Jean-Christophe Journey's End

is elsewhere. It has no history. His history lies wholly in his creative work. The uncea

of the raging seas. He knows that no man may boast of being master of himself without the permission of the God of battle. In his soul there are two souls. One is a high plateau swept by winds and shrouded with, clouds. The other, higher still, is a snowy peak bathed in light. There it is impossible to dwell; but, when he is frozen by the mists on the lower ground, well he knows the path t

fifty years. Out of the crude stuff shaped by Christophe's strong hands came strange and unknown agglomerations of harmony, bewildering combinations of chords, begotten of the remotest kinships of sounds accessible to the senses in these days; they cast a magical and holy spell upon the mind.-But the public must have time to grow accustomed to the conquests and the trophies which a great artist brings back with him from

a man expects more of his own country than any other, and he suffers more from its foibles. It was true, too, that Germany was bearing the greatest burden of the sins of Europe. The victor incurs the responsibility of his victory, a debt towards the vanquished: tacitly the victor is pledged to march in front of them to show them the way. The conquests of Louis XIV. gave Europe the splendor of French reason. What light has the Germany of Sedan given to the world? The glitter of

est, like birds taking shelter from the storm. Now what refuge is there? The island has been covered by the sea. Rome is no more. The birds have fled from the Seven Hills.-The Alps only are left for them. There, amid the rapacity of Europe, stands (for how long?) the little island of twenty-four cantons. In truth it has not the poetic radiance and glamor of the Eternal City: history has not filled its air with the breath of gods and heroes; but a mighty music rises from the naked Earth; there is an heroic rhythm in the lines of the mountains, and here, more than anywhere else, a man can feel himself in contact with elemental forces. Chri

he masses of food flung into the trough for the nosing beasts: the casino bands with their silly music mingling with the noise of the little horses, the Italian scum whose disgusting uproar makes the bored wealthy idiots wriggle with pleasure, the fatuous display of the shops-wooden bears, chalets, silly knick-knacks, always the same, r

or the breadth of their social undertakings, or the example given to the world by these United States of the three great races of the West, the model of the Europe of the future. Even less do they know of the Daphne concealed beneath this rugged bark, the wild, flashing dreams of Boecklin, the raucous heroism of Hodler, the serene vision and humor of Gottfried Keller, the living tradition of the great

them regrets for the past; they were looking on at the gradual disappearance of the old Switzerland with a sort of religious fatalism and Calvinistic pessimism; great gray souls. Christophe seldom saw them. His old wounds were apparently healed: but they had been too deep wholly to be cured. He was fearful of forming new ties with men.

ing in

double turn, and passed into shadow between two slopes; on either side were nut-trees and pines. It was like a little shut-in world. On either hand the road

ren, a boy and a girl, between six and eight, who were playing and picking flowers. They recognized each other at a distance of a few yards. Their emotion was visible in their

azi

u h

hanical, and they hardly listened, heard later, when their hands had parted: they were absorbed in gazing at each other. The children came back to her. She introduced them. He felt hostile towards them, and

come, this

e the name

more, and left her awkwardly. But when he had taken a few strides he came back to the children,

part. There were very few people about, only two or three old people. Christophe was irritated by th

nk I have chan

art gr

suffered

gly, scanning the deep marks o

at a loss

et us go somewhere else. Could we not

re. It is good enough here.

talk fre

all the

she was instinctively afraid of emotional scenes: unconsciously she was seeking protection from any surprise of their hearts

w that she had not been very happy with him. Also, she had lost a child, her first-born. She made no complaint, and turned the conversation from herself to q

hurt that she should be so little eager to see him

other: but he did not try to match the boy's looks. They talked about the country, the times, the books lying open on the table:-but their eyes spoke of other things. He was hoping to be able to talk more intimately when a hotel acquaintance came in. He marked the pleasure and politeness with which Graz

speak to her were doomed to failure. While she was very gentle and kind with him, she could not throw off her reserve. All unconsciously

re already so far gone! Perhaps they would have only a very little time in which to se

