Stamped below. 
 
ROMAIN HOLLAND 
 
 This author’s great musical novel 
 appears in France in ten volumes 
 and in its English translation in 
 three volumes as follows: 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 DAWN • MORNING • YOUTH • REVOLT 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 IN PARIS 
 
 THE MARKET-PLACE 
 ANTOINETTE THE HOUSE 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: 
 
 JOURNEY’S END 
 
 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 
 THE BURNING BUSH THE NEW DAWN 
 Each^ translated by Gilbert Cannan, $1.75 net. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
/EAN - CHEISTOPHE 
 
 V 
 
 DAWN - MORNING 
 YOUTH REVOLT 
 
 BY 
 
 ROMAIN ROLLAND 
 
 Translated by 
 
 gilbert cannan 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
1 lo 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 JeaN’Cbristophe^^ is the history of the d&velopment of a 
 Tiusician of genius. | The present volume comprises the first four 
 volumes of the original French, viz.: UAulef' '' Le Matin/' 
 
 ^ U Adolescent/' and ''La Revolte/' which are designated in 
 the translation as Part I— The Dawn; Part II— Morning; 
 Part III— Youth; Part IV— Revolt. [Parts I and II carry 
 Jean-Christophe from the moment of his iirth to the day when, 
 if ter his first encounter with Woman, at the age of fifteen, 
 he falls hack upon a Puritan creed.\Parts III and IV describe 
 the succeeding five years of his lif^ when, at the age of twenty, 
 his sincerity, integrity, and unswerving honesty have made ex- 
 istence impossible for him in the little Rhine towtc of his birth. 
 An act of open revolt against German militarism compels him 
 to cross the frontier and take refuge in Paris, and the remainder 
 of this vast book is devoted to the adventures of J ean-Christophe 
 in France. 
 
 His creator has said that he has always conceived and thought 
 of the life of his hero and of the bgok as a river. So far ds the 
 book has a plan, that is its plan, (it has no literary artifice, no 
 "plot." The words of it hang together in defiance of syntax, 
 just as the thoughts of it follow one on the other in defiance of 
 every system of philosophy. Every phase of the book is pregnant 
 with the next phase. It is as direct and simple as life itself, 
 for life is simple when the truth of it is known, a^ it was known 
 instinctively by Jean-Christophe.) The river is explored as 
 though it were absolutely uncharted. {Nothing that has evpr 
 been said or thought of life is accepted without being brought 
 to the test of J ean-Christophe's own life.) What is not true for 
 him does not exist ;)and, as there are very few of the processes 
 pf human growth or decay which are not analyzed, there is 
 disclosed to the reader the most comprehensive survey of modern 
 life which has appeared in literature in this century. 
 
 To leave M. Rolland's simile of the river, and to take another, 
 
 iii 
 
 \ ' 
 
 i 
 
IV 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 the boolc has seemed to me liJce a mighty bridge leading from the 
 world of ideas of the nineteenth century to the world of ideas of 
 the twentieth. The whole thought of the nineteenth century 
 seems to be gathered together to make the starting-point for 
 J ean-Christophe' s leap into the future. All that was most 
 religious in that thought seems to be concentrated in Jean- 
 Christophe, and when the history of the booh is traced, it appears 
 that M, Rolland has it by direct inheritance, 
 
 M, Rolland was born in 1866 at Clamecy, in the center of 
 France, of a French family of pure descent, and educated in 
 
 Paris and Rome, *^At Rome, in 1890, he met Malwida von 
 
 Meysenburg, a German lady who had taken refuge in England 
 after the Revolution of 181^8, and there knew Kossuth, Mazzini, 
 Herzen, Ledin, Rollin, and Louis Blanc, Later, in Italy, she 
 counted among her friends Wagner, Liszt, Lenbach, Nietzsche, 
 Garibaldi, and Ibsen, She died in 1903, Rolland came to her i 
 impregnated with Tolstoyan ideas, and with her wide knowledge j 
 of men and movements she helped him to discover his own ideas, ! 
 In her Memoir es d'une Idealiste'" she wrote of him: '' In \ 
 this young Frenchman I discovered the same idealism, the same j 
 lofty aspiration, the same profound grasp of every great in- 
 tellectual manifestation that I had already found in the greatest j 
 men of other nationalities,'^ j 
 
 The germ of '' J ean-Christophe " was conceived during this \ 
 period — the '' Wander jahre " — of M, Rolland' s life. On his I 
 
 return to Paris he became associated with a movement towards < 
 
 the renascence of the theatw as a social machine, and wrote 
 
 several plays. He has since been a musical critic and a lecturer 
 on music and art at the Sorbonne, He has written Lives of 
 Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and Hugo Wolf, Always his en- 
 deavor has been the pursuit of the heroic. To him the great 
 men are the men of absolute truth, J ean-Christophe must have 
 the truth and tell the truth, at all costs, in despite of circum- 
 stance, in despite of himself, in despite even of life. It is his^ 
 law. It is M, Rolland's law, [The struggle all through the 
 book is between the pure life of J ean-Christophe and the com- 
 mon acceptance of the second-rate and the second-hand by the 
 substitution of civic or social morality, which is only a com- 
 promise, for individual morality, which demands that every 
 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 V 
 
 ma7i should he delivered up to the unswerving judgment of his 
 iwn soul. Everywhere J ean-Christophe is hurled against com^ 
 oromise and untruth, individual and national,) He discovers 
 the German lie very quichly; the French lie grimaces at him 
 IS soon as he sets foot in Paris, 
 
 The booh itself breaks down the frontier between France and 
 Germany, If one frontier is broken, all are broken. The truth 
 ibout anything is universal truth, and the experiences of Jean- 
 Christophe, the adventures of his soul ( there are no other 
 idventures), are in a greater or less degree those of every human 
 being who passes through this life from theHyranny of the past 
 to the service of the future. 
 
 The book contains a host of characters who become as friends, 
 or, at least, as interesting neighbors, to the reader, -^J ean- 
 Christophe gathers people in his progress, and as they are all 
 brought to the test of his genius, they appear clearly for what 
 they are. Even the most unpleasant of them is human, and 
 demands sympathy,}^ 
 
 The recognition of J ean-Christophe as a book which marks 
 % stage in progress was instantaneous in France, It is hardly 
 possible yet to judge it. It is impossible to deny its vitality. 
 It exists, Christophe is as real as the gentlemen whose por- 
 traits are posted outside the Queen s Hall, and much more real 
 than many of them. The book clears the air. An open mind 
 coming to it cannot fail to be refreshed and strengthened by its 
 Voyage down the river of a man^s life, and if the book is followed 
 to its end, the voyager will discover with Christophe that there 
 js joy beneath sorrow, joy through* sorrow Durch Leiden 
 freude 
 
 I Those are the last words of M, Rolland's life of Beethoven; 
 \hey are words of Beethoven himself: La devise de tout dme 
 heroique,'^ 
 
 In his preface, To the Friends of Christophe/' which pre- 
 pedes the seventh volume, Dans la Maison," M, Rolland writes: 
 i ''I was isolated: like so many others in France I was stifling 
 In a world morally inimical to me: I wanted air: I wanted to re- 
 lict against an unhealthy civilization, against ideas corrupted by a 
 Jiam elite: I wanted to say to them: ^You lie! You do not 
 Represent France!' To dv so I needed a hero with a pure heart 
 
vi 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 and unclouded vision, whose soul would he stainless enough for 
 him to have the right to speak; one whose voice would he loud 
 enough for him to gain a hearing. I have patiently begotten 
 this hero. The work was in conception for many years before 
 I set myself to write a word of it. Christophe only set out on 
 his journey when 1 had been able to see the end of it for him.'' 
 
 If M. Holland's act of faith in writing J ean-Christophe were 
 only concerned with France, if the polemic of it were not 
 directed against a universal evil, there would be no reason for 
 translation. But, like Zarathustra, it is a book for all and none. 
 M. Rolland has written tvhat he believes to be the truth, and as 
 Dr. Johnson observed: ''Every man has a right to utter what he 
 thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him 
 down for it. . . 
 
 By its truth and its absolute integrity — since Tolstoy I know 
 of no writing so crystal clear — " J ean-Christophe " is the first 
 great book of the twentieth century, (in a sense it begins the 
 twentieth century. It bridges transition, and shows us where 
 we stand. It reveals the past and the present, and leaves the 
 future open to us. . . . j 
 
 GILBERT CA'NEAN. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE DAWN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I . 3 
 
 II . 26 
 
 III 68 
 
 MORNING 
 
 I. The Death of Jean Michel ..... 107 
 
 II. Otto 141 
 
 III. Minna 166 
 
 YOUTH 
 
 I. The House of Eulee 215 
 
 II. Sabine 258 
 
 III. Ada . 303 
 
 REVOLT 
 
 I. Shifting Sands 357 
 
 II. Engulfed 432 
 
 TIL Deliverance 509 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 Dianzi, nelFalba che precede al giorno, 
 Quando ranima tua dentro dormia. . . . 
 
 Purgatorio, ix. 
 
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 b - 
 
 I ,C 4 
 
 Come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi 
 
 A diradar cominciansi, la spera 
 
 Del sol debilemente entra per essi. . . . 
 
 Purgatorio, xvii. 
 
 From behind the house rises the murmuring of the river. 
 All day long the rain has been beating against the window- 
 panes; a stream of water trickles down the window at the 
 corner where it is broken. The yellowish light of the day dies 
 down. The room is dim and dull. 
 
 The new-born child stirs in his cradle. Although the old 
 man left his sabots at the door when he entered, his footsteps 
 make the floor creak. The child begins to whine. The mother 
 ‘ leans out of her bed to comfort it; and the grandfather gropes 
 to light the lamp, so that the child shall not be frightened by 
 the night when he awakes. The flame of the lamp lights up 
 old Jean MicheFs red face, with its rough white beard and 
 morose expression and quick eyes. He goes near the cradle. 
 His cloak smells wet, and as he walks he drags his large blue 
 list slippers. Louisa signs to him not to go too near. She 
 is fair, almost white ; her features are drawn ; her gentle, stupid 
 face is marked with red in patches; her lips are pale and 
 i swollen, and they are parted in a timid smile; her eyes devour 
 the child — and her eyes are blue and vague; the pupils are 
 small, but there , is an infinite tenderness in them. 
 
 The child wakes and cries, and his eyes are troubled. Oh! 
 how terrible! The darkness, the sudden flash of the lamp, 
 ? the hallucinations of a mind as yet hardly detached from chaos, 
 the stifling, roaring night in which it is enveloped, the illimita- 
 ble gloom from which, like blinding shafts of light, there 
 emerge acute sensations, sorrows, phantoms — those enormous 
 
4 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 faces leaning over him, those eyes that pierce through him, 
 penetrating, are beyond his comprehension ! ... He has not 
 the strength to cry out; terror holds him motionless, with eyes 
 and mouth wide open and he rattles in his throat. His large 
 head, that seems to have swollen up, is wrinkled with the 
 grotesque and lamentable grimaces that he makes; the skin of 
 his face and hands is brown and purple, and spotted with 
 yellow. . . . 
 
 Dear God ! said the old man with conviction : How ugly 
 he is ! ” 
 
 He put the lamp down on the table, 
 
 Louisa pouted like a scolded child. Jean Michel looked at 
 her out of the corner of his eye and laughed. 
 
 ^^You don’t want me to say that he is beautiful? You 
 would not believe it. Come, it is not your fault. They are 
 all like that.” 
 
 The child came out of the stupor and immobility into which 
 he had been thrown by the light of the lamp and the eyes of 
 the old man. He began to cry. Perhaps he instinctively felt 
 in his mother’s eyes a caress which made it possible for him 
 to complain. She held out her arms for him and said : 
 
 Give him to me.” 
 
 The old man began, as usual, ^toairjyg^ 
 
 . ^^You ought not to give wayTo”"^ildren when they cry. 
 1^ You must just let them cry.” 
 
 But he came and took the child and grumbled: 
 never saw one quite so ugly.” 
 
 Louisa took the child feverishly and pressed it to her bosom. 
 She looked at it with a bashful and delighted smile. 
 
 ^^Oh, my poor child!” she said shamefacedly. ^^How ugly 
 you are — ^how ugly ! and how I love you ! ” 
 
 Jean Michel went back to the fireside. He began to poke 
 the fire in protest, but a smile gave the lie to the moroseness 
 and solemnity of his expression. 
 
 Good girl ! ” he said. Don’t worry about it. He has 
 plenty of time to alter. And even so, what does it matter? 
 Only one thing is asked of him: that he should grow into an 
 ^ honest man.” 
 
 The child was comforted by contact with his mother’s warm 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 5 
 
 body. He could be heard sucking her milk and gurgling and 
 snorting. Jean Michel turned in his chair, and said once more, 
 with some emphasis: 
 
 There^s nothing finer than an honest man.^^ 
 
 He was silent for a moment, pondering whether it would 
 not be proper to elaborate this thought; but he found nothing 
 more to say, and after a silence he said irritably: 
 
 Why isn’t your husband here ? ” 
 
 I think he is at the theater,” said Louisa timidly. There 
 is a rehearsal.” 
 
 The theater is closed. I passed it just now. One of his 
 lies.” 
 
 ^^No. Don’t be always blaming him. I must have mis- 
 understood. He must have been kept for one of his lessons.” 
 
 He ought to have come back,” said the old man, not satis- 
 fied. He stopped for a moment, and then asked, in a rather 
 lower voice and with some shame : 
 
 Has he been . . . again ? ” 
 
 No, father — no, father,” said Louisa hurriedly. 
 
 The old man looked at her; she avoided his eyes. 
 
 It’s not true. You’re lying.” 
 
 She wept in silence. 
 
 Dear God ! ” said the old man, kicking at the fire with 
 his foot. The poker fell with a clatter. The mother and the 
 child trembled. 
 
 Father, please — please!” said Louisa. ^^You will make 
 him cry.” 
 
 The child hesitated for a second or two whether to cry or 
 to go on with his meal; but not being able to do both at once, 
 he went on with the meal. 
 
 Jean Michel continued in a lower tone, though with outbursts 
 of anger: 
 
 What have I done to the good God to have this drunkard 
 for my son? What is the use of my having lived as I have 
 lived, and of having denied myself everything all my life! 
 But you — you — can’t you do anything to stop it? Heavens! 
 That’s what you ought to do. . . . You should keep him at 
 home! . . .” 
 
 Louisa wept still more. 
 
6 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 Don’t scold me! . . . I am unhappy enough as it is! I 
 have done everything I could. If you knew how terrified I 
 am when I am alone! Always I seem to hear his step on the 
 stairs. Then I wait for the door to open, or I ask myself: 
 ^ 0 God ! what will he look like ? ’ . . .It makes me ill to 
 think of it ! ” 
 
 She was shaken by her sobs. The old man grew anxious. 
 He went to her and laid the disheveled bedclothes about 
 her trembling shoulders and caressed her head with his 
 hands. 
 
 Come, come, don’t be afraid. I am here.” 
 
 She calmed herself for the child’s sake, and tried to smile, 
 was wrong to tell you that.” 
 
 The old man shook his head as he looked at her. 
 
 ^^My poor child, it was not much of a present that I gave 
 you.” 
 
 It’s my own fault,” she said. He ought not to have 
 married me. He is sorry for what he did.” 
 
 What, do you mean that he regrets? ...” 
 
 You know. You were angry yourself because I became 
 his wife.” 
 
 We won’t talk about that. It is true I was vexed. A 
 young man like that — I can say so without hurting you — a 
 young man whom I had carefully brought up, a distinguished 
 musician, a real artist — might have looked higher than you, 
 who had nothing and were of a lower class, and not even of 
 the same trade. For more than a hundred years no Krafft has 
 ever married a woman who was not a musician! But, you 
 know, I bear you no grudge, and am fond of you, and have been 
 ever since I learned to know you. Besides, there’s no going 
 back on a choice once it’s made; there’s nothing left but to do 
 one’s duty honestly.” 
 
 He went and sat down again, thought for a little, and then 
 said, with the solemnity in which he invested all his aphorisms : 
 ' The first thing in life is to do one’s duty.” 
 i He waited for contradiction, and spat on the fire. Then, 
 as neither mother nor child raised any objection, he was for going 
 on, but relapsed into silence. 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 7 
 
 They said no more. Both Jean Michel, sitting by the fire- 
 side, and Louisa, in her bed, dreamed sadly. • The old man, 
 in spite of what he had said, had bitter thoughts about his son’s 
 marriage, and Louisa was thinking of it also,, and blaming 
 herself, although she had nothing wherewith to reproach herself. 
 
 She had been a servant when, to everybody’s surprise, and 
 her own especially, she married Melchior Krafft, Jean Michel’s 
 son. The Krafits were without fortune, but were considerable 
 people in the little Ehine town in which the old man had 
 settled down more than fifty years before. Both father and 
 son were musicians, and known to all the musicians of the 
 country from Cologne to Mannheim. Melchior played the violin 
 at the Hof-Theater, and Jean Michel had formerly been director 
 of the grand-ducal concerts. The old man had been profoundly 
 humiliated by his son’s marriage, for he had built great hopes 
 upon Melchior; he had wished to make him the distinguished 
 man which he had failed to become himself. This mad freak 
 destroyed all his ambitions. He had stormed at first, and show- 
 ered curses upon Melchior and Louisa. But, being a good- 
 hearted creature, he forgave his daughter-in-law when he learned 
 to know her better; and he even came by a paternal affection 
 for her, which showed itself for the most part in snubs. 
 
 No one ever understood what it was that drove Melchior to 
 such a marriage — least of all Melchior. It was certainly not 
 Louisa’s beauty. She had no seductive quality: she was small, 
 rather pale, and delicate, and she was a striking contrast to 
 Melchior and Jean Michel, who were both big and broad, red- 
 faced giants, heavy-handed, hearty eaters and drinkers, laugh- 
 ter-loving and noisy. She seemed to be crushed by them; no 
 one noticed her, and she seemed to wish to escape even what 
 little notice she attracted. If Melchior had been a kind-hearted 
 man, it would have been credible that he should prefer Louisa’s 
 simple goodness to every other advantage; but -a vainer man 
 never was. It seemed incredible that a young man of his 
 kidney, fairly good-looking, and quite conscious of it, very 
 foolish, but not without talent, and in a position to look for 
 some well-dowered match, and capable even — who knows? — of 
 turning the head of one of his pupils among the people of the 
 town, should suddenly have chosen a girl of the people — poor, 
 
8 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 uneducated, without beauty, a girl who could in no way advance 
 his career. 
 
 But Melchior was one of those men who always do the oppo- 
 site of what is expected of them and of what they expect of 
 themselves. It is not that they are not warned — a m an w ho 
 is warned is worth two men, says the proverb. They profess 
 never to be the dupe of anything; and that they steer their 
 ship with unerring hand towards a definite point. But they 
 reckon without themselves, for they do not know themselves. 
 In one of those moments of forgetfulness which are habitual 
 with them they let go the tiller, and, as is natural when things 
 are left to themselves, they take a naughty pleasure in rounding 
 on their masters. The ship which is released from its course 
 at once strikes a rock, and Melchior, bent upon intrigue, married 
 a cook. And yet he was neither drunk nor in a stupor on 
 the day when he bound himself to her for life, and he was 
 not under any passionate impulse; far from it. But perhaps 
 there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even 
 than the senses — mysterious forces which take hold of us in 
 the moments when the others are asleep ; and perhaps it was 
 such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale 
 eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when 
 he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat 
 down, beside her in the reeds — without knowing why — and had 
 given her his hand. 
 
 Hardly was he married than he was appalled by what he 
 had done, and he did not hide what he felt from poor Louisa, 
 who humbly asked his pardon. He was not a bad fellow, and 
 he willingly granted her that; but immediately remorse would 
 seize him again when he was with his friends or in the houses 
 of his rich pupils, who were disdainful in their treatment of 
 him, and no longer trembled at the touch of his hand when he 
 Corrected the position of their fingers on the keyboard. Then 
 me would return gloomy of countenance, and Louisa, with a 
 f catch at her heart, would read in it with the first glance the 
 / customary reproach ; or he would stay out late at one inn or 
 another, there to seek self-respect or kindliness from others. 
 On such evenings he would return shouting with laughter, and 
 this was more doleful for Louisa than the hidden reproach 
 
THE DAWN* 
 
 9 
 
 and gloomy rancor that prevailed on other days. She felt 
 that she was to a certain extent responsible for the fits of mad- 
 ness in which the small remnant of her husband’s sense would 
 disappear, together with the household money. Melchior sank 
 lower and lower. At an age when he should have been engaged 
 in unceasing toil to develop his mediocre talent, he just let 
 things slide, and others took his place. 
 
 But what did that matter to the unknown force which had 
 thrown him in with the little flaxen-haired servant? He had 
 played his part, and little Jean-Christophe had just set foot 
 on this earth whither his destiny had thrust him. 
 
 Night was fully come. Louisa’s voice roused old Jean Michel 
 from the torpor into which he had sunk by the fireside as he 
 thought of the sorrows of the past and present. 
 
 It must be late, father,” said the young woman affection- 
 ately. You ought to go home ; you have far to go.” 
 
 I am waiting for Melchior,” replied the old man. 
 
 Please, no. I would rather you did not stay.” 
 
 ^^Why?” 
 
 The old man raised his head and looked fiercely at her. 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 He resumed. 
 
 ^^You are afraid. You do not want me to meet him?” 
 
 Yes, yes; it would only make things worse. You would 
 make each other angry, and I don’t want that. Please, please 
 
 go!” 
 
 The old man sighed, rose, and said: 
 
 Well . . . I’ll go.” 
 
 I He went to her and brushed her forehead with his stiff beard. 
 He asked if she wanted anything, put out the lamp, and went 
 j stumbling against the chairs in the darkness of the room. But 
 he had no sooner reached the staircase than he thought of his 
 son returning drunk, and he stopped at each step, imagining 
 a thousand dangers that might arise if Melchior were allowed 
 to return alone. . . . 
 
 In the bed by his mother’s side the child was stirring again. 
 An unknown sorrow had arisen from the depths of his being, 
 e stiff^ed himself against her. He twisted his body, clenched 
 
10 
 
 JEAN'-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 his fists, and knitted his brows. His suffering increased steadily, 
 quietly, certain of its strength. He knew not what it was, 
 nor whence it came. It appeared immense, — infinite, and 
 he began to cry lamentably. His mother caressed him. with 
 her gentle hands. Already his suffering was less acute.. But 
 he went on weeping, for he felt it still near, still inside himself. 
 A man who suffers can lessen his anguish by knowing whence 
 it comes. By thought he can locate it in a certain portion of 
 ^ his body which can be cured, or, if necessary, torn away. He 
 ^ fixes the bounds of it, and separates it from himself. A child 
 \| has no such illusive resource. His first encounter with suffering 
 is more tragic and more true. Like his own being, it seems 
 infinite. He feels that it is seated in his bosom, housed in his 
 heart, and is mistress of his flesh. And it is so. It will not 
 leave his body until it has eaten it away. 
 
 > r His mother hugs him to her, murmuring: It is done — it is 
 done! Don’t cry, my little Jesus, my little goldfish. . . .” 
 But his intermittent outcry continues. It is as though this 
 wretched, unformed, and unconscious mass had a presentiment 
 of a whole life of sorrow awaiting him, and nothing can appease 
 him. . . . 
 
 The bells of St. Martin rang out in the night. Their voices 
 are solemn and slow. In the damp air they come like footsteps 
 on moss. The child became silent in the middle of a sob. The i 
 marvelous music, like a flood of milk, surged sweetly through j 
 him. The night was lit up; the air was moi^t and tender. ■ 
 His sorrow disappeared, his heart began to laugn and he slid ' 
 into his dreams with a sigh of abandonment. ^ 
 
 The three bells went on softly ringing in the morrow’s festi- 
 val. Louisa also dreamed, as she listened to them, of her owi/i 
 past misery and of what would become in the future of tliA 
 dear little child sleeping by her side. She had been for houi’sl 
 lying in her bed, weary and suffering. Her hands and her t 
 body were burning; the heavy eiderdown crushed her; she felt \ 
 crushed and oppressed by the darkness; but she dared not move. 
 She looked at the child, and the night did not prevent her read- 
 ing his feature 3, that looked so old. Sleep overcame her; 
 fevered images passed through her brain. She thought sht 
 heard Melchior open the door, and her heart leaped. Occasion 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 11 
 
 ally the murmuring of the stream rose more loudly through 
 the silence, like the roaring of some beast. The window once 
 or twice gave a sound under the beating of the rain. The 
 bells rang out more slowly, and then died down, and Louisa 
 slept by the side of her child. 
 
 All this time Jean Michel was waiting outside the house, 
 dripping with rain, his beard wet with the mist. He was 
 waiting for the return of his wretched son : for his mind, never 
 ceasing, had insisted on telling him all sorts of tragedies brought 
 about by drunkenness; and although he did not believe them, 
 he could not have slept a wink if he had gone away without 
 having seen his son return. The sound of the bells made him 
 melancholy, for he remembered all his shattered hopes. He 
 thought of what he was doing at such an hour in the street, 
 and for very shame he wept. 
 
 The vast tide of the days moves slowly. Day and night 
 come up and go down with unfailing regularity, like the ebb 
 and flow of an inflnite ocean. Weeks and months go by, and 
 then begin again, and the succession of days is like one 
 day. 
 
 The day is immense, inscrutable, marking the even beat of 
 light and darkness, and the beat of the life of the torpid crea- 
 ture dreaming in the depths of his cradle — his imperious needs, 
 sorrowful or glad — so regular that the night and the day which 
 bring them seem by them to be brought about. 
 
 The pendulum of life moves heavily, cud in its slow beat the 
 whole creature seems to be absorbed. The rest is no more 
 than dreams, snatches of dreams, formless and swarming, and 
 dust of atoms dancing aimlessly, a dizzy whirl passing, and 
 bringing laughter or horror. Outcry, moving shadows, grin- 
 ning shapes, sorrows, terrors, laughter, dreams, dreams. . . . 
 All is a dream, both day and night. . . . And in such chaos the 
 light of friendly eyes that smile upon him, the flood of joy 
 that surges through his body from his mother’s body, from her 
 breasts filled with milk— the force that is in him, the immense, 
 unconscious force gathering in him, the turbulent ocean roaring 
 in the narrow prison of the child’s body. For eyes that could 
 see into it there would be revealed whole worlds half buried 
 
12 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 
 in the darkness, nebulae taking shape, a universe in the making. 
 His being is limitless. He is all that there is. . . . 
 
 Months pass. ... Islands of memory begin to rise above 
 the river of his life. At first they are little uncharted islands, 
 rocks just peeping above the surface of the waters. Eound 
 about them and behind in the twilight of the dawn stretches 
 the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands, touched 
 to gold by the sun. ^ 
 
 So from the abyss of the soul there emerge shapes definite, 
 and scenes of a strange clarity. In the boundless dAy which 
 dawns once more, ever the same, with its great monotonous 
 beat, there begins to show forth the round of days, hand in 
 hand, and some of their forms are smiling, others sad. But ever 
 the links of the chain are broken, and memories are linked to- 
 gether above weeks and months. . . . 
 
 The Eiver ... the Bells ... as long as he can remember — 
 V far back in the abysses of time, at every hour of his life — 
 always their voices, familiar and resonant, have rung out. . . . 
 
 Night^ — ^half asleep — a pale light made white the win- 
 dow. . . . The river murmurs. Through the silence its voiee 
 rises omnipotent; it reigns over all creatures. Sometimes it 
 caresses their sleep, and seems almost itself to die away in the 
 roaring of its torrent. Sometimes it grows angry, and howls 
 like a furious beast about to bite. The clamor ceases. Now 
 there is a murmuring of infinite tenderness, silvery sounds like 
 clear little bells, like the laughter of children, or soft singing 
 voices, or dancing music — a great mother voice that never, never 
 goes to sleep ! It rocks the child, as it has rocked through the 
 ages, from birth to death, the generations that were before 
 him ; it fills all his thoughts, and lives in all his dreams, wraps 
 him round with the cloak of its fluid harmonies, whieh still 
 will be about him when he lies in the little cemetery that sleeps 
 by the water’s edge, washed by the Ehine. . . . 
 
 The bells. . . . It is dawn! They answer each other’s call, 
 sad, melancholy, friendly, gentle. At the sound of their slow 
 voices there rise in him hosts of dreams — dreams of the past, 
 desires, hopes, regrets for creatures who are gone, unknown 
 to the child, although he had his being in them, and they 
 live again in him. Ages of memory ring out ' in that 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 13 
 
 music. So much mourning, so many festivals! from 
 
 the depths of the room it is as though, when they are heard, 
 there passed lovely waves of sound through the soft air, free 
 viinging birds, and the moist soughing of the wind. Through 
 the window smiles a patch of blue sky ; a sunbeam slips through 
 the curtains to the bed. The little world known to the eyes of 
 the child, all that he can see from his bed every morning as 
 he awakes, all that with so much effort he is beginning to 
 recognize and classify, so that he may be master of it— his 
 kingdom is lit up. There is the table where people eat, the 
 cupboard where he hides to play, the tiled floor along which 
 he crawls, and the wall-paper which in its antic shapes holds 
 for him so many humorous or terrifying stories, and the clock 
 which chatters and stammers so many words which he alone 
 can understand. How many things there are in this room ! He 
 does not know them all. Every day he sets out on a voyage of 
 exploration in this universe which is his. Everything is his. 
 Nothing is immaterial; everything has its worth, man or fly. 
 Everything lives — the cat, the fire, the table, the grains of 
 dust which dance in a sunbeam. The room is a country, a 
 day is a lifetime. How is a creature to know himself in the 
 midst of these vast spaces ? The world is so large 1 A creature 
 is lost in it. And the faces, the actions, the movement, the 
 noise, which make round about him an unending turmoil ! . . . 
 
 I He is weary ; his eyes close ; he goes to sleep. That sweet deep 
 sleep that overcomes him suddenly at any time, and wherever 
 I he may be — on his mother’s lap, or under the table, where he 
 i loves to hide! ... It is good. All is good. . . . 
 
 These first days come buzzing up in his mind like a field 
 of corn or a wood stirred by the wind, and cast in shadow by 
 the great fleeting clouds. . . . 
 
 The shadows pass; the sun penetrates the forest. Jean- 
 Christophe begins to find his way through the labyrinth of the 
 day. 
 
 It is morning. His parents are asleep. He is in his little 
 bed, lying on his back. He looks at the rays of light dancing 
 on the ceiling. There is infinite amusement in it. Now he 
 laughs out loud with one cf those jolly children’s laughs which 
 
14 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 stir the hearts of those that hear them. His mother leans 
 out of her bed towards him, and says : “ What is it, then, little 
 mad thing ? ” Then he laughs again, and perhaps he makes 
 an effort to laugh because he has an audience. His mamma 
 looks severe, and lays a finger on her lips to warn him lest 
 he should wake his father : but her weary eyes smile in spite of 
 herself. They whisper together. Then there is a furious growl 
 from his father. Both tremble. His mother hastily turns her 
 back on him, like a naughty little girl : she pretends to be asleep. 
 Jean-Christophe buries himself in his bed, and holds his 
 breath. . . . Dead silence. 
 
 After some time the little face hidden under the clothes comes 
 to the surface again. On the roof the weathercock creaks. 
 The rain-pipe gurgles; the Angelus sounds. When the wind 
 comes from the east, the distant bells of the villages on the 
 other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows foregathered 
 in the ivy-clad wall make a deafening noise, from which three 
 or four voices, always the same, ring out more shrilly than the 
 others, just as in the games of a band of children. A pigeon 
 coos at the top of a chimney. The child abandons himself to 
 the lullaby of these sounds. He hums to himself softly, then 
 a little more loudly, then quite loudly, then very loudly, until 
 once more his father cries out in exasperation: “That little 
 donkey never will be quiet! Wait a little, and I’ll pull your 
 ears I ” Then Jean-Christophe buries himself in the bedclothes 
 again, and does not know whether to laugh or cry. He is terri- 
 fied and humiliated; and at the same time the ideal tof the 
 donkey with which his father has compared him maffes him 
 burst out laughing. From the depths of his bed he imitates 
 its braying. This time he is whipped. He sheds every tear that 
 is in him. What has he done? He wanted so much to laugh 
 and to get up ! And he is forbidden to budge. How do people 
 sleep forever? When will they get up? . . . 
 
 One day he could not contain himself. He heard a cat and 
 a dog and something queer in the street. He slipped out of 
 bed, and, creeping awkwardly with his bare feet on the tiles, 
 he tried to go down the stairs to see what it was ; but the door 
 was shut. To open it, he climbed on to a chair; the whole thing 
 collapsed, and he hurt himself and howled. And once mo :e 
 
THE DAWN" 
 
 15 
 
 at the top of the stairs he was whipped. He is always being, 
 whipped! . . . 
 
 He is in church with his grandfather. He is bored. He is 
 not very comfortable. He is forbidden to stir, and all the 
 people are saying all together words that he does not under- 
 stand. They all look solemn and gloomy. It is not their usual 
 way of looking. He looks at them, half frightened. Old Lena, 
 their neighbor, who is sitting next to him, looks very cross; 
 there are moments when he does not recognize even his grand- 
 father. He is afraid a little. Then he grows used to it, and 
 tries to find relief from boredom by every means at his disposal. 
 He balances on one leg, twists his neck to look at the ceiling, 
 makes faces, pulls his grandfather’s coat, investigates the straws 
 in his chair, tries to make a hole in them with his finger, listens 
 to the singing of birds, and yawns so that he is like to dislocate 
 his jaw. 
 
 Suddenly there is a deluge of sound : the organ is played. A 
 thrill goes down his spine. He turns and stands with his chin 
 resting on the back of his chair, and he looks very wise. He 
 does not understand this noise; he does not know the meaning 
 of it; it is dazzling, bewildering, and he can hear nothing 
 clearly. But it is good. It is as though he were no longer 
 sitting there on an uncomfortable chair in a tiresome old house. 
 He is suspended in mid-air, like a bird; and when the fiood 
 of sound rushes from one end of the church to the other, filling 
 the arches, reverberating from wall to wall, he is carried with 
 it, fiying and skimming hither and thither, with nothing to 
 do but to abandon himself to it. He is free; he is happy. 
 The sun shines. ... He falls asleep. 
 
 His grandfather is displeased with him. He behaves ill at^^ 
 
 He is at home, sitting on the ground, with his feet in his 
 hands. He has just decided that the door-mat is a boat, and 
 the tiled fioor a river. He all but drowned in stepping off 
 the carpet. He is surprised and a little put out that the others 
 pay no attention to the matter as he does when he goes into 
 the room. He seizes his mother by the skirts. You see. 
 
16 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 it is water! You must go across by the bridge.” (The bridge 
 is a series of holes between the red tiles.) His mother crosses 
 (' without even listening to him. He is vexed, as a dramatic 
 i author is vexed when he sees his audience talking during his 
 ' great work. 
 
 Next moment he thinks no more of it. The tiled floor is no 
 longer the sea. He is lying down on it, stretched full-length, 
 with his chin on the tiles, humming music of his own com- 
 position, and gravely sucking his thumb and dribbling. He 
 is lost in contemplation of a crack between the tiles. The 
 lines of the tiles grimace like faces. The imperceptible hole 
 grows larger, and becomes a valley; there are mountains about 
 it. A centipede moves : it is as large as an elephant. Thunder 
 might crash, the child would not hear it. 
 
 No one bothers about him, and he has no need of any one. 
 He can even do without door-mat boats, and caverns in the tiled 
 floor, with their fantastic fauna. His body is enough. What 
 a source of entertainment! He spends hours in looking at his 
 nails and shouting with laughter. They have all different faces, 
 and are like people that he knows. And the rest of his 
 body ! ... He goes on with the inspection of all that he has. 
 How many surprising things! There are so many marvels. 
 j He is absorbed in looking at them. 
 
 '/ But he was very roughly picked up when they caught him 
 at it 
 
 Sometimes he takes advantage of his mother’s back being 
 1 turned, to escape from the house. At first they used to run 
 I after him and bring him back. Then they got used to letting 
 1 him go alone, only so he did not go too far away. The house 
 i is at the end of the town; the country begins almost at once. 
 I As long as he is within sight of the windows he goes without 
 I stopping, very deliberately, and now and then hopping on one 
 ^ I foot. But as soon as he has passed the corner of the road, 
 / and the brushwood hides him from view, he changes abruptly. 
 
 ■ He stops there, with his finger in his mouth, to find out what 
 , story he shall tell himself that day ; for he is full of stories, 
 j True, they are all very much like each other, and every one 
 of them could be told in a few lines. He chooses. Generally 
 
 k 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 17 
 
 ( 
 
 ;he takes up the same story, sometimes from the point where 
 it left off, sometimes from the beginning, with variations. But 
 any trifle — a word heard by chance — is enough to set his mind 
 off on another direction. 
 
 Chance was fruitful of resources. It is impossible to imagine 
 what can be made of a simple piece of wood, a broken bough 
 found alongside a hedge. (You break them off when you do 
 not find them.) It was a magic wand. If it were long and 
 thin, it became a lance, or perhaps a sword; to brandish it 
 aloft was enough to cause armies to spring from the earth. 
 Jean-Christophe was their general, marching in front of them, 
 setting them an example, and leading them to the assault of 
 a hillock. If the branch were flexible, it changed into a whip. 
 Jean-Christophe mounted on horseback and leaped precipices. 
 Sometimes his mount would slip, and the horseman would find 
 himself at the bottom of the ditch, sorrily looking at his dirty 
 hands and barked knees. If the wand were lithe, then Jean- 
 Christophe would make himself the conductor of an orchestra: 
 he would be both conductor and orchestra; he conducted and 
 he sang; and then he would salute the bushes, with their little 
 green heads stirring in the wind. 
 
 He was also a magician. He walked with great strides 
 through the fields, looking at the sky and waving his arms. 
 He commanded the clouds. He wished them to go to the right, 
 but they went to the left. Then he would abuse them, and 
 repeat his command. He would watch them out of the corner 
 of his eye, and his heart would beat as he looked to see if there 
 were not at least a little one which would obey him. But 
 they went on calmly moving to the left. Then he would stamp 
 his foot, and threaten them with his stick, and angrily order 
 them to go to the left; and this time, in truth, they obeyed 
 him. He was happy and proud of his power. He would touch 
 the flowers and bid them change into golden carriages, as he 
 had been told they did in the stories; and, although it never 
 happened, he was quite convinced that it would happen if only 
 he had patience. He would look for a grasshopper to turn into 
 I a hare; he would gently lay his stick on its back, and speak 
 a rune. The insect would escape: he would bar its way. A 
 few moments later he would be lying on his belly near to it, 
 
 0 
 
18 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 looking at it. Then he would have forgotten that he was a 
 magician, and just amuse himself with turning the poor beasi 
 on its back, while he laughed aloud at its contortions. 
 
