucien Lévy-Coeur. But he did not know that Lucien Lévy-Coeur had also
+contrived to figure in the opposite camp, where he had succeeded in allying
+himself with men of the most anti-Liberal opinions, if not anti-Semite, in
+politics and art, He asked Achille Roussin:
+
+"How can you put up with such men?"
+
+Roussin replied:
+
+"He is so clever! And he is working for us; he is destroying the old
+world."
+
+"He is doing that all right," said Christophe. "He is destroying it so
+thoroughly that I don't see what is going to be left for you to build up
+again. Do you think there'll be timber enough left for your new house? And
+are you even sure that the worms have not crept into your building-yard?"
+
+Lucien Lévy-Coeur was not the only nibbler at Socialism. The Socialist
+papers were staffed by these petty men of letters, with their art for art's
+sake, these licentious anarchists who had fastened on all the roads that
+might lead to success. They barred the way to others, and filled the
+papers, which styled themselves the organs of the people, with their
+dilettante decadence and their _struggle for life_. They were not content
+with being jobbed into positions: they wanted fame. Never had there been a
+time when there were so many premature Statues, or so many speeches
+delivered at the unveiling of them. But queerest of all were the banquets
+that were periodically offered to one or other of the great men of the
+fraternity by the sycophants of fame, not in celebration of any of their
+deeds, but in celebration of some honor given to them: for those were the
+things that most appealed to them. Esthetes, supermen, Socialist Ministers,
+they were all agreed when it was a question of feasting to celebrate some
+promotion in the Legion of Honor founded by the Corsican officer.
+
+Roussin laughed at Christophe's amazement. He did not think the German far
+out in his estimation of the supporters of his party. When they were alone
+together he would handle them severely himself. He knew their stupidity
+and their knavery better than any one: but that did not keep him from
+supporting them in order to retain their support. And if in private he
+never hesitated to speak of the people in terms of contempt, on the
+platform he was a different man. Then he would assume a high-pitched voice,
+shrill, nasal, labored, solemn tones, a tremolo, a bleat, wide, sweeping,
+fluttering gestures like the beating of wings: exactly like Mounet-Sully.
+
+Christophe tried hard to discover exactly how far Roussin believed in his
+Socialism. It was obvious that at heart he did not believe in it at all:
+he was too skeptical. And yet he did believe in it, to a certain extent;
+and though he knew perfectly well that it was only a part of his mind that
+believed in it--(perhaps the most important part)--he had arranged his
+life and conduct in accordance with it, because it suited him best. It
+was not only his practical interest that was served by it, but also his
+vital interests, the foundations of his being and all his actions. His
+Socialistic Faith was to him a sort of State religion.--Most people live
+like that. Their lives are based on religious, moral, social, or purely
+practical beliefs,--(belief in their profession, in their work, in the
+utility of the part they play in life)--in which they do not, at heart,
+believe. But they do not wish to know it: for they must have this apparent
+faith, this "State religion," of which every man is priest, to live.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Roussin was not one of the worst. There were many, many others who called
+themselves Socialists and Radicals, from--it can hardly be called ambition,
+for their ambition was so short-sighted, and did not go beyond immediate
+plunder and their re-election! They pretended to believe in a new order of
+society. Perhaps there was a time when they believed in it: and they went
+on pretending to do so: but, in fact, they had no idea beyond living on the
+spoils of the dying order of society. This predatory Nihilism was saved
+by a short-sighted opportunism. The great interests of the future were
+sacrificed to the egoism of the present. They cut down the army; they would
+have dislocated the country to please the electors. They were not lacking
+in cleverness: they knew perfectly well what they ought to have done: but
+they did not do it, because it would have cost them too much effort, and
+they were incapable of effort. They wanted to arrange their own lives
+and the life of the nation with the least possible amount of trouble and
+sacrifice. All down the scale the point was to get the maximum of pleasure
+with the minimum of effort. That was their morality, immoral enough, but it
+was the only guide in the political muddle, in which the leaders set the
+example of anarchy, and the disordered pack of politicians were chasing
+ten hares at once, and letting them all escape one after the other, and
+an aggressive Foreign Office was yoked with a pacific War Office, and
+Ministers of War were cutting down the army in order to purify it, Naval
+Ministers were inciting the workmen in the arsenals, military instructors
+were preaching the horrors of war, and all the officials, judges,
+revolutionaries, and patriots were dilettante. The political demoralization
+was universal. Every man was expecting the State to provide him with
+office, honors, pensions, indemnities: and the Government did, as a matter
+of fact, feed the appetite of its supporters: honors and pensions were made
+the quarry of the sons, nephews, grand-nephews, and valets of those in
+power: the deputies were always voting an increase in their own salaries:
+revenues, posts, titles, all the possessions of the State, were being
+blindly squandered.--And, like a sinister echo of the example of the upper
+classes, the lower classes were always on the verge of a strike: they had
+men teaching contempt of authority and revolt against the established
+order; post-office employés burned letters and despatches, workers in
+factories threw sand or emery-powder into the gears of the machines, men
+working in the arsenals sacked them, ships were burned, and artisans
+deliberately made a horrible mess of their work,--the destruction not of
+riches, but of the wealth of the world.
+
+And to crown it all the intellectuals amused themselves by discovering that
+this national suicide was based on reason and right, in the sacred right
+of every human being to be happy. There was a morbid humanitarianism
+which broke down the distinction between Good and Evil, and developed a
+sentimental pity for the "sacred and irresponsible human" in the criminal,
+the doting sentimentality of an old man:--it was a capitulation to crime,
+the surrender of society to its mercies.
+
+Christophe thought:
+
+"France is drunk with liberty. When she has raved and screamed, she will
+fall down dead-drunk. And when she wakes up she will find herself in
+prison."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What hurt Christophe most in this demagogy was to see the most violent
+political measures coldly carried through by these men whose fundamental
+instability he knew perfectly well. The disproportion between the
+shiftiness of these men and the rigorous Acts that they passed or
+authorized was too scandalous. It was as though there were in them two
+contradictory things: an inconsistent character, believing in nothing,
+and discursive Reason, intent on truncating, mowing down, and crushing
+life, without regard for anything. Christophe wondered why the peaceful
+middle-class, the Catholics, the officials who were harassed in every
+conceivable way, did not throw them all out by the window. He dared not
+tell Roussin what he thought: but, as he was incapable of concealing
+anything, Roussin had no difficulty in guessing it. He laughed and said:
+
+"No doubt that is what you or I would do. But there is no danger of them
+doing it. They are just a set of poor devils who haven't the energy:
+they can't do much more than grumble. They're just the fag end of
+an aristocracy, idiotic, stultified by their clubs and their sport,
+prostituted by the Americans and the Jews, and, by way of showing how up to
+date they are, they play the degraded parts allotted to them in fashionable
+plays, and support those who have degraded them. They're an apathetic and
+surly middle-class: they read nothing, understand nothing, don't want
+to understand anything; they only know how to vilify, vilify, vaguely,
+bitterly, futilely--and they have only one passion: sleep, to lie huddled
+in sleep on their moneybags, hating anybody who disturbs them, and even
+anybody whose tastes differ from theirs, for it does upset them to think of
+other people working while they are snoozing! If you knew them you would
+sympathize with us."
+
+But Christophe could find nothing but disgust with both: for he did not
+hold that the baseness of the oppressed was any excuse for that of the
+oppressor. Only too frequently had he met at the Stevens' types of the rich
+dull middle-class that Roussin described,
+
+  "... _L'anime triste di coloro,
+  Che visser senza infamia esenza lodo_,..."
+
+He saw only too clearly the reason why Roussin and his friends were sure
+not only of their power over these people, but of their right to abuse it.
+They had to hand all the instruments of tyranny. Thousands of officials,
+who had renounced their will and every vestige of personality, and obeyed
+blindly. A loose, vulgar way of living, a Republic without Republicans:
+Socialist papers and Socialist leaders groveling before Royalties when they
+visited Paris: the souls of servants gaping at titles, and gold lace, and
+orders: they could be kept quiet by just having a bone to gnaw, or the
+Legion of Honor flung at them. If the Kings had ennobled all the citizens
+of France, all the citizens of France would have been Royalist.
+
+The politicians were having a fine time. Of the Three Estates of '89 the
+first was extinct: the second was proscribed, suspect, or had emigrated:
+the third was gorged by its victory and slept. And, as for the Fourth
+Estate, which had come into existence at a later date, and had become a
+public menace in its jealousy, there was no difficulty about squaring that.
+The decadent Republic treated it as decadent Rome treated the barbarian
+hordes, that she no longer had the power to drive from her frontiers;
+she assimilated them, and they quickly became her best watch-dogs. The
+Ministers of the middle-class called themselves Socialists, lured away
+and annexed to their own party the most intelligent and vigorous of the
+working-class: they robbed the proletariat of their leaders, infused
+their new blood into their own system, and, in return, gorged them with
+indigestible science and middle-class culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the most curious features of these attempts at distraint by the
+middle-class on the people were the Popular Universities. They were little
+jumble-sales of scraps of knowledge of every period and every country. As
+one syllabus declared, they set out to teach "every branch of physical,
+biological, and sociological science: astronomy, cosmology, anthropology,
+ethnology, physiology, psychology, psychiatry, geography, languages,
+esthetics, logic, etc." Enough to split the skull of Pico della Mirandola.
+
+In truth there had been originally, and still was in some of them, a
+certain grand idealism, a keen desire to bring truth, beauty, and morality
+within the reach of all, which was a very fine thing. It was wonderful and
+touching to see workmen, after a hard day's toil, crowding into narrow,
+stuffy lecture-rooms, impelled by a thirst for knowledge that was stronger
+than fatigue and hunger. But how the poor fellows had been tricked!
+There were a few real apostles, intelligent human beings, a few upright
+warm-hearted men, with more good intentions than skill to accomplish them;
+but, as against them, there were hundreds of fools, idiots, schemers,
+unsuccessful authors, orators, professors, parsons, speakers, pianists,
+critics, anarchists, who deluged the people with their productions. Every
+man jack of them was trying to unload his stock-in-trade. The most thriving
+of them were naturally the nostrum-mongers, the philosophical lecturers
+who ladled out general ideas, leavened with a few facts, a scientific
+smattering, and cosmological conclusions.
+
+The Popular Universities were also an outlet for the ultra-aristocratic
+works of art: decadent etchings, poetry, and music. The aim was the
+elevation of the people for the rejuvenation of thought and the
+regeneration of the race. They began by inoculating them with all the fads
+and cranks of the middle-class. They gulped them down greedily, not because
+they liked them, but because they were middle-class. Christophe, who was
+taken to one of these Popular Universities by Madame Roussin, heard her
+play Debussy to the people between _la Bonne Chanson_ of Gabriel Fauré and
+one of the later quartets of Beethoven. He who had only begun to grasp the
+meaning of the later works of Beethoven after many years, and long weary
+labor, asked some one who sat near him pityingly:
+
+"Do you understand it?"
+
+The man drew himself up like an angry cock, and said:
+
+"Certainly. Why shouldn't I understand it as well as you?"
+
+And by way of showing that he understood it he encored a fugue, glaring
+defiantly at Christophe.
+
+Christophe went away. He was amazed. He said to himself that the swine had
+succeeded in poisoning even the living wells of the nation: the People had
+ceased to be--"People yourselves!" as a working-man said to one of the
+would-be founders of the Theaters of the People. "I am as much of the
+middle-class as you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One fine evening when above the darkening town the soft sky was like an
+Oriental carpet, rich in warm faded colors, Christophe walked along by the
+river from Notre Dame to the Invalides. In the dim fading light the tower
+of the cathedral rose like the arms of Moses held up during the battle.
+The carved golden spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, the flowering Holy Thorn,
+flashed out of the labyrinth of houses. On the other side of the water
+stretched the royal front of the Louvre, and its windows were like weary
+eyes lit up with the last living rays of the setting sun. At the back of
+the great square of the Invalides behind its trenches and proud walls,
+majestic, solitary, floated the dull gold dome, like a symphony of bygone
+victories. And at the top of the hill there stood the Arc de Triomphe,
+bestriding the hill with the giant stride of the Imperial legions.
+
+And suddenly Christophe thought of it all as of a dead giant lying prone
+upon the plain. The terror of it clutched at his heart; he stopped to gaze
+at the gigantic fossils of a fabulous race, long since extinct, that in its
+life had made the whole earth ring with the tramp of its armies,--the race
+whose helmet was the dome of the Invalides, whose girdle was the Louvre,
+the thousand arms of whose cathedrals had clutched at the heavens, who
+traversed the whole world with the triumphant stride of the Arch of
+Napoleon, under whose heel there now swarmed Lilliput.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Without any deliberate effort on his part, Christophe had gained a certain
+celebrity in the Parisian circles to which he had been introduced by
+Sylvain Kohn and Goujart. He was seen everywhere with one or other of his
+friends at first nights, and at concerts, and his extraordinary face, his
+ugliness, the absurdity of his figure and costume, his brusque, awkward
+manners, the paradoxical opinions to which he gave vent from time to
+time, his undeveloped, but large and healthy intellect, and the romantic
+stories spread by Sylvain Kohn about his escapades in Germany, and his
+complications with the police and flight to France, had marked him out for
+the idle, restless curiosity of the great cosmopolitan hotel drawing-room
+that Paris has become. As long as he held himself in check, observing,
+listening, and trying to understand before expressing any opinion, as
+long as nothing was known of his work or what he really thought, he was
+tolerated. The French were pleased with him for having been unable to
+stay in Germany. And the French musicians especially were delighted with
+Christophe's unjust pronouncements on German music, and took them all
+as homage to themselves:--(as a matter of fact, they heard only his old
+youthful opinions, to many of which he would no longer have subscribed:
+a few articles published in a German Review which had been amplified and
+circulated by Sylvain Kohn).--Christophe was interesting and did not
+interfere with anybody: there was no danger of his supplanting anybody.
+He needed only to become the great man of a coterie. He needed only not
+to write anything, or as little as possible, and not to have anything
+performed, and to supply Goujart and his like with ideas, Goujart and the
+whole set of men whose motto is the famous quip--adapted a little:
+
+_"My glass is small: but I drink ... the wine of others."_
+
+A strong personality sheds its rays especially on young people who are more
+concerned with feeling than with action. There were plenty of young people
+about Christophe. They were for the most part idle, will-less, aimless,
+purposeless. Young men, living in dread of work, fearful of being left
+alone with themselves, who sought an armchair immortality, wandering from
+café to theater, from theater to café, finding all sorts of excuses for not
+going home, to avoid coming face to face with themselves. They came and
+stayed for hours, dawdling, talking, making aimless conversation, and going
+away empty, aching, disgusted, satiated, and yet famishing, forced to go
+on with it in spite of loathing. They surrounded Christophe, like Goethe's
+water-spaniel, the "lurking specters," that lie in wait and seize upon a
+soul and fasten upon its vitality. A vain fool would have found pleasure
+in such a circle of parasites. But Christophe had no taste for pedestals.
+He was revolted by the idiotic subtlety of his admirers, who read into
+anything he did all sorts of absurd meanings, Renanian, Nietzschean,
+hermaphroditic. He kicked them out. He was not made for passivity.
+Everything in him cried aloud for action. He observed so as to understand:
+he wished to understand so as to act. He was free of the constraint of
+any school, and of any prejudice, and he inquired into everything, read
+everything, and studied all the forms of thought and the resources of the
+expression of other countries and other ages in his art. He seized on all
+those which seemed to him effective and true. Unlike the French artists
+whom he studied, who were ingenious inventors of new forms, and wore
+themselves out in the unceasing effort of invention, and gave up the
+struggle half-way, he endeavored not so much to invent a new musical
+language as to speak the authentic language of music with more energy: his
+aim was not to be particular, but to be strong. His, passion for strength
+was the very opposite of the French genius of subtlety and moderation. He
+scorned style for the sake of style and art for art's sake. The best French
+artists seemed to him to be no more than pleasure-mongers. One of the
+most perfect poets in Paris had amused himself with drawing up a "list
+of the workers in contemporary French poetry, with their talents, their
+productions, and their earnings": and he enumerated "the crystals, the
+Oriental fabrics, the gold and bronze medals, the lace for dowagers, the
+polychromatic sculpture, the painted porcelain," which had been produced in
+the workshops of his various colleagues. He pictured himself "in the corner
+of a vast factory of letters, mending old tapestry, or polishing up rusty
+halberds."--Such a conception of the artist as a good workman, thinking
+only of the perfection of his craft, was not without an element of
+greatness. But it did not satisfy Christophe: and while he admitted in it
+a certain professional dignity, he had a contempt for the poor quality of
+life which most often it disguised. He could not understand writing for the
+sake of writing, or talking for the sake of talking. He never said words;
+he said--or wanted to say--the things themselves.
+
+_"Ei dice cose, e voi dite parole...."_
+
+After a long period of rest, during which he had been entirely occupied
+with taking in a new world, Christophe suddenly became conscious of an
+imperious need for creation. The antagonism which he felt between himself
+and Paris called up all his reserve of force by its challenge of his
+personality. All his passions were brimming in him, and imperiously
+demanding expression. They were of every kind: and they were all equally
+insistent. He tried to create, to fashion music, into which to turn the
+love and hatred that were swelling in his heart, and the will and the
+renunciation, and all the daimons struggling within him, all of whom
+had an equal right to live. Hardly had he assuaged one passion in
+music,--(sometimes he hardly had the patience to finish it)--than he hurled
+himself at the opposite passion. But the contradiction was only apparent:
+if they were always changing, they were in truth always the same. He
+beat out roads in music, roads that led to the same goal: his soul was a
+mountain: he tried every pathway up it; on some he wound easily, dallying
+in the shade: on others he mounted toilsomely with the hot sun beating up
+from the dry, sandy track: they all led to God enthroned on the summit.
+Love, hatred, evil, renunciation, all the forces of humanity at their
+highest pitch, touched eternity, and were a part of it. For every man the
+gateway to eternity is in himself: for the believer as for the atheist, for
+him who sees life everywhere as for him who everywhere denies it, and for
+him who doubts both life and the denial of it,--and for Christophe in whose
+soul there met all these opposing views of life. All the opposites become
+one in eternal Force. For Christophe the chief thing was to wake that Force
+within himself and in others, to fling armfuls of wood upon the fire, to
+feed the flames of Eternity, and make them roar and flicker. Through the
+voluptuous night of Paris a great flame darted in his heart. He thought
+himself free of Faith, and he was a living torch of Faith.
+
+Nothing was more calculated to outrage the French spirit of irony. Faith is
+one of the feelings which a too civilized society can least forgive: for
+it has lost it and hates others to possess it. In the blind or mocking
+hostility of the majority of men towards the dreams of youth there is for
+many the bitter thought that they themselves were once even as they, and
+had ambitions and never realized them. All those who have denied their
+souls, all those who had the seed of work within them, and have not brought
+it forth rather to accept the security of an easy, honorable life, think:
+
+"Since I could not do the thing I dreamed, why should they do the things
+they dream? I will not have them do it."
+
+How many Hedda Gablers are there among men! What a relentless struggle
+is there to crush out strength in its new freedom, with what skill is it
+killed by silence, irony, wear and tear, discouragement,--and, at the
+crucial moment, betrayed by some treacherous seductive art!...
+
+The type is of all nations. Christophe knew it, for he had met it in
+Germany. Against such people he was armed. His method of defense was
+simple: he was the first to attack; pounced on the first move, and declared
+war on them: he forced these dangerous friends to become his enemies.
+But if such a policy of frankness was an excellent safeguard for his
+personality, it was not calculated to advance his career as an artist. Once
+more Christophe began his German tactics. It was too strong for him. Only
+one thing was altered: his temper: he was in fine fettle.
+
+Lightheartedly, for the benefit of anybody who cared to listen, he
+expressed his unmeasured criticism of French artists: and so he made many
+enemies. He did not take the precaution, as a wise man would have done,
+of surrounding himself with a little coterie. He would have found no
+difficulty in gathering about him a number of artists who would gladly
+have admired him if he had admired them. There were some who admired him
+in advance, investing admiration as it were. They considered any man
+they praised as a debtor, of whom, at a given moment, they could demand
+repayment. But it was a good investment.--But Christophe was a very bad
+investment. He never paid back. Worse than that, he was barefaced enough to
+consider poor the works of men who thought his good. Unavowedly they were
+rancorous, and engaged themselves on the next opportunity to pay him back
+in kind.
+
+Among his other indiscretions Christophe was foolish enough to declare war
+on Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He found him in the way, everywhere, and he could not
+conceal an extraordinary antipathy for the gentle, polite creature who was
+doing no apparent harm, and even seemed to be kinder than himself, and was,
+at any rate, far more moderate. He provoked him into argument: and, however
+insignificant the subject of it might be, Christophe always brought into
+it a sudden heat and bitterness which surprised their hearers. It was as
+though Christophe were seizing every opportunity of battering at Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur, head down: but he could never reach him. His enemy had an
+extraordinary skill, even when he was most obviously in the wrong, in
+carrying it off well: he would defend himself with a courtesy which showed
+up Christophe's bad manners. Christophe still spoke French very badly,
+interlarding it with slang, and often with very coarse expressions which
+he had picked up, and, like many foreigners, used wrongly, and he was
+incapable of outwitting the tactics of Lucien Lévy-Coeur and he raged
+furiously against his gentle irony. Everybody thought him in the wrong,
+for they could not see what Christophe vaguely felt: the hypocrisy of that
+gentleness, which when it was brought up against a force which it could not
+hold in check, tried quietly to stifle it by silence. He was in no hurry,
+for, like Christophe, he counted on time, not, as Christophe did, to build,
+but to destroy. He had no difficulty in detaching Sylvain Kohn and Goujart
+from Christophe, just as he had gradually forced him out of the Stevens'
+circle. He was isolating Christophe.
+
+Christophe himself helped him. He pleased nobody, for he would not join any
+party, but was rather against all parties. He did not like the Jews: but he
+liked the anti-Semites even less. He was revolted by the cowardice of the
+masses stirred up against a powerful minority, not because it was bad,
+but because it was powerful, and by the appeal to the basest instincts of
+jealousy and hatred. The Jews came to regard him as an anti-Semite, and
+the anti-Semites looked on him as a Jew. As for the artists, they felt his
+hostility. Instinctively Christophe made himself more German than he was,
+in art. Revolting against the voluptuous ataraxia of a certain class of
+Parisian music, he set up, with violence, a manly, healthy pessimism. When
+joy appeared in his music, it was with a want of taste, a vulgar ardor,
+which were well calculated to disgust even the aristocratic patrons of
+popular art. An erudite, crude form. In his reaction he was not far from
+affecting an apparent carelessness in style and a disregard of external
+originality, which were bound to be offensive to the French musicians. And
+so those of them, to whom he sent some of his work, without any careful
+consideration, visited on it the contempt they had for the belated
+Wagnerism of the contemporary German school. Christophe did not care: he
+laughed inwardly, and repeated the lines of a charming musician of the
+French Renaissance--adapted to his own case:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+  _"Come, come, don't worry about those who will say:
+  'Christophe has not the counterpoint of A,
+  And he has not such harmony as Monsieur B.'
+  I have something else which they never will see."_
+
+But when he tried to have some of his music performed, he found the doors
+shut against him. They had quite enough to do to play--or not to play--the
+works of young French musicians, and could not bother about those of an
+unknown German.
+
+Christophe did not go on trying. He shut himself up in his room and went on
+writing. He did not much care whether the people of Paris heard him or not.
+He wrote for his own pleasure and not for success. The true artist is not
+concerned with the future of his work. He is like those painters of the
+Renaissance who joyously painted mural decorations, knowing full well that
+in ten years nothing would be left of them. So Christophe worked on in
+peace, quite good-humoredly resigned to waiting for better times, when help
+would come to him from some unexpected source.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe was then attracted by the dramatic form. He dared not yet
+surrender freely to the flood of his own lyrical impulse. He had to run it
+into definite channels. And, no doubt, it is a good thing for a young man
+of genius, who is not yet master of himself, and does not even know exactly
+what he is, to set voluntary bounds upon himself, and to confine therein
+the soul of which he has so little hold. They are the dikes and sluices
+which allow the course of thought to be directed. Unfortunately Christophe
+had not a poet: he had himself to fashion his subjects out of legend and
+history.
+
+Among the visions which had been floating before his mind for some months
+past were certain figures from the Bible.--That Bible, which his mother had
+given him as a companion in his exile, had been a source of dreams to him.
+Although he did not read it in any religious spirit, the moral, or, rather,
+vital energy of that Hebraic Iliad had been to him a spring in which, in
+the evenings, he washed his naked soul of the smoke and mud of Paris. He
+was concerned with the sacred meaning of the book: but it was not the
+less a sacred book to him, for the breath of savage nature and primitive
+individualities that he found in its pages. He drew in its hymns of the
+earth, consumed with faith, quivering mountains, exultant skies, and human
+lions.
+
+One of the characters in the book for whom he had an especial tenderness
+was the young David. He did not give him the ironic smile of the Florentine
+boy, or the tragic intensity of the sublime works of Michael Angelo and
+Verrochio: he knew them not. His David was a young shepherd-poet, with
+a virgin soul, in which heroism slumbered, a Siegfried of the South, of
+a finer race, and more beautiful, and of greater harmony in mind and
+body.--For his revolt against the Latin spirit was in vain: unconsciously
+he had been permeated by that spirit. Not only art influences art, not
+only mind and thought, but everything about the artist:--people, things,
+gestures, movements, lines, the light of each town. The atmosphere of Paris
+is very powerful: it molds even the most rebellious souls. And the soul of
+a German is less capable than any other of resisting it: in vain does he
+gird himself in his national pride: of all Europeans the German is the most
+easily denationalized. Unwittingly the soul of Christophe had already begun
+to assimilate from Latin art a clarity, a sobriety, an understanding of the
+emotions, and even, up to a point, a plastic beauty, which otherwise it
+never would have had. His _David_ was the proof of it.
+
+He had endeavored to recreate certain episodes of the youth of David: the
+meeting with Saul, the fight with Goliath: and he had written the first
+scene. He had conceived it as a symphonic picture with two characters.
+
+On a deserted plateau, on a moor covered with heather in bloom, the young
+shepherd lay dreaming in the sun. The serene light, the hum and buzz of
+tiny creatures, the sweet whispering of the waving grass, the silvery
+tinkling of the grazing sheep, the mighty beat and rhythm of the earth sang
+through the dreaming boy unconscious of his divine destiny. Drowsing, his
+voice and the notes of his flute joined the harmonious silence: and his
+song was so calmly, so limpidly joyous, that, hearing it, there could be no
+thought of joy or sorrow, only the feeling that it must be so and could not
+be otherwise.--Suddenly over the moor reached great shadows: the air was
+still: life seemed to withdraw into the veins of the earth. Only the music
+of the flute went on calmly. Saul, with his crazy thoughts, passed. The mad
+King, racked by his fancy, burned like a flame, devouring itself, flung
+this way and that by the wind. He breathed prayers and violent abuse,
+hurling defiance at the void about him, the void within himself. And when
+he could speak no more and fell breathless to the ground, there rang
+through the silence the smiling peace of the song of the young shepherd,
+who had never ceased. Then, with a furious beating in his heart, came Saul
+in silence up to where the boy lay in the heather: in silence he gazed at
+him: he sat down by his side and placed his fevered hand on the cool brows
+of the shepherd. Untroubled, David turned, and smiled, and looked at the
+King. He laid his hand on Saul's knees, and went on singing and playing his
+flute. Evening came: David went to sleep in the middle of his song, and
+Saul wept. And through the starry night there rose once more the serene
+joyous hymn of nature refreshed, the song of thanksgiving of the soul
+relieved of its burden.
+
+When he wrote the scene, Christophe had thought of nothing but his own joy:
+he had never given a thought to the manner of its performance: and it had
+certainly never occurred to him that it might be produced on the stage. He
+meant it to be sung at a concert at such time as the concert-halls should
+be open to him.
+
+One evening he spoke of it to Achille Roussin, and when, by request, he had
+tried to give him an idea of it on the piano, he was amazed to see Roussin
+burst into enthusiasm, and declare that it must at all costs be produced at
+one of the theaters, and that he would see to it. He was even more amazed
+when, a few days later, he saw that Roussin was perfectly serious: and his
+amazement grew to stupefaction when he heard that Sylvain Kohn, Goujart,
+and Lucien Lévy-Coeur were taking it up. He had to admit that their
+personal animosity had yielded to their love of art: and he was much
+surprised. The only man who was not eager to see his work produced was
+himself. It was not suited to the theater: it was nonsense, and almost
+hurtful to stage it. But Roussin was so insistent, Sylvain Kohn so
+persuasive, and Goujart so positive, that Christophe yielded to the
+temptation. He was weak. He was so longing to hear his music!
+
+It was quite easy for Roussin. Manager and artist rushed to please him.
+It happened that a newspaper was organizing a benefit matinee for some
+charity. It was arranged that the _David_ should be produced. A good
+orchestra was got together. As for the singers, Roussin claimed that he had
+found the ideal representative of David.
+
+The rehearsals were begun. The orchestra came through the first reading
+fairly well, although, as usual in France, there was not much discipline
+about it. Saul had a good, though rather tired, voice: and he knew his
+business. The David was a handsome, tall, plump, solid lady with a
+sentimental vulgar voice which she used heavily, with a melodramatic
+tremolo and all the café-concert tricks. Christophe scowled. As soon as
+she began to sing it was obvious that she could not be allowed to play the
+part. After the first pause in the rehearsal he went to the impresario, who
+had charge of the business side of the undertaking, and was present, with
+Sylvain Kohn, at the rehearsal. The impresario beamed and said:
+
+"Well, are you satisfied?"
+
+"Yes," said Christophe. "I think it can be made all right There's only one
+thing that won't do: the singer. She must be changed. Tell her as gently
+as you can: you're used to it.... It will be quite easy for you to find me
+another."
+
+The impresario looked disgruntled: he looked at Christophe as though he
+could not believe that he was serious; and he said:
+
+"But that's impossible!"
+
+"Why is it impossible?" asked Christophe.
+
+The impresario looked cunningly at Sylvain Kohn, and replied:
+
+"But she has so much talent!"
+
+"Not a spark," said Christophe.
+
+"What!... She has a fine voice!"
+
+"Not a bit of it."
+
+"And she is beautiful."
+
+"I don't care a damn."
+
+"That won't hurt the part," said Sylvain Kohn, laughing.
+
+"I want a David, a David who can sing: I don't want Helen of Troy," said
+Christophe.
+
+The impresario rubbed his nose uneasily.
+
+"It's a pity, a great pity ..." he said. "She is an excellent artist.... I
+give you my word for it! Perhaps she is not at her best to-day. You must
+give her another trial."
+
+"All right," said Christophe. "But it is a waste of time."
+
+He went on with the rehearsal. It was worse than ever. He found it hard to
+go on to the end: it got on his nerves: his remarks to the singer, from
+cold and polite, became dry and cutting, in spite of the obvious pains she
+was taking to satisfy him, and the way she ogled him by way of winning his
+favor. The impresario prudently stopped the rehearsal just when it seemed
+to be hopeless. By way of softening the bad effect of Christophe's remarks,
+he bustled up to the singer and paid her heavy compliments. Christophe,
+who was standing by, made no attempt to conceal his impatience, called the
+impresario, and said:
+
+"There's no room for argument. I won't have the woman. It's unpleasant, I
+know: but I did not choose her. Do what you can to arrange the matter."
+
+The impresario bowed frigidly, and said coldly:
+
+"I can't do anything. You must see M. Roussin."
+
+"What has it got to do with M. Roussin? I don't want to bother him with
+this business," said Christophe.
+
+"That won't bother him," said Sylvain Kohn ironically.
+
+And he pointed to Roussin, who had just come in.
+
+Christophe went up to him. Roussin was in high good humor, and cried:
+
+"What! Finished already? I was hoping to hear a bit of it. Well, maestro,
+what do you say? Are you satisfied?"
+
+"It's going quite well," said Christophe. "I don't know how to thank
+you...."
+
+"Not at all! Not at all!"
+
+"There is only one thing wrong."
+
+"What is it? We'll put it right. I am determined to satisfy you."
+
+"Well ... the singer. Between ourselves she is detestable."
+
+The beaming smile on Roussin's face froze suddenly. He said, with some
+asperity:
+
+"You surprise me, my dear fellow."
+
+"She is useless, absolutely useless," Christophe went on. "She has no
+voice, no taste, no knowledge of her work, no talent. You're lucky not to
+have heard her!..."
+
+Roussin grew more and more acid. He cut Christophe short, and said
+cuttingly:
+
+"I know Mlle. de Sainte-Ygraine. She is a very talented artiste. I have
+the greatest admiration for her. Every man of taste in Paris shares my
+opinion."
+
+And he turned his back on Christophe, who saw him offer his arm to the
+actress and go out with her. He was dumfounded, and Sylvain Kohn, who had
+watched the scene delightedly, took his arm and laughed, and said as they
+went down the stairs of the theater:--
+
+"Didn't you know that she was his mistress?"
+
+Christophe understood. So it was for her sake and not for his own that his
+piece was to be produced! That explained Roussin's enthusiasm, the money
+he had laid out, and the eagerness of his sycophants. He listened while
+Sylvain Kohn told him the story of the Sainte-Ygraine: a music-hall singer,
+who, after various successes in the little vaudeville theaters, had, like
+so many of her kind, been fired with the ambition to be heard on a stage
+more worthy of her talent. She counted on Roussin to procure her an
+engagement at the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique: and Roussin, who asked
+nothing better, had seen in the performance of _David_ an opportunity of
+revealing to the Parisian public at no very great risk the lyrical gifts
+of the new tragedienne, in a part which called for no particular dramatic
+acting, and gave her an excellent opportunity of displaying the elegance of
+her figure.
+
+Christophe heard the story through to the end: then he shook off Sylvain
+Kohn and burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed. When he had done, he
+said:
+
+"You disgust me. You all disgust me. Art is nothing to you. It's always
+women, nothing but women. An opera is put on for a dancer, or a singer, for
+the mistress of M. So-and-So, or Madame Thingummy. You think of nothing but
+your dirty little intrigues. Bless you, I'm not angry with you: you are
+like that: very well then, be so and wallow in your mire. But we must part
+company: we weren't made to live together. Good-night."
+
+He left him, and when he reached home, wrote to Roussin, saying that he
+withdrew the piece, and did not disguise his reasons for doing so.
+
+It meant a breach with Roussin and all his gang. The consequences were
+felt at once. The newspapers had made a certain amount of talk about the
+forthcoming piece, and the story of the quarrel between the composer and
+the singer appeared in due course. A certain conductor was adventurous
+enough to play the piece at a Sunday afternoon concert. His good fortune
+was disastrous for Christophe. The _David_ was played--and hissed. All
+the singer's friends had passed the word to teach the insolent musician a
+lesson: and the outside public, who had been bored by the symphonic poem,
+added their voices to the verdict of the critics. To crown his misfortunes,
+Christophe was ill-advised enough to accept the invitation to display his
+talents as a pianist at the same concert by giving a _Fantasia_ for piano
+and orchestra. The unkindly disposition of the audience, which had been to
+a certain extent restrained during the performance of the _David_, out of
+consideration for the interpreters, broke loose, when they found themselves
+face to face with the composer,--whose playing was not all that it might
+have been. Christophe was unnerved by the noise in the hall, and stopped
+suddenly half-way through a movement: and he looked jeeringly at the
+audience, who were startled into silence, and played _Malbrouck s'en
+va-t-en guerre_!--and said insolently:
+
+"That is all you are fit for."
+
+Then he got up and went away.
+
+There was a terrific row. The audience shouted that he had insulted them,
+and that he must come and apologize. Next day the papers unanimously
+slaughtered the grotesque German to whom justice had been meted out by the
+good taste of Paris.
+
+And then once more he was left in absolute isolation. Once more Christophe
+found himself alone, more solitary than ever, in that great, hostile,
+stranger city. He did not worry about it. He began to think that he was
+fated to be so, and would be so all his life.
+
+He did not know that a great soul is never alone, that, however Fortune may
+cheat him of friendship, in the end a great soul creates friends by the
+radiance of the love with which it is filled, and that even in that hour,
+when he thought himself for ever isolated, he was more rich in love than
+the happiest men and women in the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Living with the Stevens was a little girl of thirteen or fourteen, to whom
+Christophe had given lessons at the same time as Colette. She was a distant
+cousin of Colette's, and her name was Grazia Buontempi. She was a little
+girl with a golden-brown complexion, with cheeks delicately tinged with
+red: healthy-looking: she had a little aquiline nose, a large well-shaped
+mouth, always half-open, a round chin, very white, calm clear eyes, softly
+smiling, a round forehead framed in masses of long, silky hair, which fell
+in long, waving locks loosely down to her shoulders. She was like a little
+Virgin of Andrea del Sarto, with her wide face and serenely gazing eyes.
+
+She was Italian. Her parents lived almost all the year round in the country
+on an estate in the North of Italy: plains, fields, little canals. From the
+loggia on the housetop they looked down on golden vines, from which here
+and there the black spikes of the cypress-trees emerged. Beyond them were
+fields, and again fields. Silence. The lowing of the oxen returning from
+the fields, and the shrill cries of the peasants at the plow were to be
+heard:
+
+_"Ihi!... Fat innanz'!..."_
+
+Grasshoppers chirruped in the trees, frogs croaked by the waterside. And at
+night there was infinite silence under the silver beams of the moon. In the
+distance, from time to time, the watchers by the crops, sleeping in huts of
+branches, fired their guns by way of warning thieves that they were awake.
+To those who heard them drowsily, these noises meant no more than the
+chiming of a dull clock in the distance, marking the hours of the night.
+And silence closed again, like a soft cloak, about the soul.
+
+Round little Grazia life seemed asleep. Her people did not give her much
+attention. In the calmness and beauty that was all about her she grew up
+peacefully without haste, without fever. She was lazy, and loved to dawdle
+and to sleep. For hours together she would lie in the garden. She would let
+herself be borne onward by the silence like a fly on a summer stream. And
+sometimes, suddenly, for no reason, she would begin to run. She would run
+like a little animal, head and shoulders a little leaning to the right,
+moving easily and supply. She was like a kid climbing and slithering among
+the stones for the sheer joy of leaping about. She would talk to the dogs,
+the frogs, the grass, the trees, the peasants, and the beasts in the
+farmyard. She adored all the creatures about her, great and small: but she
+was less at her ease with the great. She saw very few people. The estate
+was isolated and far from any town. Very rarely there came along the dusty
+road some trudging, solemn peasant, or lovely country woman, with bright
+eyes and sunburnt face, walking with a slow rhythm, head high and chest
+well out. For days together Grazia lived alone in the silence of the
+garden: she saw no one: she was never bored: she was afraid of nothing.
+
+One day a tramp came, stealing fowls. He stopped dead when he saw the
+little girl lying on the grass, eating a piece of bread and butter and
+humming to herself. She looked up at him calmly, and asked him what he
+waited. He said:
+
+"Give me something, or I'll hurt you."
+
+She held out her piece of bread and butter and smiled, and said:
+
+"You must not do harm."
+
+Then he went away.
+
+Her mother died. Her father, a kind, weak man, was an old Italian of a good
+family, robust, jovial, affectionate, but rather childish, and he was quite
+incapable of bringing up his child. Old Buontempi's sister, Madame Stevens,
+came to the funeral, and was struck by the loneliness of the child, and
+decided to take her back to Paris for a while, to distract her from her
+grief. Grazia and her father wept: but when Madame Stevens had made up her
+mind to anything, there was nothing for it but to give in: nobody could
+stand out against her. She had the brains of the family: and, in her house
+in Paris, she directed everything, dominated everybody: her husband,
+her daughter, her lovers:--for she had not denied herself in the matter
+of love: she went straight at her duties, and her pleasures: she was a
+practical woman and a passionate--very worldly and very restless.
+
+Transplanted to Paris, Grazia adored her pretty cousin Colette, whom she
+amused. The pretty little savage was taken out into society and to the
+theater. They treated her as a child, and she regarded herself as a child,
+although she was a child no longer. She had feelings which she hid away,
+for she was fearful of them: accesses of tenderness for some person or
+thing. She was secretly in love with Colette, and would steal a ribbon
+or a handkerchief that belonged to her: often in her presence, she could
+not speak a word: and when she expected her, when she knew that she was
+going to see her, she would tremble with impatience and happiness. At the
+theater when she saw her pretty cousin, in evening dress, come into the
+box and attract general attention, she would smile humbly, affectionately,
+lovingly: and her heart would leap when Colette spoke to her. Dressed in
+white, with her beautiful black hair loose and hanging over her shoulders,
+biting the fingers of her long white cotton gloves, and idly poking her
+fingers through the holes,--every other minute during the play she would
+turn towards Colette in the hope of meeting a friendly look, to share the
+pleasure she was feeling, and to say with her clear brown eyes:
+
+"I love you."
+
+When they were out together in the Bois, outside Paris, she would walk in
+Colette's shadow, sit at her feet; run in front of her, break off branches
+that might be in her way, place stones in the mud for her to walk on. And
+one evening in the garden, when Colette shivered and asked for her shawl,
+she gave a little cry of delight--she was at once ashamed of it--to think
+that her beloved would be wrapped in something of hers, and would give it
+back to her presently filled with the scent of her body.
+
+There were books, certain passages in the poets, which she read in
+secret--(for she was still given children's books)--which gave her
+delicious thrills. And there were more even in certain passages in music,
+although she was told that she could not understand them: and she persuaded
+herself that she did not understand them:--but she would turn pale and cold
+with emotion. No one knew what was happening within her at such moments.
+
+Outside that she was just a docile little girl, dreamy, lazy, greedy,
+blushing on the slightest provocation, now silent for hours together, now
+talking volubly, easily touched to tears and laughter, breaking suddenly
+into fits of sobbing or childish laughter. She loved to laugh, and silly
+little things would amuse her. She never tried to be grown up. She remained
+a child. She was, above all, kind and could not bear to hurt anybody, and
+she was hurt by the least angry word addressed to herself. She was very
+modest and retiring, ready to love and admire anything that seemed good and
+beautiful to her, and so she attributed to others qualities which they did
+not possess.
+
+She was being educated, for she was very backward. And that was how she
+came to be taught music by Christophe.
+
+She saw him for the first time at a crowded party in her aunt's house.
+Christophe, who was incapable of adapting himself to his audience, played
+an interminable _adagio_ which made everybody yawn: when it seemed to be
+over he began again: and everybody wondered if it was ever going to end.
+Madame Stevens was boiling with impatience: Colette was highly amused: she
+was enjoying the absurdity of it, and rather pleased with Christophe for
+being so insensible of it: she felt that he was a force, and she liked
+that: but it was comic too: and she would have been the last person to
+defend him. Grazia alone was moved to tears by the music. She hid herself
+away in a corner of the room. When it was over she went away, so that no
+one should see her emotion, and also because she could not bear to see
+people making fun of Christophe.
+
+A few days later, at dinner, Madame Stevens in her presence spoke of her
+having music-lessons from Christophe. Grazia was so upset that she let her
+spoon drop into her soup-plate, and splashed herself and her neighbor.
+Colette said she ought first to have lessons in table-manners. Madame
+Stevens added that Christophe was not the person to go to for that. Grazia
+was glad to be scolded in Christophe's company.
+
+Christophe began to teach her. She was stiff and frozen, and held her arms
+close to her sides, and could not stir: and when Christophe placed his
+hand on hers, to correct the position of her fingers, and stretched them
+over the keys, she nearly fainted. She was fearful of playing badly for
+him; but in vain did she practise until she nearly made herself ill, and
+evoked impatient protests from her cousin: she always played vilely when
+Christophe was present: she was breathless, and her fingers were as stiff
+as pieces of wood, or as flabby as cotton: she struck the wrong notes and
+gave the emphasis all wrong: Christophe would lose his temper, scold her,
+and go away: then she would long to die.
+
+He paid no attention to her, and thought only of Colette. Grazia was
+envious of her cousin's intimacy with Christophe: but, although it hurt
+her, in her heart she was glad both for Colette and for Christophe. She
+thought Colette so superior to herself that it seemed natural to her that
+she should monopolize attention.--It was only when she had to choose
+between her cousin and Christophe that she felt her heart turn against
+Colette. With her girlish intuition she saw that Christophe was made to
+suffer by Colette's coquetry, and the persistent courtship of her by Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur. Instinctively she disliked Lévy-Coeur, and she detested him as
+soon as she knew that Christophe detested him. She could not understand
+how Colette could admit him as a rival to Christophe. She began secretly
+to judge him harshly. She discovered certain of his small hypocrisies, and
+suddenly changed her manner towards him. Colette saw it, but did not guess
+the cause: she pretended to ascribe it to a little girl's caprice. But it
+was very certain that she had lost her power over Grazia: as was shown by
+a trifling incident. One evening, when they were walking together in the
+garden, a gentle rain came on, and Colette, tenderly, though coquettishly,
+offered Grazia the shelter of her cloak: Grazia, for whom, a few weeks
+before, it would have been happiness ineffable to be held close to her
+beloved cousin, moved away coldly, and walked on in silence at a distance
+of some yards. And when Colette said that she thought a piece of music that
+Grazia was playing was ugly, Grazia was not kept from playing and loving
+it.
+
+She was only concerned with Christophe. She had the insight of her
+tenderness, and saw that he was suffering, without his saying a word. She
+exaggerated it in her childish, uneasy regard for him. She thought that
+Christophe was in love with Colette, when he had really no more than an
+exacting friendship. She thought he was unhappy, and she was unhappy for
+him, and she had little reward for her anxiety. She paid for it when
+Colette had infuriated Christophe: then he was surly and avenged himself on
+his pupil, waxing wrathful with her mistakes. One morning when Colette had
+exasperated him more than usual, he sat down by the piano so savagely that
+Grazia lost the little nerve she had: she floundered: he angrily scolded
+her for her mistakes: then she lost her head altogether: he fumed, wrung
+his hands, declared that she would never do anything properly, and that she
+had better occupy herself with cooking, sewing, anything she liked, only,
+in Heaven's name, she must not go on with her music! It was not worth the
+trouble of torturing people with her mistakes. With that he left her in the
+middle of her lesson. He was furious. And poor Grazia wept, not so much for
+the humiliation of anything he had said to her, as for despair at not being
+able to please Christophe, when she longed to do so, and could only succeed
+in adding to his sufferings. The greatest grief was when Christophe ceased
+to go to the Stevens' house. Then she longed to go home. The poor child, so
+healthy, even in her dreams, in whom there was much of the sweet peace of
+the country, felt ill at ease in the town, among the neurasthenic, restless
+women of Paris. She never dared say anything, but she had come to a fairly
+accurate estimation of the people about her. But she was shy, and, like her
+father, weak, from kindness, modesty, distrust of herself. She submitted
+to the authority of her domineering aunt and her cousin, who was used to
+tyrannizing over everybody. She dared not write to her father, to whom she
+wrote regularly long, affectionate letters:
+
+"Please, please, take me home!"
+
+And her father dared not take her home, in spite of his own longing: for
+Madame Stevens had answered his timid advances by saying that Grazia was
+very well off where she was, much better off than she would be with him,
+and that she must stay for the sake of her education.
+
+But there came a time when her exile was too hard for the little southern
+creature, a time when she had to fly back towards the light.--That was
+after Christophe's concert. She went to it with the Stevens: and she
+was tortured by the hideous sight of the rabble amusing themselves with
+insulting an artist.... An artist? The man who, in Grazia's eyes, was the
+very type of art, the personification of all that was divine in life! She
+was on the point of tears; she longed to get away. She had to listen to
+all the caterwauling, the hisses, the howls, and, when they reached home,
+to the laughter of Colette as she exchanged pitying remarks with Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur. She escaped to her room, and through part of the night she
+sobbed: she spoke to Christophe, and consoled him: she would gladly have
+given her life for him, and she despaired of ever being able to do anything
+to make him happy. It was impossible for her to stay in Paris any longer.
+She begged her father to take her away, saying:
+
+"I cannot live here any longer; I cannot: I shall die if you leave me here
+any longer."
+
+Her father came at once, and though it was very painful to them both to
+stand up to her terrible aunt, they screwed up their courage for it by a
+desperate effort of will.
+
+Grazia returned to the sleepy old estate. She was glad to get back to
+Nature and the creatures that she loved. Every day she gathered comfort
+for her sorrow, but in her heart there remained a little of the melancholy
+of the North, like a veil of mist, that very slowly melted away before
+the sun. Sometimes she thought of Christophe's wretchedness. Lying on the
+grass, listening to the familiar frogs and grasshoppers, or sitting at her
+piano, which now she played more often than before, she would dream of the
+friend her heart had chosen: she would talk to him, in whispers, for hours
+together, and it seemed not impossible to her that one day he would open
+the door and come in to her. She wrote to him, and, after long hesitation,
+she sent the letter, unsigned, which, one day, with beating heart, she went
+secretly and dropped into the box in the village two miles away, beyond the
+long plowed fields,--a kind, good, touching letter, in which she told him
+that he was not alone, that he must not be discouraged, that there was
+one who thought of him, and loved him, and prayed to God for him,--a poor
+little letter, which was lost in the post, so that he never received it.
+
+Then the serene, monotonous days succeeded each other in the life of his
+distant friend. And the Italian peace, the genius of tranquillity, calm
+happiness, silent contemplation, once more took possession of that chaste
+and silent heart, in whose depths there still burned, like a little
+constant flame, the memory of Christophe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Christophe never knew of the simple love that watched over him from
+afar, and was later to fill so great a room in his life. Nor did he know
+that at that same concert, where he had been insulted, there sat the woman
+who was to be the beloved, the dear companion, destined to walk by his
+side, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.
+
+He was alone. He thought himself alone. But he did not suffer overmuch. He
+did not feel that bitter anguish that had given him such great agony in
+Germany. He was stronger, riper: he knew that it must be so. His illusions
+about Paris were destroyed: men were everywhere the same: he must be a law
+unto himself, and not waste strength in a childish struggle with the world:
+he must be himself, calmly, tranquilly. As Beethoven had said, "If we
+surrender the forces of our lives to life, what, then, will be left for the
+noblest and highest?" He had firmly grasped a knowledge of his nature and
+the temper of his race, which formerly he had so harshly judged. The more
+he was oppressed by the atmosphere of Paris, the more keenly did he feel
+the need of taking refuge in his own country, in the arms of the poets and
+musicians, in whom the best of Germany is garnered and preserved. As soon
+as he opened their books his room was filled with the sound of the sunlit
+Rhine and lit by the loving smiles of old friends new found.
+
+How ungrateful he had been to them! How was it he had failed to feel the
+treasure of their goodness and honesty? He remembered with shame all the
+unjust, outrageous things he had said of them when he was in Germany. Then
+he saw only their defects, their awkward ceremonious manners, their tearful
+idealism, their little mental hypocrisies, their cowardice. Ah! How small
+were all these things compared with their great virtues! How could he have
+been so hard upon their weaknesses, which now made them even more moving in
+his eyes: for they were more human for them! In his reaction he was the
+more attracted to those of them to whom he had been most unjust. What
+things he had said about Schubert and Bach! And now he felt so near to
+them. Now it was as though these noble souls, whose foibles he had so
+scorned, leaned over him, now that he was in exile and far from his own
+people, and smiled kindly and said:
+
+"Brother, we are here! Courage! We too have had more than our share of
+misery ... Bah! one wins through it...."
+
+He heard the soul of Johann Sebastian Bach roaring like the sea:
+hurricanes, winds howling, the clouds of life scudding,--men and women
+drunk with joy, sorrow, fury, and the Christ, all meekness, the Prince of
+Peace, hovering above them,--towns awakened by the cries of the watchmen,
+running with glad shouts, to meet the divine Bridegroom, whose footsteps
+shake the earth,--the vast store of thoughts, passions, musical forms,
+heroic life, Shakespearean hallucinations, Savonarolaesque prophecies,
+pastoral, epic, apocalyptic visions, all contained in the stunted body of
+the little Thuringian _cantor_, with his double chin, and little shining
+eyes under the wrinkled lids and the raised eyebrows ...--he could see him
+so clearly! somber, jovial, a little absurd, with his head stuffed full of
+allegories and symbols, Gothic and rococo, choleric, obstinate, serene,
+with a passion for life, and a great longing for death ...--he saw him
+in his school, a genial pedant, surrounded by his pupils, dirty, coarse,
+vagabond, ragged, with hoarse voices, the ragamuffins with whom he
+squabbled, and sometimes fought like a navvy, one of whom once gave him
+a mighty thrashing ...--he saw him with his family, surrounded by his
+twenty-one children, of whom thirteen died before him, and one was an
+idiot, and the rest were good musicians who gave little concerts....
+Sickness, burial, bitter disputes, want, his genius misunderstood:--and
+through and above it all, his music, his faith, deliverance and light, joy
+half seen, felt, desired, grasped,--God, the breath of God kindling his
+bones, thrilling through his flesh, thundering from his lips.... O Force!
+Force! Thrice joyful thunder of Force!...
+
+Christophe took great draughts of that force. He felt the blessing of that
+power of music which issues from the depths of the German soul. Often
+mediocre, and even coarse, what does it matter? The great thing is that
+it is so, and that it flows plenteously. In France music is gathered
+carefully, drop by drop, and passed through Pasteur filters into bottles,
+and then corked. And the drinkers of stale water are disgusted by the
+rivers of German music! They examine minutely the defects of the German men
+of genius!
+
+"Poor little things!"--thought Christophe, forgetting that he himself had
+once been just as absurd--"they find fault with Wagner and Beethoven! They
+must have faultless men of genius!... As though, when the tempest rages, it
+would take care not to upset the existing order of things!..."
+
+He strode about Paris rejoicing in his strength. If he were misunderstood,
+so much the better! He would be all the freer. To create, as genius must, a
+whole world, organically constituted according to his own inward laws, the
+artist must live in it altogether. An artist can never be too much alone.
+What is terrible is to see his ideas reflected in a mirror which deforms
+and stunts them. He must say nothing to others of what he is doing until he
+has done it: otherwise he would never have the courage to go on to the end:
+for it would no longer be his idea, but the miserable idea of others that
+would live in him.
+
+Now that there was nothing to disturb his dreams, they bubbled forth like
+springs from all the corners of his soul, and from every stone of the roads
+by which he walked. He was living in a visionary state. Everything he saw
+and heard called forth in him creatures and things different from those he
+saw and heard. He had only to live to find everywhere about him the life
+of his heroes. Their sensations came to him of their own accord. The eyes
+of the passers-by, the sound of a voice borne by the wind, the light on
+a lawn, the birds singing in the trees of the Luxembourg, a convent-bell
+ringing so far away, the pale sky, the little patch of sky seen from his
+room, the sounds and shades of sound of the different hours of the day, all
+these were not in himself, but in the creatures of his dreams.--Christophe
+was happy.
+
+But his material position was worse than ever. He had lost his few pupils,
+his only resource. It was September, and rich people were out of town, and
+it was difficult to find new pupils. The only one he had was an engineer, a
+crazy, clever fellow, who had taken it into his head, at forty, to become a
+great violinist. Christophe did not play the violin very well: but he knew
+more about it than his pupil: and for some time he gave him three hours a
+week at two francs an hour. But at the end of six weeks the engineer got
+tired of it, and suddenly discovered that painting was his vocation.--When
+he imparted his discovery to Christophe, Christophe laughed heartily: but,
+when he had done laughing, he reckoned up his finances, and found that he
+had in hand the twelve francs which his pupil had just paid him for his
+last lessons. That did not worry him: he only said to himself that he must
+certainly set about finding some other means of living, and start once more
+going from publisher to publisher. That was not very pleasant.... Pff!...
+It was useless to torment himself in advance. It was a jolly day. He went
+to Meudon.
+
+He had a sudden longing for a walk. As he walked there rose in him scraps
+of music. He was as full of it as a hive of honey: and he laughed aloud at
+the golden buzzing of his bees. For the most part it was changing music.
+And lively leaping rhythms, insistent, haunting.... Much good it is to
+create and fashion music buried within four walls! There you can only make
+combinations of subtle, hard, unyielding harmonies, like the Parisians!
+
+When he was weary he lay down in the woods. The trees were half in leaf,
+the sky was periwinkle blue. Christophe dozed off dreamily, and in his
+dreams there was the color of the sweet light falling from October clouds.
+His blood throbbed. He listened to the rushing flood of his ideas. They
+came from all corners of the earth: worlds, young and old, at war, rags and
+tatters of dead souls, guests and parasites that once had dwelled within
+him, as in a city. The words that Gottfried had spoken by the grave of
+Melchior returned to him: he was a living tomb, filled with the dead,
+striving in him,--all his unknown forefathers. He listened to those
+countless lives, it delighted him to set the organ roaring, the roaring of
+that age-old forest, full of monsters, like the forest of Dante. He was
+no longer fearful of them as he had been in his youth. For the master was
+there: his will. It was a great joy to him to crack his whip and make the
+beasts howl, and feel the wealth of living creatures in himself. He was
+not alone. There was no danger of his ever being alone. He was a host in
+himself. Ages of Kraffts, healthy and rejoicing in their health. Against
+hostile Paris, against a hostile people, he could set a whole people: the
+fight was equal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had left the modest room--it was too expensive--which he occupied and
+taken an attic in the Montrouge district. It was well aired, though it
+had no other advantage. There was a continual draught. But he wanted to
+breathe. From his window he had a wide view over the chimneys of Paris to
+Montmartre in the background. It had not taken him long to move: a handcart
+was enough: Christophe pushed it himself. Of all his possessions the most
+precious to him, after his old bag, was one of those casts, which have
+lately become so popular, of the death-mask of Beethoven. He packed it with
+as much care as though it were a priceless work of art. He never let it out
+of his sight. It was an oasis in the midst of the desert of Paris. And also
+it served him as a moral thermometer. The death-mask indicated more clearly
+than his own conscience the temperature of his soul, the character of his
+most secret thoughts: now a cloudy sky, now the gusty wind of the passions,
+now fine calm weather.
+
+He had to be sparing with his food. He only ate once a day, at one in the
+afternoon. He bought a large sausage, and hung it up in his window: a thick
+slice of it, a hunk of bread, and a cup of coffee that he made himself were
+a feast for the gods. He would have preferred two such feasts. He was angry
+with himself for having such a good appetite. He called himself to task,
+and thought himself a glutton, thinking only of his stomach. He lost flesh:
+he was leaner than a famished dog. But he was solidly built, he had an iron
+constitution, and his head was clear.
+
+He did not worry about the morrow, though he had good reason for doing so.
+As long as he had in hand money enough for the day he never bothered about
+it. When he came to the end of his money he made up his mind to go the
+round of the publishers once more. He found no work. He was on his way
+home, empty, when, happening to pass the music-shop where he had been
+introduced to Daniel Hecht by Sylvain Kohn, he went in without remembering
+that he had already been there under not very pleasant circumstances. The
+first person he saw was Hecht. He was on the point of turning tail: but he
+was too late: Hecht had seen him. Christophe did not wish to seem to be
+avoiding him: he went up to Hecht, not knowing what to say to him, and
+fully prepared to stand up to him as arrogantly as need be: for he was
+convinced that Hecht would be unsparingly insolent. But he was nothing
+of the kind. Hecht coldly held out his hand, muttered some conventional
+inquiry after his health, and, without waiting for any request from
+Christophe, he pointed to the door of his office, and stepped aside to let
+him pass. He was secretly glad of the visit, which he had foreseen, though
+he had given up expecting it. Without seeming to do so, he had carefully
+followed Christophe's doings: he had missed no opportunity of hearing his
+music: he had been at the famous performance of the _David_: and, despising
+the public, he had not been greatly surprised at its hostile reception,
+since he himself had felt the beauty of the work. There were probably not
+two people in Paris more capable than Hecht of appreciating Christophe's
+artistic originality. But he took care not to say anything about it, not
+only because his vanity was hurt by Christophe's attitude towards himself,
+but because it was impossible for him to be amiable: it was the peculiarly
+ungracious quality of his nature. He was sincerely desirous of helping
+Christophe: but he would not have stirred a finger to do so: he was waiting
+for Christophe to come and ask it of him. And now that Christophe had
+come,--instead of generously seizing the opportunity of wiping out the
+memory of their previous misunderstanding by sparing his visitor any
+humiliation, he gave himself the satisfaction of hearing him make his
+request at length: and he even went so far as to offer Christophe, at least
+for the time being, the work which he had formerly refused. He gave him
+fifty pages of music to transpose for mandoline and guitar by the next
+day. After which, being satisfied that he had made him truckle down, he
+found him less distasteful work, but always so ungraciously that it was
+impossible to be grateful to him for it: Christophe had to be ground
+down by necessity before he would ever go to Hecht again. In any case he
+preferred to earn his money by such work, however irritating it might
+be, than accept it as a gift from Hecht, as it was once more offered to
+him:--and, indeed, Hecht meant it kindly: but Christophe had been conscious
+of Hecht's original intention to humiliate him: he was forced to accept
+his conditions, but nothing would induce him to accept any favor from
+him: he was willing to work for him:--by giving and giving he squared the
+account:--but he would not be under any obligation to him. Unlike Wagner,
+that impudent mendicant where his art was concerned, he did not place his
+art above himself: the bread that he had not earned himself would have
+choked him.--One day, when he brought some work that he had sat up all
+night to finish, he found Hecht at table. Hecht, remarking his pallor and
+the hungry glances that involuntarily he cast at the dishes, felt sure that
+he had not eaten that day, and invited him to lunch. He meant kindly, but
+he made it so apparent that he had noticed Christophe's straits that his
+invitation looked like charity: Christophe would have died of hunger rather
+than accept. He could not refuse to sit down at the table--(Hecht said he
+wanted to talk to him):--but he did not touch a morsel: he pretended that
+he had just had lunch. His stomach was aching with hunger.
+
+Christophe would gladly have done without Hecht: but the other publishers
+were even worse.--There were also wealthy amateurs who had conceived some
+scrap of a musical idea, and could not even write it down. They would send
+for Christophe, hum over their lucubrations, and say:
+
+"Isn't it fine?"
+
+Then they would give them to him for elaboration,--(to be written):--and
+then they would appear under their own names through some great publishing
+house. They were quite convinced that they had composed them themselves.
+Christophe knew such a one, a distinguished nobleman, a strange, restless
+creature, who would suddenly call him "Dear friend," grasp him by the
+arm, and burst into a torrent of enthusiastic demonstrations, talking and
+giggling, babbling and telling funny stories, interlarded with cries of
+ecstatic laughter: Beethoven, Verlaine, Fauré, Yvette Guilbert.... He made
+him work, and failed to pay. He worked it out in invitations to lunch and
+handshakes. Finally he sent Christophe twenty francs, which Christophe gave
+himself the foolish luxury of returning. That day he had not twenty sous
+in the world: and he had to buy a twenty-five centimes stamp for a letter
+to his mother. It was Louisa's birthday, and Christophe would not for the
+world have failed her: the poor old creature counted on her son's letter,
+and could not have endured disappointment. For some weeks past she had been
+writing to him more frequently, in spite of the pain it caused her. She
+was suffering from her loneliness. But she could not bring herself to
+join Christophe in Paris: she was too timid, too much attached to her own
+little town, to her church, her house, and she was afraid of traveling. And
+besides, if she had wanted to come, Christophe had not enough money: he had
+not always enough for himself.
+
+He had been given a great deal of pleasure once by receiving a letter from
+Lorchen, the peasant girl for whose sake he had plunged into the brawl with
+the Prussian soldiers:[Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I, "Revolt."] she
+wrote to tell him that she was going to be married: she gave him news of
+his mother, and sent him a basket of apples and a piece of cake to eat in
+her honor. They came in the nick of time. That evening with Christophe was
+a fast, Ember Days, Lent: only the butt end of the sausage hanging by the
+window was left. Christophe compared himself to the anchorite saints fed by
+a crow among the rocks. But no doubt the crow was hard put to it to feed
+all the anchorites, for he never came again.
+
+In spite of all his difficulties Christophe kept his end up. He washed his
+linen in his basin, and cleaned his boots, whistling like a blackbird. He
+consoled himself with the saying of Berlioz: "Let us raise our heads above
+the miseries of life, and let us blithely sing the familiar gay refrain,
+_Dies iræ_...."--He used to sing it sometimes, to the dismay of his
+neighbors, who were amazed and shocked to hear him break off in the middle
+and shout with laughter.
+
+He led a life of stern chastity. As Berlioz remarked: "The lover's life is
+a life for the idle and the rich." Christophe's poverty, his daily hunt
+for bread, his excessive sobriety, and his creative fever left him neither
+the time nor the taste for any thought of pleasure. He was more than
+indifferent about it: in his reaction against Paris he had plunged into a
+sort of moral asceticism. He had a passionate need of purity, a horror of
+any sort of dirtiness. It was not that he was rid of his passions. At other
+times he had been swept headlong by them. But his passions remained chaste
+even when he yielded to them: for he never sought pleasure through them but
+the absolute giving of himself and fulness of being. And when he saw that
+he had been deceived he flung them furiously from him. Lust was not to
+him a sin like any other. It was the great Sin, that which poisons the
+very springs of life. All those in whom the old Christian belief has not
+been crusted over with strange conceptions, all those who still feel in
+themselves the vigor and life of the races, which through the strengthening
+of an heroic discipline have built up Western civilization, will have
+no difficulty in understanding him. Christophe despised cosmopolitan
+society, whose only aim and creed was pleasure.--In truth it is good to
+seek pleasure, to desire pleasure for all men, to combat the cramping
+pessimistic beliefs, that have come to weigh upon humanity through twenty
+centuries of Gothic Christianity. But that can only be upon condition
+that it is a generous faith, earnestly desirous of the good of others.
+But instead of that, what happens? The most pitiful egoism. A handful of
+loose-living men and women trying to give their senses the maximum of
+pleasure with the minimum of risk, while they take good care that the rest
+shall drudge for it.--Yes, no doubt, they have their parlor Socialism!...
+But they know perfectly well that their doctrine of pleasure is only
+practicable for "well-fed" people, for a select pampered few, that it is
+poison to the poor....
+
+"The life of pleasure is a rich man's life."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe was neither rich nor likely to become so. When he made a little
+money he spent it at once on music: he went without food to go to concerts.
+He would take cheap seats in the gallery of the _Théâtre du Châtelet_: and
+he would steep himself in music: he found both food and love in it. He had
+such a hunger for happiness and so great a power of enjoying it that the
+imperfections of the orchestra never worried him: he would stay for two or
+three hours, drowsy and beatific, and wrong notes or defective taste never
+provoked in him more than an indulgent smile: he left his critical faculty
+outside: he was there to love, not to judge. Around him the audience sat
+motionless, with eyes half closed, letting itself be borne on by the great
+torrent of dreams. Christophe fancied them as a mass of people curled up
+in the shade, like an enormous cat, weaving fantastic dreams of lust and
+carnage. In the deep golden shadows certain faces stood out, and their
+strange charm and silent ecstasy drew Christophe's eyes and heart: he loved
+them: he listened through them: he became them, body and soul. One woman in
+the audience became aware of it, and between her and Christophe during the
+concert there was woven one of those obscure sympathies, which touch the
+very depths, though never by one word are they translated into the region
+of consciousness, while, when the concert is over and the thread that binds
+soul to soul is snapped, nothing is left of it. It is a state familiar
+to lovers of music, especially when they are young and do most wholly
+surrender: the essence of music is so completely love, that the full savor
+of it is not won unless it be enjoyed through another, and so it is that,
+at a concert, we instinctively seek among the throng for friendly eyes, for
+a friend with whom to share a joy too great for ourselves alone.
+
+Among such friends, the friends of one brief hour, whom Christophe marked
+out for choice of love, the better to taste the sweetness of the music, he
+was attracted by one face which he saw again and again, at every concert.
+It was the face of a little grisette who seemed to adore music without
+understanding it at all. She had an odd little profile, a short, straight
+nose, almost in line with her slightly pouting lips and delicately molded
+chin, fine arched eyebrows, and clear eyes: one of those pretty little
+faces behind the veil of which one feels joy and laughter concealed by calm
+indifference. It is perhaps in such light-hearted girls, little creatures
+working for their living, that one finds most the old serenity that is no
+more, the serenity of the antique statues and the faces of Raphael. There
+is but one moment in their lives, the first awakening of pleasure: all too
+soon their lives are sullied. But at least they have lived for one lovely
+hour.
+
+It gave Christophe an exquisite pleasure to look at her: a pretty face
+would always warm his heart: he could enjoy without desire: he found joy in
+it, force, comfort,--almost virtue. It goes without saying that she quickly
+became aware that he was watching her: and, unconsciously, there was set up
+between them a magnetic current. And as they met at almost every concert,
+almost always in the same places, they quickly learned each other's likes
+and dislikes. At certain passages they would exchange meaning glances: when
+she particularly liked some melody she would just put out her tongue as
+though to lick her lips: or, to show that she did not think much of it, she
+would disdainfully wrinkle up her pretty nose. In these little tricks of
+hers there was a little of that innocent posing of which hardly any one
+can be free when he knows that he is being watched. During serious music
+she would sometimes try to look grave and serious: and she would turn her
+profile towards him, and look absorbed, and smile to herself, and look
+out of the corner of her eye to see if he were watching. They had become
+very good friends, without exchanging a word, and even without having
+attempted--at least Christophe did not--to meet outside.
+
+At last by chance at an evening concert they found themselves sitting
+next each other. After a moment of smiling hesitation they began to talk
+amicably. She had a charming voice and said many stupid things about music:
+for she knew nothing about it and wanted to seem as if she knew: but she
+loved it passionately. She loved the worst and the best, Massenet and
+Wagner: only the mediocre bored her. Music was a physical pleasure to her:
+she drank it in through all the pores of her skin as Danaë did the golden
+rain. The prelude of _Tristan_ made her blood run cold: and she loved
+feeling herself being carried away, like some warrior's prey, by the
+_Symphonia Eroica_. She told Christophe that Beethoven was deaf and dumb,
+and that, in spite of it all, if she had known him, she would have loved
+him, although he was precious ugly. Christophe protested that Beethoven
+was not so very ugly: then they argued about beauty and ugliness: and she
+agreed that it was a matter of taste: what was beautiful for one person was
+not so for another: "We're not golden louis and can't please every one." He
+preferred her when she did not talk: he understood her better. During the
+death of Isolde she held out her hand to him: her hand was warm and moist:
+he held it in his until the end of the piece: they could feel life coursing
+through the veins of their clasped hands.
+
+They went out together: it was near midnight. They walked back to the Latin
+Quarter talking eagerly: she had taken his arm and he took her home: but
+when they reached the door, and she seemed to suggest that he should go
+up and see her room, he disregarded her smile and the friendliness in her
+eyes and left her. At first she was amazed, then furious: then she laughed
+aloud at the thought of his stupidity: and then, when she had reached her
+room and began to undress, she felt hurt and angry, and finally wept in
+silence. When next she met him at a concert she tried to be dignified and
+indifferent and crushing. But he was so kind to her that she could not hold
+to her resolution. They began to talk once more: only now she was a little
+reserved with him. He talked to her warmly but very politely and always
+about serious things, and the music to which they were listening and what
+it meant to him. She listened attentively and tried to think as he did. The
+meaning of his words often escaped her: but she believed him all the same.
+She was grateful to Christophe and had a respect for him which she hardly
+showed. By tacit agreement they only spoke to each other at concerts.
+He met her once surrounded with students. They bowed gravely. She never
+talked about him to any one. In the depths of her soul there was a little
+sanctuary, a quality of beauty, purity, consolation.
+
+And so Christophe, by his presence, by the mere fact of his existence,
+exercised an influence that brought strength and solace. Wherever he passed
+he unconsciously left behind the traces of his inward light. He was the
+last to have any notion of it. Near him, in the house where he lived, there
+were people whom he had never seen, people who, without themselves
+suspecting it, gradually came under the spell of his beneficent radiance.
+
+For several weeks Christophe had no money for concerts even by fasting: and
+in his attic under the roof, now that winter was coming in, he was numbed
+with the cold: he could not sit still at his table. Then he would get
+up and walk about Paris, trying to warm himself. He had the faculty of
+forgetting the seething town about him, and slipping away into space and
+the infinite. It was enough for him to see above the noisy street the
+dead, frozen moon, hung there in the abysm of the sky, or the sun, like a
+disc, rolling through the white mist; then Paris would sink down into the
+boundless void and all the life of it would seem to be no more than the
+phantom of a life that had been once, long, long ago ... ages ago ... The
+smallest tiny sign, imperceptible to the common lot of men, of the great
+wild life of Nature, so sparsely covered with the livery of civilization,
+was enough to make it all come rushing mightily up before his gaze. The
+grass growing between the stones of the streets, the budding of a tree
+strangled by its cast-iron cage, airless, earthless, on some bleak
+boulevard: a dog, a passing bird, the last relics of the beasts and
+birds that thronged the primeval world, which man has since destroyed: a
+whirling cloud of flies: the mysterious epidemic that raged through a whole
+district:--these were enough in the thick air of that human hothouse to
+bring the breath of the Spirit of the Earth up to slap his cheeks and whip
+his energy to action.