urt by life: she could not break her habitual reserve: any excessive display, even of a genuine feeling, hurt and terrified her. But well she

r's death, he had been utterly alone. Her letter gave the word of resurrection to his heart that was so famished for tenderness. Tenderness!... He thought he had

ld her through the piano, which with her eyes she invited him to use to tell her what he had to say! She was struck by the humility of the man whom she had known in his violence and pride. When he went

to do so, nor complain. On their last day they went for a walk with the children; there came a moment when he was so

verything that

es of bitter suffering: a few white tresses showed in her thick black hair. He was filled with a pitying, passionate adoration of this beloved creature who had travailed and been impregnated with the

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with traveling and work. He wrote to Grazia. She answered him, two or three week later, with very brief letters, in which she showed her tranquil friendship, knowing neither impatience nor uneasiness. They hurt him and he loved them. He would not admit tha

ists and the tenor arias to which every now and then the land of Virgil inspires men of letters on their travels. He felt towards Italy the hostility of an advanced artist, who has too often heard the name of Rome invoked by the worst champions of academic routine. Finally, the old leaven of instinctive antipathy which ever lies fermenting in the hearts of the men of the North towards the men of the South, or at least towards the legendary type of rhetorical braggart which, in the eyes of the m

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ed energy he had to begin by clothing himself in night, and, with his eyes closed, to descend to the depths of the mine, the subterranean galleries of his dreams. There in the seams of coal slept the sun of days gone by. But as the result of spending his life crouching there, digging, he came out burned, stiff in back and knees, with limbs deformed, half petrified, dazed eyes, that, like a bird's, could see

of the wall he had left a darkened sky and a fading day. So sudden was the change that at first he felt more surprise than joy. It was some time before his drowsy soul awoke and began slowly to expand and burst the crust that w

ringed with red and orange and greeny gold and pale blue. Evening falling on the Apennines. A winding descent by little sheer hills, snakelike curving, in a repeating, involved rhythm like a farandole.-And suddenly

nd on. The sea charmed him so that when, a few hours later, the engine whistled as it moved on, Christophe was in a boat, and, as the train passed, shouted: "Good-by!" In the luminous night, on the luminous sea, he sat rocking in the boat, as it passed along the scented coast with its promontories fringed with tiny cypress-trees. He put up at a village and spent there five days of unbroken joy. He was like a man issuing from a long fast, hungrily eating. With all his famishe

marvelous ripe fruit among the leaves. In Italy seeing is sensual: the eyes enjoy color, as the palate and the tongue delight in a juicy, scented fruit. Christophe flung himself at this new repast with eager childlike greed: he made up for the asceticism of the gray visions to which till then he had been condemned. His abounding nature, stifled by Fate, suddenly became conscious of powers of enjoyment which he had never used: they pounced on the prey presented to them; scents, colors, the music of voices, bells and the sea, the kisses of the air, the warm bath of light in which his ageing, weary soul began to expand.... Christophe had no thought of anything. He was in a state of beatific delight, and only left it to share his joy with those he met: his boatman, an old fisherman, with quick eyes all wrinkled ro

rything about him, from the circling, olive-clad hills, from the high, shining peaks of the Apennines, graven by the dense shadows and the burning sun, and from the orange-groves heavy with flowers and fruit, an

memories of Italy, or the cities of the art of past ages. He saw nothing of Rome, nor wanted to: and what he did s

ed he went to see G

Did you stop at M

aid. "Why

laug

to say! And what do

said. "I hav

t y

monument. I came straig

r to see Rome.... Look a

eed to see

see you,

ou only see your own id

zerl

eek

ou been doin

lept, with my eyes open. I do not know what I have seen, or what I have dreamed. I think I was dreaming of

you!" s

d not

t was then, everything that had been before.