 It occurred to him also to tie a piece of string to his magic 
 wand, and gravely cast it into the river, and wait for a fish 
 to come and bite. He knew perfectly well that fish do not 
 usually bite at a piece of string without bait or hook; but he 
 thought that for once in a way, and for him, they might maive 
 an exception to their rule; and in his inexhaustible confident 
 he carried it so far as to fish in the street with a whip through 
 the grating of a sewer. He would draw up the whip from time 
 to time excitedly, pretending that the cord of it was more heavy, 
 and that he had caught a treasure, as in a story that his grand- 
 father had told him. ... 
 
 And always in the middle of all these games there used to 
 occur to him moments of strange dreaming and complete for- 
 getfulness. Everything about him would then be blotted out; 
 he would not know what he was doing, and was not even con- 
 scious of himself. These attacks would take him unawares. 
 Sometimes as he walked or went upstairs a void would suddenly 
 open before him. He would seem then to have lost all thought. 
 But when he came back to himself, he was shocked and be- 
 wildered to find himself in the same place on the dark staircase. 
 It was as though he had lived through a whole lifetime — in 
 the space of a few steps. 
 
 His grandfather used often to take him with him on his 
 evening walk. The little boy used to trot by his side and give 
 him his hand. They used to go by the roads, across plowed 
 fields, which smelled strong and good. The grasshoppers 
 chirped. Enormous crows poised along the road used to watch 
 them approach from afar, and then fly away heavily as they 
 came up with them. 
 
 His grandfather would cough. Jean-Christophe knew quite 
 well what that meant. The old man was burning with the 
 desire to tell a story; but he wanted it to appear that the child 
 had asked him for one. Jean-Christophe did not fail him; 
 they understood each other. The old man had a tremendous 
 affection for his grandson, and it was a great joy to find in 
 him a willing audience. He loved to tell of episodes in his 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 19 
 
 own life, or stories of great men, ancient and modem. His 
 voice would then become emphatic and filled with emotion, 
 and would tremble with a childish joy, which he used to try 
 to stifle. He seemed delighted to hear his own voice. Un- 
 happily, words used to fail him when he opened his mouth to 
 speak. He was used to such disappointment, for it always came 
 upon him with his outbursts of eloquence. And as he used to 
 forget it with each new attempt, he never succeeded in resign- 
 ing himself to it. ° 
 
 He used to talk of Eegulus, and Arminius, of the soldiers 
 of Lutzow, of Kmrner, and of Frederic Stabs, who tried to 
 kill the Emperor Napoleon. His face would glow as he told 
 of incredible deeds of heroism. He used to pronounce historic 
 words in such a solemn voice that it was impossible to hear 
 
 them, and he used to try artfully to keep his hearer on tenter- 
 hooks at the thrilling moments. He would stop, pretend to 
 choke, and noisily blow his nose ; and his heart would leap 
 when the child asked, in a voice choking with impatience : “ And 
 
 then, grandfather?” 
 
 There came a day, when Jean-Christophe was a little older, 
 when he perceived his grandfather’s method; and then he wick- 
 edly set himself to assume an air of indifference to the rest 
 of the story, and that hurt the poor old man. But for the 
 moment Jean-Christophe is altogether held by the power of the 
 story-teller. His blood leaped at the dramatic passages. He 
 did not know what it was all about, neither where nor when 
 these deeds were done, or whether his grandfather knew Ar- 
 minius, or whether Eegulus were not— God knows why!— some 
 one whom he had seen at church last Sunday. But his heart 
 and the old man’s heart swelled with joy and pride in the 
 tale of heroic deeds, as though they themselves had done them • 
 for the old man and the child were both children. 
 
 Jean-Christophe was less happy when his grandfather inter- 
 po ated in the pathetic passages one of those abstruse discourses 
 so dear to him. There were moral thoughts generally traceable 
 to some idea, honest enough, but a little trite, such as “ Gentle- 
 ness is better than violence,” or “ Honor is the dearest thin<^ 
 in life,” or “ It is better to be good than to be wicked ” — only 
 they were much more involved. Jean-Christophe’s grandfather 
 
20 
 
 J EAJN -UJlKitSTUriliii 
 
 had no fear of the criticism of his youthful audience, and 
 abandoned himself to his habitual emphatic manner ; he was not 
 afraid of repeating the same phrases, or of not finishing them, 
 or even, if he lost himself in his discourse, of saying anything 
 that came into his head, to stop up the gaps in his thoughts; 
 and he used to punctuate his words, in order to give them 
 greater force, with inappropriate gestures. The boy iised to 
 \ listen with profound respect, and he thought his grandfather 
 ' very eloquent, but a little tiresome. ^ pit 
 
 Both of them loved to return again and again to the fabulous 
 legend of the Corsican conqueror who had taken Europe. Jean- 
 Christophe’s grandfather had known him. He had almost 
 fought against him. But he was a man to admit the greatness 
 of his adversaries: he had said so twenty times. He would 
 have given one of his arms for such a man to have been born 
 on this side of the Rhine. Fate had decreed otherwise; he 
 admired him, and had fought against him— that is, he had 
 been on the point of fighting against him. But when Napoleon 
 had been no farther than ten leagues away, and they had 
 marched out to meet him, a sudden panic had dispersed^ me 
 little band in a forest, and every man had fied, crying. We 
 are betrayed!” In vain, as the old man used to tell, m vain 
 did he endeavor to rally the fugitives; he threw lumself in 
 front of them, threatening them and weeping: he had been 
 swept away in the fiood of them, and on the morrow had found 
 himself at an extraordinary distance from the field of battle— 
 For so he called the place of the rout. But Jean-Christophe 
 used impatiently to bring him back to the exploits of the hero, 
 and he was delighted by his marvelous progress through the 
 world. He saw him followed by innumerable men, givmg 
 vent to great cries of love, and at a wave of his hand hurling 
 themselves in swarms upon fiying enemies— they were always 
 in flight. It was a fairy-tale. The old man added a little to 
 it to "fill out the story; he conquered Spain, and almost con- 
 quered England, which he could not abide. 
 
 Old KrafEt used to intersperse his enthusiastic narratives with 
 indignant apostrophes addressed to his hero. The patriot awoke 
 in him, more perhaps when he told of the Emperor’s defeats 
 than of the Battle of Jena. He would stop to shake his fist 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 21 
 
 at the river, and spit contemptuously, and mouth noble insults 
 — ^he did not stoop to less than that. He would call him 
 
 rascal,^^ wild beast,^^ immdral.’^ And if such words were 
 intended to restore to the boy’s mind a sense of justice, it must 
 be confessed that they failed in their object; for childish logic 
 leaped to this conclusion: ^^If a great man like that had no 
 morality, morality is not a great thing, and what matters most 
 is to be a great man.” But the old man was far from suspecting 
 the thoughts which were running along by his side. 
 
 They would both be silent, pondering, each after his own 
 fashion, these admirable stories — except when the old man used 
 to meet one of his noble patrons taking a walk. Then he would 
 stop, and bow very low, and breathe lavishly the formulae 
 of obsequious politeness. The child used to blush for it with- 
 out knowing why. But his grandfather at heart had a vast 
 respect for established power and persons who had arrived ” ; 
 and possibly his great love for the heroes of whom he told 
 was only because he saw in them persons who had arrived at 
 a point higher than the others. 
 
 When it was very hot, old Krafft used to sit under a tree, 
 and was not long in dozing off. Then Jean-Christophe used 
 to sit near him on a heap of loose stones or a milestone, or 
 some high seat, uncomfortable and peculiar; and he used to 
 wag his little legs, and hum to himself, and dream. Or some- 
 times he used to lie on his back and watch the clouds go by; 
 they looked like oxen, and giants, and hats, and old ladies, 
 and immense landscapes. He used to talk to them in a low 
 voice, or be absorbed in a little cloud which a great one was 
 on the point of devouring. He was afraid of those which 
 were very black, almost blue, and of those which went very 
 fast. It seemed to him that they played an enormous part in ; 
 life, and he was surprised that neither his grandfather nor - 
 his mother paid any attention to them. They were terrible 
 beings if they wished to do harm. Fortunately, they used to 
 go by, kindly enough, a little grotesque, and they did not stop. 
 The boy used in the end to turn giddy with watching them 
 too long, and he used to fidget with his legs and arms, as 
 though he were on the point of falling from the sky. His 
 eyelids then would wink, and sleep would overcome him. Si- 
 
22 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 lence. . . • The leaves murmur gently and tremble in the sun; 
 a faint mist passes through the air; the uncertain flies hover, 
 booming like an organ; the grasshoppers, drunk with the sum- 
 mer, chirp eagerly and hurriedly; all is silent . . . Under the 
 vault of the trees the cry of the green woodpecker has magic 
 sounds. Far away on the plain a peasant’s voice harangues 
 his oxen; the shoes of a horse ring out on the white road. Jean- 
 Christophe’s eyes close. Near him an ant passes along a dead 
 branch across a furrow. He loses consciousness. . . . Ages have 
 passed. He wakes. The ant has not yet crossed the twig. 
 
 Sometimes the old man would sleep too long, and his face 
 would grow rigid, and his long nose would grow longer, and 
 his mouth stand open. Jean-Christophe used then to look at 
 bim uneasily, and in fear of seeing his head change gradually 
 into some fantastic shape. He used to sing loudly, so as to 
 wake him up, or tumble down noisily from his heap of stones. 
 One day it occurred to him to throw a handful of pine-needles 
 in his grandfather’s face, and tell him that they had fallen 
 from the tree. The old man believed him, and that made 
 Jean-Christophe laugh. But, unfortunately, he tried the trick 
 again, and just when he had raised his hand he saw his grand- 
 father’s eyes watching him. It was a terrible affair. The old 
 man was solemn, and allowed no liberty to be taken with the 
 respect due to himself. They were estranged for more than 
 a week. 
 
 The worse the road was, the more beautiful it was to Jean- 
 Christophe. Every stone had a meaning for him ; he knew them 
 all. The shape of a rut seemed to him to be a geographical 
 accident almost of the same kind as the great mass of the 
 Taunus. In his head he had the map of all the ditches and 
 hillocks of the region extending two kilometers round about 
 the house, and when he made any change in the flxed ordering 
 of the furrows, he thought himself no less important than an 
 engineer with a gang of navvies; and when with his heel he 
 crushed the dried top of a clod of earth, and filled up the 
 valley at the foot of it, it seemed to him that his day had 
 not been wasted. 
 
 Sometimes they would meet a peasant in his cart on the 
 highroad, and if the peasant knew J ean-Christophe’s grand- 
 
THE DAWK 
 
 23 
 
 :athei* they would climb up by his side. That was a Paradise 
 m earth. The horse went fast^ and Jean-Christophe laughed 
 r^ith delight, except when they passed other people walking; 
 ;hen he would look serious and indifferent, like a person accus-^ 
 :omed to drive in a carriage, but his heart was filled with pride. 
 Eis grandfather and the man would talk without bothering 
 ibout him. Hidden and crushed by their legs, hardly sitting,, 
 lometimes not sitting at all, he was perfectly happy. He talked 
 iloud, without troubling about any answer to what he said.. 
 Ee watched the horse’s ears moving. What strange creatures, 
 ihose ears were ! They moved in every direction — to right and 
 eft; they hitched forward, and fell to one side, and turned 
 )ackwards in such a ridiculous way that he burst out laughing., 
 Se would pinch his grandfather to make him look at them; 
 )ut liis grandfather was not interested in them. He would 
 ‘epulse Jean-Christophe, and tell him to be quiet. Jean-Chris* 
 ophe would ponder. He thought that when people grow up 
 hey are not surprised by anything, and that when they are 
 itrong they know everything; and he would try to be grown 
 ip himself, and to hide his curiosity, and appear to be in- 
 lifferent. 
 
 1 He was silent then. The rolling of the carriage made him' 
 ilrowsy. The horse’s little bells danced — ding, ding ; dong, ding., 
 Iviusic awoke in the air, and hovered about the silvery bells,, 
 like a swarm of bees. It beat gaily with the rhythm of the 
 jart — an endless source of song, and one song came on another’s 
 leels. To Jean-Christophe they were superb. There was one 
 especially which he thought so beautiful that he tried to draw 
 lis grandfather’s attention to it. He sang it aloud. They 
 ;ook no heed of him. He began it again in a higher key, 
 hen again shrilly, and then old Jean Michel said irritably: 
 ^Be quiet; you are deafening me with your trumpet-call!” 
 That took away his breath. He blushed and was silent and 
 nortified. He crushed with his contempt the two stockish 
 mbeciles who did not understand the sublimity of his song, 
 vhich opened wide the heavens! He thought them very ugly, 
 rith their week-old beards, and they smelled very ill. 
 
 He found consolation in watching the horse’s shadow. That 
 ras an astonishing sight. The beast ran along with thenr 
 
24 
 
 JEAN'-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 lying on its side. In the evening, when they returned, ii 
 covered a part of the field. They came upon a rick, and the 
 shadow^s head would rise up and then return to its place wher 
 they had passed. Its snout was fiattened out like a burst 
 balloon; its ears were large, and pointed like candles. Was 
 it really a shadow or a creature? Jean-Christophe would not 
 have liked to encounter it alone. He would not have run aftei 
 it as he did after his grandfather^s shadow, so as to walk 
 on its head and trample it under foot. The shadows of the 
 trees when the sun was low were also objects of meditation. 
 They made barriers along the road, and looked like phantoms, 
 melancholy and grotesque, saying, Go no farther ! and the 
 creaking axles and the horse’s shoes repeated, No farther ! ” 
 Jean-Christophe’s grandfather and the driver never ceaseq 
 their endless chatter. Sometimes they would raise their voices! 
 especially when they talked of local affairs or things going wrong! 
 The child would cease to dream, and look at them uneasily. II 
 seemed to him that they were angry with each other, and M 
 was afraid that they would come to blows. However, on th^ 
 contrary, they best understood each other in their common dis- 
 likes. For the most part, they were without hatred or the least 
 passion; they talked of small matters loudly, just for the pleas- 
 ure of talking, as is the joy of the people. But Jean*Christophej 
 not understanding their conversation, only heard the loud tone? 
 of their voices and saw their agitated faces, and thought fear^! 
 fully: ^^How wicked he looks!’ Surely they hate each other! 
 How he rolls his eyes, and how wide he opens his mouth ! 
 spat on my nose in his fury. 0 Lord, he will kill my grand- 
 father! . . i 
 
 The carriage stopped. The peasant said: Here you are.’l 
 The two deadly enemies shook hands. Jean-Christophe’s grand- 
 father got down first; the peasant handed him the little boy. 
 The whip flicked the horse, the carriage rolled away, and ther^ 
 they were by the little sunken road near the Ehine. The su| 
 dipped down below the fields. The path wound almost to ty 
 water’s edge. The plentiful soft grass yielded under their feet, 
 crackling. Alder-trees leaned over the river, almost half i| 
 the water. A cloud of gnats danced. A boat passed poiselessly, 
 drawn on by the peaceful current, striding along. The watei 
 
THE DAWN* 
 
 25 
 
 Licked the branches of the willows with a little noise like 
 ps. The light was soft and misty, the air fresh, the river 
 dvery gray. Tlypy reached their home, and the crickets chirped,, 
 nd on the threshold smiled his mother^s dear face. . . . 
 
 Oh, delightful memories, kindly visions, which will hum their 
 lelody in their tuneful flight through life! . . . Journeys in 
 iter life, great towns and moving seas, dream countries and 
 wed faces, are not so exactly graven in the soul as these childish 
 ulks, or ohe corner of the garden seen every day through the 
 indow, through the steam and mist made by the child^s mouth 
 lued to it for want of other occupation. . . . 
 
 Evening now, and the house is shut up. Home . . . the ^ 
 Bfuge from all terrifying things — darkness, night, fear, things 
 nknown. No enemy can pass the threshold. . . . The fire 
 ares. A golden duck turns slowly on the spit; a delicious 
 nell of fat and of crisping flesh scents the room. The joy 
 f eating, incomparable delight, a religious enthusiasm, thrills 
 f joy! The body is too languid with the soft warmth, andj 
 le fatigues 6f the day, and the familiar voices. The act of 
 i'gestion plunges it in ecstasy, and faces, shadows, the lamp- 
 lade, the tongues of flame dancing with a shower of stars 
 
 I the fireplace — all take on a magical appearance of delight. 
 ean-Christophe lays his cheek on his plate, the better to enjoy 
 
 II this happiness. . . . 
 
 He is in his soft bed. How did he come there ? H^ is 
 v^ercome with weariness. The buzzing of the voices in the 
 3om and the visions of the day are intermingled in his mind, 
 [is father takes his violin; the shrill sweet sounds cry out 
 Dmplaining in the night. But the crowning joy is when his 
 lother comes and takes Jean-Christophe’s hands. He is drowsy, 
 nd, leaning over him, in a low voice she sings, as he ai^s, ap 
 Id song with words that have no meaning. His father thinks 
 (^ch music stupid, but Jean-Christophe never wearies of it. 
 
 [e holds his breath, and is between laughing and crying. His 
 eart is intoxicated. He does not know where he is, and he is 
 owing with tenderness. He throws his little arms round 
 lother^s neck, and hugs her with all his strength. She 
 aughing : 
 
 u want to strangle me?’’ 
 
26 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 He hugs her close. How he loves her ! How he loves eve 
 thing! Everybody, everything! All is good, all is beam 
 ful. . . . He sleeps. The cricket on the hee^th cheeps. Hi 
 grandfather’s tales, the great heroes, float by in the happ 
 night. ... To be a hero like them! ... Yes, he will be tha 
 ... he is that. . . . Ah, how good it is to live! 
 
 What an abundance of strength, joy, pride, is in that littl 
 creature ! What superfluous energy ! His body and mind nev6 
 cease to move; they are carried round and round brcathlessh 
 Like a little salamander, he dances day and night in the flame 
 His is an unwearying enthusiasm finding its food in all thing 
 A delicious dream, a bubbling well, a treasure of inexhaustib’ 
 hope, a laugh, a song, unending drunkenness. Life does n< 
 hold him yet; always he escapes it. He swims in the infiuit 
 How happy he is ! He is made to be happy ! There is nothiE 
 A in him that does not believe in happiness, and does not elm 
 k-to it with all his little strength and passion! .... 
 
 Life will soon see to it that he is brought to reason. 
 
 II 
 
 Ij 
 
 Jj alba vinceva I’ora mattutina 
 Che fuggia 'nnanzi, si che di lontano 
 Conobbi il tremolar della marina. . . . ^ 
 
 Purgatorio, i. 
 
 The Kraffts came originally from Antwerp. Old Jean Micb 
 had left the country as a result of a boyish freak, a viole: 
 quar'^el, such as he had often had, for he was devilish pu 
 ^ua: :^s, and it had had an unfortunate ending. He set.L 
 do>^n, almost fifty year's ago, in the little town of the pri 
 cipality, with its red-pointed roofs and shady gardens, ly.^ 
 on the slope of a gentle hill, mirrored in the pale green e/j 
 of Vater Rhein. An excellent musician, he had readily ga^n 
 appreciation in a country of musicians. He had take:| 
 there by marrying, forty years ago, Clara Sartorius daj 
 of the Prince’s Kapellmeister, whose duties he took over. 
 
 wai' a placid German with two passions — cooking and I 
 
THE DAWN* 
 
 Vie had for her husband a veneration only equaled by that 
 hich she had for her father. Jean Michel no less admired 
 is wife. They had lived together in perfect amity for fifteen 
 ears, and they had four children. Then Clara died, and Jean 
 lichel bemoaned her loss, and then, five months later, married 
 )ttilia Schiitz, a girl of twenty, with red cheeks, robust and 
 miling. After eight years of marriage she also died, but in 
 bat time she gave him seven children — eleven children in all, 
 f whom only one had survived. Although he loved them much, 
 11 these bereavements had not shaken his good-humor. The 
 reatest blow had been the death of Ottilia, three years ago, 
 ^hich had come to him at an age when it is difficult to start 
 ife again and to make a new home. But after a moment’s- 
 infusion old Jean Michel regained his equilibrium, which 
 
 0 misfortune seemed able to disturb. 
 
 He was an affectionate man, but health was the strongest 
 ling in him. He had a physical repugnance from sadness, and 
 need of gaiety, great gaiety, Flemish fashion — an enormous 
 nd childish laugh. Whatever might be his grief, he did not 
 rink one drop the less, nor miss one bite at table, and hi 
 and never had one day off. Under his direction the Cour 
 rchestra won a small celebrity in the Ehine country, wh 
 ean Michel had become legendary by reason of his athletic 
 :ature and his outbursts of anger. He could not master them, 
 
 1 spite of all his efforts, for the violent man was at bottom 
 mid and afraid of compromising himself. He loved decorum 
 ad feared opinion. But his blood ran away with him. He 
 sed to see red, and he used to be the victim of sudden fits of 
 razy impatience, not only at rehearsals, but at the concerts, 
 here once in the Prince’s presence he had hurled his baton and 
 ad stamped about like a man possessed, as he apostrophized 
 le of the musicians in a furious and stuttering voice. The 
 rince was amused, but the artists in question were rancorous 
 j^ainst him. In vain did Jean Michel, ashamed of his out- 
 irst, try to pass it by immediately in exaggerated obsequious- 
 3SS. On the next occasion he would break out again, and as 
 is extreme irritability increased with age, in the end it made 
 s position very difficult. He felt it himself, and one day, 
 lienihis outbursts had all but caused the whole orchestra to 
 
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 strike he sent in his resignation. He hoped that in considera- 
 Sn of his services the, Wd make difficulties about occeptmg 
 it and would ask him to stay. There was iiothing of the kind, 
 and as he was too proud to go back on his offer, >'» >'«" 
 
 hearted, and crying out upon the H. 
 
 Since that time he had not known how to fill his days, li 
 was more than seventy, hut he was still vigorous and he wenl 
 r wTSng and going up and down the town from morning 
 to night giving lessons, and entering into discussioi^, pro 
 nouncing perorftions, and entering into everything. He wa 
 ingenious, and found all sorts of ways of keeping himself oecu 
 pifd He began to repair musical instruments; he invent^ 
 experimented, and sometimes discovered 
 
 composed also, and set store by his compositions He ha, 
 once written a Missa Solennis, of which he used often to taj 
 Td it was the glory of his family. It had cost him so mud 
 trouble that he had all hut brought about a congesUon o 
 mind in the writing of it. He tried to persuade himself th, 
 it was a work of genius, but he knew perfectly well with wh 
 ,mptiness of thought it had been written, and he dared n 
 ook again at the manuscript, because every time he d ^ 
 he recognimf in the phrases that he had fought 0 e , 
 uwn“.°B taken from other authors, painfully pieced toget^ 
 haphazaid. It was a great sorrow to him. lie had ideas son^ 
 Ses which he thought admirable. He would wun trembling 
 to his table. Could he keep his inspiration this time . i 
 hardlv had he taken pen in hand than he found himself a o 
 ?n saemfand all iJefforts to call to life again the vanish 
 voices ended only in bringing to his oars familiar melodies 
 
 “itfh“"ar:,>-®rrSeorge Sand, “ unhappy geniuses w 
 lack the power of expression, and carry down to their gra 
 the nnknLn region of their thoughts, as has said a meml 
 S tiat great family of illustrious mutes or stammerer 
 Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire.” Old Jean Michel belonged to tl 
 family. He was no more successful in expressing hims 
 r^usic than in words, and he always deceived himself, 
 would so much have loved to talk, to write, to be a gr 
 
 musician, an eloquent orator! It was his secret sore. He t 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 29 
 
 lO one of it, did nqt admit it to himself, tried not to think of 
 t; but he did think of it, in spite of himself, and so there 
 ■as the seed of death in his soul. 
 
 Poor old man ! In nothing did he succeed in being absolutely 
 imself. There were in him so many seeds of beauty and 
 ower, but they never put forth fruit; a profound and touching 
 aith in the dignity of Art and the moral value of life, but 
 ; was nearly always translated in an emphatic and ridiculous 
 ishion; so much noble pride, and in life an almost servile 
 dmiration of his superiors; so lofty a desire for independence, 
 ud, in fact, absolute docility; pretensions to strength of mind, 
 ud every conceivable superstition; a passion for heroism, real 
 mrage, and so much timidity! — a nature to stop by the way- 
 de. 
 
 Jean Michel had transferred all his ambitions to his son, 
 ad at first Melchior had promised to realize them. From 
 lildhood he had shown great musical gifts. He learned with 
 ftraordinary facility, and quickly acquired as a violinist a 
 irtuosity which for a long time made him the favorite, almost 
 le idol, of the Court concerts. He played the piano and other 
 istruments pleasantly. He was a fine talker, well, though a 
 ttle heavily, built, and was of the type which passes in Ger- 
 lany for classic beauty ; he had a large brow that expressed 
 sthing, large regular features, and a curled beard — a Jupiter 
 ^ the banks of the Rhine. Old Jean Michel enjoyed his son’s 
 iccess; he was ecstatic over the virtuoso’s tours do force, he 
 ho had never been able properly to play any instrument. In 
 uth, Melchior would have had no difficulty in expressing what 
 ) thought. The trouble was that he did not think; and he 
 d not even bother about it. He had the soul of a mediocre 
 'median who takes pains with the infiexions of his voice 
 ithout caring about what they express, and, with anxious 
 watches their effect on his audience. 
 
 The odd thing was that, in spite of his constant anxiety 
 »out his stage pose, there was in him, as in Jean Michel, in 
 ite of his timid respect for social conventions, a curious, 
 regular, unexpected and chaotic quality, which made people 
 y that the Kraffts were a bit crazy. It did not harm him 
 
30 JEAN-CHEISTOPHLif 
 
 at first; it seemed as though these very ec itricEies were the 
 proof of the genius attributed to him; for it is understood 
 among people of common sense that an artist has none. But 
 it was not long before his extravagances were traced to their 
 source — usually the bottle. Nietzsche says that Bacchus is the 
 God of Music, and Melchior’s instinct was of the same opinion ; 
 but in his case his god was very ungrateful to him; far from 
 giving him the ideas he lacked, he took away from him the few 
 that he had. After his absurd marriage — absurd in the eyes 
 of the world, and therefore also in his own— he gave himself 
 Tip to it more and more. He neglected his playing so secure 
 in his own superiority that very soon he lost it. Other virtuosi 
 ■came to succeed him in public favor. That was bitter to 
 him, but instead of rousing his energy, these rebuffs only dis- 
 couraged him. He avenged himself by crying down his rivals, 
 with his pot-fellows. In his absurd conceit he counted on 
 succeeding his father as musical director: another man was 
 appointed. He thought himself persecuted, and took on the 
 airs of a misunderstood genius. Thanks to the esteem in which 
 old Krafft was held, he kept his place as a violin in the orchestra, 
 but gradually he lost all his lessons in the town. And if this 
 blow struck most at his vanity, it touched his purse even more.i 
 For several years the resources of his household had grown less 
 and less, following on various reverses of fortune. After having 
 known plenty, want came, and every day increased. Melchio^ 
 refused to take notice of it; he did not spend one penny tht 
 less on his toilet or his pleasures. 
 
 He was not a bad man, but a half-good man, which is perhaps 
 worse — weak, without spring, without moral strength, but foi 
 the rest, in his own opinion, a good father, a good son, a good| 
 husband, a good man — and perhaps he was good, if to be sol 
 it is enough to possess an easy kindness, which is quickljl 
 1 touched, and that animal affection by which a man loves hif 
 kin as a part of himself. It cannot even be said that he was 
 very egoistic ; he had not personality enough for that. He was 
 nothing. They are a terrible thing in life, these people whs 
 1' are nothing. Like a dead weight thrown into the air, thq 
 \ fall, and must fall; and in their fall they drag with thea 
 1 everything that they have. 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 31 
 
 It was when the situation of his family had reached its most 
 difficult podnt, that little Jean-Christophe began to understand 
 what was going on about him. 
 
 He was no longer the only child. Melchior gave his wife 
 a child every year, without troubling to think what was to 
 become of it later. Two had died young; two others were three 
 and four years old. Melchior never bothered about them. 
 Louisa, when she had to go out, left them with J ean-Christophe, 
 now six years old. 
 
 The charge cost Jean-Christophe something, for he had to 
 sacrifice to his duty his splendid afternoons in the fields. But 
 he was proud of being treated as a man, and gravely fulfilled 
 his task. He amused the children as best he could by showing 
 them his games, and he set himself to talk to them as he had 
 heard his mother talking to the baby. Or he would carry them 
 in his arms, one after another, as he had seen her do; he bent 
 under their weight, and clenched his teeth, and with all his 
 strength clutched his little brother to his breast, so as to prevent 
 his falling. The children always wanted to be carried — they 
 were never tired of it; and when Jean-Christophe could do no 
 more, they wept without ceasing. They made him very un- 
 happy, and he was often troubled about them. They were very 
 dirty, and needed maternal attentions. Jean-Christophe did 
 not know what to do. They took advantage of him. Some- 
 times he wanted to slap them, but he thought, They are little ; 
 they do not know,^^ and, magnanimously, he let them pinch him, 
 and beat him, and tease him. Ernest used to howl for nothing ; 
 he used to stamp his feet and roll about in a passion; he was 
 a nervous child, and Louisa had bidden Jean-Christophe not 
 to oppose his whims. As for Eodolphe, he was as malicious 
 as a monkey; he always took advantage of Jean-Christophe 
 having Ernest in his arms, to play all sorts of silly pranks 
 behind his back; he used to break toys, spill water, dirty his 
 frock, and knock the plates over as he rummaged in the cup- 
 board. 
 
 And when Louisa returned, instead of praising Jean-Chris- 
 tophe, she used to say to him, without scolding him, but with 
 an injured air, as she saw the havoc : My poor child, you are 
 not very clever ! 
 
 
32 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 ? Jean-Christophe would be mortified, and his heart would 
 grow big within him. 
 
 Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little 
 I money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such 
 I as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know 
 I nothing about- it — it touched his vanity — ^but he was not an- 
 noyed with her for doing it, so long as he did not know. Jean- 
 Christophe had as yet no idea of the difficulties of life; he 
 knew no other limit to his will than the will of his parents, 
 
 ‘ and that did not stand much in his way, for they let him 
 do pretty much as he pleased. His one idea was to grow 
 up, so as to be able to do as he liked. He had no conception 
 ; of obstacles standing in the way at every turn, and he had 
 never the least idea but that his parents were completely their ' 
 i own masters. It was a shock to his whole being when, for ■ 
 ; the first time, he perceived that among men there are those 
 who command, and those who are commanded, and that his own t 
 , people were not of the first class; it was the first crisis of ; 
 his life. 
 
 It happened one afternoon. His mother had dressed him in 
 his cleanest clothes, old clothes given to her which Louisa’s 
 ingenuity and patience had turned to account. He went to ! 
 find her, as they had agreed, at the house in which she was i 
 . working. He was abashed at the idea of entering alone. A | 
 footman was swaggering in the porch; he stopped the boy, ; 
 and asked him patronizingly what he wanted. Jean-Christophe > 
 blushed, and murmured that he had come to see Frau Krafft ” 
 
 ^ — as he had been told to say. 
 
 I Frau Krafft ? What do you want with Frau Krafft ? ” 
 
 I asked the footman, ironically emphasizing the word Frau. 
 
 I Your mother? Go down there. You will find Louisa in the 
 \ kitchen at the end of the passage.” 
 
 He went, growing redder and redder. He was ashamed to 
 hear his mother called familiarly Louisa. He was humiliated; 
 he would have liked to run away down to his dear river, and 
 the shelter of the brushwood where he used- to tell himself 'i 
 stories. I 
 
 In the kitchen he came upon a number of other servants, I 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 33 
 
 who greeted him with noisy exclamations. At the back, near 
 the stove, his mother smiled at him with tender embarrassment. 
 He ran to her, and clung to her skirts. She was wearing a 
 white apron, and holding a wooden spoon. She made him more 
 unhappy by trying to raise his chin so as to look in his face, 
 and to make him hold out his hand to everybody there and say 
 good-day to them. He would not; he turned to the wall and 
 hid his face in his arms. Then gradually he gained courage, 
 and peeped out of his hiding-place with merry bright eyes, 
 which hid again every time any one looked at him. He stole 
 looks at the people there. His mother looked busy and im- 
 portant, and he did not know her like that ; she went from one 
 saucepan to another, tasting, giving advice, in a sure voice 
 explaining recipes, and the cook of the house listened respect- 
 fully. The boy’s heart swelled with pride as he saw how much 
 his mother was appreciated, and the great part that she played 
 in this splendid room, adorned with magnificent objects of 
 gold and silver. 
 
 Suddenly conversation ceased. The door opened. A lad- 
 entered with a rustling of the stuffs she was wearing. Sh 
 cast a suspicious look about her. She was no longer young, 
 and yet she was wearing a light dress with wide sleeves. She 
 caught up her dress in her hand, so as not to brush against 
 anything. It did not prevent her going to the stove and look- 
 ing at the dishes, and even tasting them. When she raised her 
 hand a little, her sleeve fell back, and her arm was bare to the 
 elbow. , Jean-Christophe thought this ugly and improper. How 
 and abruptly she spoke to Louisa ! And how humbly 
 Louisa replied ! J ean-Christophe hated it. He hid away in 
 his corner, so as not to be observed, but it was no use. The 
 lady asked who the little boy might be. Louisa fetched him 
 him ; she held his hands to prevent his hiding 
 his face. And, though he wanted to break away and flee, 
 Jean-Christophe felt instinctively that this time he must not 
 resist. The lady looked at the boy’s scared face, and at first 
 she gave him a kindly, motherly smile. But then she resumed 
 her patronizing air, and asked him about his behavior, and his 
 piety, and put questions to him, to which he did not reply. 
 She looked to see how his clothes fitted him, and Louisa eagerly 
 
34 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 declared that they were magnificent. She pulled down his 
 waistcoat to remove the creases. Jean-Christophe ® 
 
 cry, it fitted so tightly. He did not understand why his mother 
 
 '^^Thflady^ toS' him by the hand and said that she would 
 take him to her own children. Jean-Christophe cast a look 
 of despair at his mother; but she smiled at the mistress so 
 eagerly that he saw that there was nothing to hope for from 
 her, and he followed his guide like a sheep that is led to the 
 
 ^^^The? came to a garden, where two cross-looking children, a 
 boy and a girl, about the same age as Jean-Christophe, were 
 apparently sulky with each other. Jean-Christophe s advent 
 created a diversion. They came up to examine the new arrival. 
 Jean-Christophe, left with the children by the lady, stood s ock- 
 still in a pathway, not daring to raise his eyes. The wo o ers 
 stood motionless a short distance away, and looked him up and 
 down, nudged each other, and tittered. Finally, they made up 
 their minds. They asked him who he was, whence he came, 
 nd what his father did. Jean-Christophe, turned to stone, 
 ade no reply; he was terrified almost to the point of tears, 
 specially of the little girl, who had fair hair in plaits, a short 
 
 drt, and bare legs. , • • 
 
 They began to play. Just as Jean-Christophe was beginning 
 
 To be a little happier, the little boy stopped dead in front of 
 
 i him, and touching his coat, said: 
 
 “Hullo! That’s mine!” _ 
 
 Jean-Christophe did not understand. Furious at this asser- 
 ^ tion that his coat belonged to some one else, he shook his head 
 
 violently in denial. , 
 
 “I know it all right,” said^fte boy. “It’s my old blue 
 
 waistcoat. There’s a spot on it, _ 
 
 And he put his finger on the spot. Then, going on with h 
 inspection, he examined Jean-Christophe’s feet, and asked what 
 his mended-up shoes were made of. Jean-Christophe grew crim- 
 son. The little girl pouted and whispered to her brother 
 Jean-Christophe heard it— that it was a little poor boy. Jean- 
 Christophe resented the word. He thought he would succeed 
 in combating the insulting opinions, as he stammered m a 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 35 
 
 choking voice that he was the son of Melchior KrafPt, and that 
 his mother was Louisa the cook. It seemed to him that this 
 
 title was as good as any other, and he was right. But the 
 
 two children, interested in the news, did not seem to esteem 
 him any the more for it. On the contrary, they took on a 
 patronizing tone. They asked him what he was going to be — 
 a cook or a coachman. Jean-Christophe revolted. He felt an 
 iciness steal into his heart. 
 
 Encouraged by his silence, the two rich children, who had 
 
 conceived for the little poor boy one of those cruel and un- 
 
 reasoning antipathies which children have, tried various amus- / 
 ing ways of tormenting him. The little girl especially 
 implacable. She observed that Jean-Christophe could hardly 
 run, because his clothes were so tight, and she conceived the 
 subtle idea of making him jump. They made an obstacle of 
 little seats, and insisted on Jean-Christophe clearing it. The 
 wretched child dared not say what it was that prevented his , 
 jumping. He gathered himself together, hurled himself through 1 
 the air, and measured his length on the ground. They roared 
 with laughter at him. He had to try again. Tears in his 
 eyes, he made a desperate attempt, and this time succeeded in j 
 jumping. That did not satisfy his tormentors, who decided 
 that the obstacle was not high enough, and they built it up 
 until it became a regular break-neck affair. Jean-Christophe 
 tried to rebel, and declared that he would not jump. Then the 
 little girl called him a coward, and said that he was afraid. 
 Jean-Christophe could not stand that, and, knowing that he 
 must fall, he jumped, and fell. His feet caught in the obstacle; , ' 
 I the whole thing toppled over with him. He grazed his hands V* 
 
 [ and almost broke his head, and, as a crowning misfortune, his 
 I trousers tore at the knees and elsewhere. He was sick with 
 I shame; he heard the two children dancing with delight round 
 him; he suffered horribly. He felt that they despised and 
 i hated him. Why ? Why ? He would gladly have died ! There 
 , is no more cruel suffering than that of a child who discovers..- i 
 I for the first time the wickedness of others; he believes then that 
 ! he is persecuted by the whole world, and there is nothing to 
 support him ; there is nothing then — nothing ! . . . Jean-Chris- 
 tophe tried to get up; the little boy pushed him down again; 
 
36 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 the little girl kicked him. He tried again, and they both 
 jumped on him, and sat on his back and pressed his face down 
 into the ground. Then rage seized him— it was too much. His 
 hands were bruised, his fine coat was torn a catastrophe for 
 him !— shame, pain, revolt against the injustice of it, so many 
 misfortunes all at once, plunged him in blind fury. He rose 
 to his hands and knees, shook himself like a dog, and rolled 
 his tormentors over; and when they returned to the assault 
 he hutted at them, head down, bowled over the little girl, and, 
 with one blow of his fist, knocked the boy into the middle of a 
 
 flower-bed. • • 
 
 They howled. The children ran into the house with piercing 
 cries. Doors slammed, and cries of anger were heard. The 
 lady ran out as quickly as her long dress would let her. Jean- 
 Christophe saw her coming, and made no attempt to escape 
 He was terrified at what he had done; it was a thing unheard 
 of, a crime; but he regretted nothing. He waited. He was 
 lost. So much the better ! He was reduced to despair. 
 