+
+During those long walks, when he was often starving, and often had
+not spoken to a soul for days together, his wealth of dreams seemed
+inexhaustible. Privation and silence had aggravated his morbid heated
+condition. At night he slept feverishly, and had exhausting dreams: he saw
+once more and never ceased to see the old house and the room in which he
+had lived as a child: he was haunted by musical obsessions. By day he
+talked and never ceased to talk to the creatures within himself and the
+beings whom he loved, the absent and the dead.
+
+One cold afternoon in December, when the grass was covered with frost, and
+the roofs of the houses and the great domes were glistening through the
+fog, and the trees, with their cold, twisted, naked branches, groping
+through the mist that hung about them, looked like great weeds at the
+bottom of the sea,--Christophe, who had been shivering all day and could
+not get warm again, went into the Louvre, which he hardly knew at all.
+
+Till then painting had never moved him much. He was too much absorbed by
+the world within himself to grasp the world of color and form. They only
+acted on him through their music and rhythm, which only brought him an
+indistinguishable echo of their truth. No doubt his instinct did obscurely
+divine the selfsame laws that rule the harmony of visible form, as of the
+form of sounds, and the deep waters of the soul, from which spring the two
+rivers of color and sound, to flow down the two sides of the mountain of
+life. But he only knew one side of the mountain, and he was lost in the
+kingdom of the eye, which was not his. And so he missed the secret of the
+most exquisite, and perhaps the most natural charm of clear-eyed France,
+the queen of the world of light.
+
+Even had he been interested in painting, Christophe was too German to
+adapt himself to so widely different a vision of things. He was not one of
+those up-to-date Germans who decry the German way of feeling, and persuade
+themselves that they admire and love French Impressionism or the artists of
+the eighteenth century,--except when they go farther and are convinced that
+they understand them better than the French. Christophe was a barbarian,
+perhaps: but he was frank about it. The pink flesh of Boucher, the fat
+chins of Watteau, the bored shepherds and plump, tight-laced shepherdesses,
+the whipped-cream souls, the virtuous oglings of Greuze, the tucked shirts
+of Fragonard, all that bare-legged poesy interested him no more than a
+fashionable, rather spicy newspaper. He did not see its rich and brilliant
+harmony; the voluptuous and sometimes melancholy dreams of that old
+civilization, the highest in Europe, were foreign to him. As for the French
+school of the seventeenth century, he liked neither its devout ceremony nor
+its pompous portraits: the cold reserve of the gravest of the masters, a
+certain grayness of soul that clouded the proud works of Nicolas Poussin
+and the pale faces of Philippe de Champaigne, repelled Christophe from
+old French art. And, once more, he knew nothing about it. If he had known
+anything about it he would have misunderstood it. The only modern painter
+whose fascination he had felt at all in Germany, Boecklin of Basle, had not
+prepared him much for Latin art. Christophe remembered the shock of his
+impact with that brutal genius, which smacked of earth and the musty smell
+of the heroic beasts that it had summoned forth. His eyes, seared by the
+raw light, used to the frantic motley of that drunken savage, could hardly
+adapt themselves to the half-tints, the dainty and mellifluous harmonies of
+French art.
+
+But no man with impunity can live in a foreign land. Unknown to him it sets
+its seal upon him. In vain does he withdraw into himself: upon a day he
+must wake up to find that something has changed.
+
+There was a change in Christophe on that evening when he wandered through
+the rooms of the Louvre. He was tired, cold, hungry; he was alone. Around
+him darkness was descending upon the empty galleries, and sleeping forms
+awoke. Christophe was very cold as he walked in silence among Egyptian
+sphinxes, Assyrian monsters, bulls of Persepolis, gleaming snakes from
+Palissy. He seemed to have passed into a magic world: and in his heart
+there was a strange, mysterious emotion. The dream of humanity wrapped him
+about,--the strange flowers of the soul....
+
+In the misty gilded light of the picture-galleries, and the gardens of
+rich brilliant hues, and painted airless fields, Christophe, in a state
+of fever, on the very brink of illness, was visited by a miracle.--He
+was walking, numbed by hunger, by the coldness of the galleries, by the
+bewildering mass of pictures: his head was whirling. When he reached the
+end of the gallery that looks on to the river, he stood before the _Good
+Samaritan_ of Rembrandt, and leaned on the rail in front of the pictures to
+keep himself from falling: he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened
+them on the picture in front of him--he was quite close to it--and he was
+held spellbound....
+
+Day was spent. Day was already far gone; it was already dead. The invisible
+sun was sinking down into the night. It was the magic hour when dreams and
+visions come mounting from the soul, saddened by the labors of the day,
+still, musing drowsily. All is silent, only the beating of the heart is
+heard. In the body there is hardly the strength to move, hardly to breathe;
+sadness; resignation; only an immense longing to fall into the arms of
+a friend, a hunger for some miracle, a feeling that some miracle must
+come.... It comes! A flood of golden light flames through the twilight, is
+cast upon the walls of the hovel, on the shoulder of the stranger bearing
+the dying man, touches with its warmth those humble objects, and those poor
+creatures, and the whole takes on a new gentleness, a divine glory. It is
+the very God, clasping in his terrible, tender arms the poor wretches,
+weak, ugly, poor, unclean, the poor down-at-heel rascal, the miserable
+creatures, with twisted haggard faces, thronging outside the window, the
+apathetic, silent creatures standing in mortal terror,--all the pitiful
+human beings of Rembrandt, the herd of obscure broken creatures who know
+nothing, can do nothing, only wait, tremble, weep, and pray.--But the
+Master is there. He will come: it is known that He will come. Not He
+Himself is seen: only the light that goes before, and the shadow of the
+light which He casts upon all men....
+
+Christophe left the Louvre, staggering and tottering. His head ached. He
+could not see. In the street it was raining, but he hardly noticed the
+puddles between the flags and the water trickling down from his shoes.
+Over the Seine the yellowish sky was lit up, as the day waned, by an
+inward flame--like the light of a lamp. Still Christophe was spellbound,
+hypnotized. It seemed as though nothing existed: not the carriages rattling
+over the stones with a pitiless noise: the passers-by were not banging into
+him with their wet umbrellas: he was not walking in the street: perhaps he
+was sitting at home and dreaming: perhaps he had ceased to exist.... And
+suddenly,--(he was so weak!)--he turned giddy and felt himself falling
+heavily forward.... It was only for the flash of a second: he clenched his
+fists, hurled himself backward, and recovered his balance.
+
+At that very moment when he emerged into consciousness his eyes met the
+eyes of a woman standing on the other side of the street, who seemed to
+be looking for recognition. He stopped dead, trying to remember when he
+had seen her before. It was only after a moment or two that he could place
+those sad, soft eyes: it was the little French governess whom, unwittingly,
+he had had dismissed in Germany, for whom he had been looking for so long
+to beg her to forgive him. She had stopped, too, in the busy throng, and
+was looking at him. Suddenly he saw her try to cross through the crowd of
+people and step down into the road to come to him. He rushed to meet her:
+but they were separated by a block in the traffic: he saw her again for a
+moment struggling on the other side of that living wall: he tried to force
+his way through, was knocked over by a horse, slipped and fell on the
+slippery asphalt, and was all but run over. When he got up, covered with
+mud, and succeeded in reaching the other side of the street, she had
+disappeared.
+
+He tried to follow her, but he had another attack of giddiness, and he had
+to give it up. Illness was close upon him: he felt that, but he would not
+submit to it. He set his teeth, and would not go straight home, but went
+far out of his way. It was just a useless torment to him: he had to admit
+that he was beaten: his legs ached, he dragged along, and only reached home
+with frightful difficulty. Half-way up the stairs he choked, and had to sit
+down. When he got to his icy room he refused to go to bed: he sat in his
+chair, wet through; his head was heavy and he could hardly breathe, and he
+drugged himself with music as broken as himself. He heard a few fugitive
+bars of the _Unfinished Symphony_ of Schubert. Poor Schubert! He, too, was
+alone when he wrote that, feverish, somnolent, in that semitorpid condition
+which precedes the last great sleep: he sat dreaming by the fireside: all
+round him were heavy drowsy melodies, like stagnant water: he dwelt on
+them, like a child half-asleep delighting in some self-told story, and
+repeating some passage in it twenty times: so sleep comes, then death....
+And Christophe heard fleetingly that other music, with burning hands,
+closed eyes, a little weary smile, heart big with sighs, dreaming of the
+deliverance of death:--the first chorus in the Cantata of J. S. Bach:
+"_Dear God, when shall I die?_"... It was sweet to sink back into the soft
+melodies slowly floating by, to hear the distant, muffled clangor of the
+bells.... To die, to pass into the peace of earth!... _Und dann selber Erde
+werden_.... "And then himself to become earth...."
+
+Christophe shook off these morbid thoughts, the murderous smile of the
+siren who lies in wait for the hours of weakness of the soul. He got up,
+and tried to walk about his room: but he could not stand. He was shaking
+and shivering with fever. He had to go to bed. He felt that it was serious
+this time: but he did not lay down his arms: he never was of those who,
+when they are ill, yield utterly to their illness: he struggled, he refused
+to be ill, and, above all, he was absolutely determined not to die. He had
+his poor mother waiting for him in Germany. And he had his work to do: he
+would not yield to death. He clenched his chattering teeth, and firmly
+grasped his will that was oozing away: he was like a sturdy swimmer
+battling with the waves dashing over him. At every moment, down he plunged:
+his mind wandered, endless fancies haunted him, memories of Germany and of
+Parisian society: he was obsessed by rhythms and scraps of melody which
+went round, and round, and round, like horses in a circus: the sudden shock
+of the golden light of the _Good Samaritan_: the tense, stricken faces in
+the shadow: and then, dark nothingness and night. Then up he would come
+once more, wrenching away the grimacing mists, clenching his fists, and
+setting his jaw. He clung to all those whom he loved in the present and the
+past, to the face of the friend he had just seen in the street, his dear
+mother, and to the indestructible life within himself, that he felt was
+like a rock, impervious to death. But once more the rock was covered by the
+tide: the waves dashed over it, and tore his soul away from its hold upon
+it: it was borne headlong and dashed by the foam. And Christophe struggled
+in delirium, babbling strangely, conducting and playing an imaginary
+orchestra: trombones, horns, cymbals, timbals, bassoons, double-bass,...
+he scraped, blew, beat the drum, frantically. The poor wretch was bubbling
+over with suppressed music. For weeks he had been unable to hear or play
+any music, and he was like a boiler at high pressure, near bursting-point.
+Certain insistent phrases bored into his brain like gimlets, pierced his
+skull, and made him scream with agony. After these attacks he would fall
+back on his pillow, dead tired, wet through, utterly weak, breathless,
+choking. He had placed his water-jug by his bedside, and he took great
+draughts of it. The various noises of the adjoining rooms, the banging of
+the attic doors, made him start. He was filled with a delirious disgust for
+the creatures swarming round him. But his will fought on, sounded a warlike
+clarion-note, declaring battle on all devils.... "_Und wenn die Welt voll
+Teufel wär, und wollten uns verschlingen, so fürchten wir uns nicht so
+sehr_...." ("And even though the world were full of devils, all seeking to
+devour us, we should not be afraid....").
+
+And over the sea of scalding shadows that dashed over him, there came a
+sudden calm, glimpses of light, a gentle murmuring of violins and viols,
+the clear triumphant notes of trumpets and horns, while, almost motionless,
+like a great wall, there rose from the sick man's soul an indomitable song,
+like a choral of J.S. Bach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While he was fighting against the phantoms of fever and the choking in
+his lungs, he was dimly aware that some one had opened the door, and that
+a woman entered with a candle in her hand. He thought it was another
+hallucination. He tried to speak, but could not, and fell back on his
+pillow. When, every now and then, he was brought for a moment back to
+consciousness, he felt that his pillow had been raised, that his feet had
+been wrapped up, that there was something burning his back, or he would see
+the woman, whose face was not altogether unfamiliar, sitting at the foot of
+his bed. Then he saw another face, that of a doctor using a stethoscope.
+Christophe could not hear what they were saying, but he gathered that they
+were talking of sending him to the hospital. He tried to protest, to cry
+out that he would not go, that he would die where he was, alone: but he
+could only frame incomprehensible sounds. But the woman understood him: for
+she took his part, and reassured him. He tried hard to find out who she
+was. As soon as he could, with frightful effort, frame a sentence, he asked
+her. She replied that she lived in the next attic and had heard him moaning
+through the wall, and had taken the liberty of coming in, thinking that
+he wanted help. She begged him respectfully not to wear himself out with
+talking. He obeyed her. He was worn out with the effort he had made: he lay
+still and said nothing: but his brain went on working, painfully gathering
+together its scattered memories. Where had he seen her?... At last he
+remembered: yes, he had met her on the attic landing: she was a servant,
+and her name was Sidonie.
+
+He watched her with half-closed eyes, so that she could not see him. She
+was little, and had a grave face, a wide forehead, hair drawn back, so that
+her temples were exposed; her cheeks were pale and high-boned; she had a
+short nose, pale blue eyes, with a soft, steady look in them, thick lips
+tightly pressed together, an anemic complexion, a humble, deliberate, and
+rather stiff manner. She looked after Christophe with busy silent devotion,
+without a spark of familiarity, and without ever breaking down the reserve
+of a servant who never forgets class differences.
+
+However, little by little, when he was better and could talk to her,
+Christophe's affectionate cordiality made Sidonie talk to him a little
+more freely: but she was always on her guard: there were obviously certain
+things which she would not tell. She was a mixture of humility and pride.
+Christophe learned that she came from Brittany, where she had left her
+father, of whom she spoke very discreetly: but Christophe gathered that he
+did nothing but drink, have a good time, and live on his daughter: she put
+up with it, without saying anything, from pride: and she never failed to
+send him part of her month's wages: but she was not taken in. She had also
+a younger sister who was preparing for a teacher's examination, and she was
+very proud of her. She was paying almost all the expenses of her education.
+She worked frightfully hard, with grim determination.
+
+"Have you a good situation?" asked Christophe.
+
+"Yes. But I am thinking of leaving."
+
+"Why? Aren't they good to you?"
+
+"Oh! no. They're very good to me."
+
+"Don't they pay you enough?"
+
+"Yes...."
+
+He did not quite understand: he tried to understand, and encouraged her to
+talk. She had nothing to tell him but the monotony of her life, and the
+difficulty of earning a living: she did not lay any stress on it: she was
+not afraid of work: it was a necessity to her, almost a pleasure. She never
+spoke of the thing that tried her most: boredom. He guessed it. Little by
+little, with the intuition of perfect sympathy, he saw that her suffering
+was increasing, and it was made more acute for him by the memory of the
+trials supported by his own mother in a similar existence. He saw, as
+though he had lived it, the drab, unhealthy, unnatural existence--the
+ordinary existence imposed on servants by the middle-classes:--employers
+who were not so much unkind as indifferent sometimes leaving her for days
+together without speaking a word outside her work. The hours and hours
+spent in the stuffy kitchen, the one small window, blocked up by a meat
+safe, looking out on to a white wall. And her only pleasure was when she
+was told carelessly that her sauce was good or the meat well cooked. A
+cramped airless life with no prospect, with no ray of desire or hope,
+without interest of any kind.--The worst time of all for her was when her
+employers went away to the country. They economized by not taking her with
+them: they paid her wages for the month, but not enough to take her home:
+they gave her permission to go at her own expense. She would not, she could
+not do that. And so she was left alone in the deserted house. She had no
+desire to go out, and did not even talk to other servants, whose coarseness
+and immorality she despised. She never went out in search of amusement: she
+was naturally serious, economical, and afraid of misadventure. She sat in
+her kitchen, or in her room, from whence across the chimneys she could see
+the top of a tree in the garden of a hospital. She did not read, but tried
+to work listlessly: she would sit there dreaming, bored, bored to tears:
+she had a singular and infinite capacity for weeping: it was her only
+pleasure. But when her boredom weighed too heavily on her she could not
+even weep: she was frozen, sick at heart, and dead. Then she would pull
+herself together: or life would return of its own accord. She would think
+of her sister, listen to a barrel-organ in the distance, and dream, and
+slowly count the days until she had gained such and such a sum of money:
+she would be out in her reckoning, and begin to count all over again: she
+would fall asleep. So the days passed....
+
+The fits of depression alternated with outbursts of childish chatter and
+laughter. She would make fun of herself and other people. She watched and
+judged her employers, and their anxieties fed by their want of occupation,
+and her mistress's moods and melancholy, and the so-called interests of
+these so-called people of culture, how they patronized a picture, or a
+piece of music, or a book of verse. With her rude common sense, as far
+removed from the snobbishness of the very Parisian servants as from the
+crass stupidity of the very provincial girls, who only admire what they do
+not understand, she had a respectful contempt for their dabbling in music,
+their pointless chatter, and all those perfectly useless and tiresome
+intellectual smatterings which play so large a part in such hypocritical
+existences. She could not help silently comparing the real life, with which
+she grappled, with the imaginary pains and pleasures of that cushioned
+life, in which everything seems to be the product of boredom. She was
+not in revolt against it. Things were so: things were so. She accepted
+everything, knaves and fools alike. She said:
+
+"It takes all sorts to make a world."
+
+Christophe imagined that she was borne up by her religion: but one day she
+said, speaking of others who were richer and more happy:
+
+"But in the end we shall all be equal."
+
+"When?" asked Christophe. "After the social revolution?"
+
+"The revolution?" said she. "Oh, there'll be much water flowing under
+bridges before that. I don't believe that stuff. Things will always be the
+same."
+
+"When shall we all be equal, then?"
+
+"When we're dead, of course! That's the end of everybody."
+
+He was surprised by her calm materialism. He dared not say to her:
+
+"Isn't it a frightful thing, in that case, if there is only one life, that
+it should be the like of yours, while there are so many others who are
+happy?"
+
+But she seemed to have guessed his thought: she went on phlegmatically,
+resignedly, and a little ironically:
+
+"One has to put up with it. Everybody cannot draw a prize. I've drawn a
+blank: so much the worse!"
+
+She never even thought of looking for a more profitable place outside
+France. (She had once been offered a situation in America.) The idea of
+leaving the country never entered her head. She said:
+
+"Stones are hard everywhere."
+
+There was in her a profound, skeptical, and mocking fatalism. She was
+of the stock that has little or no faith, few considered reasons for
+living, and yet a tremendous vitality--the stock of the French peasantry,
+industrious and apathetic, riotous and submissive, who have no great love
+of life, but cling to it, and have no need of artificial stimulants to keep
+up their courage.
+
+Christophe, who had not yet come across them, was astonished to find in the
+girl an absence of all faith: he marveled at her tenacious hold on life,
+without pleasure or purpose, and most of all he admired her sturdy moral
+sense that had no need of prop or support. Till then he had only seen
+the French people through naturalistic novels, and the theories of the
+mannikins of contemporary literature, who, reacting from the art of the
+century of pastoral scenes and the Revolution, loved to present natural man
+as a vicious brute, in order to sanctify their own vices.... He was amazed
+when he discovered Sidonie's uncompromising honesty. It was not a matter of
+morality but of instinct and pride. She had her aristocratic pride. For it
+is foolish to imagine that everybody belonging to the people is "popular."
+The people have their aristocrats just as the upper classes have their
+vulgarians. The aristocrats are those creatures whose instincts, and
+perhaps whose blood, are purer than those of the others: those who know and
+are conscious of what they are, and must be true to themselves. They are in
+the minority: but, even when they are forced to live apart, the others know
+that they are the salt of the earth: and the fact of their existence is a
+check upon the others, who are forced to model themselves upon them, or
+to pretend to do so. Every province, every village, every congregation of
+men, is, to a certain degree, what its aristocrats are: and public opinion
+varies accordingly, and is, in one place, severe, in another, lax. The
+present anarchy and upheaval of the majority will not change the unvoiced
+power of the minority. It is more dangerous for them to be uprooted from
+their native soil and scattered far and wide in the great cities. But
+even so, lost amid strange surroundings, living in isolation, yet the
+individualities of the good stock persist and never mix with those about
+them.--Sidonie knew nothing, wished to know nothing, of all that Christophe
+had seen in Paris. She was no more interested in the sentimental and
+unclean literature of the newspapers than in the political news. She did
+not even know that there were Popular Universities: and, if she had known,
+it is probable that she would have put herself out as little to go to them
+as she did to hear a sermon. She did her work, and thought for herself: she
+was not concerned with what other people thought. Christophe congratulated
+her.
+
+"Why is that surprising?" she asked. "I am like everybody else. You haven't
+met any French people."
+
+"I've been living among them for a year," said Christophe, "and I haven't
+met a single one who thought of anything but amusing himself or of aping
+those who amuse him."
+
+"That's true," said Sidonie. "You have only seen rich people. The rich are
+the same everywhere. You've seen nothing at all."
+
+"That's true," said Christophe. "I'm beginning."
+
+For the first time he caught a glimpse of the people of France, men and
+women who seem to be built for eternity, who are one with the earth, who,
+like the earth, have seen so many conquering races, so many masters of a
+day, pass away, while they themselves endure and do not pass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he was getting better and was allowed to get up for a little, the
+first thing he thought of was to pay Sidonie back for the expenses she
+had incurred during his illness. It was impossible for him to go about
+Paris looking for work, and he had to bring himself to write to Hecht:
+he asked him for an advance on account of future work. With his amazing
+combination of indifference and kindliness Hecht made him wait a fortnight
+for a reply--a fortnight during which Christophe tormented himself and
+practically refused to touch any of the food Sidonie brought him, and would
+only accept a little bread and milk, which she forced him to take, and then
+he grumbled and was angry with himself because he had not earned it: then,
+without a word, Hecht sent him the sum he asked: and not once during the
+months of Christophe's illness did Hecht make any inquiry after him. He had
+a genius for making himself disliked even when he was doing a kindness.
+Even in his kindness Hecht could not be generous.
+
+Sidonie came every day in the afternoon and again in the evening. She
+cooked Christophe's dinner for him. She made no noise, but went quietly
+about her business: and when she saw the dilapidated condition of his
+clothes she took them away to mend them. Insensibly there had crept an
+element of affection into their relation. Christophe talked at length about
+his mother: and that touched Sidonie: she would put herself in Louisa's
+place, alone in Germany: and she had a maternal feeling for Christophe, and
+when he talked to her he tried to trick his need of mothering and love,
+from which a man suffers most when he is weak and ill. He felt nearer
+Louisa with Sidonie than with anybody else. Sometimes he would confide his
+artistic troubles to her. She would pity him gently, though she seemed to
+regard such sorrows of the intellect ironically. That, too, reminded him of
+his mother and comforted him.
+
+He tried to get her to confide in him: but she was much less open than he.
+He asked her jokingly why she did not get married. And she would reply in
+her usual tone of mocking resignation that "it was not allowed for servants
+to marry: it complicates things too much. Besides, she was sure to make a
+bad choice, and that is not pleasant. Men are sordid creatures. They come
+courting when a woman has money, squeeze it out of her, and then leave her
+in the lurch. She had seen too many cases of that and was not inclined to
+do the same."--She did not tell him of her own unfortunate experience:
+her future husband had left her when he found that she was giving all
+her earnings to her family.--Christophe used to see her in the courtyard
+mothering the children of a family living in the house. When she met
+them alone on the stairs she would sometimes embrace them passionately.
+Christophe would fancy her occupying the place of a lady of his
+acquaintance: she was not a fool, and she was no plainer than many another
+woman: he declared that in the lady's place she would have been the better
+woman of the two. There are so many splendid lives hidden in the world,
+unknown and unsuspected! And, on the other hand, the hosts of the living
+dead, who encumber the earth, and take up the room and the happiness of
+others in the light of the sun!...
+
+Christophe had no ulterior thought. He was fond, too fond of her: he let
+her coddle him like a child.
+
+Some days Sidonie would be queer and depressed: but he attributed that to
+her work. Once when they were talking she got up suddenly and left him,
+making some excuse about her work. Finally, after a day when Christophe had
+been more confidential than usual, she broke off her visits for a time: and
+when she came back she would only talk to him constrainedly. He wondered
+what he could have done to offend her. He asked her. She replied quickly
+that he had not offended her: but she stayed away again. A few days later
+she told him that she was going away: she had given up her situation and
+was leaving the house. Coldly and reservedly she thanked him for all
+his kindness, told him she hoped he would soon recover, and that his
+mother would remain in good health, and then she said good-by. He was so
+astonished at her abrupt departure that he did not know what to say: he
+tried to discover her reasons: she replied evasively. He asked her where
+she was going: she did not reply, and, to cut short his questions, she got
+up to go. As she reached the door he held out his hand: she grasped it
+warmly: but her face did not betray her, and to the end she maintained her
+stiff, cold manner. She went away.
+
+He never understood why.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He dragged through the winter--a wet, misty, muddy winter. Weeks on end
+without sun. Although Christophe was better he was by no means recovered.
+He still had a little pain in his lungs, a lesion which healed slowly, and
+fits of coughing which kept him from sleeping at night. The doctor had
+forbidden him to go out. He might just as well have ordered him to go to
+the Riviera or the Canary Islands. He had to go out! If he did not go out
+to look for his dinner, his dinner would certainly not come to look for
+him.--And he was ordered medicines which he could not afford. And so he
+gave up consulting doctors: it was a waste of money: and besides he was
+always ill at ease with them: they could not understand each other: they
+lived in separate worlds. They had an ironical and rather contemptuous pity
+for the poor devil of an artist who claimed to be a world to himself, and
+was swept along like a straw by the river of life. He was humiliated by
+being examined, and prodded, and handled by these men. He was ashamed of
+his sick body, and thought:
+
+"How glad I shall be when _it_ is dead!"
+
+In spite of loneliness, illness, poverty, and so many other causes of
+suffering, Christophe bore his lot patiently. He had never been so patient.
+He was surprised at himself. Illness is often a blessing. By ravaging the
+body it frees the soul and purifies it: during the nights and days of
+forced inaction thoughts arise which are fearful of the raw light of day,
+and are scorched by the sun of health. No man who has never been ill can
+have a thorough knowledge of himself.
+
+His illness had, in a queer way, soothed Christophe. It had purged him of
+the coarser elements of his nature. Through his most subtle nerves he felt
+the world of mysterious forces which dwell in each of us, though the tumult
+of life prevents our hearing them. Since his visit to the Louvre, in his
+hours of fever, the smallest memories of which were graven upon his mind,
+he had lived in an atmosphere like that of the Rembrandt picture, warm,
+soft, profound. He too felt in his heart the magic beams of an invisible
+sun. And although he did not believe, he knew that he was not alone: a God
+was holding him by the hand, and leading him to the predestined goal of his
+endeavors. He trusted in Him like a little child.
+
+For the first time for years he felt that he must rest. The lassitude of
+his convalescence was in itself a rest for him after the extraordinary
+tension of mind that had gone before his illness and had left him still
+exhausted. Christophe, who for many months had been continually on the
+alert and strained upon his guard, felt the fixity of his gaze slowly
+relax. He was not less strong for it: he was more human. The great though
+rather monstrous quality of life of the man of genius had passed into the
+background: he found himself a man like the rest, purged of the fanaticism
+of his mind, and all the hardness and mercilessness of his actions. He
+hated nothing: he gave no thought to things that exasperated him, or, if
+he did, he shrugged them off: he thought less of his own troubles and more
+of the troubles of others. Since Sidonie had reminded him of the silent
+suffering of the lowly, fighting on without complaint, all over the world,
+he forgot himself in them. He who was not usually sentimental now had
+periods of that mystic tenderness which is the flower of weakness and
+sickness. In the evening, as he sat with his elbows on the window-sill,
+gazing down into the courtyard and listening to all the mysterious noises
+of the night,... a voice singing in a house near by, made moving by the
+distance, or a little girl artlessly strumming Mozart,... he thought:
+
+"All you whom I love though I know you not! You whom life has not sullied;
+you, who dream of great things, that you know to be impossible, while you
+fight for them against the envious world,--may you be happy--it is so good
+to be happy!... Oh, my friends, I know that you are there, and I hold
+my arms out to you.... There is a wall between us. Stone by stone I am
+breaking it down, but I am myself broken in the labor of it. Shall we ever
+be together? Shall I reach you before another wall is raised up between us:
+the wall of death?... No matter! Though all my life I am alone, so only I
+may work for you, do you good, and you may love me a little, later on, when
+I am dead!..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So the convalescent Christophe was nursed by those two good foster-mothers
+"_Liebe und Noth_" (Love and Poverty).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While his will was thus in abeyance Christophe felt a longing to be with
+people. And, although he was still very weak, and it was a very foolish
+thing to do, he used to go out early in the morning when the stream of
+people poured out of the residential streets on their way to their work,
+or in the evening, when they were returning. His desire was to plunge into
+the refreshing bath of human sympathy. Not that he spoke to a soul. He did
+not even try to do so. It was enough for him to watch the people pass, and
+guess what they were, and love them. With fond pity he used to watch the
+workers hurrying along, all, as it were, already worn out by the business
+of the day,--young men and girls, with pale faces, worn expressions, and
+strange smiles,--thin, eager faces beneath which there passed desires and
+anxieties, all with a changing irony,--all so intelligent, too intelligent,
+a little morbid, the dwellers in a great city. They all hurried along, the
+men reading the papers, the women nibbling and munching. Christophe would
+have given a month of his life to let one poor girl, whose eyes were
+swollen with sleep, who passed near him with a little nervous, mincing
+walk, sleep on for a few hours more. Oh! how she would have jumped at it,
+if she had been offered the chance! He would have loved to pluck all the
+idle rich people out of their rooms, hermetically sealed at that hour,
+where they were so ungratefully lying at their ease, and replace them in
+their beds, in their comfortable existence, with all these eager, weary
+bodies, these fresh souls, not abounding with life, but alive and greedy
+of life. In that hour he was full of kindness towards them: and he smiled
+at their alert, thin little faces, in which there were cunning and
+ingenuousness, a bold and simple desire for pleasure, and, behind all,
+honest little souls, true and industrious. And he was not hurt when some
+of the girls laughed in his face, or nudged each other to point out the
+strange young man staring at them so hard.
+
+And he would lounge about the riverside, lost in dreams. That was his
+favorite walk. It did a little satisfy his longing for the great river that
+had sung the lullaby of his childhood. Ah! it was not _Vater Rhein_! It had
+none of his all-puissant might: none of the wide horizons, vast plains over
+which the mind soars and is lost. A river with gray eyes, gowned in pale
+green, with finely drawn, correct features, a graceful river, with supple
+movements, wearing with sparkling nonchalance the sumptuous and sober garb
+of her city, the bracelets of its bridges, the necklets of its monuments,
+and smiling at her own prettiness, like a lovely woman strolling through
+the town.... The delicious light of Paris! That was the first thing that
+Christophe had loved in the city: it filled his being sweetly, sweetly: and
+imperceptibly, slowly, it changed his heart. It was to him the most lovely
+music, the only music in Paris. He would spend hours in the evening walking
+by the river, or in the gardens of old France, tasting the harmonies
+of the light of day touching the tall trees bathed in purple mist, the
+gray statues and ruins, the worn stones of the royal monuments which had
+absorbed the light of centuries,--that smooth atmosphere, made of pale
+sunshine and milky vapor, in which, on a cloud of silvery dust, there
+floats the laughing spirit of the race.
+
+One evening he was leaning over the parapet near the Saint-Michel Bridge,
+and looking at the water and absently turning over the books in one of the
+little boxes. He chanced upon a battered old volume of Michelet and opened
+it at random. He had already read a certain amount of that historian, and
+had been put off by his Gallic boasting, his trick of making himself drunk
+with words, and his halting style. But that evening he was held from the
+very first words: he had lighted on the trial of Joan of Arc. He knew the
+Maid of Orleans through Schiller: but hitherto she had only been a romantic
+heroine who had been endowed with an imaginary life by a great poet.
+Suddenly the reality was presented to him and gripped his attention. He
+read on and on, his heart aching for the tragic horror of the glorious
+story: and when he came to the moment when Joan learns that she is to die
+that evening and faints from fear, his hands began to tremble, tears came
+into his eyes, and he had to stop. He was weak from his illness: he had
+become absurdly sensitive, and was himself exasperated by it.--When he
+turned once more to the book it was late and the bookseller was shutting up
+his boxes. He decided to buy the book and hunted through his pockets: he
+had exactly six sous. Such scantiness was not rare and did not bother him:
+he had paid for his dinner, and counted on getting some money out of Hecht
+next day for some copying he had done. But it was hard to have to wait a
+day! Why had he spent all he had on his dinner? Ah! if only he could offer
+the bookseller the bread and sausages that were in his pockets, in payment!
+
+Next morning, very early, he went to Hecht's to get his money: but as
+he was passing the bridge which bears the name of the archangel of
+battle--"the brother in Paradise" of Joan of Arc--he could not help
+stopping. He found the precious book once more in the bookseller's box, and
+read it right through: he stayed reading it for nearly two hours and missed
+his appointment with Hecht: and he wasted the whole day waiting to see him.
+At last he managed to get his new commission and the money for the old. At
+once he rushed back to buy the book, although he had read it. He was afraid
+it might have been sold to another purchaser. No doubt that would not have
+mattered much: it was quite easy to get another copy: but Christophe did
+not know whether the book was rare or not: and besides, he wanted that
+particular book and no other. Those who love books easily become fetish
+worshipers. The pages from which the well of dreams springs forth are
+sacred to them, even when they are dirty and spotted.
+
+In the silence of the night, in his room, Christophe read once more the
+Gospel of the Passion of Joan of Arc: and now there was nothing to make
+him restrain his emotion. He was filled with tenderness, pity, infinite
+sorrow for the poor little shepherdess in her coarse peasant clothes,
+tall, shy, soft-voiced, dreaming to the sound of bells--(she loved them as
+he did)--with her lovely smile, full of understanding and kindness, and
+her tears, that flowed so readily--tears of love, tears of pity, tears of
+weakness: for she was at once so manlike and so much a woman, the pure and
+valiant girl, who tamed the savage lusts of an army of bandits, and calmly,
+with her intrepid sound good sense, her woman's subtlety, and her gentle
+persistency, alone, betrayed on all hands, for months together foiled the
+threats and hypocritical tricks of a gang of churchmen and lawyers,--wolves
+and foxes with bloody eyes and fangs--who closed a ring about her.
+
+What touched Christophe most nearly was her kindness, her tenderness of
+heart,--weeping after her victories, weeping over her dead enemies, over
+those who had insulted her, giving them consolation when they were wounded,
+aiding them in death, knowing no bitterness against those who sold her,
+and even at the stake, when the flames roared about her, thinking not of
+herself, thinking only of the monk who exorcised her, and compelling him
+to depart. She was "gentle in the most bitter fight, good even amongst
+the most evil, peaceful even in war. Into war, the triumph of Satan, she
+brought the very Spirit of God."
+
+And Christophe, thinking of himself, said:
+
+"And into my fight I have not brought enough of the Spirit of God."
+
+He read the fine words of the evangelist of Joan of Arc:
+
+"Be kind, and seek always to be kinder, amid all the injustice of men and
+the hardships of Fate.... Be gentle and of a good countenance even in
+bitter quarrels, win through experience, and never let it harm that inward
+treasure...."
+
+And he said within himself:
+
+"I have sinned. I have not been kind. I have not shown good-will towards
+men. I have been too hard.--Forgive me. Do not think me your enemy, you
+against whom I wage war! For you too I seek to do good.... But you must be
+kept from doing evil...."
+
+And, as he was no saint, the thought of them was enough to kindle his anger
+again. What he could least forgive them was that when he saw them, and saw
+France, through them, he found it impossible to conceive such a flower of
+purity and poetic heroism ever springing from such a soil. And yet it was
+so. Who could say that such a flower would not spring from it a second
+time? The France of to-day could not be worse than that of Charles VII, the
+debauched and prostituted nation from which the Maid sprang. The temple was
+empty, fouled, half in ruins. No matter! God had spoken in it.
+
+Christophe was seeking a Frenchman whom he could love for the love of
+France.
+
+It was about the end of March. For months Christophe had not spoken to a
+soul nor had a single letter, except every now and then a few lines from
+his mother, who did not know that he was ill and did not tell him that she
+herself was ill. His relation with the outside world was confined to his
+journeys to the music shop to take or bring away his work. He arranged to
+go there at times when he knew that Hecht would be out--to avoid having
+to talk to him. The precaution was superfluous, for the only time he met
+Hecht, he hardly did more than ask him a few indifferent questions about
+his health.
+
+He was immured in a prison of silence when, one morning, he received an
+invitation from Madame Roussin to a musical _soirée_: a famous quartet was
+to play. The letter was very friendly in tone, and Roussin had added a few
+cordial lines. He was not very proud of his quarrel with Christophe: the
+less so as he had since quarreled with the singer and now condemned her in
+no sparing terms. He was a good fellow: he never bore those whom he had
+wronged any grudge. And he would have thought it preposterous for any of
+his victims to be more thin-skinned than himself. And so, when he had the
+pleasure of seeing them again, he never hesitated about holding out his
+hand.
+
+Christophe's first impulse was to shrug his shoulders and vow that he
+would not go. But he wavered as the day of the concert came nearer. He was
+stifling from never hearing a human voice or a note of music. But he vowed
+again that he would never set foot inside the Roussins' house. But when the
+day came he went, raging against his own cowardice.
+
+He was ill rewarded. Hardly did he find himself once more in the gathering
+of politicians and snobs than he was filled with an aversion for them more
+violent than ever: for during his months of solitude he had lost the trick
+of such people. It was impossible to hear the music: it was a profanation;
+Christophe made up his mind to go as soon as the first piece was over.
+
+He glanced round among the faces of those people who were even physically
+so antipathetic to him. At the other end of the room he saw a face, the
+face of a young man, looking at him, and then he turned away at once.
+There was in the face a strange quality of candor which among such bored,
+indifferent people was most striking. The eyes were timid, but dear and
+direct. French eyes, which, once they marked a man, went on looking at
+him with absolute truth, hiding nothing of the soul behind them, missing
+nothing of the soul of the man at whom they gazed. They were familiar to
+Christophe. And yet he did not know the face. It was that of a young man
+between twenty and twenty-five, short, slightly stooping, delicate-looking,
+beardless, and melancholy, with chestnut hair, irregular features, though
+fine, a certain crookedness which gave it an expression not so much of
+uneasiness as of bashfulness, which was not without charm, and seemed to
+contradict the tranquillity of the eyes. He was standing in an open door:
+and nobody was paying any attention to him. Once more Christophe looked
+at him: and once more he met his eyes, which turned away timidly with a
+delightful awkwardness: once more he "recognized" them: it seemed to him
+that he had seen them in another face.
+
+Christophe, as usual, was incapable of concealing what he felt, and moved
+towards the young man: but as he made his way he wondered what he should
+say to him: and he hesitated and stood still looking to right and left, as
+though he were moving without any fixed object. But the young man was not
+taken in, and saw that Christophe was moving towards himself: he was so
+nervous at the thought of speaking to him that he tried to slip into the
+next room: but he was glued to his place by his very bashfulness. So they
+came face to face. It was some moments before they could find anything to
+say. And as they went on standing like that each thought the other must
+think him absurd. At last Christophe looked straight at the young man, and
+said with a smile, in a gruff voice:
+
+"You're not a Parisian?"
+
+In spite of his embarrassment the young man smiled at this unexpected
+question, and replied in the negative. His light voice, with its hint of a
+musical quality, was like some delicate instrument.
+
+"I thought not," said Christophe. And, as he saw that he was a little
+confused by the singular remark, he added:
+
+"It is no reproach."
+
+But the young man's embarrassment was only increased.
+
+There was another silence. The young man made an effort to speak: his lips
+trembled: it seemed that he had a sentence on the tip of his tongue, but he
+could not bring himself to speak it. Christophe eagerly studied his mobile
+face, the muscles of which he could see twitching under the clear skin:
+he did not seem to be of the same clay as the people all about him in the
+room, with their heavy, coarse faces, which were only a continuation of
+their necks, part and parcel of their bodies. In the young man's face the
+soul shone forth: in every part of it there was a spiritual life.
+
+He could not bring himself to speak. Christophe went on genially:
+
+"What are you doing among all these people?"
+
+He spoke out loud with that strange freedom of manner which made him hated.
+His friend blushed and could not help looking round to see if he had been
+heard: and Christophe disliked the movement. Then, instead of answering, he
+asked with a shy, sweet smile:
+
+"And you?"
+
+Christophe began to laugh as usual, rather loudly.
+
+"Yes. And I," he said delightedly.
+
+The young man at last summoned up his courage.
+
+"I love your music so much!" he said, in a choking voice.
+
+Then he stopped and tried once more, vainly, to get the better of his
+shyness. He was blushing, and knew it: and he blushed the more, up to his
+temples and round to his ears. Christophe looked at him with a smile, and
+longed to take him in his arms. The young man looked at him timidly.
+
+"No," he said. "Of course, I can't ... I can't talk about that ... not
+here...."
+
+Christophe took his hand with a grin. He felt the stranger's thin fingers
+tremble in his great paw and press it with an involuntary tenderness: and
+the young man felt Christophe's paw affectionately crush his hand. They
+ceased to hear the chatter of the people round them. They were alone
+together and they knew that they were friends.
+
+It was only for a second, for then Madame Roussin touched Christophe on the
+arm with her fan and said:
+
+"I see that you have introduced yourselves and don't need me to do so. The
+boy came on purpose to meet you this evening."
+
+Then, rather awkwardly, they parted.
+
+Christophe asked Madame Roussin:
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"What?" said she. "You don't know him? He is a young poet and writes very
+prettily. One of your admirers. He is a good musician and plays the piano
+quite nicely. It is no good discussing you in his presence: he is mad
+about you. The other day he all but came to blows about you with Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur."
+
+"Oh! Bless him for that!" said Christophe.
+
+"Yes, I know you are unjust to poor Lucien. And yet he too loves your
+work."
+
+"Ah! don't tell me that! I should hate myself."
+
+"It is so, I assure you."
+
+"Never! never! I will not have it. I forbid him to do so."
+
+"Just what your admirer said. You are both mad. Lucien was just explaining
+one of your compositions to us. The shy boy you met just now got up,
+trembling with anger, and forbade him to mention your name. Think of it!...
+Fortunately I was there. I laughed it off: Lucien did the same: and the
+boy was utterly confused and relapsed into silence: and in the end he
+apologized."
+
+"Poor boy!" said Christophe.
+
+He was touched by it.
+
+"Where did he go?" he asked, without listening to Madame Roussin, who had
+already begun to talk about something else.
+
+He went to look for him. But his unknown friend had disappeared. Christophe
+returned to Madame Roussin:
+
+"Tell me, what is his name?"
+
+"Who?" she asked.
+
+"The boy you were talking about just now."
+
+"Your young poet?" she said. "His name is Olivier Jeannin."
+
+The name rang in Christophe's ears like some familiar melody. The shadowy
+figure of a girl floated for a moment before his eyes. But the new image,
+the image of his friend blotted it out at once.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe went home. He strode through the streets of Paris mingling with
+the throng. He saw nothing, heard nothing; he was insensible to everything
+about him. He was like a lake cut off from the rest of the world by a ring
+of mountains. Not a breath stirred, not a sound was heard, all was still.
+Peace. He said to himself over and over again:
+
+"I have a friend."
+
+
+
+
+ANTOINETTE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The Jeannins were one of those old French families who have remained
+stationary for centuries in the same little corner of a province, and have
+kept themselves pure from any infusion of foreign blood. There are more
+of them than one would think in France, in spite of all the changes in
+the social order: it would need a great upheaval to uproot them from
+the soil to which they are held by so many ties, the profound nature of
+which is unknown to them. Reason counts for nothing in their devotion to
+the soil, and interest for very little: and as for sentimental historic
+memories, they only hold good for a few literary men. What does bind them
+irresistibly is the obscure though very strong feeling, common to the dull
+and the intelligent alike, of having been for centuries past a parcel of
+the land, of living in its life, breathing the same air, hearing the heart
+of it beating against their own, like the heart of the beloved, feeling its
+slightest tremor, the changing hours and seasons and days, bright or dull,
+and hearing the voices and the silence of all things in Nature. It is not
+always the most beautiful country, nor that which has the greatest charm of
+life, that most strongly grips the affections, but rather it is the region
+where the earth seems simplest and most humble, nearest man, speaking to
+him in a familiar friendly tongue.
+
+Such was the country in the center of France where the Jeannins lived.
+A flat, damp country, an old sleepy little town, wearily gazing at its
+reflection in the dull waters of a still canal: round about it were
+monotonous fields, plowed fields, meadows, little rivers, woods, and again
+monotonous fields.... No scenery, no monuments, no memories. Nothing
+attractive. It is all dull and oppressive. In its drowsy torpor is a hidden
+force. The soul tasting it for the first time suffers and revolts against
+it. But those who have lived with it for generations cannot break free:
+it eats into their very bones: and the stillness of it, the harmonious
+dullness, the monotony, have a charm for them and a sweet savor which they
+cannot analyze, which they malign, love, and can never forget.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Jeannins had always lived there. The family could be traced back to
+the sixteenth century, living in the town or its neighborhood: for of
+course they had a great-uncle who had devoted his life to drawing up the
+genealogical tree of their obscure line of humble, industrious people:
+peasants, farmers, artisans, then clerks, country notaries, working in
+the subprefecture of the district, where Augustus Jeannin, the father of
+the present head of the house, had successfully established himself as a
+banker: he was a clever man, with a peasant's cunning and obstinacy, but
+honest as men go, not over-scrupulous, a great worker, and a good liver:
+he had made himself respected and feared everywhere by his genial malice,
+his bluntness of speech, and his wealth. Short, thick-set, vigorous, with
+little sharp eyes set in a big red face, pitted with smallpox, he had been
+known as a petticoat-hunter: and he had not altogether lost his taste for
+it. He loved a spicy yarn and good eating. It was a sight to see him at
+meals, with his son Antoine sitting opposite him, with a few old friends
+of their kidney: the district judge, the notary, the Archdeacon of the
+Cathedral:--(old Jeannin loved stuffing the priest: but also he could stuff
+with the priest, if the priest were good at it):--hearty old fellows built
+on the same Rabelaisian lines. There was a running fire of terrific stories
+to the accompaniment of thumps on the table and roars of laughter, and
+the row they made could be heard by the servants in the kitchen and the
+neighbors in the street.
+
+Then old Augustus caught a chill, which turned to pneumonia, through going
+down into his cellars one hot summer's day in his shirt-sleeves to bottle
+his wine. In less than twenty-four hours he had departed this life for the
+next world, in which he hardly believed, properly equipped with all the
+Sacraments of the Church, having, like a good Voltairian provincial,
+submitted to it at the last moment in order to pacify his women, and also
+because it did not matter one way or the other.... And then, one never
+knows....
+
+His son Antoine succeeded him in business. He was a fat little man,
+rubicund and expansive, clean-shaven, except for his mutton-chop whiskers,
+and he spoke quickly and with a slight stutter, in a loud voice,
+accompanying his remarks with little quick, curt gestures. He had not his
+father's grasp of finance: but he was quite a good manager. He had only
+to look after the established undertakings, which went on developing day
+by day, by the mere fact of their existence. He had the advantage of a
+business reputation in the district, although he had very little to do
+with the success of the firm's ventures. He only contributed method and
+industry. For the rest he was absolutely honorable, and was everywhere
+deservedly esteemed. His pleasant unctuous manners, though perhaps a little
+too familiar for some people, a little too expansive, and just a little
+common, had won him a very genuine popularity in the little town and
+the surrounding country. He was more lavish with his sympathy than with
+his money: tears came readily to his eyes: and the sight of poverty so
+sincerely moved him that the victim of it could not fail to be touched
+by it.
+
+Like most men living in small towns, his thoughts were much occupied with
+politics. He was an ardent moderate Republican, an intolerant Liberal, a
+patriot, and, like his father, extremely anti-clerical. He was a member of
+the Municipal Council: and, like the rest of his colleagues, he delighted
+in playing tricks on the _curé_ of the parish, or on the Lent preacher,
+who roused so much enthusiasm in the ladies of the town. It must not be
+forgotten that the anti-clericalism of the little towns in France is
+always, more or less, an episode in domestic warfare, and is a subtle form
+of that silent, bitter struggle between husbands and wives, which goes on
+in almost every house.
+
+Antoine Jeannin had also some literary pretensions. Like all provincials of
+his generation, he had been brought up on the Latin Classics, many pages of
+which he knew by heart, and also a mass of proverbs, and on La Fontaine and
+Boileau,--the Boileau of _L'Art Poétique_, and, above all, of _Lutrin_,--on
+the author of _La Pucelle_, and the _poetæ minores_ of the eighteenth
+century, in whose manner he squeezed out a certain number of poems. He was
+not the only man of his acquaintance possessed by that particular mania,
+and his reputation gained by it. His rhyming jests, his quatrains,
+couplets, acrostics, epigrams, and songs, which were sometimes rather
+risky, though they had a certain coarsely witty quality, were often quoted.
+He was wont to sing the mysteries of digestion: the Muse of the Loire
+districts is fain to blow her trumpet like the famous devil of Dante:
+
+"... _Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta._"
+
+This sturdy, jovial, active little man had taken to wife a woman of a
+very different character,--the daughter of a country magistrate, Lucie de
+Villiers. The De Villiers--or rather Devilliers, for their name had split
+in its passage through time, like a stone which cracks in two as it goes
+hurtling down a hillside--were magistrates from father to son; they were of
+that old parliamentary race of Frenchmen who had a lofty idea of the law,
+and duty, the social conventions, their personal, and especially their
+professional, dignity, which was fortified by perfect honesty, tempered
+with a certain conscious uprightness. During the preceding century they had
+been infected by nonconformist Jansenism, which had given them a grumbling
+pessimistic quality, as well as a contempt for the Jesuit attitude of mind.
+They did not see life as beautiful: and, rather than smooth away life's
+difficulties, they preferred to exaggerate them so as to have good reason
+to complain. Lucie de Villiers had certain of these characteristics, which
+were so directly opposed to the not very refined optimism of her husband.
+She was tall--taller than he by a head--slender, well made; she dressed
+well and elegantly, though in a rather sober fashion, which made her
+seem--perhaps designedly--older than she was: she was of a high moral
+quality: but she was hard on other people; she would countenance no fault,
+and hardly even a caprice: she was thought cold and disdainful. She was
+very pious, and that gave rise to perpetual disputes with her husband.
+For the rest, they were very fond of each other: and, in spite of their
+frequent disagreements, they could not have lived without each other. They
+were both rather unpractical: he from want of perception--(he was always
+in danger of being taken in by good looks and fine words),--she from her
+absolute inexperience of business--(she knew nothing about it: and having
+always been kept outside it, she took no interest in it).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had two children: a girl, Antoinette, the elder by five years; and a
+boy, Olivier.
+
+Antoinette was a pretty dark-haired child, with a charming, honest face of
+the French type, round, with sharp eyes, a round forehead, a fine chin,
+a little straight nose--"one of those very pretty, fine, noble noses" (as
+an old French portrait-painter says so charmingly) "in which there was
+a certain imperceptible play of expression, which animated the face,
+and revealed the subtlety of the workings of her mind as she talked or
+listened." She had her father's gaiety and carelessness.
+
+Olivier was a delicate fair boy, short, like his father, but very different
+in character. His health had been undermined by one illness after another
+when he was a child: and although, as a result, he was petted by his
+family, his physical weakness had made him a melancholy, dreamy little boy,
+who was afraid of death and very poorly equipped for life. He was shy, and
+preferred to be alone: he avoided the society of other children: he was
+ill at ease with them: he hated their games and quarrels: their brutality
+filled him with horror. He let them strike him, not from want of courage,
+but from timidity, because he was afraid to defend himself, afraid of
+hurting them: they would have bullied the life out of him, but for the
+safeguard of his father's position. He was tender-hearted and morbidly
+sensitive: a word, a sign of sympathy, a reproach, were enough to make him
+burst into tears. His sister was much sturdier, and laughed at him, and
+called him a "little fountain."
+
+The two children were devoted to each other: but they were too different
+to live together. They went their own ways and lived in their own dreams.
+As Antoinette grew up, she became prettier: people told her so, and she
+was well aware of it: it made her happy, and she wove romances about the
+future. Olivier, in his sickly melancholy, was always rubbed up the wrong
+way by contact with the outer world: and he withdrew into the circle of his
+own absurd little brain: and he told himself stories. He had a burning,
+almost feminine, longing to love and be loved: and, living alone, away from
+boys of his own age, he had invented two or three imaginary friends: one
+was called Jean, another Étienne, another François: he was always with
+them. He never slept well, and he was always dreaming. In the morning, when
+he was lifted out of bed, he would forget himself, and sit with his bare
+legs dangling down, or sometimes with two stockings on one leg. He would go
+off into a dream with his hands in the basin. He would forget himself at
+his desk in the middle of writing or learning a lesson: he would dream for
+hours on end: and then he would suddenly wake up, horrified to find that he
+had learned nothing. At dinner he was abashed if any one spoke to him: he
+would reply two minutes after he had been spoken to: he would forget what
+he was going to say in the middle of a sentence. He would doze off to the
+murmuring of his thoughts and the familiar sensations of the monotonous
+provincial days that marched so slowly by: the great half-empty house, only
+part of which they occupied: the vast and dreadful barns and cellars: the
+mysterious closed rooms, the fastened shutters, the covered furniture,
+veiled mirrors, and the chandeliers wrapped up: the old family portraits
+with their haunting smiles: the Empire engravings, with their virtuous,
+suave heroism: _Alcibiades and Socrates in the House of the Courtezan_,
+_Antiochus and Stratonice_, _The Story of Epaminondas_, _Belisarius
+Begging_.... Outside, the sound of the smith shoeing horses in the smithy
+opposite, the uneven clink of the hammers on the anvil, the snorting of
+the broken-winded horses, the smell of the scorched hoofs, the slapping of
+the pats of the washerwomen kneeling by the water, the heavy thuds of the
+butcher's chopper next door, the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the stones
+of the street, the creaking of a pump, or the drawbridge over the canal,
+the heavy barges laden with blocks of wood, slowly passing at the end
+of the garden, drawn along by a rope: the little tiled courtyard, with
+a square patch of earth, in which two lilac-trees grew, in the middle
+of a clump of geraniums and petunias: the tubs of laurel and flowering
+pomegranate on the terrace above the canal: sometimes the noise of a fair
+in the square hard by, with peasants in bright blue smocks, and grunting
+pigs.... And on Sunday, at church, the precentor, who sang out of tune, and
+the old priest, who went to sleep as he was saying Mass: the family walk
+along the station road, where all the time he had to take off his hat
+politely to other wretched beings, who were under the same impression of
+the necessity of going for a walk all together,--until at last they reached
+the sunny fields, above which larks soared invisible,--or along by the
+still mirror of the canal, on both sides of which were poplars rustling in
+line.... And then there was the great provincial Sunday dinner, when they
+went on and on eating and talking about food learnedly and with gusto: for
+everybody was a connoisseur: and, in the provinces, eating is the chief
+occupation, the first of all the arts. And they would talk business,
+and tell spicy yarns, and every now and then discuss their neighbors'
+illnesses, going into endless detail.... And the little boy, sitting in his
+corner, would make no more noise than a little mouse, pick at his food, eat
+hardly anything, and listen with all his ears. Nothing escaped him: and
+when he did not understand, his imagination supplied the deficiency. He had
+that singular gift, which is often to be remarked in the children of old
+families and an old stock, on which the imprint of the ages is too strongly
+marked, of divining thoughts, which have never passed through their minds
+before, and are hardly comprehensible to them.--Then there was the kitchen,
+where bloody and succulent mysteries were concocted: and the old servant
+who used to tell him frightful and droll stories.... At last came evening,
+the silent flitting of the bats, the terror of the monstrous creatures
+that were known to swarm in the dark depths of the old house: huge rats,
+enormous hairy spiders: and he would say his prayers, kneeling at the, foot
+of his bed, and hardly know what he was saying: the little cracked bell of
+the convent hard by would sound the bed-time of the nuns;--and so to bed,
+the Island of Dreams....
+
+The best times of the year were those that they spent in spring and autumn
+at their country house some miles away from the town. There he could dream
+at his ease: he saw nobody. Like most of the children of their class, the
+little Jeannins were kept apart from the common children: the children
+of servants and farmers, who inspired them with fear and disgust. They
+inherited from their mother an aristocratic--or, rather, essentially
+middle-class--disdain for all who worked with their hands. Olivier would
+spend the day perched up in the branches of an ash reading marvelous
+stories: delightful folklore, the _Tales_ of Musæus, or Madame d'Aulnoy,
+or the _Arabian Nights_, or stories of travel. For he had that strange
+longing for distant lands, "those oceanic dreams," which sometimes possess
+the minds of boys in the little provincial towns of France. A thicket lay
+between the house and himself, and he could fancy himself very far away.
+But he knew that he was really near home, and was quite happy: for he did
+not like straying too far alone: he felt lost with Nature. Round him the
+wind whispered through the trees. Through the leaves that hid his nest
+he could see the yellowing vines in the distance, and the meadows where
+the straked cows were at pasture, filling the silence of the sleeping
+country-side with their plaintive long-drawn lowing. The strident cocks
+crowed to each other from farm to farm. There came up the irregular beat of
+the flails in the barns. The fevered life of myriads of creatures swelled
+and flowed through the peace of inanimate Nature. Uneasily Olivier would
+watch the ever hurrying columns of the ants, and the bees big with their
+booty, buzzing like organ-pipes, and the superb and stupid wasps who know
+not what they want--the whole world of busy little creatures, all seemingly
+devoured by the desire to reach their destination.... Where is it? They
+do not know. No matter where! Somewhere.... Olivier was fearful amid that
+blind and hostile world. He would start, like a young hare, at the sound of
+a pine-cone falling, or the breaking of a rotten branch.... He would find
+his courage again when he heard the rattling of the chains of the swing at
+the other end of the garden, where Antoinette would be madly swinging to
+and fro.
+
+She, too, would dream: but in her own fashion. She would spend the day
+prowling round the garden, eating, watching, laughing, picking at the
+grapes on the vines like a thrush, secretly plucking a peach from the
+trellis, climbing a plum-tree, or giving it a little surreptitious shake as
+she passed to bring down a rain of the golden mirabelles which melt in the
+mouth like scented honey. Or she would pick the flowers, although that was
+forbidden: quickly she would pluck a rose that she had been coveting all
+day, and run away with it to the arbor at the end of the garden. Then she
+would bury her little nose in the delicious scented flower, and kiss it,
+and bite it, and suck it: and then she would conceal her booty, and hide it
+in her bosom between her little breasts, at the wonder of whose coming she
+would gaze in eager fondness.... And there was an exquisite forbidden joy
+in taking off her shoes and stockings, and walking bare-foot on the cool
+sand of the paths, and on the dewy turf, and on the stones, cold in the
+shadow, burning in the sun, and in the little stream that ran along the
+outskirts of the wood, and kissing with her feet, and legs, and knees,
+water, earth, and light. Lying in the shadow of the pines, she would hold
+her hands up to the sun, and watch the light play through them, and she
+would press her lips upon the soft satin skin of her pretty rounded arms.
+She would make herself crowns and necklets and gowns of ivy-leaves and
+oak-leaves: and she would deck them with the blue thistles, and barberry
+and little pine-branches, with their green fruit: and then she looked like
+a little savage Princess. And she would dance for her own delight round and
+round the fountain; and, with arms outstretched, she would turn and turn
+until her head whirled, and she would slip down on the lawn and bury her
+face in the grass, and shout with laughter for minutes on end, unable to
+stop herself, without knowing why.
+
+So the days slipped by for the two children, within hail of each other,
+though neither ever gave a thought to the other,--except when it would
+suddenly occur to Antoinette to play a prank on her brother, and throw
+a handful of pine-needles in his face, or shake the tree in which he
+was sitting, threatening to make him fall, or frighten him by springing
+suddenly out upon him and yelling:
+
+"Ooh! Ooh!..."
+
+Sometimes she would be seized by a desire to tease him. She would make him
+come down from his tree by pretending that her mother was calling him.
+Then, when he had climbed down, she would take his place and refuse to
+budge. Then Olivier would whine and threaten to tell. But there was no
+danger of Antoinette staying in the tree for long: she could not keep still
+for two minutes. When she had done with taunting Olivier from the top of
+his tree, when she had thoroughly infuriated him and brought him almost to
+tears, then she would slip down, fling her arms round him, shake him, and
+laugh, and call him a "little muff," and roll him on the ground, and rub
+his face with handfuls of grass. He would try to struggle: but he was
+not strong enough. Then he would lie still, flat on his black, like a
+cockchafer, with his thin arms pinned to the ground by Antoinette's strong
+little hands: and he would look piteous and resigned. Antoinette could
+not resist that: she would look at her vanquished prisoner, and burst out
+laughing and kiss him suddenly, and let him go--not without the parting
+attention of a little gag of fresh grass in his mouth: and that he detested
+most of all, because it made him sick. And he would spit and wipe his
+mouth, and storm at her, while she ran away as hard as she could, pealing
+with laughter. She was always laughing. Even when she was asleep she
+laughed. Olivier, lying awake in the next room, would suddenly start up in
+the middle of the stories he was telling himself, at the sound of the wild
+laughter and the muttered words which she would speak in the silence of the
+night. Outside, the trees would creak with the wind, an owl would hoot, in
+the distant villages and the farms in the heart of the woods dogs would
+bark. In the dim phosphorescence of the night Olivier would see the dark,
+heavy branches of the pines moving like ghosts outside his window: and
+Antoinette's laughter would comfort him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two children were very religious, especially Olivier. Their father used
+to scandalize them with his anti-clerical professions of faith, but he did
+not interfere with them: and, at heart, like so many men of his class who
+are unbelievers, he was not sorry that his family should believe for him:
+for it is always good to have allies in the opposing camp, and one is never
+sure which way Fortune will turn. He was a Deist, and he reserved the right
+to summon a priest when the time came, as his father had done: even if it
+did no good, it could do no harm: one insures against fire, even if one has
+no reason to believe that the house will be burned down.
+
+Olivier was morbidly inclined towards mysticism. There were times when he
+doubted whether he existed. He was credulous and soft-hearted, and needed
+a prop: he took a sorrowful delight in confession, in the comfort of
+confiding in the invisible Friend, whose arms are always open to you, to
+whom you can tell everything, who understands and forgives everything: he
+tasted the sweetness of the waters of humility and love, from which the
+soul issues pure, cleansed, and comforted. It was so natural to him to
+believe, that he could not understand how any one could doubt: he thought
+people did so from wickedness, and that God would punish them. He used to
+pray secretly that his father might find grace: and he was delighted when,
+one day, as they went into a little country church, he saw his father
+mechanically make the sign of the cross. The stories of the Gospel were
+mixed up in his mind with the marvelous tales of Rübezahl, and Gracieuse
+and Percinet, and the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. When he was a little boy he
+no more doubted the truth of the one than the other. And just as he was not
+sure that he did not know Shacabac of the cleft lips, and the loquacious
+barber, and the little hunchback of Casgar, just as when he was out walking
+he used to look about for the black woodpecker which bears in its beak the
+magic root of the treasure-seeker, so Canaan and the Promised Land became
+in his childish imagination certain regions in Burgundy or Berrichon. A
+round hill in the country, with a little tree, like a shabby old feather,
+at the summit, seemed to him to be like the mountain where Abraham had
+built his pyre. A large dead bush by the edge of a field was the Burning
+Bush, which the ages had put out. Even when he was older, and his critical
+faculty had been awakened, he loved to feed on the popular legends which
+enshrined his faith: and they gave him so much pleasure, though he no
+longer accepted them implicitly, that he would amuse himself by pretending
+to do so. So for a long time on Easter Saturday he would look out for the
+return of the Easter bells, which went away to Rome on the Thursday before,
+and would come floating through the air with little streamers. He did
+finally admit that it was not true: but he did not give up looking skywards
+when he heard them ringing: and once--though he knew perfectly well that it
+could not be--he fancied he saw one of them disappearing over the house
+with blue ribbons.
+
+It was vitally necessary for him to steep himself in the world of legend
+and faith. He avoided life. He avoided himself. Thin, pale, puny, he
+suffered from being so, and could not bear its being talked about. He was
+naturally pessimistic, no doubt inheriting it from his mother, and his
+pessimism was fed by his morbidity. He did not know it: thought everybody
+must be like himself: and the queer little boy of ten, instead of romping
+in the gardens during his play-time, used to shut himself up in his room,
+and, carefully picking his words, wrote his will.
+
+He used to write a great deal. Every evening he used laboriously and
+secretly to write his diary--he did not know why, for he had nothing to
+say, and he said nothing worth saying. Writing was an inherited mania with
+him, the age-old itch of the French provincial--the old indestructible
+stock--who every day, until the day of his death, with an idiotic patience
+which is almost heroic, writes down in detail what he has seen, said, done,
+heard, eaten, and drunk. For his own pleasure, entirely. It is not for
+other eyes. No one will ever read it: he knows that: he never reads it
+again himself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Music, like religion, was for Olivier a shelter from the too vivid light of
+day. Both brother and sister were born musicians,--especially Olivier, who
+had inherited the gift from his mother. Their taste, as it needed to be,
+was excellent. There was no one capable of forming it in the province,
+where no music was ever heard but that of the local band, which played
+nothing but marches, or--on its good days--selections from Adolphe Adam,
+and the church organist who played romanzas, and the exercises of the young
+ladies of the town who strummed a few valses and polkas, the overture
+to the _Caliph of Bagdad_, _la Chasse du Jeune Henri_, and two or three
+sonatas of Mozart, always the same, and always with the same mistakes, on
+instruments that were sadly out of tune. These things were invariably
+included in the evening's program at parties. After dinner, those who had
+talent were asked to display it: at first they would blush and refuse, but
+then they would yield to the entreaties of the assembled company: and they
+would play their stock pieces without their music. Every one would then
+admire the artist's memory and her beautiful touch.
+
+The ceremony was repeated at almost every party, and the thought of it
+would altogether spoil the children's dinner. When they had to play the
+_Voyage en Chine_ of Bazin, or their pieces of Weber as a duet, they gave
+each other confidence, and were not very much afraid. But it was torture
+to them to have to play alone. Antoinette, as usual, was the braver of the
+two. Although it bored her dreadfully,--as she knew that there was no way
+out of it, she would go through with it, sit at the piano with a determined
+air, and gallop through her _rondo_ at breakneck speed, stumbling over
+certain passages, make a hash of others, break off, turn her head, and say,
+with a smile:
+
+"Oh! I can't remember...."
+
+Then she would start off again a few bars farther on, and go on to the end.
+And she would make no attempt to conceal her pleasure at having finished:
+and when she returned to her chair, amid the general chorus of praise, she
+would laugh and say:
+
+"I made such a lot of mistakes."
+
+But Olivier was not so easy to handle. He could not bear making a show of
+himself in public, and being "the observed of all observers." It was bad
+enough for him to have to speak in company. But to have to play, especially
+for people who did not like music--(that was obvious to him)--for people
+whom music actually bored, people who only asked him to play as a matter of
+habit, seemed to him to be neither more nor less than tyranny, and he tried
+vainly to revolt against it. He would refuse obstinately. Sometimes he
+would escape and go and hide in a dark room, in a passage, or even in the
+barn, in spite of his horror of spiders. His refusal would make the guests
+only insist the more, and they would quiz him: and his parents would
+sternly order him to play, and even slap him when he was too impudently
+rebellious. And in the end he always had to play,--of course unwillingly
+and sulkily. And then he would suffer agonies all night because he had
+played so badly, partly from vanity, and partly from his very genuine love
+for music.
+
+The taste of the little town had not always been so banal. There had been a
+time when there were quite good chamber concerts at several houses. Madame
+Jeannin used often to speak of her grandfather, who adored the violoncello,
+and used to sing airs of Gluck, and Dalayrac, and Berton. There was a large
+volume of them in the house, and a pile of Italian songs. For the old
+gentleman was like M. Andrieux, of whom Berlioz said: "He _loved_ Gluck."
+And he added bitterly: "He also _loved_ Piccinni."--Perhaps of the two
+he preferred Piccinni. At all events, the Italian songs were in a large
+majority in her grandfather's collection. They had been Olivier's first
+musical nourishment. Not a very substantial diet, rather like those
+sweetmeats with which provincial children are stuffed: they corrupt the
+palate, destroy the tissues of the stomach, and there is always a danger of
+their killing the appetite for more solid nutriment. But Olivier could not
+be accused of greediness. He was never offered any more solid food. Having
+no bread, he was forced to eat cake. And so, by force of circumstance, it
+came about that Cimarosa, Paesiello, and Rossini fed the mystic, melancholy
+little boy, who was more than a little intoxicated by his draughts of the
+_Asti spumante_ poured out for him, instead of milk, by these bacchanalian
+Satyrs, and the two lively, ingenuously, lasciviously smiling Bacchante of
+Naples and Catania--Pergolesi and Bellini.
+
+He played a great deal to himself, for his own pleasure. He was saturated
+with music. He did not try to understand what he was playing, but gave
+himself up to it. Nobody ever thought of teaching him harmony, and it never
+occurred to him to learn it. Science and the scientific mind were foreign
+to the nature of his family, especially on his mother's side. All the
+lawyers, wits, and humanists of the De Villiers were baffled by any sort
+of problem. It was told of a member of the family--a distant cousin--as a
+remarkable thing that he had found a post in the _Bureau des Longitudes_.
+And it was further told how he had gone mad. The old provincial
+middle-classes, robust and positive in temper, but dull and sleepy as a
+result of their gigantic meals and the monotony of their lives, are very
+proud of their common sense: they have so much faith in it that they boast
+that there is no difficulty which cannot be resolved by it: and they are
+never very far from considering men of science as artists of a sort, more
+useful than the others, but less exalted, because at least artists serve
+no useful purpose, and there is a sort of distinction about their lounging
+existence.--(Besides, every business man flatters himself that he might
+have been an artist if he had cared about it.)--While scientists are not
+far from being manual laborers,--(which is degrading),--just master-workmen
+with more education, though they are a little cracked: they are mighty fine
+on paper: but outside their arithmetic factories they're nobody. They would
+not be much use without the guidance of common-sense people who have some
+experience of life and business.
+
+Unfortunately, it is not proven that their experience of life and business
+goes so far as these people like to think. It is only a routine, ringing
+the changes on a few easy cases. If any unforeseen position arises,
+in which they have to decide quickly and vigorously, they are always
+disgruntled.
+
+Antoine Jeannin was that sort of man. Everything was so nicely adjusted,
+and his business jogged along so comfortably in its place in the life of
+the province, that he had never encountered any serious difficulty. He had
+succeeded to his father's position without having any special aptitude for
+the business: and, as everything had gone well, he attributed it to his
+own brilliant talents. He loved to say that it was enough to be honest,
+methodical, and to have common sense: and he intended handing down his
+business to his son, without any more regard for the boy's tastes than
+his father had had for his own. He did not do anything to prepare him for
+it. He let his children grow up as they liked, so long as they were good,
+and, above all, happy: for he adored them. And so the two children were
+as little prepared for the struggle of life as possible: they were like
+hothouse flowers. But, surely, they would always live like that? In the
+soft provincial atmosphere, in the bosom of their wealthy, influential
+family, with a kindly, gay, jovial father, surrounded by friends, one of
+the leading men of the district, life was so easy, so bright and smiling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Antoinette was sixteen. Olivier was about to be confirmed. His mind was
+filled with all kinds of mystic dreams. In her heart Antoinette heard
+the sweet song of new-born hope soaring, like the lark in April, in the
+springtime of her life. It was a joy to her to feel the flowering of her
+body and soul, to know that she was pretty, and to be told so. Her father's
+immoderate praises were enough to turn her head.
