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

! 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 compan

, 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,

my friend, and I am his. My friend loves me. I am my friend's, t

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he felt an irresistible longing to see him again. He got up and went out. It was not yet eight o'clock. It w

ng 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

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 s

.. You

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

have come to see me?

aid Christophe. "You wou

not?" repli

, qu

t it would not be for w

d have sto

g to to

a fine

as afraid you would no

d to see you, and here I am. If i

ave to have

led at e

er we

ight have offended you. My shyness is abso

country: one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasio

ed and chuckled

e to see me becaus

that is yours. There are all sorts: and I

sympathize with me?

d. When I see a face that I like in the crowd, I know what t

make mistakes when

ft

ave made a mis

hall

e! You terrify me. If I t

what little

, mobile face, which blushed and went pale by turns. Emotion s

ter it is!" he thought

ched h

y 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 contr

him with serious

ly part, and you are strong e

to be strong, if you want to be so. For what I have just said gives me leave to go on and say, with

as struck dumb with embarra

glanced rou

you live in. Haven'

lumber

the. How do you ma

es it s

ldn't-

ed his waistcoat an

and opened th

I breathe so little that I can live anywhere. And yet there are nights in summer when even I am hard put to it

e heap of pillows on th

he could see him struggli

e said. "Why

is shoulders and r

matter whe

below a shrill argument was toward. And always, without ceasing,

the shameful poverty-how can you bring yourself to come back to it night after night? Don't y

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 ut

it's all wrong to waste your fancy in such a struggle against the sordid

't you yourself waste energy

for. Look at my arms and hands! Fighting is the breath of life

ly down at his thi

ys have been. But what

u make you

tea

ch w

, history. I coach for d

hy at the Muni

re on

Philo

at? Do they teach mora

er sm

cour

it to keep you talki

ture for twelv

h them to do

do you

so much talk to fin

it undiscov

t a matter of knowledge: it's a matter of action. It's only your neurasthenics who go haggling about morality: and the

for such as you. You know: but th

hemselves. But whether they go on two legs or on all fours, the first

an four strides took him across it. He stopped in front of the piano, op

me som

er st

aid. "Wha

ou were a good musician.

ing? Oh!" he sai

icity with which he spo

, though rat

phe, "is that a reas

still dr

hy do you w

you prese

ha

ing yo

tingly 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 b

play any

he stooped and reached over him and fi

the music of

d for a long time gazing int

you before.... I know you so well

e was on the point of spea

a moment or two longer. Then he smi

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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 m

fference betwee

n to think in whispers, a

ged his

way of those who love with every fiber of their being, and the way of those who only giv

of following it any farther. He sat for a long time smilin

als jemals... ("Thou art mine, and now I am

with tranquil ease wrote down

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ne 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.

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

s as to who should not have it. They had to toss for it: and Christophe, who had made the sugges

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ppiness lay not in any one thing, but in all things at once: their every thou

, 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 my

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, th

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

ad 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 ha

r sister Antoinette was w

me of Antoinette struck him

ette?"

er," sai

ophe r

ster?... But," he said, as he looked at the photograph

smiled

r as a child," he said. "

ty-five when

as greatly moved. "And she w

er no

ok Olivier's

her,"

ow," repli

s arms round Ch

l!" said Christophe

e both i

im keep his arms inside the bed, and tucked the clothes up round his shoulders, a

ow I knew you. I recognized yo

er he was speaking of the p

nt later, "you knew?...

vier's eyes Ant

you. You had to se

old Christophe, who held his hand, poor Antoinette's story:-but he did not tell him what he had no right to tell;

she was with them. They had no need to think of her: every thought they shared was sha

e 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 i

tte 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

r son, and told her how fond he was of him and how he admired him. Louisa would send Olivier awkward, humble l

nd enjoyment without knowing why,"-their tongues were loosed. Th

pure metal. They loved each other because t

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 l

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 wi

ure 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,

presence of the beloved friend gives all its worth to life: a man lives for his fri

ysical 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 g

treasures of which till then he had never been conscious: the moral treasure of his nation: Olivier the wide culture

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

said Olivier, "what d

list of all the Frenchmen he had met in the circle of the Stevens and the Roussins: Jews, Belgi