into his laughing eyes. "You h

Grazia, had flitted between his gaze and this new actual beloved. Now, in the sun of Italy, the dreams of the North had melted away: in the clear light of day he saw her real soul and body. How far removed she was from the little, w

orpus solidum

other feelings. But in her luminous smile many new things were to be read: a melancholy indulgence, a little weariness, much knowledge of the ways of men, a fine irony, and tranquil common sense. The years had veiled her with a certain coldness, which protected her against the illusions of the heart; rarely could she surrender herself; and her tenderness was ever on the alert, with a smile that

*

iages; they all had a superficial cosmopolitanism and a comfortable mixture of the four chief languages, and the intellectual baggage of the four great nations of the West. Each nation brought into the pool its personal characteristic, the Jews their restlessness and the Anglo-Saxons their phlegm, but everything was quickly absorbed in the Italian melting-pot. When centuries of great plundering barons have impressed on a race the haughty

tesy, a gentleness of manners that could be charming and affectionate, and at the same time malicious and consciously superior, an elegant finesse in the use of the eyes, the smile, the alert, nonchalant, skeptical, diverse, and easy intelligence. There was nothing either stiff or famil

sum

of its race was its indolence. The frivolity of the French is accompanied by a fever of the nerves-a perpetual agitation of the mind, even when it is empty. The brain of the Italian knows how to rest.

hey loved nothing. Love played so large a part in their lives, but only on condition that it never disturbed them. Their love was indolent and lazy, like themselves; even in their passion it was apt to take on a domestic character. Their solid, harmonious intelligence was fitted with an inertia in which all the opposites of thought met without collision, were tranquilly yoked together, smiling, cushioned, and rendered harmless. They were afraid of any thorough belief, of taking sides, and

om them, as from a good sleep, they were fresh and ready: these grave men, these tranquil Madonnas would be taken with a sudden desire to talk, to be gay, to plunge into social life; then they would break out into a profusion of gestures and words, paradoxical sallies, burlesque humor: they were always playing an opera bouffe. In that gallery of Italian portraits rarely would you find the marks of thought, the metallic brilliance of the eyes, faces stained with the perpetual labor o

n no humor to recognize it. He was furious at seeing Grazia surrounded by worldly people with their courteous, witty, and empty manners. He hated them for it,

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beginning to feel the attraction of Italia

gna, near the ruddy Tiber, thick with mud, like moving earth,-and along the ruined aqueducts, like the gigantic vertebrae of antediluvian monsters. Thick masses of black clouds rolled across the blue sky. Peasants on horseback goaded across the desert great herds of pearly-gray cattle with long horns; and along the ancient road, straight, dusty, and bare, goat-footed shepherds, clad in thick skins, walked in silence. On the far horizon, the Sabine Chain, with its Olympian lines, unfolded its hills; and on the other edge of the cup of the sky the old walls of the city, the front of Saint John's Church, surmounted with statues which danced in black silhouette.... Silence.... A fiery sun.... The wind passed over the plain.... On a headl

ed in worship of this flame of the new life. The etiquette of parties, systems of thought, mattered not to them: the great thing was to "think with courage." To be frank, to be brave, in mind and deed. Rudely they disturbed the sleep of their race. After the political resurrection of Italy, awakened from death by the summons of her heroes, after her recent economic resurrection, they had set themselves to pluck Italian thought from the grave. They suffered, as from an insult, from the indolent and timid indifference of the elect, their cowardice of mind and verbolatry. Their Voices rang hollow in the mids

hered in the air above the soil that is crumbled away with untruth. We are on a plane superior to our disagreements, even though on your lips your passion brings the name of our country. There is one thing greater than a man's country, and that is the human conscience. There are laws which you must not violate on pain of being bad Italians. You see before you now only a man who is a seeker after truth: you must hear his cry. You have before you now only a man who ardently desires to see you great and pure, and to work with you. For, whether you will or no, we

of adversaries in the mêlée; but, friends or enemies, they were, and would always be, members of the same human family. They knew it, even as he. They knew it, before he did. They knew him before he knew them, for they had been friends o