+
+He was in ecstasies over her: he delighted in her little coquetries, to see
+her eying herself in her mirror, to watch her little innocent tricks. He
+would take her on his knees, and tease her about her childish love-affairs,
+and the conquests she had made, and the suitors that he pretended had come
+to him a-wooing: he would tell her their names: respectable citizens, each
+more old and ugly than the last. And she would cry out in horror, and break
+into rippling laughter, and put her arms about her father's neck, and press
+her cheek close to his. And he would ask which was the happy man of her
+choice: was it the District Attorney, who, the Jeannins' old maid used to
+say, was as ugly as the seven deadly sins? Or was it the fat notary? And
+she would slap him playfully to make him cease, or hold her hand over his
+mouth. He would kiss her little hands, and jump her up and down on his
+knees, and sing the old song
+
+  "What would you, pretty maid?
+  An ugly husband, eh?"
+
+And she would giggle and tie his whiskers under his chin, and reply with
+the refrain:
+
+  "A handsome husband I,
+  No ugly man, madame."
+
+She would declare her intention of choosing for herself. She knew that she
+was, or would be, very rich,--(her father used to tell her so at every
+turn)--she was a "fine catch." The sons of the distinguished families of
+the country were already courting her, setting a wide white net of flattery
+and cunning snares to catch the little silver fish. But it looked as though
+the fish would elude them all: for Antoinette saw all their tricks, and
+laughed at them: she was quite ready to be caught, but not against her
+will. She had already made up her mind to marry.
+
+The noble family of the district--(there is generally one noble family to
+every district, claiming descent from the ancient lords of the province,
+though generally its origin goes no farther back than some purchaser of
+the national estates, some commissary of the eighteenth century, or some
+Napoleonic army-contractor)--the Bonnivets, who lived some few miles
+away from the town, in a castle with tall towers with gleaming slates,
+surrounded by vast woods, in which were innumerable fish-ponds, themselves
+proposed for the hand of Mademoiselle Jeannin. Young Bonnivet was very
+assiduous in his courtship of Antoinette. He was a handsome boy, rather
+stout and heavy for his age, who did nothing but hunt and eat, and drink
+and sleep: he could ride, dance, had charming manners, and was not more
+stupid than other young men. He would ride into the town, or drive in his
+buggy and call on the banker, on some business pretext: and sometimes he
+would bring some game or a bouquet of flowers for the ladies. He would
+seize the opportunity to pay court to Antoinette. They would walk in the
+garden together. He would pay her lumbering compliments, and pull his
+mustache, and make jokes, and make his spurs clatter on the tiles of the
+terrace. Antoinette thought him charming. Her pride and her affections were
+both tickled. She would swim in those first sweet hours of young love.
+Olivier detested the young squire, because he was strong, heavy, brutal,
+had a loud laugh, and hands that gripped like a vise, and a disdainful
+trick of always calling him: "Boy ..." and pinching his cheeks. He detested
+him above all,--without knowing it,--because he dared to love his sister:
+... his sister, his very own, his, and she could not belong to any one
+else!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disaster came. Sooner or later there must come a crisis in the lives of the
+old middle-class families which for centuries have vegetated in the same
+little corner of the earth, and have sucked it dry. They sleep in peace,
+and think themselves as eternal as the earth that bears them. But the soil
+beneath them is dry and dead, their roots are sapped: just the blow of
+an ax, and down they come. Then they talk of accidents and unforeseen
+misfortunes. There would have been no accident if there had been more
+strength in the tree: or, at least, would have been no more than a sudden
+storm, wrenching away a few branches, but never shaking the tree.
+
+Antoine Jeannin was weak, trustful, and a little vain. He loved to throw
+dust in people's eyes, and easily confounded "seeming" and "being." He
+spent recklessly, though his extravagance, moderated by fits of remorse as
+the result of the age-old habit of economy--(he would fling away pounds,
+and haggle over a farthing)--never seriously impaired his capital. He was
+not very cautious in business either. He never refused to lend money to his
+friends: and it was not difficult to be a friend of his. He did not always
+trouble to ask for a receipt: he kept a rough account of what was owing to
+him, and never asked for payment before it was offered him. He believed
+in the good faith of other men, and supposed that they would believe in
+his own. He was much more timid than his jocular, easy-going manners led
+people to suppose. He would never have dared to refuse certain importunate
+borrowers, or to let his doubts of their solvency appear. That arose from a
+mixture of kindness and pusillanimity. He did not wish to offend anybody,
+and he was afraid of being insulted. So he was always giving way. And, by
+way of carrying it off, he would lend with alacrity, as though his debtors
+were doing him a service by borrowing his money. And he was not far from
+believing it; his vanity and optimism had no difficulty in persuading him
+that every business he touched was good business.
+
+Such ways of dealing were not calculated to alienate the sympathies of his
+debtors: he was adored by the peasants, who knew that they could always
+count on his good nature, and never hesitated to resort to him. But the
+gratitude of men--even of honest men--is a fruit that must be gathered in
+good season. If it is left too long upon the tree, it quickly rots. After
+a few months M. Jeannin's debtors would begin to think that his assistance
+was their right: and they were even inclined to think that, as M. Jeannin
+had been so glad to help them, it must have been to his interest to do so.
+The best of them considered themselves discharged--if not of the debt, at
+least of the obligation of gratitude--by the present of a hare they had
+killed, or a basket of eggs from their fowlyard, which they would come and
+offer to the banker on the day of the great fair of the year.
+
+As hitherto only small sums had been lent, and M. Jeannin had only had to
+do with fairly honest people, there were no very awkward consequences: the
+loss of money--of which the banker never breathed a word to a soul--was
+very small. But it was a very different matter when M. Jeannin knocked up
+against a certain company promoter who was launching a great industrial
+concern, and had got wind of the banker's easy-going ways and financial
+resources. This gentleman, who wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor,
+and pretended to be intimate with two or three Ministers, an Archbishop,
+an assortment of senators, and various celebrities of the literary and
+financial world, and to be in touch with an omnipotent newspaper, had a
+very imposing manner, and most adroitly assumed the authoritative and
+familiar tone most calculated to impress his man. By way of introduction
+and recommendation, with a clumsiness which would have aroused the
+suspicions of a quicker man than M. Jeannin, he produced certain ordinary
+complimentary letters which he had received from the illustrious persons of
+his acquaintance, asking him to dinner, or thanking him for some invitation
+they had received: for it is well known that the French are never niggardly
+with such epistolary small change, nor particularly chary of shaking hands
+with, and accepting invitations from, an individual whom they have only
+known for an hour--provided only that he amuses them and does not ask them
+for money: and even as regards that, there are many who would not refuse to
+lend their new friend money so long as others did the same. And it would
+be a poor lookout for a clever man bent on relieving his neighbor of his
+superfluous money if he could not find a sheep who could be induced to jump
+the fence so that all the rest would follow.--If other sheep had not taken
+the fence before him, M. Jeannin would have been the first. He was of the
+woolly tribe which is made to be fleeced. He was seduced by his visitor's
+exalted connections, his fluency and his trick of flattery, and also by the
+first fine results of his advice. He only risked a little at first, and
+won: then he risked much: finally he risked all: not only his own money,
+but that of his clients as well. He did not tell them about it: he was sure
+he would win: he wanted to overwhelm them with the great thing he had done
+for them.
+
+The venture collapsed. He heard of it indirectly through one of his
+Parisian correspondents who happened to mention the new crash, without ever
+dreaming that Jeannin was one of the victims: for the banker had not said
+a word to anybody: with incredible irresponsibility, he had not taken the
+trouble--even avoided--asking the advice of men who were in a position
+to give him information: he had done the whole thing secretly, in the
+infatuated belief in his infallible common sense, and he had been satisfied
+with the vaguest knowledge of what he was doing. There are such moments
+of aberration in life: moments, it would seem, when a man is marked out
+for ruin, when he is fearful lest any one should come to his aid, when he
+avoids all advice that might save him, hides away, and rushes headlong,
+madly, shaking himself free for the fatal plunge.
+
+M. Jeannin rushed to the station, utterly sick at heart, and took train for
+Paris. He went to look for his man. He flattered himself with the hope that
+the news might be false, or, at least, exaggerated. Naturally he did not
+find the fellow, and received further news of the collapse, which was as
+complete as possible. He returned distracted, and said nothing. No one
+had any idea of it yet. He tried to gain a few weeks, a few days. In his
+incurable optimism, he tried hard to believe that he would find a way to
+make good, if not his own losses, at least those of his clients. He tried
+various expedients, with a clumsy haste which would have removed any
+chance of succeeding that he might have had. He tried to borrow, but was
+everywhere refused. In his despair, he staked the little he had left on
+wildly speculative ventures, and lost it all. From that moment there was
+a complete change in his character. He relapsed into an alarming state of
+terror: still he said nothing: but he was bitter, violent, harsh, horribly
+sad. But still, when he was with strangers, he affected his old gaiety;
+but no one could fail to see the change in him: it was attributed to his
+health. With his family he was less guarded: and they saw at once that
+he was concealing some serious trouble. They hardly knew him. Sometimes
+he would burst into a room and ransack a desk, flinging all the papers
+higgledy-piggledy on to the floor, and flying into a frenzy because he
+could not find what he was looking for, or because some one offered to help
+him. Then he would stand stock still in the middle of it all, and when they
+asked him what he was looking for, he did not know himself. He seemed to
+have lost all interest in his family: or he would kiss them with tears in
+his eyes. He could not sleep. He could not eat.
+
+Madame Jeannin saw that they were on the eve of a catastrophe: but she had
+never taken any part in her husband's affairs, and did not understand them.
+She questioned him: he repulsed her brutally: and, hurt in her pride, she
+did not persist. But she trembled, without knowing why.
+
+The children could have no suspicion of the impending disaster. Antoinette,
+no doubt, was too intelligent not, like her mother, to have a presentiment
+of some misfortune: but she was absorbed in the delight of her budding
+love: she refused to think of unpleasant things: she persuaded herself that
+the clouds would pass--or that it would be time enough to see them when it
+was impossible to disregard them.
+
+Of the three, the boy Olivier was perhaps the nearest to understanding
+what was going on in his unhappy father's soul. He felt that his father
+was suffering, and he suffered with him in secret. But he dared not say
+anything: naturally he could do nothing, and he was helpless. And then he,
+too, thrust back the thought of sad things, the nature of which he could
+not grasp: like his mother and sister, he was superstitiously inclined to
+believe that perhaps misfortune, the approach of which he did not wish to
+see, would not come. Those poor wretches who feel the imminence of danger
+do readily play the ostrich: they hide their heads behind a stone, and
+pretend that Misfortune will not see them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disturbing rumors began to fly. It was said that the bank's credit was
+impaired. In vain did the banker assure his clients that it was perfectly
+all right, on one pretext or another the more suspicious of them demanded
+their money. M. Jeannin felt that he was lost: he defended himself
+desperately, assuming a tone of indignation, and complaining loftily and
+bitterly of their suspicions of himself: he even went so far as to be
+violent and angry with some of his old clients, but that only let him down
+finally. Demands for payment came in a rush. On his beam-ends, at bay, he
+completely lost his head. He went away for a few days to gamble with his
+last few banknotes at a neighboring watering-place, was cleaned out in a
+quarter of an hour, and returned home. His sudden departure set the little
+town by the ears, and it was said that he had cleared out: and Madame
+Jeannin had had great difficulty in coping with the wild, anxious inquiries
+of the people: she begged them to be patient, and swore that her husband
+would return. They did not believe her, although they would have been only
+too glad to do so. And so, when it was known that he had returned, there
+was a general sigh of relief: there were many who almost believed that
+their fears had been baseless, and that the Jeannins were much too shrewd
+not to get out of a hole by admitting that they had fallen into it. The
+banker's attitude confirmed that impression. Now that he no longer had any
+doubt as to what he must do, he seemed to be weary, but quite calm. He
+chatted quietly to a few friends whom he met in the station road on his way
+home, talking about the drought and the country not having had any water
+for weeks, and the superb condition of the vines, and the fall of the
+Ministry, announced in the evening papers.
+
+When he reached home he pretended not to notice his wife's excitement, who
+had run to meet him when she heard him come in, and told him volubly and
+confusedly what had happened during his absence. She scanned his features
+to try and see whether he had succeeded in averting the unknown danger:
+but, from pride, she did not ask him anything: she was waiting for him to
+speak first. But he did not say a word about the thing that was tormenting
+them both. He silently disregarded her desire to confide in him, and to get
+him to confide in her. He spoke of the heat, and of how tired he was, and
+complained of a racking headache: and they sat down to dinner as usual.
+
+He talked little, and was dull, lost in thought, and his brows were knit:
+he drummed with his fingers on the table: he forced himself to eat, knowing
+that they were watching him, and looked with vague, unseeing eyes at his
+children, who were intimidated by the silence, and at his wife, who sat
+stiffly nursing her injured vanity, and, without looking at him, marking
+his every movement. Towards the end of dinner he seemed to wake up: he
+tried to talk to Antoinette and Olivier, and asked them what they had been
+doing during his absence: but he did not listen to their replies, and
+heard only the sound of their voices: and although he was staring at them,
+his gaze was elsewhere. Olivier felt it: he stopped in the middle of his
+prattle, and had no desire to go on. But, after a moment's embarrassment,
+Antoinette recovered her gaiety: she chattered merrily, like a magpie, laid
+her head on her father's shoulder, or tugged his sleeve to make him listen
+to what she was saying. M. Jeannin said nothing: his eyes wandered from
+Antoinette to Olivier, and the crease in his forehead grew deeper and
+deeper. In the middle of one of his daughter's stories he could bear it no
+longer, and got up and went and looked out of the window to conceal his
+emotion. The children folded their napkins, and got up too. Madame Jeannin
+told them to go and play in the garden: in a moment or two they could be
+heard chasing each other down the paths and screaming. Madame Jeannin
+looked at her husband, whose back was turned towards her, and she walked
+round the table as though to arrange something. Suddenly she went up to
+him, and, in a voice hushed by her fear of being overheard by the servants
+and by the agony that was in her, she said:
+
+"Tell me, Antoine, what is the matter? There is something the matter ...
+You are hiding something ... Has something dreadful happened? Are you ill?"
+
+But once more M. Jeannin put her off, and shrugged his shoulders, and said
+harshly:
+
+"No! No, I tell you! Let me be!"
+
+She was angry, and went away: in her fury, she declared that, no matter
+what happened to her husband, she would not bother about it any more.
+
+M. Jeannin went down into the garden. Antoinette was still larking about,
+and tugging at her brother to make him run. But the boy declared suddenly
+that he was not going to play any more: and he leaned against the wall of
+the terrace a few yards away from his father. Antoinette tried to go on
+teasing him: but he drove her away and sulked: then she called him names:
+and when she found she could get no more fun out of him, she went in and
+began to play the piano.
+
+M. Jeannin and Olivier were left alone.
+
+"What's the matter with you, boy? Why won't you play?" asked the father
+gently.
+
+"I'm tired, father."
+
+"Well, let us sit here on this seat for a little."
+
+They sat down. It was a lovely September night. A dark, clear sky.
+The sweet scent of the petunias was mingled with the stale and rather
+unwholesome smell of the canal sleeping darkly below the terrace wall.
+Great moths, pale and sphinx-like, fluttered about the flowers, with a
+little whirring sound. The even voices of the neighbors sitting at their
+doors on the other side of the canal rang through the silent air. In the
+house Antoinette was playing a florid Italian cavatina. M. Jeannin held
+Olivier's hand in his. He was smoking. Through the darkness behind which
+his father's face was slowly disappearing the boy could see the red glow of
+the pipe, which gleamed, died away, gleamed again, and finally went out.
+Neither spoke. Then Olivier asked the names of the stars. M. Jeannin, like
+almost all men of his class, knew nothing of the things of Nature, and
+could not tell him the names of any save the great constellations, which
+are known to everyone: but he pretended that the boy was asking their
+names, and told him. Olivier made no objection: it always pleased him to
+hear their beautiful mysterious names, and to repeat them in a whisper.
+Besides, he was not so much wanting to know their names as instinctively to
+come closer to his father. They said nothing more. Olivier looked at the
+stars, with his head thrown back and his mouth open: he was lost in drowsy
+thoughts: he could feel through all his veins the warmth of his father's
+hand. Suddenly the hand began to tremble. That seemed funny to Olivier, and
+he laughed and said sleepily:
+
+"Oh, how your hand is trembling, father!"
+
+M. Jeannin removed his hand.
+
+After a moment Olivier, still busy with his own thoughts, said:
+
+"Are you tired, too, father?"
+
+"Yes, my boy."
+
+The boy replied affectionately:
+
+"You must not tire yourself out so much, father."
+
+M. Jeannin drew Olivier towards him, and held him to his breast and
+murmured:
+
+"My poor boy!..."
+
+But already Olivier's thoughts had flown off on another tack. The church
+clock chimed eight o'clock. He broke away, and said:
+
+"I'm going to read."
+
+On Thursdays he was allowed to read for an hour after dinner, until
+bedtime: it was his greatest joy: and nothing in the world could induce him
+to sacrifice a minute of it.
+
+M. Jeannin let him go. He walked up and down the terrace for a little in
+the dark. Then he, too, went in.
+
+In the room his wife and the two children were sitting round the lamp.
+Antoinette was sewing a ribbon on to a blouse, talking and humming the
+while, to Olivier's obvious discomfort, for he was stopping his ears with
+his fists so as not to hear, while he pored over his book with knitted
+brows, and his elbows on the table. Madame Jeannin was mending stockings
+and talking to the old nurse, who was standing by her side and giving an
+account of her day's expenditure, and seizing the opportunity for a little
+gossip: she always had some amusing tale to tell in her extraordinary
+lingo, which used to make them roar with laughter, while Antoinette would
+try to imitate her. M. Jeannin watched them silently. No one noticed him.
+He wavered for a moment, sat down, took up a book, opened it at random,
+shut it again, got up: he could not sit still. He lit a candle and said
+good-night. He went up to the children and kissed them fondly: they
+returned his kiss absently without looking up at him,--Antoinette being
+absorbed in her work, and Olivier in his book. Olivier did not even
+take his hands from his ears, and grunted "Good-night," and went on
+reading:--(when he was reading even if one of his family had fallen into
+the fire, he would not have looked up).--M. Jeannin left the room. He
+lingered in the next room, for a moment. His wife came out soon, the old
+nurse having gone to arrange the linen-cupboard. She pretended not to see
+him. He hesitated, then came up to her, and said:
+
+"I beg your pardon. I was rather rude just now."
+
+She longed to say to him:
+
+"My dear, my dear, that is nothing: but, tell me, what is the matter with
+you? Tell me, what is hurting you so?"
+
+But she jumped at the opportunity of taking her revenge, and said:
+
+"Let me be! You have been behaving odiously. You treat me worse than you
+would a servant."
+
+And she went on in that strain, setting forth all her grievances volubly,
+shrilly, rancorously.
+
+He raised his hands wearily, smiled bitterly, and left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one heard the report of the revolver. Only, next day, when it was known
+what had happened, a few of the neighbors remembered that, in the middle of
+the night, when the streets were quiet, they had noticed a sharp noise like
+the cracking of a whip. They did not pay any attention to it. The silence
+of the night fell once more upon the town, wrapping both living and dead
+about with its mystery.
+
+Madame Jeannin was asleep, but woke up an hour or two later. Not seeing her
+husband by her side she got up and went anxiously through all the rooms,
+and downstairs to the offices of the bank, which were in an annex of the
+house: and there, sitting in his chair in his office, she found M. Jeannin
+huddled forward on his desk in a pool of blood, which was still dripping
+down on to the floor. She gave a scream, dropped her candle, and fainted.
+She was heard in the house. The servants came running, picked her up, took
+care of her, and laid the body of M. Jeannin on a bed. The door of the
+children's room was locked. Antoinette was sleeping happily. Olivier heard
+the sound of voices and footsteps: he wanted to go and see what it was all
+about: but he was afraid of waking his sister, and presently he went to
+sleep again.
+
+Next morning the news was all over the town before they knew anything.
+Their old nurse came sobbing and told them. Their mother was incapable of
+thinking of anything: her condition was critical. The two children were
+left alone in the presence of death. At first they were more fearful than
+sorrowful. And they were not allowed to weep in peace. The cruel legal
+formalities were begun the first thing in the morning. Antoinette hid
+away in her room, and with all the force of her youthful egoism clung
+to the only idea which could help her to thrust back the horror of the
+overwhelming reality: the thought of her lover: all day long she waited for
+him to come. Never had he been more ardent than the last time she had seen
+him, and she had no doubt that, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe, he
+would hasten to share her grief.--But nobody came, or wrote, or gave one
+sign of sympathy. As soon as the news of the suicide was out, people who
+had intrusted their money to the banker rushed to the Jeannins' house,
+forced their way in, and, with merciless cruelty, stormed and screamed at
+the widow and the two children.
+
+In a few days they were faced with their utter ruin: the loss of a dear
+one, the loss of their fortune, their position, their public esteem, and
+the desertion of their friends. A total wreck. Nothing was left to provide
+for them. They had all three an uncompromising feeling for moral purity,
+which made their suffering all the greater from the dishonor of which they
+were innocent. Of the three Antoinette was the most distraught by their
+sorrow, because she had never really known suffering. Madame Jeannin
+and Olivier, though they were racked by it, were more inured to it.
+Instinctively pessimistic, they were overwhelmed but not surprised. The
+idea of death had always been a refuge to them, as it was now, more than
+ever: they longed for death. It is pitiful to be so resigned, but not so
+terrible as the revolt of a young creature, confident and happy, loving
+every moment of her life, who suddenly finds herself face to face with such
+unfathomable, irremediable sorrow, and death which is horrible to her....
+
+Antoinette discovered the ugliness of the world in a flash. Her eyes were
+opened: she saw life and human beings as they are: she judged her father,
+her mother, and her brother. While Olivier and Madame Jeannin wept
+together, in her grief she drew into herself. Desperately she pondered the
+past, the present, and the future: and she saw that there was nothing left
+for her, no hope, nothing to support her: she could count on no one.
+
+The funeral took place, grimly, shamefully. The Church refused to receive
+the body of the suicide. The widow and orphans were deserted by the
+cowardice of their former friends. One or two of them came for a moment:
+and their embarrassment was even harder to bear than the absence of the
+rest. They seemed to make a favor of it, and their silence was big with
+reproach and pitying contempt. It was even worse with their relations:
+not only did they receive no single word of sympathy, but they were
+visited with bitter reproaches. The banker's suicide, far from removing
+ill-feeling, seemed to be hardly less criminal than his failure.
+Respectable people cannot forgive those who kill themselves. It seems to
+them monstrous that a man should prefer death to life with dishonor: and
+they would fain call down all the rigor of the law on him who seems to say:
+
+"There is no misery so great as that of living with you."
+
+The greatest cowards are not the least ready to accuse him of cowardice.
+And when, in addition, the suicide, by ending his life, touches their
+interests and their revenge, they lose all control.--Not for one moment did
+they think of all that the wretched Jeannin must have suffered to come to
+it. They would have had him suffer a thousand times more. And as he had
+escaped them, they transferred their fury to his family. They did not admit
+it to themselves: for they knew they were unjust. But they did it all the
+same, for they needed a victim.
+
+Madame Jeannin, who seemed to be able to do nothing but weep and moan,
+recovered her energy when her husband was attacked. She discovered then how
+much she had loved him: and she and her two children, who had no idea what
+would become of them in the future, all agreed to renounce their claim to
+her dowry, and to their own personal estate, in order, as far as possible,
+to meet M. Jeannin's debts. And, since it had become impossible for them to
+stay in the little town, they decided to go to Paris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their departure was something in the nature of a flight.
+
+On the evening of the day before,--(a melancholy evening towards the end
+of September: the fields were disappearing behind the white veil of mist,
+out of which, as they walked along the road, on either side the fantastic
+shapes of the dripping, shivering bushes started forth, looking like the
+plants in an aquarium),--they went together to say farewell to the grave
+where he lay. They all three knelt on the narrow curbstone which surrounded
+the freshly turned patch of earth. They wept in silence; Olivier sobbed.
+Madame Jeannin mopped her eyes mournfully. She augmented her grief and
+tortured herself by saying to herself over and over again the words she had
+spoken to her husband the last time she had seen him alive. Olivier thought
+of that last conversation on the seat on the terrace. Antoinette wondered
+dreamily what would become of them. None of them ever dreamed of
+reproaching the wretched man who had dragged them down in his own ruin. But
+Antoinette thought:
+
+"Ah! dear father, how we shall suffer!"
+
+The mist grew more dense, the cold damp pierced through to their bones. But
+Madame Jeannin could not bring herself to go. Antoinette saw that Olivier
+was shivering and she said to her mother:
+
+"I am cold."
+
+They got up. Just as they were going, Madame Jeannin turned once more
+towards the grave, gazed at it for the last time, and said:
+
+"My dear, my dear!"
+
+They left the cemetery as night was falling. Antoinette held Olivier's icy
+hand in hers.
+
+They went back to the old house. It was their last night under the
+roof-tree where they had always slept, where their lives and the lives of
+their parents had been lived--the walls, the hearth, the little patch of
+earth were so indissolubly linked with the family's joys and sorrows, as
+almost themselves to be part of the family, part of their life, which they
+could only leave to die.
+
+Their boxes were packed. They were to take the first train next day before
+the shops were opened: they wanted to escape their neighbors' curiosity and
+malicious remarks.--They longed to cling to each other and stay together:
+but they went instinctively to their rooms and stayed there: there they
+remained standing, never moving, not even taking off their hats and cloaks,
+touching the walls, the furniture, all the things they were going to leave,
+pressing their faces against the window-panes, trying to take away with
+them in memory the contact of the things they loved. At last they made an
+effort to shake free from the absorption of their sorrowful thoughts and
+met in Madame Jeannin's room,--the family room, with a great recess at the
+back, where, in old days, they always used to foregather in the evening,
+after dinner, when there were no visitors. In old days!... How far off they
+seemed now!--They sat silently round the meager fire: then they all knelt
+by the bed and said their prayers: and they went to bed very early, for
+they had to be up before dawn. But it was long before they slept.
+
+About four o'clock in the morning Madame Jeannin, who had looked at her
+watch every hour or so to see whether it was not time to get ready, lit her
+candle and got up. Antoinette, who had hardly slept at all, heard her and
+got up too. Olivier was fast asleep. Madame Jeannin gazed at him tenderly
+and could not bring herself to wake him. She stole away on tiptoe and said
+to Antoinette:
+
+"Don't make any noise: let the poor boy enjoy his last moments here!"
+
+The two women dressed and finished their packing. About the house hovered
+the profound silence of the cold night, such a night as makes all living
+things, men and beasts, cower away for warmth into the depths of sleep.
+Antoinette's teeth were chattering: she was frozen body and soul.
+
+The front door creaked upon the frozen air. The old nurse, who had the key
+of the house, came for the last time to serve her employers. She was short
+and fat, short-winded, and slow-moving from her portliness, but she was
+remarkably active for her age: she appeared with her jolly face muffled
+up, and her nose was red, and her eyes were wet with tears. She was
+heart-broken when she saw that Madame Jeannin had got up without waiting
+for her, and had herself lit the kitchen fire.--Olivier woke up as she came
+in. His first impulse was to close his eyes, turn over, and go to sleep
+again. Antoinette came and laid her hand gently on her brother's shoulder,
+and she said in a low voice:
+
+"Olivier, dear, it is time to get up."
+
+He sighed, opened his eyes, saw his sister's face leaning over him: she
+smiled sadly and caressed his face with her hand. She said:
+
+"Come!"
+
+He got up.
+
+They crept out of the house, noiselessly, like thieves. They all had
+parcels in their hands. The old nurse went in front of them trundling their
+boxes in a wheelbarrow. They left behind almost all their possessions, and
+took away, so to speak, only what they had on their backs and a change
+of clothes. A few things for remembrance were to be sent after them by
+goods-train: a few books, portraits, the old grandfather's clock, whose
+tick-tock seemed to them to be the beating of their hearts.--The air was
+keen. No one was stirring in the town: the shutters were closed and the
+streets empty. They said nothing: only the old servant spoke. Madame
+Jeannin was striving to fix in her memory all the images which told her of
+all her past life.
+
+At the station, out of vanity, Madame Jeannin took second-class tickets,
+although she had vowed to travel third: but she had not the courage to face
+the humiliation in the presence of the railway clerks who knew her. She
+hurried into an empty compartment with her two children and shut the door.
+Hiding behind the curtains they trembled lest they should see any one they
+knew. But no one appeared: the town was hardly awake by the time they
+left: the train was empty: there were only a few peasants traveling by
+it, and some oxen, who hung their heads out of their trucks and bellowed
+mournfully. After a long wait the engine gave a slow whistle, and the train
+moved on through the mist. The fugitives drew the curtains and pressed
+their faces against the windows to take a last long look at the little
+town, with its Gothic tower just appearing through the mist, and the hill
+covered with stubby fields, and the meadows white and steaming with the
+frost; already it was a distant dream-landscape, fading out of existence.
+And when the train turned a bend and passed into a cutting, and they could
+no longer see it, and were sure there was no one to see them, they gave way
+to their emotion. With her handkerchief pressed to her lips Madame Jeannin
+sobbed. Olivier flung himself into her arms and with his head on her knees
+he covered her hands with tears and kisses. Antoinette sat at the other end
+of the compartment and looked out of the window and wept in silence. They
+did not all weep for the same reason. Madame Jeannin and Olivier were
+thinking only of what they had left behind them. Antoinette was thinking
+rather of what they were going to meet: she was angry with herself: she,
+too, would gladly have been absorbed in her memories....--She was right to
+think of the future: she had a truer vision of the world than her mother
+and brother. They were weaving dreams about Paris. Antoinette herself had
+little notion of what awaited them there. They had never been there. Madame
+Jeannin imagined that, though their position would be sad enough, there
+would be no reason for anxiety. She had a sister in Paris, the wife of a
+wealthy magistrate: and she counted on her assistance. She was convinced
+also that with the education her children had received and their natural
+gifts, which, like all mothers, she overestimated, they would have no
+difficulty in earning an honest living.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their first impressions were gloomy enough. As they left the station they
+were bewildered by the jostling crowd of people in the luggage-room and the
+confused uproar of the carriages outside. It was raining. They could not
+find a cab, and had to walk a long way with their arms aching with their
+heavy parcels, so that they had to stop every now and then in the middle
+of the street at the risk of being run over or splashed by the carriages.
+They could not make a single driver pay any attention to them. At last
+they managed to stop a man who was driving an old and disgustingly dirty
+barouche. As they were handing in the parcels they let a bundle of rugs
+fall into the mud. The porter who carried the trunk and the cabman
+traded on their ignorance, and made them pay double. Madame Jeannin gave
+the address of one of those second-rate expensive hotels patronized by
+provincials who go on going to them, in spite of their discomfort, because
+their grandfathers went to them thirty years ago. They were fleeced there.
+They were told that the hotel was full, and they were accommodated with one
+small room for which they were charged the price of three. For dinner they
+tried to economize by avoiding the table d'hôte: they ordered a modest
+meal, which cost them just as much and left them famishing. Their illusions
+concerning Paris had come toppling down as soon as they arrived. And,
+during that first night in the hotel, when they were squeezed into one
+little, ill-ventilated room, they could not sleep: they were hot and cold
+by turns, and could not breathe, and started at every footstep in the
+corridor, and the banging of the doors, and the furious ringing of the
+electric bells: and their heads throbbed with the incessant roar of the
+carriages and heavy drays: and altogether they felt terrified of the
+monstrous city into which they had plunged to their utter bewilderment.
+
+Next day Madame Jeannin went to see her sister, who lived in a luxurious
+flat in the _Boulevard Hausmann_. She hoped, though she did not say so,
+that they would be invited to stay there until they had found their feet.
+The welcome she received was enough to undeceive her. The Poyet-Delormes
+were furious at their relative's failure: especially Madame Delorme, who
+was afraid that it would be set against her, and might injure her husband's
+career, and she thought it shameless of the ruined family to come and
+cling to them, and compromise them even more. The magistrate was of the
+same opinion: but he was a kindly man: he would have been more inclined
+to help, but for his wife's intervention--to which he knuckled under.
+Madame Poyet-Delorme received her sister with icy coldness. It cut Madame
+Jeannin to the heart: but she swallowed down her pride: she hinted at the
+difficulty of her position and the assistance she hoped to receive from the
+Poyets. Her sister pretended not to understand, and did not even ask her to
+stay to dinner: they were ceremoniously invited to dine at the end of the
+week. The invitation did not come from Madame Poyet either, but from the
+magistrate, who was a little put out at his wife's treatment of her sister,
+and tried to make amends for her curtness: he posed as the good-natured
+man: but it was obvious that it did not come easily to him and that he was
+really very selfish. The unhappy Jeannins returned to their hotel without
+daring to say what they thought of their first visit.
+
+They spent the following days in wandering about Paris, looking for a fiat:
+they were worn out with going up stairs, and disheartened by the sight of
+the great barracks crammed full of people, and the dirty stairs, and the
+dark rooms, that seemed so depressing to them after their own big house in
+the country. They grew more and more depressed. And they were always shy
+and timid in the streets, and shops, and restaurants, so that they were
+cheated at every turn. Everything they asked for cost an exorbitant sum: it
+was as though they had the faculty of turning everything they touched into
+gold: only, it was they who had to pay out the gold. They were incredibly
+simple and absolutely incapable of looking after themselves.
+
+Though there was little left to hope for from Madame Jeannin's sister, the
+poor lady wove illusions about the dinner to which they were invited. They
+dressed for it with fluttering hearts. They were received as guests, and
+not as relations--though nothing more was expended on the dinner than the
+ceremonious manner. The children met their cousins, who were almost the
+same age as themselves, but they were not much more cordial than their
+father and mother. The girl was very smart and coquettish, and spoke to
+them with a lisp and a politely superior air, with affectedly honeyed
+manners which disconcerted them. The boy was bored by this duty-dinner with
+their poor relations: and he was as surly as could be. Madame Poyet-Delorme
+sat up stiffly in her chair, and, even when she handed her a dish, seemed
+to be reading her sister a lesson. Madame Poyet-Delorme talked trivialities
+to keep the conversation from becoming serious. They never got beyond
+talking of what they were eating for fear of touching upon any intimate
+and dangerous topic. Madame Jeannin made an effort to bring them round to
+the subject next her heart: Madame Poyet-Delorme cut her short with some
+pointless remark, and she had not the courage to try again.
+
+After dinner she made her daughter play the piano by way of showing off her
+talents. The poor girl was embarrassed and unhappy and played execrably.
+The Poyets were bored and anxious for her to finish. Madame Poyet exchanged
+glances with her daughter, with an ironic curl of her lips: and as the
+music went on too long she began to talk to Madame Jeannin about nothing in
+particular. At last Antoinette, who had quite lost her place, and saw to
+her horror that, instead of going on, she had begun again at the beginning,
+and that there was no reason why she should ever stop, broke off suddenly,
+and ended with two inaccurate chords and a third which was absolutely
+dissonant. Monsieur Poyet said:
+
+"Bravo!"
+
+And he asked for coffee.
+
+Madame Poyet said that her daughter was taking lessons with Pugno: and the
+young lady "who was taking lessons with Pugno" said:
+
+"Charming, my dear...."
+
+And asked where Antoinette had studied.
+
+The conversation dropped. They had exhausted the knick-knacks in the
+drawing-room and the dresses of Madame and Mademoiselle Poyet. Madame
+Jeannin said to herself:
+
+"I must speak now. I must...."
+
+And she fidgeted. Just as she had pulled herself together to begin, Madame
+Poyet mentioned casually, without any attempt at an apology, that they were
+very sorry but they had to go out at half-past nine: they had an invitation
+which they had been unable to decline. The Jeannins were at a loss, and
+got up at once to go. The Poyets made some show of detaining them. But
+a quarter of an hour later there was a ring at the door: the footman
+announced some friends of the Poyets, neighbors of theirs, who lived in the
+flat below. Poyet and his wife exchanged glances, and there were hurried
+whisperings with the servants. Poyet stammered some excuse, and hurried
+the Jeannins into the next room. (He was trying to hide from his friends
+the existence, and the presence in his house, of the compromising family.)
+The Jeannins were left alone in a room without a fire. The children were
+furious at the affront. Antoinette had tears in her eyes and insisted on
+their going. Her mother resisted for a little: but then, after they had
+waited for some time, she agreed. They went out. In the hall they were
+caught by Poyet, who had been told by a servant, and he muttered excuses:
+he pretended that he wanted them to stay: but it was obvious that he was
+only eager for them to go. He helped them on with their cloaks, and hurried
+them to the door with smiles and handshakes and whispered pleasantries, and
+closed the door on them. When they reached their hotel the children burst
+into angry tears. Antoinette stamped her foot, and swore that she would
+never enter their house again.
+
+Madame Jeannin took a flat on the fourth floor near the _Jardin des
+Plantes_. The bedrooms looked on to the filthy walls of a gloomy courtyard:
+the dining-room and the drawing-room--(for Madame Jeannin insisted on
+having a drawing-room)--on to a busy street. All day long steam-trams went
+by and hearses crawling along to the Ivry Cemetery. Filthy Italians, with a
+horde of children, loafed about on the seats, or spent their time in shrill
+argument. The noise made it impossible to have the windows open: and in the
+evening, on their way home, they had to force their way through crowds of
+bustling, evil-smelling people, cross the thronged and muddy streets, pass
+a horrible pothouse, that was on the ground floor of the next house, in
+the door of which there were always fat, frowsy women with yellow hair and
+painted faces, eying the passers-by.
+
+Their small supply of money soon gave out. Every evening with sinking
+hearts they took stock of the widening hole in their purse. They tried
+to stint themselves: but they did not know how to set about it: that is
+a science which can only be learned by years of experimenting, unless it
+has been practised from childhood. Those who are not naturally economical
+merely waste their time in trying to be so: as soon as a fresh opportunity
+of spending money crops up, they succumb to the temptation: they are always
+going to economize next time: and when they do happen to make a little
+money, or to think they have made it, they rush out and spend ten times the
+amount on the strength of it.
+
+At the end of a few weeks the Jeannins' resources were exhausted. Madame
+Jeannin had to gulp down what was left of her pride, and, unknown to her
+children, she went and asked Poyet for money. She contrived to see him
+alone at his office, and begged him to advance her a small sum until they
+had found work to keep them alive. Poyet, who was weak and human enough,
+tried at first to postpone the matter, but finally acceded to her request.
+He gave her two hundred francs in a moment of emotion, which mastered him,
+and he repented of it immediately afterwards,--when he had to make his
+peace with Madame Poyet, who was furious with her husband's weakness, and
+her sister's slyness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All day and every day the Jeannins were out and about in Paris, looking
+for work. Madame Jeannin, true to the prejudices of her class, would not
+hear of their engaging in any other profession than those which are called
+"liberal"--no doubt because they leave their devotees free to starve. She
+would even have gone so far as to forbid her daughter to take a post as
+a family governess. Only the official professions, in the service of the
+State, were not degrading in her eyes. They had to discover a means of
+letting Olivier finish his education so that he might become a teacher. As
+for Antoinette, Madame Jeannin's idea was that she should go to a school
+to teach, or to the Conservatoire to win the prize for piano playing. But
+the schools at which she applied already had teachers enough, who were
+much better qualified than her daughter with her poor little elementary
+certificate: and, as for music, she had to recognize that Antoinette's
+talent was quite ordinary compared with that of so many others who did not
+get on at all. They came face to face with the terrible struggle for life,
+and the blind waste of talent, great and small, for which Paris can find no
+use.
+
+The two children lost heart and exaggerated their uselessness: they
+believed that they were mediocre, and did their best to convince themselves
+and their mother that it was so. Olivier, who had had no difficulty in
+shining at his provincial school, was crushed by his various rebuffs: he
+seemed to have lost possession of all his gifts. At the school for which he
+won a scholarship, the results of his first examinations were so disastrous
+that his scholarship was taken away from him. He thought himself utterly
+stupid. At the same time he had a horror of Paris, and its swarming
+inhabitants, and the disgusting immorality of his schoolfellows, and their
+shameful conversation, and the bestiality of a few of them who did not
+spare him from their abominable proposals. He was not even strong enough to
+show his contempt for them. He felt degraded by the mere thought of their
+degradation. With his mother and sister, he took refuge in the heartfelt
+prayers which they used to say every evening after the day of deceptions
+and private humiliations, which to their innocence seemed to be a taint,
+of which they dared not tell each other. But, in contact with the latent
+spirit of atheism which is in the air of Paris, Olivier's faith was
+beginning to crumble away, without his knowledge, like whitewash trickling
+down a wall under the beating of the rain. He went on believing: but all
+about him God was dying.
+
+His mother and sister pursued their futile quest. Madame Jeannin turned
+once more to the Poyets, who were anxious to be quit of them, and offered
+them work. Madame Jeannin was to go as reader to an old lady who was
+spending the winter in the South of France. A post was found for Antoinette
+as governess in a family in the West, who lived all the year round in the
+country. The terms were not bad, but Madame Jeannin refused. It was not
+so much for herself that she objected to a menial position, but she was
+determined that Antoinette should not be reduced to it, and unwilling
+to part with her. However unhappy they might be, just because they were
+unhappy, they wished to be together.--Madame Poyet took it very badly. She
+said that people who had no means of living had no business to be proud.
+Madame Jeannin could not refrain from crying out upon her heartlessness.
+Madame Poyet spoke bitterly of the bankruptcy and of the money that Madame
+Jeannin owed her. They parted, and the breach between them was final. All
+relationship between them was broken off. Madame Jeannin had only one
+desire left: to pay back the money she had borrowed. But she was unable to
+do that.
+
+They resumed their vain search for work. Madame Jeannin went to see the
+deputy and the senator of her department, men whom Monsieur Jeannin had
+often helped. Everywhere she was brought face to face with ingratitude
+and selfishness. The deputy did not even answer her letters, and when she
+called on him he sent down word that he was out. The senator commiserated
+her ponderously on her unhappy position, which he attributed to "the
+wretched Jeannin," whose suicide he stigmatized harshly. Madame Jeannin
+defended her husband. The senator said that of course he knew that the
+banker had acted, not from dishonesty, but from stupidity, and that he was
+a fool, a poor gull, who knew nothing, and would go his own way without
+asking anybody's advice or taking a warning from any one. If he had only
+ruined himself, there would have been nothing to say: that would have
+been his own affair. But--not to mention the ruin that he had brought on
+others,--that he should have reduced his wife and children to poverty and
+deserted them and left them to get out of it as best they could ... it was
+Madame Jeannin's own business if she chose to forgive him, if she were a
+saint, but for his part, he, the senator, not being a saint--(s, a, i, n,
+t),--but, he flattered himself, just a plain man--(s, a, i, n),--a plain,
+sensible, reasonable human being,--he could find no reason for forgiveness:
+a man who, in such circumstances, could kill himself, was a wretch. The
+only extenuating circumstance he could find in Jeannin's case was that he
+was not responsible for his actions. With that he begged Madame Jeannin's
+pardon for having expressed himself a little emphatically about her
+husband: he pleaded the sympathy that he felt for her: and he opened his
+drawer and offered her a fifty-franc note,--charity--which she refused.
+
+She applied for a post in the offices of a great Government department. She
+set about it clumsily and inconsequently, and all her courage oozed out at
+the first attempt. She returned home so demoralized that for several days
+she could not stir. And, when she resumed her efforts, it was too late. She
+did not find help either with the church-people, either because they saw
+there was nothing to gain by it, or because they took no interest in a
+ruined family, the head of which had been notoriously anti-clerical. After
+days and days of hunting for work Madame Jeannin could find nothing better
+than a post as music-teacher in a convent--an ungrateful task, ridiculously
+ill-paid. To eke out her earnings she copied music in the evenings for an
+agency. They were very hard on her. She was severely called to task for
+omitting words and whole lines, as she did in spite of her application,
+for she was always thinking of so many other things and her wits were
+wool-gathering. And so, after she had stayed up through the night till
+her eyes and her back ached, her copy was rejected. She would return home
+utterly downcast. She would spend days together moaning, unable to stir
+a finger. For a long time she had been suffering from heart trouble,
+which had been aggravated by her hard struggles, and filled her with dark
+forebodings. Sometimes she would have pains, and difficulty in breathing
+as though she were on the point of death. She never went out without her
+name and address written on a piece of paper in her pocket in case she
+should collapse in the street. What would happen if she were to disappear?
+Antoinette comforted her as best she could by affecting a confidence which
+she did not possess: she begged her to be careful and to let her go and
+work in her stead. But the little that was left of Madame Jeannin's pride
+stirred in her, and she vowed that at least her daughter should not know
+the humiliation she had to undergo.
+
+In vain did she wear herself out and cut down their expenses: what she
+earned was not enough to keep them alive. They had to sell the few jewels
+which they had kept. And the worst blow of all came when the money, of
+which they were in such sore need, was stolen from Madame Jeannin the very
+day it came into her hands. The poor flustered creature took it into her
+head while she was out to go into the _Bon Marché_, which was on her way:
+it was Antoinette's birthday next day, and she wanted to give her a little
+present. She was carrying her purse in her hand so as not to lose it. She
+put it down mechanically on the counter for a moment while she looked at
+something. When she put out her hand for it the purse was gone. It was the
+last blow for her.
+
+A few days later, on a stifling evening at the end of August,--a hot
+steaming mist hung over the town,--Madame Jeannin came in from her copying
+agency, whither she had been to deliver a piece of work that was wanted in
+a hurry. She was late for dinner, and had saved her three sous' bus fare
+by hurrying home on foot to prevent her children being anxious. When she
+reached the fourth floor she could neither speak nor breathe. It was not
+the first time she had returned home in that condition: the children took
+no notice of it. She forced herself to sit down at table with them. They
+were both suffering from the heat and did not eat anything: they had to
+make an effort to gulp down a few morsels of food, and a sip or two of
+stale water. To give their mother time to recover they did not talk--(they
+had no desire to talk)--and looked out of the window.
+
+Suddenly Madame Jeannin waved her hands in the air, clutched at the table,
+looked at her children, moaned, and collapsed. Antoinette and Olivier
+sprang to their feet just in time to catch her in their arms. They were
+beside themselves, and screamed and cried to her:
+
+"Mother! Mother! Dear, dear mother!"
+
+But she made no sound. They were at their wit's end. Antoinette clung
+wildly to her mother's body, kissed her, called to her. Olivier ran to the
+door of the flat and yelled:
+
+"Help! Help!"
+
+The housekeeper came running upstairs, and when she saw what had happened
+she ran for a doctor. But when the doctor arrived, he could only say that
+the end had come. Death had been instantaneous--happily for Madame
+Jeannin--although it was impossible to know what thoughts might have been
+hers during the last moments when she knew that she was dying and leaving
+her children alone in such misery.
+
+They were alone to bear the horror of the catastrophe, alone to weep, alone
+to perform the dreadful duties that follow upon death. The porter's wife, a
+kindly soul, helped them a little: and people came from the convent where
+Madame Jeannin had taught: but they were given no real sympathy.
+
+The first moments brought inexpressible despair. The only thing that saved
+them was the very excess of that despair, which made Olivier really ill.
+Antoinette's thoughts were distracted from her own suffering, and her one
+idea was to save her brother: and her great, deep love filled Olivier and
+plucked him back from the violent torment of his grief. Locked in her arms,
+near the bed where their mother was lying in the glimmer of a candle,
+Olivier said over and over again that they must die, that they must both
+die, at once: and he pointed to the window. In Antoinette, too, there was
+the dark desire: but she fought it down: she wished to live....
+
+"Why? Why?"
+
+"For her sake," said Antoinette--(she pointed to her mother).--"She is
+still with us. Think ... after all that she has suffered for our sake, we
+must spare her the crowning sorrow, that of seeing us die in misery....
+Ah!" (she went on emphatically).... "And then, we must not give way. I will
+not! I refuse to give in. You must, you shall be happy, some day!"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Yes. You shall be happy. We have had too much unhappiness. A change will
+come: it must. You shall live your life. You shall have children, you shall
+be happy, you shall, you shall!"
+
+"How are we to live? We cannot do it...."
+
+"We can. What is it, after all? We have to live somehow until you can earn
+your living. I will see to that. You will see: I'll do it. Ah! If only
+mother had let me do it, as I could have done...."
+
+"What will you do? I will not have you degrading yourself. You could not do
+it."
+
+"I can.... And there is nothing humiliating in working for one's
+living--provided it be honest work. Don't you worry about it, please. You
+will see, everything will come right. You shall be happy, we shall be
+happy: dear Olivier, _she_ will be happy through us...."
+
+The two children were the only mourners at their mother's grave. By common
+consent they agreed not to tell the Poyets: the Poyets had ceased to exist
+for them: they had been too cruel to their mother: they had helped her
+to her death. And, when the housekeeper asked them if they had no other
+relations, they replied:
+
+"No. Nobody."
+
+By the bare grave they prayed hand in hand. They set their teeth in
+desperate resolve and pride and preferred their solitude to the presence of
+their callous and hypocritical relations.--They returned on foot through
+the throng of people who were strangers to their grief, strangers to their
+thoughts, strangers to their lives, and shared nothing with them but their
+common language. Antoinette had to support Olivier.
+
+They took a tiny flat in the same house on the top floor--two little
+attics, a narrow hall, which had to serve as a dining-room, and a kitchen
+that was more like a cupboard. They could have found better rooms in
+another neighborhood: but it seemed to them that they were still with their
+mother in that house. The housekeeper took an interest in them for a time:
+but she was soon absorbed in her own affairs and nobody bothered about
+them. They did not know a single one of the other tenants: and they did not
+even know who lived next door.
+
+Antoinette obtained her mother's post as music-teacher at the convent. She
+procured other pupils. She had only one idea: to educate her brother until
+he was ready for the _École Normale_. It was her own idea, and she had
+decided upon it after mature reflection: she had studied the syllabus and
+asked about it, and had also tried to find out what Olivier thought:--but
+he had no ideas, and she chose for him. Once at the _École Normale_ he
+would be sure of a living for the rest of his life, and his future would
+be assured. He must get in, somehow; whatever it cost, they would have to
+keep alive till then. It meant five or six terrible years: they would win
+through. The idea possessed Antoinette, absorbed her whole life. The poor
+solitary existence which she must lead, which she saw clearly mapped out
+in front of her, was only made bearable through the passionate exaltation
+which filled her, her determination, by all means in her power, to save her
+brother and make him happy. The light-hearted, gentle girl of seventeen or
+eighteen was transfigured by her heroic resolution: there was in her an
+ardent quality of devotion, a pride of battle, which no one had suspected,
+herself least of all. In that critical period of a woman's life, during
+the first fevered days of spring, when love fills all her being, and like
+a hidden stream murmuring beneath the earth, laves her soul, envelops
+it, floods it with tenderness, and fills it with sweet obsessions, love
+appears in divers shapes: demanding that she should give herself, and
+yield herself up to be its prey: for love the least excuse is enough, and
+for its profound yet innocent sensuality any sacrifice is easy. Love made
+Antoinette the prey of sisterly devotion.
+
+Her brother was less passionate and had no such stay. Besides, the
+sacrifice was made for him, it was not he who was sacrificed--which is so
+much easier and sweeter when one loves. He was weighed down with remorse at
+seeing his sister wearing herself out for him. He would tell her so, and
+she would reply:
+
+"Ah! My dear!... But don't you see that that is what keeps me going?
+Without you to trouble me, what should I have to live for?"
+
+He understood. He, too, in Antoinette's position, would have been jealous
+of the trouble he caused her: but to be the cause of it!... That hurt his
+pride and his affection. And what a burden it was for so weak a creature to
+bear such a responsibility, to be bound to succeed, since on his success
+his sister had staked her whole life! The thought of it was intolerable to
+him, and, instead of spurring him on, there were times when it robbed him
+of all energy. And yet she forced him to struggle on, to work, to live, as
+he never would have done without her aid and insistence. He had a natural
+predisposition towards depression,--perhaps even towards suicide:--perhaps
+he would have succumbed to it had not his sister wished him to be ambitious
+and happy. He suffered from the contradiction of his nature: and yet it
+worked his salvation. He, too, was passing through a critical age, that
+fearful period when thousands of young men succumb, and give themselves up
+to the aberrations of their minds and senses, and for two or three years'
+folly spoil their lives beyond repair. If he had had time to yield to his
+thoughts he would have fallen into discouragement or perhaps taken to
+dissipation: always when he turned in upon himself he became a prey to his
+morbid dreams, and disgust with life, and Paris, and the impure
+fermentation of all those millions of human beings mingling and rotting
+together. But the sight of his sister's face was enough to dispel the
+nightmare: and since she was living only that he might live, he would live,
+yes, he would be happy, in spite of himself.
+
+So their lives were built on an ardent faith fashioned of stoicism,
+religion, and noble ambition. All their endeavor was directed towards the
+one end: Olivier's success. Antoinette accepted every kind of work, every
+humiliation that was offered her: she went as a governess to houses where
+she was treated almost as a servant: she had to take her pupils out for
+walks, like a nurse, wandering about the streets with them for hours
+together under pretext of teaching them German. In her love for her brother
+and her pride she found pleasure even in such moral suffering and
+weariness.
+
+She would return home worn out to look after Olivier, who was a day-boarder
+at his school and only came home in the evening. She would cook their
+dinner--a wretched dinner--on the gas-stove or over a spirit-lamp. Olivier
+had never any appetite and everything disgusted him, and his gorge would
+rise at the food: and she would have to force him to eat, or cudgel her
+brains to invent some dish that would catch his fancy, and poor Antoinette
+was by no means a good cook. And when she had taken a great deal of
+trouble she would have the mortification of hearing him declare that
+her cooking was uneatable. It was only after moments of despair at her
+cooking-stove,--those moments of silent despair which come to inexperienced
+young housekeepers and poison their lives and sometimes their sleep,
+unknown to everybody--that she began to understand it a little.
+
+After dinner, when she had washed up the dishes--(he would offer to help
+her, but she would never let him),--she would take a motherly interest in
+her brother's work. She would hear him his lessons, read his exercises, and
+even look up certain words in the dictionary for him, always taking care
+not to ruffle up his sensitive little soul. They would spend the evening at
+their one table at which they had both to eat and write. He would do his
+homework, she would sew or do some copying. When he had gone to bed she
+would sit mending his clothes or doing some work of her own.
+
+Although they had difficulty in making both ends meet, they were both
+agreed that every penny they could put by should be used in the first place
+to settle the debt which their mother owed to the Poyets. It was not that
+the Poyets were importunate creditors: they had given no sign of life: they
+never gave a thought to the money, which they counted as lost: they thought
+themselves very lucky to have got rid of their undesirable relatives so
+cheaply. But it hurt the pride and filial piety of the young Jeannins to
+think that their mother should have owed anything to these people whom they
+despised. They pinched and scraped: they economized on their amusements, on
+their clothes, on their food, in order to amass the two hundred francs--an
+enormous sum for them. Antoinette would have liked to have done the saving
+by herself. But when her brother found out what she was up to, nothing
+could keep him from doing likewise. They wore themselves out in the effort,
+and were delighted when they could set aside a few sous a day.
+
+In three years, by screwing and scraping, sou by sou, they had succeeded in
+getting the sum together. It was a great joy to them. Antoinette went to
+the Poyets one evening. She was coldly received, for they thought she had
+come to ask for help. They thought it advisable to take the initiative: and
+reproached her for not letting them have any news of them: and not having
+even told them of the death of her mother, and not coming to them when
+she wanted help. She cut them short calmly by telling them that she had
+no intention of incommoding them: she had come merely to return the money
+which had been borrowed from them: and she laid two banknotes on the table
+and asked for a receipt. They changed their tone at once, and pretended to
+be unwilling to accept it: they were feeling for her that sudden affection
+which comes to the creditor for the debtor, who, after many years, returns
+the loan which he had ceased to reckon upon. They inquired where she was
+living with her brother, and how they lived. She did not reply, asked once
+more for the receipt, said that she was in a hurry, bowed coldly, and went
+away. The Poyets were horrified at the girl's ingratitude.
+
+Then, when she was rid of that obsession, Antoinette went on with the same
+sparing existence, but now it was entirely for her brother's sake. Only she
+concealed it more to prevent his knowing it: she economized on her clothes
+and sometimes on her food, to keep her brother well-dressed and amused,
+and to make his life pleasanter and gayer, and to let him go every now and
+then to a concert, or to the opera, which was Olivier's greatest joy. He
+was unwilling to go without her, but she would always make excuses for not
+going so that he should feel no remorse: she would pretend that she was too
+tired and did not want to go out: she would even go so far as to say that
+music bored her. Her fond quibbles would not deceive him: but his boyish
+selfishness would be too strong for him. He would go to the theater: once
+inside, he would be filled with remorse, and it would haunt him all through
+the piece, and spoil his pleasure. One Sunday, when she had packed him
+off to the _Châtelet_ concert, he returned half an hour later, and told
+Antoinette that when he reached the Saint Michel Bridge he had not the
+heart to go any farther: the concert did not interest him: it hurt him too
+much to have any pleasure without her. Nothing was sweeter to Antoinette,
+although she was sorry that her brother should be deprived of his Sunday
+entertainment because of her. But Olivier never regretted it: when he saw
+the joy that lit up his sister's face as he came in, a joy that she tried
+in vain to conceal, he felt happier than the most lovely music in the world
+could ever have made him. They spent the afternoon sitting together by the
+window, he with a book in his hand, she with her work, hardly reading at
+all, hardly sewing at all, talking idly of things that interested neither
+of them. Never had they had so delightful a Sunday. They agreed that they
+would never go alone to a concert again: they could never enjoy anything
+alone.
+
+She managed secretly to save enough money to surprise and delight Olivier
+with a hired piano, which, on the hire-purchase system became their
+property at the end of a certain number of months. The payments for it were
+a heavy burden for her to shoulder! It often haunted her dreams, and she
+ruined her health in screwing together the necessary money. But, folly as
+it was, it did assure them both so much happiness. Music was their Paradise
+in their hard life. It filled an enormous place in their existence. They
+steeped themselves in music so as to forget the rest of the world. There
+was danger in it too. Music is one of the great modern dissolvents. Its
+languorous warmth, like the heat of a stove, or the enervating air of
+autumn, excites the senses and destroys the will. But it was a relaxation
+for a creature forced into excessive, joyless activity as was Antoinette.
+The Sunday concert was the only ray of light that shone through the week of
+unceasing toil. They lived in the memory of the last concert and the eager
+anticipation of the next, in those few hours spent outside Paris and out of
+the vile weather. After a long wait outside in the rain, or the snow, or
+the wind and the cold, clinging together, and trembling lest all the places
+should be taken, they would pass into the theater, where they were lost in
+the throng, and sit on dark uncomfortable benches. They were crushed and
+stifling, and often on the point of fainting from the heat and discomfort
+of it all:--but they were happy, happy in their own and in each other's
+pleasure, happy to feel coursing through their veins the flood of kindness,
+light, and strength, that surged forth from the great souls of Beethoven
+and Wagner, happy, each of them, to see the dear, dear face light up--the
+poor, pale face worn by suffering and premature anxieties. Antoinette would
+feel so tired and as though loving arms were about her, holding her to a
+motherly breast! She would nestle in its softness and warmth: and she would
+weep quietly. Olivier would press her hand. No one noticed them in the
+dimness of the vast hall, where they were not the only suffering souls
+taking refuge under the motherly wing of Music.
+
+Antoinette had her religion to support her. She was very pious, and every
+day never missed saying her prayers fervently and at length, and every
+Sunday she never missed going to Mass. Even in the injustice of her
+wretched life she could not help believing in the love of the divine
+Friend, who suffers with you, and, some day, will console you. Even more
+than with God, she was in close communion with the beloved dead, and she
+used secretly to share all her trials with them. But she was of an
+independent spirit and a clear intelligence: she stood apart from other
+Catholics, who did not regard her altogether favorably: they thought her
+possessed of an evil spirit: they were not far from regarding her as a Free
+Thinker, or on the way to it, because, like the honest little Frenchwoman
+she was, she had no intention of renouncing her own independent judgment:
+she believed not from obedience, like the base rabble, but from love.
+
+Olivier no longer believed. The slow disintegration of his faith, which
+had set in during his first months in Paris, had ended in its complete
+destruction. He had suffered cruelly: for he was not of those who are
+strong enough or commonplace enough to dispense with faith: and so he had
+passed through crises of mental agony. But he was at heart a mystic: and,
+though he had lost his belief, yet no ideas could be closer to his own than
+those of his sister. They both lived in a religious atmosphere. When they
+came home in the evening after the day's parting their little flat was to
+them a haven, an inviolable refuge, poor, bitterly cold, but pure. How far
+removed they felt there from the noise and the corrupt thoughts of
+Paris!...
+
+They never talked much of their doings: for when one comes home tired one
+has hardly the heart to revive the memory of a painful day by the tale of
+its happenings. Instinctively they set themselves to forget it. Especially
+during the first hour when they met again for dinner they avoided questions
+of all kinds. They would greet each other with their eyes: and sometimes
+they would not speak a word all through the meal. Antoinette would look at
+her brother as he sat dreaming, just as he used to do when he was a little
+boy. She would gently touch his hand:
+
+"Come!" she would say, with a smile. "Courage!"
+
+He would smile too and go on eating. So dinner would pass without their
+trying to talk. They were hungry for silence. Only when they had done would
+their tongues be loosed a little, when they felt rested, and when each of
+them in the comfort of the understanding love of the other had wiped out
+the impure traces of the day.
+
+Olivier would sit down at the piano. Antoinette was out of practice from
+letting him play always: for it was the only relaxation that he had: and he
+would give himself up to it wholeheartedly. He had a fine temperament for
+music: his feminine nature, more suited to love than to action, with loving
+sympathy could catch the thoughts of the musicians whose works he played,
+and merge itself in them and with passionate fidelity render the finest
+shades,--at least, within the limitations of his physical strength, which
+gave out before the Titanic effort of _Tristan_, or the later sonatas of
+Beethoven. He loved best to take refuge in Mozart or Gluck, and theirs was
+the music that Antoinette preferred.
+
+Sometimes she would sing too, but only very simple songs, old melodies. She
+had a light mezzo voice, plaintive and delicate. She was so shy that she
+could never sing in company, and hardly even before Olivier: her throat
+used to contract. There was an air of Beethoven set to some Scotch words,
+of which she was particularly fond: _Faithful Johnnie_: it was calm, so
+calm ... and with what a depth of tenderness!... It was like herself.
+Olivier could never hear her sing it without the tears coming to his eyes.
+
+But she preferred listening to her brother. She would hurry through her
+housework and leave the door of the kitchen open the better to hear
+Olivier: but in spite of all her care he would complain impatiently of the
+noise she made with her pots and pans. Then she would close the door; and,
+when she had finished, she would come and sit in a low chair, not near the
+piano--(for he could not bear any one near him when he was playing),--but
+near the fireplace: and there she would sit curled up like a cat, with her
+back to the piano, and her eyes fixed on the golden eyes of the fire, in
+which a lump of coal was smoldering, and muse over her memories of the
+past. When nine o'clock rang she would have to pull herself together to
+remind Olivier that it was time to stop. It would be hard to drag him, and
+to drag herself, away from dreams: but Olivier would still have some work
+to do. And he must not go to bed too late. He would not obey her at once:
+he always needed a certain time in which to shake free of the music before
+he could apply himself seriously to his work. His thoughts would be off
+wandering. Often it would be half-past nine before he could shake free of
+his misty dreams. Antoinette, bending over her work at the other side of
+the table, would know that he was doing nothing: but she dared not look
+in his direction too often for fear of irritating him by seeming to be
+watching him.
+
+He was at the ungrateful age--the happy age--when a boy saunters dreamily
+through his days. He had a clear forehead, girlish eyes, deep and trustful,
+often with dark circles round them, a wide mouth with rather thick pouting
+lips, a rather crooked smile, vague, absent, taking: he wore his hair long
+so that it hung down almost to his eyes, and made a great bunch at the back
+of his neck, while one rebellious lock stuck up at the back: a neckerchief
+loosely tied round his neck--(his sister used to tie it carefully in a bow
+every morning):--a waistcoat which was always buttonless, although she was
+for ever sewing them on: no cuffs: large hands with bony wrists. He had a
+heavy, sleepy, bantering expression, and he was always wool-gathering. His
+eyes would blink and wander round Antoinette's room:--(his work-table was
+in her room):--they would light on the little iron bed, above which hung an
+ivory crucifix, with a sprig of box,--on the portraits of his father and
+mother,--on an old photograph of the little provincial town with its tower
+mirrored in its waters. And when they reached his sister's pallid face,
+bending in silence over her work, he would be filled with an immense pity
+for her and his own indolence: and he would work furiously to make up for
+lost time.
+
+He spent his holidays in reading. They would read together each with a
+separate book. In spite of their love for each other they could not read
+aloud. That hurt them as an offense against modesty. A fine book was to
+them as a secret which should only be murmured in the silence of the heart.
+When a passage delighted them, instead of reading it aloud, they would hand
+the book over, with a finger marking the place: and they would say:
+
+"Read that."
+
+Then, while the other was reading, the one who had already read would with
+shining eyes gaze into the dear face to see what emotions were roused and
+to share the enjoyment of it.
+
+But often with their books open in front of them they would not read: they
+would talk. Especially towards the end of the evening they would feel
+the need of opening their hearts, and they would have less difficulty
+in talking. Olivier had sad thoughts: and in his weakness he had to rid
+himself of all that tortured him by pouring out his troubles to some one
+else. He was a prey to doubt. Antoinette had to give him courage, to defend
+him against himself: it was an unceasing struggle, which began anew each
+day. Olivier would say bitter, gloomy things: and when he had said them he
+would be relieved: but he never troubled to think how they might hurt his
+sister. Only very late in the day did he see how he was exhausting her: he
+was sapping her strength and infecting her with his own doubts. Antoinette
+never let it appear how she suffered. She was by nature valiant and gay,
+and she forced herself to maintain a show of gaiety, even when that
+gracious quality was long since dead in her. She had moments of utter
+weariness, and revolt against the life of perpetual sacrifice to which she
+had pledged herself. But she condemned such thoughts and would not analyze
+them: they came to her in spite of herself, and she would not accept
+them. She found help in prayer, except when her heart could not pray--(as
+sometimes happens)--when it was, as it were, withered and dry. Then she
+could only wait in silence, feverish and ashamed, for the return of grace.
+Olivier never had the least suspicion of the agony she suffered. At such
+times Antoinette would make some excuse and go away and lock herself in her
+room: and she would not appear again until the crisis was over: then she
+would be smiling, sorrowful, more tender than ever, and, as it were,
+remorseful for having suffered.
+
+Their rooms were adjoining. Their beds were placed on either side of the
+same wall: they could talk to each other through it in whispers: and when
+they could not sleep they would tap gently on the wall to say:
+
+"Are you asleep? I can't sleep."
+
+The partition was so thin that it was almost as though they shared the same
+room. But the door between their rooms was always locked at night, in
+obedience to an instinctive and profound modesty,--a sacred feeling:--it
+was only left open when Olivier was ill, as too often happened.
+
+He did not gain in health. Rather he seemed to grow weaker. He was always
+ailing: throat, chest, head or heart: if he caught the slightest cold there
+was always the danger of its turning to bronchitis: he caught scarlatina
+and almost died of it: but even when he was not ill he would betray strange
+symptoms of serious illnesses, which fortunately did not come to anything:
+he would have pains in his lungs or his heart. One day the doctor who
+examined him diagnosed pericarditis, or peripneumonia, and the great
+specialist who was then consulted confirmed his fears. But it came to
+nothing. It was his nerves that were wrong, and it is common knowledge that
+disorders of the nerves take the most unaccountable shapes: they are got
+rid of at the cost of days of anxiety. But such days were terrible for
+Antoinette, and they gave her sleepless nights. She would lie in a state of
+terror in her bed, getting up every now and then to listen to her brother's
+breathing. She would think that perhaps he was dying, she would feel sure,
+convinced of it: she would get up, trembling, and clasp her hands, and hold
+them fast against her lips to keep herself from crying out.
+
+"Oh! God! Oh! God!" she would moan. "Take him not from me! Not that ... not
+that. You have no right!... Not that, oh! God, I beg!... Oh, mother,
+mother! Come to my aid! Save him: let him live!..."
+
+She would lie at full stretch.
+
+"Ah! To die by the way, when so much has been done, when we were nearly
+there, when he was going to be happy ... no: that could not be: it would be
+too cruel!..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not long before Olivier gave her other reasons for anxiety.
+
+He was profoundly honest, like herself, but he was weak of will and too
+open-minded and too complex not to be uneasy, skeptical, indulgent towards
+what he knew to be evil, and attracted by pleasure. Antoinette was so pure
+that it was some time before she understood what was going on in her
+brother's mind. She discovered it suddenly, one day.
+
+Olivier thought she was out. She usually had a lesson at that hour: but at
+the last moment she had received word from her pupil, telling her that she
+could not have her that day. She was secretly pleased, although it meant
+a few francs less in that week's earnings: but she was very tired and she
+lay down on her bed: she was very glad to be able to rest for once without
+reproaching herself. Olivier came in from school bringing another boy with
+him. They sat down in the next room and began to talk. She could hear
+everything they said: they thought they were alone and did not restrain
+themselves. Antoinette smiled as she heard her brother's merry voice. But
+soon she ceased to smile, and her blood ran cold. They were talking of
+dirty things with an abominable crudity of expression: they seemed to revel
+in it. She heard Olivier, her boy Olivier, laughing: and from his lips,
+which she had thought so innocent, there came words so obscene that the
+horror of it chilled her. Keen anguish stabbed her to the heart. It went on
+and on: they could not stop talking, and she could not help listening. At
+last they went out, and Antoinette was left alone. Then she wept: something
+had died in her: the ideal image that she had fashioned of her brother--of
+her boy--was plastered with mud: it was a mortal agony to her. She did not
+say anything to him when they met again in the evening. He saw that she had
+been weeping and he could not think why. He could not understand why she
+had changed her manner towards him. It was some time before she was able to
+recover herself.
+
+But the worst blow of all for her was one evening when he did not come
+home. She did not go to bed, but sat up waiting for him. It was not only
+her moral purity that was hurt: her suffering went down to the most
+mysterious inner depths of her heart--those same depths where there lurked
+the most awful feelings of the human heart, feelings over which she cast a
+veil, to hide them from her sight.
+
+Olivier's first aim had been the declaration of his independence. He
+returned in the morning, casting about for the proper attitude and quite
+prepared to fling some insolent remark at his sister if she had said
+anything to him. He stole into the flat on tiptoe so as not to waken her.
+But when he saw her standing there, waiting for him, pale, red-eyed from
+weeping, when he saw that, instead of making any effort to reproach him,
+she only set about silently cooking his breakfast, before he left for
+school, and that she had nothing to say to him, but was overwhelmed, so
+that she was, in herself, a living reproach, he could hold out no longer:
+he flung himself down before her, buried his face in her lap, and they both
+wept. He was ashamed of himself, sick at the thought of what he had done:
+he felt degraded. He tried to speak, but she would not let him and laid
+her hand on his lips: and he kissed her hand. They said no more: they
+understood each other. Olivier vowed that he would never again do anything
+to hurt Antoinette, and that he would be in all things what she wanted him
+to be. But though she tried bravely she could not so easily forget so sharp
+a wound: she recovered from it slowly. There was a certain awkwardness
+between them. Her love for him was just the same: but in her brother's soul
+she had seen something that was foreign to herself, and she was fearful of
+it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was the more overwhelmed by the glimpse she had had into Olivier's
+inmost heart, in that, about the same time, she had to put up with the
+unwelcome attentions of certain men. When she came home in the evening at
+nightfall, and especially when she had to go out after dinner to take or
+fetch her copying, she suffered agonies from her fear of being accosted,
+and followed (as sometimes happened) and forced to listen to insulting
+advances. She took her brother with her whenever she could under pretext of
+making him take a walk: but he only consented grudgingly and she dared not
+insist: she did not like to interrupt his work. She was so provincial and
+so pure that she could not get used to such ways. Paris at night was to
+her like a dark forest in which she felt that she was being tracked by
+dreadful, savage beasts: and she was afraid to leave the house. But she had
+to go out. She would put off going out as long as possible: she was always
+fearful. And when she thought that her Olivier would be--was perhaps--like
+one of those men who pursued her, she could hardly hold out her hand to him
+when she came in. He could not think what he had done to change her so, and
+she was angry with herself.
