Jean Christophe: In Paris The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House

fied 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

was near

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 ra

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

suspiciousness he thought every one was going to rob him. He lifted his precious bag on to his shoulder and walked straight ahead,

was called H?tel 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 pen

ence 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 beas

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 trif

ight 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 da

the most sombe

man upon earth? Are not his days

and the night be gone? and I am full of t

reams and terrifiest me through visions.... How long wilt Thou not depart from me, nor let me alon

me yet will I

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 peace

slay me yet woul

s ready calmly t

is old friend Otto Diener, who was in the office of his uncle, a cloth merchant in the Mail quarter: and a young Je

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

istophe, 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, w

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

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 ch

he 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 wa

iener i

For

o. He has

ght for a momen

ll. I wi

aken aback, and

be back before

he calmly. "I haven't anything to do i

tophe had forgotten him already. He sat down quietly in a corner, with his bac

s colleagues: they were most comically distressed, and cast ab

s 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

e shall be able to

nized Diener's h

hut, Diener showed no eagerness to offer him a chai

hought I had gone.... But I must go ... I have

hat the lie had been arranged by Diener to get rid of him.

is no

up. He was shocked b

! In business..." Christop

N

for having so put him to shame. He murmu

said. "Yo

the first had been vainly trying to set up betwee

w why I

id Diener

escapade, and the warrant out

that I am not here for fun. I have had

for it made it possible for him to feel his superiority over Christophe)-and embarrassmen

iresome. Life here is hard. Everything is so dear. We

t him short c

asking you

ashed. Christ

doing well? Have y

od!..." said Diener cautiou

a look of fury a

people in the

es

must be musical. They have chil

embarrass

ophe. "Do you think I'm no

, who would not have done a thing for Christophe except for the sake of p

e a thousand times to

t, t

difficult-very difficult-o

posi

fair, the warrant.... If

for me. It mig

tophe's face go hot with a

If I were alone!... But my uncle ... you know, the

gathering explosion he said hurriedly-(he was not a bad fellow at bottom: avarice an

d you fift

to the door and opened it, and held himself in readiness to call for hel

swi

t through the little throng of assis

*

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 suc

on ceremony. I must try ev

nward vo

hall not

nt up Kohn He made up his mind to hit him i

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 thoug

t 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, Fr

thick accent t

hn 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 imp

d, with a familiarity which at any other time would have anno

ll inclined to be suspicious, "that they told m

d Sylvain Kohn, laughing. "My name i

roke

me," h

writer famous for her voluptuous and passionate novels. The modern Sappho had a purple ribbon on her bosom, a full figure, bri

ming himself on the fact that he remembered everybody. Christophe had forgotten his antipathy; he replied cordiall

me," h

reet another lad

phe. "Are there only wo

laugh, and s

fellow. If you want to suc

lanation, and went on with his own s

devil do yo

, "he doesn't know. That

fferent whe

inst himself: the brawl with the soldiers, the war

ked with

d. "Bravo! That'

mack in the eye of authority: and the story tickled him the

past twelve. Will you g

with

epted grateful

w-decidedly a good fe

On the way Christophe

o look for work-music lessons-until I c

y one you like. I know everybo

able to show how

ns of gratitude. He felt that he was

tophe 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, w

g," said Kohn. "I'll talk about you at

ophe i

shall

to-morrow ... o

I'll come ba

ickly. "I'll let you k

ite the contrary. Eh? I'

the mea

. "But I would rather write to you. You wouldn't

phe dic

write you

morr

. You can

stophe's hand-sha

hought. "Wh

he would not be in when "the German" came to s

to his lair. He was f

ow!" he thought. "How unjust I was ab

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 pe

ght and his excursions in the morning that at length he dozed off in his chair. He only

*

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 c

day like un

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 mon

Paris on business. It was a blow to Christophe. He gasped and

ten

osed 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 te

ylvain Kohn going out, on the doorstep. Kohn made a face as he saw that he was caught: but Christoph

ay? Did you hav

had a very good time,

ophe w

I suppose?... Well, any news? You m

was amazed at his frigid man

. I have been very busy since I saw you-up to my ears in business. I don't

ked Christophe anxiou

at him slyly

w what is the matter, the las

ul. You must rest. I'm so sorry to have been a bother to you.