ts contemptible, they were too single-minded, too full of themselves and their passions, even when they were the most enamored of truth. Italian idealism cannot forget itself: it is not interested in the impersonal dreams of the North; it leads everything back to itself, its desires, its pride of race, and transfigures them. Consciously or unconsciously, it is always toiling for the terza Roma. It must be said that for many centuries it has not taken much trouble to realize it. These spl

ry, the things half said, the amphibious thoughts, the subtle dawdling of the mind between all possibilities, without deciding on any one, the fine phrases, the sweetness of it all. They were all self-taught men who had pieced themselves together with everything they could lay their hands on, but had had neither means nor leisure to put

icism harsh to the point of insult, even with people whom they had no desire to hurt. Having reached the sphere of publication before they had come to maturity, they passed with equal intolerance from one infatuation to another. Passionately sincere, giving themselves unreservedly, without stint or thought of economy, they were consumed by their excessive intellectuality, their precocious and blindly obstinate endeavors. It is not well for youn

etual state of conflict in which his new friends lived was very tiring. Christophe began by thinking it his duty to go to Grazia's house to defend them. Sometimes he went there to forget them. No doubt he was like them, too much like them. They were now what he had been twenty years ago. And life never goes back. At heart Christophe well knew that, for his own part, he had forev

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with her charming franknes

r. I don't go out of my way for society; but I admit that I like it, just as I like going sometimes to an indifferent

u endure th

ing one expects nothing of them; I know perfectly well that if I had need of them, I should not find many to help me...). And yet they are fond of me, and when I find a little real affection, I hold

thing," he sa

was so sure of her affection that, after long h

you ev

t is

mi

wen

nd I y

sm

are mine,

ow what

but she took his hands a

r," she sai

eak. She saw th

ou would say that to me. We must speak out

said sadly.

then because you would not understand what I felt for you. Our whole lives might have been changed. Now I think it was better as it has been;

because you

ove you jus

e first time yo

e thought and looked about me. Happy marriages are very rare. It is a little against nature. You cannot bind together the wills of two people wi

a fine thing-the union of two sacr

ams. In reality you would

children?... Don't say that! I should love them so!

woman, not very intelligent, not very beautiful, who

ng to make fun of it. A good woman is

Shall I fi

hurting me. How can

have I

t all. You can't if you can thin

ve you that I should be happy to do

that is

o that. I tell you, it w

I shall be happy! Speak the truth: do you

seen too much. I have become philosophical.... But, frankly-(You want me to? You won't be angry?)-well. I know my own weakness. I should, perhaps, be foolish enough, after a f

, he

ill. You don't like me. There are th

look so hang-dog. You are t

derstand. Why co

ifferent-both too dec

why I l

why we should find o

reproach myself with embarrassing you with my smaller personality, an

to Christ

ather be utterly miserable than have you

say all that, but I may be flattering myself.... Perhaps

the b

.... You see, there is no solving the difficulty either way. Let us

ad and smiled a

well. But at bottom you

with a little melancholy

ars one out unless one is very strong, like you.... Oh! you, there

d face, my wrinkl

ving out a fresh stream of life. I am worn out. When I think of my old eagerness, then-alas! As one said, 'Those were great days. I was very unh

n, well, t

not worth t

the old days,

had...? I s

ood. You a

hat in the old da

ing it worse

say a word but it hurts yo

ell me.... Tell

ethi

thing

laug

't l

must not

I be anyt

ason to be sad,

hy

ave a friend w

ru

u so, won't y

me,

won't be insatiable? You will be

mus

u love me? Really, I think I lo

it were

an outburst of lover's

. He i

l me

d kissed him. It was so unexpected! His heart leaped within him. He tried to take her in his arms. But s

*

s the advantage of frankness in friendship. No more hidden meanings, no more illusions, no more fears. Each knew the other's innermost thoughts. Now when Christophe was with Grazia in the company of strangers who irritated him and

ut her the silent charm of her harmonious nature. Any exaggeration of voice or gesture, even if it were involuntary, wounded her, as a thing that was not simple and beautiful. In this way she influenced Chri

y little, preferring to browse indolently over the same old books, but now she began to be curious about new ideas, and soon came to feel their attraction. The wealth of the world of modern ideas, which was not unknown to her though she had never cared to advent