+
+She was not very pretty, but she had charm, and attracted attention though
+she did nothing to do so. She was always very simply dressed, almost always
+in black: she was not very tall, graceful, frail-looking; she rarely spoke:
+she tripped quietly through the crowded streets, avoiding attention,
+which, however, she attracted in spite of herself by the sweetness of the
+expression of her tired eyes and her pure young lips. Sometimes she saw
+that she had attracted notice: and though it put her to confusion she was
+pleased all the same. Who can say what gentle and chaste pleasure in itself
+there may be in so innocent a creature at feeling herself in sympathy
+with others? All that she felt was shown in a slight awkwardness in her
+movements, a timid, sidelong glance: and it was sweet to see and very
+touching. And her uneasiness added to her attraction. She excited interest,
+and, as she was a poor girl, with none to protect her, men did not hesitate
+to tell her so.
+
+Sometimes she used to go to the house of some rich Jews, the Nathans, who
+took an interest in her because they had met her at the house of some
+friends of theirs where she gave lessons: and, in spite of her shyness,
+she had not been able to avoid accepting invitations to their parties.
+M. Alfred Nathan was a well-known professor in Paris, a distinguished
+scientist, and at the same time he was very fond of society, with that
+strange mixture of learning and frivolity which is so common among the
+Jews. Madame Nathan was a mixture in equal proportions of real kindliness
+and excessive worldliness. They were both generous, with loud-voiced,
+sincere, but intermittent sympathy for Antoinette.--Generally speaking
+Antoinette had found more kindness among the Jews than among the
+members of her own sect. They have many faults: but they have one great
+quality--perhaps the greatest of all: they are alive, and human: nothing
+human is foreign to them and they are interested in every living being.
+Even when they lack real, warm sympathy they feel a perpetual curiosity
+which makes them seek out men and ideas that are of worth, however
+different from themselves they may be. Not that, generally speaking, they
+do anything much to help them, for they are interested in too many things
+at once and much more a prey to the vanities of the world than other
+people, while they pretend to be immune from them. But at least they
+do something: and that is saying a great deal in the present apathetic
+condition of society. They are an active balm in society, the very leaven
+of life.--Antoinette who, among the Catholics, had been brought sharp up
+against a wall of icy indifference, was keenly alive to the worth of the
+interest, however superficial it might be, which the Nathans took in her.
+Madame Nathan had marked Antoinette's life of devoted sacrifice: she was
+sensible of her physical and moral charm: and she made a show of taking her
+under her protection. She had no children: but she loved young people and
+often had gatherings of them in her house: and she insisted on Antoinette's
+coming also, and breaking away from her solitude, and having some amusement
+in her life. And as she had no difficulty in guessing that Antoinette's
+shyness was in part the result of her poverty, she even went so far as to
+offer to give her a pretty frock or two, which Antoinette refused proudly:
+but her kindly patroness found a way of forcing her to accept a few of
+those little presents which are so dear to a woman's innocent vanity.
+Antoinette was both grateful and embarrassed. She forced herself to go to
+Madame Nathan's parties from time to time: and being young she managed to
+enjoy herself in spite of everything.
+
+But in that rather mixed society of all sorts of young people Madame
+Nathan's protégée, being poor and pretty, became at once the mark of two or
+three young gentlemen, who with perfect confidence in themselves picked her
+out for their attentions. They calculated how far her timidity would go:
+they even made bets about her.
+
+One day she received certain anonymous letters--or rather letters signed
+with a noble pseudonym--which conveyed a declaration of love: at first
+they were love-letters, flattering, ardent, appointing a rendezvous: then
+they quickly became bolder, threatening, and soon insulting and basely
+slanderous: they stripped her, exposed her, besmirched her with their
+coarse expressions of desire: they tried to play upon Antoinette's
+simplicity by making her fearful of a public insult if she did not go to
+the appointed rendezvous. She wept bitterly at the thought of having called
+down on herself such base proposals: and these insults scorched her pride.
+She did not know what to do. She did not like to speak to her brother about
+it: she knew that he would feel it too keenly and that he would make the
+affair even more serious than it was. She had no friends. The police? She
+would not do that for fear of scandal. But somehow she had to make an end
+of it. She felt that her silence would not sufficiently defend her, that
+the blackguard who was pursuing her would hold to the chase and that he
+would go on until to go farther would be dangerous.
+
+He had just sent her a sort of ultimatum commanding her to meet him next
+day at the Luxembourg. She went.--By racking her brains she had come to the
+conclusion that her persecutor must have met her at Madame Nathan's. In one
+of his letters he had alluded to something which could only have happened
+there. She begged Madame Nathan to do her a great favor and to drive her to
+the door of the gallery and to wait for her outside. She went in. In front
+of the appointed picture her tormentor accosted her triumphantly and began
+to talk to her with affected politeness. She stared straight at him without
+a word. When he had finished his remark he asked her jokingly why she was
+staring at him. She replied:
+
+"You are a coward."
+
+He was not put out by such a trifle as that, and became familiar in his
+manner. She said:
+
+"You have tried to threaten me with a scandal. Very well, I have come to
+give you your scandal. You have asked for it!"
+
+She was trembling all over, and she spoke in a loud voice to show him that
+she was quite equal to attracting attention to themselves. People had
+already begun to watch them. He felt that she would stick at nothing. He
+lowered his voice. She said once more, for the last time:
+
+"You are a coward," and turned her back on him.
+
+Not wishing to seem to have given in he followed her. She left the gallery
+with the fellow following hard on her heels. She walked straight to the
+carriage waiting there, wrenched the door open, and her pursuer found
+himself face to face with Madame Nathan, who recognized him and greeted him
+by name. His face fell and he bolted.
+
+Antoinette had to tell the whole story to her companion. She was unwilling
+to do so, and only hinted roughly at the facts. It was painful to her to
+reveal to a stranger the intimate secrets of her life, and the sufferings
+of her injured modesty. Madame Nathan scolded her for not having told her
+before. Antoinette begged her not to tell anybody. That was the end of it:
+and Madame Nathan did not even need to strike the fellow off her visiting
+list: for he was careful not to appear again.
+
+About the same time another sorrow of a very different kind came to
+Antoinette.
+
+At the Nathans' she met a man of forty, a very good fellow, who was in
+the Consular service in the Far East, and had come home on a few months'
+leave. He fell in love with her. The meeting had been planned unknown to
+Antoinette, by Madame Nathan, who had taken it into her head that she must
+find a husband for her little friend. He was a Jew. He was not good-looking
+and he was no longer young. He was rather bald, and round-shouldered: but
+he had kind eyes, an affectionate way with him, and he could feel for and
+understand suffering, for he had suffered himself. Antoinette was no longer
+the romantic girl, the spoiled child, dreaming of life as a lovely day's
+walk on her lover's arm: now she saw the hard struggle of life, which began
+again, every day, allowing no time for rest, or, if rest were taken, it
+might be to lose in one moment all the ground that had been gained, inch
+by inch, through years of striving: and she thought it would be very sweet
+to be able to lean on the arm of a friend, and share his sorrows with him,
+and be able to close her eyes for a little, while he watched over her. She
+knew that it was a dream: but she had not had the courage to renounce her
+dream altogether. In her heart she knew quite well that a dowerless girl
+had nothing to hope for in the world in which she lived. The old French
+middle-classes are known throughout the world for the spirit of sordid
+interest in which they conduct their marriages. The Jews are far less
+grasping with money. Among the Jews it is no uncommon thing for a rich
+young man to choose a poor girl, or a young woman of fortune to set herself
+passionately to win a man of intellect. But in the French middle-classes,
+Catholic and provincial in their outlook, almost always money woos money.
+And to what end? Poor wretches, they have none but dull commonplace
+desires: they can do nothing but eat, yawn, sleep--save. Antoinette knew
+them. She had observed their ways from her childhood on. She had seen them
+with the eyes of wealth and the eyes of poverty. She had no illusions left
+about them, nor about the treatment she had to expect from them. And so the
+attentions of this man who had asked her to marry him came as an unhoped
+for treasure in her life. At first she did not think of him as a lover, but
+gradually she was filled with gratitude and tenderness towards him. She
+would have accepted his proposal if it had not meant following him to the
+colonies and consequently leaving her brother. She refused: and though her
+lover understood the magnanimity of her reason for doing so, he could not
+forgive her: love is so selfish, that the lover will not hear of being
+sacrificed even to those virtues which are dearest to him in the beloved.
+He gave up seeing her: when he went away he never wrote: she had no news
+of him at all until, five or six months later, she received a printed
+intimation, addressed in his hand, that he had married another woman.
+
+Antoinette felt it deeply. She was broken-hearted, and she offered up her
+suffering to God: she tried to persuade herself that she was justly
+punished for having for one moment lost sight of her one duty, to devote
+herself to her brother: and she grew more and more wrapped up in it.
+
+She withdrew from the world altogether. She even dropped going to the
+Nathans', for they were a little cold towards her after she refused
+the marriage which they had arranged for her: they too refused to see
+any justification for her. Madame Nathan had decided that the marriage
+should take place, and her vanity was hurt at its missing fire through
+Antoinette's fault. She thought her scruples certainly quite praiseworthy,
+but exaggerated and sentimental: and thereafter she lost interest in the
+silly little goose. It was necessary for her always to be helping people,
+with or without their consent, and she quickly found another protégée to
+absorb, for the time being, all the interest and devotion which she had to
+expend.
+
+Olivier knew nothing of his sister's sad little romance. He was a
+sentimental, irresponsible boy, living in his dreams and fancies. It was
+impossible to depend on him in spite of his intelligence and charm and
+his very real tenderheartedness. Often he would fling away the results of
+months of work by his irresponsibility, or in a fit of discouragement, or
+by some boyish freak, or some fancied love affair, in which he would waste
+all his time and energy. He would fall in love with a pretty face, that
+he had seen once, with coquettish little girls, whom perhaps he once met
+out somewhere, though they never paid any attention to him. He would be
+infatuated with something he had read, a poet, or a musician: he would
+steep himself in their works for months together, to the exclusion of
+everything else and the detriment of his studies. He had to be watched
+always, though great care had to be taken that he did not know it, for he
+was easily wounded. There was always a danger of a seizure. He had the
+feverish excitement, the want of balance, the uneasy trepidation, that are
+often found in those who have a consumptive tendency. The doctor had not
+concealed the danger from Antoinette. The sickly plant, transplanted from
+the provinces to Paris, needed fresh air and light. Antoinette could not
+provide them. They had not enough money to be able to go away from Paris
+during the holidays. All the rest of their year every day in the week was
+full, and on Sundays they were so tired that they never wanted to go out,
+except to a concert.
+
+There were Sundays in the summer when Antoinette would make an effort and
+drag Olivier off to the woods outside Paris, near Chaville or Saint-Cloud.
+But the woods were full of noisy couples, singing music-hall songs, and
+littering the place with greasy bits of paper: they did not find the divine
+solitude which purifies and gives rest. And in the evening when they turned
+homewards they had to suffer the roar and clatter of the trains, the dirty,
+crowded, low, narrow, dark carriages of the suburban lines, the coarseness
+of certain things they saw, the noisy, singing, shouting, smelly
+people, and the reek of tobacco smoke. Neither Antoinette nor Olivier
+could understand the people, and they would return home disgusted and
+demoralized. Olivier would beg Antoinette not to go for Sunday walks again;
+and for some time Antoinette would not have the heart to go again. And
+then she would insist, though it was even more disagreeable to her than to
+Olivier: but she thought it necessary for her brother's health. She would
+force him to go out once more. But their new experience would be no better
+than the last, and Olivier would protest bitterly. So they stayed shut up
+in the stifling town, and, in their prison-yard, they sighed for the open
+fields.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Olivier had reached the end of his schooldays. The examinations for the
+_École Normale_ were over. It was quite time. Antoinette was very tired.
+She was counting on his success: her brother had everything in his favor.
+At school he was regarded as one of the best pupils: and all his masters
+were agreed in praising his industry and intelligence, except for a certain
+want of mental discipline which made it difficult for him to bend to any
+sort of plan. But the responsibility of it weighed on Olivier so heavily
+that he lost his head as the examination came near. He was worn out, and
+paralyzed by the fear of failure, and a morbid shyness that crept over him.
+He trembled at the thought of appearing before the examiners in public. He
+had always suffered from shyness: in class he would blush and choke when he
+had to speak: at first he could hardly do more than answer his name. And it
+was much more easy for him to reply impromptu than when he knew that he was
+going to be questioned: the thought of it made him ill: his mind rushed
+ahead picturing every detail of the ordeal as it would happen: and the
+longer he had to wait, the more he was obsessed by it. It might be said
+that he passed every examination at least twice: for he passed it in his
+dreams on the night before and expended all his energy, so that he had none
+left for the real examination.
+
+But he did not even reach the _viva voce_, the very thought of which had
+sent him into a cold sweat the night before. In the written examination on
+a philosophical subject, which at any ordinary time would have sent him
+flying off, he could not even manage to squeeze out a couple of pages in
+six hours. For the first few hours his brain was empty; he could think of
+nothing, nothing. It was like a blank wall against which he hurled himself
+in vain. Then, an hour before the end, the wall was rent and a few rays of
+light shone through the crevices. He wrote an excellent short essay, but it
+was not enough to place him. When Antoinette saw the despair on his face as
+he came out, she foresaw the inevitable blow, and she was as despairing as
+he: but she did not show it. Even in the most desperate situations she had
+always an inexhaustible capacity for hope.
+
+Olivier was rejected.
+
+He was crushed by it. Antoinette pretended to smile as though it were
+nothing of any importance: but her lips trembled. She consoled her brother,
+and told him that it was an easily remedied misfortune, and that he would
+be certain to pass next year, and win a better place. She did not tell
+him how vital it was to her that he should have passed, that year, or how
+utterly worn out she felt in soul and body, or how uneasy she felt about
+fighting through another year like that. But she had to go on. If she were
+to go away before Olivier had passed he would never have the courage to go
+on fighting alone: he would succumb.
+
+She concealed her weariness from him, and even redoubled her efforts.
+She wore herself to skin and bone to let him have amusement and change
+during the holidays so that he might resume work with greater energy and
+confidence. But at the very outset her small savings had to be broken into,
+and, to make matters worse, she lost some of her most profitable pupils.
+
+Another year!... Within sight of the final ordeal they were almost at
+breaking-point. Above all, they had to live, and discover some other means
+of scraping along. Antoinette accepted a situation as a governess in
+Germany which had been offered her through the Nathans. It was the very
+last thing she would have thought of, but nothing else offered at the time,
+and she could not wait. She had never left her brother for a single day
+during the last six years: and she could not imagine what life would be
+like without seeing and hearing him from day to day. Olivier was terrified
+when he thought of it: but he dared not say anything: it was he who had
+brought it about: if he had passed Antoinette would not have been reduced
+to such an extremity: he had no right to say anything, or to take into
+account his own grief at the parting: it was for her to decide.
+
+They spent the last days together in dumb anguish, as though one of them
+were about to die: they hid away from each other when their sorrow was too
+much for them. Antoinette gazed into Olivier's eyes for counsel. If he had
+said to her: "Don't go!" she would have stayed, although she had to go. Up
+to the very last moment, in the cab in which they drove to the station,
+she was prepared to break her resolution: she felt that she could never go
+through with it. At a word from him one word!... But he said nothing. Like
+her, he set his teeth and would not budge.--She made him promise to write
+to her every day, and to conceal nothing from her, and to send for her if
+he were ever in the least danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They parted. While Olivier returned with a heavy heart to his school, where
+it had been agreed that he should board, the train carried Antoinette,
+crushed and sorrowful, towards Germany. Lying awake and staring through the
+night they felt the minutes dragging them farther and farther apart, and
+they called to each other in whispering voices.
+
+Antoinette was fearful of the new world to which she was going. She had
+changed much in six years. She who had once been so bold and afraid of
+nothing had grown so used to silence and isolation that it hurt her to
+go out into the world again. The laughing, gay, chattering Antoinette of
+the old happy times had passed away with them. Unhappiness had made her
+sensitive and shy. No doubt living with Olivier had infected her with his
+timidity. She had had hardly anybody to talk to except her brother. She was
+scared by the least little thing, and was really in a panic when she had to
+pay a call. And so it was a nervous torture to her to think that she was
+now going to live among strangers, to have to talk to them, to be always
+with them. The poor girl had no more real vocation for teaching than her
+brother: she did her work conscientiously, but her heart was not in it, and
+she had not the support of feeling that there was any use in it. She was
+made to love and not to teach. And no one cared for her love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nowhere was her capacity for love less in demand than in her new situation
+in Germany. The Grünebaums, whose children she was engaged to teach French,
+took not the slightest interest in her. They were haughty and familiar,
+indifferent and indiscreet: they paid fairly well: and, as a result, they
+regarded everybody in their payment as being under an obligation to them,
+and thought they could do just as they liked. They treated Antoinette as a
+superior sort of servant and allowed her hardly any liberty. She did not
+even have a room to herself: she slept in a room adjoining that of the
+children and had to leave the door open all night. She was never alone.
+They had no respect for her need of taking refuge every now and then
+within herself--the sacred right of every human being to preserve an inner
+sanctuary of solitude. The only happiness she had lay in correspondence and
+communion with her brother: she made use of every moment of liberty she
+could snatch. But even that was encroached upon. As soon as she began to
+write they would prowl about in her room and ask her what she was writing.
+When she was reading a letter they would ask her what was in it: by their
+persistent impertinent curiosity they found out about her "little brother."
+She had to hide from them. Too shameful sometimes were the expedients to
+which she had to resort, and the holes and crannies in which she had to
+hide, in order to be able to read Olivier's letters unobserved. If she left
+a letter lying in her room she was sure it would be read: and as she had
+nothing she could lock except her box, she had to carry any papers she did
+not want to have read about with her: they were always prying into her
+business and her intimate affairs, and they were always fishing for her
+secret thoughts. It was not that the Grünebaums were really interested in
+her, only they thought that, as they paid her, she was their property. They
+were not malicious about it: indiscretion was with them an incurable habit:
+they were never offended with each other.
+
+Nothing could have been more intolerable to Antoinette than such espionage,
+such a lack of moral modesty, which made it impossible for her to escape
+even for an hour a day from their curiosity. The Grünebaums were hurt by
+the haughty reserve with which she treated them. Naturally they found
+highly moral reasons to justify their vulgar curiosity, and to condemn
+Antoinette's desire to be immune from it.
+
+"It was their duty," they thought, "to know the private life of a girl
+living under their roof, as a member of their household, to whom they
+had intrusted the education of their children: they were responsible for
+her."--(That is the sort of thing that so many mistresses say of their
+servants, mistresses whose "responsibility" does not go so far as to
+spare the unhappy girls any fatigue or work that must revolt them, but
+is entirely limited to denying them every sort of pleasure.)--"And that
+Antoinette should refuse to acknowledge that duty, imposed on them by
+conscience, could only show," they concluded, "that she was conscious
+of being not altogether beyond reproach: an honest girl has nothing to
+conceal."
+
+So Antoinette lived under a perpetual persecution, against which she was
+always on her guard, so that it made her seem even more cold and reserved
+than she was.
+
+Every day her brother wrote her a twelve-page letter: and she contrived to
+write to him every day even if it were only a few lines. Olivier tried hard
+to be brave and not to show his grief too clearly. But he was bored and
+dull. His life had always been so bound up with his sister's that, now that
+she was torn from him, he seemed to have lost part of himself: he could
+not use his arms, or his legs, or his brains, he could not walk, or play
+the piano, or work, or do anything, not even dream--except through her. He
+slaved away at his books from morning to night: but it was no good: his
+thoughts were elsewhere: he would be suffering, or thinking of her, or of
+the morrow's letter: he would sit staring at the clock, waiting for the
+day's letter: and when it arrived his fingers would tremble with joy--with
+fear, too--as he tore open the envelope. Never did lover tremble with more
+tenderness and anxiety at a letter from his mistress. He would hide away,
+like Antoinette, to read his letters: he would carry them about with him:
+and at night he always had the last letter under his pillow, and he would
+touch it from time to time to make sure that it was still there, during
+the long, sleepless nights when he lay awake dreaming of his dear sister.
+How far removed from her he felt! He felt that most dreadfully when
+Antoinette's letters were delayed by the post and came a day late. Two
+days, two nights, between them!... He exaggerated the time and the distance
+because he had never traveled. His imagination would take fire:
+
+"Heavens! If she were to fall ill! There would be time for her to die
+before he could see her ... Why had she not written to him, just a line or
+two, the day before?... Was she ill?... Yes. She was surely ill ..." He
+would choke.--More often still he would be terrified of dying away from
+her, dying alone, among people who did not care, in the horrible school,
+in grim, gray Paris. He would make himself ill with the thought of it....
+"Should he write and tell her to come back?"--But then he would be ashamed
+of his cowardice. Besides, as soon as he began to write to her it gave him
+such joy to be in communion with her that for a moment he would forget
+his suffering. It seemed to him that he could see her, hear her voice: he
+would tell her everything: never had he spoken to her so intimately, so
+passionately, when they had been together: he would call her "my true,
+brave, dear, kind, beloved, little sister," and say, "I love you so."
+Indeed they were real love-letters.
+
+Their tenderness was sweet and comforting to Antoinette: they were all the
+air she had to breathe. If they did not come in the morning at the usual
+time she would be miserable. Once or twice it happened that the Grünebaums,
+from carelessness, or--who knows?--from a wicked desire to tease, forgot to
+give them to her until the evening, and once even until the next morning:
+and she worked herself into a fever.--On New Year's Day they had the same
+idea, without telling each other: they planned a surprise, and each sent a
+long telegram--(at vast expense)--and their messages arrived at the same
+time.--Olivier always consulted Antoinette about his work and his troubles:
+Antoinette gave him advice, and encouragement, and fortified him with her
+strength, though indeed she had not really enough for herself.
+
+She was stifled in the foreign country, where she knew nobody, and nobody
+was interested in her, except the wife of a professor, lately come to
+the town, who also felt out of her element. The good creature was kind
+and motherly, and sympathetic with the brother and sister who loved each
+other so and had to live apart--(for she had dragged part of her story
+out of Antoinette):--but she was so noisy, so commonplace, she was so
+lacking--though quite innocently--in tact and discretion that aristocratic
+little Antoinette was irritated and drew back. She had no one in whom she
+could confide and so all her troubles were pent up, and weighed heavily
+upon her: sometimes she thought she must give way under them: but she set
+her teeth and struggled on. Her health suffered: she grew very thin. Her
+brother's letters became more and more downhearted. In a fit of depression
+he wrote:
+
+"Come back, come back, come back!..."
+
+But he had hardly sent the letter off than he was ashamed of it and wrote
+another begging Antoinette to tear up the first and give no further thought
+to it. He even pretended to be in good spirits and not to be wanting his
+sister. It hurt his umbrageous vanity to think that he might seem incapable
+of doing without her.
+
+Antoinette was not deceived: she read his every thought: but she did not
+know what to do. One day she almost went to him: she went to the station to
+find out what time the train left for Paris. And then she said to herself
+that it was madness: the money she was earning was enough to pay for
+Olivier's board: they must hold on as long as they could. She was not
+strong enough to make up her mind: in the morning her courage would spring
+forth again: but as the day dragged towards evening her strength would fail
+her and she would think of flying to him. She was homesick,--longing for
+the country that had treated her so hardly, the country that enshrined all
+the relics of her past life,--and she was aching to hear the language that
+her brother spoke, the language in which she told her love for him.
+
+Then it was that a company of French actors passed through the little
+German town. Antoinette, who rarely visited the theater--(she had neither
+time nor taste for it)--was seized with an irresistible longing to hear her
+own language spoken, to take refuge in France.
+
+The rest is known.[Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I, "Revolt."]
+
+There were no seats left in the theater: she met the young musician,
+Jean-Christophe, whom she did not know, and he, seeing her disappointment,
+offered to share with her a box which he had to give away: in her confusion
+she accepted. Her presence with Christophe set tongues wagging in the
+little town: and the malicious rumors came at once to the ears of the
+Grünebaums, who, being already inclined to believe anything ill of the
+young Frenchwoman, and furious with Christophe as a result of certain
+events which have been narrated elsewhere, dismissed Antoinette without
+more ado.
+
+She, who was so chaste and modest, she, whose whole life had been absorbed
+by her love for her brother and never yet had been besmirched with one
+thought of evil, nearly died of shame, when she understood the nature
+of the charge against her. Not for one moment was she resentful against
+Christophe. She knew that he was as innocent as she, and that, if he had
+injured her, he had meant only to be kind: she was grateful to him. She
+knew nothing of him, save that he was a musician, and that he was much
+maligned: but, in her ignorance of life and men, she had a natural
+intuition about people, which unhappiness had sharpened, and in her queer,
+boorish companion she had recognized a quality of candor equal to her own,
+and a sturdy kindness, the mere memory of which was comforting and good
+to think on. The evil she had heard of him did not at all affect the
+confidence which Christophe had inspired in her. Being herself a victim she
+had no doubt that he was in the same plight, suffering, as she did, though
+for a longer time, from the malevolence of the townspeople who insulted
+him. And as she always forgot herself in the thought of others the idea of
+what Christophe must have suffered distracted her mind a little from her
+own torment. Nothing in the world could have induced her to try to see him
+again, or to write to him: her modesty and pride forbade it. She told
+herself that he did not know the harm he had done, and, in her gentleness,
+she hoped that he would never know it.
+
+She left Germany. An hour away from the town it chanced that the train in
+which she was traveling passed the train by which Christophe was returning
+from a neighboring town where he had been spending the day.
+
+For a few minutes their carriages stopped opposite each other, and in the
+silence of the night they saw each other, but did not speak. What could
+they have said save a few trivial words? That would have been a profanation
+of the indefinable feeling of common pity and mysterious sympathy which
+had sprung up in them, and was based on nothing save the sureness of their
+inward vision. During those last moments, when, still strangers, they
+gazed into each other's eyes, they saw in each other things which never
+had appeared to any other soul among the people with whom they lived.
+Everything must pass: the memory of words, kisses, passionate embraces: but
+the contact of souls, which have once met and hailed each other and the
+throng of passing shapes, that never can be blotted out. Antoinette bore
+it with her in the innermost recesses of her heart--that poor heart, so
+swathed about with sorrow and sad thoughts, from out the midst of which
+there smiled a misty light, which seemed to steal sweetly from the earth, a
+pale and tender light like that which floods the Elysian Shades of Gluck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She returned to Olivier. It was high time she returned to him. He had just
+fallen ill: and the poor, nervous, unhappy little creature who trembled, at
+the thought of illness before it came--now that he was really ill, refused
+to write to his sister for fear of upsetting her. But he called to her,
+prayed for her coming as for a miracle.
+
+When the miracle happened he was lying in the school infirmary, feverish
+and wandering. When he saw her he made no sound. How often had he seen her
+enter in his fevered fancy!... He sat up in bed, gaping, and trembling lest
+it should be once more only an illusion. And when she sat down on the bed
+by his side, when she took him in her arms and he had taken her in his,
+when he felt her soft cheek against his lips, and her hands still cold from
+traveling by night in his, when he was quite, quite sure that it was his
+dear sister he began to weep. He could do nothing else: he was still the
+"little cry-baby" that he had been when he was a child. He clung to her and
+held her close for fear she should go away from him again. How changed they
+were! How sad they looked!... No matter! They were together once more:
+everything was lit up, the infirmary, the school, the gloomy day: they
+clung to each other, they would never let each other go. Before she had
+said a word he made her swear that she would not go away again. He had no
+need to make her swear: no, she would never go away again: they had been
+too unhappy away from each other: their mother was right: anything was
+better than being parted. Even poverty, even death, so only they were
+together.
+
+They took rooms. They wanted to take their old little flat, horrible though
+it was: but it was occupied. Their new rooms also looked out on to a yard:
+but above a wall they could see the top of a little acacia and grew fond of
+it at once, as a friend from the country, a prisoner like themselves, in
+the paved wilderness of the city. Olivier quickly recovered his health, or
+rather, what he was pleased to call his health:--(for what was health to
+him would have been illness to a stronger boy).--Antoinette's unhappy stay
+in Germany had helped her to save a little money: and she made some more by
+the translation of a German book which a publisher accepted. For a time,
+then, they were free of financial anxiety: and all would be well if Olivier
+passed his examination at the end of the year.--But if he did not pass?
+
+No sooner had they settled down to the happiness of being together again
+than they were once more obsessed by the prospect of the examination. They
+tried hard not to think about it, but in vain, they were always coming back
+to it. The fixed idea haunted them, even when they were seeking distraction
+from their thoughts: at concerts it would suddenly leap out at them in the
+middle of the performance: at night when they woke up it would lie there
+like a yawning gulf before them. In addition to his eagerness to please his
+sister and repay her for the sacrifice of her youth that she had made for
+his sake, Olivier lived in terror of his military service which he could
+not escape if he were rejected:--(at that time admission to the great
+schools was still admitted as an exemption from service).--He had an
+invincible disgust for the physical and moral promiscuity, the kind
+of intellectual degradation, which, rightly or wrongly, he saw in
+barrack-life. Every pure and aristocratic quality in him revolted from such
+compulsion, and it seemed to him that death would be preferable. In these
+days it is permitted to make light of such feelings, and even to decry
+them in the name of a social morality which, for the moment, has become
+a religion: but they are blind who deny it: there is no more profound
+suffering than that of the violation of moral solitude by the coarse
+liberal Communism of the present day.
+
+The examinations began. Olivier was almost incapable of going in: he was
+unwell, and he was so fearful of the torment he would have to undergo,
+whether he passed or not, that he almost longed to be taken seriously ill.
+He did quite well in the written examination. But he had a cruel time
+waiting to hear the results. Following the immemorial custom of the country
+of Revolutions, which is the worst country in the world for red-tape and
+routine, the examinations were held in July during the hottest days of the
+year, as though it were deliberately intended to finish off the luckless
+candidates, who were already staggering under the weight of cramming a
+monstrous list of subjects, of which even the examiners did not know a
+tenth part. The written examinations were held on the day after the holiday
+of the 14th July, when the whole city was upside down, and making merry, to
+the undoing of the young men who were by no means inclined to be merry, and
+asked for nothing but silence. In the square outside the house booths were
+set up, rifles cracked at the miniature ranges, merry-go-rounds creaked
+and grunted, and hideous steam organs roared from morning till night. The
+idiotic noise went on for a week. Then a President of the Republic, by way
+of maintaining his popularity, granted the rowdy merry-makers another three
+days' holiday. It cost him nothing: he did not hear the row. But Olivier
+and Antoinette were distracted and appalled by the noise, and had to keep
+their windows shut, so that their rooms were stifling, and stop their ears,
+trying vainly to escape the shrill, insistent, idiotic tunes which were
+ground out from morning till night and stabbed through their brains like
+daggers, so that they were reduced to a pitiful condition.
+
+The _viva voce_ examination began immediately after the publication of
+the first results. Olivier begged Antoinette not to go. She waited at the
+door,--much more anxious than he. Of course he never told her what he
+thought of his performance. He tormented her by telling her what he had
+said and what he had not said.
+
+At last the final results were published. The names of the candidates were
+posted in the courtyard of the Sorbonne. Antoinette would not let Olivier
+go alone. As they left the house, they thought, though they did not say it,
+that when they came back they would _know_, and perhaps they would regret
+their present fears, when at least there was still hope. When they came
+in sight of the Sorbonne they felt their legs give way under them. Brave
+little Antoinette said to her brother:
+
+"Please not so fast...."
+
+Olivier looked at his sister, and she forced a smile. He said:
+
+"Shall we sit down for a moment on the seat here?"
+
+He would gladly have gone no further. But, after a moment, she pressed his
+hand and said:
+
+"It's nothing, dear. Let us go on."
+
+They could not find the list at first. They read several others in which
+the name of Jeannin did not appear. When at last they saw it, they did not
+take it in at first: they read it several times and could not believe it.
+Then when they were quite sure that it was true that Jeannin was Olivier,
+that Jeannin had passed, they could say nothing: they hurried home: she
+took his arm, and held his wrist, and leaned her weight on him: they almost
+ran, and saw nothing of what was going on about them: as they crossed the
+boulevard they were almost run over. They said over and over again:
+
+"Dear ... Darling ... Dear ... Dear...."
+
+They tore upstairs to their rooms and then they flung their arms round each
+other. Antoinette took her brother's hand and led him to the photographs of
+their father and mother, which hung on the wall near her bed, in a corner
+of her room, which was a sort of sanctuary to her: they knelt down before
+them: and with tears in their eyes they prayed.
+
+Antoinette ordered a jolly little dinner: but they could not eat a morsel:
+they were not hungry. They spent the evening, Olivier kneeling by his
+sister's side while she petted him like a child. They hardly spoke at all.
+They could not even be happy, for they were too worn out. They went to bed
+before nine o'clock and slept the sleep of the just.
+
+Next day Antoinette had a frightful headache, but there was such a load
+taken from her heart! Olivier felt, for the first time in his life, that
+he could breathe freely. He was saved, she was saved, she had accomplished
+her task: and he had shown himself to be not unworthy of his sister's
+expectations!... For the first time for years and years they allowed
+themselves a little laziness. They stayed in bed till twelve talking
+through the wall, with the door between their rooms open: when they looked
+in the mirror they saw their faces happy and tired-looking: they smiled,
+and threw kisses to each other, and dozed off again, and watched each
+other's sleep, and lay weary and worn with hardly the strength to do more
+than mutter tender little scraps of words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Antoinette had always put by a little money, sou by sou, so as to have some
+small reserve in case of illness. She did not tell her brother the surprise
+she had in store for him. The day after his success she told him that they
+were going to spend a month in Switzerland to make up for all their years
+of trouble and hardship. Now that Olivier was assured of three years at the
+_École Normale_ at the expense of the State, and then, when he left the
+_École_, of finding a post, they could be extravagant and spend all their
+savings. Olivier shouted for joy when she told him. Antoinette was even
+more happy than he,--happy in her brother's happiness,--happy to think that
+she was going to see the country once more: she had so longed for it.
+
+It took them some time to get ready for the journey, but the work of
+preparation was an unending joy. It was well on in August when they set
+out. They were not used to traveling. Olivier did not sleep the night
+before. And he did not sleep in the train. The whole day they had been
+fearful of missing the train. They were in a feverish hurry, they had been
+jostled about at the station, and finally huddled into a second-class
+carriage, where they could not even lean back to go to sleep:--(that is
+one of the privileges of which the eminently democratic French companies
+deprive poor travelers, so that rich travelers may have the pleasure of
+thinking that they have a monopoly of it).--Olivier did not sleep a wink:
+he was not sure that they were in the right train, and he looked out for
+the name of every station. Antoinette slept lightly and woke up very
+frequently: the jolting of the train made her head bob. Olivier watched her
+by the light of the funereal lamp, which shone at the top of the moving
+sarcophagus: and he was suddenly struck by the change in her face. Her eyes
+were hollow: her childish lips were half-open from sheer weariness: her
+skin was sallow, and there were little wrinkles on her cheeks, the marks
+of the sad years of sorrow and disillusion. She looked old and ill.--And,
+indeed, she was so tired! If she had dared she would have postponed their
+journey. But she did not like to spoil her brother's pleasure: she tried to
+persuade herself that she was only tired, and that the country would make
+her well again. She was fearful lest she should fall ill on the way.--She
+felt that he was looking at her: and she suddenly flung off the drowsiness
+that was creeping over her, and opened her eyes,--eyes still young,
+still clear and limpid, across which, from time to time, there passed an
+involuntary look of pain, like shadows on a little lake. He asked her in
+a whisper, anxiously and tenderly, how she was: she pressed his hand and
+assured him that she was well. A word of love revived her.
+
+Then, when the rosy dawn tinged the pale country between Dôle and
+Pontarlier, the sight of the waking fields, and the gay sun rising from the
+earth,--the sun, who, like themselves, had escaped from the prison of the
+streets, and the grimy houses, and the thick smoke of Paris:--the waving
+fields wrapped in the light mist of their milk-white breath: the little
+things they passed: a little village belfry, a glimpse of a winding stream,
+a blue line of hills hovering on the far horizon: the tinkling, moving
+sound of the angelus borne from afar on the wind, when the train stopped
+in the midst of the sleeping country: the solemn shapes of a herd of cows
+browsing on a slope above the railway,--all absorbed Antoinette and her
+brother, to whom it all seemed new. They were like parched trees, drinking
+in ecstasy the rain from heaven.
+
+Then, in the early morning, they reached the Swiss Customs, where they had
+to get out. A little station in a bare country-side. They were almost worn
+out by their sleepless night, and the cold, dewy freshness of the dawn made
+them shiver: but it was calm, and the sky was clear, and the fragrant air
+of the fields was about them, upon their lips, on their tongues, down their
+throats, flowing down into their lungs like a cooling stream: and they
+stood by a table, out in the open air, and drank comforting hot coffee with
+creamy milk, heavenly sweet, and tasting of the grass and the flowers of
+the fields.
+
+They climbed up into the Swiss carriage, the novel arrangement of which
+gave them a childish pleasure. But Antoinette was so tired! She could not
+understand why she should feel so ill. Why was everything about her so
+beautiful, so absorbing, when she could take so little pleasure in it?
+Was it not all just what she had been dreaming for years: a journey with
+her brother, with all anxiety for the future left behind, dear mother
+Nature?... What was the matter with her? She was annoyed with herself, and
+forced herself to admire and share her brother's naïve delight.
+
+They stopped at Thun. They were to go up into the mountains next day. But
+that night in the hotel, Antoinette was stricken with a fever, and violent
+illness, and pains in her head. Olivier was at his wits' ends, and spent a
+night of frightful anxiety. He had to send for a doctor in the morning--(an
+unforeseen expense which was no light tax on their slender purse).--The
+doctor could find nothing immediately serious, but said that she was run
+down, and that her constitution was undermined. There could be no question
+of their going on. The doctor forbade Antoinette to get up all day; and
+he thought they would perhaps have to stay at Thun for some time. They
+were very downcast--though very glad to have got off so cheaply after all
+their fears. But it was hard to have come so far to be shut up in a nasty
+hotel-room into which the sunlight poured so that it was like a hothouse.
+Antoinette insisted on her brother going out. He went a few yards from the
+hotel, saw the beautiful green Aar, and, hovering in the distance against
+the sky, a white peak: he bubbled over with joy: but he could not keep it
+to himself. He rushed back to his sister's room, and told her excitedly
+what he had just seen: and when she expressed her surprise at his coming
+back so soon and made him promise to go out again, he said, as once before
+he had said when he came back from the _Châtelet_ concert:
+
+"No, no. It is too beautiful: it hurts me to see it without you."
+
+That feeling was not new to them: they knew that they had to be together to
+enjoy anything wholly. But they always loved to hear it said. His tender
+words did Antoinette more good than any medicine. She smiled now,
+languidly, happily.--And after a good night, although it was not very wise
+to go on so soon, she decided that they would get away very early, without
+telling the doctor, who would only want to keep them back. The pure air and
+the joy of seeing so much beauty made her stronger, so that she did not
+have to pay for her rashness, and without any further misadventure they
+reached the end of their journey--a mountain village, high above the lake,
+some distance away from Spiez.
+
+There they spent three or four weeks in a little hotel. Antoinette did not
+have any further attack of fever, but she never got really well. She still
+felt a heaviness, an intolerable weight, in her head, and she was always
+unwell. Olivier often asked her about her health: he longed to see her
+grow less pale: but he was intoxicated by the beauty of the country, and
+instinctively avoided all melancholy thoughts: when she assured him that
+she was really quite well, he tried to believe that it was true,--although
+he knew perfectly well that it was not so. And she enjoyed to the full her
+brother's exuberance and the fine air, and the all-pervading peace. How
+good it was to rest at last after those terrible years!
+
+Olivier tried to induce her to go for walks with him: she would have been
+happy to join him: but on several occasions when she had bravely set out,
+she had been forced to stop after twenty minutes, to regain her breath, and
+rest her heart. So he went out alone,--climbing the safe peaks, though they
+filled her with terror until he came home again. Or they would go for
+little walks together: she would lean on his arm, and walk slowly, and they
+would talk, and he would suddenly begin to chatter, and laugh, and discuss
+his plans, and make quips and jests. From the road on the hillside above
+the valley they would watch the white clouds reflected in the still lake,
+and the boats moving like insects on the surface of a pond: they would
+drink in the warm air and the music of the goat-bells, borne on the gusty
+wind, and the smell of the new-mown hay and the warm resin. And they would
+dream together of the past and the future, and the present which seemed to
+them to be the most unreal and intoxicating of dreams. Sometimes Antoinette
+would be infected with her brother's jolly childlike humor: they would
+chase each other and roll about on the grass. And one day he saw her
+laughing as she used to do when they were children, madly, carelessly,
+laughter clear and bubbling as a spring, such as he had not heard for many
+years.
+
+But, most often, Olivier could not resist the pleasure of going for long
+walks. He would be sorry for it at once, and later he had bitterly to
+regret that he had not made enough of those dear days with his sister. Even
+in the hotel he would often leave her alone. There was a party of young
+men and girls in the hotel, from whom they had at first kept apart. Then
+Olivier was attracted by them, and shyly joined their circle. He had been
+starved of friendship: outside his sister he had hardly known any one but
+his rough schoolfellows and their girls, who repelled him. It was very
+sweet to him to be among well-mannered, charming, merry boys and girls of
+his own age. Although he was very shy, he was naïvely curious, sentimental,
+and affectionate, and easily bewitched by the little burning, flickering
+fires that shine in a woman's eyes. And in spite of his shyness, women
+liked him. His frank longing to love and be loved gave him, unknown to
+himself, a youthful charm, and made him find words and gestures and
+affectionate little attentions, the very awkwardness of which made them all
+the more attractive. He had the gift of sympathy. Although in his isolation
+his intelligence had taken on an ironical tinge which made him see the
+vulgarity of people and their defects which he often loathed,--yet in
+their presence he saw nothing but their eyes, in which he would see the
+expression of a living being, who one day would die, a being who had only
+one life, even as he, and, even as he, would lose it all too soon, then of
+that creature he would involuntarily be fond: in that moment nothing in the
+world could make him do anything to hurt: whether he liked it or not, he
+had to be kind and amiable. He was weak: and, in being so, he was sure to
+please the "world" which pardons every vice, and even every virtue,--except
+one: force, on which all the rest depend.
+
+Antoinette did not join them. Her health, her tiredness, her apparently
+causeless moral collapse, paralyzed her. Through the long years of anxiety
+and ceaseless toil, exhausting body and soul, the positions of the brother
+and sister had been inverted: now it was she who felt far removed from the
+world, far from everything and everybody, so far!... She could not break
+down the wall between them: all their chatter, their noise, their laughter,
+their little interests, bored her, wearied her, almost hurt her. It hurt
+her to be so: she would have loved to go with the other girls, to share
+their interests and laugh with them ... But she could not!... Her heart
+ached; she seemed to be as one dead. In the evening she would shut herself
+up in her room; and often she would not even turn on the light: she would
+sit there in the dark, while downstairs Olivier would be amusing himself,
+surrendering to the current of one of those romantic little love affairs to
+which he so easily succumbed. She would only shake off her torpor when she
+heard him coming upstairs, laughing and talking to the girls, hanging about
+saying good-night outside their rooms, being unable to tear himself away.
+Then in the darkness Antoinette would smile, and get up to turn on the
+light. The sound of her brother's laughter revived her.
+
+Autumn was setting in. The sun was dying down. Nature was a-weary. Under
+the thick mists and clouds of October the colors were fading fast; snow
+fell on the mountains: mists descended upon the plains. The visitors went
+away one by one, and then several at a time. And it was sad to see even the
+friends of a little while going away, but sadder still to see the passing
+of the summer, the time of peace and happiness which had been an oasis in
+their lives. They went for a last walk together, on a cloudy autumn day,
+through the forest on the mountain-side. They did not speak: they mused
+sadly, as they walked along with the collars of their cloaks turned up,
+clinging close together: their hands were locked. There was silence in the
+wet woods, and in silence the trees wept. From the depths there came the
+sweet plaintive cry of a solitary bird who felt the coming of winter.
+Through the mist came the clear tinkling of the goat-bells, far away, so
+faint they could hardly hear it, so faint it was as though it came up from
+their inmost hearts....
+
+They returned to Paris. They were both sad. Antoinette was no better.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had to set to work to prepare Olivier's wardrobe for the _École_.
+Antoinette spent the last of her little store of money, and even sold some
+of her jewels. What did it matter? He would repay her later on. And then,
+she would need so little when he was gone from her!... She tried not to
+think of what it would be like when he was gone: she worked away at his
+clothes, and put into the work all the tenderness she had for her brother,
+and she had a presentiment that it would be the last thing she would do for
+him.
+
+During the last days together they were never apart: they were fearful of
+wasting the tiniest moment. On their last evening they sat up very late by
+the fireside, Antoinette occupying the only armchair, and Olivier a stool
+at her feet, and she made a fuss of him like the spoiled child he was. He
+was dreading--though he was curious about it, too--the new life upon which
+he was to enter. Antoinette thought only that it was the end of their dear
+life together, and wondered fearfully what would become of her. As though
+he were trying to make the thought even more bitter for her, he was more
+tender than ever he had been, with the innocent instinctive coquetry of
+those who always wait until they are just going to show themselves at their
+best and most charming. He went to the piano and played her their favorite
+passages from Mozart and Gluck--those visions of tender happiness and
+serene sorrow with which so much of their past life was bound up.
+
+When the time came for them to part, Antoinette accompanied Olivier as far
+as the gates of the _École_. Then she returned. Once more she was alone.
+But now it was not, as when she had gone away to Germany, a separation
+which she could bring to an end at will when she could bear it no longer
+How it was she who remained behind, he who went away: it was he who had
+gone away, for a long, long time--perhaps for life. And yet her love for
+him was so maternal that at first she thought less of herself than of him:
+she thought only of how different the first few days would be for him, of
+the strict rules of the _École_, and was preoccupied with those harmless
+little worries which so easily assume alarming proportions in the minds of
+people who live alone and are always tormenting themselves about those whom
+they love. Her anxiety did at least have this advantage, that it distracted
+her thoughts from her own loneliness. She had already begun to think of the
+half-hour when she would be able to see him next day in the visitors' room.
+She arrived a quarter of an hour too soon. He was very nice to her, but he
+was altogether taken up with all the new things he had seen. And during the
+following days, when she went to see him, full of the most tender anxiety,
+the contrast between what those meetings meant for her and what they meant
+for him was more and more marked. For her they were her whole life. For
+Olivier--no doubt he loved Antoinette dearly: but it was too much to expect
+him to think only of her, as she thought of him. Once or twice he came down
+late to the visitors' room. One day, when she asked him if he were at all
+unhappy, he said that he was nothing of the kind. Such little things as
+that stabbed Antoinette to the heart.--She was angry with herself for being
+so sensitive, and accused herself of selfishness: she knew quite well that
+it would be absurd, even wrong and unnatural, for him to be unable to do
+without her, and for her to be unable to do without him, and to have no
+other object in life. Yes: she knew all that. But what was the good of her
+knowing it? She could not help it if for the past ten years her whole life
+had been bound up in that one idea: her brother. Now that the one interest
+of her life had been torn from her, she had nothing left.
+
+She tried bravely to keep herself occupied and to take up her music and
+read her beloved books ... But alas! how empty were Shakespeare and
+Beethoven without Olivier!
+
+...--Yes: no doubt they were beautiful.... But Olivier was not there. What
+is the good of beautiful things if the eyes of the beloved are not there to
+see them? What is the use of beauty, what is the use even of joy, if they
+cannot be won through the heart of the beloved?
+
+If she had been stronger she would have tried to build up her life anew,
+and give it another object. But she was at the end of her tether. Now that
+there was nothing to force her to hold on, at all costs, the effort of will
+to which she had subjected herself snapped: she collapsed. The illness,
+which had been gaining grip on her for over a year, during which she had
+fought it down by force of will, was now left to take its course.
+
+She spent her evenings alone in her room, by the spent fire, a prey to her
+thoughts: she had neither the courage to light the fire again, nor the
+strength to go to bed: she would sit there far into the night, dozing,
+dreaming, shivering. She would live through her life again, and summon up
+the beloved dead and her lost illusions: and she would be terribly sad at
+the thought of her lost youth, without love or hope of love. A dumb, aching
+sorrow, obscure, unconfessed ... A child laughed in the street: its little
+feet pattered up to the floor below ... Its little feet trampled on her
+heart ... She would be beset with doubts and evil thoughts; her soul in
+its weakness would be contaminated by the soul of that city of selfish
+pleasure.--She would fight down her regrets, and burn with shame at certain
+longings which she thought, evil and wicked: she could not understand what
+it was that hurt her so, and attributed it to her evil instincts. Poor
+little Ophelia, devoured by a mysterious evil, she felt with horror dark
+and uneasy desires mounting from the depths of her being, from the very pit
+of life. She could not work, and she had given up most of her pupils: she,
+who was so plucky, and had always risen so early, now lay in bed sometimes
+until the afternoon: she had no more reason for getting up than for going
+to bed: she ate little or nothing. Only on her brother's holidays--Thursday
+afternoons and Sundays--she would make an effort to be her old self with
+him.
+
+He saw nothing. He was too much taken up with his new life to notice his
+sister much. He was at that period of boyhood when it was difficult for
+him to be communicative, and he always seemed to be indifferent to things
+outside himself which would only be his concern in later days.--People of
+riper years sometimes seem to be more open to impressions, and to take a
+simpler delight in life and Nature, than young people between twenty and
+thirty. And so it is often said that young people are not so young in
+heart as they were, and have lost all sense of enjoyment. That is often a
+mistaken idea. It is not because they have no sense of enjoyment that they
+seem less sensitive. It is because their whole being is often absorbed by
+passion, ambition, desire, some fixed idea. When the body is worn and has
+no more to expect from life, then the emotions become disinterested and
+fall into their place; and then once more the source of childish tears is
+reopened.--Olivier was preoccupied with a thousand little things, the most
+outstanding of which was an absurd little passion,--(he was always a victim
+to them),--which so obsessed him as to make him blind and indifferent
+to everything else.--Antoinette did not know what was happening to her
+brother: she only saw that he was drawing away from her. That was not
+altogether Olivier's fault. Sometimes when he came he would be glad to see
+her and start talking. He would come in. Then all of a sudden he would dry
+up. Her affectionate anxiety, the eagerness with which she clung to him,
+and drank in his words, and overwhelmed him with little attentions,--all
+her excess of tenderness and querulous devotion would deprive him utterly
+of any desire to be warm and open with her. He might have seen that
+Antoinette was not in a normal condition. Nothing could be farther from her
+usual tact and discretion. But he never gave a thought to it. He would
+reply to her questions with a curt "Yes" or "No." He would grow more stiff
+and surly, the more she tried to win him over: sometimes even he would hurt
+her by some brusque reply. Then she would be crushed and silent. Their day
+together would slip by, wasted. But hardly had he set foot outside the
+house on his way back to the _École_ than he would be heartily ashamed of
+his treatment of her. He would torture himself all night as he lay awake
+thinking of the pain he had caused her. Sometimes even, as soon as he
+reached the _École_, he would write an effusive letter to his sister.--But
+next morning, when he read it through, he would tear it up. And Antoinette
+would know nothing at all about it. She would go on thinking that he had
+ceased to love her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had--if not one last joy--one last flutter of tenderness and youth,
+when her heart beat strongly once more; one last awakening of love in her,
+and hope of happiness, hope of life. It was quite ridiculous, so utterly
+unlike her tranquil nature! It could never have been but for her abnormal
+condition, the state of fear and over-excitement which was the precursor of
+illness.
+
+She went to a concert at the _Châtelet_ with her brother. As he had just
+been appointed musical critic to a little Review, they were in better
+places than those they occupied in old days, but the people among whom they
+sat were much more apathetic. They had stalls near the stage. Christophe
+Krafft was to play. Neither of them had ever heard of the German musician.
+When she saw him come on, the blood rushed to her heart. Although her tired
+eyes could only see him through a mist, she had no doubt when he appeared:
+he was the unknown young man of her unhappy days in Germany. She had
+never mentioned him to her brother: and she had hardly even admitted his
+existence to her thoughts: she had been entirely absorbed by the anxieties
+of her life since then. Besides, she was a reasonable little Frenchwoman,
+and refused to admit the existence of an obscure feeling which she could
+not trace to its source, while it seemed to lead nowhere. There was in her
+a whole region of the soul, of unsuspected depths, wherein there slept many
+other feelings which she would have been ashamed to behold: she knew that
+they were there: but she looked away from them in a sort of religious
+terror of that Being within herself which lies beyond the mind's control.
+
+When she had recovered a little, she borrowed her brothers glasses to look
+at Christophe: she saw him in profile at the conductor's stand, and she
+recognized his expression of forceful concentration. He was wearing a
+shabby old coat which fitted him very badly.--Antoinette sat in silent
+agony through the vagaries of that lamentable concert when Christophe
+joined issue with the unconcealed hostility of his audience, who were
+at the time ill-disposed towards German artists, and actively bored
+by his music. And when he appeared, after a symphony which had seemed
+unconscionably long, to play some piano music, he was received with
+cat-calls which left no room for doubt as to their displeasure at having to
+put up with him again. However, he began to play in the face of the bored
+resignation of his audience: but the uncomplimentary remarks exchanged in a
+loud voice by two men in the gallery went on, to the great delight of the
+rest of the audience. Then he broke off: and in a childish fit of temper
+he played _Malbrouck s'en va t'en guerre_ with one finger, got up from the
+piano, faced the audience, and said:
+
+"That is all you are fit for."
+
+The audience were for a moment so taken aback that they did not quite take
+in what the musician meant. Then there was an outburst of angry protests.
+Followed a terrible uproar. They hissed and shouted:
+
+"Apologize! Make him apologize!"
+
+They were all red in the face with anger, and they blew out their
+fury--tried to persuade themselves that they were really enraged: as
+perhaps they were, but the chief thing was that they were delighted to
+have a chance of making a row, and letting themselves go: they were like
+schoolboys after a few hours in school.
+
+Antoinette could not move: she was petrified: she sat still tugging at
+one of her gloves. Ever since the last bars of the symphony she had had a
+growing presentiment of what would happen: she felt the blind hostility
+of the audience, felt it growing: she read Christophe's thoughts, and she
+was sure he would not go through to the end without an explosion: she sat
+waiting for the explosion while agony grew in her: she stretched every
+nerve to try to prevent it; and when at last it came, it was so exactly
+what she had foreseen that she was overwhelmed by it, as by some fatal
+catastrophe against which there was nothing to be done. And as she gazed
+at Christophe, who was staring insolently at the howling audience, their
+eyes met. Christophe's eyes recognized her, greeted her, for the space of
+perhaps a second: but he was in such a state of excitement that his mind
+did not recognize her (he had not thought of her for long enough). He
+disappeared while the audience yelled and hissed.
+
+She longed to cry out: to say or do something: but she was bound hand and
+foot, and could not stir; it was like a nightmare. It was some comfort to
+her to hear her brother at her side, and to know that, without having any
+idea of what was happening to her, he had shared her agony and indignation.
+Olivier was a thorough musician, and he had an independence of taste
+which nothing could encroach upon: when he liked a thing, he would have
+maintained his liking in the face of the whole world. With the very first
+bars of the symphony, he had felt that he was in the presence of something
+big, something the like of which he had never in his life come across. He
+went on muttering to himself with heartfelt enthusiasm:
+
+"That's fine! That's beautiful! Beautiful!" while his sister instinctively
+pressed close to him, gratefully. After the symphony he applauded loudly by
+way of protest against the ironic indifference of the rest of the audience.
+When it came to the great fiasco, he was beside himself: he stood up,
+shouted that Christophe was right, abused the booers, and offered to fight
+them: it was impossible to recognize the timid Olivier. His voice was
+drowned in the uproar: he was told to shut up: he was called a "snotty
+little kid," and told to go to bed. Antoinette saw the futility of standing
+up to them, and took his arm and said:
+
+"Stop! Stop! I implore you! Stop!"
+
+He sat down in despair, and went on muttering:
+
+"It's shameful! Shameful! The swine!..."
+
+She said nothing and bore her suffering in silence: he thought she was
+insensible to the music, and said:
+
+"Antoinette, don't _you_ think it beautiful?"
+
+She nodded. She was frozen, and could not recover herself. But when the
+orchestra began another piece, she suddenly got up, and whispered to her
+brother in a tone of savage hatred:
+
+"Come, come! I can't bear the sight of these people!"
+
+They hurried out. They walked along arm-in-arm, and Olivier went on talking
+excitedly. Antoinette said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that day and the days following she sat alone in her room, and a
+feeling crept over her which at first she refused to face: but then it went
+on and took possession of her thoughts, like the furious throbbing of the
+blood in her aching temples.
+
+Some time afterwards Olivier brought her Christophe's collection of songs,
+which he had just found at a publisher's. She opened it at random. On
+the first page on which her eyes fell she read in front of a song this
+dedication in German:
+
+"_To my poor dear little victim_," together with a date.
+
+She knew the date well.--She was so upset that she could read no farther.
+She put the book down and asked her brother to play, and went and shut
+herself up in her room. Olivier, full of his delight in the new music,
+began to play without remarking his sister's emotion. Antoinette sat in the
+adjoining room, striving to repress the beating of her heart. Suddenly she
+got up and looked through a cupboard for a little account-book in which was
+written the date of her departure from Germany, and the mysterious date.
+She knew it already: yes, it was the evening of the performance at the
+theater to which she had been with Christophe. She lay down on her bed and
+closed her eyes, blushing, with her hands folded on her breast, while she
+listened to the dear music. Her heart was overflowing with gratitude ...
+Ah! Why did her head hurt her so?
+
+When Olivier saw that his sister had not come back, he went into her room
+after he had done playing, and found her lying there. He asked her if she
+were ill. She said she was rather tired, and got up to keep him company.
+They talked: but she did not answer his questions at once: her thoughts
+seemed to be far away: she smiled, and blushed, and said, by way of excuse,
+that her headache was making her stupid. At last Olivier went away. She had
+asked him to leave the book of songs. She sat up late reading them at the
+piano, without playing, just lightly touching a note here and there, for
+fear of annoying her neighbors. But for the most part she did not even
+read: she sat dreaming: she was carried away by a feeling of tenderness and
+gratitude towards the man who had pitied her, and had read her mind and
+soul with the mysterious intuition of true kindness. She could not fix her
+thoughts. She was happy and sad--sad!... Ah! How her head ached!
+
+She spent the night in sweet and painful dreams, a crushing melancholy.
+During the day she tried to go out for a little to shake off her
+drowsiness. Although her head was still aching, to give herself something
+to do, she went and made a few purchases at a great shop. She hardly gave
+a thought to what she was doing. Her thoughts were always with Christophe,
+though she did not admit it to herself. As she came out, worried and
+mortally sad, through the crowd of people she saw Christophe go by on
+the other side of the street. He saw her, too, at the same moment. At
+once,--(suddenly and without thinking), she held out her hands towards
+him. Christophe stopped: this time he recognized her. He sprang forward
+to cross the road to Antoinette: and Antoinette tried to go to meet him.
+But the insensate current of the passing throng carried her along like
+a windlestraw, while the horse of an omnibus, falling on the slippery
+asphalt, made a sort of dyke in front of Christophe, by which the opposing
+streams of carriages were dammed, so that for a few moments there was an
+impassable barrier. Christophe tried to force his way through in spite of
+everything: but he was trapped in the middle of the traffic, and could not
+move either way. When at last he did extricate himself and managed to reach
+the place where he had seen Antoinette, she was gone: she had struggled
+vainly against the human torrent that carried her along: then she yielded
+to it--gave up the struggle. She felt that she was dogged by some fatality
+which forbade the possibility of her ever meeting Christophe: against Fate
+there was nothing to be done. And when she did succeed in escaping from the
+crowd, she made no attempt to go back: she was suddenly ashamed: what could
+she dare to say to him? What had she done? What must he have thought of
+her? She fled away home.
+
+She did not regain assurance until she reached her room. Then she sat by
+the table in the dark, and had not even the strength to take off her hat or
+her gloves. She was miserable at having been unable to speak to him: and at
+the same time there glowed a new light in her heart: she was unconscious of
+the darkness, and unconscious of the illness that was upon her. She went on
+and on turning over and over every detail of the scene in the street: and
+she changed it about and imagined what would have happened if certain
+things had turned out differently. She saw herself holding out her arms to
+Christophe, and Christophe's expression of joy as he recognized her, and
+she laughed and blushed. She blushed: and then in the darkness of her room,
+where there was no one to see her, and she could hardly see herself, once
+more she held out her arms to him. Her need was too strong for her: she
+felt that she was losing ground, and instinctively she sought to clutch at
+the strong vivid life that passed so near her, and gazed so kindly at her.
+Her heart was full of tenderness and anguish, and through the night she
+cried:
+
+"Help me! Save me!"
+
+All in a fever she got up and lit the lamp, and took pen and paper. She
+wrote to Christophe. Her illness was full upon her, or she would never even
+have thought of writing to him, so proud she was and timid. She did not
+know what she wrote. She was no longer mistress of herself. She called to
+him, and told him that she loved him ... In the middle of her letter she
+stopped, appalled. She tried to write it all over again: but her impulse
+was gone: her mind was a blank, and her head was aching: she had a horrible
+difficulty in finding words: she was utterly worn out. She was ashamed ...
+What was the good of it all? She knew perfectly well that she was trying to
+trick herself, and that she would never send the letter ... Even if she had
+wished to do so, how could she? She did not know Christophe's address ...
+Poor Christophe! And what could he do for her? Even if he knew all and were
+kind to her, what could he do?... It was too late! No, no: it was all in
+vain, the last dying struggle of a bird, blindly, desperately beating its
+wings. She must be resigned to it....
+
+So for a long time she sat there by the table, lost in thought, unable
+to move hand or foot. It was past midnight when she struggled to her
+feet--bravely. Mechanically she placed the loose sheets of her letter in
+one of her few books, for she had the strength neither to put them in order
+nor to tear them up. Then she went to bed, shivering and shaking with
+fever. The key to the riddle lay near at hand: she felt that the will of
+God was to be fulfilled.--And a great peace came upon her.
+
+On Sunday morning when Olivier came he found Antoinette in bed, delirious.
+A doctor was called in. He said it was acute consumption.
+
+Antoinette had known how serious her condition was: she had discovered the
+cause of the moral turmoil in herself which had so alarmed her. She had
+been dreadfully ashamed, and it was some consolation to her to think that
+not she herself but her illness was the cause of it. She had managed to
+take a few precautions and to burn her papers and to write a letter to
+Madame Nathan: she appealed to her kindness to look after her brother
+during the first few weeks after her "death"--(she dared not write the
+word)....
+
+The doctor could do nothing: the disease was too far gone, and Antoinette's
+constitution had been wrecked by the years of hardship and unceasing toil.
+
+Antoinette was quite calm. Since she had known that there was no hope her
+agony and torment had left her. She lay turning over in her mind all the
+trials and tribulations through which she had passed: she saw that her work
+was done and her dear Olivier saved: and she was filled with unutterable
+joy. She said to herself:
+
+"I have achieved that."
+
+And then she turned in shame from her pride and said:
+
+"I could have done nothing alone. God has given me His aid."
+
+And she thanked God that He had granted her life until she had accomplished
+her task. There was a catch at her heart as she thought that now she had to
+lay down her life: but she dared not complain: that would have been to feel
+ingratitude towards God, who might have called her away sooner. And what
+would have happened if she had passed away a year sooner?--She sighed, and
+humbled herself in gratitude.
+
+In spite of her weakness and oppression she did not complain,--except when
+she was sleeping heavily, when every now and then she moaned like a little
+child. She watched things and people with a calm smile of resignation. It
+was always a joy to her to see Olivier. She would move her lips to call
+him, though she made no sound: she would want to hold his hand in hers: she
+would bid him lay his head on the pillow near hers, and then, gazing into
+his eyes, she would go on looking at him in silence. At last she would
+raise herself up and hold his face in her hands and say:
+
+"Ah! Olivier!... Olivier!..."
+
+She took the medal that she wore round her neck, and hung it on her
+brother's. She commended her beloved Olivier to the care of her confessor,
+her doctor, everybody. It seemed as though she was to live henceforth in
+him, that, on the point of death, she was taking refuge in his life, as
+upon some island in uncharted seas. Sometimes she seemed to be uplifted by
+a mystic exaltation of tenderness and faith, and she forgot her illness,
+and sadness changed to joy in her,--a joy divine indeed that shone upon her
+lips and in her eyes. Over and over again she said:
+
+"I am happy...."
+
+Her senses grew dim. In her last moments of consciousness her lips moved
+and it seemed that she was repeating something to herself. Olivier went to
+her bedside and bent down over her. She recognized him once more and smiled
+feebly up at him: her lips went on moving and her eyes were filled with
+tears. They could not make out what she was trying to say.... But faintly
+Olivier heard her breathe the words of the dear old song they used to love
+so much, the song she was always singing:
+
+"_I will come again, my sweet and bonny, I will come again._"
+
+Then she relapsed into unconsciousness. So she passed away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Unconsciously she had aroused a profound sympathy in many people whom she
+did not even know: in the house in which she lived she did not even know
+the names of the other tenants. Olivier received expressions of sympathy
+from people who were strangers to him. Antoinette was not taken to her
+grave unattended as her mother had been. Her body was followed to the
+cemetery by friends and schoolfellows of her brother, and members of the
+families whose children she had taught, and people whom she had met without
+saying a word of her own life or hearing a word from them, though they
+admired her secretly, knowing her devotion, and many of the poor, and the
+housekeeper who had helped her, and even many of the small tradesmen of the
+neighborhood. Madame Nathan had taken Olivier under her wing on the day of
+his sister's death, and she had carried him off in spite of himself, and
+done her best to turn his thoughts away from his grief.
+
+If it had come later in his life he could never have borne up against such
+a catastrophe,--but now it was impossible for him to succumb absolutely to
+his despair. He had just begun a new life; he was living in a community,
+and had to live the common life whatever he might be feeling. The full busy
+life of the _École_, the intellectual pressure, the examinations, the
+struggle for life, all kept him from withdrawing into himself: he could not
+be alone. He suffered, but it proved his salvation. A year earlier, or a
+few years earlier, he must have succumbed.
+
+And yet he did as far as possible retire into isolation in the memory of
+his sister. It was a great sorrow to him that he could not keep the rooms
+where they had lived together: but he had no money. He hoped that the
+people who seemed to be interested in him would understand his distress at
+not being able to keep the things that had been hers. But nobody seemed
+to understand. He borrowed some money and made a little more by private
+tuition and took an attic in which he stored all that he could preserve
+of his sister's furniture: her bed, her table, and her armchair. He made
+it the sanctuary of her memory. He took refuge there whenever he was
+depressed. His friends thought he was carrying on an intrigue. He would
+stay there for hours dreaming of her with his face buried in his hands:
+unhappily he had no portrait of her except a little photograph, taken when
+she was a child, of the two of them together. He would talk to her and
+weep ... Where was she? Ah! if she had been at the other end of the world,
+wherever she might be and however inaccessible the spot,--with what great
+joy and invincible ardor he would have rushed forth in search of her,
+though a thousand sufferings lay in wait for him, though he had to go
+barefoot, though he had to wander for hundreds of years, if only it might
+be that every step would bring him nearer to her!... Yes, even though there
+were only one chance in a thousand of his ever finding her ... But there
+was nothing ... Nowhere to go ... No way of ever finding her again ... How
+utterly lonely he was now! Now that she was no longer there to love and
+counsel and console him, inexperienced and childish as he was, he was
+flung into the waters of life, to sink or swim!... He who has once had the
+happiness of perfect intimacy and boundless friendship with another human
+being has known the divinest of all joys,--a joy that will make him
+miserable for the remainder of his life....
+
+_Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria_....
+
+For a weak and tender soul it is the greatest of misfortunes ever to have
+known the greatest happiness.
+
+But though it is sad indeed to lose the beloved at the beginning of life,
+it is even more terrible later on when the springs of life are running dry.
+Olivier was young: and, in spite of his inborn pessimism, in spite of his
+misfortune, he had to live his life. As often seems to happen after the
+loss of those dear to us, it was as though when Antoinette passed away she
+had breathed part of her soul into her brother's life. And he believed it
+was so. Though he had not such faith as hers, yet he did arrive at a vague
+conviction that his sister was not dead, but lived on in him, as she had
+promised. There is a Breton superstition that those who die young are not
+dead, but stay and hover over the places where they lived until they have
+fulfilled the normal span of their existence.--So Antoinette lived out her
+life in Olivier.
+
+He read through the papers he had found in her room. Unhappily she had
+burned most of them. Besides, she was not the sort of woman to keep notes
+and tallies of her inner life. She was too modest to uncloak her inmost
+thoughts in morbid babbling indiscretion. She only kept a little notebook
+which was almost unintelligible to anybody else--a bare record in which she
+had written down without remark certain dates, and certain small events in
+her daily life, which had given her joys and emotions, which she had no
+need to write down in detail to keep alive. Almost all these dates were
+connected with some event in Olivier's life. She had kept every letter
+he had ever written to her, without exception.--Alas! He had not been so
+careful: he had lost almost all the letters she had written to him. What
+need had he of letters? He thought he would have his sister always with
+him: that dear fount of tenderness seemed inexhaustible: he thought that he
+would always be able to quench his thirst of lips and heart at it: he had
+most prodigally squandered the love he had received, and now he was eager
+to gather up the smallest drops.... What was his emotion when, as he
+skimmed through one of Antoinette's books, he found these words written in
+pencil on a scrap of paper:
+
+"Olivier, my dear Olivier!..."
+
+He almost swooned. He sobbed and kissed the invisible lips that so spoke
+to him from the grave.--Thereafter he took down all her books and hunted
+through them page by page to see if she had not left some other words of
+him. He found the fragment of the letter to Christophe, and discovered the
+unspoken romance which had sprung to life in her: so for the first time he
+happed upon her emotional life, that he had never known in her and never
+tried to know: he lived through the last passionate days, when, deserted
+by himself, she had held out her arms to the unknown friend. She had
+never told him that she had seen Christophe before. Certain words in her
+letter revealed the fact that they had met in Germany. He understood that
+Christophe had been kind to Antoinette, in circumstances the details of
+which were unknown to him, and that Antoinette's feeling for the musician
+dated from that day, though she had kept her secret to the end.
+
+Christophe, whom he loved already for the beauty of his art, now became
+unutterably dear to him. She had loved him: it seemed to Olivier that it
+was she whom he loved in Christophe. He moved heaven and earth to meet him.
+It was not an easy matter to trace him. After his rebuff Christophe had
+been lost in the wilderness of Paris: he had shunned all society and no
+one gave a thought to him.--After many months it chanced that Olivier met
+Christophe in the street: he was pale and sunken from the illness from
+which he had only just recovered. But Olivier had not the courage to stop
+him. He followed him home at a distance. He wanted to write to him, but
+could not screw himself up to it. What was there to say? Olivier was not
+alone: Antoinette was with him: her love, her modesty had become a part of
+him: the thought that his sister had loved Christophe made him as bashful
+in Christophe's presence as though he had been Antoinette. And yet how he
+longed to talk to him of her!--But he could not. Her secret was a seal upon
+his lips.
+
+He tried to meet Christophe again. He went everywhere where he thought
+Christophe might be. He was longing to shake hands with him. And when he
+saw him he tried to hide so that Christophe should not see him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last Christophe saw him at the house of some mutual friends where they
+both happened to be one evening. Olivier stood far away from him and said
+nothing: but he watched him. And no doubt the spirit of Antoinette was
+hovering near Olivier that night: for Christophe saw her in Olivier's eyes:
+and it was her image, so suddenly evoked, that made him cross the room and
+go towards the unknown messenger, who, like a young Hermes, brought him the
+melancholy greeting of the blessed dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+I have a friend!... Oh! The delight of having found a kindred soul to which
+to cling in the midst of torment, a tender and sure refuge in which to
+breathe again while the fluttering heart beats slower! No longer to be
+alone, no longer never to unarm, no longer to stay on guard with straining,
+burning eyes, until from sheer fatigue he should fall into the hands of his
+enemies! To have a dear companion into whose hands all his life should be
+delivered--the friend whose life was delivered into his! At last to taste
+the sweetness of repose, to sleep while the friend watches, watch while the
+friend sleeps. To know the joy of protecting a beloved creature who should
+trust in him like a little child. To know the greater joy of absolute
+surrender to that friend, to feel that he is in possession of all secrets,
+and has power over life and death. Aging, worn out, weary of the burden of
+life through so many years, to find new birth and fresh youth in the body
+of the friend, through his eyes to see the world renewed, through his
+senses to catch the fleeting loveliness of all things by the way, through
+his heart to enjoy the splendor of living.... Even to suffer in his
+suffering.... Ah! Even suffering is joy if it be shared!