r 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, i

are waiting for lessons, would you car

e accepte

ublishers-Daniel Hecht. I'll introduce you. You'll see what there is to do. I don't know a

following day. Kohn wa

y doing him

*

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, a

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 o

tion, and stood shifting from one foot to the other, holding his manuscripts and his hat in his hand. When Kohn had finished, Hecht,

ophe Krafft.... Ne

en struck, full in the chest. The blood

hear it

nt on imperturbably, as thou

. no, neve

or whom not to be known to t

on in

people there are there who dabble in music! But I don't think

t as an insult: but Chris

d in kind if Kohn ha

"You must do me the justice to admit

ur credit," r

an in order to please yo

y, but I'm

aside, went on, as

c? What have you writt

poems, quartets, piano suites, thea

l in Germany," said Hecht

mer to think that he had written so many works,

esent we are making a collection, a 'Library for Young People,' in which we are publishing some easy pi

he was s

r that to me,

ighted Kohn: but H

rk as all that! If you think it too easy, so much the better. We'll see about that later

ght to

ung sparks, they would knock the stu

himself in check)-clapped his hat on his head, and

ned to Hecht: "He has brought som

ily. "Very well, the

out his manuscripts. Hecht cast

ano ... (reading): A Day....

irst 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 hi

tronizing tone of voice

m would have hur

be told that,"

at you showed me them for

at

dly, "I fail to see wh

for work, and

you for the time being,

that. I said it was

er work to offer a m

as yourself have not thought the work beneath their dignity. There are men whose names I cou

ng 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 noth

to stem the torr

said

t or le

slammed the doors. Hec

hn, who wa

me to it li

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

*

tiful 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 wo

id 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 G

rade as a matter of taste! When I hear music, it's just for all the world like listening to the rain.... But p

aughed

one of them. "Not dirty wo

est: he floundered for his words: he did not know whether

o her husband. "All the same," she went on, turning to

sked her

. You know, they'

uck-up folk!

ents were trying to make a lady of her; they would perhaps like her to have lessons,

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 doubtf

red 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 b

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.

.. I am ..

ver 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 le

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, p

*

g in cordiality: and the whirl and confusion of their perpetual agitation crushed him. They

ts, when he saw Sylvain Kohn coming from the opposite direction. He was convinced that they

been wanting to look you up, but I lost your address.... Good Lord, my d

him. He was surprised

ot angry

What a

treat to him. It really mattered nothing to him whether Christophe or Hecht was right: he only regarded people as

g this evening? Come to dinner. I won't let you off. Quite informal: just a few artis

beg to be excused on th

ohn carri

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

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, whi

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 ta

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 hone

'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

ir 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

ed 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 t

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 wh

don't kno

N

arci thuram, catalamus, singul

e 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 conve

e. 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 w

of the same subject: for their literature was concerned with nothing but women, and their women were

d 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

re 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 a

. And he heard nothing clearly, except when he heard the others calling each other by name, and then, with a silly drunken in

, 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 kno

self 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

im 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 hi

olently 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

his excellent piano, which he never used himself. Christophe, who was bursting with suppressed m

aved 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 Chri

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 musi

rge 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

o had introduced him to various cosmop

*

n his lair. He did not seem to mind his being in such a h

ic from time to time: and as I have tickets for everyt

an, 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 ha

elessly 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

We'll go to an

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.