So Christophe had already been enriched by Olivier's mind. But this new mystic marriage was far more fruitful; for Grazia brought him for her dowry the rarest treasure, that Olivier had never possessed-joy. The

th the dark red arches of the ruined aqueducts flowered the white almond-trees. In the awakening Campagna waved the seas of grass and the triumphant flames of the poppies. Down the lawns of the vi

deep vault, frames the blue, the pleasant chains of the Alban hills, softly swelling like a beating heart. Along the path through the leaves they could see the tombs of Roman husbands and wives, lying sadly there, with hands clasped in fidelity. They used to sit down at the end of the avenue, under an arbor of roses against a white sarcophagus. Behind them the desert. Profound peace. The murmuring of a slow-dropping fountain, trickling languidly, so languidly that it seemed on the point of dying. They would talk in whispers. Grazia's eyes would trustfully gaze into the eyes of her friend. Christophe would tell her of his life, his struggles, his past sorrows; and there

ladiators. Hardly more than a few portrait-statues found favor in his sight, and the originals had absolutely no interest for him. He was no more kindly towards the pale, grimacing Florentines and their sick Madonnas and pre-Raphaelite Venuses, anaemic, consumptive, affected, and tormented. And the bestial stupidity of the red, sweating bullies and athletes let loose upon the world by the example of the Sistine Chapel made him think of cast-iron. Only for Michael Angelo did he have a secret f

conquer, but also conquer themselves, and in victory impose upon themselves the straitest discipline, and, on the field of battle, have the art exactly to choose their rightful booty from among the spoils of the enemy overthrown-the Olympian portraits and the stanze of Raphael filled Christophe's heart with music richer than Wagner's, the music of serene lives, noble architecture, harmonious grouping, the music which shines forth from the perfect

stophe w

d Goethe understood. Must a stranger once more reveal to them its work?... And what man shall teach it to our musicians? Music has not yet had its Raphael. Mozart is only a child, a little German bourgeois, with feverish hands and sentimental soul, who uses too many words, too

iscreet exclamations, his parade of himself, his lack of moderation, seemed to him both pitiable and shameful.

tate of semi-intoxication. Nature, like himself, was in the early spring-time, when the languor of the awakening is mixed with a voluptuous dizziness. Nature and he lay dreaming, locked in each other's arms,

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ut troubling to think it over, he decided to refuse, but thought it better to mention it to Grazia. I

lain the whole matter to her, and advised him to accept. He was

eep. How often had she not felt its maleficent charm, and had no power to resist it! All her friends were more or less tainted by this malaria of the soul. Stronger men than they had in old days fallen victim to it: it had rusted away the brass of the Roman she-wolf. Rome breathes forth death: it is too full of graves. It is healthier to stay there for a little time than to live there. Too easily does one slip out of one's own time, a dangerous taste for the still young forces that have a vast duty to accomplish. Grazia saw clearly that the society about her had not a life-giving air for an artist. And although she had more friendship for Christophe

hristophe had met more than one young musician in whom there lived again the soul of the melodious masters of the race and the instinct of beauty which filled the wise and simple art of the past. But who gave a thought to them? They could neither get their work played nor published. No interest was taken in the symphony. There were no ears for music except it were presented with a painted face!... So discouraged, they sang for themselves, and soon sang no more. What was the good of it? Sleep....-Christophe would have asked nothing better than to help them. While they admitted that he

fatal to an artist who has not the strength to break out of it. An artist must live the life of his own time, even if it be clamorous and impure: he must forever be giving and receiving, and giving, and giving, and again receiving.-Italy, at the time of Christo

o doubt because she valued him more highly, but also because it suited her. She delegated her energy upon him, and so maintained her tranquillity.-He had not the heart to be an

ore for her. For he did not altogether like her having so little egoism in her friendship as to

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r. As an old trouvère says: "The lover does not le