+
+I have a friend!... Away from me, near me, in me always. I have my friend,
+and I am his. My friend loves me. I am my friend's, the friend of my
+friend. Of our two souls love has fashioned one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe's first thought, when he awoke the day after the Roussins'
+party, was for Olivier Jeannin. At once he felt an irresistible longing to
+see him again. He got up and went out. It was not yet eight o'clock. It was
+a heavy and rather oppressive morning. An April day before its time: stormy
+clouds were hovering over Paris.
+
+Olivier lived below the hill of Sainte-Geneviève, in a little street
+near the _Jardin des Plantes_. The house stood in the narrowest part of
+the street. The staircase led out of a dark yard, and was full of divers
+unpleasant smells. The stairs wound steeply up and sloped down towards the
+wall, which was disfigured with scribblings in pencil. On the third floor a
+woman, with gray hair hanging down, and in petticoat-bodice, gaping at the
+neck, opened the door when she heard footsteps on the stairs, and slammed
+it to when she saw Christophe. There were several flats on each landing,
+and through the ill-fitting doors Christophe could hear children romping
+and squalling. The place was a swarming heap of dull base creatures, living
+as it were on shelves, one above the other, in that low-storied house,
+built round a narrow, evil-smelling yard. Christophe was disgusted, and
+wondered what lusts and covetous desires could have drawn so many creatures
+to this place, far from the fields, where at least there is air enough for
+all, and what it could profit them in the end to be in the city of Paris,
+where all their lives they were condemned to live in such a sepulcher.
+
+He reached Olivier's landing. A knotted piece of string was his bell-pull.
+Christophe tugged at it so mightily that at the noise several doors on the
+staircase were half opened. Olivier came to the door. Christophe was struck
+by the careful simplicity of his dress: and the neatness of it, which at
+any other time would have been little to his liking, was in that place an
+agreeable surprise: in such an atmosphere of foulness there was something
+charming and healthy about it. And at once he felt just as he had done the
+night before when he gazed into Olivier's clear, honest eyes. He held out
+his hand: but Olivier was overcome with shyness, and murmured:
+
+"You.... You here!"
+
+Christophe was engrossed in catching at the lovable quality of the man as
+it was revealed to him in that fleeting moment of embarrassment, and he
+only smiled in answer. He moved forward and forced Olivier backward, and
+entered the one room in which he both slept and worked. An iron bedstead
+stood against the wall near the window; Christophe noticed the pillows
+heaped up on the bolster. There were three chairs, a black-painted table, a
+small piano, bookshelves and books, and that was all. The room was cramped,
+low, ill-lighted: and yet there was in it a ray of the pure light that
+shone in the eyes of its owner. Everything was clean and tidy, as though
+a woman's hands had dealt with it: and a few roses in a vase brought
+spring-time into the room, the walls of which were decorated with
+photographs of old Florentine pictures.
+
+"So.... You.... You have come to see me?" said Olivier warmly.
+
+"Good Lord, I had to!" said Christophe. "You would never have come to me?"
+
+"You think not?" replied Olivier.
+
+Then, quickly:
+
+"Yes, you are right. But it would not be for want of thinking of it."
+
+"What would have stopped you?"
+
+"Wanting to too much."
+
+"That's a fine reason!"
+
+"Yes. Don't laugh. I was afraid you would not want it as much as I."
+
+"A lot that's worried me! I wanted to see you, and here I am. If it bores
+you, I shall know at once."
+
+"You will have to have good eyes."
+
+They smiled at each other.
+
+Olivier went on:
+
+"I was an ass last night. I was afraid I might have offended you. My
+shyness is absolutely a disease: I can't get a word out."
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that. There are plenty of talkers in your country:
+one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasionally, even though
+it be only from shyness and in spite of himself."
+
+Christophe laughed and chuckled over his own gibe.
+
+"Then you have come to see me because I can be silent?"
+
+"Yes. For your silence, the sort of silence that is yours. There are all
+sorts: and I like yours, and that's all there is to say."
+
+"But how could you sympathize with me? You hardly saw me."
+
+"That's my affair. It doesn't take me long to make up my mind. When I see a
+face that I like in the crowd, I know what to do: I go after it; I simply
+have to know the owner of it."
+
+"And don't you ever make mistakes when you go after them?"
+
+"Often."
+
+"Perhaps you have made a mistake this time."
+
+"We shall see."
+
+"Ah! In that case I'm done! You terrify me. If I think you are watching me,
+I shall lose what little wits I have."
+
+With fond and eager curiosity Christophe watched the sensitive, mobile
+face, which blushed and went pale by turns. Emotion showed fleeting across
+it like the shadows of clouds on a lake.
+
+"What a nervous youngster it is!" he thought. "He is like a woman."
+
+He touched his knee.
+
+"Come, come!" he said. "Do you think I should come to you with weapons
+concealed about me? I have a horror of people who practise their psychology
+on their friends. I only ask that we should both be open and sincere, and
+frankly and without shame, and without being afraid of committing ourselves
+finally to anything or of any sort of contradiction, be true to what we
+feel. I ask only the right to love now, and next minute, if needs must, to
+be out of love. There's loyalty and manliness in that, isn't there?"
+
+Olivier gazed at him with serious eyes, and replied:
+
+"No doubt. It is the more manly part, and you are strong enough. But I
+don't think I am."
+
+"I'm sure you are," said Christophe; "but in a different way. And then,
+I've come just to help you to be strong, if you want to be so. For what I
+have just said gives me leave to go on and say, with more frankness than I
+should otherwise have had, that--without prejudice for to-morrow--I love
+you."
+
+Olivier blushed hotly. He was struck dumb with embarrassment, and could not
+speak.
+
+Christophe glanced round the room.
+
+"It's a poor place you live in. Haven't you another room?"
+
+"Only a lumber-room."
+
+"Ugh! I can't breathe. How do you manage to live here?"
+
+"One does it somehow."
+
+"I couldn't--never."
+
+Christophe unbuttoned his waistcoat and took a long breath.
+
+Olivier went and opened the window wide.
+
+"You must be very unhappy in a town, M. Krafft. But there's no danger of
+my suffering from too much vitality. I breathe so little that I can live
+anywhere. And yet there are nights in summer when even I am hard put to it
+to get through. I'm terrified when I see them coming. Then I stay sitting
+up in bed, and I'm almost stifled."
+
+Christophe looked at the heap of pillows on the bed, and from them to
+Olivier's worn face: and he could see him struggling there in the darkness.
+
+"Leave it," he said. "Why do you stay?"
+
+Olivier shrugged his shoulders and replied carelessly:
+
+"It doesn't matter where I live."
+
+Heavy footsteps padded across the floor above them. In the room below a
+shrill argument was toward. And always, without ceasing, the walls were
+shaken by the rumbling of the buses in the street.
+
+"And the house!" Christophe went on. "The house reeking of filth, the hot
+dirtiness of it all, the shameful poverty--how can you bring yourself to
+come back to it night after night? Don't you lose heart with it all? I
+couldn't live in it for a moment. I'd rather sleep under an arch."
+
+"Yes. I felt all that at first, and suffered. I was just as disgusted as
+you are. When I went for walks as a boy, the mere sight of some of the
+crowded dirty streets made me ill. They gave me all sorts of fantastic
+horrors, which I dared not speak of. I used to think: 'If there were an
+earthquake now, I should be dead, and stay here for ever and ever'; and
+that seemed to me the most appalling thing that could happen. I never
+thought that one day I should live in one of them of my own free-will, and
+that in all probability I shall die there. And then it became easier to put
+up with: it had to. It still revolts me: but I try not to think of it. When
+I climb the stairs I close my eyes, and stop my ears, and hold my nose, and
+shut off all my senses and withdraw utterly into myself. And then, over the
+roof there, I can see the tops of the branches of an acacia. I sit here in
+this corner so that I don't see anything else: and in the evening when the
+wind rustles through them I fancy that I am far away from Paris: and the
+mighty roar of a forest has never seemed so sweet to me as the gentle
+murmuring of those few frail leaves at certain moments."
+
+"Yes," said Christophe. "I've no doubt that you are always dreaming; but
+it's all wrong to waste your fancy in such a struggle against the sordid
+things of life, when you might be using it in the creation of other lives."
+
+"Isn't it the common lot? Don't you yourself waste energy in anger and
+bitter struggles?"
+
+"That's not the same thing. It's natural to me: what I was born for. Look
+at my arms and hands! Fighting is the breath of life to me. But you haven't
+any too much strength: that's obvious."
+
+Olivier looked sadly down at his thin wrists, and said:
+
+"Yes. I am weak: I always have been. But what can I do? One must live?"
+
+"How do you make your living?"
+
+"I teach."
+
+"Teach what?"
+
+"Everything--Latin, Greek, history. I coach for degrees. And I lecture on
+Moral Philosophy at the Municipal School."
+
+"Lecture on what?"
+
+"Moral Philosophy."
+
+"What in thunder is that? Do they teach morality in French schools?"
+
+Olivier smiled:
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Is there enough in it to keep you talking for ten minutes?"
+
+"I have to lecture for twelve hours a week."
+
+"Do you teach them to do evil, then?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There's no need for so much talk to find out what good is."
+
+"Or to leave it undiscovered either."
+
+"Good gracious, yes! Leave it undiscovered. There are worse ways of doing
+good than knowing nothing about it. Good isn't a matter of knowledge: it's
+a matter of action. It's only your neurasthenics who go haggling about
+morality: and the first of all moral laws is not to be neurasthenic. Rotten
+pedants! They are like cripples teaching people how to walk."
+
+"But they don't do their talking for such as you. You _know_: but there are
+so many who do not know!"
+
+"Well, let them crawl like children until they learn how to walk by
+themselves. But whether they go on two legs or on all fours, the first
+thing, the only thing you can ask is that they should walk somehow."
+
+He was prowling round and round and up and down the room, though less than
+four strides took him across it. He stopped in front of the piano, opened
+it, turned over the pages of some music, touched the keys, and said:
+
+"Play me something."
+
+Olivier started.
+
+"I!" he said. "What an idea!"
+
+"Madame Roussin told me you were a good musician. Come: play me something."
+
+"With you listening? Oh!" he said, "I should die."
+
+The sincerity and simplicity with which he spoke made Christophe laugh:
+Olivier, too, though rather bashfully.
+
+"Well," said Christophe, "is that a reason for a Frenchman?"
+
+Olivier still drew back.
+
+"But why? Why do you want me to?"
+
+"I'll tell you presently. Play!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Anything you like."
+
+Olivier sat down at the piano with a sigh, and, obedient to the imperious
+will of the friend who had sought him out, he began to play the beautiful
+_Adagio in B Minor_ of Mozart. At first his fingers trembled so that he
+could hardly make them press down the keys: but he regained courage little
+by little: and, while he thought he was but repeating Mozart's utterance,
+he unwittingly revealed his inmost heart. Music is an indiscreet confidant:
+it betrays the most secret thoughts of its lovers to those who love it.
+Through the godlike scheme of the _Adagio_ of Mozart Christophe could
+perceive the invisible lines of the character, not of Mozart, but of his
+new friend sitting there by the piano: the serene melancholy, the timid,
+tender smile of the boy, so nervous, so pure, so full of love, so ready
+to blush. But he had hardly reached the end of the air, the topmost point
+where the melody of sorrowful love ascends and snaps, when a sudden
+irrepressible feeling of shame and modesty overcame Olivier, so that he
+could not go on: his fingers would not move, and his voice failed him. His
+hands fell by his side, and he said:
+
+"I can't play any more...."
+
+Christophe was standing behind him, and he stooped and reached over him and
+finished the broken melody: then he said:
+
+"Now I know the music of your soul."
+
+He held his hands, and stayed for a long time gazing into his face. At last
+he said:
+
+"How queer it is!... I have seen you before.... I know you so well, and I
+have known you so long!..."
+
+Olivier's lips trembled: he was on the point of speaking. But he said
+nothing.
+
+Christophe went on gazing at him for a moment or two longer. Then he smiled
+and said no more, and went away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went down the stairs with his heart filled with joy. He passed two ugly
+children going up, one with bread, the other with a bottle of oil. He
+pinched their cheeks jovially. He smiled at the scowling porter. When he
+reached the street he walked along humming to himself until he came to the
+Luxembourg. He lay down on a seat in the shade, and closed his eyes. The
+air was still and heavy: there were only a few passers-by. Very faintly he
+could hear the irregular trickling of the fountain, and every now and then
+the scrunching of the gravel as footsteps passed him by. Christophe was
+overcome with drowsiness, and he lay basking like a lizard in the sun: his
+face had been out of the shadow of the trees for some time: but he could
+not bring himself to stir. His thoughts wound about and about: he made
+no attempt to hold and fix them: they were all steeped in the light of
+happiness. The Luxembourg clock struck: he did not listen to it: but, a
+moment later, he thought it must have been striking twelve. He jumped up
+to realize that he had been lounging for a couple of hours, had missed an
+appointment with Hecht, and wasted the whole morning. He laughed, and went
+home whistling. He composed a _Rondo_ in canon on the cry of a peddler.
+Even sad melodies now took on the charm of the gladness that was in him. As
+he passed the laundry in his street, as usual, he glanced into the shop,
+and saw the little red-haired girl, with her dull complexion flushed with
+the heat, and she was ironing with her thin arms bare to the shoulder and
+her bodice open at the neck: and, as usual, she ogled him brazenly: for the
+first time he was not irritated by her eyes meeting his. He laughed once
+more. When he reached his room he was free of all the obsessions from which
+he had suffered. He flung his hat, coat, and vest in different directions,
+and sat down to work with an all-conquering zest. He gathered together all
+his scattered scraps of music, which were lying all over the room, but his
+mind was not in his work: he only read the script with his eyes: and a few
+minutes later he fell back into the happy somnolence that had been upon him
+in the Luxembourg Gardens; his head buzzed, and he could not think. Twice
+or thrice he became aware of his condition, and tried to shake it off: but
+in vain. He swore light-heartedly, got up, and dipped his head in a basin
+of cold water. That sobered him a little. He sat down at the table again,
+sat in silence, and smiled dreamily. He was wondering:
+
+"What is the difference between that and love?"
+
+Instinctively he had begun to think in whispers, as though he were ashamed.
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"There are not two ways of loving.... Or, rather, yes, there are two ways:
+there is the way of those who love with every fiber of their being, and the
+way of those who only give to love a part of their superfluous energy. God
+keep me from such cowardice of heart!"
+
+He stopped in his thought, from a sort of shame and dread of following it
+any farther. He sat for a long time smiling at his inward dreams. His heart
+sang through the silence:
+
+_Du bist mein, und nun ist das Meine Meiner als jemals..._ ("Thou art mine,
+and now I am mine, more mine than I have ever been....")
+
+He took a sheet of paper, and with tranquil ease wrote down the song that
+was in his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They decided to take rooms together. Christophe wanted to take possession
+at once without worrying about the waste of half a quarter. Olivier was
+more prudent, though not less ardent in their friendship, and thought it
+better to wait until their respective tenancies had expired. Christophe
+could not understand such parsimony. Like many people who have no money, he
+never worried about losing it. He imagined that Olivier was even worse off
+than himself. One day when his friend's poverty had been brought home to
+him he left him suddenly and returned a few hours later in triumph with a
+few francs which he had squeezed in advance out of Hecht. Olivier blushed
+and refused. Christophe was put out and made to throw them to an Italian
+who was playing in the yard. Olivier withheld him. Christophe went away,
+apparently offended, but really furious with his own clumsiness to which he
+attributed Olivier's refusal. A letter from his friend brought balm to his
+wounds. Olivier could write what he could not express by word of mouth:
+he could tell of his happiness in knowing him and how touched he was by
+Christophe's offer of assistance. Christophe replied with a crazy, wild
+letter, rather like those which he wrote when he was fifteen to his friend
+Otto: it was full of _Gemüth_ and blundering jokes: he made puns in French
+and German, and even translated them into music.
+
+At last they went into their rooms. In the Montparnasse quarter, near the
+_Place Denfert_, on the fifth floor of an old house they had found a flat
+of three rooms and a kitchen, all very small, and looking on to a tiny
+garden inclosed by four high walls. From their windows they looked out over
+the opposite wall, which was lower than the rest, on to one of those large
+convent gardens which are still to be found in Paris, hidden and unknown.
+Not a soul was to be seen in the deserted avenues. The old trees, taller
+and more leafy than those in the Luxembourg Gardens, trembled in the
+sunlight: troops of birds sang: in the early dawn the blackbirds fluted,
+and then there came the riotously rhythmic chorus of the sparrows: and
+in summer in the evening the rapturous cries of the swifts cleaving the
+luminous air and skimming through the heavens. And at night, under the
+moon, like bubbles of air mounting to the surface of a pond, there came
+up the pearly notes of the toads. Almost they might have forgotten the
+surrounding presence of Paris but that the old house was perpetually
+shaken by the heavy vehicles rumbling by, as though the earth beneath were
+shivering in a fever.
+
+One of the rooms was larger and finer than the rest, and there was a
+struggle between the friends as to who should not have it. They had to toss
+for it: and Christophe, who had made the suggestion, contrived not to win
+with a dexterity of which he found it hard to believe himself capable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then for the two of them there began a period of absolute happiness. Their
+happiness lay not in any one thing, but in all things at once: their every
+thought, their every act, were steeped in it, and it never left them for a
+moment.
+
+During this honeymoon of their friendship, the first days of deep and
+silent rejoicing, known only to him "who in all the universe can call
+one soul his own" ... _Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele sein nennt auf dem
+Erdenrund_... they hardly spoke to each other, they dared hardly breathe a
+word; it was enough for them to feel each other's nearness, to exchange a
+look, a word in token that their thoughts, after long periods of silence,
+still ran in the same channel. Without probing or inquiring, without
+even looking at each other, yet unceasingly they watched each other.
+Unconsciously the lover takes for model the soul of the beloved: so
+great is his desire to give no hurt, to be in all things as the beloved,
+that with mysterious and sudden intuition he marks the imp...erceptible
+movements in the depths of his soul. One friend to another is
+crystal-clear: they exchange entities. Their features are assimilated. Soul
+imitates soul,--until that day comes when deep-moving force, the spirit of
+the race, bursts his bonds and rends asunder the web of love in which he is
+held captive.
+
+Christophe spoke in low tones, walked softly, tried hard to make no
+noise in his room, which was next to that of the silent Olivier: he
+was transfigured by his friendship: he had an expression of happiness,
+confidence, youth, such as he had never worn before. He adored Olivier.
+It would have been easy for the boy to abuse his power if he had not been
+so timorous in feeling that it was a happiness undeserved: for he thought
+himself much inferior to Christophe, who in his turn was no less humble.
+This mutual humility, the product of their great love for each other,
+was an added joy. It was a pure delight--even with the consciousness of
+unworthiness--for each to feel that he filled so great a room in the heart
+of his friend. Each to other they were tender and filled with gratitude.
+
+Olivier had mixed his books with Christophe's: they made no distinction.
+When he spoke of them he did not say "_my_ book," but "_our_ book." He kept
+back only a few things from the common stock: those which had belonged to
+his sister or were bound up with her memory. With the quick perception of
+love Christophe was not slow to notice this: but he did not know the reason
+of it. He had never dared to ask Olivier about his family: he only knew
+that Olivier had lost his parents: and to the somewhat proud reserve of his
+affection, which forbade his prying into his friend's secrets, there was
+added a fear of calling to life in him the sorrows of the past. Though he
+might long to do so, yet he was strangely timid and never dared to look
+closely at the photographs on Olivier's desk, portraits of a lady and a
+gentleman stiffly posed, and a little girl of twelve with a great spaniel
+at her feet.
+
+A few months after they had taken up their quarters Olivier caught cold and
+had to stay in bed. Christophe, who had become quite motherly, nursed him
+with fond anxiety: and the doctor, who, on examining Olivier, had found
+a little inflammation at the top of the lungs, told Christophe to smear
+the invalid's chest with tincture of iodine. As Christophe was gravely
+acquitting himself of the task he saw a confirmation medal hanging from
+Olivier's neck. He was familiar enough with Olivier to know that he was
+even more emancipated in matters of religion than himself. He could not
+refrain from showing his surprise. Olivier colored and said:
+
+"It is a souvenir. My poor sister Antoinette was wearing it when she died."
+
+Christophe trembled. The name of Antoinette struck him like a flash of
+lightning.
+
+"Antoinette?" he said.
+
+"My sister," said Olivier.
+
+Christophe repeated:
+
+"Antoinette ... Antoinette Jeannin.... She was your sister?... But," he
+said, as he looked at the photograph on the desk, "she was quite a child
+when you lost her?"
+
+Olivier smiled sadly.
+
+"It is a photograph of her as a child," he said. "Alas! I have no other....
+She was twenty-five when she left me."
+
+"Ah!" said Christophe, who was greatly moved. "And she was in Germany, was
+she not?"
+
+Olivier nodded.
+
+Christophe took Olivier's hands in his.
+
+"I knew her," he said.
+
+"Yes, I know," replied Olivier.
+
+And he flung his arms round Christophe's neck.
+
+"Poor girl! Poor girl!" said Christophe over and over again.
+
+They were both in tears.
+
+Christophe remembered then that Olivier was ill. He tried to calm him, and
+made him keep his arms inside the bed, and tucked the clothes up round his
+shoulders, and dried his eyes for him, and then sat down by the bedside and
+looked long at him.
+
+"You see," he said, "that is how I knew you. I recognized you at once, that
+first evening."
+
+(It were hard to tell whether he was speaking of the present or the absent
+friend.)
+
+"But," he went on a moment later, "you knew?... Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+And through Olivier's eyes Antoinette replied:
+
+"I could not tell you. You had to see it for yourself."
+
+They said nothing for some time: then, in the silence of the night,
+Olivier, lying still in bed, in a low voice told Christophe, who held
+his hand, poor Antoinette's story:--but he did not tell him what he had
+no right to tell; the secret that she had kept locked,--the secret that
+perhaps Christophe knew already without needing to be told.
+
+From, that time on the soul of Antoinette was ever near them. When they
+were together she was with them. They had no need to think of her: every
+thought they shared was shared with her too. Her love was the meeting-place
+wherein their two hearts were united.
+
+Often Olivier would conjure up the image of her: scraps of memory and brief
+anecdotes. In their fleeting light they gave a glimpse of her shy, gracious
+gestures, her grave, young smile, the pensive, wistful grace that was so
+natural to her. Christophe would listen without a word and let the light of
+the unseen friend pierce to his very soul. In obedience to the law of his
+own nature, which everywhere and always drank in life more greedily than
+any other, he would sometimes hear in Olivier's words depths of sound which
+Olivier himself could not hear: and more than Olivier he would assimilate
+the essence of the girl who was dead.
+
+Instinctively he supplied her place in Olivier's life: and it was a
+touching sight to see the awkward German hap unwittingly on certain of the
+delicate attentions and little mothering ways of Antoinette. Sometimes
+he could not tell whether it was Olivier that he loved in Antoinette or
+Antoinette in Olivier. Sometimes on a tender impulse, without saying
+anything, he would go and visit Antoinette's grave and lay flowers on it.
+It was some time before Olivier had any idea of it. He did not discover it
+until one day when he found fresh flowers on the grave: but he had some
+difficulty in proving that it was Christophe who had laid them there. When
+he tried bashfully to speak about it Christophe cut him short roughly and
+abruptly. He did not want Olivier to know: and he stuck to it until one day
+when they met in the cemetery at Ivry.
+
+Olivier, on his part, used to write to Christophe's mother without letting
+him know. He gave Louisa news of her son, and told her how fond he was
+of him and how he admired him. Louisa would send Olivier awkward, humble
+letters in which she thanked him profusely: she used always to write of her
+son as though he were a little boy.
+
+After a period of fond semi-silence--"a delicious time of peace and
+enjoyment without knowing why,"--their tongues were loosed. They spent
+hours in voyages of discovery, each in the other's soul.
+
+They were very different, but they were both pure metal. They loved each
+other because they were so different though so much the same.
+
+Olivier was weak, delicate, incapable of fighting against difficulties.
+When he came up against an obstacle he drew back, not from fear, but
+something from timidity, and more from disgust with the brutal and coarse
+means he would have to employ to overcome it. He earned his living by
+giving classes, and writing art-books, shamefully underpaid, as usual, and
+occasionally articles for reviews, in which he never had a free hand and
+had to deal with subjects in which he was not greatly interested:--there
+was no demand for the things that did interest him: he was never asked
+for the sort of thing he could do best: he was a poet and was asked
+for criticism: he knew something about music and he had to write about
+painting: he knew quite well that he could only say mediocre things, which
+was just what people liked, for there he could speak to mediocre minds in a
+language which they could understand. He grew disgusted with it all and
+refused to write. He had no pleasure except in writing for certain obscure
+periodicals, which never paid anything, and, like so many other young men,
+he devoted his talents to them because they left him a free hand. Only in
+their pages could he publish what was worthy of publicity.
+
+He was gentle, well-mannered, seemingly patient, though he was excessively
+sensitive. A harsh word drew blood: injustice overwhelmed him: he suffered
+both on his own account and for others. Certain crimes, committed ages ago,
+still had the power to rend him as though he himself had been their victim.
+He would go pale, and shudder, and be utterly miserable as he thought how
+wretched he must have been who suffered them, and how many ages cut him off
+from his sympathy. When any unjust deed was done before his eyes he would
+be wild with indignation and tremble all over, and sometimes become quite
+ill and lose his sleep. It was because he knew his weakness that he drew on
+his mask of calmness: for when he was angry he knew that he went beyond all
+limits and was apt to say unpardonable things. People were more resentful
+with him than with Christophe, who was always violent, because it seemed
+that in moments of anger Olivier, much more than Christophe, expressed
+exactly what he thought: and that was true. He judged men and women without
+Christophe's blind exaggeration, but lucidly and without his illusions. And
+that is precisely what people do pardon the least readily. In such cases
+he would say nothing and avoid discussion, knowing its futility. He had
+suffered from this restraint. He had suffered more from his timidity, which
+sometimes led him to betray his thoughts, or deprived him of the courage to
+defend his thoughts conclusively, and even to apologize for them, as had
+happened in the argument with Lucien Lévy-Coeur about Christophe. He had
+passed through many crises of despair before he had been able to strike
+a compromise between himself and the rest of the world. In his youth and
+budding manhood, when his nerves were not hopelessly out of order, he
+lived in a perpetual alternation of periods of exaltation and periods of
+depression which came and went with horrible suddenness. Just when he was
+feeling most at his ease and even happy he was very certain that sorrow was
+lying in wait for him. And suddenly it would lay him low without giving
+any warning of its coming. And it was not enough for him to be unhappy: he
+had to blame himself for his unhappiness, and hold an inquisition into his
+every word and deed, and his honesty, and take the side of other people
+against himself. His heart would throb in his bosom, he would struggle
+miserably, and he would scarcely be able to breathe.--Since the death of
+Antoinette, and perhaps thanks to her, thanks to the peace-giving light
+that issues from the beloved dead, as the light of dawn brings refreshment
+to the eyes and soul of those who are sick, Olivier had contrived, if
+not to break away from these difficulties, at least to be resigned to
+them and to master them. Very few had any idea of his inward struggles.
+The humiliating secret was locked up in his breast, all the immoderate
+excitement of a weak, tormented body, surveyed serenely by a free and keen
+intelligence which could not master it, though it was never touched by
+it,--"_the central peace which endures amid the endless agitation of the
+heart_."
+
+Christophe marked it. This it was that he saw in Olivier's eyes. Olivier
+had an intuitive perception of the souls of men, and a mind of a wide,
+subtle curiosity that was open to everything, denied nothing, hated
+nothing, and contemplated the world and things with generous sympathy: that
+freshness of outlook, which is a priceless gift, granting the power to
+taste with a heart that is always new the eternal renewal and re-birth. In
+that inward universe, wherein he knew himself to be free, vast, sovereign,
+he could forget his physical weakness and agony. There was even a certain
+pleasure in watching from a great height, with ironic pity, that poor
+suffering body which seemed always so near the point of death. So there was
+no danger of his clinging to _his_ life, and only the more passionately did
+he hug life itself. Olivier translated into the region of love and mind all
+the forces which in action he had abdicated. He had not enough vital sap to
+live by his own substance. He was as ivy: it was needful for him to cling.
+He was never so rich as when he gave himself. His was a womanish soul with
+its eternal need of loving and being loved. He was born for Christophe, and
+Christophe for him. Such are the aristocratic and charming friends who are
+the escorts of the great artists and seem to have come to flower in the
+lives of their mighty souls: Beltraffio, the friend of Leonardo: Cavalliere
+of Michael Angelo: the gentle Umbrians, the comrades of young Raphael: Aërt
+van Gelder, who remained faithful to Rembrandt in his poor old age. They
+have not the greatness of the masters: but it is as though all the purity
+and nobility of the masters in their friends were raised to a yet higher
+spiritual power. They are the ideal companions for men of genius.
+
+Their friendship was profitable to both of them. Love lends wings to the
+soul. The presence of the beloved friend gives all its worth to life: a man
+lives for his friend and for his sake defends his soul's integrity against
+the wearing force of time.
+
+Each enriched the other's nature. Olivier had serenity of mind and a sickly
+body. Christophe had mighty strength and a stormy soul. They were in some
+sort like a blind man and a cripple. Now that they were together they felt
+sound and strong. Living in the shadow of Christophe Olivier recovered his
+joy in the light: Christophe transmitted to him something of his abounding
+vitality, his physical and moral robustness, which, even in sorrow, even in
+injustice, even in hate, inclined to optimism. He took much more than he
+gave, in obedience to the law of genius, which gives in vain, but in love
+always takes more than it gives, _quia nominor leo_, because it is genius,
+and genius half consists in the instinctive absorption of all that is great
+in its surroundings and making it greater still. The vulgar saying has it
+that riches go to the rich. Strength goes to the strong. Christophe fed on
+Olivier's ideas: he impregnated himself with his intellectual calmness and
+mental detachment, his lofty outlook, his silent understanding and mastery
+of things. But when they were transplanted into him, the richer soil, the
+virtues of his friend grew with a new and other energy.
+
+They both marveled at the things they discovered in each other. There were
+so many things to share! Each brought vast treasures of which till then he
+had never been conscious: the moral treasure of his nation: Olivier the
+wide culture and the psychological genius of France: Christophe the innate
+music of Germany and his intuitive knowledge of nature.
+
+Christophe could not understand how Olivier could be a Frenchman. His
+friend was so little like all the Frenchmen he had met! Before he found
+Olivier he had not been far from taking Lucien Lévy-Coeur as the type of
+the modern French mind, Lévy-Coeur who was no more than the caricature of
+it. And now through Olivier he saw that there might be in Paris minds just
+as free, more free indeed than that of Lucien Lévy-Coeur, men who remained
+as pure and stoical as any in Europe. Christophe tried to prove to Olivier
+that he and his sister could not be altogether French.
+
+"My poor dear fellow," said Olivier, "what do you know of France?"
+
+Christophe avowed the trouble he had taken to gain some knowledge of the
+country: he drew up a list of all the Frenchmen he had met in the circle
+of the Stevens and the Roussins: Jews, Belgians, Luxemburgers, Americans,
+Russians, Levantines, and here and there a few authentic Frenchmen.
+
+"Just what I was saying," replied Olivier. "You haven't seen a single
+Frenchman. A group of debauchees, a few beasts of pleasure, who are not
+even French, men-about-town, politicians, useless creatures, all the fuss
+and flummery which passes over and above the life of the nation without
+even touching it. You have only seen the swarms of wasps attracted by a
+fine autumn and the rich meadows. You haven't noticed the busy hives, the
+industrious city, the thirst for knowledge."
+
+"I beg pardon," said Christophe, "I've come across your intellectual élite
+as well."
+
+"What? A few dozen men of letters? They're a fine lot! Nowadays when
+science and action play so great a part literature has become superficial,
+no more than the bed where the thought of the people sleeps. And in
+literature you have only come across the theater, the theater of luxury,
+an international kitchen where dishes are turned out for the wealthy
+customers of the cosmopolitan hotels. The theaters of Paris? Do you think
+a working-man even knows what is being done in them? Pasteur did not go
+to them ten times in all his life! Like all foreigners you attach an
+exaggerated importance to our novels, and our boulevard plays, and the
+intrigues of our politicians.... If you like I will show you women who
+never read novels, girls in Paris who have never been to the theater,
+men who have never bothered their heads about politics,--yes, even among
+our intellectuals. You have not come across either our men of science or
+our poets. You have not discovered the solitary artists who languish in
+silence, nor the burning flame of our revolutionaries. You have not seen
+a single great believer, or a single great skeptic. As for the people, we
+won't talk of them. Outside the poor woman who looked after you, what do
+you know of them? Where have you had a chance of seeing them? How many
+Parisians have you met who have lived higher than the second or third
+floor? If you do not know these people, you do not know France. You
+know nothing of the brave true hearts, the men and women living in poor
+lodgings, in the garrets of Paris, in the dumb provinces, men' and women
+who, through a dull, drab life, think grave thoughts, and live in daily
+sacrifice,--the little Church, which has always existed in France--small in
+numbers, great in spirit, almost unknown, having no outward or apparent
+force of action, though it is the very force of France, that might which
+endures in silence, while the so-called élite rots away and springs to life
+again unceasingly.... You are amazed when you find a Frenchman who lives
+not for the sake of happiness, happiness at all costs, but to accomplish or
+to serve his faith? There are thousands of men like myself, men more worthy
+than myself, more pious, more humble, men who to their dying day live
+unfailingly to serve an ideal, a God, who vouchsafes them no reply. You
+know nothing of the thrifty, methodical, industrious, tranquil middle-class
+living with a quenchless dormant flame in their hearts--the people betrayed
+and sacrificed who in old days defended 'my country' against the selfish
+arrogance of the great, the blue-eyed ancient race of Vauban. You do not
+know the people, you do not know the élite. Have you read a single one of
+the books which are our faithful friends, the companions who support us in
+our lives? Do you even know of the existence of our young reviews in which
+such great faith and devotion are expressed? Have you any idea of the men
+of moral might and worth who are as the sun to us, the sun whose voiceless
+light strikes terror to the army of the hypocrites? They dare not make
+a frontal attack: they bow before them, the better to betray them. The
+hypocrite is a slave, and there is no slave but he has a master. You know
+only the slaves: you know nothing of the masters.... You have watched our
+struggles and they have seemed to you brutish and unmeaning because you
+have not understood their aim. You see the shadow, the reflected light of
+day: you have never seen the inward day, our age-old immemorial spirit.
+Have you ever tried to perceive it? Have you ever heard of our heroic deeds
+from the Crusades to the Commune? Have you ever seen and felt the tragedy
+of the French spirit? Have you ever stood at the brink of the abyss of
+Pascal? How dare you slander a people who for more than a thousand years
+have been living in action and creation, a people that has graven the world
+in its own image through Gothic art, and the seventeenth century, and the
+Revolution,--a people that has twenty times passed through the ordeal of
+fire, and plunged into it again, and twenty times has come to life again
+and never yet has perished!...--You are all the same. All your countrymen
+who come among us see only the parasites who suck our blood, literary,
+political, and financial adventurers, with their minions and their
+hangers-on and their harlots: and they judge France by these wretched
+creatures who prey on her. Not one of you has any idea of the real France
+living under oppression, or of the reserve of vitality in the French
+provinces, or of the great mass of the people who go on working heedless of
+the uproar and pother made by their masters of a day.... Yes: it is only
+natural that you should know nothing of all this: I do not blame you: how
+could you? Why, France is hardly at all known to the French. The best of
+us are bound down and held captive to our native soil.... No one will ever
+know all that we have suffered, we who have guarded as a sacred charge the
+light in our hearts which we have received from the genius of our race, to
+which we cling with all our might, desperately defending it against the
+hostile winds that strive blusteringly to snuff it out;--we are alone and
+in our nostrils stinks the pestilential atmosphere of these harpies who
+have swarmed about our genius like a thick cloud of flies, whose hideous
+grubs gnaw at our minds and defile our hearts:--we are betrayed by those
+whose duty it is to defend us, our leaders, our idiotic and cowardly
+critics, who fawn upon the enemy, to win pardon for being of our race:--we
+are deserted by the people who give no thought to us and do not even know
+of our existence.... By what means can we make ourselves known to them? We
+cannot reach them.... Ah! that is the hardest thing of all! We know that
+there are thousands of men in France who all think as we do, we know that
+we speak in their name, and we cannot gain a hearing! Everything is in the
+hands of the enemy: newspapers, reviews, theaters.... The Press scurries
+away from ideas or admits them only as an instrument of pleasure or a party
+weapon. The cliques and coteries will only suffer us to break through on
+condition that we degrade ourselves. We are crushed by poverty and
+overwork. The politicians, pursuing nothing but wealth, are only interested
+in that section of the public which they can buy. The middle-class is
+selfish and indifferent, and unmoved sees us perish. The people know
+nothing of our existence: even those who are fighting the same fight like
+us are cut off by silence and do not know that we exist, and we do not know
+that they exist.... Ill-omened Paris! No doubt good also has come of it--by
+gathering together all the forces of the French mind and genius. But the
+evil it has done is at least equal to the good: and in a time like the
+present the good quickly turns to evil. A pseudo-élite fastens on Paris
+and blows the loud trumpet of publicity and the voices of all the rest of
+France are drowned. More than that: France herself is deceived by it: she
+is scared and silent and fearfully locks away her own ideas.... There was a
+time when it hurt me dreadfully. But now, Christophe, I can bear it calmly.
+I know and understand my own strength and the might of my people. We must
+wait until the flood dies down. It cannot touch or change the bed-rock of
+France. I will make you feel that bed-rock under the mud that is borne
+onward by the flood. And even now, here and there, there are lofty peaks
+appearing above the waters...."
+
+Christophe discovered the mighty power of idealism which animated the
+French poets, musicians, and men of science of his time. While the
+temporary masters of the country with their coarse sensuality drowned the
+voice of the French genius, it showed itself too aristocratic to vie with
+the presumptuous shouts of the rabble and sang on with burning ardor in
+its own praise and the praise of its God. It was as though in its desire
+to escape the revolting uproar of the outer world it had withdrawn to the
+farthest refuge in the innermost depths of its castle-keep.
+
+The poets--that is, those only who were worthy of that splendid name, so
+bandied by the Press and the Academies and doled out to divers windbags
+greedy of money and flattery--the poets, despising impudent rhetoric
+and that slavish realism which nibbles at the surface of things without
+penetrating to reality, had intrenched themselves in the very center of
+the soul, in a mystic vision into which was drawn the universe of form
+and idea, like a torrent falling into a lake, there to take on the color
+of the inward life. The very intensity of this idealism, which withdrew
+into itself to recreate the universe, made it inaccessible to the mob.
+Christophe himself did not understand it at first. The transition was
+too abrupt after the market-place. It was as though he had passed from a
+furious rush and scramble in the hot sunlight into silence and the night.
+His ears buzzed. He could see nothing. At first, with his ardent love of
+life, he was shocked by the contrast. Outside was the roaring of the
+rushing streams of passion overturning France and stirring all humanity.
+And at the first glance there was not a trace of it in this art of theirs.
+Christophe asked Olivier:
+
+"You have been lifted to the stars and hurled down to the depths of hell by
+your Dreyfus affair. Where is the poet in whose soul the height and depth
+of it were felt? Now, at this very moment, in the souls of your religious
+men and women there is the mightiest struggle there has been for centuries
+between the authority of the Church and the rights of conscience. Where is
+the poet in whose soul this sacred agony is reflected? The working classes
+are preparing for war, nations are dying, nations are springing to new
+life, the Armenians are massacred, Asia, awaking from its sleep of a
+thousand years, hurls down the Muscovite colossus, the keeper of the keys
+of Europe: Turkey, like Adam, opens its eyes on the light of day: the air
+is conquered by man: the old earth cracks under our feet and opens: it
+devours a whole people.... All these prodigies, accomplished in twenty
+years, enough to supply material for twenty _Iliads_: but where are they,
+where shall their fiery traces be found in the books of your poets? Are
+they of all men unable to see the poetry of the world?"
+
+"Patience, my friend, patience!" replied Olivier. "Be silent, say nothing,
+listen...."
+
+Slowly the creaking of the axle-tree of the world died away and the
+rumbling over the stones of the heavy car of action was lost in the
+distance. And there arose the divine song of silence....
+
+  _The hum of bees, and the perfume of the limes....
+  The wind,
+  With his golden lips kissing the earth of the plains...
+  The soft sound of the rain and the scent of the roses._
+
+There rang out the hammer and chisel of the poets carving the sides of a
+vase with
+
+  _The fine majesty of simple things,_
+
+solemn, joyous life,
+
+  _With its flutes of gold and flutes of ebony,_
+
+religious joy, faith welling up like a fountain of souls
+
+  _For whom the very darkness is clear,..._
+
+and great sweet sorrow, giving comfort and smiling,
+
+  _With her austere face from which there shines
+  A clearness beyond nature,..._
+
+and
+
+  _Death serene with her great, soft eyes._
+
+A symphony of harmonious and pure voices. Not one of them had the full
+sonorousness of such national trumpets as were Corneille and Hugo: but how
+much deeper and more subtle in expression was their music! The richest
+music in Europe of to-day.
+
+Olivier said to Christophe, who was silent:
+
+"Do you understand now?"
+
+Christophe in his turn bade him be silent. In spite of himself, and
+although he preferred more manly music, yet he drank in the murmuring of
+the woods and fountains of the soul which came whispering to his ears. Amid
+the passing struggles of the nations they sang the eternal youth of the
+world, the
+
+  _Sweet goodness of Beauty._
+
+While humanity,
+
+  _Screaming with terror and yelping its complaint
+  Marched round and round a barren gloomy field,_
+
+while millions of men and women wore themselves out in wrangling for the
+bloody rags of liberty, the fountains and the woods sang on:
+
+  "Free!... Free!... _Sanctus, Sanctus...._"
+
+And yet they slept not in any dream selfishly serene. In the choir of the
+poets there were not wanting tragic voices: voices of pride, voices of
+love, voices of agony.
+
+A blind hurricane, mad, intoxicated
+
+  _With its own rough force or gentleness profound,_
+
+tumultuous forces, the epic of the illusions of those who sing the wild
+fever of the crowd, the conflicts of human gods, the breathless toilers,
+
+  _Faces inky black and golden peering through darkness and mist,
+  Muscular backs stretching, or suddenly crouching
+  Round mighty furnaces and gigantic anvils..._
+
+forging the City of the Future.
+
+In the flickering light and shadow falling on the glaciers of the mind
+there was the heroic bitterness of those solitary souls which devour
+themselves with desperate joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Many of the characteristics of these idealists seemed to the German more
+German than French. But all of them had the love for the "fine speech of
+France" and the sap of the myths of Greece ran through their poetry. Scenes
+of France and daily life were by some hidden magic transformed in their
+eyes into visions of Attica. It was as though antique souls had come to
+life again in these twentieth-century Frenchmen, and longed to fling off
+their modern garments to appear again in their lovely nakedness.
+
+Their poetry as a whole gave out the perfume of a rich civilization that
+has ripened through the ages, a perfume such as could not be found anywhere
+else in Europe. It were impossible to forget it once it had been breathed.
+It attracted foreign artists from every country in the world. They became
+French poets, almost bigotedly French: and French classical art had no more
+fervent disciples than these Anglo-Saxons and Flemings and Greeks.
+
+Christophe, under Olivier's guidance, was impregnated with the pensive
+beauty of the Muse of France, while in his heart he found the aristocratic
+lady a little too intellectual for his liking, and preferred a pretty girl
+of the people, simple, healthy, robust, who thinks and argues less, but is
+more concerned with love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same _odor di bellezza_ arose from all French art, as the scent of ripe
+strawberries and raspberries ascends from autumn woods warmed by the sun.
+French music was like one of those little strawberry plants, hidden in
+the grass, the scent of which sweetens all the air of the woods. At first
+Christophe had passed it by without seeing it, for in his own country
+he had been used to whole thickets of music, much fuller and bearing
+more brilliant fruits. But now the delicate perfume made him turn: with
+Olivier's help among the stones and brambles and dead leaves which usurped
+the name of music, he discovered the subtle and ingenuous art of a handful
+of musicians. Amid the marshy fields and the factory chimneys of democracy,
+in the heart of the Plaine-Saint-Denis, in a little magic wood fauns were
+dancing blithely. Christophe was amazed to hear the ironic and serene notes
+of their flutes which were like nothing he had ever heard:
+
+  "_A little reed sufficed for me
+  To make the tall grass quiver,
+  And all the meadow,
+  The willows sweet.
+  And the singing stream also:
+  A little reed sufficed, for me
+  To make the forest sing._"
+
+Beneath the careless grace and the seeming dilettantism of their little
+piano pieces, and songs, and French chamber-music, which German art
+never deigned to notice, while Christophe himself had hitherto failed to
+see the poetic accomplishment of it all, he now began to see the fever
+of renovation, and the uneasiness,--unknown on the other side of the
+Rhine,--with which French musicians were seeking in the unfilled fields
+of their art the germs from which the future might grow. While German
+musicians sat stolidly in the encampments of their forebears, and
+arrogantly claimed to stay the evolution of the world at the barrier of
+their past victories, the world was moving onwards: and in the van the
+French plunged onward to discovery: they explored the distant realms of
+art, dead suns and suns lit up once more, and vanished Greece, and the Far
+East, after its age-long slumber, once more opening its slanting eyes, full
+of vasty dreams, upon the light of day. In the music of the West, run off
+into channels by the genius of order and classic reason, they opened up the
+sluices of the ancient fashions: into their Versailles pools they turned
+all the waters of the universe: popular melodies and rhythms, exotic and
+antique scales, new or old beats and intervals. Just as, before them, the
+impressionist painters had opened up a new world to the eyes,--Christopher
+Columbuses of light,--so the musicians were rushing on to the conquest of
+the world of Sound; they pressed on into mysterious recesses of the world
+of Hearing: they discovered new lands in that inward ocean. It was more
+than probable that they would do nothing with their conquests. As usual the
+French were the harbingers of the world.
+
+Christophe admired the initiative of their music born of yesterday and
+already marching in the van of art. What valiance there was in the elegant
+tiny little creature! He found indulgence for the follies that he had
+lately seen in her. Only those who attempt nothing never make mistakes.
+But error struggling on towards the living truth is more fruitful and more
+blessed than dead truth.
+
+Whatever the results, the effort was amazing. Olivier showed Christophe the
+work done in the last thirty-five years, and the amount of energy expended
+in raising French music from the void in which it had slumbered before
+1870: no symphonic school, no profound culture, no traditions, no masters,
+no public: the whole reduced to poor Berlioz, who died of suffocation and
+weariness. And now Christophe felt a great respect for those who had been
+the laborers in the national revival: he had no desire now to jeer at their
+esthetic narrowness or their lack of genius. They had created something
+much greater than music: a musical people. Among all the great toilers who
+had forged the new French music one man was especially dear to him: César
+Franck, who died without seeing the victory for which he had paved the way,
+and yet, like old Schütz, through the darkest years of French art, had
+preserved intact the treasure of his faith and the genius of his race. It
+was a moving thing to see: amid pleasure-seeking Paris, the angelic master,
+the saint of music, in a life of poverty and work despised, preserving the
+unimpeachable serenity of his patient soul, whose smile of resignation lit
+up his music in which is such great goodness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Christophe, knowing nothing of the depths of the life of France, this
+great artist, adhering to his faith in the midst of a country of atheists,
+was a phenomenon, almost a miracle.
+
+But Olivier would gently shrug his shoulders and ask if any other country
+in Europe could show a painter so wholly steeped in the spirit of the Bible
+as François Millet;--a man of science more filled with burning faith and
+humility than the clear-sighted Pasteur, bowing down before the idea of the
+infinite, and, when that idea possessed his mind, "in bitter agony"--as he
+himself has said--"praying that his reason might be spared, so near it was
+to toppling over into the sublime madness of Pascal." Their deep-rooted
+Catholicism was no more a bar in the way of the heroic realism of the first
+of these two men, than of the passionate reason of the other, who, sure of
+foot and not deviating by one step, went his way through "the circles of
+elementary nature, the great night of the infinitely little, the ultimate
+abysses of creation, in which life is born." It was among the people of the
+provinces, from which they sprang, that they had found this faith, which is
+for ever brooding on the soil of France, while in vain do windy demagogues
+struggle to deny it. Olivier knew well that faith: it had lived in his own
+heart and mind.
+
+He revealed to Christophe the magnificent movement towards a Catholic
+revival, which had been going on for the last twenty-five years, the mighty
+effort of the Christian idea in France to wed reason, liberty, and life:
+the splendid priests who had the courage, as one of their number said, "to
+have themselves baptized as men," and were claiming for Catholicism the
+right to understand everything and to join in every honest idea: for "every
+honest idea, even when it is mistaken, is sacred and divine": the thousands
+of young Catholics banded by the generous vow to build a Christian
+Republic, free, pure, in brotherhood, open to all men of good-will: and, in
+spite of the odious attacks, the accusations of heresy, the treachery on
+all sides, right and left,--(especially on the right),--which these great
+Christians had to suffer, the intrepid little legion advancing towards the
+rugged defile which leads to the future, serene of front, resigned to all
+trials and tribulations, knowing that no enduring edifice can be built,
+except it be welded together with tears and blood.
+
+The same breath of living idealism and passionate liberalism brought new
+life to the other religions in France. The vast slumbering bodies of
+Protestantism and Judaism were thrilling with new life. All in generous
+emulation had set themselves to create the religion of a free humanity
+which should sacrifice neither its power for reason, nor its power for
+enthusiasm.
+
+This religious exaltation was not the privilege of the religious: it
+was the very soul of the revolutionary movement. There it assumed a
+tragic character. Till now Christophe had only seen the lowest form of
+socialism,--that of the politicians who dangled in front of the eyes of
+their famished constituents the coarse and childish dreams of Happiness,
+or, to be frank, of universal Pleasure, which Science in the hands of
+Power could, according to them, procure. Against such revolting optimism
+Christophe saw the furious mystic reaction of the élite arise to lead the
+Syndicates of the working-classes on to battle. It was a summons to "war,
+which engenders the sublime," to heroic war "which alone can give the dying
+worlds a goal, an aim, an ideal." These great Revolutionaries, spitting
+out such "bourgeois, peddling, peace-mongering, English" socialism, set up
+against it a tragic conception of the universe, "whose law is antagonism,"
+since it lives by sacrifice, perpetual sacrifice, eternally renewed.--If
+there was reason to doubt that the army, which these leaders urged on to
+the assault upon the old world, could understand such warlike mysticism,
+which applied both Kant and Nietzsche to violent action, nevertheless it
+was a stirring sight to see the revolutionary aristocracy, whose blind
+pessimism, and furious desire for heroic life, and exalted faith in war and
+sacrifice, were like the militant religious ideal of some Teutonic Order or
+the Japanese Samurai.
+
+And yet they were all Frenchmen: they were of a French stock whose
+characteristics have endured unchanged for centuries. Seeing with
+Olivier's eyes Christophe marked them in the tribunes and proconsuls of
+the Convention, in certain of the thinkers and men of action and French
+reformers of the _Ancien Régime_. Calvinists, Jansenists, Jacobins,
+Syndicalists, in all there was the same spirit of pessimistic idealism,
+struggling against nature, without illusions and without loss of
+courage:--the iron bands which uphold the nation.
+
+Christophe drank in the breath of these mystic struggles, and he began to
+understand the greatness of that fanaticism, into which France brought
+uncompromising faith and honesty, such as were absolutely unknown to
+other nations more familiar with _combinazioni_. Like all foreigners
+it had pleased him at first to be flippant about the only too obvious
+contradiction between the despotic temper of the French and the magic
+formula which their Republic wrote up on the walls of their buildings. Now
+for the first time he began to grasp the meaning of the bellicose Liberty
+which they adored as the terrible sword of Reason. No: it was not for
+them, as he had thought, mere sounding rhetoric and vague ideology. Among
+a people for whom the demands of reason transcend all others the fight for
+reason dominated every other. What did it matter whether the fight appeared
+absurd to nations who called themselves practical? To eyes that see deeply
+it is no less vain to fight for empire, or money, or the conquest of the
+world: in a million years there will be nothing left of any of these
+things. But if it is the fierceness of the fight that gives its worth to
+life, and uplifts all the living forces to the point of sacrifice to a
+superior Being, then there are few struggles that do more honor life than
+the eternal battle waged in France for or against reason. And for those who
+have tasted the bitter savor of it the much-vaunted apathetic tolerance
+of the Anglo-Saxons is dull and unmanly. The Anglo-Saxons paid for it by
+finding elsewhere an outlet for their energy. Their energy is not in their
+tolerance, which is only great when, between factions, it becomes heroism.
+In Europe of to-day it is most often indifference, want of faith, want of
+vitality. The English, adapting a saying of Voltaire, are fain to boast
+that "diversity of belief has produced more tolerance in England" than the
+Revolution has done in France.--The reason is that there is more faith in
+the France of the Revolution than in all the creeds of England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the circle of brass of militant idealism and the battles of
+Reason,--like Virgil leading Dante, Olivier led Christophe by the hand to
+the summit of the mountain where, silent and serene, dwelt the small band
+of the elect of France who were really free.
+
+Nowhere in the world are there men more free. They have the serenity of a
+bird soaring in the still air. On such a height the air was so pure and
+rarefied that Christophe could hardly breathe. There he met artists who
+claimed the absolute and limitless liberty of dreams,--men of unbridled
+subjectivity, like Flaubert, despising "the poor beasts who believe in
+the reality of things":--thinkers, who, with supple and many-sided minds,
+emulating the endless flow of moving things, went on "ceaselessly trickling
+and flowing," staying nowhere, nowhere coming in contact with stubborn
+earth or rock, and "depicted not the essence of life, but the _passage_,"
+as Montaigne said, "the eternal passage, from day to day, from minute to
+minute";--men of science who knew the emptiness and void of the universe,
+wherein man has builded his idea, his God, his art, his science, and went
+on creating the world and its laws, that vivid day's dream. They did not
+demand of science either rest, or happiness, or even truth:--for they
+doubted whether it were attainable: they loved it for itself, because it
+was beautiful, because it alone was beautiful, and it alone was real.
+On the topmost pinnacles of thought these men of science, passionately
+Pyrrhonistic, indifferent to all suffering, all deceit, almost indifferent
+to reality, listened, with closed eyes, to the silent music of souls,
+the delicate and grand harmony of numbers and forms. These great
+mathematicians, these free philosophers,--the most rigorous and positive
+minds in the world,--had reached the uttermost limit of mystic ecstasy:
+they created a void about themselves, they hung over the abyss, they were
+drunk with its dizzy depths: into the boundless night with joy sublime they
+flashed the lightnings of thought.
+
+Christophe leaned forward and tried to look over as they did: and his head
+swam. He who thought himself free because he had broken away from all laws
+save those of his own conscience, now became fearfully conscious of how
+little he was free compared with these Frenchmen who were emancipated from
+every absolute law of mind, from every categorical imperative, from every
+reason for living. Why, then, did they live?
+
+"For the joy of being free," replied Olivier.
+
+But Christophe, who was unsteadied by such liberty, thought regretfully of
+the mighty spirit of discipline and German authoritarianism: and he said:
+
+"Your joy is a snare, the dream of an opium-smoker. You make yourselves
+drunk with liberty, and forget life. Absolute liberty means madness to the
+mind, anarchy to the State ... Liberty! What man is free in this world?
+What man in your Republic is free?--Only the knaves. You, the best of the
+nation, are stilled. You can do nothing but dream. Soon you will not be
+able even to dream."
+
+"No matter!" said Olivier. "My poor dear Christophe, you cannot know the
+delight of being free. It is worth while paying for it with so much danger,
+and suffering, and even death. To be free, to feel that every mind about
+you--yes, even the knave's--is free, is a delicious pleasure which it is
+impossible to express: it is as though your soul were soaring through
+the infinite air. It could not live otherwise. What should I do with the
+security you offer me, and your order and your impeccable discipline,
+locked up in the four walls of your Imperial barracks? I should die of
+suffocation. Air! give me air, more and more of it! Liberty, more and more
+of that!"
+
+"There must be law in the world," replied Christophe. "Sooner or later the
+master cometh."
+
+But Olivier laughed and reminded Christophe of the saying of old Pierre de
+l'Estoile:
+
+  _It is as little in the power of all the
+  dominions of the earth to curb the French
+  liberty of speech, as
+  to bury the sun in the earth
+  or to shut it up
+  inside a
+  hole._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gradually Christophe grew accustomed to the air of boundless liberty. From
+the lofty heights of French thought, where those minds dream that are all
+light, he looked down upon the slopes of the mountain at his feet, where
+the heroic elect, fighting for a living faith, whatever faith it be,
+struggle eternally to reach the summit:--those who wage the holy war
+against ignorance, disease, and poverty: the fever of invention, the mental
+delirium of the modern Prometheus and Icarus conquering the light and
+marking out roads in the air: the Titanic struggle between Science and
+Nature, being tamed;--lower down, the little silent band, the men and women
+of good faith, those brave and humble hearts, who, after a thousand
+efforts, have climbed half-way, and can climb no farther, being held bound
+in a dull and difficult existence, while in secret they burn away in
+obscure devotion:--lower still, at the foot of the mountain, in a narrow
+gorge between rocky crags, the endless battle, the fanatics of abstract
+ideas and blind instincts, fiercely wrestling, with never a suspicion that
+there may be something beyond, above the wall of rocks which hems them
+in:--still lower, swamps and brutish beasts wallowing in the mire.--And
+everywhere, scattered about the sides of the mountain, the fresh flowers of
+art, the scented strawberry-plants of music, the song of the streams and
+the poet birds.
+
+And Christophe asked Olivier:
+
+"Where are your people? I see only the elect, all sorts, good and bad."
+
+Olivier replied:
+
+"The people? They are tending their gardens. They never bother about us.
+Every group and faction among the elect strives to engage their attention.
+They pay no heed to any one. There was a time when it amused them to listen
+to the humbug of the political mountebanks. But now they never worry about
+it. There are several millions who do not even make use of their rights as
+electors. The parties may break each other's heads as much as they like,
+and the people don't care one way or another so long as they don't trample
+the crops in their wrangling: if that happens then they lose their tempers,
+and smash the parties indiscriminately. They do not act: they react in one
+way or another against all the exaggerations which disturb their work and
+their rest. Kings, Emperors, republics, priests, Freemasons, Socialists,
+whatever their leaders may be, all that they ask of them is to be protected
+against the great common dangers: war, riots, epidemics,--and, for the
+rest, to be allowed to go on tending their gardens. When all is said and
+done they think:
+
+"'Why won't these people leave us in peace?'
+
+"But the politicians are so stupid that they worry the people, and won't
+leave off until they are pitched out with a fork,--as will happen some day
+to our members of Parliament. There was a time when the people were
+embarked upon great enterprises. Perhaps that will happen again, although
+they sowed their wild oats long ago: in any case their embarkations are
+never for long: very soon they return to their age-old companion: the
+earth. It is the soil which binds the French to France, much more than the
+French. There are so many different races who for centuries have been
+tilling that brave soil side by side, that it is the soil which unites
+them, the soil which is their love. Through good times and bad they
+cultivate it unceasingly: and it is all good to them, even the smallest
+scrap of ground."
+
+Christophe looked down. As far as he could see, along the road, around the
+swamps, on the slopes of rocky hills, over the battlefields and ruins of
+action, over the mountains and plains of France, all was cultivated and
+richly bearing: it was the great garden of European civilization. Its
+incomparable charm lay no less in the good fruitful soil than in the blind
+labors of an indefatigable people, who for centuries have never ceased to
+till and sow and make the land ever more beautiful.
+
+A strange people! They are always called inconstant: but nothing in them
+changes. Olivier, looking backward, saw in Gothic statuary all the types of
+the provinces of to-day: and so in the drawings of a Clouet and a
+Dumoustier, the weary ironical faces of worldly men and intellectuals: or
+in the work of a Lenain the clear eyes of the laborers and peasants of
+Île-de-France or Picardy. And the thoughts of the men of old days lived in
+the minds of the present day. The mind of Pascal was alive, not only in the
+elect of reason and religion, but in the brains of obscure citizens or
+revolutionary Syndicalists. The art of Corneille and Racine was living for
+the people even more than for the elect, for they were less attainted by
+foreign influences: a humble clerk in Paris would feel more sympathy with a
+tragedy of the time of Louis XIV than with a novel of Tolstoi or a drama of
+Ibsen. The chants of the Middle Ages, the old French _Tristan_, would be
+more akin to the modern French than the _Tristan_ of Wagner. The flowers of
+thought, which since the twelfth century have never ceased to blossom in
+French soil, however different they may be, were yet kin one to another,
+though utterly different from all the flowers about them.
+
+Christophe knew too little of France to be able to grasp how these
+characteristics had endured. What struck him most of all in all the wide
+expanse of country was the extremely small divisions of the earth. As
+Olivier said, every man had his garden: and each garden, each plot of land,
+was separated from the rest by walls, and quickset hedges, and inclosures
+of all sorts. At most there were only a few woods and fields in common, and
+sometimes the dwellers on one side of a river were forced to live nearer to
+each other than to the dwellers on the other. Every man shut himself up in
+his own house: and it seemed that this jealous individualism, instead of
+growing weaker after centuries of neighborhood, was stronger than ever.
+Christophe thought:
+
+"How lonely they all are!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In that sense nothing could have been more characteristic than the house in
+which Christophe and Olivier lodged. It was a world in miniature, a little
+France, honest and industrious, without any bond which could unite its
+divers elements. A five-storied house, a shaky house, leaning over to one
+side, with creaking floors and crumbling ceilings. The rain came through
+into the rooms under the roof in which Christophe and Olivier lived: they
+had had to have the workmen in to botch up the roof as best they could:
+Christophe could hear them working and talking overhead. There was one man
+in particular who amused and exasperated him: he never stopped talking to
+himself, and laughing, and singing, and babbling nonsense, and whistling
+inane tunes, and holding long conversations with himself all the time he
+was working: he was incapable of doing anything without proclaiming exactly
+what it was:
+
+"I'm going to put in another nail. Where's my hammer? I'm putting in a
+nail, two nails. One more blow with the hammer! There, old lady, that's
+it...."
+
+When Christophe was playing he would stop for a moment and listen, and then
+go on whistling louder than ever: during a stirring passage he would beat
+time with his hammer on the roof. At last Christophe was so exasperated
+that he climbed on a chair, and poked his head through the skylight of the
+attic to rate the man. But when he saw him sitting astride the roof, with
+his jolly face and his cheek stuffed out with nails, he burst out laughing,
+and the man joined in. And not until they had done laughing did he remember
+why he had come to the window:
+
+"By the way," he said, "I wanted to ask you: my playing doesn't interfere
+with your work?"
+
+The man said it did not: but he asked Christophe to play something faster,
+because, as he worked in time to the music, slow tunes kept him back. They
+parted very good friends. In a quarter of an hour they had exchanged more
+words than in six months Christophe had spoken to the other inhabitants of
+the house.
+
+There were two flats on each floor, one of three rooms, the other of only
+two. There were no servants' rooms: each household did its own housework,
+except for the tenants of the ground floor and the first floor, who
+occupied the two flats thrown into one.
+
+On the fifth floor Christophe and Olivier's next-door neighbor was the Abbé
+Corneille, a priest of some forty years old, a learned man, an independent
+thinker, broad-minded, formerly a professor of exegesis in a great
+seminary, who had recently been censured by Rome for his modernist
+tendency. He had accepted the censure without submitting to it, in silence:
+he made no attempt to dispute it and refused every opportunity offered to
+him of publishing his doctrine: he shrank from a noisy publicity and would
+rather put up with the ruin of his ideas than figure in a scandal.
+Christophe could not understand that sort of revolt in resignation. He had
+tried to talk to the priest, who, however, was coldly polite and would not
+speak of the things which most interested him, and seemed to prefer as a
+matter of dignity to remain buried alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the floor below in the flat corresponding to that of the two friends
+there lived a family of the name of Elie Elsberger: an engineer, his wife,
+and their two little girls, seven and ten years old: superior and
+sympathetic people who kept themselves very much to themselves, chiefly
+from a sort of false shame of their straitened means. The young woman who
+kept her house most pluckily was humiliated by it: she would have put up
+with twice the amount of worry and exhaustion if she could have prevented
+anybody knowing their condition: and that too was a feeling which
+Christophe could not understand. They belonged to a Protestant family and
+came from the East of France. Both man and wife, a few years before, had
+been bowled over by the storm of the Dreyfus affair: both of them had taken
+the affair passionately to heart, and, like thousands of French people,
+they had suffered from the frenzy brought on by the turbulent wind of that
+exalted fit of hysteria which lasted for seven years. They had sacrificed
+everything to it, rest, position, relations: they had broken off many dear
+friendships through it: they had almost ruined their health. For months at
+a time they did not sleep nor act, but went on bringing forward the same
+arguments over and over again with the monotonous insistence of the insane:
+they screwed each other up to a pitch of excitement: in spite of their
+timidity and their dread of ridicule, they had taken part in demonstrations
+and spoken at meetings, from which they returned with minds bewildered and
+aching hearts, and they would weep together through the night. In the
+struggle they had expended so much enthusiasm and passion that when at last
+victory was theirs they had not enough of either to rejoice: it left them
+dry of energy and broken for life. Their hopes had been so high, their
+eagerness for sacrifice had been so pure, that triumph when it came had
+seemed a mockery compared with what they had dreamed. To such single-minded
+creatures for whom there could exist but one truth, the bargaining of
+politics, the compromises of their heroes had been a bitter disappointment.
+They had seen their comrades in arms, men whom they had thought inspired
+with the same single passion for justice,--once the enemy was overcome,
+swarming about the loot, catching at power, carrying off honors and
+positions, and, in their turn, trampling justice underfoot. Only a mere
+handful of men held steadfast to their faith, and, in poverty and
+isolation, rejected by every party, rejecting every party, they remained in
+obscurity, cut off one from the other, a prey to sorrow and neurasthenia,
+left hopeless and disgusted with men and utterly weary of life. The
+engineer and his wife were among these wretched victims.
+
+They made no noise in the house: they were morbidly afraid of disturbing
+their neighbors, the more so as they suffered from their neighbors' noises,
+and they were too proud to complain. Christophe was sorry for the two
+little girls, whose outbursts of merriment, and natural need of shouting,
+jumping about and laughing, were continually being suppressed. He adored
+children, and he made friendly advances to his little neighbors when he met
+them on the stairs. The little girls were shy at first, but were soon on
+good terms with Christophe, who always had some funny story to tell them or
+sweetmeats in his pockets: they told their parents about him: and, though
+at first they had been inclined to look askance at his advances, they were
+won over by the frank open manners of their noisy neighbor, whose
+piano-playing and terrific disturbance overhead had often made them
+curse:--(for Christophe used to feel stifled in his room and take to pacing
+up and down like a caged bear).--They did not find it easy to talk to him.
+Christophe's rather boorish and abrupt manners sometimes made Elie
+Elsberger shudder. But it was all in vain for the engineer to try to keep
+up the wall of reserve, behind which he had taken shelter, between himself
+and the German: it was impossible to resist the impetuous good humor of the
+man whose eyes were so honest and affectionate and so free from any
+ulterior motive. Every now and then Christophe managed to squeeze a little
+confidence out of his neighbor. Elsberger was a queer man, full of courage,
+yet apathetic, sorrowful, and yet resigned. He had energy enough to bear a
+life of difficulty with dignity, but not enough to change it. It was as
+though he took a delight in justifying his own pessimism. Just at that time
+he had been offered a post in Brazil as manager of an undertaking: but he
+had refused as he was afraid of the climate and fearful of the health of
+his wife and children.
+
+"Well, leave them," said Christophe. "Go alone and make their fortune."
+
+"Leave them!" cried the engineer. "It's easy to see that you have no
+children."
+
+"I assure you that, if I had, I should be of the same opinion."
+
+"Never! Never!... Leave the country!... No. I would rather suffer here."
+
+To Christophe it seemed an odd way of loving one's country and one's wife
+and children to sit down and vegetate with them. Olivier understood.
+
+"Just think," he said, "of the risk of dying out there, in a strange
+unknown country, far away from those you love! Anything is better than the
+horror of that. Besides, it isn't worth while taking so much trouble for
+the few remaining years of life!..."
+
+"As though one had always to be thinking of death!" said Christophe with a
+shrug. "And even if that does happen, isn't it better to die fighting for
+the happiness of those one loves than to flicker out in apathy?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the same landing in the smaller flat on the fourth floor lived a
+journeyman electrician named Aubert.--If he lived entirely apart from the
+other inhabitants of the house it was not altogether his fault. He had
+risen from the lower class and had a passionate desire not to sink back
+into it. He was small and weakly-looking; he had a harsh face, and his
+forehead bulged over his eyes, which were keen and sharp and bored into you
+like a gimlet: he had a fair mustache, a satirical mouth, a sibilant way of
+speaking, a husky voice, a scarf round his neck, and he had always
+something the matter with his throat, in which irritation was set up by his
+perpetual habit of smoking: he was always feverishly active and had the
+consumptive temperament. He was a mixture of conceit, irony, and
+bitterness, cloaking a mind that was enthusiastic, bombastic, and naïve,
+while it was always being taken in by life. He was the bastard of some
+burgess whom he had never known, and was brought up by a mother whom it was
+impossible to respect, so that in his childhood he had seen much that was
+sad and degrading. He had plied all sorts of trades and had traveled much
+in France. He had an admirable desire for education, and had taught himself
+with frightful toil and labor: he read everything: history, philosophy,
+decadent poets: he was up-to-date in everything: theaters, exhibitions,
+concerts: he had a touching veneration for art, literature, and
+middle-class ideas: they fascinated him. He had imbibed the vague and
+ardent ideology which intoxicated the middle-classes in the first days of
+the Revolution. He had a definite belief in the infallibility of reason, in
+boundless progress,--_quo non ascendam?_--in the near advent of happiness
+on earth, in the omnipotence of science, in Divine Humanity, and in France,
+the eldest daughter of Humanity. He had an enthusiastic and credulous sort
+of anti-clericalism which made him lump together religion--especially
+Catholicism--and obscurantism, and see in priests the natural foe of light.
+Socialism, individualism, Chauvinism jostled each other in his brain. He
+was a humanitarian in mind, despotic in temperament, and an anarchist in
+fact. He was proud and knew the gaps in his education, and, in
+conversation, he was very cautious: he turned to account everything that
+was said in his presence, but he would never ask advice: that humiliated
+him; now, though he had intelligence and cleverness, these things could not
+altogether supply the defects of his education. He had taken it into his
+head to write. Like so many men in France who have not been taught, he had
+the gift of style, and a clear vision: but he was a confused thinker. He
+had shown a few pages of his productions to a successful journalist in whom
+he believed, and the man made fun of him. He was profoundly humiliated, and
+from that time on never told a soul what he was doing. But he went on
+writing: it fed his need of expansion and gave him pride and delight. In
+his heart he was immensely pleased with his eloquent passages and
+philosophic ideas, which were not worth a brass farthing. And he set no
+store by his observation of real life, which was excellent. It was his
+crank to fancy himself as a philosopher, and he wished to write
+sociological plays and novels of ideas. He had no difficulty in solving all
+sorts of insoluble questions, and at every turn he discovered America. When
+in due course he found that America was already discovered, he was
+disappointed, humiliated, and rather bitter: he was never far from scenting
+injustice and intrigue. He was consumed by a thirst for fame and a burning
+capacity for devotion which suffered from finding no means or direction of
+employment: he would have loved to be a great man of letters, a member of
+that literary élite, who in his eyes were adorned with a supernatural
+prestige. In spite of his longing to deceive himself he had too much good
+sense and was too ironical not to know that there was no chance of its
+coming to pass. But he would at least have hiked to live in that atmosphere
+of art and middle-class ideas which at a distance seemed to him so
+brilliant and pure and chastened of mediocrity. This innocent longing had
+the unfortunate result of making the society of the people with whom his
+condition in life forced him to live intolerable to him. And as the
+middle-class society which he wished to enter closed its doors to him, the
+result was that he never saw anybody. And so Christophe had no difficulty
+in making his acquaintance. On the contrary he had very soon to bolt and
+bar against him: otherwise Aubert would more often have been in
+Christophe's rooms, than Christophe in his. He was only too happy to find
+an artist to whom he could talk about music, plays, etc. But, as one would
+imagine, Christophe did not find them so interesting: he would rather have
+discussed the people with a man who was of the people. But that was just
+what Aubert would not and could not discuss.