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 onl

phe, "I've come across your

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 ha

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 an

hich 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 fro

ence. 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 lig

ce!" replied Olivier. "Be si

the rumbling over the stones of the heavy car of action was lost

and the perfume

wi

ps kissing the ear

the rain and the s

nd chisel of the poets carv

jesty of si

, joyo

s of gold and

th welling up like

very darkness

orrow, giving com

m which there shines A cl

n

with her grea

ss of such national trumpets as were Corneille and Hugo: but how much deeper and

o Christophe,

understa

y music, yet he drank in the murmuring of the woods and fountains of the soul which came whispering

odness o

huma

terror and yelp

nd round a barr

ves out in wrangling for the bloody rags of

e!... Sanctus

n the choir of the poets there were not wanting tragic

ricane, mad

gh force or gent

those who sing the wild fever of the crowd, the

and mist, Muscular backs stretching, or suddenly cr

e City of

rs of the mind there was the heroic bitterness of those

*

f 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 t

re 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 b

in his heart he found the aristocratic lady a little too intellectual for his liking, and preferred a prett

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ed 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 a

reed suffi

e tall gra

l the

llows

inging st

eed suffic

the fore

y 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

s in the elegant tiny little creature! He found indulgence for the follies that he had lately seen in her. Only those who attempt

at 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

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rance, this great artist, adhering to his faith in the midst

lf 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 n

sm 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, t

lumbering bodies of Protestantism and Judaism were thrilling with new life. All in generous emulation had set themselves t

sm 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 sacr

e 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, Syndicali

ng 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 re

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leading Dante, Olivier led Christophe by the hand to the summit of the mountain where

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 pinn

om all laws save those of his own conscience, now became fearfully conscious of how little he was free compared with these Frenchmen who w

being free," r

y, thought regretfully of the mighty spirit of di

ans madness to the mind, anarchy to the State ... Liberty! What man is free in this world? What man in your Republic is free?-On

t 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 secu

d," replied Christophe. "Soone

nded Christophe of the sayin

le in the pow

the earth to

of spe

he sun in

shut

si

o

*

etheus 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, i

tophe ask

I see only the elect,

er re

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 th

ese people lea

ppen 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 diff

e 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 th

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

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 liv

ely they

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e, 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 parti

er? I'm putting in a nail, two nails. One more blo

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, wi

ed to ask you: my playing does

e to the music, slow tunes kept him back. They parted very good friends. In a quarter of an hour they h

were no servants' rooms: each household did its own housework, except for the tenants

nist 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 figu

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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 ea

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 t

d Christophe. "Go alone

gineer. "It's easy to see

f I had, I should be

the country!... No. I wo

e's country and one's wife and children to sit

, far away from those you love! Anything is better than the horror of that. Besides,

h a shrug. "And even if that does happen, isn't it better to die fighti

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, 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

arties, 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 fi

r 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 soli

is 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 som

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e 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 occup

e 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 in

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structive, 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 ir

f 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 lo

*

cs, 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 laughin

*

hological 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 s

mistic engineer, the priest, the anarchist, and all these pr

*

f the people Christophe found the same moral sol

in touch with a little r

nd had taken for its m

tai

price upon himself, described all sorts of marvels; the second said as much for himself, or more. When it came to ?sop's

ty 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 lik

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

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

audiences who had come to forget their troubles for a few hours, only to be presented wi

at score," said Olivier, lau

e mad. Are you trying to rob them

he sadness of things, as we do, and yet to

that they'll do it without pleasure. And you don't go ve

o? One has no right

ght to tell the whol

g the truth aloud, you who pretend to lov

: 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 bur

lie to one'

lied with the

e good of the world. The rest we must keep to ourselves: like the soft

hen 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

d 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 fro

as, 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

eling, 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

s 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

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 b

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 m

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hich 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,

rtune 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 fett

n 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 yo

s shoulders, and said,

happen. All the old embittered failures, the young Royalist idiots, the odious apostles of brutality and hatred, would seize on a

" asked C

s good enough for barbarian countries! But our country has no use for hatred. Our genius never yet asserted itself by denying or

poisono

ws, 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 Germ

nhood. But there will come a day when its energy declines: and then there is a danger of its being subm

ence! 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

ave sapped yo

and 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 m

hen your France emerges from the Nile? Don't you think it would be better to fight against it? You woul

of mind, which I prize far more than victory. I will not be a party to hatred. I will be just to all my enem

*

ing 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 co

*

o him veritably to be the "?le 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 t

n 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

e 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

virgin o

to the downtrodden hearts o

stophe pressed

Olivier, "your Germany h

rgiveness almost as though h

es 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

Olivier, in whose eyes there shon

Frenchmen! You are s

n. "Blessed be that disaster! We will