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

ce, 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 every

*

on, Christophe tried to find out some

ifferent 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 want

it said that the French were amiable fantastics who believed in nothing? Those whom Christophe saw were more hag

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 thi

Ah! How fine it is!... Ah! How spl

ng 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 musician

, 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,

I am everybo

hey insist

t in music, harmon

rep

me what you

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, t

. 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

sicians 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 th

*

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 sai

g 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 work

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 Potte

ey 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

ey did sometimes manage to write it. Then they wrote music that was not intended to say anything. Unfortunately, they of

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 no

ted 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

rmonies, 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-alw

always go back to t

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 concei

oven 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 wh

her. (For he was well up

*

rought 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

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 artis

lence and disdain of the

ngs which they are incapable of using. They need a master of another r

e notion of an Eigh

*

han 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, mai

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: i

as 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 t

it was

*

e could gauge the vitality of the art. Schools and coteries only express some superficial fashion or manufactured theory. But the independent men who stand apa

ntly praised, while some of them were announcing the coming of the greatest musical revolution of the last ten

s 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 eve

n, what do yo

he s

e that all

es

t's no

udly, and called

hristophe. "No music. No

armony. Quite good orche

hing-nothing

etically 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

forests, caves, cellars, death-chambers-little sea-birds struggled: hardly even that. Poor little birds! Pretty birds, soft, pretty birds.... The

ing of cannon, coming to batter down that worn-

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

ted 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 cou

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 shoulde

t patience wit

sic 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 l

e 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; no

ries! Not all the twaddle of the harmonic kitchens would ever help him

s 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

matter with you

began to la

t is

shrugged hi

pulling

ughed o

. Read a li

e 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

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 sur

e had known them would not have been more indulgent; for in his eyes nothing in th

the well-being of

even

s not

n!... May God have mercy on your white-livered humanitarianism, it is so bloo

vain 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

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

d 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. Christoph

monious 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

ue 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 wit

*

nks to him, Christophe's first impression was almost as repulsive as that of his first essa

rack-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 th

l 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 extr

us 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

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-hous

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 disord

his nose and sai

stinks. That's enough! Let'

sked Sylv

anc

it!" s

Christophe. "Franc

ce, and Ge

ke that wouldn't last for twenty years: why, it's

nothing

mething else," in

eople, of course, and theaters for them, too.

ophe to the Th

*

playing a modern comedy, in prose

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 wr

rst 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 m

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

are gay!" exclaimed Christo

vain Kohn chaffingly. "You wanted virtue.

ue!" cried Christoph

Kohn. "Virtue in the the

nd the prize goes to the best talker. I h

ook him to the

*

ter was not for them. It was for the versifiers. The theater is to po

e 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

ouplets, 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

owhere was the poetic lie more insolently reared than in th

g is to have a

broad brow like

, grave mien, most

eyes full of dreams

he 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 di

incompoops of the days of Grand Cyrus, those Gascons of the ideal-Scudéry, La Calprenède-an everlasting brood, the songsters of sham heroism, impossible

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 Chatelet. And, of course, th

tophe

is untruth incarnate. I'm

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

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

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

he 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

nch 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 th

*

y 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, an

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 lov

ou hea

is ill, let him first of all cure himself," as

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 s

sake. Art is always pure: everything in art is chaste. We explore life as tourists,

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 C?sar a man must have the soul of C?sar. But you are only limelight Kings: you are playing a part, and do not even deceive yourselves. And, li

mit: it is poisonous: b

e, sentencing a hoo

certainly: but he has

*

lack of critics: they swarmed all over and about French art. It was imp

ss 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 t

e 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 corre

impossible.... I don't know

le piece were put u

nasty r

y s

: and therefore you ought not to say: 'That is nasty rubbish!' but: 'It seems to me that that is nasty

arts. Schiller once taught them a lesson when he reminded the p

uty of

is to enter. Bustle about, then! Sweep the ro

t you go! Let not the serving-w

uld be servants: and servants they were. But bad servants: they never took a broom in their hands: the room was thick with dust. Instead

ction. 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

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

lent that your art la

ohn. "You need a great

said Sylvai

s, more than these

said Sylvain Kohn, "no

ileau. I bet you that if I set out and told you the truth about yourselves

fellow!" laugh

ll the rep

h that suddenly it occurred to Christophe that Kohn was a thousand times mor

d that evening when he had left the theater on the b

you want?" ask

anc

id Sylvain Kohn, gu

m for a moment, then shook h

t be somet

look for it," said Sylvain Ko

o look for it. I