+
+In proportion as he went lower in the house relations between Christophe
+and the other tenants became naturally more distant. Besides, some secret
+magic, some _Open Sesame_, would have been necessary for him to reach the
+inhabitants of the third floor.--In the one flat there lived two ladies who
+were under the self-hypnotism of grief for a loss that was already some
+years old: Madame Germain, a woman of thirty-five who had lost her husband
+and daughter, and lived in seclusion with her aged and devout
+mother-in-law.--On the other side of the landing there dwelt a mysterious
+character of uncertain age, anything between fifty and sixty, with a little
+girl of ten. He was bald, with a handsome, well-trimmed beard, a soft way
+of speaking, distinguished manners, and aristocratic hands. He was called
+M. Watelet. He was said to be an anarchist, a revolutionary, a foreigner,
+from what country was not known, Russia or Belgium. As a matter of fact he
+was a Northern Frenchman and was hardly at all revolutionary: but he was
+living on his past reputation. He had been mixed up with the Commune of '71
+and condemned to death: he had escaped, how he did not know: and for ten
+years he had lived for a short time in every country in Europe. He had seen
+so many ill-deeds during the upheaval in Paris, and afterwards, and also in
+exile, and also since his return, ill-deeds done by his former comrades now
+that they were in power, and also by men in every rank of the revolutionary
+parties, that he had broken with them, peacefully keeping his convictions
+to himself useless and untarnished. He read much, wrote a few mildly
+incendiary books, pulled--(so it was said)--the wires of anarchist
+movements in distant places, in India or the Far East, busied himself with
+the universal revolution, and, at the same time, with researches no less
+universal but of a more genial aspect, namely with a universal language, a
+new method of popular instruction in music. He never came in contact with
+anybody in the house: when he met any of its inmates he did no more than
+bow to them with exaggerated politeness. However, he condescended to tell
+Christophe a little about his musical method. Christophe was not the least
+interested in it: the symbols of his ideas mattered very little to him: in
+any language he would have managed somehow to express them. But Watelet was
+not to be put off, and went on explaining his system gently but firmly:
+Christophe could not find out anything about the rest of his life. And so
+he gave up stopping when he met him on the stairs and only looked at the
+little girl who was always with him: she was fair, pale, anemic: she had
+blue eyes, rather a sharp profile, a thin little figure--she was always
+very neatly dressed--and she looked sickly and her face was not very
+expressive. Like everybody else he thought she was Watelet's daughter. She
+was an orphan, the daughter of poor parents, whom Watelet had adopted when
+she was four or five, after the death of her father and mother in an
+epidemic. He had an almost boundless love for the poor, especially for poor
+children. It was a sort of mystic tenderness with him as with Vincent de
+Paul. He distrusted official charity, and knew exactly what philanthropic
+institutions were worth, and therefore he set about doing charity alone: he
+did it by stealth, and took a secret joy in it. He had learned medicine so
+as to be of some use in the world. One day when he went to the house of a
+working-man in the district and found sickness there, he turned to and
+nursed the invalids: he had some medical knowledge and turned it to
+account. He could not bear to see a child suffer: it broke his heart. But,
+on the other hand, what a joy it was when he had succeeded in tearing one
+of these poor little creatures from the clutches of sickness, and the first
+pale smile appeared on the little pinched face! Then Watelet's heart would
+melt. Those were his moments of Paradise. They made him forget the trouble
+he often had with his protégés: for they very rarely showed him much
+gratitude. And the housekeeper was furious at seeing so many people with
+dirty boots going up her stairs, and she would complain bitterly. And the
+proprietor would watch uneasily these meetings of anarchists, and make
+remarks. Watelet would contemplate leaving his flat: but that hurt him: he
+had his little whimsies: he was gentle and obstinate, and he put up with
+the proprietor's observations.
+
+Christophe won his confidence up to a certain point by the love he showed
+for children. That was their common bond. Christophe never met the little
+girl without a catch at his heart: for, though he did not know why, by one
+of those mysterious similarities in outline, which the instinct perceives
+immediately and subconsciously, the child reminded him of Sabine's little
+girl. Sabine, his first love, now so far away, the silent grace of whose
+fleeting shadow had never faded from his heart. And so he took an interest
+in the pale-faced little girl whom he never saw romping, or running, whose
+voice he hardly ever heard, who had no little friend of her own age, who
+was always alone, mum, quietly amusing herself with lifeless toys, a doll
+or a block of wood, while her lips moved as she whispered some story to
+herself. She was affectionate and a little offhanded in manner: there was a
+foreign and uneasy quality in her, but her adopted father never saw it: he
+loved her too much. Alas! Does not that foreign and uneasy quality exist
+even in the children of our own flesh and blood?... Christophe tried to
+make the solitary little girl friends with the engineer's children. But
+with both Elsberger and Watelet he met with a polite but categorical
+refusal. These people seemed to make it a point of honor to bury themselves
+alive, each in his own mausoleum. If it came to a point each would have
+been ready to help the other: but each was afraid of it being thought that
+he himself was in need of help: and as they were both equally proud and
+vain,--and the means of both were equally precarious,--there was no hope of
+either of them being the first to hold out his hand to the other.
+
+The larger flat on the second floor was almost always empty. The proprietor
+of the house reserved it for his own use: and he was never there. He was a
+retired merchant who had closed down his business as soon as he had made a
+certain fortune, the figure of which he had fixed for himself. He spent the
+greater part of the year in some hotel on the Riviera, and the summer at
+some watering-place in Normandy, living as a gentleman with private means
+who enjoys the illusion of luxury cheaply by watching the luxury of others,
+and, like them, leading a useless existence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The smaller flat was let to a childless couple: M. and Madame Arnaud. The
+husband, a man of between forty and forty-five, was a master at a school.
+He was so overworked with lectures, and correcting exercises, and giving
+classes, that he had never been able to find time to write his thesis: and
+at last he had given it up altogether. The wife was ten years younger,
+pretty, and very shy. They were both intelligent, well read, in love with
+each other: they knew nobody, and never went out. The husband had no time
+for it. The wife had too much time: but she was a brave little creature,
+who fought down her fits of depression when they came over her, and hid
+them, by occupying herself as best she could, trying to learn, taking notes
+for her husband, copying out her husband's notes, mending her husband's
+clothes, making frocks and hats for herself. She would have liked to go to
+the theater from time to time: but Arnaud did not care about it: he was too
+tired in the evening. And she resigned herself to it.
+
+Their great Joy was music. They both adored it. He could not play, and she
+dared not although she could: when she played before anybody, even before
+her husband, it was like a child strumming. However, that was good enough
+for them: and Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, whom they stammered out, were as
+friends to them: they knew their lives in detail, and their sufferings
+filled them with love and pity. Books, too, beautiful, fine books, which
+they read together, gave them happiness. But there are few such books in
+the literature of to-day: authors do not worry about those people who can
+bring them neither reputation, nor pleasure, nor money, such humble readers
+who are never seen in society, and do not write in any journal, and can
+only love and say nothing. The silent light of art, which in their upright
+and religious hearts assumed almost a supernatural character, and their
+mutual affection, were enough to make them live in peace, happy enough,
+though a little sad--(there is no gainsaying that),--very lonely, a little
+bruised in spirit. They were both much superior to their position in life.
+M. Arnaud was full of ideas: but he had neither the time nor enough courage
+left to write them down. It meant such a lot of trouble to get articles and
+books published: it was not worth it: futile vanity! Anything he could do
+was so small in comparison with the thinkers he loved! He had too true a
+love for the great works of art to want to produce art himself: it would
+have seemed to him pretentious, impertinent, and ridiculous. It seemed to
+be his lot to spread their influence. He gave his pupils the benefit of his
+ideas: they would turn them into books later on,--without mentioning his
+name of course.--Nobody spent more money than he in subscribing to various
+publications. The poor are always the most generous: they do buy their
+books: the rich would take it as a slur upon themselves if they did not
+somehow manage to get them for nothing. Arnaud ruined himself in buying
+books: it was his weakness--his vice. He was ashamed of it, and concealed
+it from his wife. But she did not blame him for it: she would have spent
+just as much.--And with it all they were always making fine plans for
+saving, with a view to going to Italy some day--though, as they knew quite
+well, they never would go: and they were the first to laugh at their
+incapacity for keeping money. Arnaud would console himself. His dear wife
+was enough for him, and his life of work and inward joys. Was it not also
+enough for her?--She said it was. She dared not say how dear it would have
+been to her if her husband could have some reputation, which would in some
+sort be reflected upon herself, and brighten her life, and give her ease
+and comfort: inward joys are beautiful: but a little ray of light from
+without shining in from time to time is sweet, and does so much good!...
+But she never said anything, because she was timid: and besides, she knew
+that even if he wished to make a reputation it was by no means certain that
+he would succeed: it was too late!... Their greatest sorrow was that they
+had no children. Each hid that sorrow from the other: and they were only
+the more tender with each other: it was as though the poor creatures were
+striving to win one another's forgiveness. Madame Arnaud was kind and
+affectionate: she would gladly have been friends with Madame Elsberger. But
+she dared not: she was never approached. As for Christophe, husband and
+wife would have asked nothing better than to know him: they were fascinated
+by the music that they could hear faintly when he was playing. But nothing
+in the world could have induced them to make the first move: they would
+have thought it indiscreet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The whole of the first floor was occupied by M. and Madame Félix Weil. They
+were rich Jews, and had no children, and they spent six months of the year
+in the country near Paris. Although they had lived in the house for twenty
+years--(they stayed there as a matter of habit, although they could easily
+have found a flat more in keeping with their fortune)--they were always
+like passing strangers. They had never spoken a word to any of their
+neighbors, and no one knew any more about them than on the day of their
+arrival. But that was no reason why the other tenants should not pass
+judgment on them: on the contrary. They were not liked. And no doubt they
+did nothing to win popularity. And yet they were worthy of more
+acquaintance: they were both excellent people and remarkably intelligent.
+The husband, a man of sixty, was an Assyriologist, well known through his
+famous excavations in Central Asia: like most of his race he was
+open-minded and curious, and did not confine himself to his special
+studies: he was interested in an infinite number of things: the arts,
+social questions, every manifestation of contemporary thought. But these
+were not enough to occupy his mind: for they all amused him, and none of
+them roused passionate interest. He was very intelligent, too intelligent,
+too much emancipated from all ties, always ready to destroy with one hand
+what he had constructed with the other: for he was constructive, always
+producing books and theories: he was a great worker: as a matter of habit
+and spiritual health he was always patiently plowing his deep furrow in the
+field of knowledge, without having any belief in the utility of what he was
+doing. He had always had the misfortune to be rich, so that he had never
+had the interest of the struggle for life, and, since his explorations in
+the East, of which he had grown tired after a few years, he had not
+accepted any official position. Outside his own personal work, however, he
+busied himself with clairvoyance, contemporary problems, social reforms of
+a practical and pressing nature, the reorganization of public education in
+France: he flung out ideas and created lines of thought: he would set great
+intellectual machines working, and would immediately grow disgusted with
+them. More than once he had scandalized people, who had been converted to a
+cause by his arguments, by producing the most incisive and discouraging
+criticisms of the cause itself. He did not do it deliberately: it was a
+natural necessity for him: he was very nervous and ironical in temper, and
+found it hard to bear with the foibles of things and people which he saw
+with the most disconcerting clarity. And, as there is no good cause, nor
+any good man, who, seen at a certain angle or with a certain distortion,
+does not present a ridiculous aspect, there was nothing that, with his
+ironic disposition, he could go on respecting for long. All this was not
+calculated to make him friends. And yet he was always well-disposed towards
+people, and inclined to do good: he did much good: but no one was ever
+grateful to him: even those whom he had helped could not in their hearts
+forgive him, because they had seen that they were ridiculous in his eyes.
+It was necessary for him not to see too much of men if he were to love
+them. Not that he was a misanthrope. He was not sure enough of himself to
+be that. Face to face with the world at which he mocked, he was timid and
+bashful: at heart he was not at all sure that the world was not right and
+himself wrong: he endeavored not to appear too different from other people,
+and strove to base his manners and apparent opinions on theirs. But he
+strove in vain: he could not help judging them: he was keenly sensible of
+any sort of exaggeration and anything that was not simple: and he could
+never conceal his irritation. He was especially sensible of the foibles of
+the Jews, because he knew them best: and as, in spite of his intellectual
+freedom, which did not admit of barriers between races, he was often
+brought up sharp against those barriers which men of other races raised
+against him,--as, in spite of himself, he was out of his element among
+Christian ideas, he retired with dignity into his ironic labors and the
+profound affection he had for his wife.
+
+Worst of all, his wife was not secure against his irony. She was a kindly,
+busy woman, anxious to be useful, and always taken up with various
+charitable works. Her nature was much less complex than that of her
+husband, and she was cramped by her moral benevolence and the rather
+rigidly intellectual, though lofty, idea of duty that she had begotten. Her
+whole life, which was sad enough, without children, with no great joy nor
+great love, was based on this moral belief of hers, which was more than
+anything else the will to believe. Her husband's irony had, of course,
+seized on the element of voluntary self-deception in her faith, and--(it
+was too strong for him)--he had made much fun at her expense. He was a mass
+of contradictions. He had a feeling for duty no less lofty than his wife's,
+and, at the same time, a merciless desire to analyze, to criticize, and to
+avoid deception, which made him dismember and take to pieces his moral
+imperative. He could not see that he was digging away the ground from under
+his wife's feet: he used cruelly to discourage her. When he realized that
+he had done so, he suffered even more than she: but the harm was done. It
+did not keep them from loving each other faithfully, and working and doing
+good. But the cold dignity of the wife was not more kindly judged than the
+irony of the husband: and as they were too proud to publish abroad the good
+they did, or their desire to do good, their reserve was regarded as
+indifference, and their isolation as selfishness. And the more conscious
+they became of the opinion that was held of them, the more careful were
+they to do nothing to dispute it. Reacting against the coarse indiscretion
+of so many of their race they were the victims of an excessive reserve
+which covered a vast deal of pride.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for the ground floor, which was a few steps higher than the little
+garden, it was occupied by Commandant Chabran, a retired officer of the
+Colonial Artillery: he was still young, a man of great vigor, who had
+fought brilliantly in the Soudan and Madagascar: then suddenly, he had
+thrown the whole thing up, and buried himself there: he did not even want
+to hear the army mentioned, and spent his time in digging his flower-beds,
+and practising the flute without making any progress, and growling about
+politics, and scolding his daughter, whom he adored: she was a young woman
+of thirty, not very pretty, but quite charming, who devoted herself to him,
+and had not married so as not to leave him. Christophe used often to see
+them leaning out of the window: and, naturally, he paid more attention to
+the daughter than the father. She used to spend part of the afternoon in
+the garden, sewing, dreaming, digging, always in high good humor with her
+grumbling old father. Christophe could hear her soft clear voice laughingly
+replying to the growling tones of the Commandant, whose footsteps ground
+and scrunched on the gravel-paths: then he would go in, and she would stay
+sitting on a seat in the garden, and sew for hours together, never
+stirring, never speaking, smiling vaguely, while inside the house the bored
+old soldier played flourishes on his shrill flute, or, by way of a change,
+made a broken-winded old harmonium squeal and groan, much to Christophe's
+amusement--or exasperation--(which, depended on the day and his mood).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All these people went on living side by side in that house with its
+walled-in garden sheltered from all the buffets of the world, hermetically
+sealed even against each other. Only Christophe, with his need of expansion
+and his great fullness of life, unknown to them, wrapped them about with
+his vast sympathy, blind, yet all-seeing. He could not understand them. He
+had no means of understanding them. He lacked Olivier's psychological
+insight and quickness. But he loved them. Instinctively he put himself in
+their place. Slowly, mysteriously, there crept through him a dim
+consciousness of these lives so near him and yet so far removed, the
+stupefying sorrow of the mourning woman, the stoic silence of all their
+proud thoughts, the priest, the Jew, the engineer, the revolutionary: the
+pale and gentle flame of tenderness and faith which burned in silence in
+the hearts of the two Arnauds: the naïve aspirations towards the light of
+the man of the people: the suppressed revolt and fertile activity which
+were stifled in the bosom of the old soldier: and the calm resignation of
+the girl dreaming in the shade of the lilac. But only Christophe could
+perceive and hear the silent music of their souls: they heard it not: they
+were all absorbed in their sorrow and their dreams.
+
+They all worked hard, the skeptical old scientist, the pessimistic
+engineer, the priest, the anarchist, and all these proud or dispirited
+creatures. And on the roof the mason sang.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the district round the house among the best of the people Christophe
+found the same moral solitude--even when the people were banded together.
+
+Olivier had brought him in touch with a little review for which he wrote.
+It was called _Ésope_, and had taken for its motto this quotation from
+Montaigne:
+
+"_Æsop was put up for sale with two other staves. The purchaser inquired of
+the first what he could do; and he, to put a price upon himself, described
+all sorts of marvels; the second said as much for himself, or more. When it
+came to Æsop's turn, and he was asked what he could do:--Nothing, he said,
+for these two have taken everything: they can do everything._"
+
+Their attitude was that of pure reaction against "the impudence," as
+Montaigne says, "of those who profess knowledge and their overweening
+presumption!" The self-styled skeptics of the _Ésope_ review were at heart
+men of the firmest faith. But their mask of irony and haughty ignorance,
+naturally enough, had small attraction for the public: rather it repelled.
+The people are only with a writer when he brings them words of simple,
+clear, vigorous, and assured life. They prefer a sturdy lie to an anemic
+truth. Skepticism is only to their liking when it is the covering of lusty
+naturalism or Christian idolatry. The scornful Pyrrhonism in which the
+_Ésope_ clothed itself could only be acceptable to a few minds--"_aeme
+sdegnose_,"--who knew the solid worth beneath it. It was force absolutely
+lost upon action and life.
+
+There was no help for it. The more democratic France became, the more
+aristocratic did her ideas, her art, her science seem to grow. Science
+securely lodged behind its special languages, in the depths of its
+sanctuary, wrapped about with a triple veil, which only the initiate had
+the power to draw, was less accessible than at the time of Buffon and the
+Encyclopedists. Art,--that art at least which had some respect for itself
+and the worship of beauty,--was no less hermetically sealed: it despised
+the people. Even among writers who cared less for beauty than for action,
+among those who gave moral ideas precedence over esthetic ideas, there was
+often a strange dominance of the aristocratic spirit. They seemed to be
+more intent upon preserving the purity of their inward flame than to
+communicate its warmth to others. It was as though they desired not to make
+their ideas prevail but only to affirm them.
+
+And yet among these writers there were some who applied themselves to
+popular art. Among the most sincere some hurled into their writings
+destructive anarchical ideas, truths of the distant future, which might be
+beneficent in a century or so, but, for the time being, corroded and
+scorched the soul: others wrote bitter or ironical plays, robbed of all
+illusion, sad to the last degree. Christophe was left in a state of
+collapse, ham-strung, for a day or two after he read them.
+
+"And you give that sort of thing to the people?" he would ask, feeling
+sorry for the poor audiences who had come to forget their troubles for a
+few hours, only to be presented with these lugubrious entertainments. "It's
+enough to make them all go and drown themselves!"
+
+"You may be quite easy on that score," said Olivier, laughing. "The people
+don't go."
+
+"And a jolly good thing too! You're mad. Are you trying to rob them of
+every scrap of courage to live?"
+
+"Why? Isn't it right to teach them to see the sadness of things, as we do,
+and yet to go on and do their duty without flinching?"
+
+"Without flinching? I doubt that. But it's very certain that they'll do it
+without pleasure. And you don't go very far when you've destroyed a man's
+pleasure in living."
+
+"What else can one do? One has no right to falsify the truth."
+
+"Nor have you any right to tell the whole truth to everybody."
+
+"_You_ say that? You who are always shouting the truth aloud, you who
+pretend to love truth more than anything in the world!"
+
+"Yes: truth for myself and those whose backs are strong enough to bear it
+But it is cruel and stupid to tell it to the rest. Yes. I see that now. At
+home that would never have occurred to me: in Germany people are not so
+morbid about the truth as they are here: they're too much taken up with
+living: very wisely they see only what they wish to see. I love you for not
+being like that: you are honest and go straight ahead. But you are inhuman.
+When you think you have unearthed a truth, you let it loose upon the world,
+without stopping to think whether, like the foxes in the Bible with their
+burning tails, it will not set fire to the world. I think it is fine of you
+to prefer truth to your happiness. But when it comes to the happiness of
+other people.... Then I say, 'Stop!' You are taking too much upon
+yourselves. Thou shalt love truth, more than thyself, but thy neighbor more
+than truth."
+
+"Is one to lie to one's neighbor?"
+
+Christophe replied with the words of Goethe:
+
+"We should only express those of the highest truths which will be to the
+good of the world. The rest we must keep to ourselves: like the soft rays
+of a hidden sun, they will shed their light upon all our actions."
+
+But they were not moved by these scruples. They never stopped to think
+whether the bow in their hands shot "_ideas or death_," or both together.
+They were too intellectual. They lacked love. When a Frenchman has ideas he
+tries to impose them on others. He tries to do the same thing when he has
+none. And when he sees that he cannot do it he loses interest in other
+people, he loses interest in action. That was the chief reason why this
+particular group took so little interest in politics, save to moan and
+groan. Each of them was shut up in his faith, or want of faith.
+
+Many attempts had been made to break down their individualism and to form
+groups of these men: but the majority of these groups had immediately
+resolved themselves into literary clubs, or split up into absurd factions.
+The best of them were mutually destructive. There were among them some
+first-rate men of force and faith, men well fitted to rally and guide those
+of weaker will. But each man had his following, and would not consent to
+merging it with that of other men. So they were split up into a number of
+reviews, unions, associations, which had all the moral virtues, save one:
+self-denial; for not one of them would give way to the others: and, while
+they wrangled over the crumbs that fell from an honest and well-meaning
+public, small in numbers and poor in purse, they vegetated for a short
+time, starved and languished, and at last collapsed never to rise again,
+not under the assault of the enemy, but--(most pitiful!)--under the weight
+of their own quarrels.--The various professions,--men of letters, dramatic
+authors, poets, prose writers, professors, members of the Institute,
+journalists--were divided up into a number of little castes, which they
+themselves split up again into smaller castes, each one of which closed its
+doors against the rest. There was no sort of mutual interchange. There was
+no unanimity on any subject in France, except at those very rare moments
+when unanimity assumed an epidemic character, and, as a rule, was in the
+wrong: for it was morbid. A crazy individualism predominated in every kind
+of French activity: in scientific research as well as in commerce, in which
+it prevented business men from combining and organizing working agreements.
+This individualism was not that of a rich and bustling vitality, but that
+of obstinacy and self-repression. To be alone, to owe nothing to others,
+not to mix with others for fear of feeling their inferiority in their
+company, not to disturb the tranquillity of their haughty isolation: these
+were the secret thoughts of almost all these men who founded "outside"
+reviews, "outside" theaters, "outside" groups: reviews, theaters, groups,
+all most often had no other reason for existing than the desire not to be
+with the general herd, and an incapacity for joining with other people in a
+common idea or course of action, distrust of other people, or, at the very
+worst, party hostility, setting one against the other the very men who were
+most fitted to understand each other.
+
+Even when men who thought highly of each other were united in some common
+task, like Olivier and his colleagues on the _Ésope_ review, they always
+seemed to be on their guard with each other: they had nothing of that
+open-handed geniality so common in Germany, where it is apt to become a
+nuisance. Among these young men there was one especially who attracted
+Christophe because he divined him to be a man of exceptional force: he was
+a writer of inflexible logic and will, with a passion for moral ideas, in
+the service of which he was absolutely uncompromising and ready in their
+cause to sacrifice the whole world and himself: he had founded and
+conducted almost unaided a review in which to uphold them: he had sworn to
+impose on Europe and on France the idea of a pure, heroic, and free France:
+he firmly believed that the world would one day recognize that he was
+responsible for one of the boldest pages in the history of French
+thought:--and he was not mistaken. Christophe would have been only too glad
+to know him better and to be his friend. But there was no way of bringing
+it about. Although Olivier had a good deal to do with him they saw very
+little of each other except on business: they never discussed any intimate
+matter, and never got any farther than the exchange of a few abstract
+ideas: or rather--(for, to be exact, there was no exchange, and each
+adhered to his own ideas)--they soliloquized in each other's company in
+turn. However, they were comrades in arms and knew their worth.
+
+There were innumerable reasons for this reservedness, reasons difficult to
+discern, even for their own eyes. The first reason was a too great critical
+faculty, which saw too clearly the unalterable differences between one mind
+and another, backed by an excessive intellectualism which attached too much
+importance to those differences: they lacked that puissant and naïve
+sympathy whose vital need is of love, the need of giving out its
+overflowing love. Then, too, perhaps overwork, the struggle for existence,
+the fever of thought, which so taxes strength that by the evening there is
+none left for friendly intercourse, had a great deal to do with it. And
+there was that terrible feeling, which every Frenchman is afraid to admit,
+though too often it is stirring in his heart, the feeling of _not being of
+one race_, the feeling that the nation consists of different races
+established at different epochs on the soil of France, who, though all
+bound together, have few ideas in common, and therefore ought not, in the
+common interest, to ponder them too much. But above all the reason was to
+seek in the intoxicating and dangerous passion for liberty, to which, when
+a man has once tasted it, there is nothing that he will not sacrifice. Such
+solitary freedom is all the more precious for having been bought by years
+of tribulation. The select few have taken refuge in it to escape the
+slavishness of the mediocre. It is a reaction against the tyranny of the
+political and religious masses, the terrific crushing weight which
+overbears the individual in France: the family, public opinion, the State,
+secret societies, parties, coteries, schools. Imagine a prisoner who, to
+escape, has to scale twenty great walls hemming him in. If he manages to
+clear them all without breaking his neck, and, above all, without losing
+heart, he must be strong indeed. A rough schooling for free-will! But those
+who have gone through it bear the marks of it all their life in the mania
+for independence, and the impossibility of their ever living in the lives
+of others.
+
+Side by side with this loneliness of pride, there was the loneliness of
+renunciation. There were many, many good men in France whose goodness and
+pride and affection came to nothing in withdrawal from life! A thousand
+reasons, good and bad, stood in the way of action for them. With some it
+was obedience, timidity, force of habit. With others human respect, fear of
+ridicule, fear of being conspicuous, of being a mark for the comments of
+the gallery, of meddling with things that did not concern them, of having
+their disinterested actions attributed to motives of interest. There were
+men who would not take part in any political or social struggle, women who
+declined to undertake any philanthropic work, because there were too many
+people engaged in these things who lacked conscience and even common sense,
+and because they were afraid of the taint of these charlatans and fools. In
+almost all such people there are disgust, weariness, dread of action,
+suffering, ugliness, stupidity, risks, responsibilities: the terrible
+"What's the use?" which destroys the good-will of so many of the French of
+to-day. They are too intelligent,--(their intelligence has no wide sweep of
+the wings),--they are too intent upon reasons for and against. They lack
+force. They lack vitality. When a man's life beats strongly he never
+wonders why he goes on living: he lives for the sake of living,--because it
+is a splendid thing to be alive!
+
+In fine, the best of them were a mixture of sympathetic and average
+qualities: a modicum of philosophy, moderate desires, fond attachment to
+the family, the earth, moral custom; discretion, dread of intruding, of
+being a nuisance to other people: modesty of feeling, unbending reserve.
+All these amiable and charming qualities could, in certain cases, be
+brought into line with serenity, courage, and inward joy; but at bottom
+there was a certain connection between them and poverty in the blood, the
+progressive ebb of French vitality.
+
+The pretty garden, beneath the house in which Christophe and Olivier lived,
+tucked away between the four walls, was symbolical of that part of the life
+of France. It was a little patch of green earth shut off from the outer
+world. Only now and then did the mighty wind of the outer air, whirling
+down, bring to the girl dreaming there the breath of the distant fields and
+the vast earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that Christophe was beginning to perceive the hidden resources of
+France he was furious that she should suffer the oppression of the rabble.
+The half-light, in which the select and silent few were huddled away,
+stifled him. Stoicism is a fine thing for those whose teeth are gone. But
+he needed the open air, the great public, the sunshine of glory, the love
+of thousands of men and women: he needed to hold close to him those whom he
+loved, to pulverize his enemies, to fight and to conquer.
+
+"You can," said Olivier. "You are strong. You were born to conquer through
+your faults--(forgive me!)--as well as through your qualities. You are
+lucky enough not to belong to a race and a nation which are too
+aristocratic. Action does not repel you. If need be you could even become a
+politician.--Besides, you have the inestimable good fortune to write music.
+Nobody understands you, and so you can say anything and everything. If
+people had any idea of the contempt for themselves which you put into your
+music, and your faith in what they deny, and your perpetual hymn in praise
+of what they are always trying to kill, they would never forgive you, and
+you would be so fettered, and persecuted, and harassed, that you would
+waste most of your strength in fighting them: when you had beaten them back
+you would have no breath left for going on with your work: your life would
+be finished. The great men who triumph have the good luck to be
+misunderstood. They are admired for the very opposite of what they are."
+
+"Pooh!" said Christophe. "You don't understand how cowardly your masters
+are. At first I thought you were alone, and I used to find excuses for your
+inaction. But, as a matter of fact, there's a whole army of you all of the
+same mind. You are a hundred times stronger than your oppressors, you are a
+thousand times more worthy, and you let them impose on you with their
+effrontery! I don't understand you. You live in a most beautiful country,
+you are gifted with the finest intelligence and the most human quality of
+mind, and with it all you do nothing: you allow yourselves to be overborne
+and outraged and trampled underfoot by a parcel of fools. Good Lord! Be
+yourselves! Don't wait for Heaven or a Napoleon to come to your aid! Arise,
+band yourselves together! Get to work, all of you! Sweep out your house!"
+
+But Olivier shrugged his shoulders, and said, wearily and ironically:
+
+"Grapple with them? No. That is not our game: we have better things to do.
+Violence disgusts me. I know only too well what would happen. All the old
+embittered failures, the young Royalist idiots, the odious apostles of
+brutality and hatred, would seize on anything I did and bring it to
+dishonor. Do you want me to adopt the old device of hate: _Fuori Barbari_,
+or: _France for the French_?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Christophe.
+
+"No. Such a device is not for the French. Any attempt to propagate it among
+our people under cover of patriotism must fail. It is good enough for
+barbarian countries! But our country has no use for hatred. Our genius
+never yet asserted itself by denying or destroying the genius of other
+countries, but by absorbing them. Let the troublous North and the
+loquacious South come to us...."
+
+"And the poisonous East?"
+
+"And the poisonous East: we will absorb it with the rest: we have absorbed
+many others! I just laugh at the air of triumph they assume, and the
+pusillanimity of some of my fellow-countrymen. They think they have
+conquered us, they strut about our boulevards, and in our newspapers and
+reviews, and in our theaters and in the political arena. Idiots! It is they
+who are conquered! They will be assimilated after having fed us. Gaul has a
+strong stomach: in these twenty centuries she has digested more than one
+civilization. We are proof against poison.... It is meet that you Germans
+should be afraid! You must be pure or impure. But with us it is not a
+matter of purity but of universality. You have an Emperor: Great Britain
+calls herself an Empire: but, in fact, it is our Latin Genius that is
+Imperial. We are the citizens of the City of the Universe. _Urbis, Orbis_."
+
+"That is all very well," said Christophe, "as long as the nation is healthy
+and in the flower of its manhood. But there will come a day when its energy
+declines: and then there is a danger of its being submerged by the influx
+of foreigners. Between ourselves, does it not seem as though that day had
+arrived?"
+
+"People have been saying that for ages. Again and again our history has
+given the lie to such fears. We have passed through many different trials
+since the days of the Maid of Orleans, when Paris was deserted, and bands
+of wolves prowled through the streets. Neither in the prevalent immorality,
+nor the pursuit of pleasure, nor the laxness, nor the anarchy of the
+present day, do I see any cause for fear. Patience! Those who wish to live
+must endure in patience. I am sure that presently there will be a moral
+reaction,--which will not be much better, and will probably lead to an
+equal degree of folly; those who are now living on the corruptness of
+public life will not be the least clamorous in the reaction!... But what
+does that matter to us? All these movements do not touch the real people of
+France. Rotten fruit does not corrupt the tree. It falls. Besides, all
+these people are such a small part of the nation! What does it matter to us
+whether they live or die? Why should I bother to organize leagues and
+revolutions against them? The existing evil is not the work of any form of
+government. It is the leprosy of luxury, a contagion spread by the
+parasites of intellectual and material wealth. Such parasites will perish."
+
+"After they have sapped your vitality."
+
+"It is impossible to despair of such a race. There is in it such hidden
+virtue, such a power of light and practical idealism, that they creep into
+the veins even of those who are exploiting and ruining the nation. Even the
+grasping, self-seeking politicians succumb to its fascination. Even the
+most mediocre of men when they are in power are gripped by the greatness of
+its Destiny: it lifts them out of themselves: the torch is passed on from
+hand to hand among them: one after another they resume the holy war against
+darkness. They are drawn onward by the genius of the people: willy-nilly
+they fulfil the law of the God whom they deny, _Gesta Dei per Francos_....
+O my beloved country, I will never lose my faith in thee! And though in thy
+trials thou didst perish, yet would I find in that only a reason the more
+for my proud belief, even to the bitter end, in our mission in the world. I
+will not have my beloved France fearfully shutting herself up in a
+sickroom, and closing every inlet to the outer air. I have no mind to
+prolong a sickly existence. When a nation has been so great as we have
+been, then it were far better to die rather than to sink from greatness.
+Therefore let the ideas of the world rush into the channels of our minds! I
+am not afraid. The floor will go down of its own accord after it has
+enriched the soil of France with its ooze."
+
+"My poor dear fellow," said Christophe, "but it's a grim prospect in the
+meanwhile. Where will you be when your France emerges from the Nile? Don't
+you think it would be better to fight against it? You wouldn't risk
+anything except defeat, and you seem inclined to impose that on yourself as
+long as you like."
+
+"I should be risking much more than defeat," said Olivier. "I should be
+running the risk of losing my peace of mind, which I prize far more than
+victory. I will not be a party to hatred. I will be just to all my enemies.
+In the midst of passion I wish to preserve the clarity of my vision, to
+understand and love everything."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Christophe, to whom this love of life, detached from life, seemed to be
+very little different from resignation and acceptance of death, felt in his
+heart, as in Empedocles of old, the stirring of a hymn to Hatred and to
+Love, the brother of Hate, fruitful Love, tilling and sowing good seed in
+the earth. He did not share Olivier's calm fatalism: he had no such
+confidence in the continuance of a race which did not defend itself, and
+his desire was to appeal to all the healthy forces of the nation, to call
+forth and band together all the honest men in the whole of France.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just as it is possible to learn more of a human being in one minute of love
+than in months of observation, so Christophe had learned more about France
+in a week of intimacy with Olivier, hardly ever leaving the house, than
+during a whole year of blind wandering through Paris, and standing at
+attention at various intellectual and political gatherings. Amid the
+universal anarchy in which he had been floundering, a soul like that of his
+friend seemed to him veritably to be the "_Île de France_"--the island of
+reason and serenity in the midst of the ocean. The inward peace which was
+in Olivier was all the more striking, inasmuch as it had no intellectual
+support,--as it existed amid unhappy circumstances,--(in poverty and
+solitude, while the country of its birth was decadent),--and as its body
+was weak, sickly, and nerve-ridden. That serenity was apparently not the
+fruit of any effort of will striving to realize it,--(Olivier had little
+will);--it came from the depths of his being and his race. In many of the
+men of Olivier's acquaintance Christophe perceived the distant light of
+that [Greek: sophrosynae],--"the silent calm of the motionless sea";--and
+he, who knew, none better, the stormy, troublous depths of his own soul,
+and how he had to stretch his will-power to the utmost to maintain the
+balance in his lusty nature, marveled at its veiled harmony.
+
+What he had seen of the inner France had upset all his preconceived ideas
+about the character of the French. Instead of a gay, sociable, careless,
+brilliant people, he saw men of a headstrong and close temper, living in
+isolation, wrapped about with a seeming optimism, like a gleaming mist,
+while they were in fact steeped in a deep-rooted and serene pessimism,
+possessed by fixed ideas, intellectual passions, indomitable souls, which
+it would have been easier to destroy than to alter. No doubt these men were
+only the select few among the French: but Christophe wondered where they
+could have come by their stoicism and their faith. Olivier told him:
+
+"In defeat. It is you, my dear Christophe, who have forged us anew. Ah! But
+we suffered for it, too. You can have no idea of the darkness in which we
+grew up in a France humiliated and sore, which had come face to face with
+death, and still felt the heavy weight of the murderous menace of force.
+Our life, our genius, our French civilization, the greatness of a thousand
+years,--we were conscious that France was in the hands of a brutal
+conqueror who did not understand her, and hated her in his heart, and at
+any moment might crush the life out of her for ever. And we had to live for
+that and no other destiny! Have you ever thought of the French children
+born in houses of death in the shadow of defeat, fed with ideas of
+discouragement, trained to strike for a bloody, fatal, and perhaps futile
+revenge: for even as babies, the first thing they learned was that there
+was no justice, there was no justice in the world: might prevailed against
+right! For a child to open its eyes upon such things is for its soul to be
+degraded or uplifted for ever. Many succumbed: they said: 'Since it is so,
+why struggle against it? Why do anything? Everything is nothing. We'll not
+think of it. Let us enjoy ourselves.'--But those who stood out against it
+are proof against fire: no disillusion can touch their faith: for from
+their earliest childhood they have known that their road could never lead
+them near the road to happiness, and that they had no choice but to follow
+it, else they would suffocate. Such assurance is not come by all at once.
+It is not to be expected of boys of fifteen. There is bitter agony before
+it is attained, and many tears are shed. But it is well that it should be
+so. It must be so....
+
+"_O Faith, virgin of steel...._
+
+"Dig deep with thy lance into the downtrodden hearts of the peoples!
+peoples!..."
+
+In silence Christophe pressed Olivier's hand.
+
+"Dear Christophe," said Olivier, "your Germany has made us suffer indeed."
+
+And Christophe begged for forgiveness almost as though he had been
+responsible for it.
+
+"There's nothing for you to worry about," said Olivier, smiling. "The good
+it has unintentionally done us far outweighs the ill. You have rekindled
+our idealism, you have revived in us the keen desire for knowledge and
+faith, you have filled our France with schools, you have raised to the
+highest pitch the creative powers of a Pasteur, whose discoveries are alone
+worth more than your indemnity of two hundred million; you have given new
+life to our poetry, our painting, our music: to you we owe the new
+awakening of the consciousness of our race. We have reward enough for the
+effort needed to learn to set our faith before our happiness: for, in doing
+so, we have come by a feeling of such moral force, that, amid the apathy of
+the world, we have no doubt, even of victory in the end. Though we are few
+in number, my dear Christophe, though we seem so weak,--a drop of water in
+the ocean of German power--we believe that the drop of water will in the
+end color the whole ocean. The Macedonian phalanx will destroy the mighty
+armies of the plebs of Europe."
+
+Christophe looked down at the puny Olivier, in whose eyes there shone the
+light of faith, and he said:
+
+"Poor weakly little Frenchmen! You are stronger than we are."
+
+"O beneficent defeat," Olivier went on. "Blessed be that disaster! We will
+no more deny it! We are its children."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Defeat new-forges the chosen among men: it sorts out the people: it winnows
+out those who are purest and strongest, and makes them purer and stronger.
+But it hastens the downfall of the rest, or cuts short their flight. In
+that way it separates the mass of the people, who slumber or fall by the
+way, from the chosen few who go marching on. The chosen few know it and
+suffer: even in the most valiant there is a secret melancholy, a feeling of
+their own impotence and isolation. Worst of all,--cut off from the great
+mass of their people, they are also cut off from each other. Each must
+fight for his own hand. The strong among them think only of
+self-preservation. _O man, help thyself!_... They never dream that the
+sturdy saying means: _O men, help yourselves!_ In all there is a want of
+confidence, they lack free-flowing sympathy, and do not feel the need of
+common action which makes a race victorious, the feeling of overflowing
+strength, of reaching upward to the zenith.
+
+Christophe and Olivier knew something of all this. In Paris, full of men
+and women who could have understood them, in the house peopled with unknown
+friends, they were as solitary as in a desert of Asia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were very poor. Their resources were almost nil. Christophe had only
+the copying and transcriptions of music given him by Hecht. Olivier had
+very unwisely thrown up his post at the University during the period of
+depression following on his sister's death, which had been accentuated by
+an unhappy love affair with a young lady he had met at Madame
+Nathan's:--(he had never mentioned it to Christophe, for he was modest
+about his troubles: part of his charm lay in the little air of mystery
+which he always preserved about his private affairs, even with his friend,
+from whom, however, he made no attempt to conceal anything).--In his
+depressed condition when he had longed for silence his work as a lecturer
+became intolerable to him. He had never cared for the profession, which
+necessitates a certain amount of showing off, and thinking aloud, while it
+gives a man no time to himself. If teaching in a school is to be at all a
+noble thing it must be a matter of a sort of apostolic vocation, and that
+Olivier did not possess in the slightest degree: and lecturing for any of
+the Faculties means being perpetually in contact with the public, which is
+a grim fate for a man, like Olivier, with a desire for solitude. On several
+occasions he had had to speak in public: it gave him a singular feeling of
+humiliation. At first he loathed being exhibited on a platform. He _saw_
+the audience, felt it, as with antennæ, and knew that for the most part it
+was composed of idle people who were there only for the sake of having
+something to do: and the role of official entertainer was not at all to his
+liking. Worst of all, speaking from a platform is almost bound to distort
+ideas: if the speaker does not take care there is a danger of his passing
+gradually from a certain theatricality in gesture, diction, attitude, and
+the form in which he presents his ideas--to mental trickery. A lecture is a
+thing hovering in the balance between tiresome comedy and polite pedantry.
+For an artist who is rather bashful and proud, a lecture, which is a
+monologue shouted in the presence of a few hundred unknown, silent people,
+a ready-made garment warranted to fit all sizes, though it actually fits no
+one, is a thing intolerably false. Olivier, being more and more under the
+necessity of withdrawing into himself and saying nothing which was not
+wholly the expression of his thought, gave up the profession of teaching,
+which he had had so much difficulty in entering: and, as he no longer had
+his sister to check him in his tendency to dream, he began to write. He was
+naïve enough to believe that his undoubted worth as an artist could not
+fail to be recognized without his doing anything to procure recognition.
+
+He was quickly undeceived. He found it impossible to get anything
+published. He had a jealous love of liberty, which gave him a horror of
+everything that might impinge on it, and made him live apart, like a poor
+starved plant, among the solid masses of the political churches whose
+baleful associations divided the country and the Press between them. He was
+just as much cut off from all the literary coteries and rejected by them.
+He had not, nor could he have, a single friend among them. He was repelled
+by the hardness, the dryness, the egoism of the intellectuals--(except for
+the very few who were following a real vocation, or were absorbed by a
+passionate enthusiasm for scientific research). That man is a sorry
+creature who has let his heart atrophy for the sake of his mind--when his
+mind is small. In such a man there is no kindness, only a brain like a
+dagger in a sheath: there is no knowing but it will one day cut your
+throat. Against such a man it is necessary to be always armed. Friendship
+is only possible with honest men, who love fine things for their own sake,
+and not for what they can make out of them,--those who live outside their
+art. The majority of men cannot breathe the atmosphere of art. Only the
+very great can live in it without loss of love, which is the source of
+life.
+
+Olivier could only count on himself. And that was a very precarious
+support. Any fresh step was a matter of extreme difficulty to him. He was
+not disposed to accept humiliation for the sake of his work. He went hot
+with shame at the base and obsequious homage which young authors forced
+themselves to pay to a well-known theater manager, who took advantage of
+their cowardice, and treated them as he would never dare to treat his
+servants. Olivier could never have done that to save his life. He just sent
+his manuscripts by post, or left them at the offices of the theaters or the
+reviews, where they lay for months unread. However, one day by chance he
+met one of his old schoolfellows, an amiable loafer, who had still a sort
+of grateful admiration for him for the ease and readiness with which
+Olivier had done his exercises: he knew nothing at all about literature:
+but he knew several literary men, which was much better: he was rich and in
+society, something of a snob, and so he let them, discreetly, exploit him.
+He put in a word for Olivier with the editor of an important review in
+which he was a shareholder: and at once one of his forgotten manuscripts
+was disinterred and read: and, after much temporization,--(for, if the
+article seemed to be worth something, the author's name, being unknown, was
+valueless),--they decided to accept it. When he heard the good news Olivier
+thought his troubles were over. They were only just beginning.
+
+It is comparatively easy to have an article accepted in Paris: but getting
+it published is quite a different matter. The unhappy writer has to wait
+and wait, for months, if need be for life, if he has not acquired the trick
+of flattering people, or bullying them, and showing himself from time to
+time at the receptions of these petty monarchs, and reminding them of his
+existence, and making it clear that he means to go on being a nuisance to
+them as long as they make it necessary. Olivier just stayed at home, and
+wore himself out with waiting. At best he would write a letter or two which
+were never answered. He would lose heart, and be unable to work. It was
+quite absurd, but there was nothing to be done. He would wait for post
+after post, sitting at his desk, with his mind blanketed by all sorts of
+vague injuries: then he would get up and go downstairs to the porter's
+room, and look hopefully in his letter-box, only to meet with
+disappointment: he would walk blindly about with no thought in his head but
+to go back and look again: and when the last post had gone, when the
+silence of his room was broken only by the heavy footsteps of the people in
+the room above, he would feel strangled by the cruel indifference of it
+all. Only a word of reply, only a word! Could that be refused him if only
+in charity? And yet those who refused him that had no idea of the hurt they
+were dealing him. Every man sees the world in his own image. Those who have
+no life in their hearts see the universe as withered and dry: and they
+never dream of the anguish of expectation, hope, and suffering which rends
+the hearts of the young: or if they give it a thought, they judge them
+coldly, with the weary, ponderous irony of those who are surfeited and
+beyond the freshness of life.
+
+At last the article appeared. Olivier had waited so long that it gave him
+no pleasure: the thing was dead for him. And yet he hoped desperately that
+it would be a living thing for others. There were flashes of poetry and
+intelligence in it which could not pass unnoticed. It fell upon absolute
+silence.--He made two or three more attempts. Being attached to no clique
+he met with silence or hostility everywhere. He could not understand it. He
+had thought simply that everybody must be naturally well-disposed towards
+the work of a new man, even if it was not very good. It always represents
+such an amount of work, and surely people would be grateful to a man who
+has tried to give others a little beauty, a little force, a little joy. But
+he only met with indifference or disparagement. And yet he knew that he
+could not be alone in feeling what he had written, and that it must be in
+the minds of other good men. He did not know that such good men did not
+read him, and had nothing to do with literary opinion, or with anything, or
+with anything. If here and there there were a few men whom his words had
+reached, men who sympathized with him, they would never tell him so: they
+remained immured in their unnatural silence. Just as they refrained from
+voting, so they took no share in art: they did not read books, which
+shocked them: they did not go to the theater, which disgusted them: but
+they let their enemies vote, elect their enemies, engineer a scandalous
+success and a vulgar celebrity for books and plays and ideas which only
+represented an impudent minority of the people of France.
+
+Since Olivier could not count on those who were mentally akin to himself,
+as they did not read, he was delivered up to the hosts of the enemy, to the
+mercy of men of letters, who were for the most part hostile to his ideas,
+and the critics who were at their beck and call.
+
+His first bouts with them left him bleeding. He was as sensitive to
+criticism as old Bruchner, who could not bear to have his work performed,
+because he had suffered so much from the malevolence of the Press. He did
+not even win the support of his former colleagues at the University, who,
+thanks to their profession, did preserve a certain sense of the
+intellectual traditions of France, and might have understood him. But for
+the most part these excellent young men, cramped by discipline, absorbed in
+their work, often rather embittered by their thankless duties, could not
+forgive Olivier for trying to break away and do something else Like good
+little officials, many of them were inclined only to admit the superiority
+of talent when it was consonant with hierarchic superiority.
+
+In such a position three courses were open to him: to break down resistance
+by force: to submit to humiliating compromises: or to make up his mind to
+write only for himself. Olivier was incapable of the two first: he
+surrendered to the third. To make a living he went through the drudgery of
+teaching and went on writing, and as there was no possibility of his work
+attaining full growth in publicity, it became more and more involved,
+chimerical, and unreal.
+
+Christophe dropped like a thunderbolt into the midst of his dim crepuscular
+life. He was furious at the wickedness of people and Olivier's patience.
+
+"Have you no blood in your veins?" he would say. "How can you stand such a
+life? You know your own superiority to these swine, and yet you let them
+squeeze the life out of you without a murmur!"
+
+"What can I do?" Olivier would say. "I can't defend myself. It revolts me
+to fight with people I despise: I know that they can use every weapon
+against me: and I can't. Not only should I loathe to stoop to use the means
+they employ, but I should be afraid of hurting them. When I was a boy I
+used to let my schoolfellows beat me as much as they liked. They used to
+think me a coward, and that I was afraid of being hit. I was more afraid of
+hitting than of being hit. I remember some one saying to me one day, when
+one of my tormentors was bullying me: 'Why don't you stop it once and for
+all, and give him a kick in the stomach?' That filled me with horror. I
+would much rather be thrashed."
+
+"There's no blood in your veins," said Christophe. "And on top of that, all
+sorts of Christian ideas!... Your religious education in France is reduced
+to the Catechism: the emasculate Gospel, the tame, boneless New
+Testament.... Humanitarian clap-trap, always tearful.... And the
+Revolution, Jean-Jacques, Robespierre, '48, and, on top of that, the
+Jews!... Take a dose of the full-blooded Old Testament every morning."
+
+Olivier protested. He had a natural antipathy for the Old Testament, a
+feeling which dated back to his childhood, when he used secretly to pore
+over an illustrated Bible, which had been in the library at home, where it
+was never read, and the children were even forbidden to open it. The
+prohibition was useless! Olivier could never keep the book open for long.
+He used quickly to grow irritated and saddened by it, and then he would
+close it: and he would find consolation in plunging into the _Iliad_, or
+the _Odyssey_, or the _Arabian Nights_.
+
+"The gods of the _Iliad_ are men, beautiful, mighty, vicious: I can
+understand them," said Olivier. "I like them or dislike them: even when I
+dislike them I still love them: I am in love with them. More than once,
+with Patroclus, I have kissed the lovely feet of Achilles as he lay
+bleeding. But the God of the Bible is an old Jew, a maniac, a monomaniac, a
+raging madman, who spends his time in growling and hurling threats, and
+howling like an angry wolf, raving to himself in the confinement of that
+cloud of his. I don't understand him. I don't love him; his perpetual
+curses make my head ache, and his savagery fills me with horror:
+
+  "_The burden of Moab...._
+
+  "_The burden of Damascus...._
+
+  "_The burden of Babylon...._
+
+  "_The burden of Egypt...._
+
+  "_The burden of the desert of the sea...._
+
+  "_The burden of the valley of vision...._
+
+"He is a lunatic who thinks himself judge, public prosecutor, and
+executioner rolled into one, and, even in the courtyard of his prison, he
+pronounces sentence of death on the flowers and the pebbles. One is
+stupefied by the tenacity of his hatred, which fills the book with bloody
+cries ...--'a cry of destruction,... the cry is gone round about the
+borders of Moab: the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof
+unto Beerelim....'
+
+"Every now and then he takes a rest, and looks round on his massacres, and
+the little children done to death, and the women outraged and butchered:
+and he laughs like one of the captains of Joshua, feasting after the sack
+of a town:
+
+"'_And the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people a feast of fat things;
+a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the
+lees well refined.... The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is
+made fat with fatness, with the fat of the kidneys of rams...._'
+
+"But worst of all is the perfidy with which this God sends his prophet to
+make men blind, so that in due course he may have a reason for making them
+suffer:
+
+"'_Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy and shut
+their eyes: lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and
+understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.--Lord, how
+long?--Until the cities be wasted without inhabitants, and the houses
+without men, and the land be utterly desolate...._' Oh! I have never found
+a man so evil as that!...
+
+"I'm not so foolish as to deny the force of the language. But I cannot
+separate thought and form: and if I do occasionally admire this Hebrew God,
+it is with the same sort of admiration that I feel for a viper, or a
+...--(I'm trying in vain to find a Shakespearean monster as an example: I
+can't find one: even Shakespeare never begat such a hero of Hatred--saintly
+and virtuous Hatred). Such a book is a terrible thing. Madness is always
+contagious. And that particular madness is all the more dangerous inasmuch
+as it sets up its own murderous pride as an instrument of purification.
+England makes me shudder when I think that her people have for centuries
+been nourished on no other fare.... I'm glad to think that there is the
+dike of the Channel between them and me. I shall never believe that a
+nation is altogether civilized as long as the Bible is its staple food."
+
+"In that case," said Christophe, "you will have to be just as much afraid
+of me, for I get drunk on it. It is the very marrow of a race of lions.
+Stout hearts are those which feed on it. Without the antidote of the Old
+Testament the Gospel is tasteless and unwholesome fare. The Bible is the
+bone and sinew of nations with the will to live. A man must fight, and he
+must hate."
+
+"I hate hatred," said Olivier.
+
+"I only wish you did!" retorted Christophe.
+
+"You're right. I'm too weak even for that. What would you? I can't help
+seeing the arguments in favor of my enemies. And I say to myself over and
+over again, like Chardin: 'Gentleness! Gentleness!'...."
+
+"What a silly sheep you are!" said Christophe. "But whether you like it or
+not, I'm going to make you leap the ditch you're shying at, and I'm going
+to drag you on and beat the big drum for you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the upshot he took Olivier's affairs in hand and set out to do battle
+for him. His first efforts were not very successful. He lost his temper at
+the very outset, and did his friend much harm by pleading his cause: he
+recognized what he had done very quickly, and was in despair at his own
+clumsiness.
+
+Olivier did not stand idly by. He went and fought for Christophe. In spite
+of his fear and dislike of fighting, in spite of his lucid and ironical
+mind, which scorned any sort of exaggeration in word and deed, when it came
+to defending Christophe he was far more violent than anybody else, and even
+than Christophe himself. He lost his head. Love makes a man irrational, and
+Olivier was no exception to the rule.--However, he was cleverer than
+Christophe. Though he was uncompromising and clumsy in handling his own
+affairs, when it came to promoting Christophe's success he was politic and
+even tricky: he displayed an energy and ingenuity well calculated to win
+support: he succeeded in interesting various musical critics and Mæcenases
+in Christophe, though he would have been utterly ashamed to approach them
+with his own work.
+
+In spite of everything they found it very difficult to better their lot.
+Their love for each other made them do many stupid things. Christophe got
+into debt over getting a volume of Olivier's poems published secretly, and
+not a single copy was sold. Olivier induced Christophe to give a concert,
+and hardly anybody came to it. Faced with the empty hall, Christophe
+consoled himself bravely with Handel's quip: "Splendid! My music will sound
+all the better...." But these bold attempts did not repay the money they
+cost: and they would go back to their rooms full of indignation at the
+indifference of the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In their difficulties the only man who came to their aid was a Jew, a man
+of forty, named Taddée Mooch. He kept an art-photograph shop: but although
+he was interested in his trade and brought much taste and skill to bear on
+it, he was interested in so many things outside it that he was apt to
+neglect his business for them. When he did attend to his business he was
+chiefly engaged in perfecting technical devices, and he would lose his head
+over new reproduction processes, which, in spite of their ingenuity, hardly
+ever succeeded, and always cost him a great deal of money. He was a
+voracious reader, and was always hard on the heels of every new idea in
+philosophy, art, science, and politics: he had an amazing knack of finding
+out men of originality and independence of character: it was as though he
+answered to their magnetism. He was a sort of connecting-link between
+Olivier's friends, who were all as isolated as himself, and all working in
+their several directions. He used to go from one to the other, and through
+him there was established between them a complete circuit of ideas, though
+neither he nor they had any notion of it.
+
+When Olivier first proposed to introduce him to Christophe, Christophe
+refused: he was sick of his experiences with the tribe of Israel. Olivier
+laughed and insisted on it, saying that he knew no more of the Jews than he
+did of France. At last Christophe consented, but when he saw Taddée Mooch
+he made a face. In appearance Mooch was extraordinarily Jewish: he was the
+Jew as he is drawn by those who dislike the race: short, bald, badly built,
+with a greasy nose and heavy eyes goggling behind large spectacles: his
+face was hidden by a rough, black, scrubby beard: he had hairy hands, long
+arms, and short bandy legs: a little Syrian Baal. But he had such a kindly
+expression that Christophe was touched by it. Above all, he was very
+simple, and never talked too much. He never paid exaggerated compliments,
+but just dropped the right word, pat. He was very eager to be of service,
+and before any kindness was asked of him it would be done. He came often,
+too often; and he almost always brought good news: work for one or other of
+them, a commission for an article or a lecture for Olivier, or
+music-lessons for Christophe. He never stayed long. It was a sort of
+affectation with him never to intrude. Perhaps he saw Christophe's
+irritation, for his first impulse was always towards an ejaculation of
+impatience when he saw the bearded face of the Carthaginian idol,--(he used
+to call him "Moloch")--appear round the door: but the next moment it would
+be gone, and he would feel nothing but gratitude for his perfect kindness.
+
+Kindness is not a rare quality with the Jews: of all the virtues it is the
+most readily admitted among them, even when they do not practise it.
+Indeed, in most of them it remains negative or neutral: indulgence,
+indifference, dislike for hurting anybody, ironic tolerance. With Mooch it
+was an active passion. He was always ready to devote himself to some cause
+or person: to his poor co-religionists, to the Russian refugees, to the
+oppressed of every nation, to unfortunate artists, to the alleviation of
+every kind of misfortune, to every generous cause. His purse was always
+open: and however thinly lined it might be, he could always manage to
+squeeze a mite out of it: when it was empty he would squeeze the mite out
+of some one else's purse: if he could do any one a service no pains were
+too great for him to take, no distance was too far for him to go. He did it
+simply--with exaggerated simplicity. He was a little apt to talk too much
+about his simplicity and sincerity: but the great thing was that he was
+both simple and sincere.
+
+Christophe was torn between irritation and sympathy with Mooch, and one day
+he said an innocently cruel thing, though he said it with the air of a
+spoiled child. Mooch's kindness had touched him, and he took his hands
+affectionately and said:
+
+"What a pity!... What a pity it is that you are a Jew!"
+
+Olivier started and blushed, as though the shaft had been leveled at
+himself. He was most unhappy, and tried to heal the wound his friend had
+dealt.
+
+Mooch smiled, with sad irony, and replied calmly:
+
+"It is an even greater misfortune to be a man."
+
+To Christophe the remark was nothing but the whim of a moment. But its
+pessimism cut deeper than he imagined: and Olivier, with his subtle
+perception, felt it intuitively. Beneath the Mooch of their acquaintance
+there was another different Mooch, who was in many ways exactly the
+opposite. His apparent nature was the result of a long struggle with his
+real nature. Though he was apparently so simple he had a distorted mind:
+when he gave way to it he was forced to complicate simple things and to
+endow his most genuine feelings with a deliberately ironical character.
+Though he was apparently modest and, if anything, too humble, at heart he
+was proud, and knew it, and strove desperately to whip it out of himself.
+His smiling optimism, his incessant activity, his perpetual business in
+helping others, were the mask of a profound nihilism, a deadly despondency
+which dared not see itself face to face. Mooch made a show of immense faith
+in all sorts of things: in the progress of humanity, in the future of the
+pure Jewish spirit, in the destiny of France, the soldier of the new
+spirit--(he was apt to identify the three causes). Olivier was not taken in
+by it, and used to say to Christophe:
+
+"At heart he believes in nothing."
+
+With all his ironical common sense and calmness Mooch was a neurasthenic
+who dared not look upon the void within himself. He had terrible moments
+when he felt his nothingness: sometimes he would wake suddenly in the
+middle of the night screaming with terror. And he would cast about for
+things to do, like a drowning man clinging to a life-buoy.
+
+It is a costly privilege to be a member of a race which is exceeding old.
+It means the bearing of a frightful burden of the past, trials and
+tribulations, weary experience, disillusion of mind and heart,--all the
+ferment of immemorial life, at the bottom of which is a bitter deposit of
+irony and boredom.... Boredom, the immense boredom of the Semites, which
+has nothing in common with our Aryan boredom, though that, too, makes us
+suffer; while it is at least traceable to definite causes, and vanishes
+when those causes cease to exist: for in most cases it is only the result
+of regret that we cannot have what we want. But in some of the Jews the
+very source of joy and life is tainted with a deadly poison. They have no
+desire, no interest in anything: no ambition, no love, no pleasure. Only
+one thing continues to exist, not intact, but morbid and fine-drawn, in
+these men uprooted from the East, worn out by the amount of energy they
+have had to give out for centuries, longing for quietude, without having
+the power to attain it: thought, endless analysis, which forbids the
+possibility of enjoyment, and leaves them no courage for action. The most
+energetic among them set themselves parts to play, and play them, rather
+than act on their own account. It is a strange thing that in many of
+them--and not in the least intelligent or the least seriously minded--this
+lack of interest in life prompts the impulse, or the unavowed desire, to
+act a part, to play at life,--the only means they know of living!
+
+Mooch was an actor after his fashion. He rushed about to try to deaden his
+senses. But whereas most people only bestir themselves for selfish reasons,
+he was restlessly active in procuring the happiness of others. His devotion
+to Christophe was both touching and a bore. Christophe would snub him and
+then immediately be sorry for it. But Mooch never bore him any ill-will.
+Nothing abashed him. Not that he had any ardent affection for Christophe.
+It was devotion that he loved rather than the men to whom he devoted
+himself. They were only an excuse for doing good, for living.
+
+He labored to such effect that he managed to induce Hecht to publish
+Christophe's _David_ and some other compositions. Hecht appreciated
+Christophe's talent, but he was in no hurry to reveal it to the world. It
+was not until he saw that Mooch was on the point of arranging the
+publication at his own expense with another firm that he took the
+initiative out of vanity.
+
+And on another occasion, when things were very serious and Olivier was ill
+and they had no money, Mooch thought of going to Félix Weil, the rich
+archeologist, who lived in the same house. Mooch and Weil were acquainted,
+but had little sympathy with one another. They were too different: Mooch's
+restlessness and mysticism and revolutionary ideas and "vulgar" manners,
+which, perhaps, he exaggerated, were an incentive to the irony of Félix
+Weil, with his calm, mocking temper, his distinguished manners and
+conservative mind. They had only one thing in common: they were both
+equally lacking in any profound interest in action: and if they did indulge
+in action, it was not from faith, but from their tenacious and mechanical
+vitality. But neither was prepared to admit it: they preferred to give
+their minds to the parts they were playing, and their different parts had
+very little in common. And so Mooch was quite coldly received by Weil: when
+he tried to interest him in the artistic projects of Olivier and
+Christophe, he was brought up sharp against a mocking skepticism. Mooch's
+perpetual embarkations for one Utopia or another were a standing joke in
+Jewish society, where he was regarded as a dangerous visionary. But on this
+occasion, as on so many others, he was not put out: and he went on speaking
+about the friendship of Christophe and Olivier until he roused Weil's
+interest. He saw that and went on.
+
+He had touched a responsive chord. The friendless solitary old man
+worshiped friendship: the one great love of his life had been a friendship
+which he had left behind him: it was his inward treasure: when he thought
+of it he felt a better man. He had founded institutions in his friend's
+name, and had dedicated his books to his memory. He was touched by what
+Mooch told him of the mutual tenderness of Christophe and Olivier. His own
+story had been something like it. His lost friend had been a sort of elder
+brother to him, a comrade of youth, a guide whom he had idolized. That
+friend had been one of those young Jews, burning with intelligence and
+generous ardor, who suffer from the hardness of their surroundings, and set
+themselves to uplift their race, and, through their race, the world, and
+burn hotly into flame, and, like a torch of resin, flare for a few hours
+and then die. The flame of his life had kindled the apathy of young Weil.
+He had raised him from the earth. While his friend was alive Weil had
+marched by his side in the shining light of his stoical faith,--faith in
+science, in the power of the spirit, in a future happiness,--the rays of
+which were shed upon everything with which that messianic soul came in
+contact. When he was left alone, in his weakness and irony, Weil fell from
+the heights of that idealism into the sands of that Book of Ecclesiastes,
+which exists in the mind of every Jew and saps his spiritual vitality. But
+he had never forgotten the hours spent in the light with his friend:
+jealously he guarded its clarity, now almost entirely faded. He had never
+spoken of him to a soul, not even to his wife, whom he loved: it was a
+sacred thing. And the old man, who was considered prosaic and dry of heart,
+and nearing the end of his life, used to say to himself the bitter and
+tender words of a Brahmin of ancient India:
+
+"_The poisoned tree of the world puts forth two fruits sweeter than the
+waters of the fountain of life: one is poetry, the other, friendship._"
+
+From that time on he took an interest in Christophe and Olivier. He knew
+how proud they were, and got Mooch, without saying anything, to send him
+Olivier's volume of poems, which had just been published: and, without the
+two friends having anything to do with it, without their having even the
+smallest idea of what he was up to, he managed to get the Academy to award
+the book a prize, which came in the nick of time to help them in their
+difficulty.
+
+When Christophe discovered that such unlooked-for assistance came from a
+man of whom he was inclined to think ill, he regretted all the unkind
+things he had said or thought of him: he gulped down his dislike of
+calling, and went and thanked him. His good intentions met with no reward.
+Old Weil's irony was excited by Christophe's young enthusiasm, although he
+tried hard to conceal it from him, and they did not get on at all well.
+
+That very day, when Christophe returned, irritated, though still grateful,
+to his attic, after his interview with Weil, he found Mooch there, doing
+Olivier some fresh act of service, and also a review containing a
+disparaging article on his music by Lucien Lévy-Coeur;--it was not written
+in a vein of frank criticism, but took the insultingly kindly line of
+chaffing him and banteringly considering him alongside certain third-rate
+and fourth-rate musicians whom he loathed.
+
+"You see," said Christophe to Olivier, after Mooch had gone, "we always
+have to deal with Jews, nothing but Jews! Perhaps we're Jews ourselves? Do
+tell me that we're not. We seem to attract them. We're always knocking up
+against them, both friends and foes."
+
+"The reason is," said Olivier, "that they are more intelligent than the
+rest. The Jews are almost the only people in France to whom a free man can
+talk of new and vital things. The rest are stuck fast in the past among
+dead things. Unfortunately the past does not exist for the Jews, or at
+least it is not the same for them as for us. With them we can only talk
+about the things of to-day: with our fellow-countrymen we can only discuss
+the things of yesterday. Look at the activity of the Jews in every kind of
+way: commerce, industry, education, science, philanthropy, art...."
+
+"Don't let's talk about art," said Christophe.
+
+"I don't say that I am always in sympathy with what they do: very often I
+detest it. But at least they are alive, and can understand men who are
+alive. It is all very well for us to criticise and make fun of the Jews,
+and speak ill of them. We can't do without them."
+
+"Don't exaggerate," said Christophe jokingly. "I could do without them
+perfectly."
+
+"You might go on living perhaps. But what good would that be to you if your
+life and your work remained unknown, as they probably would without the
+Jews? Would the members of your own religion come to your assistance? The
+Catholic Church lets the best of its members perish without raising a hand
+to help them. Men who are religious from the very bottom of their hearts,
+men who give their lives in the defense of God,--if they have dared to
+break away from Catholic dominion and shake off the authority of Rome,--at
+once find the unworthy mob who call themselves Catholic not only
+indifferent, but hostile: they condemn them to silence, and abandon them to
+the mercy of the common enemy. If a man of independent spirit, be he never
+so great and Christian at heart, is not a Christian as a matter of
+obedience, it is nothing to the Catholics that in him is incarnate all that
+is most pure and most truly divine in their faith. He is not of the pack,
+the blind and deaf sect which refuses to think for itself. He is cast out,
+and the rest rejoice to see him suffering alone, torn to pieces by the
+enemy, and crying for help to those who are his brothers, for whose faith
+he is done to death. In the Catholicism of to-day there is a horrible,
+death-dealing power of inertia. It would find it far easier to forgive its
+enemies than those who wish to awake it and restore it to life.... My dear
+Christophe, where should we be, and what should we do--we, who are
+Catholics by birth, we, who have shaken free, without the little band of
+free Protestants and Jews? The Jews in Europe of to-day are the most active
+and living agents of good and evil. They carry hither and thither the
+pollen of thought. Have not your worst enemies and your friends from the
+very beginning been Jews?"
+
+"That's true," said Christophe. "They have given me encouragement and help,
+and said things to me which have given me new life for the struggle, by
+showing me that I was understood. No doubt very few of my friends have
+remained faithful to me: their friendship was but a fire of straw. No
+matter! That fleeting light is a great thing in darkness. You are right: we
+mustn't be ungrateful."
+
+"We must not be stupid, either," replied Olivier. "We must not mutilate our
+already diseased civilization by lopping off some of its most living
+branches. If we were so unfortunate as to have the Jews driven from Europe,
+we should be left so poor in intelligence and power for action that we
+should be in danger of utter bankruptcy. In France especially, in the
+present condition of French vitality, their expulsion would mean a more
+deadly drain on the blood of the nation than the expulsion of the
+Protestants in the seventeenth century.--No doubt, for the time being, they
+do occupy a position out of all proportion to their true merit. They do
+take advantage of the present moral and political anarchy, which in no
+small degree they help to aggravate, because it suits them, and because it
+is natural to them to do so. The best of them, like our friend Mooch, make
+the mistake, in all sincerity, of identifying the destiny of France with
+their Jewish dreams, which are often more dangerous than useful. But you
+can't blame them for wanting to build France in their own image: it means
+that they love the country. If their love becomes a public danger, all we
+have to do is to defend ourselves and keep them in their place, which, in
+France, is the second. Not that I think their race inferior to ours:--(all
+these questions of the supremacy of races are idiotic and disgusting).--But
+we cannot admit that a foreign race which has not yet been fused into our
+own, can possibly know better than we do what suits us. The Jews are well
+off in France: I am glad of it: but they must not think of turning France
+into Judea! An intelligent and strong Government which was able to keep the
+Jews in their place would make them one of the most useful instruments for
+the building of the greatness of France: and it would be doing both them
+and us a great service. These hypernervous, restless, and unsettled
+creatures need the restraint of law and the firm hand of a just master, in
+whom there is no weakness, to curb them. The Jews are like women: admirable
+when they are reined in; but, with the Jews as with women, their use of
+mastery is an abomination, and those who submit to it present a pitiful and
+absurd spectacle."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of their love for each other, and the intuitive knowledge that
+came with it, there were many things which Christophe and Olivier could not
+understand in each other, things, too, which shocked them. In the beginning
+of their friendship, when each tried instinctively only to suffer the
+existence of those qualities in himself which were most like the qualities
+of his friend, they never remarked them. It was only gradually that the
+different aspects of their two nationalities appeared on the surface again,
+more sharply defined than before: for being in contrast, each showed the
+other up. There were moments of difficulty, moments when they clashed,
+which, with all their fond indulgence, they could not altogether avoid.
+
+Sometimes they misunderstood each other. Olivier's mind was a mixture of
+faith, liberty, passion, irony, and universal doubt, for which Christophe
+could not find any working formula.
+
+Olivier, on his part, was distressed by Christophe's lack of psychology:
+being of an old intellectual stock, and therefore aristocratic, he was
+moved to smile at the awkwardness of such, a vigorous, though lumbering and
+single mind, which had no power of self-analysis, and was always being
+taken in by others and by itself. Christophe's sentimentality, his noisy
+outbursts, his facile emotions, used sometimes to exasperate Olivier, to
+whom they seemed absurd. Not to speak of a certain worship of force, the
+German conviction of the excellence of fist-morality, _Faustrecht_, to
+which Olivier and his countrymen had good reason for not subscribing.