 The lady pounced on him. He felt her beat him. He heard 
 her talking in a furious voice, a flood of words; but he could 
 distinguish nothing. His little enemies had come back to see 
 his shame, and screamed shrilly. There were servants— a babel 
 of voices. To complete his downfall, Louisa, who had been sum- 
 moned, appeared, and, instead of defending him, she began to 
 scold him— she, too, without knowing anything— and bade hirn 
 beg pardon. He refused angrily. She shook him, and dragged 
 him by the hand to the lady and the children, and bade him 
 go on his knees. But he stamped and roared, and bit his 
 mother’s hand. Finally, he escaped among the servants, who 
 
 laughed. . , . » , - • 
 
 He went away, his heart beating furiously, his face burning 
 with anger and the slaps which he had received. He tried not 
 to think, and he hurried along because he did not ^^nt to 
 cry in the street. He wanted to be at home, so as to be able 
 to find the comfort of tears. He choked ; the blood beat in his 
 
 head; he was at bursting-point. 
 
 Finally, he arrived; he ran up the old black staircase to 
 his usual nook in the bay of a window above the river; he 
 hurled himself into it breathlessly, and then there came a flood 
 
 1 , 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 37 
 
 of tears. He did not know exactly why he was crying, but \ 
 he had to cry; and when the first flood of them was done, he ’ 
 wept again because he wanted, with a sort of rage, to make i 
 himself suffer, as if he could in this way punish the others I 
 as well as himself. Then he thought that his father must be 
 coming home, and that his mother would tell him everything, 
 and that hjs own miseries were by no means at an end. He 
 resolved on flight, no matter whither, never to return. 
 
 Just as he was going downstairs, he bumped into his father, 
 who was coming up. 
 
 “What are you doing, boy? Where are you going?” asked 
 Melchior. 
 
 He did not reply. 
 
 “You are up to some folly. Wliat have jmu done?” 
 
 Jean-Christophe held his peace. 
 
 “What have you done?” repeated Melchior. “Will you 
 answer ? ” 
 
 The boy began to cry and Melchior to shout, vying with 
 each other until they heard Louisa hurriedly coming up the 
 stairs. She arrived, still upset. She began with violent re- 
 proach and further chastisement, in which Melchior joined as 
 soon as he understood— and probably before— with blows that 
 would have felled an ox. Both shouted; the boy roared. They \ 
 ended by angry argument. All the time that he was beating \ 
 his son, Melchior maintained that he was right, and that this \ 
 was the sort of thing that one came by, by going out to service i 
 with people who thought they could do everything because they 
 had money; and as she beat the child, Louisa shouted that her \ 
 
 1 husband was a brute, that she would never let him touch the 
 boy, and that he had really hurt him. Jean-Christophe was, 
 in fact, bleeding a little from the nose, but he hardly gave a | 
 
 thought to it, and he was not in the least thankful to his \ 
 
 mother for stopping it with a wet cloth, since she went on scold- 
 ing him. In the end they pushed him away in a dark closet, 
 and shut him up without any supper. 
 
 He heard them shouting at each other, and he did not know t/'' 
 which of them he detested most. He thought it must be hisl^'^ 
 mother, for he had never expected any such wickedness from' 1 
 her. All the misfortunes of the day overwhelmed him : all that 
 
38 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 he had suffeted — the injustice of the children, the injustice of 
 the lady, the injustice of his parents, and — this he felt like 
 an open wound, without quite knowing why — the degradation 
 of his parents, of whom he was so proud, before these evil and 
 contemptible people. Such cowardice, of which for the first 
 time he had become vaguely conscious, seemed ignoble to him. 
 Everything was upset for him — his admiration for his own 
 people, the religious respect with which they inspired him, his 
 confidence in life, the simple need that he had of loving others 
 and of being loved, his moral faith, blind but absolute. It 
 was a complete cataclysm. He was crushed by brute force, 
 without any means of defending himself or of ever again escap- 
 ing. He choked. He thought himself on the point of death. 
 
 All his body stift'ened in desperate revolt. He beat with fists, , 
 
 feet, head, against the wall, howled, was seized with convul- 1 
 
 sions, and fell to the floor, hurting himself against the furniture. ; 
 
 His parents, running up, took him in their arms. They 
 vied with each other now as to who should be the more tender i 
 with him. His mother undressed him, carried him to his bed, , 
 and sat by him and remained with him until he was calmer. 
 
 But he did not yield one inch. He forgave her nothing, and 
 pretended to be asleep to get rid of her. His mother seemed ; 
 
 to him bad and cowardly. He had no suspicion of all the ' 
 
 suffering that she had to go through in order to live and g;ive | 
 
 a living to her family, and of what she had borne in taking l 
 
 sides against him. j 
 
 After he had exhausted to the last drop the incredible store ] 
 of tears that is in the eyes of a child, he felt somewhat com- 
 ; forted. He was tired and worn out, but his nerves were too 
 much on stretch for him to sleep. The visions that had been 
 with him floated before him again in his semi-torpor. Espe- 
 cially he saw again the little girl with her bright eyes and her 
 turned-up, disdainful little nose, her hair hanging down to her 
 shoulders, her bare legs and her childish, affected way of talk- 
 ing. He trembled, as it seemed to him that he could hear her 
 voice. He remembered how stupid he had been with her, and 
 he conceived a savage hatred for her. He did not pardon her 
 for having brought him low, and was consumed with the desire 
 to humiliate her and to make her weep. He sought means of 
 
THE HAWH 
 
 39 
 
 doing this, but found none. There was no sign of her ever 
 caring about him. But by way of consoling himself he sup- 
 posed that everything was as he wished it to be. He supposed 
 that he had become very powerful and famous, and decided 
 that she was in love with him. Then he began to tell himself 
 one of those absurd stories which in the end he would regard 
 as more real than reality. 
 
 She was dying of love, but he spurned her. When he passed 
 before her house she watched him pass, hiding behind the 
 curtains, and he knew that she 'watched him, but he pretended 
 to take no notice, and talked gaily. Even he left the country, 
 and journeyed far to add to her anguish. He did great things. 
 Here he introduced into his narrative fragments chosen from 
 his grandfather’s heroic tales, and all this time she was falling 
 ill of grief. Her mother, that proud dame, came to beg of 
 him : “^My poor child is dying. I beg you to come ! ” He went. 
 She was in her bed. Her face was pale and sunken. She 
 held out her arms to him. She could not speak, but she took 
 his hands and kissed them as she wept. Then he looked at 
 her with marvelous kindness and tenderness. He bade her 
 recover, and consented to let her love him. At this point of 
 the story, when he amused himself by drawing out the coming 
 together by repeating their gestures and words several times, 
 sleep overcame him, and he slept and was consoled. 
 
 But when he opened his eyes it was day, and it no longer 
 shone so lightly or so carelessly as its predecessor. There was 
 a great change in the world. Jean-Christophe now knew the 
 meaning of injustice. 
 
 There were now times of extremely straitened circumstances 
 at home. They became more and more frequent. They lived 
 meagerly then. No one was more sensible of it than Jean-, 
 Chrfstophe. His father saw nothing. He was served first, 
 and there was always enough for him. He talked noisily, and 
 roared with laughter at his own jokes, and he never noticed 
 his wife’s glances as she gave a forced laugh, while she watched 
 him helping himself. When he passed the dish it was more 
 than half empty. Louisa helped the children— two potatoes 
 each. When it came to Jean-Christophe’s turn there were 
 
40 
 
 JEAN'-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 sometimes only three left, and his mother was not helped. He 
 knew that beforehand; he had counted them before they came 
 to him. Then he summoned up courage, and said carelessly : 
 
 “ Only one, mother.” 
 
 She was a little put out. 
 
 ‘‘ Two, like the others.” 
 
 “ !No, please; only one.” 
 
 “ Aren’t you hungry ? ” 
 
 “ Ho, I’m not very hungry.” 
 
 But she, too, only took one, and they peeled them care- 
 fully, cut them up in little pieces, and tried to eat them as 
 slowly as possible. His mother watched him. When he had 
 finished : 
 
 “ Come, take it ! ” , 
 
 “ Ho, mother.” ; 
 
 But you are ill ? ” • 
 
 “I am not ill, but I have eaten enough.” 
 
 Then his father would reproach him with being obstinate, I 
 and take the last potato for himself. But Jean-Christophe 5 
 learned that trick, and he used to keep it on his plate for ! 
 Ernest, his little brother, who was always hungry, and watched ; 
 him out of the corner of his eyes from the beginning of dinner, : 
 and ended by asking: , 
 
 “ Aren’t you going to eat it ? Give it me, then, Jean-Chris- ] 
 tophe.” i 
 
 Oh, how Jean-Christophe detested his father, how he hated ; 
 him for not thinking of them, or for not even dreaming that i 
 he was eating their share ! He was so, hungry that he hated 
 him, and would gladly have told him so; but he thought in | 
 his pride that he had no right, since he could not earn his \ 
 own living. His father had earned the bread that he took. | 
 He himself was good for nothing; he was a burden on every- | 
 body ; he had no right to talk. Later on he would talk — 
 if there were any later on. Oh, he would die of hunger 
 first ! . . . 
 
 He suffered more than another child would have done from 
 these cruel fasts. His robust stomach was in agony. Some- 
 times he trembled because of it; his head ached. There was 
 ■a hole in his chest — a hole which turned and widened, as if a 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 41 
 
 gimlet were being twisted in it. But he did not complain. He 
 felt his mother's eyes upon him, and assumed an expression of 
 indifference. Louisa, with a clutching at her heart, understood^ 
 vaguely that her little boy was denying himself so that the 
 others might have more. She rejected the idea, but always 
 returned to it. She dared not investigate it or ask Jean-Chris- 
 tophe if it were true, for, if it were true, what could she 
 do ? She had been used to privation since her childhood. 
 What is the use of complaining when there is nothing to be 
 done? She never suspected, indeed — she, with her frail health 
 and small needs — that the boy might suffer more than herself. 
 She did not say anything, but once or twice, when the others 
 were gone, the children to the street, Melchior about his busi- 
 ness, she asked her eldest son to stay to do her some small 
 service. Jean-Christophe would hold her skein while she un- 
 wound it. Suddenly she would throw everything away, and 
 draw him passionately to her. She would take him on her 
 knees, although he was quite heavy, and would hug and hug 
 him. He would fling his arms round her neck, and the two 
 of them would weep desperately, embracing each other. 
 
 ^^My poor little boy! . . 
 
 Mother, mother 1 . . ." | 
 
 They said no more, but they understood each other. ' 
 
 It was some time before Jean-Christophe realized that his 
 father drank, Melchior's intemperance did not — at least, in 
 the beginning — exceed tolerable limits. It was not brutish. It 
 showed itself rather by wild outbursts of happiness. He used 
 to make foolish remarks, and sing loudly for hours together as 
 he drummed on the table, and sometimes he insisted on dancing 
 with Louisa and the children. Jean-Christophe saw that his 
 mother looked sad. She would shrink back and bend her face 
 over her work ; she avoided the drunkard's eyes, and used to try 
 gently to quiet him when he said coarse things that made her 
 bluslu But Jean-Christophe did not understand, and he was 
 in such need of gaiety that* these noisy home-comings of his 
 father were almost a festival to him. The house was melan- 
 choly, and these follies were a relaxation for him. He used 
 to laugh heartily at Melchior's crazy antics and stupid jokes; 
 
42 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 he sang and danced with him; and he was put out when his 
 mother in an angry voice ordered him to cease. How could 
 it be wrong, since his father did it? Although his ever keen 
 observation, which never forgot anything it had seen, told him 
 that there were in his fathers behavior several things which 
 did not accord with his childish and imperious sense of justice, 
 yet he continued to admire him. A child has so much need 
 of an object of admiration! Doubtless it is one of the eternal 
 forms of self-love. When a man is, or knows himself to be, 
 too weak to accomplish his desires and satisfy his pride, as a 
 child he transfers them to his parents, or, as a man who has 
 failed, he transfers them to his children. They are, or shall 
 be, all that he dreamed of being — his champions, his avengers — 
 and in this proud abdication in their favor, love and egoism are 
 mingled so forcefully and yet so gently as to bring him keen 
 delight. J ean-Christophe forgot all his grudges against his ; 
 father, and cast about to find reasons for admiring him. 
 He admired his figure, his strong arms, his voice, his laugh, 
 his gaiety, and he shone with pride when he heard praise of I 
 his father’s talents as a virtuoso, or when Melchior himself 
 recited with some amplification the eulogies he had received. 
 He believed in his father’s boasts, and looked upon him as a 
 genius, as one of his grandfather’s heroes. 
 
 One evening about seven o’clock he was alone in the house. 
 His little brothers had gone out with Jean Michel. Louisa was 
 washing the linen in the river. The door opened, and Melchior 
 plunged in. He was hatless and disheveled. He cut a sort 
 of caper to cross the threshold, and then plumped down in a ‘ 
 chair by the table. Jean-Christophe began to laugh, thinking 
 it was a part of one of the usual buffooneries, and he approached 
 him. But as soon as he looked more closely at him the desire 
 to laugh left him. Melchior sat there with his arms hanging, 
 and looking straight in front of him, seeing nothing, with his 
 eyes blinking. His face was crimson, his mouth was open, 
 and from it there gurgled every now and then a silly laugh. 
 Jean-Christophe stood stock-still. He thought at first that 
 his father was joking, but when he saw that he did not budge 
 he was panic-stricken. 
 
 Papa, papa ! ” he cried. 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 43 
 
 Melchior went on gobbling like a fowl. J ean-Christophe 
 took him by the arm in despair, and shook him with all his 
 strength. 
 
 Papa, dear papa, answer me, please, please ! 
 
 Melchior’s body shook like a boneless thing, and all but fell. 
 His head flopped towards Jean-Christophe; he looked at him 
 and babbled incoherently and irritably. When Jean-Chris- 
 tophe’s eyes met those clouded eyes he was seized mth panic 
 terror. He ran away to the other end of the room, and threw 
 himself on his knees by the bed, and buried his face in the 
 clothes. He remained so for some time. Melchior swung 
 heavily on the chair, sniggering. Jean-Christophe stopped his 
 ears, so as not to hear him, and trembled. What was happen- 
 ing within him was inexpressible. It was a terrible upheaval — 
 terror, sorrow, as though for some one dead, some one dear and 
 honored. 
 
 No one came; they were left alone. Night fell, and Jean- 
 Christbphe’s fear grew as the minutes passed. He could not 
 help listening, and his blood froze as he heard the voice that 
 he did not recognize. The silence made it all the more terri- 
 fying; the limping clock beat time for the senseless babbling. 
 He could bear it no longer; he wished to fly. But he had 
 to pass his father to get out, and Jean-Christophe shuddered 
 at the idea of seeing those eyes again; it seemed to him that 
 he must die if he did. He tried to creep on hands and^ 
 knees to the door of the room. He could not breathe ; he 
 would not look; he stopped at the least movement from Mel- ^ 
 chior, whose feet he couM see under the table. One of the 
 drunken man’s legs trembled. Jean-Christophe reached the 
 door. With one trembling hand he pushed the handle, but 
 in his terror he let go. It shut to again. Melchior turned 
 to look. The chair on which he was balanced toppled over ; 
 he fell down with a crash. Jean-Christophe in his terror had 
 no strength left for flight. He remained glued to the wall, 
 looking at his father stretched there at his feet, and he cried 
 for help. 
 
 His fall sobered Melchior a little. He cursed and swore, 
 and thumped on the chair that had played him such a trick. 
 He tried vainly to get up, and then did manage to sit up with 
 
 
 / 
 
44 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 /. 
 
 his back resting against the table, and he recognized his 
 surroundings. He saw Jean-Christophe‘ crying; he called 
 him. Jean-Christophe wanted to run away; he could not stir. 
 Melchior called him again, and as the child did not come, he 
 swore angrily. Jean-Christophe went near him, trembling in 
 every limb. Melchior drew the boy near him, and made him sit 
 on his knees. He began by pulling his ears, and in a thick, 
 stuttering voice delivered a homily on the respect due from a 
 son to his father. Then he went off suddenly on a new train 
 of thought, and made him jump in his arms while he rattled 
 off silly jokes. He wriggled with laughter. From that he 
 passed immediately to melancholy ideas. He commiserated the 
 : boy and himself ; he hugged him so that he was like to choke, - 
 i covered him with kisses and tears, and finally rocked him in- 
 1 his arms, intoning the De Profundis. Jean-Christophe made no ; 
 effort to break loose ; he was frozen with horror. Stified against ; 
 his fathers bosom, feeling his breath hiccoughing and srnelling 
 of wine upon his face, wet with his kisses and repulsive tears,! 
 he was in an agony of fear and disgust. He would have ? 
 screamed, but no sound would come from his lips. He re- ; 
 mained in this horrible condition for an age, as it seemed to 
 him, until the door opened, and Louisa came in with a basket , 
 of linen on her arm. She gave a cry, let the basket fall, rushed ' 
 at Jean-Christophe, and with a violence which seemed incredible] 
 in her she wrenched MelchioFs arm, crying: . i 
 
 Drunken, drunken wretch ! 
 
 Her eyes fiashed with anger. j 
 
 Jean-Christophe thought his fath^ was going to kill her.^ 
 But Melchior was so startled by the threatening appearance 
 of his wife that he made no reply, and began to weep. He 
 rolled on the fioor; he beat his head* against the furniture, 
 and said that she was right, that he was a drunkard, that 
 he brought misery upon his family, and was ruining his poor 
 children, and wished he were dead. Louisa had contemptuously 
 turned her back on him. She carried Jean-Christophe into the 
 next room, and caressed him and tried to comfort him. The 
 boy went on trembling, and did not answer his mothers ques-i 
 tions: then he burst out sobbinsr. Louisa bathed his face withl 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 45 
 
 him. In the end they were both comforted. She knelt, and 
 made him kneel by her side. They prayed to God to cure father 
 of his disgusting habit, and make him the kind, good man that 
 he used to be. Louisa put the child to bed. He wanted her to 
 stay by his bedside and hold his hand. Louisa spent part 
 of the night sitting on Jean-Christophe’s bed. He was feverish. 
 The drunken man snored on the floor. 
 
 Some time after that, one day at school, when Jean-Chris- 
 tophe was spending his time watching the flies on the ceiling, 
 and thumping his neighbors, to make them fall off the form, 
 the schoolmaster, who had taken a dislike to him, because he 
 was always fldgeting and laughing, and would never learn any- 
 thing, made an unhappy allusion. Jean-Christophe had fallen 
 down himself, and the schoolmaster said he seemed to be l\ke 
 to follow brilliantly in the footsteps of a certain well-known 
 person. All the boys burst out laughing, and some of them 
 took upon themselves to point the allusion with comment both 
 lucid and vigorous. Jean-Christophe got up, livid with shame, 
 seized his ink-pot, and hurled it with all his strength at the 
 nearest boy whom he saw laughing. The schoolmaster fell on^ 
 him and beat him. He was thrashed, made to kneel, and set 
 to do an enormous imposition. 
 
 He went home, pale and storming, though he said never a 
 word. He declared frigidly that he would not go to school 
 again. They paid no attention to what he said. Next morning, 
 when his mother reminded him that it was time to go, he 
 replied quietly that he had said that he was not going any more. 
 In vain Louisa begged and screamed and threatened; it was 
 no use. He stayed sitting in his corner, obstinate. Melchior 
 thrashed him. He howled, but every time they bade him go 
 after the thrashing was over he replied angrily, No! They 
 asked him at least to say why. He clenched his teeth, and 
 would not. Melchior took hold of him, carried him to school, 
 and gave him into the master’s charge. They set him on his 
 form, and he began methodically to break everything within 
 reach— his inkstand, his pen. He tore up his copy-book and 
 lessoh-book, all quite openly, with his eye on the schoolmaster, 
 pTRovocative. They shut him up in a dark room. A few mo- 
 ments later the schoolmaster found him with his handkerchief 
 
46 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHB 
 
 j . tied round his neck, tugging with all his strength at the two 
 5 J ends of it. He was trying to strangle himself. 
 
 I They had to send him back. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 \/ 
 
 Jean-Christophe was impervious to sickness. He had in- 
 herited from his father and grandfather their robust constitu- 
 tions. They were not mollycoddles in that family; well or ill, 
 they never worried, and nothing could bring about any change 
 in the habits of the two Kraffts, father and son. They went, 
 out winter and summer, in all weathers, and stayed for hours 
 together out in rain or sun, sometimes bareheaded and with 
 their coats open, from carelessness or bravado, and walked 
 for miles without being tired, and they looked with pity and 
 disdain upon poor Louisa, who never said anything, but had 
 to stop. She would go pale, and her legs would swell, and 
 her heart would thump. . Jean-Christophe was not far from 
 sharing the scorn of his mother; he did not understand people’ 
 being ill. When he fell, or knocked himself, or cut himself,* 
 or burned himself, he did not cry; but he was angry with^i 
 the thing that had injured him. His father’s brutalities and 
 tli ' roughness of his little playmates, the urchins of the street, 
 with whom he used to fight, hardened him. He was not afraid 
 of blows, and more than once he returned home with bleeding: 
 nose and bruised forehead. One day he had to be wrenched( 
 away, almost suffocated, from one of these fierce tussles in| 
 which he had bowled over his adversary, who was savagely- 
 banging his head on the ground. That seemed natural enoughs 
 to him, for he was prepared to do unto others as they did unto^ 
 himself. 
 
 And yet he was afraid of all sorts of things, and although 
 no one knew it — for he was very proud — nothing brought him 
 so much suffering during a part of his childhood as these same 
 terrors. For two or three years especially they gnawed at him 
 like a disease. 
 
 He was afraid of the mysterious something that lurks in 
 darkness — evil powers that seemed to lie in wait for his life, 
 the roaring of monsters which fearfully haunt the mind of 
 every child and appear in everything that he sees, the^ relic' 
 perhaps of a form long dead, hallucinations of the first days 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 47 
 
 after emerging from chaos, from the fearful slumber in his 
 mother's womb, from the awakening of the larva from the 
 depths of matter. 
 
 He was afraid of the garret door. It opened on to the stairs, 
 and was almost always ajar. When he had to pass it he felt 
 his heart beating; he would spring forward and jump by it 
 without looking. It seemed to him that there was some one 
 or something behind it. When it was closed he heard distinctly 
 something moving behind it. That was not surprising, for 
 there were large rats; but he imagined a monster, with rattling 
 bones, and flesh hanging in rags, a horse's head, horrible and 
 terrifying eyes, shapeless. He did not want to think of it, 
 but did so in spite of himself. With trembling hand he would 
 make sure that the door was locked; but that did not keep him 
 from turning round ten times as he went downstairs. 
 
 He was afraid of the night outside. Sometimes he used to 
 stay late with his grandfather, or was sent out in the even- 
 ing on some errand. Old Krafft lived a little outside the town 
 in the last house on the Cologne road. Between the house and 
 the first lighted windows of the town there was a distance of 
 two or three hundred yards, which seemed three times as long 
 to Jean-Christophe. There were places where the road twisted 
 and it was impossible to see anything. The country was 
 deserted in the evening, the earth grew black,' and the sky 
 was awfully pale. When he came out from the hedges that 
 lined the road, and climbed up the slope, he could still see 
 a yellowish gleam on the horizon, but it gave no light, and 
 was more oppressive than the night ; it made the darkness 
 only darker; it was a deathly light. The clouds came down 
 almost to earth. The hedges grew enormous and moved. The 
 gaunt trees were like grotesque old men. The sides of the 
 wood were stark white. The darkness moved. There were 
 (dwarfs sitting in the ditches, lights in the grass, fearful flying 
 things in the air, shrill cries of insects coming from nowhere. 
 Jean-Christophe was always in anguish, expecting some fear- 
 some or strange putting forth of Nature. He would run, with 
 his heart leaping in his bosom. 
 
 When he saw the light in his grandfather's room he would 
 gain confidence. But worst of all was when old Krafft was 
 
 i 
 
48 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 not at home. That was most terrifying. The old house^ lost 
 in the country, frightened the boy even in daylight. He forgot 
 his fears when his grandfather was there, but sometimes the 
 old man would leave him alone, and go out without warning 
 him. Jean-Christophe did not mind that. The room waa 
 quiet. Everything in it was familiar and kindly. There was 
 a great white wooden bedstead, by the bedside was a great 
 Bible on a shelf, artificial flowers were on the mantelpiece, 
 with photographs of the old man's two wives and eleven chil- 
 dren — and at the bottom of each photograph he had written 
 the date of birth and death — on the walls were framed texts 
 and vile chromolithographs of Mozart and Beethoven. A little 
 piano stood in one corner, a great violoncello in another; rows 
 J* of books higgledy-piggledy, pipes, and in the window pots of 
 geraniums. It was like being surrounded with friends. The « 
 
 old man could be heard moving about in the next room, and ] 
 
 planing or hammering, and talking to himself, calling himself J 
 
 an idiot, or singing in a loud voice, improvising a potpourri 
 of scraps of chants and sentimental Lieder, warlike marches, i 
 
 and drinking songs. Here was shelter and refuge. Jean- 1 
 
 Christophe would sit in the great armchair by the window, with i 
 
 a book on his knees, bending over the pictures and losing him- ■ 
 
 self in them. The day would die down, his ejes would grow ] 
 
 weary, and then he would look no more, and fall into vague j 
 
 dreaming. The wheels of a cart would rumble by along the | 
 
 road, a cow would moo in the fields; the bells of the town, ] 
 
 weary and sleepy, would ring the evening Angelus. Vague ] 
 
 desires, happy presentiments, would awake in the heart of the ;* 
 
 dreaming child. | 
 
 Suddenly Jean-Christophe would awake, filled with dull un- 
 easiness. He would raise his eyes — night! He would listen — 
 silence! His grandfather had just gone out. He shuddered, f 
 
 He leaned out of the window to try to see him. The road was m 
 
 I deserted; things began to take on a threatening aspect. Oh | 
 
 / God! If that should be coming! What? He could not telL 
 / The fearful thing. The doors were not properly shut. The 
 ! wooden stairs creaked as under a footstep. The boy leaped 
 up, dragged the armchair, the two chairs and the table, to 
 the most remote corner of the room; he made a barrier .»yf 
 
 I 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 49 
 
 them; the armchair against the wall, a chair to the right, a 
 chair to the left, and the table in front of him. Jn the middle 
 he planted a pair of steps, and, perched on top with his book 
 and other books, like provisions against a siege, he breathed 
 again, having decided in his childish imagination that the 
 enemy could not pass the barrier — that was not to be allowed. 
 
 But the enemy would creep forth, even from his book. Among 
 the old books which the old man had picked up were some 
 with pictures which made a profound impression on the child: 
 they attracted and yet terrified him. There were fantastic 
 visions — temptations of St. Anthony — in which skeletons of 
 birds hung in bottles, and thousands of eggs writhe like worms 
 in disemboweled frogs, and heads walk on feet, and asses play 
 trumpets, and household utensils and corpses of animals walk 
 gravely, wrapped in great cloths, bowing like old ladies. Jean- 
 Christophe was horrified by them, but always returned to them, 
 drawn on by disgust. He would look at them for a long time, 
 and every now and then look furtively about him to see what 
 was stirring in the folds of the curtains. A picture of a flayed 
 man in an anatomy book was still more horrible to him. He 
 trembled as he turned the page when he came to the place 
 v/here it was in the book. This shapeless medley was grimly 
 etched for him.*^, The creative power inherent in every child’s 
 mind filled out the meagerness of the setting of them. He 
 saw no difference between the daubs and the reality. At night 
 they had an even more powerful influence over his dreams than 
 the living things that he saw during the day. 
 
 He was afraid to sleep. For several years nightmares poisoned 
 his rest. He wandered in cellars, and through the manhole 
 saw the grinning flayed man entering. He was alone in a 
 room, and he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor; he 
 hurled himself against the door to close it, and was just in 
 time to hold the handle; but it was turned from the outside; 
 he could not turn the key, his strength left him, and he cried 
 for help. He was with his family, and suddenly their faces 
 changed; they did crazy things. He was reading quietly, and 
 he felt that an invisible being was all round him. He tried 
 to fly, but felt himself bound. He tried to cry out, but he 
 was gagged. A loathsome grip was about his neck. He awoke. 
 
50 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 
 suffocating, and with his teeth chattering ; and he went on 
 trembling lon^ after he was awake; he could not be rid of his 
 agony. 
 
 The room in which he slept was a hole without door or 
 windows; an old curtain hung up by a curtain-rod over the 
 entrance was all that separated it from the room of his father 
 and mother. The thick air stifled him. His brother, who slept 
 in the same bed, used to kick him. His head burned, and he 
 was a prey to a sort of hallucination in which all the little 
 troubles of the day reappeared inflnitely magnified. In this 
 state of nervous tension, bordering on delirium, the least shock 
 was an agony to him. The creaking of a plank terrified him. 
 His father’s breathing took on fantastic proportions. It seemed 
 to be no longer a human breathing, and the monstrous sound 
 was horrible to him; it seemed to him that there must be a 
 beast sleeping there. The night crushed him; it would never 
 end; it must always be so; he was lying there for months and 
 months. He gasped for breath; he half raised himself on 
 his bed, sat up, dried his sweating face with his shirt-sleeve. 
 Sometimes he nudged his brother Eodolphe to wake him up; 
 but Eodolphe moaned, drew away from him the rest of the 
 bedclothes, and went on sleeping. 
 
 So he stayed in feverish agony until a pale beam of light 
 appeared on the floor below the curtain. This timorous pale- 
 ness of the distant dawn suddenly brought him peace. He 
 felt the light gliding into the room, when it was still impossible 
 to distinguish it from darkness. Then his fever would die 
 down, his blood would grow calm, like a flooded river returning 
 to its bed ; an even warmth would flow through all his body, and 
 his eyes, burning from sleeplessness, would close in spite of 
 himself. 
 
 In the evening it was terrible to him to see the approach 
 of the hour of sleep. He vowed that he would not give way 
 to it, to watch the whole night through, fearing his nightmares. 
 But in the end weariness always overcame him, and it was 
 always when he was least on his guard that the monsters 
 returned. 
 
 Fearful night! So sweet to most children, so terrible to 
 some! ... He was afraid to sleep. He was afraid of not 
 
 i 
 
 { 
 
 < 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 51 
 
 sleeping. Waking or sleeping, he was surrounded by monstrous 
 shapes, the phantoms of his own brain, the larvae floating in 
 the half-day and twilight of childhood, as in the dark chiaros- 
 curo of sickness. 
 
 But these fancied terrors were soon to be blotted out in 
 the great Fear — that which is in the hearts of all men; that 
 Fear which Wisdom does in vain preen itself on forgetting or 
 denying — Death. 
 
 One day when he was rummaging in a cupboard, he came 
 upon several things that he did not know — a child's frock and 
 a striped bonnet. He took them in triumph to his mother, 
 who, instead of smiling at him, looked vexed, and bade him 
 take them back to the place where he had found them. Wlien 
 he hesitated to obey, and asked her why, she snatched them 
 from him without reply, and put them on a shelf where he 
 could not reach them. Boused to curiosity, he plied her with 
 questions. At last she told him that there had been a little 
 brother, who had died before Jean-Christophe came into the 
 world. He was taken aback — ^he had never heard tell of him. 
 He was silent for a moment, and then tried to find out more. 
 His mother seemed to be lost in thought ; but she told him that 
 the little brother was called Jean-Christophe like himself, but 
 was more sensible. He put more questions to her, but she would 
 not reply readily. She told him only that his brother was in 
 Heaven, and was praying for them all. Jean-Christophe could 
 get no more out of her; she bade him be quiet, and to let her 
 go on with her work. She seem.ed to be absorbed in her sewing; 
 she looked anxious, and did not rai.se her eyes. But after some 
 time she looked at him where he was in the corner, whither he 
 had retired to sulk, began to smile, and told him to go and play 
 outside. 
 
 These scraps of conversation profoundly agitated Jean-Chris- 
 tophe. There had been a child, a little boy, belonging to his 
 mother, like himself, bearing the same name, almost exactly 
 the same, and he was dead ! Dead ! He did not exactly know 
 what that was, but it was something terrible. And they never 
 talked of this other Jean-Christophe; he was quite forgotten. 
 It would be the same with him if he were to die? This thought 
 
62 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 was with him still in the evening at table with his family, 
 when he saw them all laughing and talking of trifles. So^ then, 
 it was possible that they would be gay after he was dead! 
 
 Oh ! he never would have believed that his mother could be 
 selflsh enough to laugh after the death of her little boy! He 
 hated them all. He wanted to weep for himself, for his own 
 death, in advance. At the same time he wanted to ask a 
 whole heap of questions, but he dared not; he remembered the 
 voice in which his mother had bid him be quiet. At last he 
 could contain himself no longer, and one night when he had 
 gone to bed, and Louisa came to kiss him, he asked: 
 
 Mother, did he sleep in my bed ? 
 
 The poor woman trembled, and, trying to take on an in- 
 different tone of' voice, she asked : 
 
 ^^who?^^ : 
 
 The little boy who is dead,’^ said Jean-Christophe in a ■ 
 whisper. | 
 
 His mother clutched him with her hands. j 
 
 ^^Be quiet — quiet,’^ she said. 
 
 Her voice trembled. Jean-Christophe, whose head was lean- 
 ing against her bosom, heard her heart beating. There was a 
 moment of silence, then she said: ! 
 
 You must never talk of that, my dear. ... Go to sleep. 
 ... No, it was not his bed.^^ 
 
 She kissed him. He thought he felt her cheek wet against | 
 ihis. He wished he could have been sure of it. He vras a little 
 \ /comforted. There was grief in her then! Then he doubted it ^ 
 \r again the next moment, when he heard her in the next room 
 talking in a quiet, ordinary voice. Which was true — that or | 
 what had just been ? He turned about for long in his bed with- |i 
 out flnding any answer. He wanted his mother to suffer ; not i! 
 that he also did not suffer in the knowledge that she was sad, | 
 but it would have done him so much good, in spite of every- | 
 \ thing ! He would have felt himself less alone. He slept, and | 
 \ next day thought no more of it. ! 
 
 Some weeks afterwards one of the urchins with whom he 
 played in the street did not come at the usual time. One of 
 them said that he was ill, and they got used to not seeing him 
 in their games. It was explained, it was quite simple. One 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 53 
 
 evening Jean-Christophe had gone to bed; it was early, and 
 from the recess in which his bed was, he saw the light in the 
 room. There was a knock at the door. A neighbor had come 
 to have a chat. He listened absently, telling himself stories 
 as usnal. The words of their talk did not reach him. Suddenly 
 he heard the neighbor say : “ He is dead.” His blood stopped, 
 for he had understood who was dead. He listened and held 
 his breath. His parents cried out. Melchior’s booming voice 
 said : 
 
 “Jean-Christophe, do you hear? Poor Fritz is dead.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe made an effort, and replied quietly: 
 
 “ Yes, papa.” 
 
 His bosom was drawn tight as in a vise. 
 
 Melchior went on : 
 
 “"Yes, papa.’ Is that all you say? You are not grieved 
 by it.” 
 
 Louisa, who understood the child, said: 
 
 “ ’Ssh ! Let him sleep ! ” • j 
 
 And they talked in whispers. But Jean-Christophe, pricking 
 his ears, gathered all the details of illness— typhoid fever, cold 
 baths, delirium, the parents’ grief. He could not breathe, 
 a lump in his throat choked him. He shuddered. All these 
 horrible things took shape in his mind. Above all, he gleaned 
 that the disease was contagious — that is, that he also might die 
 in the same way — and terror froze him, for he remembered 
 that he had shaken hands with Fritz the last time he had seen 
 him, and that very day had gone past the house. But he made 
 no sound, so as to avoid having to talk, and when his father^ 
 after the neighbor had gone, asked him: “Jean-Christophe, 
 are you asleep ? ” he did not reply. He heard Melchior saying 
 to Louisa : 
 
 "" The boy has no heart.” 
 
 Louisa did not reply, but a moment later she came and 
 gently raised the curtain and looked at the little bed. Jean- 
 Christophe only just had time to close his eyes and imitate 
 the regular breathing which his brothers made when they were 
 asleep. Louisa went away on tip-toe. And yet how he wanted 
 to keep her! How he wanted to tell her that he was afraid, 
 and to ask her to save him, or at least to comfort him! But 
 
 f 
 
54 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 he was afraid of their laughing at him, and treating him as a 
 coward; and besides, he knew only too well that nothing that 
 they might say would be any good. And for hours he lay there 
 in agony, thinking that he felt the disease creeping over him, 
 and pains in his head, a stricture of the heart, and thinking 
 in terror : “ It is the end. I am ill. I am going to die. I am 
 going to die ! ” . . . Once he sat up in his bed and called to 
 his mother in a low voice; but they were asleep, and he dared 
 not wake them. 
 
 From that time on his childhood was poisoned by the idea 
 of death. His nerves delivered him up to all sorts of little 
 baseless sicknesses, to depression, to sudden transports, and fits 
 of choking. His imagination ran riot with these troubles, and 
 .thought it saw in all of them the murderous beast which was 
 to rob him of his life. How many times he suffered agonies, 
 with his mother sitting only a few yards away from him, and 
 she guessing nothing! For in his cowardice he was brave 
 enough to conceal all his terror in a strange jumble of feeling 
 — pride in not turning to others, shame of being afraid, and 
 the scrupulousness of a tenderness which forbade him to trouble 
 his mother. But he never ceased to think : “ This time I am 
 ill. I am seriously ill. It is diphtheria. . . .” He had chanced 
 on the word “diphtheria.” . . . “Dear God! not this 
 time! ...” 
 
 He had religious ideas : he loved to believe what his mother 
 had told him, that after death the soul ascended to the Lord, 
 and if it were pious entered into the garden of paradise. But 
 the idea of this journey rather frightened than attracted him. 
 
 I He was not at all envious of the children whom God, as a 
 recompense, according to his mother, took in their sleep and 
 : called to Him without having made them suffer. He trembled, 
 as he went to sleep, for fear that God should indulge this 
 ’ whimsy at his expense. It must be terrible to be taken suddenly 
 from the warmth of one’s bed and dragged through the void 
 into the presence of -God. He imagined God as an enormous 
 sun, with a voice of thunder. How it must hurt! It must 
 burn the eyes, ears — all one’s soul ! Then, God could punish — 
 you never know. . . . And besides, that did not prevent all 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 55 
 
 could guess them from what he had heard— your body in a 
 box, all alone at the bottom of a hole, lost in the crowd of those 
 revolting cemeteries to which he was taken to pray. . . God! 
 God! How sad! how sad! . . . 
 
 And yet it was not exactly joyous to live, and be hungry, 
 and see your father drunk, and to be beaten, to suffer in so 
 many ways from the wickedness of other children, from the 
 insulting pity of grown-up persons, and to be understood by 
 no one, not even by your mother. Everybody humiliates you, 
 no one loves you. You are alone — alone, and matter so little! 
 Yes; but it was just this that made him want to live. He 
 felt in himself a surging power of wrath. A strange thing, that 
 power! It could do nothing yet; it was as though it were 
 afar off and gagged, swaddled, paralyzed; he had no idea what 
 it wanted, what, later on, it would be. But it was in him; 
 he was sure of it ; he felt it stirring and crying out. To-morrow 
 — to-morrow, what a voyage he would take! He had a savage 
 desire to live, to punish the wicked, to do great things. “ Oh ! 
 but how I will live when I am . . .” he pondered a little — 
 “ when I am eighteen ! ” Sometimes he put it at twenty-one ; 
 that was the extreme limit. He thought that was enough for 
 the domination of the world. He thought of the heroes dearest 
 to him — of Napoleon, and of that other more remote hero, 
 whom he preferred, Alexander the Great. Surely he would be 
 like them if only he lived for another twelve — ten years. He 
 never thought of pitying those who died at thirty. They were 
 old; they had lived their lives; it was their fault if they had 
 failed. But to die now . . . despair! Too terrible to pass 
 while yet a little child, and forever to be in the minds of men 
 a little boy whom everybody thinks he has the right to scold ! 
 He wept with rage at the thought, as though he were already 
 dead. 
 