+
+And Christophe could not bear Olivier's irony, which used sometimes to make
+him furious with exasperation: he could not bear his mania for arguing, his
+perpetual analysis, and the curious intellectual immorality, which was
+surprising in a man who set so much store by moral purity as Olivier, and
+arose from the very breadth of his mind, to which every kind of negation
+was detestable,--so that he took a delight in the contemplation of ideas
+the opposite of his own. Olivier's outlook on things was in some sort
+historical and panoramic: it was so necessary for him to understand
+everything that he always saw reasons both for and against, and supported
+each in turn, according as the opposite thesis was put forward: and so amid
+such contradictions he lost his way. He would leave Christophe hopelessly
+perplexed. It was not that he had any desire to contradict or any taste for
+paradox: it was an imperious need in him for justice and common sense: he
+was exasperated by the stupidity of any assumption, and he had to react
+against it. The crudeness with which Christophe judged immoral men and
+actions, by seeing everything as much coarser and more brutal than it
+really was, distressed Olivier, who was just as moral, but was not of the
+same unbending steel; he allowed himself to be tempted, colored, and molded
+by outside influences. He would protest against Christophe's exaggerations
+and fly off into exaggeration in the opposite direction. Almost every day
+this perverseness of mind would make him take up the cudgels for his
+adversaries against his friends. Christophe would lose his temper. He would
+cry out upon Olivier's sophistry and his indulgence of hateful things and
+people. Olivier would smile: he knew the utter absence of illusion that lay
+behind his indulgence: he knew that Christophe believed in many more things
+than he did, and had a greater power of acceptance! But Christophe would
+look neither to the right hand nor the left, but went straight ahead. He
+was especially angry with Parisian "kindness."
+
+"Their great argument, of which they are so proud, in favor of 'pardoning'
+rascals, is," he would say, "that all rascals are sufficiently unhappy in
+their wickedness, or that they are irresponsible or diseased.... In the
+first place, it is not true that those who do evil are unhappy. That's a
+moral idea in action, a silly melodramatic idea, stupid, empty optimism,
+such as you find in Scribe and Capus,--(Scribe and Capus, your Parisian
+great men, artists of whom your pleasure-seeking, vulgar society is worthy,
+childish hypocrites, too cowardly to face their own ugliness).--It is quite
+possible for a rascal to be a happy man. He has every chance of being so.
+And as for his irresponsibility, that is an idiotic idea. Do have the
+courage to face the fact that Nature does not care a rap about good and
+evil, and is so far malevolent that a man may easily be a criminal and yet
+perfectly sound in mind and body. Virtue is not a natural thing. It is the
+work of man. It is his duty to defend it. Human society has been built up
+by a few men who were stronger and greater than the rest. It is their duty
+to see that the work of so many ages of frightful struggles is not spoiled
+by the cowardly rabble."
+
+At bottom there was no great difference between these ideas and Olivier's:
+but, by a secret instinct for balance and proportion, he was never so
+dilettante as when he heard provocative words thrown out.
+
+"Don't get so excited, my friend," he would say to Christophe. "Let the
+world hug its vices. Like the friends in the 'Decameron,' let us breathe in
+peace the balmy air of the gardens of thought, while under the cypress-hill
+and the tall, shady pines, twined about with roses, Florence is devastated
+by the black plague."
+
+He would amuse himself for days together by pulling to pieces art, science,
+philosophy, to find their hidden wheels: so he came by a sort of
+Pyrrhonism, in which everything that was became only a figment of the mind,
+a castle in the air, which had not even the excuse of the geometric
+symbols, of being necessary to the mind. Christophe would rage against his
+pulling the machine to pieces:
+
+"It was going quite well: you'll probably break it. Then how will you be
+better off? What are you trying to prove? That nothing is nothing? Good
+Lord! I know that. It is because nothingness creeps in upon us from every
+side that we fight. Nothing exists? I exist. There's no reason for doing
+anything? I'm doing what I can. If people like death, let them die! For my
+part, I'm alive, and I'm going to live. My life is in one scale of the
+balance, my mind and thought in the other.... To hell with thought!"
+
+He would fly off with his usual violence, and in their argument he would
+say things that hurt. Hardly had he said them than he was sorry. He would
+long to withdraw them: but the harm was done. Olivier was very sensitive:
+his skin was easily barked: a harsh word, especially if it came from some
+one he loved, hurt him terribly. He was too proud to say anything, and
+would retire into himself. And he would see in his friend those sudden
+flashes of unconscious egoism which appear in every great artist. Sometimes
+he would feel that his life was no great thing to Christophe compared with
+a beautiful piece of music:--(Christophe hardly troubled to disguise the
+fact).--He would understand and see that Christophe was right: but it made
+him sad.
+
+And then there were in Christophe's nature all sorts of disordered elements
+which eluded Olivier and made him uneasy. He used to have sudden fits of a
+freakish and terrible humor. For days together he would not speak: or he
+would break out in diabolically malicious moods and try deliberately to
+hurt. Sometimes he would disappear altogether and be seen no more for the
+rest of the day and part of the night. Once he stayed away for two whole
+days. God knows what he was up to! He was not very clear about it
+himself.... The truth was that his powerful nature, shut up in that narrow
+life, and those small rooms, as in a hen-coop, every now and then reached
+bursting-point. His friend's calmness maddened him: then he would long to
+hurt him, to hurt some one. He would have to rush away, and wear himself
+out. He would go striding through the streets of Paris and the outskirts in
+the vague quest of adventure, which sometimes he found: and he would not
+have been sorry to meet with some rough encounter which would have given
+him the opportunity of expending some of his superfluous energy in a
+brawl.... It was hard for Olivier, with his poor health and weakness of
+body, to understand. Christophe was not much nearer understanding it. He
+would wake up from his aberrations as from an exhausting dream,--a little
+uneasy and ashamed of what he had been doing and might yet do. But when the
+fit of madness was over he would feel like a great sky washed by the storm,
+purged of every taint, serene, and sovereign of his soul. He would be more
+tender than ever with Olivier, and bitterly sorry for having hurt him. He
+would give up trying to account for their little quarrels. The wrong was
+not always on his side: but he would take all the blame upon himself, and
+put it down to his unjust passion for being right; and he would think it
+better to be wrong with his friend than to be right, if right were not on
+his side.
+
+Their misunderstandings were especially grievous when they occurred in the
+evening, so that the two friends had to spend the night in disunion, which
+meant that both of them were morally upset. Christophe would get up and
+scribble a note and slip it under Olivier's door: and next day as soon as
+he woke up he would beg his pardon. Sometimes, even, he would knock at his
+door in the middle of the night: he could not bear to wait for the day to
+come before he humbled himself. As a rule, Olivier would be just as unable
+to sleep. He knew that Christophe loved him, and had not wished to hurt
+him: but he wanted to hear him say so. Christophe would say so, and then
+the whole thing would be forgotten. Then they would be pacified. Delightful
+state! How well they would sleep for the rest of the night!
+
+"Ah!" Olivier would sigh. "How difficult it is to understand each other!"
+
+"But is it necessary always to understand each other?" Christophe would
+ask. "I give it up. We only need love each other."
+
+All these petty quarrels which, with anxious tenderness, they would at once
+find ways of mending, made them almost dearer to each other than before.
+When they were hotly arguing Antoinette would appear in Olivier's eyes. The
+two friends would pay each other womanish attentions. Christophe never let
+Olivier's birthday go by without celebrating it by dedicating a composition
+to him, or by the gift of flowers, or a cake, or a little present, bought
+Heaven knows how!--(for they often had no money in the house)--Olivier
+would tire his eyes out with copying out Christophe's scores at night and
+by stealth.
+
+Misunderstandings between friends are never very serious so long as a third
+party does not come between them.--But that was bound to happen: there are
+too many people in this world ready to meddle in the affairs of others and
+make mischief between them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Olivier knew the Stevens, whom Christophe rarely visited, and he too had
+been attracted by Colette. The reason why Christophe had not met him in the
+girl's little court was that just at that time Olivier was suffering from
+his sister's death, and had shut himself up with his grief and saw no one.
+Colette, on her part, did not go out of her way to see him: she liked
+Olivier, but she did not like unhappy people: she used to declare that she
+was so sensitive that she could not bear the sight of sorrow: she waited
+until Olivier's sorrow was over before she remembered his existence. When
+she heard that he seemed to be himself again, and that there was no danger
+of infection, she made bold to beckon him to her. Olivier did not need much
+inducement to go. He was shy but he liked society, and he was easily led:
+and he had a weakness for Colette. When he told Christophe of his intention
+of going back to her, Christophe, who had too much respect for his friend's
+liberty to express any adverse opinion, just shrugged his shoulders and
+said jokingly:
+
+"Go, dear boy, if it amuses you."
+
+But nothing would have induced him to follow his example. He had made up
+his mind to have nothing more to do with a coquette like Colette or the
+world she lived in. Not that he was a misogynist: far from it. He had a
+very tender feeling for all the young women who worked for their living,
+the factory-hands, and typists, and Government clerks, who are to be seen
+every morning, half awake, always a little late, hurrying to their
+workshops and offices. It seemed to him that a woman was only in possession
+of all her senses when she was working and struggling for her own
+individual existence, by earning her daily bread and her independence. And
+it seemed to him that only then did she possess all her charm, her alert
+suppleness of movement, the awakening of all her senses, her integrity of
+life and will. He detested the idle, pleasure-seeking woman, who seemed to
+him to be only an overfed animal, perpetually in the act of digestion,
+bored, browsing over unwholesome dreams. Olivier, on the contrary, adored
+the _far niente_ of women, their charm, like the charm of flowers, living
+only to be beautiful and to perfume the air about them. He was more of an
+artist: Christophe was more human. Unlike Colette, Christophe loved other
+people in proportion as they shared in the suffering of the world. So,
+between him and them there was a bond of brotherly compassion.
+
+Colette was particularly anxious to see Olivier again, after she heard of
+his friendship with Christophe: for she was curious to hear the details.
+She was rather angry with Christophe for the disdainful manner in which he
+seemed to have forgotten her: and, though she had no desire for
+revenge,--(it was not worth the trouble: and revenge does mean a certain
+amount of trouble),--she would have been very glad to pay him out. She was
+like a cat that bites the hand that strokes it. She had an ingratiating way
+with her, and she had no difficulty in getting Olivier to talk. Nobody
+could be more clear-sighted than he, or less easily taken in by people,
+when he was away from them: but nobody could be more naïvely confiding than
+he when he was with a woman whose eyes smiled kindly at him. Colette
+displayed so genuine an interest in his friendship with Christophe that he
+went so far as to tell her the whole story, and even about certain of their
+amicable misunderstandings, which, at a distance, seemed amusing, and he
+took the whole blame for them on himself. He also confided to Colette
+Christophe's artistic projects, and also some of his opinions--which were
+not altogether flattering--concerning France and the French. Nothing that
+he told her was of any great importance in itself, but Colette repeated it
+all at once, and adapted it partly to make the story more spicy, and partly
+to satisfy her secret feeling of malice against Christophe. And as the
+first person to receive her confidence was naturally her inseparable Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur, who had no reason for keeping it secret, the story went the
+rounds, and was embellished by the way: a note of ironic pity for Olivier,
+who was represented as a victim, was introduced, and he cut rather a sorry
+figure. It seemed unlikely that the story could be very interesting to
+anybody, since the heroes of it were very little known: but a Parisian
+takes an interest in everything that does not concern him. So much so, that
+one day Christophe heard the story from the lips of Madame Roussin. She met
+him one day at a concert, and asked him if it were true that he had
+quarreled with that poor Olivier Jeannin: and she asked about his work, and
+alluded to things which he believed were known only to himself and Olivier.
+And when he asked her how she had come by her information, she said she had
+had it from Lucien Lévy-Coeur, who had had it direct from Olivier.
+
+The blow overwhelmed Christophe. Violent and uncritical as he was, it never
+occurred to him to think how utterly fantastic the story was: he only saw
+one thing: his secrets which he had confided to Olivier had been
+betrayed--betrayed to Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He could not stay to the end of
+the concert: he left the hall at once. Around him all was blank and dark.
+In the street he narrowly escaped being run over. He said to himself over
+and over again: "My friend has betrayed me!..."
+
+Olivier was with Colette. Christophe locked the door of his room, so that
+when Olivier came in he could not have his usual talk with him. He heard
+him come in a few moments later and try to open the door, and whisper
+"Good-night" through the keyhole: he did not stir. He was sitting on his
+bed in the dark, holding his head in his hands, and saying over and over
+again: "My friend has betrayed me!...": and he stayed like that half
+through the night. Then he felt how dearly he loved Olivier: for he was not
+angry with him for having betrayed him: he only suffered. Those whom we
+love have absolute rights over us, even the right to cease loving us. We
+cannot bear them any ill-will; we can only be angry with ourselves for
+being so unworthy of love that it must desert us. There is mortal anguish
+in such a state of mind--anguish which destroys the will to live.
+
+Next morning, when he saw Olivier, he did not tell him anything: he so
+detested the idea of reproaching him,--reproaching him for having abused
+his confidence and flung his secrets into the enemy's maw,--that he could
+not find a single word to say to him. But his face said what he could not
+speak: his expression was icy and hostile. Olivier was struck dumb: he
+could not understand it. He tried timidly to discover what Christophe had
+against him. Christophe turned away from him brutally, and made no reply.
+Olivier was hurt in his turn, and said no more, and gulped down his
+distress in silence. They did not see each other again that day.
+
+Even if Olivier had made him suffer a thousand times more, Christophe would
+never have done anything to avenge himself, and he would have done hardly
+anything to defend himself: Olivier was sacred to him. But it was necessary
+that the indignation he felt should be expended upon some one: and since
+that some one could not be Olivier, it was Lucien Lévy-Coeur. With his
+usual passionate injustice he put upon him the responsibility for the
+ill-doing which he attributed to Olivier: and he suffered intolerable pangs
+of jealousy in the thought that such a man as that could have robbed him of
+his friend's affection, just as he had previously ousted him from his
+friendship with Colette Stevens. To bring his exasperation to a head, that
+very day he happened to see an article by Lucien Lévy-Coeur on a
+performance of _Fidelio_. In it he spoke of Beethoven in a bantering way,
+and poked fun at his heroine. Christophe was as alive as anybody to the
+absurdities of the opera, and even to certain mistakes in the music. He had
+not always displayed an exaggerated respect for the acknowledged master
+himself. But he set no store by always agreeing with his own opinions, nor
+had he any desire to be Frenchily logical. He was one of those men who are
+quite ready to admit the faults of their friends, but cannot bear anybody
+else to do so. And, besides, it was one thing to criticise a great artist,
+however bitterly, from a passionate faith in art, and even--(one may
+say)--from an uncompromising love for his fame and intolerance of anything
+mediocre in his work,--and another thing, as Lucien Lévy-Coeur did, only to
+use such criticism to flatter the baseness of the public, and to make the
+gallery laugh, by an exhibition of wit at the expense of a great man.
+Again, free though Christophe was in his judgments, there had always been a
+certain sort of music which he had tacitly left alone and shielded: music
+which was not to be tampered with: that music, which was higher and better
+than music, the music of an absolutely pure soul, a great health-giving
+soul, to which a man could turn for consolation, strength, and hope.
+Beethoven's music was in the category. To see a puppy like Lévy-Coeur
+insulting Beethoven made him blind with anger. It was no longer a question
+of art, but a question of honor; everything that makes life rare, love,
+heroism, passionate virtue, the good human longing for self-sacrifice, was
+at stake. The Godhead itself was imperiled! There was no room for argument
+It is as impossible to suffer that to be besmirched as to hear the woman
+you respect and love insulted: there is but one thing to do, to hate and
+kill.... What is there to say when the insulting blackguard was, of all
+men, the one whom Christophe most despised?
+
+And, as luck would have it, that very evening the two men came face to
+face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To avoid being left alone with Olivier, contrary to his habit, Christophe
+went to an At Home at the Roussins'. He was asked to play. He consented
+unwillingly. However, after a moment or two he became absorbed in the music
+he was playing, until, glancing up, he saw Lucien Lévy-Coeur standing in a
+little group, watching him with an ironical stare. He stopped short, in the
+middle of a bar: he got up and turned away from the piano. There was an
+awkward silence. Madame Roussin came up to Christophe in her surprise and
+smiled forcedly; and, very cautiously,--for she was not sure whether the
+piece was finished or not,--she asked him:
+
+"Won't you go on, Monsieur Krafft?"
+
+"I've finished," he replied curtly.
+
+He had hardly said it than he became conscious of his rudeness; but,
+instead of making him more restrained, it only excited him the more. He
+paid no heed to the amused attention of his auditors, but went and sat
+in a corner of the room from which he could follow Lucien Lévy-Coeur's
+movements. His neighbor, an old general, with a pinkish, sleepy face,
+light-blue eyes, and a childish expression, thought it incumbent on him to
+compliment him on the originality of his music. Christophe bowed irritably,
+and growled out a few inarticulate sounds. The general went on talking
+with effusive politeness and a gentle, meaningless smile: and he wanted
+Christophe to explain how he could play such a long piece of music from
+memory. Christophe fidgeted impatiently, and thought wildly of knocking the
+old gentleman off the sofa. He wanted to hear what Lucien Lévy-Coeur was
+saying: he was waiting for an excuse for attacking him. For some moments
+past he had been conscious that he was going to make a fool of himself: but
+no power on earth could have kept him from it.--Lucien Lévy-Coeur, in his
+high falsetto voice, was explaining the aims and secret thoughts of great
+artists to a circle of ladies. During a moment of silence Christophe heard
+him talking about the friendship of Wagner and King Ludwig, with all sorts
+of nasty innuendoes.
+
+"Stop!" he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table by his side.
+
+Everybody turned in amazement. Lucien Lévy-Coeur met Christophe's eyes and
+paled a little, and said:
+
+"Were you speaking to me?"
+
+"You hound!... Yes," said Christophe.
+
+He sprang to his feet.
+
+"You soil and sully everything that is great in the world," he went on
+furiously. "There's the door! Get out, you cur, or I'll fling you through
+the window!"
+
+He moved towards him. The ladies moved aside screaming. There was a moment
+of general confusion. Christophe was surrounded at once. Lucien Lévy-Coeur
+had half risen to his feet: then he resumed his careless attitude in his
+chair. He called a servant who was passing and gave him a card: and he went
+on with his remarks as though nothing had happened: but his eyelids were
+twitching nervously, and his eyes blinked as he looked this way and that
+to see how people had taken it. Roussin had taken his stand in front of
+Christophe, and he took him by the lapel of his coat and urged him in the
+direction of the door. Christophe hung his head in his anger and shame,
+and his eyes saw nothing but the wide expanse of shirt-front, and kept on
+counting the diamond studs: and he could feel the big man's breath on his
+cheek.
+
+"Come, come, my dear fellow!" said Roussin. "What's the matter with you?
+Where are your manners? Control yourself! Do you know where you are? Come,
+come, are you mad?"
+
+"I'm damned if I ever set foot in your house again!" said Christophe,
+breaking free: and he reached the door.
+
+The people prudently made way for him. In the cloak-room a servant held
+out a salver. It contained Lucien Lévy-Coeur's card. He took it without
+understanding what it meant, and read it aloud: then, suddenly, snorting
+with rage, he fumbled in his pockets: mixed up with a varied assortment of
+things, he pulled out three or four crumpled dirty cards:
+
+"There! There!" he said, flinging them on the salver so violently that one
+of them fell to the ground.
+
+He left the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Olivier knew nothing about it. Christophe chose as his witnesses the first
+men of his acquaintance who turned up, the musical critic, Théophile
+Goujart, and a German, Doctor Barth, an honorary lecturer in a Swiss
+University, whom he had met one night in a café; he had made friends with
+him, though they had little in common: but they could talk to each other
+about Germany. After conferring with Lucien Lévy-Coeur's witnesses, pistols
+were chosen. Christophe was absolutely ignorant about the use of arms, and
+Goujart told him it would not be a bad thing for him to go and have a few
+lessons: but Christophe refused, and while he was waiting for the day to
+come went on with his work.
+
+But his mind was distracted. He had a fixed idea, of which he was dimly
+conscious, while it kept buzzing in his head like a bad dream.... "It was
+unpleasant, yes, very unpleasant.... What was unpleasant?--Oh! the duel
+to-morrow.... Just a joke! Nobody is ever hurt.... But it was possible....
+Well, then, afterwards?... Afterwards, that was it, afterwards.... A cock
+of the finger by that swine who hates me may wipe out my life.... So be
+it!...--Yes, to-morrow, in a day or two, I may be lying in the loathsome
+soil of Paris....--Bah! Here or anywhere, what does it matter!... Oh! Lord:
+I'm not going to play the coward!--No, but it would be monstrous to waste
+the mighty world of ideas that I feel springing to life in me for a
+moment's folly.... What rot it is, these modern duels in which they try to
+equalize the chances of the two opponents! That's a fine sort of equality
+that sets the same value on the life of a mountebank as on mine! Why don't
+they let us go for each other with fists and cudgels? There'd be some
+pleasure in that. But this cold-blooded shooting!... And, of course, he
+knows how to shoot, and I have never had a pistol in my hand.... They are
+right: I must learn.... He'll try to kill me. I'll kill him."
+
+He went out. There was a range a few yards away from the house. Christophe
+asked for a pistol, and had it explained how he ought to hold it. With his
+first shot he almost killed his instructor: he went on with a second and a
+third, and fared no better: he lost patience, and went from bad to worse. A
+few young men were standing by watching and laughing. He paid no heed to
+them. With his German persistency he went on trying, and was so indifferent
+to their laughter and so determined to succeed that, as always happens,
+his blundering patience roused interest, and one of the spectators gave
+him advice. In spite of his usual violence he listened to everything with
+childlike docility; he managed to control his nerves, which were making
+his hand tremble: he stiffened himself and knit his brows: the sweat was
+pouring down his cheeks: he said not a word: but every now and then he
+would give way to a gust of anger, and then go on shooting. He stayed there
+for a couple of hours. At the end of that time he hit the bull's-eye. Few
+things could have been more absorbing than the sight of such a power of
+will mastering an awkward and rebellious body. It inspired respect. Some of
+those who had scoffed at the outset had gone, and the others were silenced
+one by one, and had not been able to tear themselves away. They took off
+their hats to Christophe when he went away.
+
+When he reached home Christophe found his friend Mooch waiting anxiously.
+Mooch had heard of the quarrel, and had come at once: he wanted to know
+how it had originated. In spite of Christophe's reticence and desire
+not to attach any blame to Olivier, he guessed the reason. He was very
+cool-headed, and knew both the friends, and had no doubt of Olivier's
+innocence of the treachery ascribed to him. He looked into the matter, and
+had no difficulty in finding out that the whole trouble arose from the
+scandal-mongering of Colette and Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He rushed back with
+his evidence to Christophe, thinking that he could in that way prevent
+the duel. But the result was exactly the opposite of what he expected:
+Christophe was only the more rancorous against Lévy-Coeur when he learned
+that it was through him that he had come to doubt his friend. To get rid of
+Mooch, who kept on imploring him not to fight, he promised him everything
+he asked. But he had made up his mind. He was quite happy now: he was going
+to fight for Olivier, not for himself!
+
+A remark made by one of the seconds as the carriage was going along a road
+through the woods suddenly caught Christophe's attention. He tried to find
+out what they were thinking, and saw how little they really cared about
+him. Professor Barth was wondering when the affair would be over, and
+whether he would be back in time to finish a piece of work he had begun
+on the manuscripts in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. Of Christophe's three
+companions, he was the most interested in the result of the encounter as
+a matter of German national pride. Goujart paid no attention either to
+Christophe or the other German, but discussed certain scabrous subjects
+in connection with the coarser branches of physiology with Dr. Jullien, a
+young physician from Toulouse, who had recently come to live next door to
+Christophe, and occasionally borrowed his spirit-lamp, or his umbrella, or
+his coffee-cups, which he invariably returned broken. In return he gave him
+free consultations, tried medicines on him, and laughed at his simplicity.
+Under his impassive manner, that would have well become a Castilian
+hidalgo, there was a perpetual love of teasing. He was highly delighted
+with the adventure of the duel, which struck him as sheer burlesque: and
+he was amusing himself with fancying the mess that Christophe would make
+of it. He thought it a great joke to be driving through the woods at the
+expense of good old Krafft.--That, clearly, was what was in the minds of
+the trio: they regarded it as a jolly excursion which cost them nothing.
+Not one of them attached the least importance to the duel. But, on the
+other hand, they were just as calmly prepared for anything that might come
+of it.
+
+They reached the appointed spot before the others. It was a little inn in
+the heart of the forest. It was a pleasure-resort, more or less unclean, to
+which Parisians used to resort to cleanse their honor when the dirt on it
+became too apparent. The hedges were bright with the pure flowers of the
+eglantine. In the shade of the bronze-leaved oak-trees there were rows
+of little tables. At one of these tables were seated three bicyclists:
+a painted woman, in knickerbockers, with black socks: and two men in
+flannels, who were stupefied by the heat, and every now and then gave out
+growls and grunts as though they had forgotten how to speak.
+
+The arrival of the carriage produced a little buzz of excitement in the
+inn. Goujart, who knew the house and the people of old, declared that he
+would look after everything. Barth dragged Christophe into an arbor and
+ordered beer. The air was deliciously warm and soft, and resounding with
+the buzzing of bees. Christophe forgot why he had come. Barth emptied the
+bottle, and said, after a short silence:
+
+"I know what I'll do."
+
+He drank and went on:
+
+"I shall have plenty of time: I'll go on to Versailles when it's all over."
+
+Goujart was heard haggling with the landlady over the price of the
+dueling-ground. Jullien had not been wasting his time: as he passed near
+the bicyclists he broke into noisy and ecstatic comment on the woman's bare
+legs: and there was exchanged a perfect deluge of filthy epithets in which
+Jullien did not come off worst. Barth said in a whisper:
+
+"The French are a low-minded lot. Brother, I drink to your victory."
+
+He clinked his glass against Christophe's. Christophe was dreaming: scraps
+of music were floating in his mind, mingled with the harmonious humming of
+insects. He was very sleepy.
+
+The wheels of another carriage crunched over the gravel of the drive.
+Christophe saw Lucien Lévy-Coeur's pale face, with its inevitable smile:
+and his anger leaped up in him. He got up, and Barth followed him.
+
+Lévy-Coeur, with his neck swathed in a high stock, was dressed with a
+scrupulous care which was strikingly in contrast with his adversary's
+untidiness. He was followed by Count Bloch, a sportsman well known for
+his mistresses, his collection of old pyxes, and his ultra-Royalist
+opinions,--Léon Mouey, another man of fashion, who had reached his position
+as Deputy through literature, and was a writer from political ambition: he
+was young, bald, clean-shaven, with a lean bilious face: he had a long
+nose, round eyes, and a head like a bird's,--and Dr. Emmanuel, a fine type
+of Semite, well-meaning and cold, a member of the Academy of Medicine, a
+chief-surgeon in a hospital, famous for a number of scientific books, and
+the medical skepticism which made him listen with ironic pity to the
+plaints of his patients without making the least attempt to cure them.
+
+The newcomers saluted the other three courteously. Christophe barely
+responded, but was annoyed by the eagerness and the exaggerated politeness
+with which they treated Lévy-Coeur's seconds. Jullien knew Emmanuel, and
+Goujart knew Mouey, and they approached them obsequiously smiling. Mouey
+greeted them with cold politeness and Emmanuel jocularly and without
+ceremony. As for Count Bloch, he stayed by Lévy-Coeur, and with a rapid
+glance he took in the condition of the clothes and linen of the three men
+of the opposing camp, and, hardly opening his lips, passed abrupt humorous
+comment on them with, his friend,--and both of them stood calm and correct.
+
+Lucien Lévy-Coeur stood at his ease waiting for Count Bloch, who had the
+ordering of the duel, to give the signal. He regarded the affair as a mere
+formality. He was an excellent shot, and was fully aware of his adversary's
+want of skill. He would not be foolish enough to make use of his advantage
+and hit him, always supposing, as was not very probable, that the seconds
+did not take good care that no harm came of the encounter: for he knew that
+nothing is so stupid as to let an enemy appear to be a victim, when a much
+surer and better method is to wipe him out of existence without any fuss
+being made. But Christophe stood waiting, stripped to his shirt, which was
+open to reveal his thick neck, while his sleeves were rolled up to show his
+strong wrists, head down, with his eyes glaring at Lévy-Coeur: he stood
+taut, with murder written implacably on every feature: and Count Bloch, who
+watched him carefully, thought what a good thing it was that civilization
+had as far as possible suppressed the risks of fighting.
+
+After both men had fired, of course without result, the seconds hurried
+forward and congratulated the adversaries. Honor was satisfied.--Not so
+Christophe. He stayed there, pistol in hand, unable to believe that it was
+all over. He was quite ready to repeat his performance at the range the
+evening before, and go on shooting until one or other of them had hit the
+target. When he heard Goujart proposing that he should shake hands with his
+adversary, who advanced chivalrously towards him with his perpetual smile,
+he was exasperated by the pretense of the whole thing. Angrily he hurled
+his pistol away, pushed Goujart aside, and flung himself upon Lucien
+Lévy-Coeur. They were hard put to it to keep him from going on with the
+fight with his fists.
+
+The seconds intervened while Lévy-Coeur escaped. Christophe broke away from
+them, and, without listening to their laughing expostulation, he strode
+along in the direction of the forest, talking loudly and gesticulating
+wildly. He did not even notice that he had left his hat and coat on the
+dueling-ground. He plunged into the woods. He heard his seconds laughing
+and calling him: then they tired of it, and did not worry about him any
+more. Very soon he heard the wheels of the carriages rumbling away and
+away, and knew that they had gone. He was left alone among the silent
+trees. His fury had subsided. He flung himself down on the ground and
+sprawled on the grass.
+
+Shortly afterwards Mooch arrived at the inn. He had been pursuing
+Christophe since the early morning. He was told that his friend was in the
+woods, and went to look for him. He beat all the thickets, and awoke all
+the echoes, and was going away in despair when he heard him singing: he
+found his way by the voice, and at last came upon him in a little clearing
+with his arms and legs in the air, rolling about like a young calf. When
+Christophe saw him he shouted merrily, called him "dear old Moloch," and
+told him how he had shot his adversary full of holes until he was like a
+sieve: he made him tuck in his tuppenny, and then join him in a game of
+leap-frog: and when he jumped over him he gave him a terrific thump.
+Mooch was not very good at it, but he enjoyed the game almost as much as
+Christophe.--They returned to the inn arm-in-arm, and caught the train
+back to Paris at the nearest station.
+
+Olivier knew nothing of what had happened. He was surprised at Christophe's
+tenderness: he could not understand his sudden change. It was not until
+the next day, when he saw the newspapers, that he knew that Christophe
+had fought a duel. It made him almost ill to think of the danger that
+Christophe had run. He wanted to know why the duel had been fought.
+Christophe refused to tell him anything. When he was pressed he said with
+a laugh:
+
+"It was for you."
+
+Olivier could not get a word more out of him. Mooch told him all about it.
+Olivier was horrified, quarreled with Colette, and begged Christophe to
+forgive his imprudence. Christophe was incorrigible, and quoted for his
+benefit an old French saying, which he adapted so as to infuriate poor
+Mooch, who was present to share in the happiness of the friends:
+
+"My dear boy, let this teach you to be careful....
+
+  "_From an idle chattering girl,
+  From a wheedling, hypocritical Jew,
+  From a painted friend,
+  From a familiar foe,
+  And from flat wine,
+  Libera Nos, Domine!_"
+
+Their friendship was re-established. The danger of losing it, which had
+come so near, made it only the more dear. Their small misunderstandings
+had vanished: the very differences between them made them more attractive
+to each other. In his own soul Christophe embraced the souls of the two
+countries, harmoniously united. He felt that his heart was rich and full:
+and, as usual with him, his abundant happiness expressed itself in a flow
+of music.
+
+Olivier marveled at it. Being too critical in mind, he was never far from
+believing that music, which he adored, had said its last word. He was
+haunted by the morbid idea that decadence must inevitably succeed a certain
+degree of progress: and he trembled lest the lovely art, which made him
+love life, should stop short, and dry up, and disappear into the ground.
+Christophe would scoff at such pusillanimous ideas. In a spirit of
+contradiction he would pretend that nothing had been done before he
+appeared on the scene, and that everything remained to be done. Olivier
+would instance French music, which seemed to have reached a point of
+perfection and ultimate civilization beyond which there could not possibly
+be anything. Christophe would shrug his shoulders:
+
+"French music?... There has never been any.... And yet you have such fine
+things to do in the world! You can't really be musicians, or you would have
+discovered that. Ah! if only I were a Frenchman!..."
+
+And he would set out all the things that a Frenchman might turn into music:
+
+"You involve yourselves in forms which do not suit you, and you do nothing
+at all with those which are admirably fitted for your use. You are a
+people of elegance, polite poetry, beautiful gestures, beautiful walking
+movements, beautiful attitudes, fashion, clothes, and you never write
+ballets nowadays, though you ought to be able to create an inimitable art
+of poetic dancing....--You are a people of laughter and comedy, and you
+never write comic operas, or else you leave it to minor musicians, the
+confectioners of music. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would set Rabelais to
+music, I would write comic epics....--You are a people of story-tellers,
+and you never write novels in music: (for I don't count the feuilletons
+of Ghistave Charpentier). You make no use of your gift of psychological
+analysis, your insight into character. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would
+give you portraits in music.... (Would you like me to sketch the girl
+sitting in the garden under the lilac?).... I would write you Stendhal for
+a string quartet....--You are the greatest democracy in Europe, and you
+have no theater for the people, no music for the people. Ah! if I were a
+Frenchman, I would set your Revolution to music: the 14th July, the 10th
+August, Valmy, the Federation, I would express the people in music! Not
+in the false form of Wagnerian declamation. I want symphonies, choruses,
+dances. Not speeches! I'm sick of them. There's no reason why people
+should always be talking in a music drama! Bother the words! Paint in bold
+strokes, in vast symphonies with choruses, immense landscapes in music,
+Homeric and Biblical epics, fire, earth, water, and sky, all bright and
+shining, the fever which makes hearts burn, the stirring of the instincts
+and destinies of a race, the triumph of Rhythm, the emperor of the world,
+who enslaves thousands of men, and hurls armies down to death.... Music
+everywhere, music in everything! If you were musicians you would have
+music for every one of your public holidays, for your official ceremonies,
+for the trades unions, for the student associations, for your family
+festivals.... But, above all, above all, if you were musicians, you would
+make pure music, music which has no definite meaning, music which has no
+definite use, save only to give warmth, and air, and life. Make sunlight
+for yourselves! _Sat prata_.... (What is that in Latin?).... There has been
+rain enough. Your music gives me a cold. One can't see in it: light your
+lanterns.... You complain of the Italian _porcherie_, who invade your
+theaters and conquer the public, and turn you out of your own house?
+It is your own fault! The public are sick of your crepuscular art, your
+harmonized neurasthenia, your contrapuntal pedantry. The public goes where
+it can find life, however coarse and gross. Why do you run away from life?
+Your Debussy is a bad man, however great he may be as an artist. He aids
+and abets you in your torpor. You want roughly waking up."
+
+"What about Strauss?"
+
+"No better. Strauss would finish you off. You need the digestion of my
+fellow-countrymen to be able to bear such immoderate drinking. And even
+they cannot bear it.... Strauss's _Salome_!... A masterpiece.... I should
+not like to have written it.... I think of my old grandfather and uncle
+Gottfried, and with what respect and loving tenderness they used to talk
+to me about the lovely art of sound!... But to have the handling of such
+divine powers, and to turn them to such uses!... A flaming, consuming
+meteor! An Isolde, who is a Jewish prostitute. Bestial and mournful lust.
+The frenzy of murder, pillage, incest, and untrammeled instincts which is
+stirring in the depths of German decadence.... And, on the other hand,
+the spasm of a voluptuous and melancholy suicide, the death-rattle which
+sounds through your French decadence.... On the one hand, the beast: on the
+other, the prey. Where is man?... Your Debussy is the genius of good taste:
+Strauss is the genius of bad taste. Debussy is rather insipid. But Strauss
+is very unpleasant. One is a silvery thread of stagnant water, losing
+itself in the reeds, and giving off an unhealthy aroma. The other is a
+mighty muddy flood.... Ah! the musty base Italianism and neo-Meyerbeerism,
+the filthy masses of sentiment which are borne on by the torrent!... An
+odious masterpiece!... Salome, the daughter of Ysolde.... And whose mother
+will Salome be in her turn?"
+
+"Yes," said Olivier, "I wish we could jump fifty years. This headlong
+gallop towards the precipice must end one way or another: either the horse
+must stop or fall. Then we shall breathe again. Thank Heaven, the earth
+will not cease to flower, nor the sky to give light, with or without music!
+What have we to do with an art so inhuman!... The West is burning away....
+Soon.... Very soon.... I see other stars arising in the furthest depths of
+the East."
+
+"Bother the East!" said Christophe. "The West has not said its last word
+yet. Do you think I am going to abdicate? I have enough to say to keep
+you going for centuries. Hurrah for life! Hurrah for joy! Hurrah for the
+courage which drives us on to struggle with our destiny! Hurrah for love
+which maketh the heart big! Hurrah for friendship which rekindles our
+faith,--friendship, a sweeter thing than love! Hurrah for the day! Hurrah
+for the night! Glory be to the sun! _Laus Deo_, the God of joy, the God of
+dreams and actions, the God who created music! Hosannah!..."
+
+With that he sat down at his desk and wrote down everything that was in his
+head, without another thought for what he had been saying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that time Christophe was in a condition in which all the elements of his
+life were perfectly balanced. He did not bother his head with esthetic
+discussions as to the value of this or that musical form, nor with reasoned
+attempts to create a new form: he did not even have to cast about for
+subjects for translation into music. One thing was as good as another. The
+flood of music welled forth without Christophe knowing exactly what feeling
+he was expressing. He was happy: that was all: happy in expanding, happy in
+having expanded, happy in feeling within himself the pulse of universal
+life.
+
+His fullness of joy was communicated to those about him.
+
+The house with its closed garden was too small for him. He had the view out
+over the garden of the neighboring convent with the solitude of its great
+avenues and century-old trees: but it was too good to last. In front of
+Christophe's windows they were building a six-story house, which shut out
+the view and completely hemmed him in. In addition, he had the pleasure of
+hearing the creaking of pulleys, the chipping of stones, the hammering of
+nails, all day long from morning to night. Among the workmen he found his
+old friend the slater, whose acquaintance he had made on the roof. They
+made signs to each other, and once, when he met him in the street, he took
+the man to a wineshop, and they drank together, much to the surprise of
+Olivier, who was a little scandalized. He found the man's drollery and
+unfailing good-humor very entertaining, but did not curse him any the less,
+with his troop of workmen and stupid idiots who were raising a barricade
+in front of the house and robbing him of air and light. Olivier did not
+complain much: he could quite easily adapt himself to a limited horizon:
+he was like the stove of Descartes, from which the suppressed ideas darted
+upward to the free sky. But Christophe needed more air. Shut up in that
+confined space, he avenged himself by expanding into the lives of those
+about him. He drank in their inmost life, and turned it into music. Olivier
+used to tell him that he looked like a lover.
+
+"If I were in love," Christophe would reply, "I should see nothing, love
+nothing, be interested in nothing outside my love."
+
+"What is the matter with you, then?"
+
+"I'm very well. I'm hungry."
+
+"Lucky Christophe!" Olivier would sigh. "I wish you could hand a little of
+your appetite over to us."
+
+Health, like sickness, is contagious. The first to feel the benefit of
+Christophe's vitality was naturally Olivier. Vitality was what he most
+lacked. He retired from the world because its vulgarity revolted him.
+Brilliantly clever though he was, and in spite of his exceptional artistic
+gifts, he was too delicate to be a great artist. Great artists do not feel
+disgust: the first law for every healthy being is to live: and that law
+is even more imperative for a man of genius: for such a man lives more.
+Olivier fled from life: he drifted along in a world of poetic fictions that
+had no body, no flesh and blood, no relation to reality. He was one of
+those literary men who, in quest of beauty, have to go outside time, into
+the days that are no more, or the days that have never been. As though the
+wine of life were not as intoxicating, and its vintages as rich nowadays as
+ever they were! But men who are weary in soul recoil from direct contact
+with life: they can only bear to see it through the veil of visions spun
+by the backward movement of time, and hear it in the echo which sends back
+and distorts the dead words of those who were once alive.--Christophe's
+friendship gradually dragged Olivier out of this Limbo of art. The sun's
+rays pierced through to the innermost recesses of his soul in which he was
+languishing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Elsberger, the engineer, also succumbed to Christophe's contagious
+optimism. It was not shown in any change in his habits: they were too
+inveterate: and it was too much to expect him to become enterprising enough
+to leave France and go and seek his fortune elsewhere. But he was shaken
+out of his apathy: he recovered his taste for research, and reading, and
+the scientific work which he had long neglected. He would have been much
+astonished had he been told that Christophe had something to do with
+his new interest in his work: and certainly no one would have been more
+surprised than Christophe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of all the inhabitants of the house, Christophe was the soonest
+intimate with the little couple on the second floor. More than once as he
+passed their door he had stopped to listen to the sound of the piano which
+Madame Arnaud used to play quite well when she was alone. Then he gave them
+tickets for his concert, for which they thanked him effusively. And after
+that he used to go and sit with them occasionally in the evening. He
+had never heard Madame Arnaud playing again: she was too shy to play in
+company: and even when she was alone, now that she knew she could be heard
+on the stairs, she kept the soft pedal down. But Christophe used to play to
+them, and they would talk about it for hours together. The Arnauds used to
+speak of music with such eagerness and freshness of feeling that he was
+enchanted with them. He had not thought it possible for French people to
+care so much for music.
+
+"That," Olivier would say, "is because you have only come across
+musicians."
+
+"I'm perfectly aware," Christophe would reply, "that professed musicians
+are the very people who care least for music: but you can't make me believe
+that there are many people like you in France."
+
+"A few thousands at any rate."
+
+"I suppose it's an epidemic, the latest fashion."
+
+"It is not a matter of fashion," said Arnaud. "_He who does not rejoice to
+hear a sweet accord of instruments, or the sweetness of the natural voice,
+and is not moved by it, and does not tremble from head to foot with its
+sweet ravishment, and is not taken completely out of himself, does thereby
+show himself to have a twisted, vicious, and depraved soul, and of such an
+one we should beware as of a man ill-born...._"
+
+"I know that," said Christophe. "It is my friend Shakespeare."
+
+"No," said Arnaud gently. "It is a Frenchman who lived before him, Ronsard.
+That will show you that, if it is the fashion in France to care for music,
+it is no new thing."
+
+But what astonished Christophe was not so much that people in France should
+care for music, as that almost without exception they cared for the same
+music as the people in Germany. In the world of Parisian snobs and artists,
+in which he had moved at first, it had been the mode to treat the German
+masters as distinguished foreigners, by all means to be admired, but to be
+kept at a distance: they were always ready to poke fun at the dullness of a
+Gluck, and the barbarity of a Wagner: against them they set up the subtlety
+of the French composers. And in the end Christophe had begun to wonder
+whether a Frenchman could have the least understanding of German music, to
+judge by the way it was rendered in France. Only a short time before he had
+come away perfectly scandalized from a performance of an opera of Gluck's:
+the ingenious Parisians had taken it into their heads to deck the old
+fellow up, and cover him with ribbons, and pad out his rhythms, and bedizen
+his music with, impressionistic settings, and charming little dancing
+girls, forward and wanton.... Poor Gluck! There was nothing left of his
+eloquent and sublime feeling, his moral purity, his naked sorrow. Was it
+that the French could not understand these things?--And now Christophe
+could see how deeply and tenderly his new friends loved the very inmost
+quality of the Germanic spirit, and the old German _lieder_, and the German
+classics. And he asked them if it was not the fact that the great Germans
+were as foreigners to them, and that a Frenchman could only really love the
+artists of his own nationality.
+
+"Not at all!" they protested. "It is only the critics who take upon
+themselves to speak for us. They always follow the fashion, and they want
+us to follow it too. But we don't worry about them any more than they worry
+about us. They're funny little people, trying to teach us what is and is
+not French--us, who are French of the old stock of France!... They come and
+tell us that our France is in Rameau,--or Racine,--and nowhere else. As
+though we did not know,--(and thousands like us in the provinces, and in
+Paris). How often Beethoven, Mozart, and Gluck, have sat with us by the
+fireside, and watched with us by the bedside of those we love, and shared
+our troubles, and revived our hopes, and been one of ourselves! If we
+dared say exactly what we thought, it is much more likely that the French
+artists, who are set up on a pedestal by our Parisian critics, are
+strangers among us."
+
+"The truth is," said Olivier, "that if there are frontiers in art, they are
+not so much barriers between races as barriers between classes. I'm not so
+sure that there is a French art or a German art: but there is certainly
+one art for the rich and another for the poor. Gluck was a great man of
+the middle-classes: he belongs to our class. A certain French artist,
+whose name I won't mention, is not of our class: though he was of the
+middle-class by birth, he is ashamed of us, and denies us: and we deny
+him."
+
+What Olivier said was true. The better Christophe got to know the French,
+the more he was struck by the resemblance between the honest men of France
+and the honest men of Germany. The Arnauds reminded him of dear old Schulz
+with his pure, disinterested love of art, his forgetfulness of self, his
+devotion to beauty. And he loved them in memory of Schulz.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the same time as he realized the absurdity of moral frontiers between
+the honest men of different nationalities, Christophe began to see the
+absurdity of the frontiers that lay between the different ideas of honest
+men of the same nationality. Thanks to him, though without any deliberate
+effort on his part, the Abbé Corneille and M. Watelet, two men who seemed
+very far indeed from understanding each other, made friends.
+
+Christophe used to borrow books from both of them and, with a want of
+ceremony which shocked Olivier, he used to lend their books in turn to the
+other. The Abbé Corneille was not at all scandalized: he had an intuitive
+perception of the quality of a man: and, without seeming to do so, he had
+marked the generous and even unconsciously religious nature of his young
+neighbor. A book by Kropotkin, which had been borrowed from M. Watelet, and
+for different reasons had given great pleasure to all three of them, began
+the process of bringing them together. It chanced one evening that they met
+in Christophe's room. At first Christophe was afraid that they might be
+rude to each other: but, on the contrary, they were perfectly polite, They
+discussed various sage subjects: their travels, and their experience of
+men. And they discovered in each other a fund of gentleness and the spirit
+of the Gospels, and chimerical hopes, in spite of the many reasons that
+each had for despair, They discovered a mutual sympathy, mingled with a
+little irony. Their sympathy was of a very discreet nature. They never
+revealed their fundamental beliefs. They rarely met and did not try to
+meet: but when they did so they were glad to see each other.
+
+Of the two men the Abbé Corneille was not the least independent of mind,
+though Christophe would never have thought it. He gradually came to
+perceive the greatness of the religious and yet free ideas, the immense,
+serene, and unfevered mysticism which permeated the priest's whole mind,
+the every action of his daily life, and his whole outlook on the
+world,--leading him to live in Christ, as he believed that Christ had lived
+in God.
+
+He denied nothing, no single element of life. To him the whole of
+Scripture, ancient and modern, lay and religious, from Moses to Berthelot,
+was certain, divine, the very expression of God. Holy Writ was to him only
+its richest example, just as the Church was the highest company of men
+united in the brotherhood of God: but in neither of them was the spirit
+confined in any fixed, unchanging truth. Christianity was the living
+Christ. The history of the world was only the history of the perpetual
+advance of the idea of God. The fall of the Jewish Temple, the ruin of the
+pagan world, the repulse of the Crusades, the humiliation of Boniface VIII,
+Galileo flinging the world back into giddy space, the infinitely little
+becoming more mighty than the great, the downfall of kingdoms, and the end
+of the Concordats, all these for a time threw the minds of men out of their
+reckoning. Some clung desperately to the passing order: some caught at a
+plank and drifted. The Abbé Corneille only asked: "Where do we stand as
+men? Where is that which makes us live?" For he believed: "Where life is,
+there is God."--And that was why he was in sympathy with Christophe.
+
+For his part, Christophe was glad once more to hear the splendid music of a
+great religious soul. It awoke in him echoes distant and profound. Through
+the feeling of perpetual reaction, which is in vigorous natures a vital
+instinct, the instinct of self-preservation, the stroke which preserves
+the quivering balance of the boat, and gives it a new drive onward,--his
+surfeit of doubts and his disgust with Parisian sensuality had for the last
+two years been slowly restoring God to his place in Christophe's heart. Not
+that he believed in God. He denied God. But he was filled with the spirit
+of God. The Abbé Corneille used to tell him with a smile, that like his
+namesake, the sainted giant, he bore God on his shoulders without knowing
+it.
+
+"How is it that I don't see it then?" Christophe would ask.
+
+"You are like thousands of others: you see God every day, and never know
+that it is He. God reveals Himself to all, in every shape,--to some He
+appears in their daily life, as He did to Saint Peter in Galilee,--to
+others (like your friend M. Watelet), as He did to Saint Thomas, in wounds
+and suffering that call for healing,--to you in the dignity of your ideal:
+_Noli me tangere_.... Some day you will know it."
+
+"I will never surrender," said Christophe. "I am free. Free I shall
+remain."
+
+"Only the more will you live in God," replied the priest calmly.
+
+But Christophe would not submit to being made out a Christian against his
+will. He defended himself ardently and simply, as though it mattered in the
+least whether one label more than another was plastered on to his ideas.
+The Abbé Corneille would listen with a faint ecclesiastical irony, that was
+hardly perceptible, while it was altogether kindly. He had an inexhaustible
+fund of patience, based on his habit of faith. It had been tempered by the
+trials to which the existing Church had exposed him: while it had made him
+profoundly melancholy, and had even dragged him through terrible moral
+crises, he had not really been touched by it all. It was cruel to suffer
+the oppression of his superiors, to have his every action spied upon by
+the Bishops, and watched by the free-thinkers, who were endeavoring to
+exploit his ideas, to use him as a weapon against his own faith, and to
+be misunderstood and attacked both by his co-religionists and the enemies
+of his religion. It was impossible for him to offer any resistance: for
+submission was enforced upon him. It was impossible for him to submit in
+his heart: for he knew that the authorities were wrong. It was agony for
+him to hold his peace. It was agony for him to speak and to be wrongly
+interpreted. Not to mention the soul for which he was responsible, he had
+to think of those, who looked to him for counsel and help, while he had to
+stand by and see them suffer.... The Abbé Corneille suffered both for them
+and for himself, but he was resigned. He knew how small a thing were the
+days of trial in the long history of the Church.--Only, by dint of being
+turned in upon himself in his silent resignation, slowly he lost heart, and
+became timid and afraid to speak, so that it became more and more difficult
+for him to do anything, and little by little the torpor of silence crept
+over him. Meeting Christophe had given him new courage. His neighbor's
+youthful ardor and the affectionate and simple interest which he took in
+his doings, his sometimes indiscreet questions, did him a great deal of
+good. Christophe forced him to mix once more with living men and women.
+
+Aubert, the journeyman electrician, once met him in Christophe's room. He
+started back when he saw the priest, and found it hard to conceal his
+feeling of dislike. Even when he had overcome his first inclination, he was
+uncomfortable and oddly embarrassed at finding himself in the company of a
+man in a cassock, a creature to whom he could attach no exact definition.
+However, his sociable instincts and the pleasure he always found in talking
+to educated men were stronger than his anti-clericalism. He was surprised
+by the pleasant relations existing between M. Watelet and the Abbé
+Corneille: he was no less surprised to find a priest who was a democrat,
+and a revolutionary who was an aristocrat: it upset all his preconceived
+ideas. He tried vainly to classify them in any social category: for he
+always had to classify people before he could begin to understand them. It
+was not easy to find a pigeon-hole for the peaceful freedom of mind of a
+priest who had read Anatole France and Renan, and was prepared to discuss
+them calmly, justly, and with some knowledge. In matters of science the
+Abbé Corneille's way was to accept the guidance of those who knew, rather
+than of those who laid down the law. He respected authority, but in his
+eyes it stood lower than knowledge. The flesh, the spirit, and charity:
+the three orders, the three rungs of the divine ladder, the ladder of
+Jacob.--Of course, honest Aubert was far, indeed, from understanding, or
+even from dreaming, of the possibility of such a state of mind. The Abbé
+Corneille used to tell Christophe that Aubert reminded him of certain
+French peasants whom he had seen one day. A young Englishwoman had asked
+them the way, in English. They listened solemnly, but did not understand.
+Then they spoke in French. She did not understand. Then they looked at each
+other pityingly, and wagged their heads, and went on with their work, and
+said:
+
+"What a pity! What a pity! Such a pretty girl, too!..."
+
+As though they had thought her deaf, or dumb, or soft in the head....
+
+At first Aubert was abashed by the knowledge and distinguished manners of
+the priest and M. Watelet, and sat mum, listening intently to what they
+said. Then, little by little, he joined in the conversation, giving way to
+the naïve pleasure that he found in hearing himself speak. He paraded his
+generous store of rather vague ideas. The other two would listen politely,
+and smile inwardly. Aubert was delighted, and could not hold himself in:
+he took advantage of, and presently abused, the inexhaustible patience of
+the Abbé Corneille. He read his literary productions to him. The priest
+listened resignedly; and it did not bore him overmuch, for he listened not
+so much to the words as to the man. And then he would reply to Christophe's
+commiseration:
+
+"Bah! I hear so many of them!"
+
+Aubert was grateful to M. Watelet and the Abbé Corneille: and, without
+taking much trouble to understand each other's ideas, or even to find out
+what they were, the three of them became very good friends without exactly
+knowing why. They were very surprised to find themselves so intimate. They
+would never have thought it.--Christophe was the bond between them.
+
+He had other innocent allies in the three children, the two little
+Elsbergers and M. Watelet's adopted daughter. He was great friends with
+them: they adored him. He told each of them about the other, and gave them
+an irresistible longing to know each other. They used to make signs to each
+other from the windows, and spoke to each other furtively on the stairs.
+Aided and abetted by Christophe, they even managed to get permission
+sometimes to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens. Christophe was delighted with
+the success of his guile, and went to see them there the first time they
+were together: they were shy and embarrassed, and hardly knew what to make
+of their new happiness. He broke down their reserve in a moment, and
+invented games for them, and races, and played hide-and-seek: he joined in
+as keenly as though he were a child of ten: the passers-by cast amused and
+quizzical glances at the great big fellow, running and shouting and dodging
+round trees, with three little girls after him. And as their parents were
+still suspicious of each other, and showed no great readiness to let these
+excursions to the Luxembourg Gardens occur very often--(because it kept
+them too far out of sight)--Christophe managed to get Commandant Chabran,
+who lived on the ground floor, to invite the children to play in the garden
+belonging to the house.
+
+Chance had thrown Christophe and the old soldier together:--(chance always
+singles out those who can turn it to account).--Christophe's writing-table
+was near his window. One day the wind blew a few sheets of music down into
+the garden. Christophe rushed down, bareheaded and disheveled, just as he
+was, without even taking the trouble to brush his hair. He thought he would
+only have to see a servant. However, the daughter opened the door to him.
+He was rather taken aback, but told her what he had come for. She smiled
+and let him in: they went into the garden. When he had picked up his papers
+he was for hurrying away, and she was taking him to the door, when they met
+the old soldier. The Commandant gazed at his odd visitor in some surprise.
+His daughter laughed, and introduced him.
+
+"Ah! So you are the musician?" said the old soldier. "We are comrades."
+
+They shook hands. They talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concerts
+they gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with his
+flute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and he
+plunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly he stopped short,
+and said:
+
+"Come and see my canons."
+
+Christophe followed him, wondering how anybody could be interested in
+anything he might think about French artillery. The old man showed him in
+triumph a number of musical canons, amazing productions, compositions that
+might just as well be read upside down, or played as duets, one person
+playing the right-hand page, and the other the left. The Commandant was an
+old pupil of the Polytechnic, and had always had a taste for music: but
+what he loved most of all in it was the mathematical problem: it seemed
+to him--(as up to a point it is)--a magnificent mental gymnastic: and
+he racked his brains in the invention and solution of puzzles in the
+construction of music, each more useless and extravagant than the last. Of
+course, his military career had not left him much time for the development
+of his mania: but since his retirement he had thrown himself into it with
+enthusiasm: he expended on it all the energy and ingenuity which he had
+previously employed in pursuing the hordes of negro kings through the
+deserts of Africa, or avoiding their traps. Christophe found his puzzles
+quite amusing, and set him a more complicated one to solve. The old soldier
+was delighted: they vied with one another: they produced a perfect shower
+of musical riddles. After they had been playing the game for some time,
+Christophe went upstairs to his own room. But the very next morning his
+neighbor sent him a new problem, a regular teaser, at which the Commandant
+had been working half the night: he replied with another: and the duel went
+on until Christophe, who was getting tired of it, declared himself beaten:
+at which the old soldier was perfectly delighted. He regarded his success
+as a retaliation on Germany. He invited Christophe to lunch. Christophe's
+frankness in telling the old soldier that he detested his musical
+compositions, and shouting in protest when Chabran began to murder an
+_andante_ of Haydn on his harmonium, completed the conquest. From that time
+on they often met to talk. But not about music. Christophe could not summon
+up any great interest in his neighbor's crotchety notions about it, and
+much preferred getting him to talk about military subjects. The Commandant
+asked nothing better: music was only a forced amusement for the unhappy
+man: in reality, he was fretting his life out.
+
+He was easily led on to yarn about his African campaigns. Gigantic
+adventures worthy of the tales of a Pizarro and a Cortez! Christophe was
+delighted with the vivid narrative of that marvelous and barbaric epic, of
+which he knew nothing, and almost every Frenchman is ignorant: the tale of
+the twenty years during which the heroism, and courage, and inventiveness,
+and superhuman energy of a conquering handful of Frenchmen were spent far
+away in the depths of the Black Continent, where they were surrounded
+by armies of negroes, where they were deprived of the most rudimentary
+arms of war, and yet, in the face of public opinion and a panic-stricken
+Government, in spite of France, conquered for France an empire greater than
+France itself. There was the flavor of a mighty joy, a flavor of blood in
+the tale, from which, in Christophe's mind's eye, there sprang the figures
+of modern _condottieri_, heroic adventurers, unlooked for in the France of
+to-day, whom the France of to-day is ashamed to own, so that she modestly
+draws a veil over them. The Commandant's voice would ring out bravely
+as he recalled it all: and he would jovially recount, with learned
+descriptions--(oddly interpolated in his epic narrative)--of the geological
+structure of the country, in cold, precise terms, the story of the
+tremendous marches, and the charges at full gallop, and the man-hunts, in
+which he had been hunter and quarry, turn and turn about, in a struggle to
+the death.--Christophe would listen and watch his face, and feel a great
+pity for such a splendid human animal, condemned to inaction, and forced to
+spend his time in playing ridiculous games. He wondered how he could ever
+have become resigned to such a lot. He asked the old man how he had done
+it. The Commandant was at first not at all inclined to let a stranger
+into his confidence as to his grievances. But the French are naturally
+loquacious, especially when they have a chance of pitching into each other:
+
+"What on earth should I do," he said, "in the army as it is to-day? The
+marines write books. The infantry study sociology. They do everything but
+make war. They don't even prepare for it: they prepare never to go to war
+again: they study the philosophy of war.... The philosophy of war! That's
+a game for beasts of burden wondering how much thrashing they are going to
+get!... Discussing, philosophizing, no, that's not my work. Much better
+stay at home and go on with my canons!"
+
+He was too much ashamed to air the most serious of his grievances: the
+suspicion created among the officers by the appeal to informers, the
+humiliation of having to submit to the insolent orders of certain crass and
+mischievous politicians, the army's disgust at being put to base police
+duty, taking inventories of the churches, putting down industrial strikes,
+at the bidding of capital and the spite of the party in power--the petty
+burgess radicals and anti-clericals--against the rest of the country. Not
+to speak of the old African's disgust with the new Colonial Army, which was
+for the most part recruited from the lowest elements of the nation, by way
+of pandering to the egoism and cowardice of the rest, who refuse to share
+in the honor and the risks of securing the defense of "greater
+France"--France beyond the seas.
+
+Christophe was not concerned with these French quarrels: they were no
+affair of his: but he sympathized with the old soldier. Whatever he might
+think of war, it seemed to him that an army was meant to produce soldiers,
+as an apple-tree to produce apples, and that it was a strange perversion to
+graft on to it politicians, esthetes, and sociologists. And yet he could
+not understand how a man of such vigor could give way to his adversaries.
+It is to be his own worst enemy for a man not to fight his enemies. In
+all French people of any worth at all there was a spirit of surrender, a
+strange temper of renunciation.--To Christophe it was even more profound,
+and even more touching as it existed in the old soldier's daughter.
+
+Her name was Céline. She had beautiful hair, plaited and braided so as
+to set off her high, round forehead and her rather pointed ears, her
+thin cheeks, and her pretty chin: she was like a country girl, with fine
+intelligent dark eyes, very trustful, very soft, rather short-sighted: her
+nose was a little too large, and she had a tiny mole on her upper lip by
+the corner of her mouth, and she had a quiet smile which made her pout
+prettily and thrust out her lower lip, which was a little protruding. She
+was kind, active, clever, but she had no curiosity of mind. She read very
+little, and never any of the newest books, never went to the theater, never
+traveled,--(for traveling bored her father, who had had too much of it
+in the old days),--never had anything to do with any polite charitable
+work,--(her father used to condemn all such things),--made no attempt to
+study,--(he used to make fun of blue stockings),--hardly ever left her
+little patch of garden inclosed by its four high walls, so that it was like
+being at the bottom of a deep well. And yet she was not really bored. She
+occupied her time as best she could, and was good-tempered and resigned.
+About her and about the setting which every woman unconsciously creates
+for herself wherever she may be, there was a Chardinesque atmosphere: the
+same soft silence, the same tranquil expression, the same attitude of
+absorption--(a little drowsy and languid)--in the common task: the poetry
+of the daily round, of the accustomed way of life, with its fixed thoughts
+and actions, falling into exactly the same place at exactly the same
+time--thoughts and actions which are cherished none the less with an
+all-pervading tranquil gentleness: the serene mediocrity of the fine-souled
+women of the middle-class: honest, conscientious, truthful, calm--calm in
+their pleasures, unruffled in their labors, and yet poetic in all their
+qualities. They are healthy and neat and tidy, clean in body and mind: all
+their lives are sweetened with the scent of good bread, and lavender, and
+integrity, and kindness. There is peace in all that they are and do, the
+peace of old houses and smiling souls....
+
+Christophe, whose affectionate trustfulness invited trust, had become very
+friendly with her: they used to talk quite frankly: and he even went so far
+as to ask her certain questions, which she was surprised to find herself
+answering: she would tell him things which she had not told anybody, even
+her most intimate friends.
+
+"You see," Christophe would say, "you're not afraid of me. There's no
+danger of our falling in love with each other: we're too good friends for
+that."
+
+"You're very polite!" she would answer with a laugh.
+
+Her healthy nature recoiled as much as Christophe's from philandering
+friendship, that form of sentimentality dear to equivocal men and women,
+who are always juggling with their emotions. They were just comrades one to
+another.
+
+He asked her one day what she was doing in the afternoons, when he saw her
+sitting in the garden with her work on her knees, never touching it, and
+not stirring for hours together. She blushed, and protested that it was not
+a matter of hours, but only a matter of a few minutes, perhaps a quarter of
+an hour, during which she "went on with her story."
+
+"What story?"
+
+"The story I am always telling myself."
+
+"You tell yourself stories? Oh, tell them to me!"
+
+She told him that he was too curious. She would only go so far as to
+intimate that they were stories of which she was not the heroine.
+
+He was surprised at that:
+
+"If you are going to tell yourself stories, it seems to me that it would be
+more natural if you told your own story with embellishments, and lived in a
+happier dream-life."
+
+"I couldn't," she said. "If I did that, I should become desperate."
+
+She blushed again at having revealed even so much of her inmost thoughts:
+and she went on:
+
+"Besides, when I am in the garden and a gust of wind reaches me, I am
+happy. Then the garden becomes alive for me. And when the wind blusters and
+comes from a great distance, he tells me so many things!"
+
+In spite of her reserve, Christophe could see the hidden depths of
+melancholy that lay behind her good-humor, and the restless activity which,
+as she knew perfectly well, led nowhere. Why did she not try to break away
+from her condition and emancipate herself? She would have been so well
+fitted for a useful and active life!--But she alleged her affection for her
+father, who would not hear of her leaving him. In vain did Christophe tell
+her that the old soldier was perfectly vigorous and energetic, and had no
+need of her, and that a man of his stamp could quite well be left alone,
+and had no right to make a sacrifice of her. She would begin to defend her
+father: by a pious fiction she would pretend that it was not her father
+who was forcing her to stay, but she herself who could not bear to leave
+him.--And, up to a point, what she said was true. It seemed to have been
+accepted from time immemorial by herself, and her fatter, and all their
+friends that their life had to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. She
+had a married brother, who thought it quite natural that she should devote
+her life to their father in his stead. He was entirely wrapped up in his
+children. He loved them jealously, and left them no will of their own. His
+love for his children was to him, and especially to his wife, a voluntary
+bondage which weighed heavily on their life, and cramped all their
+movements: his idea seemed to be that as soon as a man has children, his
+own life comes to an end, and he has to stop short in his own development:
+he was still young, active, and intelligent, and there he was reckoning up
+the years he would have still to work before he could retire.--Christophe
+saw how these good people were weighed down by the atmosphere of family
+affection, which is so deep-rooted in France--deep-rooted, but stifling and
+destructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive since
+families in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, one
+or two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It is
+a cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, like a miser clinging
+tightly to his hoard of gold.
+
+A fortuitous circumstance gave Christophe a yet greater interest in the
+girl, and showed him the full extent of the suppression of the emotions
+of the French, their fear of life, of letting themselves go, and claiming
+their birthright.
+
+Elsberger, the engineer, had a brother ten years younger than himself,
+likewise an engineer. He was a very good fellow, like thousands of others,
+of the middle-class, and he had artistic aspirations: he was one of those
+people who would like to practise an art, but are afraid of compromising
+their reputation and position. As a matter of fact, it is not a very
+difficult problem, and most of the artists of to-day have solved it
+without any great danger to themselves. But it needs a certain amount of
+will-power: and not everybody is capable of even that much expenditure of
+energy: such people are not sure enough of wanting what they really want:
+and as their position in life grows more assured, they submit and drift
+along, without any show of revolt or protest. They cannot be blamed if they
+become good citizens instead of bad artists. But their disappointment too
+often leaves behind it a secret discontent, a _qualis artifex pereo_, which
+as best it can assumes a crust of what is usually called philosophy, and
+spoils their lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxieties
+have erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of André
+Elsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who was
+very self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon a
+scientific career. André was clever, and quite well equipped for scientific
+work--or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough of
+being an artist, and he was too sure that he was middle-class: and so,
+provisionally at first,--(one knows what that means)--he had bowed to his
+brother's wishes: he entered the _Centrale_, high up in the list, and
+passed out equally high, and since then he had practised his profession as
+an engineer conscientiously, but without being interested in it. Of course,
+he had lost the little artistic quality that he had possessed, and he never
+spoke of it except ironically.
+
+"And then," he used to say--(Christophe recognized Olivier's pessimistic
+tendency in his arguments)--"life is not good enough to make one worry
+about a spoiled career. What does a bad poet more or less matter!..."
+
+The brothers were fond of one another: they were of the same stamp morally:
+but they did not get on well together. They had both been Dreyfus-mad. But
+André was attracted by syndicalism, and was an anti-militarist: and Elie
+was a patriot.
+
+From time to time André would visit Christophe without going to see his
+brother: and that astonished Christophe: for there was no great sympathy
+between himself and André, who used hardly ever to open his mouth except
+to gird at something or somebody,--which was very tiresome: and when
+Christophe said anything, André would not listen. Christophe made no effort
+to conceal the fact that he found his visits a nuisance: but André did not
+mind, and seemed not to notice it. At last Christophe found the key to the
+riddle one day when he found his visitor leaning out of the window, and
+paying much more attention to what was happening in the garden below than
+to what he was saying. He remarked upon it, and André was not reluctant to
+admit that he knew Mademoiselle Chabran, and that she had something to do
+with his visits to Christophe. And, his tongue being, loosed, he confessed
+that he had long been attached to the girl, and perhaps something more than
+that: the Elsbergers had long ago been in close touch with the Chabrans:
+but, though they had been very intimate, politics and recent events
+had separated them: and thereafter they saw very little of each other.
+Christophe did not disguise his opinion that it was an idiotic state of
+things. Was it impossible for people to think differently, and yet to
+retain their mutual esteem? André said he thought it was, and protested
+that he was very broad-minded: but he would not admit the possibility of
+tolerance in certain questions, concerning which, he said, he could not
+admit any opinion different from his own: and he instanced the famous
+Affair. On that, as usual, he became wild. Christophe knew the sort of
+thing that happened in that connection, and made no attempt to argue: but
+he; asked whether the Affair was never going to come to an end, or whether
+its curse was to go on and on to the end of time, descending even unto the
+third and fourth generation. André began to laugh: and without answering
+Christophe, he fell to tender praise of Céline Chabran, and protested
+against her father's selfishness, who thought it quite natural that she
+should be sacrificed to him.
+
+"Why don't you marry her," asked Christophe, "if you love her and she loves
+you?"
+
+André said mournfully that Céline was clerical. Christophe asked what he
+meant by that. André replied that he meant that she was religious, and had
+vowed a sort of feudal service to God and His bonzes.
+
+"But how does that affect you?"
+
+"I don't want to share my wife with any one."
+
+"What! You are jealous even of your wife's ideas? Why, you're more selfish
+even than the Commandant!"
+
+"It's all very well for you to talk: would you take a woman who did not
+love music?"
+
+"I have done so."
+
+"How can a man and a woman live together if they don't think the same?"
+
+"Don't you worry about what you think! Ah! my dear fellow, ideas count for
+so little when one loves. What does it matter to me whether the woman I
+love cares for music as much as I do? She herself is music to me! When a
+man has the luck, as you have, to find a dear girl whom he loves, and she
+loves him, she must believe what she likes, and he must believe what he
+likes! When all is said and done, what do your ideas amount to? There is
+only one truth in the world, there is only one God: love."
+
+"You speak like a poet. You don't see life as it is. I know only too many
+marriages which have suffered from such a want of union in thought."
+
+"Those husbands and wives did not love each other enough. You have to know
+what you want."
+
+"Wanting does not do everything in life. Even if I wanted to marry
+Mademoiselle Chabran, I couldn't."
+
+"I'd like to know why."
+
+André spoke of his scruples: his position was not assured: he had no
+fortune and no great health. He was wondering whether he had the right to
+marry in such circumstances. It was a great responsibility. Was there not a
+great risk of bringing unhappiness on the woman he loved, and himself,--not
+to mention any children there might be?... It was better to wait--or give
+up the idea.
+
+Christophe shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That's a fine sort of love! If she loves you, she will be happy in her
+devotion to you. And as for the children, you French people are absurd. You
+would like only to bring them into the world when you are sure of turning
+them out with comfortable private means, so that they will have nothing to
+suffer and nothing to fear.... Good Lord! That's nothing to do with you:
+your business is only to give them life, love of life, and courage to
+defend it. The rest ... whether they live or die ... is the common lot. Is
+it better to give up living than to take the risks of life?"
+
+The sturdy confidence which emanated from Christophe affected André, but
+did not change his mind. He said:
+
+"Yes, perhaps, that is true...."
+
+But he stopped at that. Like all the rest, his will and power of action
+seemed to be paralyzed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe had set himself to fight the inertia which he found In most
+of his French friends, oddly coupled with laborious and often feverish
+activity. Almost all the people he met in the various middle-class houses
+which he visited were discontented. They had almost all the same disgust
+with the demagogues and their corrupt ideas. In almost all there was the
+same sorrowful and proud consciousness of the betrayal of the genius of
+their race. And it was by no means the result of any personal rancor nor
+the bitterness of men and classes beaten and thrust out of power and active
+life, or discharged officials, or unemployed energy, nor that of an old
+aristocracy which has returned to its estates, there to die in hiding like
+a wounded lion. It was a feeling of moral revolt, mute, profound, general:
+it was to be found everywhere, in a greater or less degree, in the army, in
+the magistracy, in the University, in the officers, and in every vital
+branch of the machinery of government. But they took no active measures.
+They were discouraged in advance: they kept on saying:
+
+"There is nothing to be done:"
+
+or
+
+"Let us try not to think of it."
+
+Fearfully they dodged anything sad in their thoughts and conversation: and
+they took refuge in their home life.
+
+If they had been content to refrain only from political action! But even
+in their daily lives these good people had no interest in doing anything
+definite. They put up with the degrading, haphazard contact with horrible
+people whom they despised, because they could not take the trouble to fight
+against them, thinking that any such revolt must of necessity be useless.