 This agony of death tortured his childish years — corrected 
 only by disgust with all life and the sadness of his own. 
 
 It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling 
 night that every moment seemed to intensify about him, that 
 there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space, 
 the light which was to illuminate his life: divine music. . . . 
 
56 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 \/ 
 
 His grandfather gave the children an old piano, which one 
 of his clients, anxious to be rid of it, had asked him to take. 
 His patient ingenuity had almost put it in order. The present 
 had not been very well received. Louisa thought her room 
 already too small, without filling it up any more; and Melchior 
 said that Jean Michel had not ruined himself over it: just 
 firewood. Only Jean-Christophe was glad of it without exactly 
 knowing why. It seemed to him a magic box, full of marvelous 
 stories, just like the ones in the fairy-book — a volume of the 
 Thousand and One Nights ’’—which his grandfather read 
 , to him sometimes to their mutual delight. He had heard hjs 
 father try the piano on the day of its arrival, and draw from it a 
 little rain of arpeggios like the drops that a puff of wind shakes 
 from the wet branches of a tree after a shower. He clapped 
 his hands, and cried “ Encore ! ” but Melchior scornfully closed ‘ 
 the piano, saying that it was worthless. Jean-Christophe did ; 
 not insist, hut after that he was always hovering about the 
 instrument. As soon as no one was near he would raise the ' 
 lid, and softly press down a key, just as if he were moving | 
 with his finger the living shell of some great insect; he wanted 
 to push out the creature that was locked up in it. Sometimes ■■ 
 in his haste he would strike too hard, and then his mother would i 
 cry out, “Will you not be quiet? Don’t go touching every- j 
 thing ! ” or else he would pinch himself cruelly in closing the ^ 
 piano, and make piteous faces as he sucked his bruised fin- | 
 gers. ... ] 
 
 Now his greatest joy is when his mother is gone out for a J 
 day’s service, or to pay some visit in the town. He listens as | 
 she goes down the stairs, and into the street, and away. He I 
 is alone. He opens the piano, and brings, up a chair, and perches | 
 on it. His shoulders just about reach the keyboard; it is 1 
 enough for what he wants. Why does he wait until he is alone ? 1 
 No one would prevent his playing so long as he did not make i 
 too much noise. But he is ashamed before the others, and i 
 dare not. And then they talk and move about: that spoils his | 
 pleasure. It is so much more beautiful when he is alone! | 
 Jean-Christophe holds his breath so that the silence may be | 
 6V6I1 srrGatGr. and also honanso ho i.«s a lifflp PYPi+prI qc -d. 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 57 
 
 his finger on the key; sometimes he lifts his finger after he \ 
 has the key half pressed down, and lays it on another. Ddes he \ 
 know what will come out of it, more than what will come out 
 of the other? Suddenly a sound issues from it; there are deep 
 sounds and high sounds, some tinkling, some roaring. The 
 child listens to them one by one as they die away and finally 
 cease to be ; they hover in the air like bells heard far off, coming 
 near in the wind, and then going away again; then when you 
 listen you hear in the distance other voices, different, joining 
 in and droning like flying insects; they seem to call to you, 
 to draw you away farther — farther and farther into the mys- 
 terious regions, where they dive down and are lost. . . . They 
 are gone! ... No; still they murmur. ... A little beating 
 of wings. . . . How strange it all is! They are like spirits. 
 How is it that they are so obedient? how is it that they are 
 held captive in this old box? But best of all is when you lay 
 two Angers on two keys at once. Then you never know exactly 
 what will happen. Sometimes the two spirits are hostile; they 
 are angry with each other, and flght; and hate each other, and 
 buzz testily. Then voices arc raised; they cry out, angrily, 
 now sorrowfully. J ean-Christophe adores that ; it is as though 
 there were monsters chained up, biting at their fetters, beating 
 against the bars of their prison; they are like to break them, 
 and burst out like the monsters in the fairy-book — the genii 
 imprisoned in the Arab bottles under the seal of Solomon. 
 Others flatter you; they try to cajole you, but you feel that 
 they only want to bite, that they are hot and fevered. Jean- 
 Christophe does not know what they want, but they lure him 
 and disturb him; they make him almost blush. And some- 
 times there are notes that love each other ; sounds embrace, 
 as people do with their arms when they kiss : they are gracious 
 and sweet. These are the good spirits; their faces are smiling, 
 and there are no lines in them; they love little Jean-Chris- 
 tophe, and little Jean-Christophe loves them. Tears come to 
 his eyes as he hears them, and he is never weary of calling 
 them up. They are his friends, his dear, tender friends. . . . 
 
 So the child journeys through the forest of sounds, and 
 round him he is conscious of thousands of forces lying in wait 
 for him, and calling to him to caress or devour him. . • . 
 
58 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 One day Melchior came upon him thus. He made him jump 
 with fear at the sound of his great voice. Jean-Christophe, 
 thinking he was doing wrong, quickly put his hands up to his 
 ears to ward off the blows he feared. But Melchior did not 
 scold him, strange to say ; he was in a good temper, and laughed. 
 
 ^^You like that, boy?^^ he asked, patting his head kindly. 
 
 Would you like me to teach you to play it?^^ 
 
 Would he like ! . . . Delighted, he murmured : Yes.’^ The 
 two of them sat down at the piano, Jean-Christophe perched 
 this time on a pile of big books, and very attentively he took 
 his first lesson. He learned first of all that the buzzing spirits 
 have strange names, like Chinese names, of one syllable, or 
 even of one letter. He was astonished; he imagined them to 
 be different from that: beautiful, caressing names, like the 
 princesses in the fairy stories. He did not like the familiarity 
 with which his father talked of them. Again, when Melchior 
 evoked them they were not the same; they seemed to become 
 ^indifferent as they rolled out from under his fingers. But 
 ‘ Jean-Christophe was glad to learn about the relationships be- 
 tween them, their hierarchy, the scales, which were like a 
 King commanding an army, or like a band of negroes marching 
 in single file. He was surprised to see that each soldier, or 
 each negro, could become a monarch in his turn, or the head 
 of a similar band, and that it was possible to summon whole 
 battalions from one end to the other of the keyboard. It 
 amused him to hold the thread which made them march. But 
 it was a small thing compared with what he had seen at first; 
 his enchanted forest was lost. However, he set himself to learn, 
 for it was not tiresome, and he was surprised at his father’s 
 patience. Melchior did not weary of it either; he made him 
 begin the same thing over again ten times. Jean-Christophe 
 did not understand why he should take so much trouble; his 
 father loved him, then? That was good! The boy worked 
 ^way; his heart was filled with gratitude. 
 
 He would have been less docile had he known what thoughts 
 were springing into being in his father’s head. 
 
 From that day on Melchior took him to the house of a neigh- 
 bor, where three times a week there was chamber music. Mel- 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 59 
 
 chior played first violin, Jean Michel the violoncello. The 
 other two were a bank-clerk and the old watchmaker of the 
 Schill6Tstr(isse. Every now and then the chemist joined them 
 with his flute. They began at five, and went on till nine. Be- 
 tween each piece they drank beer. Neighbors used to come in 
 and out, and listen without a word, leaning against the wall, 
 and nodding their heads, and beating time with their feet, 
 and filling the room with clouds of tobacco-smoke. Page fol- 
 lowed page, piece followed piece, but the patience of the musi- 
 cians was never exhausted. They did not speak; they were all 
 attention; their brows were knit, and from time to time they 
 grunted with pleasure, but for the rest they were perfectly 
 incapable not only of expressing, but even of feeling, the beauty 
 of what they played. They played neither very accurately nor 
 in good time, but they never went off the rails, and followed 
 faithfully the marked changes of tone. They had that musical 
 facility which is easily satisfied, that mediocre perfection which 
 is so plentiful in the race which is said to be the most musical 
 in the world. They had also that great appetite which does 
 not stickle for the quality of its food, so only there be quantity 
 —that healthy appetite to which all music is good, and the 
 more substantial the better— it sees no difference between 
 Brahms and Beethoven, or between the works of the same 
 master, between an empty concerto and a moving sonata, be- 
 cause they are fashioned of the same stuff. 
 
 Jean-Christophe sat apart in a corner, which was his own, 
 behind the piano. No one could disturb him there, for to reach 
 it he had to go on all fours. It was half dark there, and the 
 boy had just room to lie on the floor if he huddled up. The 
 smoke of the tobacco filled his eyes and throat : dust, too ; there 
 were large flakes of it like sheepskin, but he did not mind that, 
 and listened gravely, squatting there Turkish fashion, and 
 widening the holes in the cloth of the piano with his dirty little 
 fingers. He did not like everything that they played ; but noth- 
 ing that they played bored him, and he never tried to formulate 
 his opinions, for he thought himself too small to know anything. 
 Only some music sent him to sleep, some woke him up ; it 
 was never disagreeable to him. Without his knowing it, it 
 ViTas nearly always good music that excited him. Sure of not 
 
60 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 (*■ 
 
 / 
 
 being seen, he made faces, he wrinkled his nose, ground his 
 teeth, or stuck out his tongue; his eyes flashed with anger or 
 drooped languidly; he moved his arms and legs with a defiant 
 and valiant air; he wanted to march, to lunge out, to pulverize 
 the world. He fidgeted so much that in the end a head would 
 peer over the piano, and say : Hullo, boy, are you mad ? 
 Leave the piano. . . . Take your hand away, or Til pull your 
 ears ! And that made him crestfallen and angry. Why did 
 they want to spoil his pleasure? He was not doing any harm. 
 Must he always be tormented! His father chimed in. They 
 chid him for making a noise, and said that he did not like 
 music. And in the end he believed it. These honest citizens 
 grinding out concertos would have been astonished if they had , 
 been told that the only person in the company who really felt 
 the music was the little boy. 1 
 
 If they wanted him to keep quiet, why did they play airs ; 
 which make you march? In those pages were rearing horses, 
 swords, war-cries, the pride of triumph; and they wanted him, ^ 
 like them, to do no more than wag his head and beat time with | 
 his feet ! They had only to play placid dreams or some of those 
 chattering pages which talk so much and say nothing. There ’ 
 are plenty of them, for example, like that piece of Goldmark’s, i 
 of which the old watchmaker had just said with a delighted • 
 smile : It is pretty. There is no harshness in it. All the | 
 
 corners are rounded off. . . The boy was very quiet then, i 
 He became drowsy. He did not know what they were playing, ^ 
 hardly heard it; but he was happy; his limbs were numbed, ] 
 
 and he was dreaming. 
 
 His dreams were not a consecutive story; they had neither 
 head nor tail. It was rarely that he saw a definite picture: • 
 his mother making a cake, and with a knife removing the paste 
 that clung to her fingers; a water-rat that he had seen the 
 night before swimming in the river; a whip that he wanted . 
 to make with a willow wand. . . . Heaven knows why these ^ 
 things should have cropped up in his memory at such a time! ^ 
 But most often he saw nothing at all, and yet he felt things J 
 innumerable and infinite. It was as though there were a | 
 number of very important things not to be spoken of, or 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 61 
 
 because they had always been so. Some of them were sad, 
 terribly sad; but there was nothing painful in them, as there 
 is in the things that belong to real life ; they were not ugly and 
 debasing, like the blows that Jean-Christophe had from his 
 father, or like the things that were in his head when, sick at 
 heart with shame, he thought of some humiliation; they filled 
 ihe mind with a melancholy calm. And some were bright and 
 shining, shedding torrents of joy. And Jean-Christophe 
 thought: ^^Yes, it is thus — thus that I will do by-and-by.^^ 
 He did not know exactly what thus was, nor why he said it,, 
 but he felt that he had to say it, and that it was clear as day. 
 He heard the sound of a sea, and he was quite near to it, kept 
 from it only by a wall of dunes. Jean-Christophe had no idea 
 what sea it was, or what it wanted with him, but he was con- 
 scious that it would rise above the barrier of dunes. And 
 then! . . . Then all would be well, and he would be quite 
 happy. Nothing to do but to hear it, then, quite near, to sink 
 to sleep to the sound of its great voice, soothing away all his 
 little griefs and humiliations. They were sad still, but no 
 longer shameful nor injurious; everything seemed natural and 
 almost sweet. 
 
 Very often it was mediocre music that produced this intoxica- 
 tion in him. The writers of it were poor devils, with no thought 
 in their heads but the gaining of money, or the hiding away 
 of the emptiness of their lives by tagging notes together accord- 
 ing to accepted formulae — or to be original, in defiance of 
 formulae. But in the notes of music, even when handled by 
 an idiot, there is such a power of life that they can let loose 
 storms in a simple soul. Perhaps even the dreams suggested 
 by the idiots are more mysterious and more free than those 
 breathed by an imperious thought which drags you along by 
 force, for aimless movement and empty chatter do not disturb 
 the mind in its own pondering. . . . 
 
 So, forgotten and forgetting, the child stayed in his corner 
 behind the piano, until suddenly he felt ants climbing up his 
 legs. And he remembered then that he was a little boy with 
 dirty nails, and that he was rubbing his nose against a white- 
 washed wall, and holding his feet in his hands. 
 
 On the day when Melchior, stealing on tiptoe, had surprised 
 
62 
 
 JEAN-.CHEISTOPHE 
 
 the boy at the keyboard that was too high for him, he had stayed 
 to watch him for a moment, and suddenly there had flashed 
 upon him : A little prodigy ! . . . Why had he not thought 
 of it? . . . What luck for the family! . . No doubt he 
 had thought that the boy would be a little peasant like his 
 mother. It would cost nothing to try. What a great thing 
 it would be! He would take him all over Germany, perhaps 
 abroad. It would be a jolly life, and noble to boot.^^ Melchior 
 never failed to look for the nobility hidden in all he did, for 
 it was not often that he failed to find it, after some reflection. 
 
 Strong in this assurance, immediately after supper, as soon 
 as he had taken his last mouthful, he dumped the child once 
 more in front of the piano, and made him go through the day’s , 
 lesson until his eyes closed in weariness. Then three times 
 the next day. Then the day after that. Then every day. J ean- " 
 Christophe soon tired of it; then he was sick to death of it; ; 
 finally he could stand it no more, and tried to revolt against 
 it. There was no point in what he was made to do: nothing ; 
 but learning to run as fast as possible over the keys, by loosen- | 
 ing the thumb, or exercising the fourth finger, which would 
 cling awkwardly to the two next to it. It got on his nerves; * 
 there was nothing beautiful in it. There was an end of the t 
 magic sounds, and fascinating monsters, and the universe of • 
 dreams felt in one moment. . . . Nothing but scales and exer- | 
 cises — dry, monotonous, dull — duller than the conversation at | 
 meal-time, which was always the same — always about the dishes, j 
 and always the same dishes. At first the child listened absently ] 
 to what his father said. When he was severely reprimanded he 
 went on with a bad grace. He paid no attention to abuse; he 
 met it with bad temper. The last straw was when one evening 
 he heard Melchior unfold his plans in the next room. So it 
 was in order to put him on show like a trick animal that he 
 was so badgered and forced every day to move bits of ivory ! 
 He was not even given time to go and see his beloved river. 
 What was it made them so set against him? He was angry, 
 hurt in his pride, robbed of his liberty. He decided that he 
 would play no more, or as badly as possible, and would dis- 
 courage his father. It would be hard, but at all costs he must 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 63 
 
 The very next lesson he began to put his plan into execution. 
 He set himself conscientiously to hit the notes awry, or to 
 bungle every touch. Melchior cried out, then roared, and blows 
 began to rain. He had a heavy ruler. At every false note 
 he struck the boy’s fingers, and at the same time shouted in 
 his ears, so that he was like to deafen him. Jean-Christophe’s 
 face twitched under the pain of it; he bit his lips to keep 
 himself from crying, and stoically went on hitting the notes all 
 wrong, bobbing his head down whenever he felt a blow coming. 
 But his system was not good, and it was not long before he 
 began to see that it was so. Melchior was as obstinate as his 
 son, and he swore that even if they were to stay there two 
 days and two nights he would not let him off a single note until 
 it had been properly played. Then Jean-Christophe tried too 
 deliberately to play wrongly, and Melchior began to suspect 
 the trick, as he saw that the boy’s hand fell heavily to one side 
 at every note with obvious intent. The blows became more 
 frequent; Jean-Christophe was no longer conscious of his ‘fin- 
 gers. He wept pitifully and silently, sniffing, and swallowing 
 down his sobs and tears. He understood that he had nothing 
 to gain by going on like that, and that he would have to resort 
 to desperate measures. He stopped, and, trembling at the 
 thought of the storm which was about to let loose, he said 
 valiantly : 
 
 ^^Papa, I won’t play any more.” 
 
 Melchior choked. 
 
 ^^What! What! ...” he cried. 
 
 He took and almost broke the boy’s arm with shaking it. 
 Jean-Christophe, trembling more and more, and raising his 
 elbow to ward off the blows, said again : 
 
 I won’t play any more. First, because I don’t like being 
 beaten. And then ...” 
 
 He could not finish. A terrific blow knocked the wind out 
 of him, and Melchior roared: 
 
 ^^Ah! you don’t like being beaten? You don’t like 
 it? . . .” 
 
 Blows rained. Jean-Christophe bawled through his sobs: 
 
 And then ... I don’t like music ! . . . I don’t like 
 music! . . .” 
 
64 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 He slipped down from his chair. Melchior roughly put him 
 back, and knocked his knuckles ' against the keyboard. He 
 cried : 
 
 You shall play! 
 
 And Jean-Christophe shouted : 
 
 ^^No! No! I won’t play!” 
 
 Melchior had to surrender. He thrashed the boy, thrust him 
 from the room, and said that he should have nothing to eat 
 all day, or the whole month, until he had played all his exer- 
 cises without a mistake. He kicked him out and slammed the 
 door after him. 
 
 Jean-Christophe found himself on the stairs, the dark and 
 dirty stairs, worm-eaten. A draught came through a broken 
 in the skylight, and the walls were dripping. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe sat on one of the greasy steps; his heart was beating 
 wildly with anger and emotion. In a low voice he cursed his 
 father : 
 
 Beast ! That’s what you are ! 
 ture ... a brute! Yes, a brute! 
 
 you! 
 
 Oh, I wish you were 
 
 A beast ... a gross crea- 
 . . and I hate you, I hate 
 dead ! I wish you were 
 
 dead!” 
 
 His bosom swelled. He looked desperately at the sticky 
 staircase and the spider’s web swinging in the wind above the 
 broken pane. He felt alone, lost in his misery. He looked 
 at the gap in the banisters. . . . What if he were to throw 
 himself down? ... or out of the window? . . . Yes, what if 
 he were to kill himself to punish them? How remorseful they 
 would be! He heard the noise of his fall from the stairs. 
 The door upstairs opened suddenly. Agonized voices cried : 
 
 He has fallen ! — He has fallen ! ” Footsteps clatter^ed down- 
 stairs. His father and mother threw themselves weeping upon 
 his body. His mother sobbed: ^^It is your fault! You have 
 killed him ! ” His father waved his arms, threw himself on 
 his knees, beat his head against the banisters, and cried : What 
 a wretch am I ! What a wretch am I ! ” The sight of all 
 this softened his misery. He was on the point of taking pity 
 on their grief; but then he thought that it was well for them, 
 and he enjoyed his revenge. . . . 
 
 When his story was ended, he found himself once more at 
 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 65 
 
 the top of the stairs in the dark; he looked down once more, 
 and his desire to throw himself down was gone. He even 
 shuddered^ a little, and moved away from the edge, thinking 
 that he might fall. Then he felt that he was a prisoner, like 
 a poor bird in a cage — a prisoner forever, with nothing to do 
 but to break his head and hurt himself. He wept, wept, and 
 he rubbed his eyes with his dirty little hands, so that in a 
 moment he was filthy. As he wept he never left off looking at 
 the things about him, and he found some distraction in that. 
 He stopped moaning for a moment to look at the spider which 
 had just begun to move. Then he began with less conviction. 
 He listened to the sound of his own weeping, and went on 
 mechanically with his sobbing, without much knowing why he 
 did so. Soon he got up; he was attracted by the window. He 
 sat on the window-sill, retiring into the background, and 
 watched the spider furtively. It interested while it revolted 
 him. 
 
 Below the Ehine flowed, washing the walls of the house. In 
 the staircase window it was like being suspended over the river 
 in a moving sky. Jean-Christophe never limped down the 
 stairs without taking a long look at it, but he had never yet 
 seen it as it was to-day. Grief sharpens the senses; it is as 
 though everything were more sharply graven on the vision 
 after tears have washed away the dim traces of memory. The 
 river was like a living thing to the child — a creature inexplica- 
 ble, but how much more powerful than all the creatures that 
 he knew ! J ean-Christophe leaned forward to see it better ; he 
 pressed his mouth and flattened his nose against the pane. 
 Where was it going? What did it want? It looked free, and 
 sure of its road. . . . Nothing could stop it. At all hours of 
 the day or night, rain or sun, whether there were joy or sorrow 
 in the house, it went on going by, and it was as . though nothing 
 mattered to it, as though it never knew sorrow, and rejoiced 
 in its strength. What joy to be like it, to run through the fields, 
 and by willow-branches, and over little shining pebbles and 
 crisping sand, and to care for nothing, to be cramped by noth- 
 ing, to be free! . . . 
 
 The boy looked and listened greedily; it was as though he 
 were borne along by the river, moving by with it. . . . When 
 
66 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 he closed his eyes he saw color — ^blue, green, yellow, red, and 
 great chasing shadows and sunbeams. . . , What he sees takes 
 shape. Now it is a large plain, reeds, corn waving under a 
 breeze scented with new grass and mint. Flowers on every side 
 — cornflowers, poppies, violets. How lovely it is! How sweet 
 the air ! How good it is to lie down in the thick, soft grass ! 
 
 . . . Jean-Christophe feels glad and a little bewildered, as he 
 does when on feast-days his father pours into his glass a little 
 Ehine wine. . . . The river goes by. . . . The country is 
 changed. ... Now there are trees leaning over the water; their 
 delicate leaves, like little hands, dip, move, and turn about in 
 the water. A village among the trees is mirrored in the river. 
 There are cypress-trees, and the crosses of the cemetery showing 
 above the white wall washed by the stream. Then thbre are 
 rocks, a mountain gorge, vines on the slopes, a little pine-wood, ’ 
 and ruined castles. . . . And once more the plain, corn, birds, ; 
 and the sun. ... 
 
 The great green mass of the river goes by smoothly, like a • 
 single thought; there are no waves, almost no ripples — smooth, ^ 
 oily patches. Jean-Christophe does not see it; he has closed 
 his eyes to hear it better. The ceaseless roaring fills him, makes 
 him giddy ; he is exalted by this eternal, masterful dream which 
 goes no man knows whither. Over the turmoil of its depths ^ 
 rush waters, in swift rhythm, eagerly, ardently. And from ' 
 the rhythm ascends music, like a vine climbing a trellis — j 
 arpeggios from silver keys, sorrowful violins, velvety and , 
 smooth-sounding flutes. . . . The country has disappeared. ' 
 The river has disappeared. There floats by only a strange, soft, 
 and twilight atmosphere. Jean-Christophe’s heart flutters with 
 emotion. What does he see now ? Oh ! Charming faces ! . . . 
 
 A little girl with brown tresses calls to him, slowly, softly, and 
 mockingly. ... A pale boy’s face looks at him with melancholy 
 blue eyes. . . . Others smile; other eyes look at him — curious 
 and provoking eyes, and their glances make him blush — eyes 
 affectionate and mournful, like the eyes of a dog — eyes im- 
 perious, eyes suffering. . . . And the pale face of a woman, 
 with black hair, and lips close pressed, and eyes so large that 
 they obscure her other features, and they gaze upon Jean- 
 Christophe with an ardor that hurts him. . . . And, dearest of 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 67 
 
 all, that face which smiles upon him with clear gray eyes and 
 lips a little open, showing gleaming white teeth. ... Ah! 
 how kind and tender is that smile ! All his heart is tenderness 
 from it! How good it is to love! Again! Smile upon me 
 
 again! Do not go! . . . Alas! it is gone! . . . But it leaves 
 
 in his heart sweetness ineffable. Evil, sorrow, are no more; 
 nothing is left. . . . Nothing, only an airy dream, like serene 
 music, floating down a sunbeam, like the gossamers on fine 
 summer days. . . . What has happened? What are these 
 visions that fill the child with sadness and sweet sorrow? Never 
 had he seen them before, and yet he knew them and recognized 
 them. Whence come they? From what obscure abysm of 
 
 creation? Are they wWt has been ... or what will 
 
 ie? . . . 
 
 Now all is done, every haunting form is gone. Once more 
 through a misty veil, as though he were soaring high above 
 it, the river in flood appears, covering the fields, and rolling 
 by, majestic, slow, almost still. And far, far away, like a: steely ^ 
 light upon the horizon, a watery plain, a line of trembling waves 
 — the sea. The river runs down to it. The sea seems to run 
 up to the river. She fires him. He desires her. He must lose 
 himself in her. . . . The music hovers; lovely dance rhythms 
 swing out madly; all the world is rocked in their triumphant 
 whirligig. . . . The soul, set free, cleaves space, like swallows’ 
 flight, like swallows drunk with the air, skimming across the 
 sky with shrill cries. . . . Joy! Joy! There is nothing, noth- 
 ing ! . . . Oh, infinite happiness ! . . . 
 
 Hours passed; it was evening; the staircase was in darkness. 
 Drops of rain made rings upon the river’s gown, and the current 
 bore them dancing away. Sometimes the branch of a tree or 
 pieces of black bark passed noiselessly and disappeared. The 
 murderous spider had withdrawn to her darkest corner. And 
 little Jean-Christophe was still leaning forward on the window- 
 sill. His face was pale and dirty; happiness shone in him. 
 
 He was asleep. 
 
68 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 III - 
 
 E la faccia del sol nascere ombrata. 
 
 Purgatorio, xxx. 
 
 ' He had to surrender. In spite of an obstinate and heroic 
 y resistance, blows triumphed over his ill-will. Every morning 
 for three hours, and for three hours every evening, Jean-Chris- 
 tophe was set before the instrument of torture. All on edge 
 with attention and weariness, with large tears rolling down 
 his cheeks and nose, he moved his little red hands over the 
 black and white keys — ^his hands were often stiff with cold — 
 under the threatening ruler, which descended at every false 
 note, and the harangues of his master, which were more odious " 
 
 to him than the blows. He thought that he hated music. And ; 
 
 yet he applied himself to it with a zest which fear of .Melchior 
 did not altogether explain. Certain words of his grandfather t 
 
 had made an impression on him. The old man, seeing his | 
 
 grandson weeping, had told him, with that gravity which he | 
 
 always maintained for the boy, that it was worth while suffer- \ 
 
 ing a little for the most beautiful and noble art given to men | 
 
 for their consolation and glory. And Jean-Christophe, who i 
 
 was grateful to his grandfather for talking to him like a man, | 
 
 had been secretly touched by these simple words, which sorted | 
 
 well with his childish stoicism and growing pride. But, more ^ 
 
 . than by argument, he was bound and enslaved by the memory 1 
 
 of certain musical emotions, bound and enslaved to the detested i 
 
 art, against which he tried in vain to rebel. | 
 
 There was in the town, as usual in Germany, a theater, where 7 
 opera, opera-comique, operetta, drama, comedy, and vaudeville 
 are presented — every sort of play of every style and fashion, 
 There were performances three times a week from six to nine in ^ 
 the evening. Old Jean Michel never missed one, and was equally ; 
 interested in everything. Once he took his grandson with him. r ; 
 Several days beforehand he told him at length what the piece 
 was about. Jean-Christophe did not understand it, but he did J 
 gather that there would be terrible things in it, and while he j 
 was consumed with the desire to see them he. was much afraid, ! 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 69 
 
 though he dared not confess it. He knew that there was to 
 be a storm, and he was fearful of being struck by lightning. 
 He knew that there was to be a battle, and he was not at all 
 sure that he would not be killed. On the night before, in 
 bed, he went through real agony, and on the day of the per- 
 formance he almost wished that his grandfather might be 
 prevented from coming for him. But when the hour was near, 
 and his grandfather did not come, he began to worry, and 
 every other minute looked out of the window. At last the 
 old man appeared, and they set out together. His heart leaped 
 in his bosom; his tongue was dry, and he could not speak. 
 
 They arrived at the mysterious building which was so often 
 talked about at home. At the door Jean Michel met some 
 acquaintances, and the boy, who was holding his hand tight 
 because he was afraid of being lost, could not understand how 
 they could talk and laugh quietly at such a moment. 
 
 Jean Michel took his usual place in the. first row behind the 
 orchestra. He leaned on the fialustrad^e, and began a long 
 conversation with the contra-bass. He was at home there; 
 there he was listened to because of his authority as a musician, 
 and he made the most of it; it might almost be said that he 
 abused it. Jean-Christophe could hear nothing. He was over- 
 whelmed by his expectation of the play, by the appearance of 
 the theater, which seemed magnificent to him, by the splendor 
 of the audience, who frightened him terribly. He dared not 
 turn his head, for he thought that all eyes were fixed on him. 
 He hugged his little cap between his knees, and he stared at 
 the magic curtain with round eyes. 
 
 At last three blows were struck. His grandfather blew his 
 nose, and drew the libretto from his pocket. He always fol- 
 lowed it scrupulously, so much so that sometimes he neglected 
 what was happening on the stage. The orchestra began to 
 play. With the opening chords Jean-Christophe felt more at 
 ease. He was at home in this world of sound, and from that 
 moment, however extravagant the play might be, it seemed nat- 
 ural to him. 
 
 The curtain was raised, to reveal pasteboard trees and crea- 
 tures who were not much more real. The boy looked at it all, 
 gaping with admiration, but he was not surprised. The piece 
 
70 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 was set in a fantastic East, of which he could have had no 
 idea. The poem was a web of ineptitudes, in which no human 
 quality was perceptible. Jean-Christophe hardly grasped it at 
 all; he made extraordinary mistakes, took one character for 
 another, and pulled at his grandfather’s sleeve to ask him absurd 
 questions, which showed that he had understood nothing. He 
 was not bored : passionately interested, on the contrary. Eound 
 the idiotic libretto he built a romance of his own invention, 
 which had no sort of relation to the one that was represented 
 on the stage. Every moment some incident upset his romance, 
 and he had to repair it, but that did not worry him. He had 
 made his choice of the people who moved upon the stage, mak- 
 ing all sorts of different sounds, and breathlessly he followed 
 the fate of those upon whom he had fastened his sympathy. 
 He was especially concerned with a fair lady, of uncertain age, 
 who had long, brilliantly fair hair, eyes of an unnatural size, 
 and bare feet. The monstrous improbabilities of the setting 
 did not shock him. His keen, childish eyes did not perceive 
 the grotesque ugliness of the actors, large and fleshy, and the 
 deformed chorus of all sizes in two lines, nor the pointlessness 
 of their gestures, nor their faces bloated by their shrieks, nor 
 the full wigs, nor the high heels of the tenor, nor the make-up 
 of his lady-love, whose face was streaked with variegated pen- 
 ciling. He was in the condition of a lover, whose passion blinds 
 him to the actual aspect of the beloved object. The marvelous 
 power of illusion, natural to children, stopped all unpleasant 
 sensations on the way, and transformed them. 
 
 The music especially worked wonders. It bathed the whole 
 scene in a misty atmosphere, in which everything became beau- 
 tiful, noble, and desirable. It bred in the soul a desperate 
 need of love, and at the same time showed phantoms of love 
 on all sides, to fill the void that itself had created. Little 
 Jean-Christophe was overwhelmed by his emotion. There were 
 words, gestures, musical phrases which disturbed him; he dared 
 not then raise his eyes; he knew not whether it were well 
 or ill; he blushed and grew pale by turns; sometimes there 
 came drops of sweat upon his brow, and he was fearful lest 
 all the people there should see his distress. When the catas- 
 trophe came about which inevitably breaks upon lovers in the 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 71 
 
 fourth act of an opera so as to provide the tenor and the prima 
 donna with an opportunity for showing off their shrillest 
 screams, the child thought he must choke 5 his throat hurt him 
 as though he had caught cold; he clutched at his neck with 
 his hands, and could not swallow his saliva; tears welled up 
 in him; his hands and feet were frozen. Fortunately, his 
 grandfather was not much less moved. He enjoyed the theater 
 with a childish simplicity. During the dramatic passages he 
 coughed carelessly to hide his distress, but Jean-Christophe saw 
 it, and it delighted him. It was horribly hot; Jean-Christophe 
 was dropping with sleep, and he was very uncomfortable. But 
 he thought only ; “ Is there much longer ? It cannot be fin- 
 ished ! ” Then suddenly it was finished, without his knowing 
 why. The curtain fell ; the audience rose ; the enchantment was 
 broken. 
 
 They went home through the night, the two children — the 
 old man and the little boy. What a fine night ! What a serene 
 moonlight! They said nothing; they were turning over their 
 memories. At last the old man said : 
 
 “ Did you like it, boy ? ” 
 
 Jean-Christophe could not reply; he was still fearful from 
 emotion, and he would not speak, so as not to break the spell; 
 he had to make an effort to whisper, with a sigh: 
 
 “Oh yes.” 
 
 The old man smiled. After a time he went on: 
 
 “ It’s a fine thing — a musician’s trade ! To create things like 
 that, such marvelous spectacles — is there anything more glori- 
 ous ? It is to be God on earth I ” 
 
 The boy’s mind leaped to that. What! a man had made all 
 that! That had not occurred to him. It had seemed that it' 
 must have made itself, must be the work of Nature. A man, 
 a musician, such as he would be some day ! Oh, to be that 
 for one day, only one day! And then afterwards . . . after- 
 wards, whatever you like! Die, if necessary! He asked: 
 
 “What man made that, grandfather?” 
 
 The old man told him of Frangois Marie Hassler, a 
 young German artist who lived at Berlin. He had known 
 him once. Jean-Christophe listened, all ears. Suddenly he 
 said: 
 
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 72 
 
 "And you, grandfather?” 
 
 . j| The old man trembled. 
 
 "What?” he asked. 
 
 I 
 
 ! i ^^Did you do things like that — ^you too?^’ 
 
 i : Certainly/^ said the old man a little crossly. 
 
 He was silent, and after they had walked a little he 
 I : sighed heavily. It was one of the sorrows of his life. He 
 
 had always longed to write for the theater, and inspira- 
 'ii tion had always betrayed him. He had in his desk one 
 or two acts written, but he had so little illusion as to their 
 worth that he had never dared to submit them to an outside 
 judgment. 
 
 They said no more until they reached home. either slept. 
 
 The old man was troubled. He took his Bible for consolation. 
 
 In bed Jean-Christophe turned over and over the events of the 
 evening; he recollected the smallest details, and the girl with 
 the bare feet reappeared before him. As he dozed off a musical 
 , f phrase rang in his ears as distinctly as if the orchestra were t 
 there. All his body leaped; he sat up on his pillow, his head ^ 
 
 buzzing with music, and he thought: Some day I also shall ; 
 
 write. Oh, can I ever do it?^^ ; 
 
 i From that moment he had only one desire, to go to the ^ 
 
 , theater again, and he set himself to work more keenly, because I 
 they made a visit to the theater his reward. He thought of { 
 
 nothing but that; half the week he thought of the last per- \ 
 
 formance, and the other half he thought of the next. He was ] 
 
 fearful of being ill on a theater day, and this fear made him 1 
 
 often find in himself the symptoms of three or four illnesses, y 
 
 When the day came he did not eat; he fidgeted like a soul in 
 agony; he looked at the clock fifty times, and thought that 
 the evening would never come; finally, unable to contain him- j 
 self, he would go out an hour before the office opened, for fear 
 of not being able to procure a seat, and, as he was the first 
 in the empty theater, he used to grow uneasy. His grandfather 
 had told him that once or twice the audience had not been 
 large enough, and so the players had preferred not to perform, 
 and to give back the money. He watched the arrivals and 
 counted them, thinking : Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty- 
 five. . . . Oh, it is not enough . . . there will never be 
 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 73 
 
 enough ! And when he saw some important person enter 
 the circle or the stall^ his heart was lighter, and he said to 
 himself: ''They will never dare to send him away. Surely 
 they will play for him.’’ But he was not convinced; he would 
 not be reassured until the musicians took their places. And 
 even then he would be afraid that the curtain would rise, and 
 they would announce, as they had done one evening, a change 
 of programme. With lynx eyes he watched the stand of the 
 contra-bass to see if the title written on his music was that of 
 the piece announced. And when he had seen it there, two 
 minutes later he would look again to make quite sure that he 
 had not been wrong. The conductor was not there. He must 
 be ill. There was a stirring behind the curtain, and a sound 
 of voices and hurried footsteps. Was there an accident, some 
 untoward misfortune? Silence again. The conductor was at 
 his post. Everything seemed ready at last. . . . They did not 
 begin ! What was happening ? He boiled over with impatience. 
 Then the bell rang. His heart thumped away. The orchestra 
 began the overture, and for a few hours Jean-Christophe would 
 swim in happiness, troubled only by the idea that it must soon 
 come to an end. 
 
 Some time after that a musical event brought even more 
 excitement into Jean-Christophe’s thoughts. Frangois Marie 
 Hassler, the author of the first opera which had so bowled him 
 over, was to visit the town. He was to conduct a concert con- 
 sisting of his compositions. The town was excited. The young 
 musician was the subject of violent discussion in Germany, 
 and for a fortnight he was the only topic of conversation. It 
 was a different matter when he arrived. The friends of Mel- 
 chior and old Jean Michel continually came for news, and 
 they went away with the most extravagant notions of the musi- 
 cian’s habits and eccentricities. The child followed these narra- 
 tives with eager attention. The idea that the great man was 
 there in the town, breathing the same air as himself, treading 
 the same stones, threw him into a state of dumb exaltation. 
 He lived only in the hope of seeing him. 
 
 Hassler was staying at the Palace as the guest of the Grand 
 Duke. He hardly went out, except to the theater for rehearsals. 
 
i V 
 
 I 
 
 , !■ 
 
 to -which Jean-Christophe w^as not admitted, and as he was very 
 lazy, he went to and fro in the Prince’s carriage. Therefore, 
 Jean-Christophe did not have many opportunities of seeing him, 
 and he only succeeded once in catching sight of him as he 
 drove in the carriage. He saw his fur coat, and wasted hours 
 in waiting in the street, thrusting and jostling his way to 
 right and left, and before and behind, to win and keep his place 
 in front of the loungers. He consoled himself with spending 
 half his days watching the windows of the Palace which had 
 been pointed out as those of the master. Most often he only 
 saw the shutters, for Hassler got up late, and the windows were 
 closed almost all morning. This habit had made well-informed 
 persons say that Hassler could not bear the light of day, and 
 lived in eternal night. 
 
 At length Jean-Christophe was able to approach his hero. 
 
 It was the day of the concert. All the town was there. The ; 
 Grand Duke and his Court occupied the great royal box, sur- 
 mounted with a crown supported by two chubby cherubims. ’ 
 The theater was in gala array. The stage was decorated with | 
 branches of oak and flowering laurel. All the musicians of ^ 
 any account made it a point of honor to take their places in - 
 the orchestra. Melchior was at his post, and Jean Michel was '! 
 conducting the chorus. i 
 
 When Hassler appeared there was loud applause from every ^ 
 part of the house, and the ladies rose to see him better. Jean- | 
 Christophe devoured him with his eyes. Hassler had a young, < 
 sensitive face, though it was already rather puffy and tired- ^ 
 looking; his temples were bald, and his hair was thin on the ‘ 
 crown of his head ; for the rest, fair, curly hair. His blue eyes 
 looked vague. He had a little fair mustache and an expressive 
 mouth, which was rarely still, but twitched with a thousand im- 
 perceptible movements. He was tall, and held himself badly — 
 not from awkwardness, but from weariness or boredom. He 
 
 conducted capriciously and lithely, with his whole awkward 
 body swaying, like his music, with gestures, now caressing, now 
 sharp and jerky. It was easy to see that he was very nervous, 
 and his music was the exact reflection of himself. The quiver- 
 ing and jerky life of it broke through the usual apathy of the 
 orchestra. Jean-Christophe breathed heavily; in spite of his 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 fear of drawing attention to himself, he could not stand still 
 in his place; he fidgeted, got up, and the music gave him such 
 violent and unexpected shocks that he had to move his head, 
 arms, and legs, to the great discomfort of his neighbors, who 
 warded off his kicks as best they could. The whole audience 
 was enthusiastic, fascinated by the success, rather than by the 
 compositions. At the end there was a storm of applause and 
 cries, in which the trumpets in the orchestra joined, German 
 fashion, with their triumphant blare in salute of the conqueror. 
 Jean-Christophe trembled with pride, as though these honors 
 were for himself. He enjoyed seeing Hassler’s face light up 
 with childish pleasure. The ladies threw fiowers, the men 
 waved their hats, and the audience rushed for the platform. 
 Every one wanted to shake the master’s hand. Jean-Christophe 
 saw one enthusiast raise the master’s hand to his lips, another 
 steal a handkerchief that Hassler had left on the corner of his 
 desk. He wanted to reach the platform also, although he did 
 not know why, for if at that moment he had found himself 
 near Hassler, he would have fied at once in terror and emotion. 
 But he butted with all his force, like a ram, among the skirts 
 and legs that divided him from Hassler. He was too small; 
 he could not break through. 
 
 Fortunately, when the concert was over, his grandfather came 
 and took him to join in a party to serenade Hassler. It was 
 night, and torches were lighted^ All the musicians of the 
 orchestra were there. They talked only of the marvelous com- 
 positions they had heard. They arrived outside the Palace, 
 and took up their places without a sound under the master’s 
 windows. They took on an air of secrecy, although everybody, 
 including Hassler, knew what was to come. In the silence of 
 the night they began to play certain famous fragments of 
 Hassler’s compositions. He appeared at the window with the 
 Prince, and they roared in their honor. Both bowed. A serv- 
 ant came from the Prince to invite the musicians to enter the 
 Palace. They passed through great rooms, with frescoes repre- 
 senting naked men with helmets; they were of a reddish color, 
 and were making gestures of defiance. The sky was covered with 
 great clouds like sponges. There were also men and women of 
 marble clad in waist-cloths made of iron. The guests walked on 
 
6 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 carpets so thick that their tread was inaudible, and they came 
 at length to a room which was as light as day, and there were 
 tables laden with drinks and good things. 
 
 The Grand Duke was there, but Jean-Christophe did not see 
 him; he had eyes only for Hassler. Hassler came towards 
 them ; he thanked them. He picked his words carefully, stopped 
 awkwardly in the middle of a sentence, and extricated himself 
 with a quip which made everybody laugh. They began to eat. 
 Hassler took four or five musicians aside. He singled out 
 Jean-Christophe’s grandfather, and addressed very flattering 
 words to him: he recollected that Jean Michel had been one 
 of the first to perform his works, and he said that he had often 
 heard tell of his excellence from a friend of his who had been 
 a pupil of the old man’s. Jean-Christophe’s grandfather ex- 
 pressed his gratitude profusely; he replied with such extraor- 
 dinary eulogy that, in spite of his adoration of Hassler, the = 
 boy was ashamed. But to Hassler they seemed to be pleasant * 
 and in the rational order. Finally, the old man, who had , 
 lost himself in his rigmarole, took Jean-Christophe by the hand, ' 
 and presented him to Hassler. Hassler smiled at Jean-Chris- * 
 tophe, and carelessly patted his head, and when he learned that ^ 
 the boy liked his music, and had not slept for several nights 
 in anticipation of seeing him, he took him in his arms and i 
 *lied him with questions. Jean-Christophe, struck dumb and { 
 flushing with pleasure, dared not look at him. Hassler took | 
 him by the chin and lifted his face up. Jean-Christophe ven- 
 tured to look. HassleFs eyes were kind and smiling; he began • 
 to smile too. Then he felt so happy, so wonderfully happy in ' 
 the great man’s arms, that he burst into tears. Hassler was 
 touched by this simple affection, and was more kind than ever. 
 
 He kissed the boy and talked to him tenderly. At the same 
 time he said funny things and tickled him to make him laugh; 
 and Jean-Christophe could not help laughing through his tears. 
 Soon he became at ease, and answered Hassler readily, and of 
 his own accord he began to whisper in his ear all his small 
 ambitions, as though he and Hassler were old friends; he told 
 him how he wanted to be a musician like Hassler, and, like 
 Hassler, to make beautiful things, and to be a great man. He, 
 who was always ashamed, talked confidently; he did not know 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 77 
 
 •what he was saying ; he was in a sort of ecstasy. Hassler smiled 
 at his prattling and said: 
 
 “When you are a man, and have become a good musician, 
 you shall come and see me in Berlin. I shall make something 
 of you.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe was too delighted to reply. 
 
 Hassler teased him. 
 
 “You don’t want to?” 
 
 Jean-Christophe nodded his head violently five or six times, 
 meaning “Yes.” 
 
 “ It is a bargain, then ? ” 
 
 Jean-Christophe nodded again. 
 
 “ Kiss me, then.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe threw his arms round Hassler’s neck and 
 hugged him with all his strength. 
 
 “ Oh, you are wetting me ! Let go ! Your nose wants 
 wiping ! ” 
 
 Hassler laughed, and wiped the boy’s nose himself, a little 
 self-consciously, though he was quite Jolly. He put him down, 
 then took him by the hand and led him to a table, where he 
 filled his pockets with cake, and left him, saying: 
 
 “ Good-bye ! Eemember your promise.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe swam in happiness. The rest of the world 
 had ceased to exist for him. He could remember nothing of 
 what had happened earlier in the evening ; he followed lovingly 
 Hassler^s every expression and gesture. One thing that he said 
 struck him. Hassler was holding a glass in his hand ; he was 
 talking, and his face suddenly hardened, and he said : 
 
 The joy of such a day must not make us forget our enemies. 
 We must never forget our enemies. It is not their fault that 
 we are not crushed out of existence. It will not be our fault 
 if that does not happen to them. That is why the toast I 
 propose is that there are people whose health ... we will not 
 drink ! 
 
 Everybody applauded and laughed at this original toast. 
 Hassler had laughed with the others and his good-humored 
 expression had returned. But Jean-Christophe was put out 
 by it. Although he did not permit himself to criticise any 
 action of his hero, it hurt him that he had thought ugly things. 
 
78 
 
 JEAN’-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 when on such a night there ought to be nothing but brilliant 
 thoughts and fancies. But he did not examine what he felt, 
 and the impression that it made was soon driven out by his 
 great joy and the drop of champagne which he drank out of 
 his grandfather^s glass. 
 
 On the way back the old man never stopped talking; he was 
 delighted with the praise that Hassler had given him ; he cried 
 out that Hassler was a genius such as had not been known 
 for a century. Jean-Christophe said nothing, locking up in 
 his heart his intoxication of love. He had kissed him. He 
 had held him in his arms! How good he was! How great! 
 
 Ah,^^ he thought in bed, as he kissed his pillow passionately, 
 
 I would die for him — die for him ! 
 
 The brilliant meteor which had flashed across the sky of the 
 little town that night had a decisive influence on Jean-Chris- " 
 tophe^s mind. All his childhood Hassler was the model on ^ 
 which his eyes were flxed, and to follow his example the little ‘ 
 man of six decided that he also would write music. To tell ^ 
 the truth, he had been doing so for long enough without know- * 
 ing it, and he had not waited to be conscious of composing ■ 
 before he composed. 
 
 Everything is music for the born musician. Everything that ; 
 throbs, or moves, or stirs, or palpitates — sunlit summer days, ; 
 nights when the wind howls, flickering light, the twinkling of \ 
 the stars, storms, the song of birds, the buzzing of insects, the | 
 murmuring of trees, voices, loved or loathed, familiar fireside 
 sounds, a creaking door, blood moving in the veins in the silence | 
 of the night — everything that is is music; all that is needed » 
 is that it should be heard. All the music of creation found 
 its echo in Jean-Christophe. Everything that he saw, every- 
 thing that he felt, was translated into music without his being 
 conscious of it. He was like a buzzing hive of bees. But no 
 one noticed it, himself least of all. 
 
 Like all children, he hummed perpetually at every hour of 
 the day. Whatever he was doing — whether he were walking in 
 the street, hopping on one foot, or lying on the floor at his 
 grandfather^s, with his head in his hands, absorbed in the 
 pictures of a book, or sitting in his little chair in the darkest 
 corner of the kitchen, dreaming aimlessly in the twilight — al- 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 79 
 
 ways the monotonous murmuring of his little trumpet was to 
 be heard, played with lips closed and cheeks blown out. His 
 mother seldom paid any heed to it, but, once in a while, she 
 would protest. 
 
 When he was tired of this state of half-sleep he would have 
 to move and make a noise. Then he made music, singing it 
 at the top of his voice. He had made tunes for every occasion. 
 He had a tune for splashing in his wash-basin in the morning, 
 like a little duck. He had a tune for sitting on the piano-stool 
 in front of the detested instrument, and another for getting 
 off it, and this was a more brilliant affair than the other. He 
 had one for his mother putting the soup on the table ; he used 
 to go before her then blowing a blare of trumpets. He played 
 triumphal marches by which to go solemnly frona the dining- 
 room to the bedroom. Sometimes he would organize little 
 cessions with his two small brothers; all then would file out 
 gravely, one after another, and each had a tune to march to. 
 But, as was right and proper, Jean-Christophe kept the best 
 for himself. Every one of his tunes was strictly appropriated 
 to its special occasion, and Jean-Christophe never by any chance 
 confused them. Anybody else would have made mistakes, but 
 he knew the shades of difference between them exactly. 
 
 One day at his grandfather^s house he was going round the 
 room clicking his heels, head up and chest out; he went round 
 and round and round, so that it was a wonder he did not turn t 
 sick, and played one of his compositions. The old man, who 
 was shaving, stopped in the middle of it, and, with his face 
 covered with lather, came to look at him, and said: 
 
 What are you singing, boy ? 
 
 Jean-Christophe said he did not know. 
 
 Sing it again ! said J ean Michel. 
 
 Jean-Christophe tried; he could not remember the tune. 
 Proud of having attracted his grandfather’s attention, he tried 
 to make him admire his voice, and sang after his own fashion 
 an air from some opera, but that was not what the old man 
 wanted. Jean Michel said nothing, and seemed not to notice, 
 him any more. But he left the door of his room ajar while^ 
 the boy was playing alone in the next room. 
 
 A few days later Jean-Christophe, with the chairs arranged 
 
80 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 'I about him, was playing a comedy in music, which he had made 
 fl;^ scraps that he remembered from the theater, and he was 
 
 'f making steps and bows, as he had seen them done in a minuet, 
 
 I and addressing himself to the portrait of Beethoven which 
 
 I'l hung above the table. As he turned with a pirouette he saw 
 
 ■fli' grandfather watching him through the half-open door. He 
 
 thought the old man was laughing at him; he was abashed, and 
 stopped dead; he ran to the window, and pressed his face 
 against the panes, pretending that he had been watching some- 
 thing of the greatest interest. But the old man said nothing; 
 he came to him and kissed him, and Jean-Christophe saw that 
 , he was pleased. His vanity made the most of these signs; 
 
 : \ he was clever enough to see that he had been appreciated; 
 
 \ but he did not know exactly which his grandfather had admired 
 j ; most — his talent as a dramatic author, or as a musician, or ‘ 
 
 I .I Us a singer, or as a dancer. He inclined to the latter, for he 
 I '' prided himself on this. * 
 
 , i' A week later, when he had forgotten the whole affair, his t 
 
 grandfather said mysteriously that he had something to show ' 
 
 him. He opened his desk, took out a music-book, and put it ' 
 
 j . on the rack of the piano, and told the boy to play. Jean-Chris- 1 
 
 i tophe was very much interested, and deciphered it fairly well. . 
 
 i i| The notes were written by hand in the old man’s large hand- i 
 
 f writing, and he had taken especial pains with it. The headings ? 
 
 were adorned with scrolls and flourishes. After some moments | 
 
 the old man, who was sitting beside Jean-Christophe turning ? 
 
 the pages for him, asked him what the music was. Jean- t 
 
 Christophe had been too much absorbed in his playing to notice 
 what he had played, and said that he did not know it. 
 
 “Listen! ... You don’t know it?” 
 
 Yes; he thought he knew it, but he did not know where 
 he had heard it. The old man laughed. 
 
 “ Think.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe shook his head. .s 
 
 “I don’t know.” I 
 
 A light was fast dawning in his mind; it seemed to him that I 
 
THE DAWN* 
 
 81 
 
 He blushed. 
 
 What, you little fool, donT you see that it is your 
 own ? 
 
 He was sure of it, but to hear it said made his heart thump. 
 
 Oh ! grandfather ! . . 
 
 Beaming, the old man showed him the book. 
 
 See : Aria, It is what you were singing on Tuesday when 
 you were lying on the floor. March. That is what I asked you 
 to sing again last week, and you could not remember it. 
 Minuet. That is what you were dancing by the armchair. 
 Look ! 
 
 On the cover was written in wonderful Gothic letters: ^ 
 
 The Pleasures of Childhood: Aria, Minuetto, Valse, and 
 Marcia, Op. 1, hy J ean-Christophe Krafft.'^ 
 
 Jean-Christophe was dazzled by it. To see his name, and 
 that fine title, and that large book — his work! ... He went 
 on murmuring: 
 
 ' Oh ! grandfather ! grandfather ! . . .^^ 
 
 The old man drew him to him. Jean-Christophe threw him- 
 self on his knees, and hid his head in Jean MicheFs bosom. 
 He was covered with blushes from his happiness. The old 
 man was even happier, and went on, in a voice which he tried 
 to make indifferent, for he felt that he was on the point of 
 breaking down: 
 
 Of course, I added the accompaniment and the harmony 
 to fit the song. And then — he coughed — and then, I added 
 a trio to the minuet, because . . . because it is usual . . . and 
 then ... I think it is not at all bad.^^ 
 
 He played it. Jean-Christophe was very proud of collaborat- 
 ing with his grandfather. 
 
 But, grandfather, you must put your name to it too.’’ 
 
 It is not worth while. It is not worth while others besides 
 yourself knowing it. Only ” — here his voice trembled — only, 
 later on, when I am no more, it will remind you of your old 
 grandfather ... eh? You won’t forget him?” 
 
 The poor old man did not say that he had been unable to 
 resist the quite innocent pleasure of introducing one of his own 
 unfortunate airs into his grandson’s work, which he felt was 
 destined to survive him; but his desire to share in this imagi- 
 
82 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 nary glory was very humble and very touching, since it was 
 enough for him anonymously to transmit to posterity a scrap 
 of his own thought, so as not altogether to perish. Jean- 
 Christophe was touched by it, and covered his face with kisses, 
 and the old man, growing more and more tender, kissed his 
 hair. 
 
 You will remember me ? Later on, when you are a good 
 musician, a great artist, who will bring honor to his family, 
 to his art, and to his country, when you are famous, you will 
 remember that it was your old grandfather who first perceived it, 
 and foretold what you would be ? 
 
 There were tears in his eyes as he listened to his own words. 
 
 He was reluctant to let such signs of weakness be seen. He 
 had an attack of coughing, became moody, and sent the boy 
 away hugging the precious manuscript. 
 
 Jean-Christophe went home bewildered by his happiness. The ; 
 stones danced about him. The reception he had from his family 
 sobered him a little. When he blurted out the splendor of his < 
 musical exploit they cried out upon him. His mother laughed 
 at him. Melchior declared that the old man was mad, and 
 that he would do better to take care of himself than to set « 
 
 about turning the boy’s head. As for Jean-Christophe, he : 
 
 would oblige by putting such follies from his mind, and sitting ■ 
 down illico at the piano and playing exercises for four hours. | 
 
 He must first learn to play properly; and as for composing, | 
 
 there was plenty of time for that later on when he had nothing ^ 
 better to do. ] 
 
 Melchior was not, as these words of wisdom might indicate, 
 trying to keep the boy from the dangerous exaltation of a too 
 early pride. On the contrary, he proved immediately that this 
 was not so. But never having himself had any idea to express 
 in music, and never having had the least need to express an 
 idea, he had come, as a virtuoso, to consider composing a second- j 
 ary matter, which was only given value by the art of the 
 executant. He was not insensible of the tremendous enthusiasm 
 roused by great composers like Hassler. For such ovations I 
 he had the respect which he always paid to success — mingled, 
 perhaps, with a little secret jealousy — for it seemed to him that i 
 such applause was stolen from him. But he knew by experience 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 83 
 
 that the successes of the great virtuosi are no less remarkable, 
 and are more personal in character, and therefore more fruitful 
 of agreeable and flattering consequences. He affected to pay 
 profound homage to the genius of the master musicians; but 
 he took a great delight in telling absurd anecdotes of them, 
 presenting their intelligence and morals in a lamentable light. 
 He placed the virtuoso at the top of the artistic ladder, for, 
 he said, it is well known that the tongue is the noblest member 
 of the body, and what would thought be without words ? What 
 would music be without the executant ? But whatever may have 
 been the reason for the scolding that he gave Jean-Christophe, 
 it was not without its uses in restoring some common sense 
 to the boy, who was almost beside himself with hi*s grand- 
 father’s praises. It was not quite enough. Jean-Christophe, 
 of course, decided that his grandfather was much cleverer than 
 his father, and though he sat down at the piano without sulking, 
 he did so not so much for the sake of obedience as to be able 
 to dream in peace, as he always did while his fingers ran 
 mechanically over the keyboard. While he played his intermi- 
 nable exercises he heard a proud voice inside himself saying over 
 and over again : I am a composer — a great composer.” 
 
 From that day on, since he was a composer, he set himself 
 to composing. Before he had even learned to write, he eon- 
 tinued to cipher crotchets and quavers on scraps of paper, which 
 he tore from the household account-books. But in the effort 
 to find out what he was thinking, and to set it down in black 
 and white, he arrived at thinking nothing, except when he 
 wanted to think something. But he did not for that give up 
 making musical phrases, and as he was a born musician he made 
 them somehow, even if they meant nothing at all. Then he 
 would take them in triumph to his grandfather, who wept with 
 joy over them — ^he wept easily now that he was growing old- — 
 and vowed that they were wonderful. 
 
 All this was like to spoil him altogether. Fortunately, his 
 own good sense saved him, helped by the influence of a man 
 who made no pretension of having any influence over anybody, 
 and set nothing before the eyes of the world but a common- 
 sense point of view. This man was Louisa’s brother. 
 
 Like her, he was small, thin, puny, and rather round-shoul- 
 
84 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 dered. No one knew exactly how old he was; he could not he 
 more than forty, but he looked more than fifty. He had a little 
 wrinkled face, with a pink complexion, and kind pale blue eyes, 
 like faded forget-me-nots. When he took off his cap, which he 
 used fussily to wear everywhere from his fear of draughts, he 
 exposed a little pink bald head, conical in shape, which was 
 the great delight of Jean-Christophe and his brothers. They 
 never left off teasing him about it, asking him what he had 
 done with his hair, and, encouraged by Melchior’s pleasantries, 
 threatening to smack it. He was the first to laugh at them, 
 and put up with their treatment of him patiently. He was a 
 peddler; he used to go from village to village with a pack on 
 his back, containing everything — groceries, stationery, eonfec- 
 tionery, handkerchiefs, scarves, shoes, pickles, almanacs, songs, 
 and drugs. Several attempts had been made to make him settle ' 
 down, and to buy him a little business — a store or a drapery j 
 shop. But he could not do it. One night he would get up, 
 push the key under the door, and set off again with his pack. < 
 Weeks and months went by before he was seen again. Then ' 
 he would reappear. Some evening they would hear him fum- ; 
 bling at the door; it would half open, and the little bald 
 head, politely uncovered, would appear with its kind eyes and j 
 timid smile. He would say, “ Good-evening, everybody,” care- i 
 fully wipe his shoes before entering, salute everybody, beginning | 
 with the eldest, and go and sit in the most remote corner of f 
 the room. There he would light his pipe, and sit huddled ' 
 up, waiting quietly until the usual storm of questions was over. 1 
 The two Kraffts, Jean-Christophe’s father and grandfather, had ‘ 
 a jeering contempt for him. The little freak seemed ridiculous 
 to them, and their pride was touched by the low degree of the 
 peddler. They made him feel it, but he seemed to take no 
 notice of it, and showed them a profound respect which dis- 
 armed them, especially the old man, who was very sensitive to 
 what people thought of him. They used to crush him with 
 heavy pleasantries, which often brought the blush to Louisa’s 
 cheeks. Accustomed to bow without dispute to the intellectual 
 superiority of the Kraffts, she had no doubt that her husband ; 
 and father-in-law were right ; but she loved her brother, and 
 her brother had for her a dumb adoration. They were the . 
 
THE DAWN* 
 
 85 
 
 only members of their family, and they were both humble, 
 crushed, and thrust aside by life; they were united in sadness 
 and tenderness by a bond of mutual pity and common suffer- 
 ing, borne in secret. With the Kraffts — robust, noisy, brutal, 
 solidly built for living, and living joyously — these two weak, 
 kindly creatures, out of their setting, so to speak, outside life, 
 understood and pitied each other without ever saying anything 
 about it. 
 
 Jean-Christophe, with the cruel carelessness of childhood, 
 shared the contempt of his father and grandfather for the little 
 peddler. He made fun of him, and treated him as a comic 
 figure; he worried him with stupid teasing, which his uncle 
 bore with his unshakable phlegm. But Jean-Christophe loved 
 him, without quite knowing why. He loved him first of all 
 as a plaything with which he did what he liked. He loved him 
 also because he always gave him something nice — a dainty, a 
 picture, an amusing toy. The little man’s return was a joy 
 for the children, for he always had some surprise for them. 
 Poor as he was, he always contrived to bring them each a pres- 
 ent, and he never forgot the birthday of any one of the family. 
 He always turned up on these august days, and brought out 
 of his pocket some jolly present, lovingly chosen. They were 
 so used to it that they hardly thought of thanking him; it 
 seemed natural, and he appeared to be sufficiently repaid by 
 the pleasure he had given. But Jean-Christophe, who did not 
 sleep very well, and during the night used to turn over in his 
 mind the events of the day, used sometimes to think that his 
 uncle was very kind, and he used to be filled with floods of 
 gratitude to the poor man. He never showed it when the 
 day came, because he thought that the others would laugh at 
 him. Besides, he was too little to see in kindness all the rare 
 value that it has. In the language of children, kind and stupid 
 are almost synonymous, and Uncle Gottfried seemed to be the 
 living proof of it. 
 
 One evening when Melchior was dining out, Gottfried was 
 left alone in the living-room, while Louisa put the children 
 to bed. He went out, and sat by the river a few yards away 
 from the house. Jean-Christophe, having nothing better to do, 
 followed him, and, as usual, tormented him with his puppy 
 
86 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE ^ 
 
 tricks until he was out of breath, and dropped down on the 
 grass at his feet. Lying on his belly, he buried his nose in 
 the turf. When he had recovered his breath, he cast about tor 
 some new crazy thing to say. When he found it he shouted 
 it out, and rolled about with laughing, with his face still buried 
 in the earth. He received no answer. Surprised by the silence, 
 he raised his head, and began to repeat his joke. He saw Gott- 
 fried’s face lit up by the last beams of the setting sun cast 
 through golden mists. He swallowed down his words. Gott- 
 fried smiled with his eyes half closed and his mouth half open, 
 and in his sorrowful face was an expression of sadness and 
 unutterable melancholy. Jean-Christophe, with his face in his 
 hands, watched him. The night came; little by little Gott- 
 fried’s face disappeared. Silence reigned. Jean-Christophe in 
 his turn was filled with the mysterious impressions which had 
 been refiected on Gottfried’s face. He fell into a vague stupor. 
 The earth was in darkness, the sky was bright; the stars peeped 
 out. The little waves of the river chattered against the bank. 
 The boy grew sleepy. Without seeing them, he bit off little 
 blades of grass. A grasshopper chirped near him. It seemed 
 to him that he was going to sleep. 
 
 Suddenly, in the dark, Gottfried began to sing. He sang 
 in a weak, husky voice, as though to himself; he could not 
 have been heard twenty yards away. But there was sincerity 
 and emotion in his voice; it was as though he were thinking 
 aloud, and that through the song, as through clear water, the 
 very inmost heart of him was to be seen. Never had Jean- 
 Christophe heard such singing, and never had he heard such 
 a song. Slow, simple, childish, it moved gravely, sadly, a little 
 monotonously, never hurrying — ^with long pauses then setting 
 out again on its way, careless where it arrived, and losing 
 itself in the night. It seemed to come from far away, and it 
 went no man knows whither. Its serenity was full of sorrow, 
 and beneath its seeming peace there dwelt an agony of the 
 ages. Jean-Christophe held his breath; he dared not move; 
 he was cold with emotion. When it was done he crawled to- 
 wards Gottfried, and in a choking voice said: 
 
 « Uncle ! ” 
 
 Gottfried did not reply. 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 8T 
 
 “ Uncle ! ” repeated the boy, placing his hands and chin om 
 Gottfried’s knees. 
 
 Gottfried said kindly: 
 
 “ Well, boy ...” 
 
 “What is it, uncle? Tell me! What were you sing- 
 ing?” 
 
 “I don’t know.” 
 
 “ Tell me what it is ! ” 
 
 “I don’t know. Just a song.” 
 
 “ A song that you made.” 
 
 “ No, not I ! Wliat an idea! ... It is an old song.” 
 
 “Who made it?” 
 
 “No one knows. . . .” 
 
 “When?” 
 
 “No one knows. . . .” 
 
 “ When you were little ? ” 
 
 “ Before I was born, before my father was horn, and before 
 his father, and before his father’s father. ... It has always 
 
 been.” , 
 
 “ How strange ! No one has ever told me about it. 
 
 He thought for a moment. 
 
 “Uncle, do you know any other?” 
 
 “ Yes.” 
 
 “ Sing another, please.” 
 
 “Why should I sing another? One is enough. One sings 
 when one wants to sing, when one has to sing. One must not 
 sing for the fun of it.” 
 
 “But what about when one makes music?” 
 
 “ That is not music.” 
 
 The boy was lost in thought. He did not quite understand. 
 But he asked for no explanation. It was true, it was not music, 
 not like all the rest. He went on : 
 
 “Uncle, have you ever made them?” 
 
 “ Made what ? ” 
 
 “ Songs ! ” 
 
 “Songs? Oh! How should I make them? They can’t be 
 made.” 
 
 With his usual logic the boy ii'sisted : 
 
 “ But, uncle, it must have beeiv made once. . . .” 
 
,jl Gottfried shook his head obstinately. 
 
 1'^ ^^It has always been/^ 
 
 The boy returned to the attack: 
 
 ^^But, uncle, isnT it possible to make other songs, new 
 M songs 
 
 v|i : Why make them ? There are enough for everything. There 
 
 1 are songs for when you are sad, and for when you are gay; 
 
 for when you are weary, and for when you are thinking of 
 ^ home; for when you despise yourself, because you have been 
 
 a vile sinner, a worm upon the earth; for when you want to 
 weep, because people have not been kind to you; and for when 
 your heart is glad because the world is beautiful, and you see 
 i God^s heaven, which, like Him, is always kind, and seems to 
 
 laugh at you. . . . There are songs for everything, everything. 
 
 ^ ; Why should I make them ?^^ 
 
 ; ri To be a great man ! said the boy, full of his grandfather^s ' 
 
 i ' teaching and his simple dreams. 
 
 ' Gottfried laughed softly. Jean-Christophe, a little hurt, t 
 
 asked him: * 
 
 ^^Why are you laughing 
 
 Gottfried said: ; 
 
 ’ ^^Oh! I? ... I am nobody.^^ ^ 
 
 ii'i He kissed the boy’s head, and said : I 
 
 I ^^You want to be a great man?” { 
 
 ^^Yes,” said Jean-Christophe proudly. He thought Gott- \ 
 fried would admire him. But Gottfried replied : ! 
 
 ^^What for?” \ 
 
 Jean-Christophe was taken aback. He thought for a moment, ‘ 
 
 and said : 
 
 To make beautiful songs ! ” 
 
 Gottfried laughed again, and said: v 
 
 You want to make beautiful songs, so as to be a great man; ■ 
 and you want to be a great man, so as to make beautiful songs. 
 You are like a dog chasing its own tail.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe was dashed. At any other time he would 
 not have borne his uncle laughing at him, he at whom he was | 
 used to laughing. And, at the same time, he would never | 
 have thought Gottfried cleve? enough to stump him with an | 
 argument. He cast about for some answer or some imper-| 
 
THE DAWN 89 
 
 tinence to throw at him, but could find none. Gottfried went 
 on: 
 
 "When you are as great as from here to Coblentz, you will 
 never make a single song.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe revolted on that. 
 
 "And if I will! . . .” 
 
 " The more you want to, the less you can. To make songs, 
 you have to be like those creatures. Listen. . . .” 
 
 The moon had risen, round and gleaming, behind the fields. 
 A silvery mist hovered above the ground and the shimmering 
 waters. The frogs croaked, and in the meadows the melodious 
 fluting of the toads arose. The shrill tremolo of the gr^s- 
 hoppers seemed to answer the twinkling of th*^' stars. The wind 
 rustled softly in the branches of the alders. From the hills 
 above the river there came down the sweet light song of a 
 nightingale. 
 
 " What need is there to sing? ” sighed Gottfried, after a long 
 silence. (.It was not clear whether he were talking to himself 
 or to Jean-Christophe.) " Don’t they sing sweeter than any- 
 thing that you could make ? ” 
 
 Jean-Christophe had often heard these sounds of the night, 
 and he loved them. But never had he heard them as he heard 
 them now. It was true ; what need was there to sing ? . . . His 
 heart was full of tenderness and sorrow. He was fain to em- 
 brace the meadows, the river, the ‘sky, the clear stars. He was 
 filled with love for his uncle Gottfried, who seemed to him 
 now the best, the cleverest, the most beautiful , of men. He 
 thought how he had misjudged him, and he thought that his 
 uncle was sad because he, Jean-Christophe, had misjudged him. 
 He was remorseful. He wanted to cry out : " Uncle, do not 
 be sad I I will not be naughty again. Forgive me, I love you ! ” 
 But he dared not. And suddenly he threw himself into Gott- 
 fried’s arms, but the words would not come, only he repeated, 
 " I love you I ” and kissed him passionately. Gottfried was sur- 
 prised and touched, and went on saying, "What? What? 
 and kissed him. Then he got up, took him by the hand, and 
 said: "We must go in.” Jean-Christophe was sad because 
 his uncle had not understood him. But as they came to the 
 house, Gottfried said : " If you like we’ll go again to hear God’s 
 
90 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 music, and I will sing you some more songs.” And when Jean- 
 Christophe kissed him gratefully as they said good-night, he 
 saw that his uncle had understood. 
 
 Thereafter they often went for walks together in the evening, 
 and they walked without a word along hy the river, or through 
 the fields. Gottfried slowly smoked his pipe, and Jean-Chris- 
 tophe, a little frightened by the darkness, would give him his 
 hand. They would sit down on the grass, and after a few 
 moments of silence Gottfried would talk to him about the stars 
 and the clouds; he taught him to distinguish the breathing of 
 the earth, air, and water, the songs, cries, and sounds of the 
 little worlds of flying, creeping, hopping, and swimming things 
 swarming in the darkness, and the signs of rain and fine 
 weather, and the countless instruments of the symphony of the ■ 
 night. Sometimes Gottfried would sing tunes, sad or gay, but . 
 always of the same kind, and always in the end J ean-Christophe ; 
 would be brought to the same sorrow. But he would never ; 
 sing more than one song in an evening, and Jean-Christophe ^ 
 noticed that he did not sing gladly when he v/as asked to do ; 
 so; it had to come of itself, just when he wanted to. Some- ; 
 times they had to wait for a long time without speaking, and , 
 just when Jean-Christophe was beginning to think, “ He is not : 
 going to sing this evening,” Gottfried would make up his mind. ; 
 
 One evening, when nothing would induce Gottfried to sing, , 
 Jean-Christophe thought of submitting to him one of his own j 
 small compositions, in the making of which he found so much ' 
 trouble and pride. He wanted to show what an artist he was. ^ 
 Gottfried listened very quietly, and then said : i 
 
 That is very ugly, my poor dear Jean-Christophe ! ” 
 Jean-Christophe was so hurt that he could find nothing to i 
 say. Gottfried went on pityingly: 
 
 “Why did you do it? It is so ugly! No one forced you 
 to do it.” j 
 
 Hot with anger, Jean-Christophe protested: 
 
 “ My grandfather thinks my music fine.” I 
 
 “ Ah 1 ” said Gottfried, not turning a hair. “ No doubt he 
 is right. He is a learned man. He knows all about music. . 
 I know nothing about it. ...” 
 
 And after a moment: 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 91 
 
 " But I think that is very ugly.” 
 
 He looked quietly at Jean-Christophe, and saw his angry face, 
 and smiled, and said : 
 
 “Have you composed any others? Perhaps I shall like the 
 others better than that.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe thought that his other compositions might 
 wipe out the impression of the first, and he sang them all. 
 Gottfried said nothing; he waited until they were finished. 
 Then he shook his head, and with profound conviction said: 
 
 “ They are even more ugly.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe shut his lips, and his chin trembled; he 
 wanted to cry. Gottfried went on as though he himself were 
 upset. 
 
 “ How ugly they are ! ” 
 
 Jean-Christophe, with tears in his voice, cried out: 
 
 “But why do you say they are ugly? ” 
 
 Gottfried looked at him with his frank eyes. 
 
 “Why? ... I don’t know. . . . Wait. . . . They are ugly 
 
 . . . first, because they are stupid. . . . Yes, that’s it. . . . 
 
 They are stupid, they don’t mean anything. ... You see? 
 
 When you wrote, you had nothing to say. Why did you write 
 
 them?” 
 
 “I don’t know,” said Jean-Christophe, in a piteous voice. 
 
 “ I wanted to write something pretty.” 
 
 - “ There you are ! You wrote for the sake of writing. You 
 
 wrote because you wanted to be a great musician, and to be 
 admired. You have been proud ; you have been a liar ; you 
 have been punished. ... You see ! A man is always punished 
 when he is proud and a liar in music. Music must be modest , 
 and sincere — or else, what is it? Impious, a blasphemy of the 
 Lord, who has given us song to tell the honest truth.” ' 
 
 He saw the boy’s distress, and tried to kiss him. But Jean- 
 Christophe turned angrily away, and for several days he sulked. 
 He hated Gottfried. But it was in vain that he said over and 
 over to himself : “ He is an ass ! He knows nothing — nothing I 
 My grandfather, who is much cleverer, likes my music.” In 
 his heart he knew that his uncle was right, and Gottfried’s words 
 were graven on his inmost soul ; he was ashamed to have been 
 a liar. 
 
92 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 And, in spite of his resentment, he always thought of it 
 when he was writing music, and often he tore up what he had 
 written, being ashamed already of what Gottfried would have 
 thought of it. When he got over it, and wrote a melody which 
 he knew to be not quite sincere, he hid it carefully from his 
 uncle; he was fearful of his judgment, and was quite happy 
 when Gottfried just said of one of his pieces : “ That is not so 
 very ugly. • ^ • I lik^ it. . . .” 
 
 Sometimes^ by way of revenge, he used to trick him by giving 
 him as his own melodies from the great musicians, and he was 
 delighted when it happened that Gottfried disliked them heart- 
 ily. But that did not trouble Gottfried. He would laugh loudly 
 when he saw Jean-Christophe clap his hands and dance about , 
 him delightedly, and he always returned to his usual argument: , 
 “It is well enough written, but it says nothing.” He always ; 
 refused to be present at one of the little concerts given in ; 
 Melchior’s house. However beautiful the music might be, he 
 would begin to yawn and look sleepy with boredom. Very soon ! 
 he would be unable to bear it any longer, and would steal away j 
 quietly. He used to say: ; 
 
 “ You see, my boy, everything that you write in the house ' 
 is not music. Music in a house is like sunshine in a room. ; 
 Music is to be found outside where you breathe God’s dear fresh j 
 air.” i 
 
 He was always talking of God, for he was very pious, unlike | 
 the two Kraffts, father and son, who were free-thinkers, and j 
 took care to eat meat on Fridays. j 
 
 Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Melchior changed his 
 opinion. Not only did he approve of his father having put 
 together Jean-Christophe’s inspirations, but, to the boy’s great 
 surprise, he spent several evenings in making two or three copies 
 of his manuscript. To every question put to him on the subject, 
 he replied impressively, “ We shall see ; . . .” or he would rub 
 his hands and laugh, smack the boy’s head by way of a joke, 
 ^ turn him up and blithely spank him. J ean-Christophe loathed 
 ^hese familiarities, but he saw that his father was pleased, and 
 did not know why. 
 
 Then there were mysterious confabulations between Melchior ■ 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 93 
 
 and his father. And one evening Jean-Christophe, to his aston- 
 ishment, learned that he, Jean-Christophe, had dedicated to 
 H.S.H. the Grand Duke Leopold the Pleasures of Childhood,. 
 Melchior had sounded the disposition of the Prince, who had 
 shown himself graciously inclined to accept the homage. There- 
 upon Melchior declared that without losing a moment they must, 
 primo, draw up the official request to the Prince; secondo, 
 publish the work ; tertio, organize a concert to give it a hearing. 
 