+Why, for instance, should artists, and, in particular, the musicians
+with whom Christophe was most in touch, unprotestingly put up with the
+effrontery of the scaramouches of the Press, who laid down the law for
+them? There were absolute idiots among them, whose ignorance _in omni re
+scibili_ was proverbial, though they were none the less invested with
+a sovereign authority _in omni re scibili_. They did not even take the
+trouble to write their articles and books: they had secretaries, poor
+starving creatures, who would have sold their souls, if they had had such
+things, for bread or women. There was no secret about it in Paris. And
+yet they went on riding their high horse and patronizing the artists.
+Christophe used to roar with anger sometimes when he read their articles.
+
+"They have no heart!" he would say. "Oh! the cowards!"
+
+"Who are you screaming at?" Olivier would ask. "The idiots of the
+market-place?"
+
+"No. The honest men. These rascals are plying their trade: they lie, they
+steal, they rob and murder. But it is the others--those who despise them
+and yet let them go on--that I despise a thousand times more. If their
+colleagues on the Press, if honest, cultured critics, and the artists on
+whose backs these harlequins strut and poise themselves, did not put up
+with it, in silence, from shyness or fear of compromising themselves, or
+from some shameful anticipation of mutual service, a sort of secret pact
+made with the enemy so that they may be immune from their attacks,--if they
+did not let them preen themselves in their patronage and friendship, their
+upstart power would soon be killed by ridicule. There's the same weakness
+in everything, everywhere. I've met twenty honest men who have said to me
+of so-and-so: 'He is a scoundrel.' But there is not one of them who would
+not refer to him as his 'dear colleague,' and, if he met him, shake hands
+with him.--'There are too many of them!' they say.--Too many cowards. Too
+many flabby honest men."
+
+"Eh! What do you want them to do?"
+
+"Be every man his own policeman! What are you waiting for? For Heaven to
+take your affairs in hand? Look you, at this very moment. It is three days
+now since the snow fell. Your streets are thick with it, and your Paris is
+like a sewer of mud. What do you do? You protest against your Municipal
+Council for leaving you in such a state of filth. But do you yourselves do
+anything to clear it away? Not a bit of it! You sit with your arms folded.
+Not one of you has energy enough even to clean the pavement in front of
+his house. Nobody does his duty, neither the State nor the members of the
+State: each man thinks he has done as much as is expected of him by laying
+the blame on some one else. You have become so used, through centuries of
+monarchical training, to doing nothing for yourselves that you all seem to
+spend your time in star-gazing and waiting for a miracle to happen. The
+only miracle that could happen would be if you all suddenly made up your
+minds to do something. My dear Olivier, you French people have plenty of
+brains and plenty of good qualities: but you lack blood. You most of all.
+There's nothing the matter with your mind or your heart. It's your life
+that's all wrong. You're sputtering out."
+
+"What can we do? We can only wait for life to return to us."
+
+"You must want life to return to you. You must want to be cured. You must
+_want_, use your will! And if you are to do that you must first let in some
+pure air into your houses. If you won't go out of doors, then at least
+you must keep your houses healthy. You have let the air be poisoned by
+the unwholesome vapors of the market-place. Your art and your ideas are
+two-thirds adulterated. And you are so dispirited that it hardly occasions
+you any surprise, and rouses you to no sort of indignation. Some of these
+good people--(it is pitiful to see)--are so cowed that they actually
+persuade themselves that they are wrong and the charlatans are right.
+Why--even on your _Ésope_ review, in which you profess not to be taken in
+by anything,--I have found unhappy young men persuading themselves that
+they love an art and ideas for which they have not a vestige of love. They
+get drunk on it, without any sort of pleasure, simply because they are told
+to do so: and they are dying of boredom--boredom with the monstrous lie of
+the whole thing!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christophe passed through these wavering and dispirited creatures like a
+wind shaking the slumbering trees. He made no attempt to force them to his
+way of thinking: he breathed into them energy enough to make them think for
+themselves. He used to say:
+
+"You are too humble. The grand enemy is neurasthenia, doubt. A man can and
+must be tolerant and human. But no man may doubt what he believes to be
+good and true. A man must believe in what he thinks. And he should maintain
+what he believes. Whatever our powers may be, we have no right to forswear
+them. The smallest creature in the world, like the greatest, has his duty.
+And--(though he is not sufficiently conscious of it)--he has also a power.
+Why should you think that your revolt will carry so little weight? A sturdy
+upright conscience which dares assert itself is a mighty thing. More than
+once during the last few years you have seen the State and public opinion
+forced to reckon with the views of an honest man, who had no other weapons
+but his own moral force, which, with constant courage and tenacity, he had
+dared publicly to assert....
+
+"And if you must go on asking what's the good of taking so much trouble,
+what's the good of fighting, _what's the good of it all?_... Then, I will
+tell you:--Because France is dying, because Europe is perishing--because,
+if we did not fight, our civilization, the edifice so splendidly
+constructed, at the cost of centuries of labor, by our humanity, would
+crumble away. These are not idle words. The country is in danger, our
+European mother-country,--and more than any, yours, your own native
+country, France. Your apathy is killing her. Your silence is killing her.
+Each of your energies as it dies, each of your ideas as it accepts and
+surrenders, each of your good intentions as it ends in sterility, every
+drop of your blood as it dries up, unused, in your veins, means death to
+her.... Up! up! You must live! Or, if you must die, then you must die
+fighting like men!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the chief difficulty lay not in getting them to do something, but in
+getting them to act together. There they were quite unmanageable. The best
+of them were the most obstinate, as Christophe found in dealing with the
+tenants in his own house: M. Félix Weil, Elsberger, the engineer, and
+Commandant Chabran, lived on terms of polite and silent hostility. And yet,
+though Christophe knew very little of them, he could see that, underneath
+their party and racial labels, they all wanted the same thing.
+
+There were many reasons particularly why M. Weil and the Commandant should
+have understood each other. By one of those contrasts common to thoughtful
+men, M. Weil, who never left his books and lived only in the life of the
+mind, had a passion for all things military. "_We are all cranks_," said
+the half-Jew Montaigne, applying to mankind in general what is perfectly
+true of certain types of minds, like the type of which M. Weil was an
+example. The old intellectual had the craze for Napoleon. He collected
+books and relics which brought to life in him the terrible dream of the
+Imperial epic. Like many Frenchmen of that crepuscular epoch, he was
+dazzled by the distant rays of that glorious sun. He used to go through the
+campaigns, fight the battles all over again, and discuss operations: he
+was one of those chamber-strategists who swarm in the Academies and the
+Universities, who explain Austerlitz and declare how Waterloo should have
+been fought. He was the first to make fun of the "Napoleonite" in himself:
+it tickled his irony: but none the less he went on reading the splendid
+stories with the wild enthusiasm of a child playing a game: he would weep
+over certain episodes: and when he realized that he had been weak enough to
+shed tears, he would roar with laughter, and call himself an old fool. As a
+matter of fact, he was a Napoleonite not so much from patriotism as from
+a romantic interest and a platonic love of action. However, he was a good
+patriot, and much more attached to France than many an actual Frenchman.
+The French anti-Semites are stupid and actively mischievous in casting
+their insulting suspicions on the feeling for France of the Jews who have
+settled in the country. Outside the reasons by which any family does of
+necessity, after a generation or two, become attached to the land of its
+adoption, where the blood of the soil has become its own, the Jews have
+especial reason to love the nation which in the West stands for the most
+advanced ideas of intellectual and moral liberty. They love it because
+for a hundred years they have helped to make it so, and its liberty is in
+part their work. How, then, should they not defend it against every menace
+of feudal reaction? To try--as a handful of unscrupulous politicians and
+a herd of wrong-headed people would like--to break the bonds which bind
+these Frenchmen by adoption to France, is to play into the hands of that
+reaction.
+
+Commandant Chabran was one of those wrong-headed old Frenchmen who are
+roused to fury by the newspapers, which make out that every immigrant
+into France is a secret enemy, and, in a human, hospitable spirit, force
+themselves to suspect and hate and revile them, and deny the brave destiny
+of the race, which is the conflux of all the races. Therefore, he thought
+it incumbent on him not to know the tenant of the first floor, although he
+would have been glad to have his acquaintance. As for M. Weil, he would
+have been very glad to talk to the old soldier: but he knew him for a
+nationalist, and regarded him with mild contempt.
+
+Christophe had much less reason than the Commandant for being interested in
+M. Weil. But he could not bear to hear ill spoken of anybody unjustly. And
+he broke many a lance in defence of M. Weil when he was attacked in his
+presence.
+
+One day, when the Commandant, as usual, was railing against the prevailing
+state of things, Christophe said to him:
+
+"It is your own fault. You all shut yourselves up inside yourselves. When
+things in France are not going well, to your way of thinking, you submit to
+it and send in your resignation. One would think it was a point of honor
+with you to admit yourselves beaten. I've never seen anybody lose a cause
+with such absolute delight. Come, Commandant, you have made war; is that
+fighting, or anything like it?"
+
+"It is not a question of fighting," replied the Commandant. "We don't fight
+against France. In such struggles as these we have to argue, and vote, and
+mix with all sorts of knaves and low blackguards: and I don't like it."
+
+"You seem to be profoundly disgusted! I suppose you had to do with knaves
+and low blackguards in Africa!"
+
+"On my honor, that did not disgust me nearly so much. Out there one could
+always knock them down! Besides, if it's a question of fighting, you need
+soldiers. I had my sharpshooters out there. Here I am all alone."
+
+"It isn't that there is any lack of good men."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Everywhere. All round us."
+
+"Well: what are they doing?"
+
+"Just what you're doing. Nothing. They say there's nothing to be done."
+
+"Give me an instance."
+
+"Three, if you like, in this very house."
+
+Christophe mentioned M. Weil,--(the Commandant gave an exclamation),--and
+the Elsbergers,--(he jumped in his seat):
+
+"That Jew? Those Dreyfusards?"
+
+"Dreyfusards?" said Christophe. "Well: what does that matter?"
+
+"It is they who have ruined France."
+
+"They love France as much as you do."
+
+"They're mad, mischievous lunatics."
+
+"Can't you be just to your adversaries?"
+
+"I can get on quite well with loyal adversaries who use the same weapons.
+The proof of that is that I am here talking to you, Monsieur German. I can
+think well of the Germans, although some day I hope to give them back with
+interest the thrashing we got from them. But it is not the same thing with
+our enemies at home: they use underhand weapons, sophistry, and unsound
+ideas, and a poisonous humanitarianism...."
+
+"Yes. You are in the same state of mind as that of the knights of the
+Middle Ages, when, for the first time, they found themselves faced with
+gunpowder. What do you want? There is evolution in war too."
+
+"So be it. But then, let us be frank, and say that war is war."
+
+"Suppose a common enemy were to threaten Europe, wouldn't you throw in your
+lot with the Germans?"
+
+"We did so, in China."
+
+"Very well, then: look about you. Don't you see that the heroic idealism
+of your country and every other country in Europe is actually threatened?
+Don't you see that they are all, more or less, a prey to the adventurers of
+every class of society? To fight that common enemy, don't you think you
+should join with those of your adversaries who are of some worth and moral
+vigor? How can a man like you set so little store by the realities of life?
+Here are people who uphold an ideal which is different from your own! An
+ideal is a force, you cannot deny it: in the struggle in which you were
+recently engaged, it was your adversaries' ideal which defeated you.
+Instead of wasting your strength in fighting against it, why not make use
+of it, side by side with your own, against the enemies of all ideals, the
+men who are exploiting your country and your wealth of ideas, the men who
+are bringing European civilization to rottenness?"
+
+"For whose sake? One must know where one is. To make our adversaries
+triumph?"
+
+"When you were in Africa, you never stopped to think whether you were
+fighting for the King or the Republic. I fancy that not many of you ever
+gave a thought to the Republic."
+
+"They didn't care a rap."
+
+"Good! And that was well for France. You conquered for her, as well as for
+yourselves, and for the honor and the joy of it. Why not do the same here?
+Why not widen the scope of the fight? Don't go haggling over differences in
+politics and religion. These things are utterly futile. What does it matter
+whether your nation is the eldest daughter of the Church or the eldest
+daughter of Reason? The only thing that does matter is that it should
+live! Everything that exalts life is good. There is only one enemy,
+pleasure-seeking egoism, which fouls the sources of life and dries them up.
+Exalt force, exalt the light, exalt fruitful love, the joy of sacrifice,
+action, and give up expecting other people to act for you. Do, act,
+combine! Come!..."
+
+And he laughed and began to bang out the first bars of the march in _B
+minor_ from the _Choral Symphony_.
+
+"Do you know," he said, breaking off, "that if I were one of your
+musicians, say Charpentier or Bruneau (devil take the two of them!),
+I would combine in a choral symphony _Aux armes, citoyens!_,
+_l'Internationale_, _Vive Henri IV_, and _Dieu Protège la France!_,--(You
+see, something like this.)--I would make you a soup so hot that it would
+burn your mouth! It would be unpleasant,--(no worse in any case than what
+you are doing now):--but I vow it would warm your vitals, and that you
+would have to set out on the march!"
+
+And he roared with laughter.
+
+The Commandant laughed too:
+
+"You're a fine fellow, Monsieur Krafft. What a pity you're not one of us!"
+
+"But I am one of you! The fight is the same everywhere. Let us close up the
+ranks!"
+
+The Commandant quite agreed: but there he stayed. Then Christophe pressed
+his point and brought the conversation back to M. Weil and the Elsbergers.
+And the old soldier no less obstinately went back to his eternal arguments
+against Jews and Dreyfusards, and nothing that Christophe had said seemed
+to have had the slightest effect on him.
+
+Christophe grew despondent. Olivier said to him:
+
+"Don't you worry about it. One man cannot all of a sudden change the whole
+state of mind of a nation. That's too much to expect! But you have done a
+good deal without knowing it."
+
+"What have I done?" said Christophe.
+
+"You are Christophe."
+
+"What good is that to other people?"
+
+"A great deal. Just go on being what you are, my dear Christophe. Don't you
+worry about us."
+
+But Christophe could not surrender. He went on arguing with Commandant
+Chabran, sometimes with great vehemence. It amused Céline. She was
+generally present at their discussions, sitting and working in silence. She
+took no part in the argument: but it seemed to make her more lively: and
+quite a different expression would come into her eyes: it was as though it
+gave her more breathing-space. She began to read, and went out a little
+more, and found more things to interest her. And one day, when Christophe
+was battling with her father about the Elsbergers, the Commandant saw her
+smile: he asked her what she was thinking, and she replied calmly:
+
+"I think M. Krafft is right."
+
+The Commandant was taken aback, and said:
+
+"You ... you surprise me!... However, right or wrong, we are what we are.
+And there's no reason why we should know these people. Isn't it so, my
+dear?"
+
+"No, father," she replied. "I would like to know them."
+
+The Commandant said nothing, and pretended that he had not heard. He
+himself was much less insensible of Christophe's influence than he cared to
+appear. His vehemence and narrow-mindedness did not prevent his having a
+proper sense of justice and very generous feelings. He loved Christophe, he
+loved his frankness and his moral soundness, and he used often bitterly to
+regret that Christophe was a German. Although he always lost his temper in
+these discussions, he was always eager for more, and Christophe's arguments
+did produce an effect on him though he would never have been willing to
+admit it. But one day Christophe found him absorbed in reading a book which
+he would not let him see. And when Céline took Christophe to the door and
+found herself alone with him, she said:
+
+"Do you know what he was reading? One of M. Weil's books."
+
+Christophe was delighted.
+
+"What does he say about it?"
+
+"He says: 'Beast!'... But he can't put it down."
+
+Christophe made no allusion to the fact with the Commandant. It was he who
+asked:
+
+"Why have you stopped hurling that blessed Jew at my head?"
+
+"Because I don't think there's any need to," said Christophe. "Why?" asked
+the Commandant aggressively.
+
+Christophe made no reply, and went away laughing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Olivier was right. It is not through words that a man can influence other
+men: but through his life. There are people who irradiate an atmosphere
+of peace from their eyes, and in their gestures, and through the silent
+contact with the serenity of their souls. Christophe irradiated life.
+Softly, softly, like the moist air of spring, it penetrated the walls and
+the closed windows of the somnolent old house: it gave new life to the
+hearts of men and women, whom sorrow, weakness, and isolation had for years
+been consuming, so that they were withered and like dead creatures. What
+a power there is in one soul over another! Those who wield that power and
+those who feel it are alike ignorant of its working. And yet the life of
+the world is in the ebb and flow controlled by that mysterious power of
+attraction.
+
+On the second floor, below Christophe and Olivier's room, there lived,
+as we have seen, a young woman of thirty-five, a Madame Germain, a widow
+of two years' standing, who, the year before, had lost her little girl,
+a child of seven. She lived with her mother-in-law, and they never saw
+anybody. Of all the tenants of the house, they had the least to do with
+Christophe. They had hardly met, and they had never spoken to each other.
+
+She was a tall woman, thin, but with a good figure; she had fine brown
+eyes, dull and rather inexpressive, though every now and then there glowed
+in them a hard, mournful light. Her face was sallow and her complexion
+waxy: her cheeks were hollow and her lips were tightly compressed. The
+elder Madame Germain was a devout lady, and spent all her time at church.
+The younger woman lived in jealous isolation in her grief. She took no
+interest in anything or anybody. She surrounded herself with portraits and
+pictures of her little girl, and by dint of staring at them she had ceased
+to see her as she was: the photographs and dead presentments had killed the
+living image of the child. She had ceased to see her as she was, but she
+clung to it: she was determined to think of nothing but the child: and so,
+in the end, she reached a point at which she could not even think of her:
+she had completed the work of death. There she stopped, frozen, with her
+heart turned to stone, with no tears to shed, with her life withered.
+Religion was no aid to her. She went through the formalities, but her heart
+was not in them, and therefore she had no living faith: she gave money for
+Masses, but she took no active part in any of the work of the Church: her
+whole religion was centered in the one thought of seeing her child again.
+What did the rest matter? God? What had she to do with God? To see her
+child again, only to see her again.... And she was by no means sure that
+she would do so. She wished to believe it, willed it hardly, desperately:
+but she was in doubt.... She could not bear to see other children, and used
+to think:
+
+"Why are they not dead too?"
+
+In the neighborhood there was a little girl who in figure and manner was
+like her own. When she saw her from behind, with her little pigtails down
+her back, she used to tremble. She would follow her, and, when the child
+turned round and she saw that it was not _she_, she would long to strangle
+her. She used to complain that the Elsberger children made a noise
+below her, though they were very quiet, and even very subdued by their
+up-bringing: and when the unhappy children began to play about their
+room, she would send her maid to ask her neighbors to make them be quiet.
+Christophe met her once as he was coming in with the little girls, and was
+hurt and horrified by the hard way in which she looked at them.
+
+One summer evening when the poor woman was sitting in the dark in the
+self-hypnotized condition of the utter emptiness of her living death, she
+heard Christophe playing. It was his habit to sit at the piano in the
+half-light, musing and improvising. His music irritated her, for it
+disturbed the empty torpor into which she had sunk. She shut the window
+angrily. The music penetrated through to her room. Madame Germain was
+filled with a sort of hatred for it. She would have been glad to stop
+Christophe, but she had no right to do so. Thereafter, every day at the
+same time she sat waiting impatiently and irritably for the music to begin:
+and when it was later than usual her irritation was only the more acute. In
+spite of herself, she had to follow the music through to the end, and when
+it was over she found it hard to sink back into her usual apathy.--And one
+evening, when she was curled up in a corner of her dark room, and, through
+the walls and the closed window, the distant music reached her, that
+light-giving music ... she felt a thrill run through her, and once more
+tears came to her eyes. She went and opened the window, and stood there
+listening and weeping. The music was like rain drop by drop falling upon
+her poor withered heart, and giving it new life. Once more she could see
+the sky, the stars, the summer night: within herself she felt the dawning
+of a new interest in life, as yet only a poor, pale light, vague and
+sorrowful sympathy for others. And that night, for the first time for many
+months, the image of her little girl came to her in her dreams.--For the
+surest road to bring us near the beloved dead, the best means of seeing
+them again, is not to go with them into death, but to live. They live in
+our lives, and die with us.
+
+She made no attempt to meet Christophe. Bather she avoided him. But she
+used to hear him go by on the stairs with the children: and she would stand
+in hiding behind her door to listen to their babyish prattle, which so
+moved her heart.
+
+One day, as she was going out, she heard their little padding footsteps
+coming down the stairs, rather more noisily than usual, and the voice of
+one of the children saying to her sister:
+
+"Don't make so much noise, Lucette. Christophe says you mustn't because of
+the sorrowful lady."
+
+And the other child began to walk more quietly and to talk in a whisper.
+Then Madame Germain could not restrain herself: she opened the door, and
+took the children in her arms, and hugged them fiercely. They were afraid:
+one of the children began to cry. She let them go, and went back into her
+own room.
+
+After that, whenever she met them, she used to try to smile at them, a poor
+withered smile,--(for she had grown unused to smiling);--she would speak to
+them awkwardly and affectionately, and the children would reply shyly in
+timid, bashful whispers. They were still afraid of the sorrowful lady, more
+afraid than ever: and now, whenever they passed the door, they used to run
+lest she should come out and catch them. She used to hide to catch sight
+of them as they passed. She would have been ashamed to be seen talking to
+the children. She was ashamed in her own eyes. It seemed to her that she
+was robbing her own dead child of some of the love to which she only was
+entitled. She would kneel down and pray for her forgiveness. But now that
+the instinct for life and love was newly awakened in her, she could not
+resist it: it was stronger than herself.
+
+One evening, as Christophe came in, he saw that there was an unusual
+commotion in the house. He met a tradesman, who told him that the tenant
+of the third floor, M. Watelet, had just died suddenly of angina pectoris.
+Christophe was filled with pity, not so much for his unhappy neighbor as
+for the child who was left alone in the world. M. Watelet was not known to
+have any relations, and there was every reason to believe that he had left
+the girl almost entirely unprovided for. Christophe raced upstairs, and
+went into the flat on the third floor, the door of which was open. He
+found the Abbé Corneille with the body, and the child in tears, crying
+to her father: the housekeeper was making clumsy efforts to console her.
+Christophe took the child in his arms and spoke to her tenderly. She clung
+to him desperately: he could not think of leaving her: he wanted to take
+her away, but she would not let him. He stayed with her. He sat near the
+window in the dying light of day, and went on rocking her in his arms and
+speaking to her softly. The child gradually grew calmer, and went to sleep,
+still sobbing. Christophe laid her on her bed, and tried awkwardly to
+undress her and undo the laces of her little shoes. It was nightfall. The
+door of the flat had been left open. A shadow entered with a rustling of
+skirts. In the fading light Christophe recognized the fevered eyes of the
+sorrowful lady. He was amazed. She stood by the door, and said thickly:
+
+"I came.... Will you ... will you let me take her?"
+
+Christophe took her hand and pressed it. Madame Germain was in tears. Then
+she sat by the bedside. And, a moment later, she said:
+
+"Let me stay with her...."
+
+Christophe went up to his own room with the Abbé Corneille. The priest was
+a little embarrassed, and begged Ms pardon for coming up. He hoped, he
+said, humbly, that the dead man would have nothing to reproach him with: he
+had gone, not as a priest, but as a friend. Christophe was too much moved
+to speak, and left him with an affectionate shake of the hand.
+
+Next morning, when Christophe went down, he found the child with her arms
+round Madame Germain's neck, with the naïve confidence which makes children
+surrender absolutely to those who have won their affection. She was glad to
+go with her new friend.... Alas! she had soon forgotten her adopted father.
+She showed just the same affection for her new mother. That was not very
+comforting. Did Madame Germain, in the egoism of her love, see it?...
+Perhaps. But what did it matter? The thing is to love. That way lies
+happiness....
+
+A few weeks after the funeral Madame Germain took the child into the
+country, far away from Paris. Christophe and Olivier saw them off. The
+woman had an expression of contentment and secret joy which they had never
+known in her before. She paid no attention to them. However, just as they
+were going, she noticed Christophe, and held out her hand, and said:
+
+"It was you who saved me."
+
+"What's the matter with the woman?" asked Christophe in amazement, as they
+were going upstairs after her departure.
+
+A few days later the post brought him a photograph of a little girl whom he
+did not know, sitting on a stool, with her little hands sagely folded in
+her lap, while she looked up at him with clear, sad eyes. Beneath it were
+written these words:
+
+"With thanks from my dear, dead child."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus it was that the breath of life passed into all these people. In the
+attic on the fifth floor was a great and mighty flame of humanity, the
+warmth and light of which were slowly filtered through the house.
+
+But Christophe saw it not. To him the process was very slow.
+
+"Ah!" he would sigh, "if one could only bring these good people together,
+all these people of all classes and every kind of belief, who refuse to
+know each other! Can't it be done?"
+
+"What do you want?" said Olivier. "You would need to have mutual tolerance
+and a power of sympathy which can only come from inward joy,--the joy of a
+healthy, normal, harmonious existence,--the joy of having a useful outlet
+for one's activity, of feeling that one's efforts are not wasted, and that
+one is serving some great purpose. You would need to have a prosperous
+country, a nation at the height of greatness, or--(better still)--on the
+road to greatness. And you must also have--(the two things go together)--a
+power which could employ all the nation's energies, an intelligent and
+strong power, which would be above party. Now, there is no power above
+party save that which finds its strength in itself--not in the multitude,
+that power which seeks not the support of anarchical majorities,--as it
+does nowadays when it is no more than a well-trained dog in the hands
+of second-rate men, and bends all to its will by service rendered: the
+victorious general, the dictatorship of Public Safety, the supremacy of the
+intelligence... what you will. It does not depend on us. You must have the
+opportunity and the men capable of seizing it: you must have happiness and
+genius. Let us wait and hope! The forces are there: the forces of faith,
+knowledge, work, old France and new France, and the greater France.... What
+an upheaval it would be, if the word were spoken, the magic word which
+should let loose these forces all together! Of course, neither you nor I
+can say the word. Who will say it? Victory? Glory?... Patience! The chief
+thing is for the strength of the nation to be gathered together, and not
+to rust away, and not to lose heart before the time comes. Happiness and
+genius only come to those peoples who have earned them by ages of stoic
+patience, and labor, and faith."
+
+"Who knows?" said Christophe. "They often come sooner than we think--just
+when we expect them least. You are counting too much on the work of ages.
+Make ready. Gird your loins. Always be prepared with your shoes on your
+feet and your staff in your hand.... For you do not know that the Lord will
+not pass your doors this very night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Lord came very near that night. His shadow fell upon the threshold of
+the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Following on a sequence of apparently insignificant events, relations
+between France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in a few days,
+the usual neighborly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocative
+mood which precedes war. There was nothing surprising in this, except to
+those who were living under the illusion that the world is governed by
+reason. But there were many such in France: and numbers of people were
+amazed from day to day to see the vehement Gallophobia of the German
+Press becoming rampant with the usual quasi-unanimity. Certain of those
+newspapers which, in the two countries, arrogate to themselves a monopoly
+of patriotism, and speak in the nation's name, and dictate to the State,
+sometimes with the secret complicity of the State, the policy it should
+follow, launched forth insulting ultimatums to France. There was a dispute
+between Germany and England; and Germany did not admit the right of France
+not to interfere: the insolent newspapers called upon her to declare for
+Germany, or else threatened to make her pay the chief expenses of the war:
+they presumed that they could wrest alliance from her fears, and already
+regarded her as a conquered and contented vassal,--to be frank, like
+Austria. It only showed the insane vanity of German Imperialism, drunk with
+victory, and the absolute incapacity of German statesmen to understand
+other races, so that they were always applying the simple common measure
+which was law for themselves: Force, the supreme reason. Naturally, such a
+brutal demand, made of an ancient nation, rich in its past ages of a glory
+and a supremacy in Europe, such as Germany had never known, had had exactly
+the opposite effect to that which Germany expected. It had provoked their
+slumbering pride; France was shaken from top to base; and even the most
+diffident of the French roared with anger.
+
+The great mass of the German people had nothing at all to do with the
+provocation: they were shocked by it: the honest men of every country
+ask only to be allowed to live in peace: and the people of Germany are
+particularly peaceful, affectionate, anxious to be on good terms with
+everybody, and much more inclined to admire and emulate other nations than
+to go to war with them. But the honest men of a nation are not asked for
+their opinion: and they are not bold enough to give it. Those who are not
+virile enough to take public action are inevitably condemned to be its
+pawns. They are the magnificent and unthinking echo which casts back the
+snarling cries of the Press and the defiance of their leaders, and swells
+them into the _Marseillaise_, or the _Wacht am Rhein_.
+
+It was a terrible blow to Christophe and Olivier. They were so used to
+living in mutual love that they could not understand why their countries
+did not do the same. Neither of them could grasp the reasons for the
+persistent hostility, which was now so suddenly brought to the surface,
+especially Christophe, who, being a German, had no sort of ground for
+ill-feeling against the people whom his own people had conquered.
+Although he himself was shocked by the intolerable vanity of some of his
+fellow-countrymen, and, up to a certain point, was entirely with the French
+against such a high-handed Brunswicker demand, he could not understand
+why France should, after all, be unwilling to enter into an alliance with
+Germany. The two countries seemed to him to have so many deep-seated
+reasons for being united, so many ideas in common, and such great tasks to
+accomplish together, that it annoyed him to see them persisting in their
+wasteful, sterile ill-feeling. Like all Germans, he regarded France as the
+most to blame for the misunderstanding: for, though he was quite ready to
+admit that it was painful for her to sit still under the memory of her
+defeat, yet that was, after all, only a matter of vanity, which should be
+set aside in the higher interests of civilization and of France herself.
+He had never taken the trouble to think out the problem of Alsace and
+Lorraine. At school he had been taught to regard the annexation of those
+countries as an act of justice, by which, after centuries of foreign
+subjection, a German province had been restored to the German flag. And so,
+he was brought down with a run, and he discovered that his friend regarded
+the annexation as a crime. He had never even spoken to him about these
+things, so convinced was he that they were of the same opinion: and now he
+found Olivier, of whose good faith and broad-mindedness he was certain,
+telling him, dispassionately, without anger and with profound sadness, that
+it was possible for a great people to renounce the thought of vengeance for
+such a crime, but quite impossible for them to subscribe to it without
+dishonor.
+
+They had great difficulty in understanding each other. Olivier's historical
+argument, alleging the right of France to claim Alsace as a Latin country,
+made no impression on Christophe: there were just as good arguments to the
+contrary: history can provide politics with every sort of argument in every
+sort of cause. Christophe was much more accessible to the human, and not
+only French, aspect of the problem. Whether the Alsatians were or were not
+Germans was not the question. They did not wish to be Germans: and that
+was all that mattered. What nation has the right to say: "These people are
+mine: for they are my brothers"? If the brothers in question renounce that
+nation, though they be a thousand times in the wrong, the consequences of
+the breach must always be borne by the party who has failed to win the
+love of the other, and therefore has lost the right to presume to bind the
+other's fortunes up with his own. After forty years of strained relations,
+vexations, patent or disguised, and even of real advantage gained from the
+exact and intelligent administration of Germany, the Alsatians persist in
+their refusal to become Germans: and, though they might give in from sheer
+exhaustion, nothing could ever wipe out the memory of the sufferings of the
+generations, forced to live in exile from their native land, or, what is
+even more pitiful, unable to leave it, and compelled to bend under a yoke
+which was hateful to them, and to submit to the seizure of their country
+and the slavery of their people.
+
+Christophe naïvely confessed that he had never seen the matter in that
+light: and he was considerably perturbed by it. And honest Germans always
+bring to a discussion an integrity which does not always go with the
+passionate self-esteem of a Latin, however sincere he may be. It never
+occurred to Christophe to support his argument by the citation of similar
+crimes perpetrated by all nations all through the history of the world. He
+was too proud to fall back upon any such humiliating excuse: he knew that,
+as humanity advances, its crimes become more odious, for they stand in a
+clearer light. But he knew also that if France were victorious in her turn
+she would be no more moderate in the hour of victory than Germany had been,
+and that yet another link would be added to the chain of the crimes of the
+nations. So the tragic conflict would drag on for ever, in which the best
+elements of European civilization were in danger of being lost.
+
+Though the subject was terribly painful for Christophe, it was even more so
+for Olivier. It meant for him, not only the sorrow of a great fratricidal
+struggle between the two nations best fitted for alliance together. In
+France the nation was divided, and one faction was preparing to fight the
+other. For years pacific and anti-militarist doctrines had been spread and
+propagated both by the noblest and the vilest elements of the nation. The
+Government had for a long time held aloof, with the weak-kneed dilettantism
+with which it handled everything which did not concern the immediate
+interests of the politicians: and it never occurred to it that it might
+be less dangerous frankly to maintain the most dangerous doctrines than
+to leave them free to creep into the veins of the people and ruin their
+capacity for war, while armaments were being prepared. These doctrines
+appealed to the Free Thinkers who were dreaming of founding a European
+brotherhood, working all together to make the world more just and human.
+They appealed also to the selfish cowardice of the rabble, who were
+unwilling to endanger their skins for anything or anybody.--These ideas had
+been taken up by Olivier and many of his friends. Once or twice, in his
+rooms, Christophe had been present at discussions which had amazed him. His
+friend Mooch, who was stuffed full of humanitarian illusions, used to say,
+with eyes blazing, quite calmly, that war must be abolished, and that the
+best way of setting about it was to incite the soldiers to mutiny, and, if
+necessary, to shoot down their leaders: and he would insist that it was
+bound to succeed. Elie Elsberger would reply, coldly and vehemently, that,
+if war were to break out, he and his friends would not set out for the
+frontier before they had settled their account with the enemy at home.
+André Elsberger would take Mooch's part.... One day Christophe came in for
+a terrible scene between the two brothers. They threatened to shoot each
+other. Although their bloodthirsty words were spoken in a bantering tone,
+he had a feeling that neither of them had uttered a single threat which he
+was not prepared to put into action. Christophe was amazed when he thought
+of a race of men so absurd as to be always ready to commit suicide for the
+sake of ideas.... Madmen. Crazy logicians. And yet they are good men. Each
+man sees only his own ideas, and wishes to follow them through to the end,
+without turning aside by a hair's breadth. And it is all quite useless: for
+they crush each other out of existence. The humanitarians wage war on the
+patriots. The patriots wage war on the humanitarians. And meanwhile the
+enemy comes and destroys both country and humanity in one swoop.
+
+"But tell me," Christophe would ask André Elsberger, "are you in touch with
+the proletarians of the rest of the nations?"
+
+"Some one has to begin. And we are the people to do it. We have always been
+the first. It is for us to give the signal!"
+
+"And suppose the others won't follow!"
+
+"They will."
+
+"Have you made treaties, and drawn up a plan?"
+
+"What's the good of treaties? Our force is superior to diplomacy."
+
+"It is not a question of ideas: it's a question of strategy. If you are
+going to destroy war, you must borrow the methods of war. Draw up your plan
+of campaign in the two countries. Arrange that on such and such a date in
+France and Germany your allied troops shall take such and such a step. But,
+if you go to work without a plan, how can you expect any good to come of
+it? With chance on the one hand, and tremendous organized forces on the
+other--the result would never be in doubt: you would be crushed out of
+existence."
+
+André Elsberger did not listen. He shrugged his shoulders and took refuge
+in vague threats: a handful of sand, he said, was enough to smash the whole
+machine, if it were dropped into the right place in the gears.
+
+But it is one thing to discuss at leisure, theoretically, and quite another
+to have to put one's ideas into practice, especially when one has to make
+up one's mind quickly.... Those are frightful moments when the great tide
+surges through the depths of the hearts of men! They thought they were free
+and masters of their thoughts! But now, in spite of themselves, they are
+conscious of being dragged onwards, onwards.... An obscure power of will is
+set against their will. Then they discover that it is not they who exist
+in reality, not they, but that unknown Force, whose laws govern the whole
+ocean of humanity....
+
+Men of the firmest intelligence, men the most secure in their faith, now
+saw it dissolve at the first puff of reality, and stood turning this way
+and that, not daring to make up their minds, and often, to their immense
+surprise, deciding upon a course of action entirely different from any
+that they had foreseen. Some of the most eager to abolish war suddenly
+felt a vigorous passionate pride in their country leap into being in their
+hearts. Christophe found Socialists, and even revolutionary syndicalists,
+absolutely bowled over by their passionate pride in a duty utterly foreign
+to their temper. At the very beginning of the upheaval, when as yet
+he hardly believed that the affair could be serious, he said to André
+Elsberger, with his usual German want of tact, that now was the moment to
+apply his theories, unless he wanted Germany to take France. André fumed,
+and replied angrily:
+
+"Just you try!... Swine, you haven't even guts enough to muzzle your
+Emperor and shake off the yoke, in spite of your thrice-blessed Socialist
+Party, with its four hundred thousand members and its three million
+electors. We'll do it for you! Take us? We'll take you...."
+
+And as they were held on and on in suspense, they grew restless and
+feverish. André was in torment. He knew that his faith was true, and yet
+he could not defend it! He felt that he was infected by the moral epidemic
+which spreads among the people of a nation the collective insanity of their
+ideas, the terrible spirit of war! It attacked everybody about Christophe,
+and even Christophe himself. They were no longer on speaking terms, and
+kept themselves to themselves.
+
+But it was impossible to endure such suspense for long. The wind of action
+willy-nilly sifted the waverers into one group or another. And one day,
+when it seemed that they must be on the eve of the ultimatum,--when, in
+both countries, the springs of action were taut, ready for slaughter,
+Christophe saw that everybody, including the people in his own house, had
+made up their minds. Every kind of party was instinctively rallied round
+the detested or despised Government which represented France. Not only
+the honest men of the various parties: but the esthetes, the masters of
+depraved art, took to interpolating professions of patriotic faith in their
+work. The Jews were talking of defending the soil of their ancestors. At
+the mere mention of the flag tears came to Hamilton's eyes. And they were
+all sincere: they were all victims of the contagion. André Elsberger and
+his syndicalist friends, just as much as the rest, and even more: for,
+being crushed by necessity and pledged to a party that they detested, they
+submitted with a grim fury and a stormy pessimism which made them crazy for
+action. Aubert, the artisan, torn between his cultivated humanitarianism
+and his instinctive chauvinism, was almost beside himself. After many
+sleepless nights he had at last found a formula which could accommodate
+everything: that France was synonymous with Humanity. Thereafter he never
+spoke to Christophe. Almost all the people in the house had closed their
+doors to him. Even the good Arnauds never invited him. They went on playing
+music and surrounding themselves with art; they tried to forget the general
+obsession. But they could not help thinking of it. When either of them
+alone happened to meet Christophe alone, he or she would shake hands
+warmly, but hurriedly and furtively. And if, the very same day, Christophe
+met them together, they would pass him by with a frigid bow. On the
+other hand, people who had not spoken to each other for years now rushed
+together. One evening Olivier beckoned to Christophe to go near the window,
+and, without a word, he pointed to the Elsbergers talking to Commandant
+Chabran in the garden below.
+
+Christophe had no time to be surprised at such a revolution in the minds of
+his friends. He was too much occupied with his own mind, in which there had
+been an upheaval, the consequences of which he could not master. Olivier
+was much calmer than he, though he had much more reason to be upset. Of
+all Christophe's acquaintance, he seemed to be the only one to escape the
+contagion. Though he was oppressed by the anxious waiting for the outbreak
+of war, and the dread of schism at home, which he saw must happen in spite
+of everything, he knew the greatness of the two hostile faiths which sooner
+or later would come to grips: he knew also that it is the part of France to
+be the experimental ground in human progress, and that all new ideas need
+to be watered with her blood before they can come to flower. For his own
+part, he refused to take part in the skirmish. While the civilized nations
+were cutting each other's throats he was fain to repeat the device of
+Antigone: "_I am made for love, and not for hate_."--For love and for
+understanding, which is another form of love. His fondness for Christophe
+was enough to make his duty plain to him. At a time when millions of human
+beings were on the brink of hatred, he felt that the duty and happiness of
+friends like himself and Christophe was to love each other, and to keep
+their reason uncontaminated by the general upheaval. He remembered how
+Goethe had refused to associate himself with the liberation movement of
+1813, when hatred sent Germany to march out against France.
+
+Christophe felt the same: and yet he was not easy in his mind. He who in a
+way had deserted Germany, and could not return thither, he who had been fed
+with the European ideas of the great Germans of the eighteenth century, so
+dear to his old friend Schulz, and detested the militarist and commercial
+spirit of New Germany, now found himself the prey of gusty passions: and he
+did not know whither they would lead him. He did not tell Olivier, but he
+spent his days in agony, longing for news. Secretly he put his affairs in
+order and packed his trunk. He did not reason the thing out. It was too
+strong for him. Olivier watched him anxiously, and guessed the struggle
+which was going on in his friend's mind: and he dared not question him.
+They felt that they were impelled to draw closer to each other than ever,
+and they loved each other more: but they were afraid to speak: they
+trembled lest they should discover some difference of thought which might
+come between them and divide them, as their old misunderstanding had done.
+Often their eyes would meet with an expression of tender anxiety, as
+though they were on the eve of parting for ever. And they were silent and
+oppressed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But still on the roof of the house that was being built on the other side
+of the yard, all through those days of gloom, with the rain beating down on
+them, the workmen were putting the finishing touches: and Christophe's
+friend, the loquacious slater, laughed and shouted across:
+
+"There! The house is finished!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Happily, the storm passed as quickly as it had come. The chancelleries
+published bulletins announcing the return of fair weather, barometrically
+as it were. The howling dogs of the Press were despatched to their kennels.
+In a few hours the tension was relieved. It was a summer evening, and
+Christophe had rushed in breathless to convey the good news to Olivier. He
+was happy, and could breathe again. Olivier looked at him with a little sad
+smile. And he dared not ask him the question that lay next his heart. He
+said:
+
+"Well: you have seen them all united, all these people who could not
+understand each other."
+
+"Yes," said Christophe good-humoredly, "I have seen them united. You're
+such humbugs! You all cry out upon each other, but at bottom you're all of
+the same mind."
+
+"You seem to be glad of it," remarked Olivier.
+
+"Why not? Because they were united at my expense?... Bah! I'm strong enough
+for that ... Besides, it's a fine thing to feel the mighty torrent rushing
+you along, and the demons that were let loose in your hearts...."
+
+"They terrify me," said Olivier. "I would rather have eternal solitude than
+have my people united at such a cost."
+
+They relapsed into silence: and neither of them dared approach the subject
+which was troubling them. At last Olivier pulled himself together, and, in
+a choking voice, said:
+
+"Tell me frankly, Christophe: you were going away?"
+
+Christophe replied:
+
+"Yes."
+
+Olivier was sure that he would say it. And yet his heart ached for it. He
+said:
+
+"Tell me, Christophe: could you ... could you ...?"
+
+Christophe drew his hand over his forehead and said:
+
+"Don't let's talk of it. I don't like to think of it."
+
+Olivier went on sorrowfully:
+
+"You would have fought against us?"
+
+"I don't know. I never thought about it."
+
+"But, in your heart, you had decided?"
+
+Christophe said:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Against me?"
+
+"Never against you. You are mine. Where I am, you are too."
+
+"But against my country?"
+
+"For my country."
+
+"It is a terrible thing," said Olivier. "I love my country, as you do. I
+love France: but could I slay my soul for her? Could I betray my conscience
+for her? That would be to betray her. How could I hate, having no hatred,
+or, without being guilty of a lie, assume a hatred that I did not feel? The
+modern State was guilty of a monstrous crime--a crime which will prove its
+undoing--when it presumed to impose its brazen laws on the free Church of
+those spirits the very essence of whose being is to love and understand.
+Let Cæsar be Cæsar, but let him not assume the Godhead! Let him take our
+money and our lives: over our souls he has no rights: he shall not stain
+them with blood. We are in this world to give it light, not to darken it:
+let each man fulfil his duty! If Cæsar desires war, then let Cæsar have
+armies for that purpose, armies as they were in olden times, armies of
+men whose trade is war! I am not so foolish as to waste my time in vainly
+moaning and groaning in protest against force. But I am not a soldier in
+the army of force. I am a soldier in the army of the spirit: with thousands
+of other men who are my brothers-in-arms I represent France in that army.
+Let Cæsar conquer the world if he will! We march to the conquest of truth."
+
+"To conquer," said Christophe, "you must vanquish, you must live. Truth is
+no hard dogma, secreted by the brain, like a stalactite by the walls of
+a cave. Truth is life. It is not to be found in your own head, but to be
+sought for in the hearts of others. Attach yourself to them, be one with
+them. Think as much as you like, but do you every day take a bath of
+humanity. You must live in the life of others and love and bow to destiny."
+
+"It is our fate to be what we are. It does not depend on us whether we
+shall or shall not think certain things, even though they be dangerous. We
+have reached such a pitch of civilization that we cannot turn back."
+
+"Yes, you have reached the farthest limit of the plateau of civilization,
+that dizzy height to which no nation can climb without feeling an
+irresistible desire to fling itself down. Religion and instinct are
+weakened in you. You have nothing left but intelligence. You are machines
+grinding out philosophy. Death comes rushing in upon you."
+
+"Death comes to every nation: it is a matter of centuries."
+
+"Have done with your centuries! The whole of life is a matter of days and
+hours. If you weren't such an infernally metaphysical lot, you'd never
+go shuffling over into the absolute, instead of seizing and holding the
+passing moment."
+
+"What do you want? The flame burns the torch away. You can't both live and
+have lived, my dear Christophe."
+
+"You must live."
+
+"It is a great thing to have been great."
+
+"It is only a great thing when there are still men who are alive enough and
+great enough to appreciate it."
+
+"Wouldn't you much rather have been the Greeks, who are dead, than any of
+the people who are vegetating nowadays?"
+
+"I'd much rather be myself, Christophe, and very much alive."
+
+Olivier gave up the argument. It was not that he was without an answer.
+But it did not interest him. All through the discussion he had only been
+thinking of Christophe. He said, with a sigh:
+
+"You love me less than I love you."
+
+Christophe took his hand and pressed it tenderly:
+
+"Dear Olivier," he said, "I love you more than my life. But you must
+forgive me if I do not love you more than Life, the sun of our two races. I
+have a horror of the night into which your false progress drags me. All
+your sentiments of renunciation are only the covering of the same Buddhist
+Nirvana. Only action is living, even when it brings death. In this world
+we can only choose between the devouring flame and night. In spite of the
+sad sweetness of dreams in the hour of twilight, I have no desire for that
+peace which is the forerunner of death. The silence of infinite space
+terrifies me. Heap more fagots upon the fire! More! And yet more! Myself
+too, if needs must. I will not let the fire dwindle. If it dies down, there
+is an end of us, an end of everything."
+
+"What you say is old," said Olivier; "it comes from the depths of the
+barbarous past."
+
+He took down from his shelves a book of Hindoo poetry, and read the sublime
+apostrophe of the God Krishna:
+
+"_Arise, and fight with a resolute heart. Setting no store by pleasure or
+pain, or gain or loss, or victory or defeat, fight with all thy might...._"
+
+Christophe snatched the book from his hands and read:
+
+"_... I have nothing in the world to bid me toil: there is nothing that is
+not mine: and yet I cease not from my labor. If I did not act, without a
+truce and without relief, setting an example for men to follow, all men
+would perish. If for a moment I were to cease from my labors, I should
+plunge the world in chaos, and I should he the destroyer of life._"
+
+"Life," repeated Olivier,--"what is life?"
+
+"A tragedy," said Christophe. "Hurrah!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The panic died down. Every one hastened to forget, with a hidden fear in
+their hearts. No one seemed to remember what had happened. And yet it was
+plain that it was still in their thoughts, from the joy with which they
+resumed their lives, the pleasant life from day to day, which is never
+truly valued until it is endangered. As usual when danger is past, they
+gulped it down with renewed avidity.
+
+Christophe flung himself into creative work with tenfold vigor. He dragged
+Olivier after him. In reaction against their recent gloomy thoughts they
+had begun to collaborate in a Rabelaisian epic. It was colored by that
+broad materialism which follows on periods of moral stress. To the
+legendary heroes--Gargantua, Friar John, Panurge--Olivier had added, on
+Christophe's inspiration, a new character, a peasant, Jacques Patience,
+simple, cunning, sly, resigned, who was the butt of the others, putting up
+with it when he was thrashed and robbed,--putting up with it when they made
+love to his wife, and laid waste his fields,--tirelessly putting his house
+in order and cultivating his land,--forced to follow the others to war,
+bearing the burden of the baggage, coming in for all the kicks, and still
+putting up with it,--waiting, laughing at the exploits of his masters and
+the thrashings they gave him, and saying, "They can't go on for ever,"
+foreseeing their ultimate downfall, looking out for it out of the corner of
+his eye, and silently laughing at the thought of it, with his great mouth
+agape. One fine day it turned out that Gargantua and Friar John were
+drowned while they were away on a crusade. Patience honestly regretted
+their loss, merrily took heart of grace, saved Panurge, who was drowning
+also, and said:
+
+"I know that you will go on playing your tricks on me: you don't take me
+in: but I can't do without you: you drive away the spleen, and make me
+laugh."
+
+Christophe set the poem to music with great symphonic pictures, with soli
+and chorus, mock-heroic battles, riotous country fairs, vocal buffooneries,
+madrigals à la Jannequin, with tremendous childlike glee, a storm at sea,
+the Island of Bells, and, finally, a pastoral symphony, full of the air
+of the fields, and the blithe serenity of the flutes and oboes, and the
+clean-souled folk-songs of Old France.--The friends worked away with
+boundless delight. The weakly Olivier, with his pale cheeks, found new
+health in Christophe's health. Gusts of wind blew through their garret. The
+very intoxication of Joy! To be working together, heart to heart with one's
+friend! The embrace of two lovers is not sweeter or more ardent than such
+a yoking together of two kindred souls. They were so near in sympathy
+that often the same ideas would flash upon them at the same moment. Or
+Christophe would write the music for a scene for which Olivier would
+immediately find words. Christophe impetuously dragged Olivier along in his
+wake. His mind swamped that of his friend, and made it fruitful.
+
+The joy of creation was enhanced by that of success. Hecht had just made up
+his mind to publish the _David_: and the score, well launched, had had an
+instantaneous success abroad. A great Wagnerian _Kapellmeister_, a friend
+of Hecht's, who had settled in England, was enthusiastic about it: he had
+given it at several of his concerts with considerable success, which,
+with the _Kapellmeister's_ enthusiasm, had carried it over to Germany,
+where also the _David_ had been played. The _Kapellmeister_ had entered
+into correspondence with Christophe, and had asked him for more of his
+compositions, offered to do anything he could to help him, and was engaged
+in ardent propaganda in his cause. In Germany, the _Iphigenia_, which
+had originally been hissed, was unearthed, and it was hailed as a work
+of genius. Certain facts in Christophe's life, being of a romantic
+nature, contributed not a little to the spurring of public interest. The
+_Frankfurter Zeitung_ was the first to publish an enthusiastic article.
+Others followed. Then, in France, a few people began to be aware that they
+had a great musician in their midst. One of the Parisian conductors asked
+Christophe for his Rabelaisian epic before it was finished: and Goujart,
+perceiving his approaching fame, began to speak mysteriously of a friend
+of his who was a genius, and had been discovered by himself. He wrote a
+laudatory article about the admirable _David_,--entirely forgetting that
+only the year before he had decried it in a short notice of a few lines.
+Nobody else remembered it either or seemed to be in the least astonished
+at his sudden change. There are so many people in Paris who are now loud
+in their praises of Wagner and César Franck, where formerly they roundly
+abused them, and actually use the fame of these men to crush those new
+artists whom to-morrow they will be lauding to the skies!
+
+Christophe did not set any great store on his success. He knew that he
+would one day win through: but he had not thought that the day could be so
+near at hand: and he was distrustful of so rapid a triumph. He shrugged
+his shoulders, and said that he wanted to be left alone. He could have
+understood people applauding the _David_ the year before, when he wrote it:
+but now he was so far beyond it; he had climbed higher. He was inclined to
+say to the people who came and talked about his old work:
+
+"Don't worry me with that stuff. It disgusts me. So do you." And he plunged
+into his new work again, rather annoyed at having been disturbed. However,
+he did feel a certain secret satisfaction. The first rays of the light of
+fame are very sweet. It is good, it is healthy, to conquer. It is like
+the open window and the first sweet scents of the spring coming into a
+house.--Christophe's contempt for his old work was of no avail, especially
+with regard to the _Iphigenia_: there was a certain amount of atonement for
+him in seeing that unhappy production, which had originally brought him
+only humiliation, belauded by the German critics, and in great request
+with the theaters, as he learned from a letter from Dresden, in which the
+directors stated that they would be glad to produce the piece during their
+next season.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The very day when Christophe received the news, which, after years of
+struggling, at last opened up a calmer horizon, with victory in the
+distance, he had another letter from Germany.
+
+It was in the afternoon. He was washing his face and talking gaily to
+Olivier in the next room, when the housekeeper slipped an envelope under
+the door. His mother's writing.... He had been just on the point of writing
+to her, and was happy at the thought of being able to tell her of his
+success, which would give her so much pleasure. He opened the letter. There
+were only a few lines. How shaky the writing was!
+
+  _"My dear boy, I am not very well. If it were possible, I
+  should like to see you again. Love.
+                                    "MOTHER."_
+
+Christophe gave a groan. Olivier, who was working in the next room, ran to
+him in alarm. Christophe could not speak, and pointed to the letter on the
+table. He went on groaning, and did not listen to what Olivier said, who
+took in the letter at a glance, and tried to comfort him. He rushed to his
+bed, where he had laid his coat, dressed hurriedly, and without waiting to
+fasten his collar,--(his hands were trembling too much)--went out. Olivier
+caught him up on the stairs: what was he going to do? Go by the first
+train? There wasn't one until the evening. It was much better to wait there
+than at the station. Had he enough money?--They rummaged through their
+pockets, and when they counted all that they possessed between them, it
+only amounted to thirty francs. It was September. Hecht, the Arnauds, all
+their friends, were out of Paris. They had no one to turn to. Christophe
+was beside himself, and talked of going part of the way on foot. Olivier
+begged him to wait for an hour, and promised to procure the money somehow.
+Christophe submitted: he was incapable of a single idea himself. Olivier
+ran to the pawnshop: it was the first time he had been there: for his own
+sake, he would much rather have been left with nothing than pledge any of
+his possessions, which were all associated with some precious memory: but
+it was for Christophe, and there was no time to lose. He pawned his watch,
+for which he was advanced a sum much smaller than he had expected. He
+had to go home again and fetch some of his books, and take them to a
+bookseller. It was a great grief to him, but at the time he hardly thought
+of it: his mind could grasp nothing but Christophe's trouble. He returned,
+and found Christophe just where he had left him, sitting by his desk, in
+a state of collapse. With their thirty francs the sum that Olivier had
+collected was more than enough. Christophe was too upset to think of asking
+his friend how he had come by it, or whether he had kept enough to live
+on during his absence. Olivier did not think of it either: he had given
+Christophe all he possessed. He had to look after Christophe, just like a
+child, until it was time for him to go. He took him to the station, and
+never left him until the train began to move.
+
+In the darkness into which he was rushing Christophe sat wide-eyed, staring
+straight in front of him and thinking:
+
+"Shall I be in time?"
+
+He knew that his mother must have been unable to wait for her to write to
+him. And in his fevered anxiety he was impatient of the jolting speed of
+the express. He reproached himself bitterly for having left Louisa. And
+at the same time he felt how vain were his reproaches: he had no power to
+change the course of events.
+
+However, the monotonous rocking of the wheels and springs of the carriage
+soothed him gradually, and took possession of his mind, like tossing waves
+of music dammed back by a mighty rhythm. He lived through all his past
+life again from the far-distant days of his childhood: loves, hopes,
+disillusion, sorrows,--and that exultant force, that intoxication of
+suffering, enjoying, and creating, that delight in blotting out the light
+of life and its sublime shadows, which was the soul of his soul, the living
+breath of the God within him. Now as he looked back on it all was clear.
+His tumultuous desires, his uneasy thoughts, his faults, mistakes, and
+headlong struggles, now seemed to him to be the eddy and swirl borne on
+by the great current of life towards its eternal goal. He discovered the
+profound meaning of those years of trial: each test was a barrier which was
+burst by the gathering waters of the river, a passage from a narrow to a
+wider valley, which the river would soon fill: always he came to a wider
+view and a freer air. Between the rising ground of France and the German
+plain the river had carved its way, not without many a struggle, flooding
+the meadows, eating away the base of the hills, gathering and absorbing
+all the waters of the two countries. So it flowed between them, not to
+divide, but to unite them: in it they were wedded. And for the first time
+Christophe became conscious of his destiny, which was to carry through the
+hostile peoples, like an artery, all the forces of life of the two sides of
+the river.--A strange serenity, a sudden calm and clarity, came over him,
+as sometimes happens in the darkest hours.... Then the vision faded, and he
+saw nothing but the tender, sorrowful face of his old mother.
+
+It was hardly dawn when he reached the little German town. He had to take
+care not to be recognized, for there was still a warrant of arrest out
+against him. But nobody at the station took any notice of him: the town was
+asleep: the houses were shut up and the streets deserted: it was the gray
+hour when the lights of the night are put out and the light of day is not
+yet come,--the hour when sleep is sweetest and dreams are lit with the pale
+light of the east. A little servant-girl was taking down the shutters of
+a shop and singing an old German folk-song. Christophe almost choked with
+emotion. O Fatherland! Beloved!... He was fain to kiss the earth as he
+heard the humble song that set his heart aching in his breast; he felt how
+unhappy he had been away from his country, and how much he loved it.... He
+walked on, holding his breath. When he saw his old house he was obliged
+to stop and put his hand to his lips to keep himself from crying out. How
+would he find his mother, his mother whom he had deserted?... He took a
+long breath and almost ran to the door. It was ajar. He pushed it open. No
+one there ... The old wooden staircase creaked under his footsteps. He went
+up to the top floor. The house seemed to be empty. The door of his mother's
+room was shut.
+
+Christophe's heart thumped as he laid his hand on the doorknob. And he had
+not the strength to open it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Louisa was alone, in bed, feeling that the end was near. Of her two other
+sons, Rodolphe, the business man, had settled in Hamburg, the other,
+Ernest, had emigrated to America, and no one knew what had become of him.
+There was no one to attend to her except a woman in the house, who came
+twice a day to see if Louisa wanted anything, stayed for a few minutes, and
+then went about her business: she was not very punctual, and was often late
+in coming. To Louisa it seemed quite natural that she should be forgotten,
+as it seemed to her quite natural to be ill. She was used to suffering, and
+was as patient as an angel. She had heart disease and palpitations, during
+which she would think she was going to die: she would lie with her eyes
+wide open, and her hands clutching the bedclothes, and the sweat dripping
+down her face. She never complained. She knew that it must be so. She was
+ready: she had already received the sacrament. She had only one anxiety:
+lest God should find her unworthy to enter into Paradise. She endured
+everything else in patience.
+
+In a dark corner of her little room, near her pillow, on the wall of the
+recess, she had made a little shrine for her relics and trophies: she had
+collected the portraits of those who were dear to her: her three children,
+her husband, for whose memory she had always preserved her love in its
+first freshness, the old grandfather, and her brother, Gottfried: she was
+touchingly devoted to all those who had been kind to her, though it were
+never so little. On her coverlet, close to her eyes, she had pinned the
+last photograph of himself that Christophe had sent her: and his last
+letters were under her pillow. She had a love of neatness and scrupulous
+tidiness, and it hurt her to know that everything was not perfectly in
+order in her room. She listened for the little noises outside which marked
+the different moments of the day for her. It was so long since she had
+first heard them! All her life had been spent in that narrow space.... She
+thought of her dear Christophe. How she longed for him to be there, near
+her, just then! And yet she was resigned even to his absence. She was sure
+that she would see him again on high. She had only to close her eyes to see
+him. She spent days and days, half-unconscious, living in the past....
+
+She would see once more the old house on the banks of the Rhine.... A
+holiday.... A superb summer day. The window was open: the white road lay
+gleaming under the sun. They could hear the birds singing. Melchior and the
+old grandfather were sitting by the front-door smoking, and chatting and
+laughing uproariously. Louisa could not see them: but she was glad that
+her husband was at home that day, and that grandfather was in such a good
+temper. She was in the basement, cooking the dinner: an excellent dinner:
+she watched over it as the apple of her eye: there was a surprise: a
+chestnut cake: already she could hear the boy's shout of delight.... The
+boy, where was he? Upstairs: she could hear him practising at the piano.
+She could not make out what he was playing, but she was glad to hear the
+familiar tinkling sounds, and to know that he was sitting there with his
+grave face.... What a lovely day! The merry jingling bells of a carriage
+went by on the road.... Oh! good heavens! The joint! Perhaps it had
+been burned while she was looking out of the window! She trembled lest
+grandfather, of whom she was so fond, though she was afraid of him,
+should be dissatisfied, and scold her.... Thank Heaven! there was no harm
+done. There, everything was ready, and the table was laid. She called
+Melchior and grandfather. They replied eagerly. And the boy?... He had
+stopped playing. His music had ceased a moment ago without her noticing
+it....--"Christophe!"... What was he doing? There was not a sound to be
+heard. He was always forgetting to come down to dinner: father was going
+to scold him. She ran upstairs....--"Christophe!"... He made no sound.
+She opened the door of the room where he was practising. No one there.
+The room was empty, and the piano was closed.... Louisa was seized with
+a sudden panic. What had become of him? The window was open. Oh, Heaven!
+Perhaps he had fallen out! Louisa's heart stops. She leans out and looks
+down....--"Christophe!"... He is nowhere to be found. She rushes all over
+the house. Downstairs grandfather shouts to her: "Come along; don't worry;
+he'll come back." She will not go down: she knows that he is there: that
+he is hiding for fun, to tease her. Oh, naughty, naughty boy!... Yes, she
+is sure of it now: she heard the floor creak: he is behind the door. She
+tries to open the door. But the key is gone. The key! She rummages through
+a drawer, looking for it in a heap of keys. This one, that.... No, not
+that....Ah, that's it!... She cannot fit it into the lock, her hand is
+trembling so. She is in such haste: she must be quick. Why? She does not
+know, but she knows that she must be quick, and that if she doesn't hurry
+she will be too late. She hears Christophe breathing on the other side of
+the door.... Oh, bother the key!... At last! The door is opened. A cry of
+joy. It is he. He flings his arms round her neck.... Oh, naughty, naughty,
+good, darling boy!...
+
+She has opened her eyes. He is there, standing by her.
+
+For some time he had been standing looking at her; so changed she was, with
+her face both drawn and swollen, and her mute suffering made her smile of
+recognition so infinitely touching: and the silence, and her utter
+loneliness.... It rent his heart....
+
+She saw him. She was not surprised. She smiled all that she could not say,
+a smile of boundless tenderness. She could not hold out her arms to him,
+nor utter a single word. He flung his arms round her neck and kissed her,
+and she kissed him: great tears were trickling down her cheeks. She said in
+a whisper:
+
+"Wait...."
+
+He saw that she could not breathe.
+
+Neither stirred. She stroked his head with her hands, and her tears went on
+trickling down her cheeks. He kissed her hands and sobbed, with his face
+hidden in the coverlet.
+
+When her attack had passed she tried to speak. But she could not find
+words: she floundered, and he could hardly understand her. But what did
+it matter? They loved each other, and were together, and could touch each
+other: that was the main thing.--He asked indignantly why she was left
+alone. She made excuses for her nurse:
+
+"She cannot always be here: she has her work to do...."
+
+In a faint, broken voice,--she could hardly pronounce her words,--she made
+a little hurried request about her burial. She told Christophe to give her
+love to her two other sons who had forgotten her. And she seat a message
+to Olivier, knowing his love for Christophe. She begged Christophe to tell
+him that she sent him her blessing--(and then, timidly, she recollected
+herself, and made use of a more humble expression),--"her affectionate
+respects...."
+
+Once more she choked. He helped her to sit up in her bed. The sweat dripped
+down her face. She forced herself to smile. She told herself that she had
+nothing more to wish for in the world, now that she had her son's hand
+clasped in hers.
+
+And suddenly Christophe felt her hand stiffen in his. Louisa opened her
+lips. She looked at her son with infinite tenderness:--so the end came.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+In the evening of the same day Olivier arrived. He had been unable to bear
+the thought of leaving Christophe alone in those tragic hours of which he
+had had only too much experience. He was fearful also of the risks his
+friend was running in returning to Germany. He wanted to be with him, to
+look after him. But he had no money for the journey. When he returned from
+seeing Christophe off he made up his mind to sell the few family jewels
+that he had left: and as the pawnshop was closed at that hour, and he
+wanted to go by the next train, he was just going out to look for a
+broker's shop in the neighborhood when he met Mooch on the stairs. When the
+little Jew heard what he was about he was genuinely sorry that Olivier had
+not come to him: he would not let Olivier go to the broker's, and made him
+accept the necessary money from himself. He was really hurt to think that
+Olivier had pawned his watch and sold his books to pay Christophe's fare,
+when he would have been only too glad to help them. In his zeal for doing
+them a service he even proposed to accompany Olivier to Christophe's home,
+and Olivier had great difficulty in dissuading him.
+
+Olivier's arrival was a great boon to Christophe. He had spent the day,
+prostrated with grief, alone by his mother's body. The nurse had come,
+performed certain offices, and then had gone away and had never come back.
+The hours had passed in the stillness of death. Christophe sat there,
+as still as the body: he never took his eyes from his mother's face: he
+did not weep, he did not think, he was himself as one dead.--Olivier's
+wonderful act of friendship brought him back to tears and life.
+
+  "_Getrost! Es ist der Schmerzen werth dies haben,
+  So lang ... mit uns ein treues Auge weint._"
+
+("Courage! Life; is worth all its suffering as long as there are faithful
+friends to weep with us.")
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They clasped each other in a long embrace, and then sat by the dead woman's
+side and talked in whispers. Night had fallen. Christophe, with his arms on
+the foot of the bed, told random tales of his childhood's memories, in
+which his mother's image ever recurred. He would pause every now and then
+for a few minutes, and then go on again, until there came a pause when he
+stopped altogether, and his face dropped into his hands: he was utterly
+worn out: and when Olivier went up to him, he saw that he was asleep. Then
+he kept watch alone. And presently he, too, was overcome by sleep, with his
+head leaning against the back of the bed. There was a soft smile on
+Louisa's face, and she seemed happy to be watching over her two children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the early hours of the morning they were awakened by a knocking at the
+door. Christophe opened it. It was a neighbor, a joiner, who had come to
+warn Christophe that his presence in the town had been denounced, and
+that he must go, if he did not wish to be arrested. Christophe refused to
+fly: he would not leave his mother before he had taken her to her last
+resting-place. But Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he would
+faithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house:
+and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him to
+the station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sight
+of the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echo
+of which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Though
+it was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet for his whim he
+disregarded it. They walked along the steep bank of the Rhine, which
+was rushing along in its mighty peace, between its low banks, on to its
+mysterious death in the sands of the North. A great iron bridge, looming
+in the mist, plunged its two arches, like the halves of the wheels of a
+colossal chariot, into the gray waters. In the distance, fading into the
+mist, were ships sailing through the meadows along the river's windings. It
+was like a dream, and Christophe was lost in it. Olivier brought him back
+to his senses, and, taking his arm, led him back to the station. Christophe
+submitted: he was like a man walking in his sleep. Olivier put him into the
+train as it was just starting, and they arranged to meet next day at the
+first French station, so that Christophe should not have to go back to
+Paris alone.
+
+The train went, and Olivier returned to the house, where he found two
+policemen stationed at the door, waiting for Christophe to come back. They
+took Olivier for him, and Olivier did not hurry to explain a mistake so
+favorable to Christophe's chances of escape. On the other hand, the police
+were not in the least discomfited by their blunder, and showed no great
+zest in pursuing the fugitive, and Olivier had an inkling that at bottom
+they were not at all sorry that Christophe had gone.
+
+Olivier stayed until the next morning, when Louisa was buried. Christophe's
+brother, Rodolphe, the business man, came by one train and left by the
+next. That important personage followed the funeral very correctly, and
+went immediately it was over, without addressing a single word to Olivier,
+either to ask him for news of his brother or to thank him for what he had
+done for their mother. Olivier spent a few hours more in the town, where he
+did not know a soul, though it was peopled for him with so many familiar
+shadows: the boy Christophe, those whom he had loved, and those who had
+made him suffer;--and dear Antoinette.... What was there left of all those
+human beings, who had lived in the town, the family of the Kraffts, that
+now had ceased to be? Only the love for them that lived in the heart of a
+stranger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the afternoon Olivier met Christophe at the frontier station as they had
+arranged. It was a village nestling among wooded hills. Instead of waiting
+for the next train to Paris, they decided to go part of the way on foot, as
+far as the nearest town. They wanted to be alone. They set out through the
+silent woods, through which from a distance there resounded the dull thud
+of an ax. They reached a clearing at the top of a hill. Below them, in a
+narrow valley, in German territory, there lay the red roof of a forester's
+house, and a little meadow like a green lake amid the trees. All around
+there stretched the dark-blue sea of the forest wrapped in cloud. Mists
+hovered and drifted among the branches of the pines. A transparent veil
+softened the lines and blurred the colors of the trees. All was still.
+Neither footsteps nor voices were to be heard. A few drops of rain rang
+out on the golden copper leaves of the beeches, which had turned to autumn
+tints. A little stream ran tinkling over the stones. Christophe and Olivier
+stood still and did not stir. Each was dreaming of those whom he had lost.
+Olivier was thinking:
+
+"Antoinette, where are you?"
+
+And Christophe:
+
+"What is success to me, now that she is dead?"
+
+But each heard the comforting words of the dead:
+
+"Beloved, weep not for us. Think, not of us. Think of Him...."
+
+They looked at each other, and each ceased to feel his own sorrow, and was
+conscious only of that of his friend. They clasped their hands. In both
+there was sad serenity. Gently, while no wind stirred, the misty veil was
+raised: the blue sky shone forth again. The melting sweetness of the earth
+after rain.... So near to us, so tender!... The earth takes us in her arms,
+clasps us to her bosom with a lovely loving smile, and says to us:
+
+"Rest. All is well...."
+
+The ache in Christophe's heart was gone. He was like a little child.
+For two days he had been living wholly in the memory of his mother, the
+atmosphere of her soul: he had lived over again her humble life, with its
+days one like unto another, solitary, all spent in the silence of the
+childless house, in the thought of the children who had left her: the poor
+old woman, infirm but valiant in her tranquil faith, her sweetness of
+temper, her smiling resignation, her complete lack of selfishness.... And
+Christophe thought also of all the humble creatures he had known. How near
+to them he felt in that moment! After all the years of exhausting struggle
+in the burning heat of Paris, where ideas and men jostle in the whirl
+of confusion, after those tragic days when there had passed over them
+the wind of the madness which hurls the nations, cozened by their own
+hallucinations, murderously against each other, Christophe felt utterly
+weary of the fevered, sterile world, the conflict between egoisms and
+ideas, the little groups of human beings deeming themselves above humanity,
+the ambitious, the thinkers, the artists who think themselves the brain of
+the world, and are no more than a haunting evil dream. And all his love
+went out to those thousands of simple souls, of every nation, whose lives
+burn away in silence, pure flames of kindness, faith, and sacrifice,--the
+heart of the world.
+
+"Yes," he thought, "I know you; once more I have come to you; you are blood
+of my blood; you are mine. Like the prodigal son, I left you to pursue the
+shadows that passed by the wayside. But I have come back to you; give me
+welcome. We are one; one life is ours, both the living and the dead; where
+I am there are you also. Now I bear you in my soul, O mother, who bore me.
+You, too, Gottfried, and you Schulz, and Sabine, and Antoinette, you are
+all in me, part of me, mine. You are my riches, my joy. We will take the
+road together. I will never more leave you. I will be your voice. We will
+join forces: so we shall attain the goal."
+
+A ray of sunlight shot through the dripping branches of the trees. From the
+little field down below there came up the voices of children singing an Old
+German folk-song, frank and moving: the singers were three little girls
+dancing round the house: and from afar the west wind brought the chiming of
+the bells of France, like a perfume of roses....
+
+"O peace, Divine harmony, serene music of the soul set free, wherein are
+mingled joy and sorrow, death and life, the nations at war, and the nations
+in brotherhood. I love you, I long for you, I shall win you...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The night drew down her veil. Starting from his dream, Christophe saw the
+faithful face of his friend by his side. He smiled at him and embraced him.
+Then they walked on through the forest in silence: and Christophe showed
+Olivier the way.
+
+  "_Taciti, soli e senza compagnia,
+  N'andavan I' un dinnanzi, e I' altro dopo,
+  Come i frati minor vanno per via...._"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Jean Christophe: In Paris, by Romain Rolland
+
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