 There were further long conferences between Melchior and 
 Jean Michel. They argued heatedly for two or three evenings. 
 It was forbidden to interrupt them. Melchior wrote, erased; 
 erased, wrote. The old man talked loudly, as though he were 
 reciting verses., Sometimes they squabbled or thumped on the 
 table because they could not find a word. 
 
 Then Jean-Christophe was called, made to sit at the table 
 with a pen in his hand, his father on his right, his grandfather 
 on his left, and the old man began to dictate words which 
 he did not understand, because he found it difficult to write 
 every word in his enormous letters, because Melchior was shout- 
 ing in his ear, and because the old man declaimed with such 
 emphasis that Jean-Christophe, put out by the sound of the 
 words, could not bother to listen to their meaning. The old 
 man was no less in a state of emotion. He could not sit still, 
 and he walked up and down the room, involuntarily illustrating 
 the text of what he read with gestures, but he came every minute 
 to look over what the boy had written, and Jean-Christophe^. 
 frightened by the two large faces looking over his shoulder, 
 put out his tongue, and held his pen clumsily. A mist floated 
 before his eyes; he made too many strokes, or smudged what 
 he had written ; and Melchior roared, and J ean Michel stormed ;■ 
 and he had to begin again, and then again, and when he thought 
 that they had at last come to an end, a great blot fell on the 
 immaculate page. Then they pulled his ears, and he burst 
 into tears ; but they forbade him to weep, because he was spoiling 
 the paper, and they began to dictate, beginning all over again, 
 and he thought it would go on like that to the end of his' 
 life. 
 
 At last it was finished, and Jean Michel leaned against the 
 mantelpiece, and read over their handiwork in a voice trembling 
 

 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 with pleasure, while Melchior sat straddled across a chair, and 
 looked at the ceiling and wagged his chair and, as a connoisseur, 
 rolled round his tongue the style of the following epistle: 
 
 Most Noble and Sublime Highness! Most 
 Gracious Lord! 
 
 From my fourth year Music has been the first occupation 
 <of my childish days. So soon as I allied myself to the noble 
 Muse, who roused my soul to pure harmony, I loved her, and, 
 as it seemed to me, she returned my love. Now I am in my 
 sixth year, and for some time my Muse in hours of inspiration 
 has whispered in my ears: ^Be bold! Be bold! Write down 
 
 the harmonies of thy soul ! ’ ^ Six years old,^ thought I, ^ and , 
 
 how should I be bold? What would the learned in the art say 
 of me ? ^ I hesitated. I trembled. But my Muse insisted, I ; 
 obeyed. I wrote. ] 
 
 •^^And now shall I, 
 
 X 
 
 0 Most Suhlime Highness! ’ 
 
 — shall I have the temerity and audacity to place upon the , 
 steps of Thy Throne the first-fruits of my youthful labors? . • • ' 
 Shall I make so bold as to hope that Thou wilt let fall upon ; 
 them the august approbation of Thy paternal regard? ... ^ 
 
 “ Oh, yes ! For Science and the Arts have ever found in j 
 Thee their sage Maecenas, their generous champion, and talent ) 
 puts forth its flowers under the aegis of Thy holy protection. | 
 “ In this profound and certain faith I dare, then, approach ; 
 Thee with these youthful efforts. Eeceive them as a pure offer-' 
 ing of my childish veneration, and of Thy goodness deign, 
 
 0 Most Sublime Highness! 
 
 to glance at them, and at their young author, who bows at Thy 
 feet deeply and in humility! 
 
 " From the most submissive, faithful, and obedient servant 
 <of His Most Noble and Most Sublime Highness, 
 
 “ Jean-Christophe Keafft.” 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 95 
 
 Jean-Christophe heard nothing. He was very happy to have 
 finished, and, fearing that he would be made to 
 he ran away to the fields. He had no idea of what he had 
 written, and he cared not at all. But when the old “^n had 
 finished his reading he began again to taste the full fiavor of it, 
 and when the second reading came to an end Melchior and he 
 declared that it was a little masterpiece. That was also the 
 opinion of the Grand Duke, to whom the letter was presented, 
 with a copy of the musical work. He was kind enough to 
 send word that he found both quite charming He granted 
 uermission for the concert, and ordered that the hall of is 
 Academy of Music should be put at Melchior’s disposal and 
 deigned to promise that he would have the young artist pre- 
 sented to himself on the day of the performance. 
 
 Melchior set about organizing the concert as quickly as pos- 
 sible. He engaged the support of the Hof Musik Verein, and 
 as the success of his first ventures had blown out his sense of 
 proportion, he undertook at the same time to publish a mag- 
 nificent edition of the Pleasures of Childhood. He wanted to 
 have printed on the cover of it a portrait of Jean-Chnstophe 
 at the piano, with himself, Melchior, standing by his side 
 violin in hand. He had to abandon that, not on account of 
 the cost— Melchior did not stop at any expense— but because 
 there was not time enough. He fell back on an allegorical 
 design representing a cradle, a trumpet, a drum, a wooden horse, 
 grouped round a lyre which put forth rays like the sun. ^ e 
 title-page bore, together with a long dedication, in whic e 
 name of the Prince stood out in enormous letters, a notice to 
 the effect that “ Herr Jean-Christophe Krafft was six years old. 
 He was, in fact, seven and a half. The printing 
 was very expensive. To meet the bill for it, Jean Michel had 
 to sell an old eighteenth-century chest, carved with faces, which 
 he had never consented to sell, in spite of the repeated offers 
 of Wormser, the furniture-dealer. But Melchior had no doubt 
 but the subscriptions would cover the cost, and beyond that the 
 expenses of printing the composition. ^ . j t 
 
 One other question occupied his mind: how to dress Jean- 
 Christophe on the day of the concert. There was a famdy 
 council to decide the matter. Melchior would have liked the 
 
96 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE / 
 
 boy to appear in a short frock and bare legs, like a child of 
 four. But Jean-Christophe was very large for his age, and 
 everybody knew him. They could not hope to deceive any one. 
 Melchior had a great idea. He decided that the boy should 
 wear a dress-coat and white tie. In vain did Louisa protest 
 that they would make her poor boy ridiculous. Melchior antici- 
 pated exactly the success and merriment that would be pro- 
 duced by such an unexpected appearance. It was decided on, 
 and the tailor came and measured Jean-Christophe for his 
 little coat. He had also to have fine linen and patent-leather 
 pumps, and all that swallowed up their last penny. Jean- 
 Christophe was very uncomfortable in his new clothes. To 
 make him used to them they made him try on his various gar- 
 ments. For a whole month he hardly left the piano-stool. 
 They taught him to bow. He had never a moment of liberty. 
 He raged against it, but dared not rebel, for he thought that ; 
 he was going to accomplish something startling. He was both 
 proud and afraid of it. They pampered him ; they were afraid t 
 he would catch cold; they swathed his neck in scarves; they ^ 
 warmed his boots in case they were wet; and at table he had 
 the best of everything. : 
 
 AI last the great day arrived. The barber came to preside > 
 his toilet and curl Jean-Christophe^s rebellious hair. He 1 
 did not leave it until he had made it look like a sheep-skin. ( 
 All the family walked round Jean-Christophe and declared that \ 
 he was superb. Melchior, after looking him up and down, 
 and turning him about and about, was seized with an idea, ^ 
 and went off to fetch a large flower, which he put in his button- ’ 
 hole. But when Louisa saw him she raised her hands, and 
 cried out distressfully that he looked like a monkey. That hurt 
 him cruelly. He did not know whether to be ashamed or proud 
 of his garb. Instinctively he felt humiliated, and he was more 
 so at the concert. Humiliation was to be for him the out- 
 standing emotion of that memorable day. 
 
 The concert was about to begin. The hall was half empty;, 
 the Grand Duke had not arrived. One of those kindly and - 
 well-informed friends who always appear on these occasions! 
 came and told them that there was a Council being held at | 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 97 
 
 the Palace, and that the Grand Duke would not come. He had 
 it on good authority. Melchior was in despair. He fidgeted, 
 paced up and down, and looked repeatedly out of the window. 
 
 Old Jean Michel was also in torment, but he was concerned 
 for his grandson. He bombarded him with instructions. J earn 
 Christophe was infected by the nervousness of his family. He 
 was not in the least anxious about his compositions, but he was 
 troubled by the thought of the bows that he had to make to the 
 audience, and thinking of them brought him to agony. 
 
 However, he had to begin; the audience was gjowing im^ 
 patient. The orchestra of the Hof Musilc Verein began the 
 Coriolan Overture. The boy knew neither Coriolan nor Bee- 
 thoven, for though he had often heard Beethoven’s music, he^ 
 had not known it. He never bothered about the names of the 
 works he heard. He gave them names of his own invention, 
 while he created little stories or pictures for them. He classi- 
 fied them usually in three categories: fire, water, and earth, 
 with a thousand degrees between each. Mozart belonged almost 
 always to water. He was a meadow by the side of a river, a 
 transparent mist fioating over the water, a spring shower, or 
 a rainbow. Beethoven was fire — now a furnace with gigantic 
 fiames and vast columns of smoke; now a burning forest, a 
 heavy and terrible cloud, hashing lightning; now a wide sky 
 full of quivering stars, one of which breaks free, swoops, and 
 dies on a fine September night setting the heart beating. N’ow' 
 the imperious ardor of that heroic soul burned him like fire.tjisj 
 Everything else disappeared. What was it all to him? — ^Mel- 
 chior in despair, Jean Michel agitated, all the busy world, the 
 audience, the Grand Duke, little" Jean-Christophe. What had 
 he to do with all these? What lay between them and him? 
 Was that he — ^he, himself ? ... He was given up to the furious 
 will that carried him headlong. He followed it breathlessly, 
 with tears in his eyes, and his legs numb, thrilling from the 
 palms of his hands to the soles of his feet. His blood drummed 
 
 Charge ! ” and he trembled in every limb. And as he listened 
 so intensely, hiding behind a curtain, his heart suddenly leaped 
 violently. The orchestra had stopped short in the middle of a 
 bar, and after a moment’s silence, it broke into a crashing of 
 brass and cymbals with a military march, officially strident. 
 
98 
 
 JBAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 The transition from one sort of music to another was so brutal, 
 so unexpected, that Jean-Christophe ground his teeth and 
 stamped his foot with rage, and shook his fist at the wall. But 
 Melchior rejoiced. The Grand Duke had come in, and the 
 orchestra was saluting him with the National Anthem. And 
 in a trembling voice Jean Michel gave his last instructions to 
 his grandson. 
 
 The overture began again, and this time was finished. It 
 was now Jean-Christophe’s turn. Melchior had arranged the 
 programme to show off at the same time the skill of both father 
 and son. They were to play together a sonata of Mozart for 
 violin and piano. For the sake of effect he had decided that 
 Jean-Christophe should enter alone. He was led to the entrance . 
 of the stage and showed the piano at the front, and for the 
 last time it was explained what he had to do, and then he was ■ 
 pushed on from the wings. : 
 
 He was not much afraid, for he was used to the theater ; but 
 when he found himself alone on the platform, with hundreds of ; 
 eyes staring at him, he became suddenly so frightened that in- , 
 stinctively he moved backwards and turned towards the wings 
 to go back again. He saw his father there gesticulating and 
 with his eyes blazing. He had to go on. Besides, the audience , 
 had seen him. As he advanced there arose a twittering of ^ 
 curiosity, followed soon by laughter, which grew louder and; 
 louder. Melchior had not been wrong, and the boy’s garb.; 
 had all the effect anticipated. The audience rocked with laugh- j 
 ter at the sight of the child with his long hair and gipsy com- : 
 plexion timidly trotting across the platform in the evening 
 dress of a man of the world. They got up to see him better. 
 Soon the hilarity was general. There was nothing unkindly 
 in it, but it would have made the most hardened musician lose | 
 his head. Jean-Christophe, terrified by the noise, and the eyes ; 
 watching, and the glasses turned upon him, had only one idea : ! 
 to reach the piano as quickly as possible, for it seemed to him I 
 a refuge, an island in the midst of the sea. With head down, ; 
 looking neither to right nor left, he ran quickly across the plat- 
 form, and when he reached the middle of it, instead of bowing | 
 to the audience, as had been arranged, he turned his back on | 
 it, and plunged straight for the piano. The chair was too high j 
 
99 
 
 THE DAWH 
 
 for him to sit down without his father’s help, and in his dis- 
 tress, instead of waiting, he climbed up on to it on his knees. 
 That increased the merriment of the audience, but now Jean- 
 Christophe was safe. Sitting at his instrument, he was afraid 
 
 of no one. , 
 
 Melchior came at last. He gained by the good-humor of 
 the audience, who welcomed him with warm applause. The 
 sonata began. The boy played it with imperturbable certainty, 
 with his lips pressed tight in concentration, his eyes fixed on 
 the keys, his little legs hanging down from the chair. He 
 became more at ease as the notes rolled out; he was among 
 friends that he knew. A murmur of approbation reached him, 
 and waves of pride and satisfaction surged through him as he 
 thought that all these people were silent to listen to him and 
 to admire him. Biit hardly had he finished when fear overcame 
 him again, and the applause which greeted him gave him more 
 shame than pleasure. His shame increased when Melchior took 
 him by the hand, and advanced with him to the edge of the- 
 platform, and made him bow to the public. He obeyed, and 
 bowed very low, with a funny awkwardness; but he was hu- 
 miliated, and blushed for what he had done, as though it were 
 a thing ridiculous and ugly. 
 
 He had to sit at the piano again, and he played the Pleasures 
 of Childhood. Then the audience was enraptured. After each 
 piece they shouted enthusiastically. They wanted him to begin 
 again, and he was proud of his success and at the same time 
 almost hurt by such applause, which was also a command. At 
 the end the whole audience rose to acclaim him ; the Grand 
 Duke led the applause. But as Jean-Christophe was now alone 
 on the platform he dared not budge from his seat. The ap- 
 plause redoubled. He bent his head lower and lower, blushing 
 and hang-dog in expression, and he looked steadily away from 
 the audience. Melchior came. He took him in his arms, and 
 told him to blow kisses. He pointed out to him the Grand 
 Duke’s box. Jean-Christophe turned a deaf ear. Melchior took 
 his arm, and threatened him in a low voice. Then he did as 
 he was told passively, but he did not look at anybody, he did 
 not raise his eyes, but went on turning his head away, and he 
 was unhappy. He was suffering ; how, he did not know. His 
 
100 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 vanity was suffering. He did not like the people who were 
 there at all. It was no use their applauding; he could not 
 forgive them for having laughed and for being amused by his 
 humiliation; he could not forgive them for having seen him 
 in such a ridiculous position — held in mid-air to blow kisses. 
 He disliked them even for applauding, and when Melchior did 
 at last put him down, he ran away to the wings. A lady threw 
 a bunch of violets up at him as he went. It brushed his face. 
 He was panic-stricken and ran as fast as he could, turning 
 over a chair that was in his way. The faster he ran the more 
 they laughed, and the more they laughed the faster he ran. 
 
 At last he reached the exit, which was filled with people 
 looking at him. He forced his way through, butting, and ran 
 and hid himself at the back of the anteroom. His grandfather ' 
 was in high feather, and covered him with blessings. The ' 
 
 lusicians of the orchestra shouted with laughter, and con- : 
 
 ^gratulated the boy, who refused to look at them or to shake * 
 hands with them. Melchior listened intently, gaging the ap- , 
 plause, which had not yet ceased, and wanted to take Jean- f 
 Christophe on to the stage again. But the boy refused angrily, ■ 
 clung to his grandfather’s coat-tails, and kicked at everybody 
 who came near him. At last he burst into tears, and they . 
 had to let him be. ; 
 
 Just at this moment an officer came to say that the Grand { 
 Duke wished the artists to go to his box. How could the child j 
 be presented in such a state? Melchior swore angrily, and his ' 
 wrath only had the effect of making Jean-Christophe’s tears | 
 flow faster. To stop them, his grandfather promised him a < 
 pound of chocolates if he would not cry any more, and Jean- 
 Christophe, who was greedy, stopped dead, swallowed down 
 his tears, and let them carry him off ; but they had to swear 
 at first most solemnly that they would not take him on to ^ 
 the platform again. 
 
 In the anteroom of the Grand Ducal box he was presented 
 to a gentleman in a dress-coat, with a face like a pug-dog, 
 bristling mustaches, and a short, pointed beard — a little red- 
 faced man, inclined to stoutness, who addressed him with ban- 
 
 +.princr Tiitti IVfrwQv'f f 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 101 
 
 Grand Duchess and her daughter, and their suite. But as he 
 did not dare raise his eyes, the only thing he could remember 
 of this brilliant company was a series of gowns and uniforms 
 from the waist down to the feet. He sat on the lap of the 
 voun'^ Princess, and dared not move or breathe. She asked 
 him Questions, which Melchior answered in an obsequious Toice 
 with formal replies, respectful and servile; but she did not 
 listen to Melchior, and went on teasing the child. He grew 
 redder and redder, and, thinking that everybody must have 
 noticed it, he thought he must explain it away and said with 
 
 a long sigh: 
 
 “ My face is red. I am hot.” . 
 
 That made the girl shout with laughter. But Jean-Chris- 
 tophe did not mind it in her, as he had in his audience just 
 before, for her laughter was pleasant, and she kissed him, and 
 
 he did not dislike that. , ,, j f 
 
 Then he saw his grandfather in the passage at the door ot 
 the box, beaming and bashful. The old man was fain to show 
 himself, and also to say a few words, but he dared not, because 
 no one had spoken to him. He was enjoying his grandson s 
 glory at a distance. Jean-Christophe became tender, and telt 
 an irresistible impulse to procure justice also for the old man, / 
 so that they should know his worth. His tongue was loosed, 
 and he reached up to the ear of his new friend and whispered 
 
 to her: 
 
 “ I will tell you a secret.” 
 
 She laughed, and said : 
 
 “What?” . 
 
 “ You know,” he went on — “ you know the pretty tno in my 
 
 minuetto, the minuetto I played? . . . You know it? . . .” 
 (He hummed it gently.) “. . . Well, grandfather wrote it, not 
 I. All the other airs are mine. But that is the best. Grand- 
 father wrote it. Grandfather did not want me to say anything. 
 You won’t tell anybody? . . .” (He pointed out the old man.) 
 “ That is my grandfather. I love him ; he is very kind to me. 
 
 At that the young Princess laughed again, said that he was 
 a darling, covered him with kisses, and, to the consternation 
 of Jean-Christophe and his grandfather, told everybody. 
 Everybody laughed then, and the Grand Duke congratulated 
 
 I 
 
• the old man, who was covered with confusion, tried in vain 
 || to explain himself, and stammered like a guilty criminal. But 
 
 frj Jean-Christophe said not another word to the girl, and in 
 
 |r spite of her wheedling he remained dumb and stiff. He de- 
 li spised her for having broken her promise. His idea of princes 
 
 ■ ' suffered considerably from this disloyalty. He was so angry 
 
 I Y about it that he did not hear anything that was said, or that 
 I the Prince had appointed him laughingly his pianist in ordinary, 
 
 ‘ his Hof Musicus. 
 
 He went out with his relatives, and found himself surrounded 
 in the corridors of the theater, and even in the street, with 
 , people congratulating him or kissing him. That displeased 
 
 . him greatly, for he did not like being kissed, and did not 
 
 jl'l like people meddling with him without asking his permission, 
 
 i/,';, , At last they reached home, and then hardly' was the door ' 
 
 I" closed than Melchior began to call him a “ little idiot ” because ; 
 
 ij, he had said that the trio was not his own. As the boy was 
 
 under the impression that he had done a fine thing, which ' 
 
 ; deserved praise, and not blame, he rebelled, and was impertinent. ' 
 
 Melchior lost his temper, and said that he would box his ears, '■ 
 
 ll|,! although he had played his music well enough, because with ' 
 
 :|;j; his idiocy he had spoiled the whole effect of the concert. Jean- ] 
 
 'jf ’l Christophe had a profound sense of Justice. He went and ^ 
 
 i ; . sulked in a corner ; he visited his contempt upon his father, ^ 
 
 il the Princess, and the whole world. He was hurt also because | 
 
 1 : , the neighbors came and congratulated his parents and laughed ! 
 
 with them, as if it were they who had played, and as if it ] 
 were their affair. 
 
 At this moment a servant of the Court came with a beautiful 
 gold watch from the Grand Duke and a box of lovely sweets 
 from the young Princess. Both presents gave great pleasure, 
 
 ■ ‘ to Jean-Christophe, and he did not know which gave him the 
 
 ;■ r ; more ; but he was in such a bad temper that he would not admit 
 
 ' ! , it to himself, and he went on sulking, scowling at the sweets, 
 
 and wondering whether he could properly accept a gift from a 
 person who had betrayed his confidence. As he was on the 
 point of giving in his father wanted to set him down at once 
 I at the table, and make him write at his dictation a letter of 
 
 : thanks. This was too much. Either from the nervous strain ^ 
 
THE DAWH 
 
 103 
 
 of the day, or from instinctive shame at beginning the letter, 
 as Melchior wanted him to, with the words, “ The little servant 
 and musician — Knecht und Mmicus — of Your Highness . . . 
 he burst into tears, and was inconsolable. The servant waited 
 and scoffed. Melchior had to write the letter. That did not 
 make him exactly kindly disposed towards Jean-Christophe. As 
 a crowning misfortune, the boy let his watch fall and broke it. 
 A storm of reproaches broke upon him. Melchior shouted that 
 he would have to go without dessert. J ean-Christophe said 
 angrily that that was what he wanted. To punish him, Louisa 
 said that she would begin by confiscating his sweets. Jean- 
 Christophe was up in arms at that, and said that the box 
 was his, and no one else’s, and that no one should take it away 
 from him! He was smacked, and in a fit of anger snatched 
 the box from his mother’s hands, hurled it on the floor, and 
 stamped on it. He was whipped, taken to his room, undressed, 
 and put to bed. 
 
 In the evening he heard his parents dining with friends— 
 a magnificent repast^ prepared a week before in honor of the 
 concert. He was like to die with wrath at such injustice. They 
 laughed loudly, and touched glasses. They had told the guests 
 that the boy was tired, and no one bothered about him. Only 
 after dinner, when the party was breaking up, he heard a slow,. 
 shuffling step come into his room, and old Jean Michel bent 
 over his bed and kissed him, and said *. ^ Dear little Jean- 
 Christophe !...'' Then, as if he were ashamed, he went away 
 without another word. He had slipped into his hand some 
 sweetmeats which he had hidden in his pocket. 
 
 That softened Jean-Christophe; but he was so tired with 
 all the day’p. emotions that he had not the strength to think 
 about what his grandfather had done. He had not even the 
 strength to reach out to the good things the old man had given 
 him. He was worn out, and went to sleep almost at once. 
 
 His sleep was light. He had acute nervous attacks, like 
 electric shocks, which shook his whole body. In his dreams 
 he was haunted by wild music. He awoke in the night. The 
 Beethoven overture that he had heard at the concert was roaring 
 in his ears. It filled the room with its mighty beat. He sat 
 up in his bed, rubbed his eyes and ears, and asked himself if 
 
104 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE • 
 
 ihe were asleep. No; he was not asleep. He recognized the 
 «ound, he recognized those roars of anger, those savage cries; 
 ihe heard the throbbing of that passionate heart leaping in his 
 bosom, that tumult of the blood; he felt on his face the frantic 
 heating of the wind, lashing and destroying, then stopping 
 suddenly, cut off by an Herculean will. That Titanic soul 
 entered his body, blew out his limbs and his soul, and seemed 
 to give them colossal proportions. He strode over all the 
 world. He was like a mountain, and storms raged within him 
 — storms of wrath, storms of sorrow! . . . Ah, what sorrow! 
 
 . . . But they were nothing ! He felt so strong ! ... To suffer 
 - — ^still to suffer! . . . Ah, how good it is to be strong! How 
 good it is to suffer when a man is strong! ... 
 
 He laughed. His laughter rang out in the silence of the ; 
 uight. His father woke up and cried: ; 
 
 ^^Who is there j 
 
 His mother whispered: 
 
 Ssh ! the boy is dreaming ! | 
 
 All then were silent ; round them all was silence. The music \ 
 died away, and nothing sounded but the regular breathing of 
 fhe human creatures asleep in the room, comrades in misery, 
 thrown together by Fate in the same frail barque, bound on- . 
 wards by a wild whirling force through the night. ; 
 
 ( Jean-Christophe’s letter to the Grand Duke Leopold is inspired by \ 
 Beethoven’s letter to the Prince Elector of Bonn, written when he was ■ 
 eleven.) { 
 
MOENING 
 
I 
 
 THE DEATH OF JEAN MICHEL 
 
 Years have passed. Jean-Christophe is nearly eleven. His 
 musical education is proceeding. He is learning harmony with 
 Florian Holzer, the organist of St. Martin's, a friend of his 
 grandfather's, a very learned man, who teaches him that the 
 chords and series of chords that he most loves, and the har- 
 monies which softly greet his heart and ear, those that he 
 cannot hear without a little thrill running down his spine, 
 are bad and forbidden. When he asks why, no reply is forth- 
 coming but that it is so; the rules forbid them. As he is 
 naturally in revolt against discipline, he loves them only the 
 more. His delight is to find examples of them in the great 
 and admired musicians, and to take them to his grandfather or 
 his master. His grandfather replies that in the great musicians 
 they are admirable, and that Beethoven and Bach can take any 
 liberty. His master, less conciliatory, is angry, and says acidly 
 that the masters did better things. 
 
 Jean-Christophe has a free pass for the concerts and the 
 theater. He has learned to play every instrument a little. 
 He is already quite skilful with the violin, and his father 
 procured him a seat in the orchestra. He acquitted himself 
 so well there that after a few months' probation he was officially 
 appointed second violin in the Hof Musik Verein. He has 
 begun to earn his living. Not too soon either, for affairs at 
 home have gone from bad to worse. Melchior's intemperance 
 has swamped him, and his grandfather is growing old. 
 
 Jean-Christophe has taken in the melancholy situation. He 
 is already as grave and anxious as a man. He fulfils his task 
 valiantly, though it does not interest him, and he is apt to 
 fall asleep in the orchestra in the evenings, because it is late 
 and he is tired. The theater no longer rouses in him the emotion 
 it used to do when he was little. When he was little — four 
 
 107 
 
108 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 years ago — his greatest ambition had been to occupy the place 
 that he now holds. ' But now he dislikes most of the music he 
 is made to play. He dare not yet pronounce judgment upon 
 it, but he does find it foolish; and if by chance they do play 
 lovely things, he is displeased by the carelessness with which 
 they are rendered, and his best-beloved works are made to 
 appear like his neighbors and colleagues in the orchestra, who, 
 as soon as the curtain has fallen, when they have done with 
 blowing and scraping, mop their brows and smile and chatter 
 quietly, as though they had just finished an houPs gymnastics. 
 And he has been close to his former flame, the fair barefooted 
 singer. He meets her quite often during the entracte in the 
 saloon. She knows that he was once in love with her, and she 
 kisses him often. That gives him no pleasure. He is dis- 
 gusted by her paint and scent and her fat arms and her greedi- 
 ness. He hates her now. 
 
 The Grand Duke did not forget his pianist in ordinary. 
 Not that the small pension which was granted to him with this 
 title was regularly paid — it had to be asked for — ^but from time 
 to time Jean-Christophe used to receive orders to go to the 
 Palace when there were distinguished guests, or simply when 
 Their Highnesses took it into their heads that they wanted to 
 hear him. It was almost always in the evening, at the time 
 when Jean-Christophe wanted to be alone. He had to leave j 
 everything and hurry off. Sometimes he was made to wait 
 in the anteroom, because dinner was not finished. The serv- | 
 ants, accustomed to see him, used to address him familiarly. 
 Then he would be led into a great room full of mirrors and 
 lights, in which well-fed men and women used to stare at him 
 with horrid curiosity. He had to cross the waxed floor to kiss 
 Their Highnesses^ hand«, and the more he grew the more awk- 
 ward he became, for he felt that he was in a ridiculous position, 
 and his pride used to suffer. 
 
 When it was all done he used to sit at the piano and have 
 to play for these idiots. He thought them idiots. There were 
 moments when their indifference so oppressed him as he played 
 that he was often on the point of stopping in the middle of a 
 piece. There was no air about him; he was near suffocation, 
 seemed losing his senses. When he finished he was overwhelmed 
 
MOENING 
 
 109 
 
 with congratulations and laden with compliments ; he was intro- 
 duced all round. He thought they looked at him like some 
 strange animal in the Prince’s menagerie, and that the words 
 of praise were addressed rather to his master than to himself. 
 He thought himself brought low, and he developed a morbid 
 sensibility from which he suffered the more as he dared not 
 show it. He saw offense in the most simple actions. If any 
 one laughed in a corner of the room, he imagined himself to 
 be the cause of it, and he knew not whether it were his manners, 
 or his clothes, or his person, or his hands, or his feet, that 
 caused the laughter. He was humiliated by everything. He 
 was humiliated if people did not talk to him, humiliated if they 
 did, humiliated if they gave him sweets like a child, humiliated 
 especially when the Grand Duke, as sometimes happened, in 
 princely fashion dismissed him by pressing a piece of money 
 into his hand. He was wretched at being poor and at being 
 treated as a poor boy. One evening, as he was going home, 
 the money that he had received weighed so heavily upon him 
 that he threw it through a cellar window, and then immediately 
 he would have done anything to get it back, for at home there 
 was a month’s old account with the butcher to pay. 
 
 His relatives never suspected - these injuries to his pride. 
 They were delighted at his favor with the Prince. Poor Louisa 
 could conceive of nothing finer for her son than these evenings 
 at the Palace in splendid society. As for Melchior, he used 
 to brag of it continually to his boon-fellows. But Jean-Chris- 
 tophe’s grandfather was happier than any. He pretended to 
 be independent and democratic, and to despise greatness, but 
 he had a simple admiration for money, power, honors, social 
 distinction, and he took unbounded pride in seeing his grandson 
 moving among those who had these things. He delighted in 
 them as though such glory was a refiection upon himself, and 
 in spite of all his efforts to appear calm and indifferent, his 
 face used to glow. On the evenings when Jean-Christophe went 
 to the Palace, old Jean Michel used always to contrive to stay 
 about the house on some pretext or another. He used to await 
 his grandson’s return with childish impatience, and when Jean- 
 Christophe came in he would begin at once with a careless air 
 to ply him with seeming idle questions, such as: 
 
110 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 “ Well, did things go well to-night ? ” 
 
 Or he would make little hints like : 
 
 “ Here’s our Jean-Christophe; he can tell us some news.” 
 
 Or he would produce some ingenious compliment by way of 
 flattery : 
 
 “ Here’s our young nobleman ! ” 
 
 But Jean-Christophe, out of sorts and out of temper, would 
 reply with a curt “ Good-evening ! ” and go and sulk in a corner. 
 But the old man would persist, and ply him with more direct 
 questions, to which the boy replied only “ Yes,” or “ No.” Then 
 the others would join in and ask for details. Jean-Christophe 
 would look more and more thunderous. They had to drag 
 the words from his lips until Jean Michel would lose his temper 
 and hurl insults at him. Then Jean-Christophe would reply 
 with scant respect, and the end would be a rumpus. The old ; 
 man would go out and slam the door. So Jean-Christophe ^ 
 spoiled the joy of these poor people, who had no inkling of the ‘ 
 cause of his bad temper. It was not their fault if they had the i 
 souls of servants, and never dreamed that it is possible to be | 
 otherwise. 
 
 Jean-Christophe was turned into himself, and though he never : 
 judged his family, yet he felt a gulf between himself and them. : 
 No doubt he exaggerated what lay between them, and in spite ' 
 of their different ways of thought it is quite probable that they ^ 
 could have understood each other if he had been able to talk < 
 intimately to them. ^B^t it is known that nothing is more ’ 
 difficult than absolute intimacy between children and parents^ 
 even when there is much love between them, for on the one 
 side respect discourages confidence, and on the other the idea, 
 often erroneous, of the superiority of age and experience pre- 
 vents them taking seriously enough the child’s feelings, which 
 are often just as interesting as those of grown-up persons, and 
 almost always more sincere. 
 
 But the people that Jean-Christophe saw at home and the 
 conversation that he heard there widened the distance between 
 himself and his family. 
 
 Melchior’s friends used to frequent the house — mostly musi- 
 cians of the orchestra, single men and hard drinkers. They 
 were not bad fellows, but vulgar. They made the house shake 
 
MOKNING 
 
 with their footsteps and their laughter. They loved 
 they spoke of it with a stupidity that was revolting, 
 indiscretion of their enthusiasm wounded the boy’s modesty 
 feeling. When they praised a work that he loved it was 
 though they were insulting him personally. He would stiffen 
 himself and grow pale, frozen, and pretend not to take any 
 interest in music. He would have hated it had that been 
 possible. Melchior used to say : 
 
 “ The fellow has no heart. He feels nothing. I don’t know 
 where he gets it from.” 
 
 Sometimes they used to sing German four-part songs — four- 
 footed as well — and these were all exactly like themselves — slow- 
 moving, solemn and broad, fashioned of dull melodies. Then 
 Jean-Christophe used to fly to the most distant room and hurl 
 insults at the wall. 
 
 His grandfather also had friends: the organist, the furniture- 
 dealer, the watch-maker, the contra-bass — ^garrulous old men, 
 who used always to pass round the same jokes and plunge into 
 interminable discussions on art, politics, or the family trees of 
 the country-side, much less interested in the subjects of which 
 they talked than happy to talk and to And an audience. 
 
 As for Louisa, she used only to see some of her neighbors 
 who brought her the gossip of the place, and at rare intervals 
 a “ kind lady,” who, under pretext of taking an interest in her, 
 used to come and engage her services for a dinner-party, and 
 pretend to watch over the religious education of the children. 
 
 But of all who came to the house, none was more repugnant 
 to Jean-Christophe than his Uncle Theodore, a stepson of his 
 grandfather’s, a son by a former marriage of his grandmother 
 Clara, Jean Michel’s flrst wife. He was a partner in a great 
 commercial house which did business in Africa and the Far 
 East. He was the exact type of one of those Germans of the 
 new style, whose affectation it is scoffingly to repudiate the old 
 idealism of the race, and, intoxicated by conquest, to maintain 
 a cult of strength and success which shows that they are not 
 accustomed to seeing them on their side. But as it is difficult 
 at once to change the age-old nature of a people, the despised 
 idealism sprang up again in him at every turn in language, 
 manners, and moral habits and the quotations from Goethe to 
 
JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 .Smallest incidents of domestic life, for he was a singular 
 ound of conscience and self-interest. There was in him a 
 ‘urious effort to reconcile the honest principles of the old 
 German bourgeoisie with the cynicism of these new commercial 
 condottieri — a compound which forever gave out a repulsive 
 flavor of hypocrisy, forever striving to make of German strength, 
 avarice, and self-interest the symbols of all right, justice, and 
 truth. 
 
 Jean-Christophe’s loyalty was deeply injured by all this. He 
 could not tell whether his uncle were right or no, but he hated 
 him, and marked him down for an enemy. His grandfather 
 had no great love for him either, and was in revolt against his 
 theories; but he was easily crushed in argument by Theodore’s 
 fluency, which was never hard put to it to turn into ridicule 
 the old man’s simple generosity. In the end Jean Michel came • 
 to be ashamed of his own good-heartedness, and by way of 
 showing that he was not so much behind the times as they! 
 thought, he used to try to talk like Theodore; but the words, 
 came hollow from his lips, and he was ill at ease with them.i 
 Whatever he may have thought of him, Theodore did impress 
 him. He felt respect for such practical skill, which he admired 
 the more for knowing himself to be absolutely incapable of it. 
 He used to dream of putting one of his grandsons to similar 
 work. That was Melchior’s idea also. He intended to make; 
 Eodolphe follow in his uncle’s footsteps. And so the whole* 
 family set itself to flatter this rich relation of whom they ex-'! 
 pected help. He, seeing that he was necessary to them, took' 
 advantage of it to cut a fine masterful figure. He meddled in 
 everything, gave advice upon everything, and made no attempt 
 to conceal his contempt for art and artists. Rather, he blazoned 
 it abroad for the mere pleasure of humiliating his musicianly 
 relations, and he used to indulge in stupid jokes at their ex- 
 pense, and the cowards used to laugh. 
 
 Jean-Christophe, especially, was singled out as a butt for his 
 uncle’s jests. He was not patient under them. He would say 
 nothing, but he used to grind his teeth angrily, and his uncle 
 used to laugh at his speechless rage. But one day, when Theo- 
 dore went too far in his teasing, Jean-Christophe, losing control 
 of himself, spat in his face. It was a fearful affair. The insult 
 
MOENING 
 
 113 
 
 sras so monstrous that his uncle was at first paralyzed by it; 
 then words came back to him, and he broke out into a flood 
 jf abuse. Jean-Christophe sat petrified by the enormity of 
 the thing that he had done, and did not even feel the blows that 
 rained down upon him; but when they tried to force him down 
 an his knees before his uncle, he broke away, jostled his mother 
 aside, and ran out of the house. He did not stop until he could 
 breathe no more, and then he was right out in the country. 
 He heard voices calling him, and he debated within himself 
 whether he had not better throw himself into the river, since 
 he could not do so with his enemy. He spent the night in 
 the fields. At dawn he went and knocked at his grandfather ^s 
 door. The old man had been so upset by Jean-Christophe’s 
 disappearance — ^he had not slept for it that he had not the 
 heart to scold him. He took him home, and then nothing was 
 said to him, because it was apparent that he was still in an 
 excited condition, and they had to smooth him down, for he 
 had to play at the Palace that evening. But for several weeks 
 Melchior continued to overwhelm him with his complaints, 
 addressed to nobody in particular, about the trouble that a man 
 takes to give an example of an irreproachable life and good 
 manners to unworthy creatures who dishonor him. And when 
 his Uncle Theodore met him in the street, he turned his head 
 and held his nose by way of showing his extreme^ disgust. 
 
 Finding so little sympathy at home, Jean-Christophe spent 
 as little time there as possible. He chafed against the continual 
 restraint which they strove to set upon him. There were too 
 many things, too many people, that he had to respect, and he 
 was never allowed to ask why, and Jean-Christophe did not 
 possess the bump of respect. The more they tried to discipline 
 him and to turn him into an honest little German bourgeois, 
 the more he felt the need of breaking free from it all. It would 
 have been his pleasure after the dull, tedious, formal perform- 
 ances which he had to attend in the orchestra or at the Palace 
 to roll in the grass like a fowl, aud to slide down the grassy 
 slope on the seat of his new trousers, or to have a stone-fight 
 with the urchins of the neighborhood. It was not because he 
 was afraid of scoldings and thwackings that he did not do 
 these things more often, but because he had no playmates. He 
 
114 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 / 
 
 could not get on with other children. Even the little gutter- 
 snipes did not like playing with him, because he took every 
 game too seriously, and struck too lustily. He had grown used 
 to being driven in on himself, and to living apart from children 
 of his own age. He was ashamed of not being clever at games^ 
 and dared not take part in their sport. And he used to pretend 
 to take no interest in it, although he was consumed by the 
 desire to be asked to play with them. But they never said 
 anything to him, and then he would go away hurt, but assum- 
 ing indifference. 
 
 He found consolation in wandering with Uncle Gottfried 
 when he was in the neighborhood. He became more and more 
 friendly with him, and sympathized with his independent tern- , 
 per. He understood so well now Gottfried’s delight in tramping 
 the roads without a tie in the world ! Often they used to 1 
 go out together in the evening into the country, straight on, j 
 aimlessly, and as Gottfried always forgot the time, they used to 
 come back very late, and then were scolded. Gottfried knew ' 
 that it was wrong, but Jean-Christophe used to implore, and , 
 he could not himself resist the pleasure of it. About midnight • 
 he would stand in front of the house and whistle, an agreed ’ 
 signal. Jean-Christophe would be in his bed fully dressed. ; 
 He would slip out with his shoes in his hand, and, holding his ; 
 breath, creep with all the artful skill of a savage to the kitchen | 
 window, which opened on to the road. He would climb on to | 
 the table; Gottfried would take him on his shoulders, and then • 
 off they would go, happy as truants. ! 
 
 Sometimes they would go and seek out Jeremy the fisherman, 
 a friend of Gottfried’s, and then they would slip out in his 
 boat under the moon. The water dropping from the oars gave 
 out little arpeggios, then chromatic scales. A milky vapor hung 
 tremulous over the surface of the waters. The stars quivered. 
 The cocks called to each other from either bank, and some- 
 times in the depths of the sky they heard the trilling of larks, 
 ascending from earth, deceived by the light of the moon. They 
 were silent. Gottfried hummed a tune. Jeremy told strange, 
 tales of the lives of the beasts — tales that gained in mystery 
 from the curt and enigmatic manner of their telling. The moon 
 hid herself behind the woods. They skirted the black mass 
 
MOENING 
 
 115 
 
 of the hills. The darkness of the water and the sky mingled. 
 There was never a ripple on the water. Sounds died down. 
 The boat glided through the night. Was she gliding? Was 
 she moving? Was she still? . . . The reeds parted with a 
 sound like the rustling of silk. The boat grounded noiselessly. 
 They climbed out on to the bank, and returned on foot. They 
 would not return until dawn. They followed the river-bank. 
 Clouds of silver ablets, green as ears of corn, or blue as jewels, 
 teemed in the first light of day. They swarmed like the ser- 
 pents of Medusa’s head, and fiung themselves greedily at the 
 bread thrown to them; they plunged for it as it sank, and 
 turned in spirals, and then darted away in a fiash, like a ray 
 of light. The river took on rosy and purple hues of refiection. 
 The birds woke one after another. The truants hurried back. 
 Just as carefully as when they had set out, they returned to the 
 room, with its thick atmosphere, and Jean-Christophe, worn out, 
 fell into bed, and slept at once, with his body sweet-smelling with 
 the smell of the fields. 
 
 All was well, and nothing would have been known, but that 
 one day Ernest, his younger brother, betrayed Jean-Christophe’s 
 midnight sallies. From that moment they were forbidden, and 
 he was watched. But he contrived to escape, and he preferred 
 the society of the little peddler and his friends to any other. 
 His family was scandalized. Melchior said that he had the 
 tastes of a laborer. Old Jean Michel was jealous of Jean- 
 Christophe’s affection for Gottfried, and used to ' lecture him 
 about lowering himself so far as to like such vulgar company 
 when he had the honor of mixing with the best people and of 
 being the servant of princes. It was considered that Jean- 
 Christophe was lacking in dignity and self-respect. 
 
 In spite of the penury which increased wnth Melchior’s in- 
 temperance and folly, life was tolerable as long as Jean Michel 
 was there. He was the only creature who had any infiuence 
 over Melchior, and who could hold him back to a certain extent 
 from his vice. The esteem in which he was generally held did 
 serve to pass over the drunkard’s freaks, and he used constantly 
 to come to the aid of the household with money. Besides the 
 modest pension which he enjoyed as retired Kapellmeister, he 
 was still able to earn small sums by giving lessons and tuning 
 
116 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 pianos. He gave most of it to his daughter-in-law, for he 
 perceived her difficulties, though she strove to hide them from 
 him. Louisa hated the idea that he was denying himself for 
 them, and it was all the more to the old man’s credit in that he 
 had always been accustomed to a latge way of living and had 
 great needs to satisfy. Sometimes even his ordinary sacrifices 
 were not sufficient, and to meet some urgent debt Jean Michel 
 would have secretly to sell a piece of furniture or books, or some 
 relic that he set store by. Melchior knew that his father made 
 presents to Louisa that were concealed from himself, and very 
 often he would lay hands on them, in spite of protest. But 
 when this came to the old man’s ears — ^not from Louisa, who 
 said nothing of her troubles to him, but from one of his grand- 
 children — he would fly into a terrible passion, and there were 
 frightful scenes between the two men. They were both extraor- 
 dinarily violent, and they would come to round oaths and 
 threats — almost it seemed as though they would come to blows. 
 But even in his most angry passion respect would hold Melchior 
 in check, and, however drunk he might be, in the end he would 
 bow his head to the torrent of insults and humiliating reproach 
 which his father poured out upon him. But for that he did 
 not cease to watch for the first opportunity of breaking out 
 again, and with his thoughts on the future, Jean Michel would 
 be filled with melancholy and anxious fears. 
 
 “ My poor children,” he used to say to Louisa, ‘‘ what will 
 become of you when I am no longer here? . . . Fortunately,” 
 he would add, fondling J ean-Christophe, “ I can go on until 
 this fellow pulls you out of the mire.” But he was out in his 
 reckoning; he was at the end of his road. No one would 
 have suspected it. He was surprisingly strong. He was past 
 eighty; he had a full head of hair, a white mane, still gray 
 in patches, and in his thick beard were still black hairs. He 
 had only about ten teeth left, but with these he could chew 
 lustily. It was a pleasure to see him at table. | He had a hearty 
 appetite, and though he reproached Melchior for drinking, he 
 always emptied his bottle himself. He had a preference for 
 white Moselle. For the rest — wine, beer, eider — ^he could do 
 justice to all the good things that the Lord hath made. He 
 was not so foolish as to lose his reason in his cups, and he 
 
MOENING 
 
 117 - 
 
 kept to his allowance. It is true that it was a plentiful allow- 
 ance, and that a feebler intelligence must have been made drunk 
 by it. He was strong of f#ot and eye, and indefatigably active. 
 He got up at six, and performed his ablutions scrupulously, 
 for he cared for his appearance and respected his person. He 
 lived alone in his house, of which he was sole occupant, and 
 never let his daughter-in-law meddle with his affairs. He 
 cleaned out his room, made his own coffee, sewed on his buttons, 
 nailed, and glued, and altered; and going to and fro and up 
 and down stairs in his shirt-sleeves, he never stopped singing 
 in a sounding bass which he loved to let ring out as he accom- 
 panied himself with operatic gestures. And then he used to 
 go out in all weathers. He went about his business, omitting 
 none, but he was not often punctual. He was to be seen at 
 every street corner arguing with some acquaintance or joking 
 with some woman whose face he had remembered, for he loved 
 pretty women and old friends. And so he was always late, 
 and never knew the time. But he never let the dinner-hour 
 slip by. He dined wherever he might be, inviting himself, and 
 he would not go home until late — after nightfall, after a visit 
 to his grandchildren. Then he would go to bed, and before 
 he went to sleep read a page of his old Bible, and during the 
 night — for he never slept for more than an hour or two to- 
 gether — he would get up to take down one of his old books, 
 bought second-hand — ^history, theology, belles-lettres, or science. 
 He used to read at random a few pages, which interested and 
 bored him, and he did not rightly understand them, though he 
 did not skip a word, until sleep came to him again. On Sunday 
 he would go to church, walk with the children, and play bowls. 
 He had never been ill, except for a little ^out in his toes, which 
 used tojoake Iiim^ s;^a^^^^ ]ie was reading his 
 
 ^BiblSr^ It seemed as though he migTifliveTb he a hundred, 
 and he himself could see no reason why he should not live 
 longer. When people said that he would die a centenarian, he 
 used to think, like another illustrious old man, that no limit 
 can be appointed to the goodness of Providence. The only sign 
 that he was growing old was that he was more easily brought 
 to tears, and was becoming every day more irritable. The 
 smallest impatience with him could throw him into a violent 
 
118 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 fury. His red face and short neck would grow redder than 
 ever. He would stutter angrily, and have to -stop, choking. 
 The family doctor, an old friend, had M^arned him to take care 
 and to moderate both his anger and his appetite. But with 
 an old man’s obstinacy he plunged into acts of still greater 
 recklessness out of bravado, and he laughed at medicine and 
 doctors. He pretended to despise death, and did not mince 
 his language when he declared that he was not afraid of it. 
 
 One summer day, when it was very hot, and he had drunk 
 copiously, and argued in the market-place, he went home and 
 began to work quietly in his garden. He loved digging. Bare- 
 headed under the sun, still irritated by his argument, he dug 
 angrily. Jean-Christophe was sitting in the arbor with a book 
 in his hand, but he was not reading. He was dreaming and 
 listening to the cheeping of the crickets, and mechanically fol-, 
 lowing his grandfather’s movements. The old man’s back was 
 towards him; he was bending and plucking out weeds. Sud-^ 
 denly Jean-Christophe saw him rise, beat against the air with, 
 his arms, and fall heavily with his face to the ground. For 
 a moment he wanted to laugh; then he saw that the old man- 
 did not stir. He called to him, ran to him, and shook himj 
 with all his strength. Fear seized him. He knelt, and withj 
 his two hands tried to raise the great head from the ground. | 
 It was so heavy and he trembled so that he could hardly move 
 it. But when he saw the eyes turned up, white and bloody,^ 
 he was frozen with horror and, with a shrill cry, let the headjj 
 fall. He got up in terror, ran away and out of the place.{| 
 He cried and wept. A man passing by stopped the boy. Jean-jj 
 Christophe could not speak, but he pointed to the house.j 
 The man went in, and Jean-Christophe’ followed him. Others 
 had heard his cries, and they came from the neighboring houses. 
 Soon the garden was full of people. They trampled the flowers, 
 and bent down over the old man. They cried aloud. Two 
 or three men lifted him up. Jean-Christophe stayed by the 
 gate, turned to the wall, and hid his face in his hands. He 
 was afraid to look, but he could not help himself, and when 
 they passed him he saw through his Angers the old man’s huge 
 body, limp and flabby. One arm dragged along the ground, 
 the head, leaning against the knee of one of the men carrying 
 
tJlG DOdy, DODOea ai every step, ana me xaee >vao oeaiieu., enveicn 
 
 with mud, bleeding. The mouth was open and the eyes were 
 fearful. He howled again, and took to flight. He ran^as 
 though something were after him, and never stopped until ne 
 reached home. He burst into the kitchen with frightful cries. 
 Louisa was cleaning vegetables. He hurled himself at her,> 
 and hugged her desperately, imploring her help. His face was 
 distorted with his sobs; he could hardly speak. But at the 
 first word she understood. She went white, let the things fall 
 from her hands, and without a word rushed from the house. 
 
 Jean-Christophe was left alone, crouching against a cupboard. 
 He went on weeping. His brothers were playing. He could 
 not make out quite what had happened. He did not think 
 of his grandfather; he was thinking only of the dreadful sights 
 he had just seen, and he was in terror lest I made 
 
 to return to see them again. 
 
 And as it turned out in the evening, when \j uxx’ij-i. 
 tired of doing every sort of mischief in the house, were 
 ning to feel wearied and hungry, Louisa rushed in agair 
 them by the hand, and led them to their grandfather’s 
 She walked very fast, and Ernest and Eodolphe tried to 
 plain, as usual; but Louisa bade them be silent in such i 
 of voice that they held their peace. An instinctive fear 
 them, and when they entered the house they began to 
 It was not yet night. The last hours of the sunset cast strah 
 lights over the inside of the house — on the door-handle, on 
 the mirror, on the violin hung on the wall in the chief room, 
 which was half in darkness. But in the old man’s room a candl 
 was alight, and the flickering flame, vying with the livid, dyin 
 day, made the heavy darkness of the room more r 
 Melchior was sitting near the window, loudly weeping 
 doctor, leaning over the bed, hid from sight what was lyi^.^ 
 there. Jean-Christophe’s heart beat so that it was like to break. 
 Louisa made the children kneel at the foot of the bed. Jean- 
 Christophe stole a glance. He expected something so terrifying 
 after what he had seen in the afternoon that at the first glimpse 
 he was almost comforted. His grandfather lay motionless, 
 and seemed to be asleen. For a moment the ebild believed that 
 
120 JEAN^CHEISTOFHE 
 
 he heard his heavy breathing; when, as he looked cio&er, he 
 saw the swollen face, on which the wound that he had come 
 by in the fall had made a broad scar; when he understood that 
 hlf e was a man at point of death, he began to tremble ; and 
 while he Tepeated Louisa’s prayer for the restoration of his 
 grandfather, in his heart he prayed that if the old man could 
 not get well he might be already dead. He was terrified at the 
 prospect of what was going to happen. 
 
 The old man had not been conscious since the moment of 
 his fall. H’e only returned to consciousness for a moment, 
 enough to learn his condition, and that was lamentable. The 
 priest was there, and recited the last prayers over him. They 
 raised the old man on his pillow. He opened his eyes slowly, 
 and they seemed no longer to obey his will. He breathed noisily, 
 and with unseeing eyes looked at the faces and the lights, and 
 suddenly he opened his mouth. A nameless terror showed on 
 ^fpf^tures. 
 
 fit then . . he gasped — but I am going to die ! ” 
 
 I awful sound of his voice pierced Jean-Christophe’s heart. 
 
 , never was it to fade from his memory. The old man 
 lo more. He moaned like a little child. The stupor took 
 [nee more, but his breathing became more and more diffi- 
 He groaned, he fidgeted with his hands, he seemed to 
 against the mortal sleep. In his semi-consciousness he 
 once: 
 
 Mother ! ” 
 
 Oh, the biting impression that it made, this mumbling of 
 e old man, calling in anguish on his mother, as Jean-Chris- 
 would himself have done — ^his mother, of whom he was 
 er known to talk in life, to whom he now turned instinc- 
 tively, the last futile refuge in the last terror ! . . . Then he 
 seemed to be comforted for a moment. He had once more a 
 flicker of consciousness. His heavy eyes, the pupils of which 
 seemed to move aimlessly, met those of the boy frozen in his 
 fear. They lit up. The old man tried to smile and speak. 
 Louisa took Jean-Christophe and led him to the bedside. Jean 
 Michel moved his lips, and tried to caress his head with his 
 hand, but then he fell back into his torpor. It was the end. 
 
 They sent the children into the next room, but they had tor^ . 
 
MORNING 
 
 121 
 
 much to do to worry about them, and Jean-Christophe, under 
 the attraction of the horror of it, peeped through the half-open 
 door at the tragic face on the pillow; the man strangled by 
 the firm clutch that had him by the neck; the face which grew 
 ever more hollow as he watched; the sinking of the creature 
 into the void, which seemed to suck it down like a pump; and 
 the horrible death-rattle, the mechanical breathing, like a bubble 
 of air bursting on the surface of waters; the last efforts of the 
 body, which strives to live when the soul is no longer. Then 
 the head fell on one side on the pillow. All, all was silence. 
 
 A few moments later, in the midst of the sobs and prayers 
 and the confusion caused by the death, Louisa saw the child, 
 pale, wide-eyed, with gaping mouth, clutching convulsively at 
 the handle of the door. She ran to him. He had a seizure 
 in her arms. She carried him away. He lost consciousness. 
 He woke up to find himself in his bed. He howled in terror, 
 because he had been left alone for a moment, had another 
 seizure, and fainted again. For the rest of the night and the 
 next day he was in a fever. Finally, he grew calm, and on the 
 next night fell into a deep sleep, which lasted until the middle 
 of the following day. He felt that some one was walking in 
 his room, that his mother was leaning over his bed and kissing 
 him. He thought he heard the sweet distant sound of bells. 
 But he would not stir; he was in a dream. 
 
 When he opened his eyes again his Uncle Gottfried was sit- 
 ting at the foot of his bed. Jean-Christophe was worn out, 
 and could remember nothing. Then his memory returned, and 
 he began to weep. Gottfried got up and kissed him. 
 
 “ Well, my boy — well ? ” he said gently. 
 
 “ Oh, uncle, uncle ! ” sobbed the boy, clinging to him. 
 
 “ Cry, then . . .” said Gottfried. “ Cry ! ” 
 
 He also was weeping. 
 
 When he was a little comforted Jean-Christophe dried his 
 eyes and looked at Gottfried. Gottfried understood that he 
 wanted to ask something. 
 
 “No,” he said, putting a finger to his lips, “you must not 
 talk. It is good to cry, bad to talk.” 
 
 The boy insisted. 
 
 “ It is no good.” 
 
t 
 
 
 133 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 ^^Only one thing — only one! . . ^ 
 
 ^^What?^^ 
 
 Jean-Christophe hesitated. 
 
 Oh, uncle I ” he asked, where is he now ? 
 
 Gottfried answered: 
 
 ^^He is with the Lord, my boy.^^ 
 
 But that was not what Jean-Christophe had asked. 
 
 No; you do not understand. Where is he — ^he himself?'' 
 
 (He meant the body.) 
 
 He went on in a trembling voice: 
 
 ^^Is he still in the house 
 
 ^^They buried the good man this morning,’^ said Gottfried. 
 
 Did you not hear the bells ? 
 
 Jean-Christophe was comforted. Then, when he thought that 
 he would never see his beloved grandfather again, he wept once 
 more bitterly. 
 
 Poor little beast ! said Gottfried, looking pityingly at the 
 child. 
 
 Jean-Christophe expected Gottfried to console him, but Gott- 
 fried made no attempt to do so, knowing that it was useless. 
 
 Uncle Gottfried,^^ asked the boy, are not you afraid of it, 
 too?^^ 
 
 (Much did he wish that Gottfried should not have been afraid, 
 and would tell him the secret of it!) 
 
 ^Ssh ! he said, in a troubled voice. . . . 
 
 And how is one not to be afraid ? he said, after a moment. 
 ^^But what can one do? It is so. One must put up with 
 it.^^ 
 
 Jean-Christophe shook his head in protest. 
 
 One has to put up with it, my boy,^^ said Gottfried. He 
 ordered it up yonder. One has to love what He has ordered.^^ 
 
 I hate Him ! said Jean-Christophe, angrily shaking his 
 fist at the sky. 
 
 Gottfried fearfully bade him be silent. Jean-Christophe him- 
 self was afraid of what he had just said, and he began to pray 
 with Gottfried. But blood boiled, and as he repeated the words 
 of servile humility and resignation there was in his inmost 
 heart a feeling of passionate revolt and horror of the abominable 
 thing and the monstrous Being who had been able to create it. 
 
 I 
 
MORNING 
 
 123 
 
 Days passed and nights of rain over the freshly-turned earth 
 under which lay the remains of poor old Jean Michel. At 
 the moment Melchior wept and cried and sobbed much, but 
 the week was not out before Jean-Christophe heard him laugh- 
 ing heartily. When the name of the dead man was pronounced 
 in his presence, his face grew longer and a lugubrious ex- 
 pression came into it, but in a moment he would begin to talk 
 and gesticulate excitedly. He was sincerely afflicted, but it was 
 impossible for him to remain sad for long. 
 
 Louisa, passive and resigned, accepted the misfortune as she 
 accepted everything. She added a prayer to her daily prayers; 
 she went regularly to the cemetery, and cared for the grass 
 as if it were part of her household. 
 
 Gottfried paid touching attention to the little patch of ground 
 where the old man slept. When he came to the neighborhood, 
 he brought a little souvenir — a cross that he had made, or 
 flowers that Jean Michel had loved. He never missed, even 
 if he were only in the town for a few hours, and he did it by 
 stealth. 
 
 Sometimes Louisa took Jean-Christophe with her on her visits 
 to the cemetery. Jean-Christophe revolted in disgust against 
 the fat patch of earth clad in its sinister adornment of flowers 
 and trees, and against the heavy scent which mounts to the sun, 
 mingling with the breath of the sonorous cypress. But he dared 
 not confess his disgust, because he condemned it in himself as 
 cowardly and impious. He was very unhappy. His grand- 
 father’s death haunted him incessantly, and yet he had long 
 known what death was, and had thought about it and been 
 afraid of it. But he had never before seen it, and he who 
 sees it for the first time learns that he knew nothing, neither 
 of death nor of life. One moment brings everything tottering. 
 Reason is of no avail. You thought you were alive, you thought 
 you had some experience of life; you see then that you knew 
 nothing, that you have been living in a veil of illusions spun 
 by your own mind to hide from your eyes the awful counte- 
 nance of reality. There is no connection between the idea of 
 suffering and the creature who bleeds and suffers. There is 
 no connection between the idea of death and the convulsions 
 of body and soul in combat and in death. Human language, 
 
124 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 human wisdom, are only a puppet-show of stiff mechanical dolls 
 by the side of the grim charm of reality and the creatures of 
 mind and blood, whose desperate and vain efforts are strained 
 to the fixing of a life which crumbles away with every day. 
 
 Jean-Christophe thought of death day and night. Memories 
 of the last agony pursued him. He heard that horrible breath- 
 ing ; every night, whatever he might be doing, he saw his grand- 
 father again. All Nature was changed; it seemed as though 
 there were an icy vapor drawn over her. Eound him, every- 
 where, whichever way he turned, he felt upon his face the fatal 
 breathing of the blind, all-powerful Beast; he felt himself in 
 the grip of that fearful destructive Form, and he felt that 
 there was nothing to be done. But, far from crushing him, 
 the thought of it set him afiame with hate and indignation. 
 He was never resigned to it. He butted head down against 
 the impossible; it mattered nothing that he broke his head, 
 and was forced to realize that he was not the stronger. He 
 never ceased to revolt against suffering. From that time on ■ 
 his life was an unceasing struggle against the savagery of a ■ 
 Fate which he could not admit. t 
 
 The very misery of his life afforded him relief from the * 
 obsession of his thoughts. The ruin of his family, which only ; 
 Jean Michel had withheld, proceeded apace when he was re- ; 
 moved. With him the Kraffts had lost their chief means of * 
 support, and misery entered the house. 1 
 
 Melchior increased it. Far from working more, he abandoned \ 
 himself utterly to his vice when he was free of the only force | 
 that had held him in check. Almost every night he returned ^ 
 home drunk, and he never brought back his earnings. Besides, 1 
 he had lost almost all his lessons. One day he had appeared 
 at the house of one of his pupils in a state of complete in- j 
 toxication, and, as a consequence of this scandal, all doors were I 
 closed to him. He was only tolerated in the orchestra out of 
 regard for the memory of his father, but Louisa trembled lest 
 he. should be dismissed any day after a scene. He had already 
 been threatened with it on several evenings when he had turned 
 up in his place about the end of the performance. 
 
 Twice or thrice he had forgotten altogether to put in an 
 appearance. And of what was he not capable in those moments 
 
MOKNING 
 
 125 
 
 of stupid excitement when he was taken with the itch to do 
 and say idiotic things! Had he not taken it into his head 
 one evening to try and play his great violin concerto in the 
 middle of an act of the VcUJcyrie? They were hard put to it 
 to stop him. Sometimes, too, he would shout with laughter 
 in the middle of a performance at the amusing pictures that 
 were presented on the stage or whirling in his own brain. He 
 was a joy to his colleagues, and they passed over many things 
 because he was so funny. But such indulgence was worse than 
 severity, and Jean-Christophe could have died for shame. 
 
 The boy was now first violin in the orchestra. He sat so 
 that he could watch over his father, and, when necessary, be- 
 seech him, and make him be silent. It was not easy, and the 
 best thing was not to pay any attention to him, for if he did, 
 as soon as the sot felt that eyes were upon him, he would take 
 to making faces or launch out into a speech. Then Jean- 
 Christophe would turn away, trembling with fear lest he should 
 commit some outrageous prank. He would try to be absorbed 
 in his work, but he could not help hearing Melchior’s utter- 
 ances and the laughter of his colleagues. Tears would come into 
 his eyes. The musicians, good fellows that they were, had seen 
 that, and were sorry for him. They would hush their laughter, 
 and only talk about his father when Jean-Christophe was not 
 by. But Jean-Christophe was conscious of their pity. He 
 knew that as soon as he had gone their jokes would break out 
 again, and that Melchior was the laughing-stock of the town. 
 He could not stop him, and he was in torment. He used to 
 bring his father home after the play. He would take his arm, 
 put up with his pleasantries, and try to conceal the stumbling 
 in his walk. But he deceived no one, and in spite of all his 
 efforts it was very rarely that he could succeed in leading Mel- 
 chior all the way home. At the corner of the street Melchior 
 would declare that he had an urgent appointment with some 
 friends, and no argument could dissuade him from keeping 
 this engagement. Jean-Christophe took care not to insist too 
 much, so as not to expose himself to a scene and paternal 
 imprecations which might attract the neighbors to their windows. 
 
 All the household money slipped away in this fashion. Mel- 
 chior was not satisfied with drinking away his earnings; he 
 
drank away all that his wife and son so hardly earned. Louisa 
 used to weep, but she dared not resist, since her husband had 
 harshly reminded her that nothing in the house belonged to 
 her, and that he had married her without a sou. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe tried to resist. Melchior boxed his ears, treated him 
 like a naughty child, and took the money out of his hands. 
 The boy was twelve or thirteen. He was strong, and was 
 beginning to kick against being beaten; but he was still afraid 
 to rebel, and rather than expose himself to fresh humiliations 
 of the kind he let himself be plundered. The only resource that 
 Louisa and Jean-Christophe had was to hide their money; but 
 Melchior was singularly ingenious in discovering their hiding- 
 places when they were not there. 
 
 Soon that was not enough for him. He sold the things that 
 he had inherited from his father. Jean-Christophe sadly saw , 
 the precious relics go — the books, the bed, the furniture, the j 
 portraits of musicians. He could say nothing. But one day, j 
 when Melchior had crashed into Jean Michel’s old piano, he jj 
 swore as he rubbed his knee, and said that there was no longer 
 room to move about in his own house, and that he would rid ; 
 the house of all such gimcrackery. Jean-Christophe cried aloud. ■ 
 It was true that the rooms were too full, since all Jean Michel’s i 
 belongings were crowded into them, so as to be able to sell ; 
 the house, that dear house in which Jean-Christophe had spent ; 
 the happiest hours of his childhood. It was true also that the 
 old piano was not worth much, that it was husky in tone, and | 
 that for a long time Jean-Christophe had not used it, since | 
 he played on the fine new piano due to the generosity of the ^ 
 Prince; but however old and useless it might be, it was Jean-t 
 Christophe’s best friend. It had awakened the child to the ■ 
 boundless world of music; on its worn yellow keys he had 
 discovered with his fingers the kingdom of sounds and its laws; 
 it had been his grandfather’s work (months had gone to repair- 
 ing it for his grandson), and he was proud of it; it was in 
 some sort a holy relic, and Jean-Christophe protested that his 
 father had no right to sell it. Melchior bade him be silent. 
 Jean-Christophe cried louder than ever that the piano was his, 
 and that he forbade any one to touch it ; but Melchior looked 
 at him with an evil smile, and said nothing. 
 
MORNING 
 
 127 
 
 Next day Jean-Christophe had forgotten the affair. He came 
 home tired, hut in a fairly good temper. He was struck by 
 the sly looks of his brothers. They pretended to be absorbed 
 in their books, but they followed him with their eyes, and 
 watched all his movements, and bent over their books again 
 when he looked at them. He had no doubt that they had played 
 some trick upon him, but he was used to that, and did not 
 worry about it, but determined, when he had found it out, to 
 give them a good thrashing, as he always did on such occasions. 
 He scorned to look into the matter, and he began to talk to his 
 father, who was sitting by the fire, and questioned him as to 
 the doings of the day with an affectation of interest which suited 
 bim but ill; and while he talked he saw that Melchior was 
 exchanging stealthy nods and winks with the two children. 
 Something caught at his heart. He ran into his room. The 
 place where the piano had stood was empty! He gave a cry 
 of anguish. In the next room he heard the stifled laughter of 
 his brothers. The blood rushed to his face. He rushed in to 
 them, and cried: 
 
 “ My piano ! ” 
 
 Melchior raised his head with an air of calm bewilderment 
 which made the children roar with laughter. He could not 
 contain himself when he saw Jean-Christophe’s piteous look, 
 and he turned aside to guffaw. Jean-Christophe no longer 
 knew what he was doing. He hurled himself like a mad thing 
 on his father. Melchior, lolling in his chair, had no time to 
 protect himself. The boy seized him by the throat and cried: 
 “Thief! Thief!” 
 
 It was only for a moment. Melchior shook himself, and sent 
 Jean-Christophe rolling down on to the tile floor, though in 
 his fury he was clinging to him like grim death. The boy’s 
 head crashed against the tiles. Jean-Christophe got upon his 
 knees. He was livid, and he went on saying in a choking 
 voice : 
 
 “Thief, thief! . . . You are robbing us — mother and me. 
 . . . Thief! ... You are selling my grandfather!” 
 
 Melchior rose to his feet, and held his fist above Jean-Chris- 
 tophe’s head. The boy stared at him with hate in his eyes. 
 He was trembling with rage. Melchior began to tremble, too. 
 
128 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 He sat down, and hid his face in his hands. The two children 
 had run away screaming. Silence followed the uproar. Mel- 
 chior groaned and mumbled. J ean-Christophe, against the wall,, 
 never ceased glaring at him with clenched teeth, and he trembled 
 in every limb. Melchior began to blame himself. 
 
 I am a thief ! I rob my family ! My children despise me ! 
 
 It were better if I were dead ! 
 
 When he had finished whining, Jean-Christophe did not 
 budge, but asked him harshly: 
 
 Where is the piano ? 
 
 ^^At WormsePs,^^ said Melchior, not daring to look at him. 
 
 Jean-Christophe took a step forward, and said: 
 
 The money ! | 
 
 Melchior, crushed, took the money from his pocket and gave | 
 it to his son. Jean-Christophe turned towards the door. Mel- i 
 chior called him: 
 
 J ean-Christophe ! ; 
 
 Jean-Christophe stopped. Melchior went on in a quavering \ 
 voice : 
 
 Dear Jean-Christophe ... do not despise me ! i 
 
 Jean-Christophe fiung his arms round his neck and sobbed: ^ 
 
 No, father — dear father ! I do not despise you ! I am so i 
 unhappy ! : 
 
 They wept loudly. Melchior lamented: ; 
 
 It is not my fault. I am not bad. ThaPs true, J ean- . 
 Christophe ? I am not bad ? j 
 
 He promised that he would drink no more. Jean-Christophe 
 wagged his head doubtfully, and Melchior admitted that he | 
 could not resist it when he had money in his hands. Jean- j 
 Christophe thought for a moment and said: 
 
 ^^You see, father, we must . . 
 
 He stopped. 
 
 ^^What then?^^ 
 
 I am ashamed . . 
 
 Of whom ? asked Melchior naively 
 Of you.^^ 
 
 Melchior made a face and said : 
 
 That’s nothing.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe explained that they would have to put all 
 
MOENING 
 
 129 
 
 the family money, even Melchior’s contribution, into the hands 
 of some one else, who would dole it out to Melchior day by 
 day, or week by week, as he needed it. Melchior, who was 
 in humble mood — he was not altogether starving — agreed to 
 the proposition, and declared that he would then and there 
 write a letter to the Grand Duke to ask that the pension which 
 came to him should be regularly paid over in his name to Jean- 
 Christophe. Jean-Christophe refused, blushing for his father’s 
 humiliation. But Melchior, thirsting for self-sacrifice, insisted 
 on writing. He was much moved by his own magnanimity. 
 Jean-Christophe refused to take the letter, and when Louisa 
 came in and was acquainted with the turn of events, she declared 
 that she would rather beg in the streets than expose her hus- 
 band to such an insult. She added that she had every confidence 
 in him, and that she was sure he would make amends out of 
 love for the children and herself. In the end there was a 
 scene of tender reconciliation and Melchior’s letter was left on 
 the table, and then fell under the cupboard, where it remained 
 concealed. 
 
 But a few days later, when she was cleaning up, Louisa 
 found it there, and as she was very unhappy about Melchior’s 
 fresh outbreaks — he had forgotten all about it — instead of tear- 
 ing it up, she kept it. She kept it for several months, always 
 rejecting the idea of making use of it, in spite of the suffering 
 she had to endure. But one day, when she saw Melchior once 
 more beating Jean-Christophe and robbing him of his money, 
 she could bear it no longer, and when she was left alone with 
 the boy, who was weeping, she went and fetched the letter, and 
 gave it him, and said: 
 
 « Go!” 
 
 Jean-Christophe hesitated, but he understood that there was 
 no other way if they wished to save from the wreck the little 
 that was left to them. He went to the Palace. He took nearly 
 an hour to walk a distance that ordinarily took twenty minutes. 
 He was overwhelmed by the shame of what he was doing. His 
 pride, which had grown great in the years of sorrow and isola- 
 tion, bled at the thought of publicly confessing his 'father’s 
 vice. He knew perfectly well that it was known to everybody, 
 but by a strange and natural inconsequence he would not admit 
 
JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 it, and pretended to notice nothing, and he would rather have 
 been hewn in pieces than agree. And now, of his own accord, 
 he was going! . . . Twenty times he was on the point of turn- 
 ing back. He walked two or three times round the town, turn- 
 ing away just as he came near the Palace. He was not alone 
 in his plight. His mother and brothers had also to be con- 
 sidered. Since his father had deserted them and betrayed them, 
 it was his business as eldest son to take his place and come to 
 their assistance. There was no room for hesitation or pride; 
 he had to swallow down his shame. He entered the Palace. 
 On the staircase he almost turned and fled. He knelt down on 
 a step; he stayed for several minutes on the landing, with his 
 hand on the door, until some one coming made him go in. 
 
 Every one in the offices knew him. He asked to see His 
 Excellency the Director of the Theaters, Baron de Hammer 
 Langbach. A young clerk, sleek, bald, pink-faced, with a white 
 waistcoat and a pink tie, shook his hand familiarly, and began 
 to talk about the opera of the night before. Jean-Christophe 
 repeated his question. The clerk replied that His Excellency 
 was busy for the moment, but that if Jean-Christophe had a 
 request to make they could present it with other documents 
 which were to be sent in for His Excellency’s signature. Jean- 
 Christophe held out his letter. The clerk read it, and gave 
 a cry of surprise. 
 
 Oh, indeed ! ” he said brightly. That is a good idea. He 
 ought to have thought of that long ago! He never did any- 
 thing better in his life ! Ah, the old sot ! How the devil did 
 he bring himself to do it ? ” 
 
 He stopped short. Jean-Christophe had snatched the paper 
 out of his hands, and, white with rage, shouted: 
 
 I forbid you ! . . . I forbid you to insult me ! ” 
 
 The clerk was staggered. 
 
 But, my dear Jean-Christophe,” he began to say, whoever 
 thought of insulting you? I only said what everybody thinks, 
 and what you think yourself.” 
 
 No ! ” cried Jean-Christophe angrily. 
 
 ^^It is not true!” said Jean-Christophe. 
 
MORNING 
 
 
 He stamped his foot. 
 
 The clerk shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 “ In that case, why did he write this letter ? ” 
 
 “Because,” said Jean-Christophe (he did not know what to 
 say) — “because, when I come for my wages every month, I 
 prefer to take my father’s at the same time. It is no good 
 our both putting ourselves out. ... My father is very busy.” 
 
 He reddened at the absurdity of his explanation. The clerk 
 looked at him with pity and irony in his eyes. Jean-Christophe 
 crumpled the paper in his hands, and turned to go. The clerk 
 got up and took him by the arm. 
 
 “ Wait a moment,” he said. “ I’ll go and fix it up for you.” 
 
 He went into the Director’s office. Jean-Christophe waited, 
 with the eyes of the other clerks upon him. His blood boiled. 
 He did not know what he was doing, what to do, or what he 
 ought to do. He thought of going away before the answer was 
 brought to him, and he had just made up his mind to that when 
 the door opened. 
 
 “ His Excellency will see you,” said the too obliging clerk. 
 
 Jean-Christophe had to go in. 
 
 His Excellency Baron de Hammer Langbach, a little neat old 
 man with whiskers, mustaches, and a shaven chin, looked at 
 Jean-Christophe over his golden spectacles without stopping 
 writing, nor did he give any response to the boy’s awkward bow. 
 
 “So,” he said, after a moment, “you are, asking, Herr 
 Krafft . . . ?” 
 
 “ Your Excellency,” said Jean-Christophe hurriedly, “ I ask 
 your pardon. I have thought better of it. I have nothing to 
 ask.” 
 
 The old man sought no explanation for this sudden recon- 
 sideration. He looked more closely at Jean-Christophe, coughed, 
 and said: 
 
 “ Herr Krafft, will you give me the letter that is in your 
 hand?” 
 
 Jean-Christophe saw that the Director’s gaze was fixed on 
 the paper which he was still unconsciously holding crumpled 
 up in his hand. 
 
 “It is no use. Your Excellency,” he murmured. “It is not 
 worth while now.” 
 
132 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 “ Please give it me,” said the old man quietly, as though 
 he had not heard. 
 
 Mechanically Jean-Christophe gave him the crumpled letter, 
 but he plunged into a torrent of stuttered words while he held 
 out his hand for the letter. His Excellency carefully smoothed 
 out the paper, read it, looked at Jean-Christophe, let him floun- 
 der about with his explanations, then checked him, and said with 
 a malicious light in his eyes ; 
 
 “Very well, Herr Krafft; the request is granted.” 
 
 He dismissed him with a wave of his hand and went on with 
 his writing. 
 
 Jean-Christophe went out, crushed. 
 
 “No offense, Jean-Christophe ! ” said the clerk kindly, when 
 the boy came into the office again. Jean-Christophe let him 
 shake his hand without daring to raise his eyes. He found 
 himself outside the Palace. He was cold with shame. Every- ' 
 
 thing that had been said to him recurred in his memory, and | 
 
 he imagined that there was an insulting irony in the pity of 
 the people who honored and were sorry for him. He went home, 
 and answered only with a few irritable words Louisa’s questions, ’■ 
 as though he bore a grudge against her for what he had just 
 done. He was racked by remorse when he thought of his father. ! 
 
 He wanted to confess everything to him, and to beg his pardon. -i 
 
 Melchior was not there. Jean-Christophe kept awake far into ;; 
 
 the night, waiting for him. The more he thought of him the 1 
 
 more his remorse quickened. He idealized him ; he thought of | 
 
 him as weak, kind, unhappy, betrayed by his own family. As 
 soon as he heard his step on the stairs he leaped from his t 
 bed to go and meet him, and throw himself in his arms; but i 
 Melchior was in such a disgusting state of intoxication that 
 Jean-Christophe had not even the courage to go near him, 
 and he went to bed again, laughing bitterly at his own illusions. 
 
 When Melchior learned a few days later of what had hap- 
 pened, he was in a towering passion, and, in spite of all Jean- 
 Christophe’s entreaties, he went and made a scene at the Palace. 
 But he returned with his tail between his legs, and breathed 
 not a word of what had happened. He had been very badly 
 received. He had been told that he would have to take a very 
 different tone about the matter, that the pension had only been 
 
MOKNING 
 
 133 
 
 continued out of consideration for the worth of his son, and 
 that if in the future there came any scandal concerning him 
 to their ears, it would be suppressed. And so Jean-Christophe 
 was much surprised and comforted to see his father accept his 
 living from day to day, and even boast about having taken the 
 initiative in the sacrifice. 
 
 But that did not keep Melchior from complaining outside 
 that he had been robbed by his wife and children, that he had 
 put himself out for them all his life, and that now they let 
 him want for everything. He tried also to extract money from 
 Jean-Christophe by all sorts of ingenious tricks and devices, 
 which often used to make Jean-Christophe laugh, although he 
 was hardly ever taken in by them. But as Jean-Christophe 
 held firm, Melchior did not insist. He was curiously intimi- 
 dated by the severity in the eyes of this boy of fourteen who 
 judged him. He used to avenge himself by some stealthy, 
 dirty trick. He used to go to the cabaret and eat and drink 
 as much as he pleased, and then pay nothing, pretending that 
 his son would pay his debts. Jean-Christophe did not protest, 
 for fear of increasing the scandal, and he and Louisa exhausted 
 their resources in discharging Melchior’s debts. In the end 
 Melchior more and more lost interest in his work as violinist, 
 since he no longer received his wages, and his absence from 
 the theater became so frequent that, in spite of Jean-Chris- 
 tophe’s entreaties, they had to dismiss him. The boy was left 
 to support his father, his brothers, and the whole household. 
 
 So at fourteen Jean-Christophe became the head of the 
 family. 
 
 He stoutly faced his formidable task. His pride would not 
 allow him to resort to the charity of others. He vowed that 
 he would pull through alone. From his earliest days he had 
 suffered too much from seeing his mother accept and even ask 
 for humiliating charitable offerings. He used to argue the 
 matter with her when she returned home triumphant with some 
 present that she had obtained from one of her patronesses. 
 She saw no harm in it, and was glad to be able, thanks to the 
 money, to spare Jean-Christophe a little, and to bring another 
 meager dish forth for supper. But Jean-Christophe would be* 
 
134 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 come gloomy, and would not talk all evening, and would even 
 refuse, without giving any reason, to touch food gained in 
 / this way. Louisa was vexed, and clumsily urged her son to 
 eat. He was not to be budged, and in the end she would lose 
 her temper, and say unkind things to him, and he would retort. 
 Then he would fling his napkin on the table and go out. His 
 father would shrug his shoulders and call him a poseur; his 
 brothers would laugh at him and eat his portion. 
 
 But he had somehow to find a livelihood. His earnings from | 
 the orchestra were not enough. He gave lessons. His talents 
 as an instrumentalist, his good reputation, and, above all, the 
 Prince’s patronage, brought him a numerous clientele among 
 the middle classes. Every morning from nine o’clock on he 
 taught the piano to little girls, many of them older than him- 
 self, who frightened him horribly with their coquetry and mad- 
 dened him with the clumsiness of their playing. They were 
 absolutely stupid as far as music went, but, on the other hand, I 
 they had all, more or less, a keen sense of ridicule, and their i 
 mocking looks spared none of Jean-Christophe’s awkwardnesses. ^ 
 It was torture for him. Sitting by their side on the edge of ? 
 his chair, stiff, and red in the face; bursting with anger, and ^ 
 not daring to stir; controlling himself so as not to say stupid 
 things, and afraid of the sound of his own voice, so that he 
 could hardly speak a word; trying to look severe, and feeling ; 
 that his pupil was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, ^ 
 he would lose countenance, grow confused in the middle of a | 
 remark; fearing to make himself ridiculous, he would become 5 
 so, and break out into violent reproach. But it was very easy | 
 for his pupils to avenge themselves, and they did not fail to i 
 do so, and upset him by a certain way of looking at him, and 
 by asking him the simplest questions, which made him blush 
 up to the roots of his hair; or they would ask him to do them 
 some small service, such as fetching something they had for- 
 gotten from a piece of furniture, and that was for him a most 
 painful ordeal, for he had to cross the room under fire of 
 malicious looks, which pitilessly remarked the least awkward- ^ 
 ness in his movements and his clumsy legs, his stiff arms, his 
 body cramped by his shyness. 
 
 From these lessons he had to hasten to rehearsal at the theater. 
 
MOENING 
 
 135 
 
 Often he had no time for lunch, and he used to carry a pi^e 
 of bread and some cold meat in his pocket to ^ 
 
 interval. Sometimes he had to take the place of Tobias 
 the Musik DireUor, who was interested in hm, and sometimes 
 had him to conduct the orchestra rehearsals instead of 
 And he had also to go on with ^ 
 
 Other piano lessons filled his day until the hour of the per- 
 forming and very often in the evening after the p ay he was 
 'Iirflr to play at the Palace. There he had to play for an 
 hour or two.^ The Princess laid claim to a knowledge of music. 
 She was very fond of it, but had never been able to perceive 
 the difference between good and bad. She used to 
 Christophe play through strange FOgram«ies, in which du 
 rhapsodies stood side by side with masterpieces. ^ 
 
 greatest pleasure was to make him improvise and she used to 
 provide him with heartbreakingly sentimental themes. 
 
 ^ Jean-Christophe used to leave about midnight, worn out, wte 
 his hands burning, his head aching, his stomach emp y. 
 
 ;iTn . ™eat, Im outside snow would be fa hug, or there 
 would be an icy fog. He had to walk across half the town to 
 Taeh homo. He went on foot, his «h chattonng, longing 
 to sleep and to cry, and he had to take care not to splash h 
 
 only evening dress-snit in the puddles. 
 
 He would go up to his room, which he still shared with his 
 brothers, and never was he so overwhelmed by dis^t and 
 despair with his life as at the moment when in ^tti^ 
 with its stifling smell, he was at last permitted to take o 
 the halter of hfs misery. He had hardly the heart to undress 
 himself. Happily, no sooner did his \ ^ 
 
 than he would sink into a heavy sleep which deprived him of 
 
 all consciousness of his troubles. 
 
 But he had to get up by dawn in summer, and before dawn 
 in winter. He wished to do his own work. It w^ all the 
 free time that he had between five o’clock and eight. Even 
 then he had to waste some of it by work to coi^and, for tes 
 title of Hof Musicus and his favor with the Grand Duke exacted 
 from bim official compositions for the Court festivals. 
 
 So the very source of his life was poisoned. Even his dreams 
 were not free, but, as usual, this restraint made them only the 
 
136 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 stronger. When nothing hampers action, the soul has fewer 
 reasons for action, and the closer the walls of Jean-Christophe’s 
 prison of care and banal tasks were drawn about him, the more 
 his heart in its revolt felt its independence. In a life without 
 obstacles he would doubtless have abandoned himself to chance 
 and to the voluptuous sauntering of adolescence. As he could 
 be free only for an hour or two a day, his strength flowed into 
 that space of time like a river between walls of rock. It is a 
 good discipline for art for a man to confine his efforts between 
 unshakable bounds. In that sense it may be said that misery 
 is a master, not only of thought, but of style j it teaches sobriety 
 to the mind as to the body. When time is doled out and 
 thoughts measured, a man says no word too much, and grows 
 accustomed to thinking only what is essential^ so he lives at 
 double pressure, having less time for living. 
 
 This had happened in Jean-Christophe’s case. Under his 
 yoke he took full stock of the value of liberty and he never I 
 
 frittered away the precious minutes with useless words or il 
 
 actions. His natural tendency to write diffusely, given up to ; 
 
 all the caprice of a mind sincere but indiscriminating, found ! 
 
 correction in being forced to think and do as much as possible 
 in the least possible time. Nothing had so much influence ' 
 on his artistic and moral development — not the lessons of 
 his masters, nor the example of the masterpieces. During ii 
 
 the years when the character is formed he came to consider ' 
 
 music as an exact language, in which every sound has a mean- \ 
 
 ing, and at the same time he came to loathe those musicians | 
 
 who talk without saying anything. ; 
 
 And yet the compositions which he wrote at this time were -j 
 still far from expressing himself completely, because he was 
 still very far from having completely discovered himself. He 
 was seeking himself through the mass of acquired feelings which 
 education imposes on a child as second nature. He had only 
 intuitions of his true being, until he should feel the passions 
 of adolescence, which strip the personality of its borrowed gar- 
 ments as a thunder-clap purges the sky of the mists that hang 
 over it. Vague and great forebodings were mingled in him 
 with strange memories, of which he could not rid himself. He 
 raged against these lies; he was wretched to see how inferior 
 
MOKNING 
 
 137 
 
 what he wrote wae to what he thought ; 
 
 ”a2r H. ri e-a r— rr 
 
 deteat, tie lougeu j tnoment of illusion 
 
 thint^s and always he missed fire. Alter a mome 
 „ hf ™te he iw that what he had aone was worthless. He 
 
 .a ™oSta »« Mt^aqt of Pallm, written on the occasion 
 
 S irmBAgt ofprinLss Adelaiae-pnblished at pea ex- 
 pense in mins de Inxs, which his 
 
 tor posterity; tor he believed in postenty. He wept m his 
 
 "Te^rer'years! No respite, no releas^nothing to create 
 
 a diversion from such maddening toil; no games, no friends, 
 a diversion afternoon, when other 
 
 Sren played, young Jean-Christophe, -^is^brows^kmt 
 
 in attention, was at his place in t e ore children 
 
 and ill-lighted theater; and in the evening, when other ctaldren 
 were “hi, he was still there, sitting in his chair, howed with 
 
 ” N'i°Mmacy with his brothers. The younger, Ernest was 
 
 twelve He was a little ragamuIBn. vicious and impudent, 
 who spent his days with other rapscallions like himself, and 
 from their company had caught not only deplorable manners, 
 
 but shameful habits which good ^ e ®Jne 
 
 so much as suspected their existence, was ^ 
 
 day. The other, Eodolphe, the favorite of 
 was to go into business. He was steady, quiet but sly. He 
 thought himself much superior to Jean-Christophe, and di 
 admft his authority in the house, although it seemed natural 
 to him to eat the food that he provided. He ! 
 
 cause of Theodore and Melchior’s ill-feeling agamst ^an-C 
 Sophe and used to repeat their absurd gossip- Neither of 
 the brothers cared for music, and Eodolphe, in imitation o i 
 uncle affected to despise it. Chafing against Jean-Christophe 
 authority and lectures-for he took himself very seriously as 
 the head of the family— the two boys had tried to rebel, but 
 
138 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Jean-Christophe, who had lusty fists and the consciousness of 
 right, sent them packing. Still they did not for that cease 
 to do with him as they liked. They abused his credulity, and 
 laid traps for him, into which he invariably fell. They used 
 to extort money from him with barefaced lies, and laughed at 
 him behind his back. Jean-Christophe was always taken in. 
 He had so much need of being loved that an affectionate word 
 was enough to disarm his rancor. He would have forgiven 
 them everything for a little love. But his confidence was cruelly 
 shaken when he heard them laughing at his stupidity after a 
 scene of hypocritical embracing which had moved him to tears, 
 and they had taken advantage of it to rob him of a gold watch, 
 a present from the Prince, which they coveted. He despised 
 them, and yet went on letting himself be taken in from his 
 unconquerable tendency to trust and to love. He knew it. He ‘ 
 raged against himself, and he used to thrash his brothers ■; 
 soundly when he discovered once more that they had tricked ; 
 him. That did not keep him from swallowing almost immedi- ' 
 ately the fresh hook which it pleased them to bait for him. 
 
 A more bitter cause of suffering was in store for him. He i 
 learned from officious neighbors that his father was speaking i 
 ill of him. After having been proud of his son’s successes, and ■ 
 having boasted of them everywhere, Melchior was weak and ' 
 shameful enough to be jealous of them. He tried to decry ; 
 them. It was stupid to weep ; J ean-Christophe could only shrug ^ 
 his shoulders in contempt. It was no use being angry about it, | 
 for his father did not know what he was doing, and was em- ' 
 bittered by his own downfall. The boy said nothing. He was | 
 afraid, if he said anything, of being too hard; but he was cut i 
 to the heart. 
 
 They were melancholy gatherings at the family evening meal 
 round the lamp, with a spotted cloth, with all the stupid chatter 
 and the sound of the jaws of these people whom he despised 
 and pitied, and yet loved in spite of everything. Only between 
 himself and his brave mother did Jean-Christophe feel a bond 
 of affection. But Louisa, like himself, exhausted herself during 
 the day, and in the evening she was worn out and hardly spoke, 
 and after dinner used to sleep in her chair over her darning. 
 And she was so good that she seemed to make no difference 
 
MOKNING 
 
 139 
 
 in her love between her husband and her three sons. She loved 
 them all equally. Jean-Christophe did not find in her the 
 
 trusted friend that he so much needed. ^ - v. 
 
 So he was driven in upon himself. For days together he 
 would not speak, fulfilling his tiresome and wearing task with 
 a sort of silent rage. Such a mode of living was dangerous, 
 especially for a child at a critical age, when he is most sensitive, . 
 and is exposed to every agent of destruction and the risk of 
 being deformed for the rest of his life. Jean-Christophe s 
 health suffered seriously. He had been endowed by his paren s 
 with a healthy constitution and a sound and healthy body; but 
 his very healthiness only served to feed his suffering when the 
 weight of weariness and too early cares had opened up a gap 
 by which it might enter. Quite early in life there were signs 
 of grave nervous disorders. When he was a small boy he was 
 subiect to fainting-fits and convulsions and vomiting whenever 
 he encountered opposition. When he was seven or eight about 
 the time of the concert, his sleep had been troubled. He used 
 to talk, cry, laugh and weep in his sleep, and this habit re- 
 turned to him whenever he had too much to think ot. Ihen 
 he had cruel headaches, sometimes shooting pains at the base 
 of his skull or the top of his head, sometimes a leaden heavi- 
 ness. His eyes troubled him. Sometimes it was as though 
 red-hot needles were piercing his eyeballs. He was subject to 
 fits of dizziness, when he could not see to read, and had to 
 stop for a minute or two. Insufficient and unsound food and 
 irregular meals ruined the health of his stomach. He was 
 racked by internal pains or exhausted by diarrhea. But noth- 
 ing brought him more suffering than his heart. It beat with 
 a crazy irregularity. Sometimes it would leap in his bosom, 
 and seem like to break; sometimes it would hardly beat at 
 all, and seem like to stop. At night his temperature would 
 vary alarmingly; it would change suddenly from fever-point 
 to next to nothing. He would burn, then shiver with cold, 
 pass through agony. His throat would go dry ; a lump m it 
 would prevent his breathing. Naturally his pagination 
 took fire. He dared not say anything to his family of what 
 he was going through, but he was continually dissecting it with 
 a minuteness which either enlarged his sufferings or created 
 
140 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 new ones. He decided that he had every known illness one 
 after the other.. He believed that he was going blind, and as 
 he sometimes used to turn giddy as he walked, he thought 
 that he was going to fall down dead. Always that dreadful 
 fear of being stopped on his road, of dying before his time, 
 obsessed him, overwhelmed him, and pursued him. Ah, if he 
 had to die, at least let it not be now, not before he had tasted 
 victory! . . . 
 
 Victory . . . the fixed idea which never ceases to burn within 
 him without his being fully aware of it— the idea which bears 
 him up through all his disgust and fatigues and the stagnant 
 morass of such a life! A dim and great foreknowledge of 
 what he will be some day, of what he is already! . . . What 
 is he? A sick, nervous child, who plays the violin in the 
 orchestra and writes mediocre concertos? Noj far more than ■ 
 such a child. That is no more than the wrapping, the seeming 
 of a day ; that is not his Being. There is no connection between 
 his Being and the existing shape of his face and thought. He 
 knows that well. When he looks at himself in the mirror he 
 does not know himself. That broad red face, those prominent ■ 
 eyebrows, those little sunken eyes, that short thick nose, that ! 
 sullen mouth — the whole mask, ugly and vulgar, is foreign to 
 himself. Neither does he know himself in his writings. 
 He judges, he knows that what he does and what he is are 
 nothing ; and yet he is sure of what he will be and do. Some- j 
 times he falls foul of such certainty as a vain lie. He takes ] 
 pleasure in humiliating himself and bitterly mortifying him- I 
 self by way of punishment. But his certainty endures ; nothing | 
 can alter it. Whatever he does, whatever he thinks, none of j 
 his thoughts, actions, or writings contain him or express him. 
 
 He knows, he has this strange presentiment, that the more that 
 he is, is not contained in the present but is what he will be, 
 what he will be to-morrow. He will be! ... He is fired by 
 that faith, he is intoxicated by that light ! Ah, if only To-day 
 does not block the way ! If only he does not fall into one 
 of the cunning traps which To-day is forever laying for him ! 
 
 So he steers his bark across the sea of days, turning his eyes 
 neither to right nor left, motionless at the helm, with his gaze 
 fixed on the bourne, the refuge, the end that he .has in sight. 
 
14 
 
 MOENING 
 
 In the orchestra, among the talkative musicians, at table with 
 his own family, at the Palace, while he is playing without a 
 thought of what he is playing, for the entertainment of Koyai 
 folk— it is in that future, that future which a speck may bring 
 toppling to earth — no matter, it is in that that he lives. 
 
 He is at his old piano, in his garret, alone. Night falls. 
 The dying light of day is cast upon his music. He strains his 
 eyes to read the notes until the last ray of light is dead. The 
 tenderness of hearts that are dead breathed forth from the 
 dumb page fills him with love. His eyes are filled with tears. 
 It seems to him that a beloved creature is standing behind him, 
 that soft breathing caresses his cheek, that two arms are about 
 his neck. He turns, trembling. He feels, he knows, that he 
 is not alone. A soul that loves and is loved is there, near him. 
 He groans aloud because he cannot perceive it, and yet that 
 shadow of bitterness falling upon his ecstasy has sweetness, too. 
 Even sadness has its light. He thinks of his beloved masters, 
 of the genius that is gone, though its soul lives on in the music 
 which it had lived in its life. His heart is overflowing with 
 love ; he dreams of the superhuman happiness which must have 
 been the lot of these glorious men, since the reflection only of 
 their happiness is still so much aflame. He dreams of being 
 like them, of giving out such love as this, with lost rays to 
 lighten his misery with a godlike smile. In his turn to be 
 a god, to give out the warmth of joy, to be a sun of life ! . . . 
 
 Alas ! if one day he does become the equal of those whom he 
 loves, if he does achieve that brilliant happiness for which he 
 longs, he will see the illusion that was upon him. . • • 
 
 II 
 
 OTTO 
 
 One Sunday when Jean-Christophe had been invited by his 
 Musik Direktor to dine at the little country house which Tobias 
 Pfeiffer owned an hour’s journey from the town, he took the 
 Rhine steamboat. On deck he sat next to a boy about his own 
 
.2 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 age, who eagerly made room for him. Jean-Christophe paid 
 no attention, but after a moment, feeling that his neighbor 
 had never taken his eyes off him, he turned and looked at him. 
 He was a fair boy, with round pink cheeks, with his hair parted 
 on one side, and a shade of down on his lip. He looked frankly 
 what he was — a hobbledehoy — though he made great efforts to 
 seem grown up. He was dressed with ostentatious care — ^flannel 
 suit, light gloves, white shoes, and a pale blue tie — and he car- 
 ried a little stick in his hand. He looked at Jean-Christophe 
 out of the corner of his eye without turning his head, with 
 his neck stiff, like a hen; and when Jean-Christophe looked 
 at him he blushed up to his ears, took a newspaper from his 
 pocket, and pretended to be absorbed in it, and to look impor- 
 tant over it. But a few minutes later he dashed to pick up 
 Jean- Christophers hat, which had fallen. Jean-Christophe, sur- 
 prised at such politeness, looked once more at the boy, and 
 once more he blushed. Jean-Christophe thanked him curtly, for 
 he did not like such obsequious eagerness, and he hated to be 
 fussed with. All the same, he was flattered by it. 
 
 Soon it passed from his thoughts; his attention was occupied 
 by the view. It was long since he had been able to escape 
 from the town, and so he had keen pleasure in the wind that 
 beat against his face, in the sound of the water against the 
 boat, in the great stretch of water and the changing spectacle 
 presented by the banks — ^bluffs gray and dull, willow-trees half 
 under water, pale vines, legendary rocks, towns crowned with 
 Gothic towers and factory chimneys belching black smoke. 
 And as he was in ecstasy over it all, his neighbor in a choking 
 voice timidly imparted a few historic facts concerning the ruins 
 that they saw, cleverly restored and covered with ivy. He 
 seemed to be lecturing to himself. Jean-Christophe, roused to 
 interest, plied him with questions. The other replied eagerly, 
 glad to display his knowledge, and with every sentence he ad- 
 dressed himself directly to Jean-Christophe, calling him "'Herr 
 Hof Violinist/' 
 
 "^You know me, then?^^ said Jean-Christophe. 
 
 Oh yes,’^ said the boy, with a simple admiration that tickled 
 Jean-Christophe^s vanity. 
 
 They talked. The boy had often seen Jean-Christophe at 
 
MOKNING 
 
 143 
 
 concerts and his imagination had been touched by everything 
 that he had heard about him. He did not say so to Jean- 
 Christophe but Jean-Christophe felt it, and was pleasantly sur- 
 prised by it. He was not used to being spoken to m this tone 
 It eager respect. He went on questioning his neighbor about 
 the history of the country through which they were passing. 
 The le/ set out all the knowledge that he had, and Jean- 
 Christophe admired his learning. But that was o^ly ^he peg 
 on which their conversation hung. What interested them wa 
 the making of each other’s acquaintance. They dared not 
 frankly approach the subject; they returned to it 
 again lith awkward questions. Finally they 
 Christophe learned that his new friend was called Otto Diener, 
 and was the son of a rich merchant in the town. It appeared, 
 naturally, that they had friends in common, and little by little 
 their tongues were loosed. They were talking eagerly when 
 the boat arrived at the town at which Jean-Christophe was , 
 to get out. Otto got out, too. That surprised them, and Jean- 
 Christophe proposed that they should take a walk together unti 
 dinner-time. They struck out across the fields. Jean-Chns- 
 tophe had taken Otto’s arm familiarly, and was telling him 
 his plans as if he had known |iim from his birth He ^adjieen 
 so much deprived of the society of children of his own age 
 that he found an inexpressible joy in being with this y, 
 so learned and well brought up, who was in sympathy with 
 
 Time passed, and Jean-Christophe took no count of it. Diener, 
 proud of the confidence which the young musician showed him, 
 dared not point out that the dinner-hour had run^ At last 
 he thought that he must remind him of it, but Jean-Christophe 
 who had begun the ascent of a hill in the woods declared that 
 they must go to the top, and when they reached i* ^ lay down 
 on the grass as though he meant to spend the day ther . 
 a quarter of an hour Diener, seeing that he seemed to hav 
 no intention of moving, hazarded again . 
 
 And your dinner?^' v • -u 
 
 Jean-Christophe, lying at full length, with his hands behind 
 
 his head, said quietly: 
 
 “Tssh!” 
 
■■ 
 
 144 ; JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Then he looked at Otto, saw his scared look, and began to 
 laugh. ® 
 
 “ It is too good here,” he explained. “ I shan’t go. Let them 
 wait for me ! ” 
 
 He half rose. 
 
 “Are you in a hurry? No? Do you know what we’ll do? 
 We’ll dine together. I know of an inn.” 
 
 Diener would have had many objections to make — not that 
 any one was waiting for him, but because it was hard for him 
 to come to any sudden decision, whatever it might be. He 
 was methodical, and needed to be prepared beforehand. But 
 Jean-Christophe’s question was put in such a tone as allowed 
 of no refusal. He let himself be dragged oif, and they began 
 to talk again. " , 
 
 At the inn their eagerness died down. Both were occupied 
 with the question as to who should give the dinner, and each J 
 
 within himself made it a point of honor to give it— Diener '! 
 
 because he was the richer, Jean-Christophe because he was ^ 
 the poorer. They made no direct reference to the matter, but 
 Diener made great efforts to assert his right by the tone of ! 
 
 authority which he tried to take as he asked for the menu. ! 
 
 Jean-Christophe understood what he was at and turned the 
 tables on him by ordering other dishes of a rare kind. He ' 
 wanted to show that he was as much at his ease as anybody, j 
 and when Diener tried again by endeavoring to take upon him- ■ 
 self the choice of wine, Jean-Christophe crushed him with a | 
 look, and ordered a bottle of one of the most expensive vintages I 
 they had in the inn. J 
 
 When they found themselves seated before a considerable • 
 
 repast, they were abashed by it. They could find nothing to ‘ 
 
 say , ate mincingly, and were awkward and constrained in 
 their movements. They became conscious suddenly that 
 they were strangers, and they watched each other. They 
 made vain efforts to revive the conversation; it dropped 
 immediately. Their first half-hour was a time of fearful bore- 
 dom. Fortunately, the meat and drink soon had an effect on 
 them, and they looked at each other more confidently. Jean- 
 Christophe especially, who was not used to such good things, 
 became extraordinarily loquacious. He told of the difficulties 
 
MOEOTNG 145 
 
 of his life, and Otto, breaking through his reserve, confessed 
 that he also was not happy. He was weak and timid, and his 
 schoolfellows put upon him. They laughed at him, and could 
 not forgive him for despising their vulgar manners. They 
 played all sorts of tricks on him. Jean-Christophe clenched 
 his fists, and said they had better not try it in his presence. 
 Otto also was misunderstood by his family. Jean-Christoph^ 
 knew the unhappiness of that, and they commiserated each other 
 on their common misfortunes. Diener’s parents wanted him 
 to become a merchant, and to step into his father’s place, but 
 he wanted to be a poet. He would be a poet, even though he 
 had to fly the town, like Schiller, and brave poverty! (His 
 father’s fortune would all come to him, and it was considerable.) 
 He confessed blushingly that he had already written verses on 
 the sadness of life, but he could not bring himself to recite 
 them, in spite of Jean-Christophe’s entreaties. But in the end 
 he did give two or three of them, dithering with emotion. Jean- 
 Christophe thought them admirable. They exchanged plans. 
 Later on they would work together; they would write dramas 
 and song-cycles. They admired each other. Besides his reputa- 
 tion as a musician, Jean-Christophe’s strength and bold ways 
 made an impression on Otto, and Jean-Christophe was sensible 
 of Otto’s elegance and distinguished manners — everything in 
 this world is relative— and of his ease of manner— that ease of 
 manner which he looked and longed for. 
 
 Made drowsy by their meal, with their elbows on the table, 
 they talked and listened to each other with softness in their 
 eyes. The afternoon drew on; they had to go. Otto made a 
 last attempt to procure the bill, but Jean-Christophe nailed him 
 to his seat with an angry look which made it impossible for 
 him to insist. Jean-Christophe was only uneasy on one point— 
 that he might be asked for more than he had. He would have 
 given his watch and everything that he had about him rather 
 than admit it to Otto. But he was not called on to go so far. 
 He had to spend on the dinner almost the whole of his month s 
 money. 
 
 They went down the hill again. The shades of evening were 
 beginning to fall over the pine-woods. Their tops were still 
 bathed in rosy light; they swung slowly with a surging sound. 
 
146 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 The carpet of purple pine-needles deadened the sound of their 
 footsteps. They said no word. Jean-Christophe felt a strange 
 sweet sadness welling through his heart. He was happy; he 
 wished to talk, but was weighed down with his sweet sorrow. 
 He stopped for a moment, and so did Otto. All was silence. 
 Flies buzzed high above them in a ray of sunlight; a rotten 
 branch fell. Jean-Christophe took Otto’s hand, and in a trem- 
 bling voice said: 
 
 “ Will you be my friend ? ” 
 
 Otto murmured: 
 
 « Yes.” 
 
 They shook hands; their hearts beat; they dared hardly look 
 at each other. 
 
 After a moment they walked on. They were a few paces 
 away from each other, and they dared say no more until they 
 were out of the woods. They were fearful of each other, and 
 of their strange emotion. They walked very fast, and never 
 stopped until they had issued from the shadow of the trees; 
 then they took courage again, and joined hands. They mar- 
 veled at the limpid evening falling, and they talked discon- 
 nectedly. 
 
 On the boat, sitting at the bows in the brilliant twilight, 
 they tried to talk of trivial matters, but they gave no heed 
 to what they were saying. They were lost in their own hap- 
 piness and weariness. They felt no need to talk, or to hold 
 hands, or even to look at each other; they were near each 
 other. 
 
 When they were near their journey’s end they agreed to meet 
 again on the following Sunday. Jean-Christophe took Otto to 
 his door. Under the light of the gas they timidly smiled and 
 murmured au revoir. They were glad to part, so wearied were 
 they by the tension at which they had been living for those 
 hours and by the pain it cost them to break the silence with 
 a single word. 
 
 Jean-Christophe returned alone in the night. His heart 
 was singing: “I have a friend! I have a friend!” He 
 saw nothing, he heard nothing, he thought of nothing 
 else. 
 
 He was very sleepy, and fell asleep as soon as he reached 
 
MOKNING 147 
 
 his room ; but he was awakened twice or thrice during the night, 
 as by some fixed idea. He repeated, “ I "have a friend, and 
 went to sleep again at once. 
 
 Next morning it seemed to be all a dream. To test the reality 
 of it, he tried to recall the smallest details of the day. He 
 was absorbed by this occupation while he was giving his lessons, 
 and even during the afternoon he was so absent during the 
 orchestra rehearsal that when he left he could hardly remember 
 what he had been playing. 
 
 When he returned home he found a letter waiting tor him. 
 He had no need to ask himself whence it came. He ran and 
 shut himself up in his room to read it, It was written on pale 
 blue paper in a labored, long, uncertain hand, with very correct 
 flourishes : 
 
 "Dear Herr Jeak-Christophe— dare I say Honored 
 Friend ? — 
 
 "I am thinking much of our doings yesterday, and I do 
 thank you tremendously for your kindness to me. I am so 
 grateful for all that you have done, and for your kind words, 
 and the delightful walk and the excellent dinner! I am only 
 worried that you should have spent so much money on it. 
 WTiat a lovely day! Do you not think there was something 
 providential in that strange meeting? It seems to me that 
 it was Fate decreed that we should meet. How glad I shall 
 be to see you again on Sunday! I hope you will not have had 
 too much unpleasantness for having inissed the Hof Mimic 
 DireUor’s dinner. I should be so sorry if you had any trouble 
 because of me. 
 
 "Dear Herr Jean-Christophe, I am always 
 “Your very devoted servant and friend, 
 
 " Otto Diener. 
 
 <( p. s. On Sunday please do not call for me at home. It 
 
 would be better, if you will, for us to meet at the Schloss 
 Garten/^ 
 
 Jean-Christophe read the letter with tears in his eyes. He 
 kissed it; he laughed aloud; he jumped about on his bed. Then 
 
148 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 he ran to the table and took pen in hand to reply at once. He 
 could not wait a moment. But he was not used to writing. 
 He could not express what was swelling in his heart; he dug 
 into the paper with his pen, and blackened his fingers with 
 ink; he stamped impatiently. At last, by dint of putting out 
 his tongue and making five or six drafts, he succeeded in writ- 
 ing in malformed letters, which fiew out in all directions, and 
 with terrific mistakes in spelling: 
 
 Soul, — 
 
 How dare you speak of gratitude, because I love you ? Have 
 I not told you how sad I was and lonely before I knew you? 
 Your friendship is the greatest of blessings. Yesterday I was 
 happy, happy! — for the first time in my life. I weep for joy 
 as I read your letter. Yes, my beloved, there is no doubt 
 that it was Fate brought us together. Fate wishes that we 
 shotild be friends to do great things. Friends! The lovely 
 ' word ! Can it be that at last I have a friend ? Oh ! you will 
 never leave me? You will be faithful to me? Always! always! 
 . . . How beautiful it will be to grow up together, to work 
 together, to bring together — I my musical whimsies, and all 
 the crazy things that go chasing through my mind; you your 
 intelligence and amazing learning! How much you know! I 
 have never met a man so clever as you. There are moments 
 when r am uneasy. I seem to be unworthy of your friendship. 
 You are so noble and so accomplished, and I am so grateful 
 to you for loving so coarse a creature as myself ! . . . But no ! 
 I have just said, let there be no talk of gratitude. In friend- 
 ship there is no obligation nor benefaction. I would not accept 
 any benefaction ! We are equal, since we love. How impatient 
 I am to see you! I will not call for you at home, since you 
 do not wish it — although, to tell the truth, I do not understand 
 all these precautions — ^but you are the wiser; you are surely 
 right. . . . 
 
 One word only ! No more talk of money. I hate money — 
 the word and the thing itself. If I am not rich, I am yet rich 
 enough to give to my friend, and it is my joy to give all I 
 can for him. Would not you do the same? And if I needed 
 it, would you not be the first to give me all your fortune? But 
 
MOENING 
 
 149 
 
 that shall never be ! I have sound fists and a sound head, and 
 I shall always be ible to earn the bread that I eat. Till Sun- 
 day! Dear God, a whole week without seeing you! And for 
 two days I have not seen you! How have I been able to live 
 so long without you? 
 
 The conductor tried to grumble, but do not bother about it 
 any more than I do. What are others to me? I care nothing 
 what they think or what they may ever think of me. Only 
 you matter. Love me well, my soul; love me as I love you! 
 I cannot tell you how much I love you. I am yours, yours, 
 yours, from the tips of my fingers to the apple of my 
 eye. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 Jean-Christophe.’’ 
 
 Jean-Christophe was devoured with impatience for the rest 
 of the week. He would go out of his way, and make long turns 
 to pass by Otto^s house. Not that he counted on seeing him, 
 but the sight of the house was enough to make him grow pale 
 and red with emotion. On the Thursday he could bear it no 
 longer, and sent a second letter even more high-fiown than the 
 first. Otto answered it sentimentally. 
 
 Sunday came at length, and Otto was punctually at the meet- 
 ing-place. But Jean-Christophe had been there for an hour, 
 waiting impatiently for the walk. He began to imagine dread- 
 fully that Otto would not come. He trembled lest Otto should 
 be ill, for he did not suppose for a moment that Otto might 
 break his word. He whispered over and over again, Dear 
 God, let him come — ^let him come ! and he struck at the pebbles 
 in the avenue with his stick, saying to himself that if he 
 missed three times Otto would not come, but if he hit them 
 Otto would appear at once. In spite of his care and the 
 easiness of the test, he had just missed three times when he 
 saw Otto coming at his easy, deliberate pace; for Otto was 
 above all things correct, even when he was most moved. Jean- 
 Christophe ran to him, and with his throat dry wished him 
 Good-day ! Otto replied, Good-day ! and they found 
 that they had nothing more to say to each other, except that 
 the weather was fine and that it was five or six minutes past 
 
150 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ten, or it migM be ten past, because the castle clock was always 
 slow. 
 
 They went to the station, and went by rail to a neighboring 
 place which was a favorite excursion from the town. On the 
 way they exchanged not more than ten words. They tried to 
 make up for it by eloquent looks, but they were no more success- 
 ful. In vain did they try to tell each other what friends they 
 were; their eyes would say nothing at all. They were just play- 
 acting. Jean-Christophe saw that, and was humiliated. He 
 did not understand how he could not express or even feel all 
 that had filled his heart an hour before. Otto did not, perhaps, 
 so exactly take stock of their failure, because he was less sin- 
 cere, and examined himself with more circumspection, but he 
 was just as disappointed. The truth is that the boys had, dur- 
 ing their week of separation, blown out their feelings to such , 
 a diapason that it was impossible for them to keep them actu- , 
 ally at that pitch, and when they met again their first impression ■ 
 must of necessity be false. They had to break away from it, , 
 but they could not bring themselves to agree to it. 
 
 All day they wandered in the country without ever breaking ! 
 through the awkwardness and constraint that were upon them. , 
 It was a holiday. The inns and woods were filled with a rabble 
 of excursionists — ^little bourgeois families who made a great 
 noise and ate everywhere. That added to their ill-humor. , 
 They attributed to the poor people the impossibility of again; 
 finding the earelessness of their first walk,. But they talked, j 
 they took great pains to find subjects of conversation; theyl 
 were afraid of finding that they had nothing to say to each! 
 other. Otto displayed his school-learning; Jean-Christophe en-; 
 tered into technical explanations of musical compositions and 
 violin-playing. They oppressed each other; they crushed each 
 other by "talking; and they never stopped talking, trembling 
 lest they should, for then there opened before them abysses of 
 silence which horrified them. Otto came near to weeping, and 
 Jean-Christophe was near leaving him and running away as 
 hard as he could, he was so bored and ashamed. 
 
 Only an hour before they had to take the train again did 
 they thaw. In the depths of the woods a dog was barking; he 
 was hunting on his own account. Jean-Christophe proposed, 
 
B 
 
 I 
 
 MOENING 151 
 
 that they should hide by his path to try and see his quarry. 
 
 They ran into the midst of the thicket. The dog came near x 
 
 them, and then went away again. They went to right and left, - 
 went forward and doubled. The barking grew louder; the 
 dog was choking with impatience in his lust for slaughter. He 
 came near once more. J ean-Christophe and Otto, lying on the 
 dead leaves in the rut of a path, waited and held their breath. 
 
 The iJarking stopped ; the dog had lost the scent. They heard his 
 yap once again in the distance ; then silence came upon the 
 woods. Not a sound, only the mysterious hum of millions of 
 crefatures, insects, and creeping things, moving unceasingly, de- 
 stroying the forest— the measured breathing of death, which 
 neiver stops. The boys listened, they did not stir. Just 
 w^hen they got up, disappointed, and said, “It is all over; 
 
 Me will not come!” a little hare plunged out of the thicket. 
 
 He came straight upon them. They saw him at the same 
 moment, and gave a cry of joy. The hare turned in his tracks 
 /and jumped aside. They saw him dash into the brushwood 
 /head over heels. The stirring of the rumpled leaves vanished 
 f away like a ripple on the face of waters. Although they were 
 orry for having cried out, the adventure filled them with joy. 
 
 They rocked with laughter as they thought of the hare’s terri- 
 fied leap, and Jean-Christophe imitated it grotesquely. Otto 
 did the same. Then they chased each other. Otto was the 
 hare, Jean-Christophe the dog. They plunged through woods 
 and meadows, dashing through hedges and leaping ditches. A 
 peasant shouted at them, because they had rushed over a field 
 of rye. They did not stop to hear him. Jean-Christophe 
 imitated the hoarse barking of the dog to such perfection that 
 Otto laughed until he cried. At last they rolled down a slope, 
 shouting like mad things. When they could not utter another 
 I sound they sat up and looked at each other, with tears Cj. 
 laughter in their eyes. They were quite happy and pleased 
 with themselves. They were no longer trying to play the heroic 
 friend ; they were frankly what they were two boys. 
 
 They came back arm-in-arm, singing senseless songs, and yet, 
 when they were on the point of returning to the town, they 
 thought they had better resume their pose, and under the last 
 tree of the woods they carved their initials intertwined. But 
 
152 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 then good temper had the better of their sentimentality, and 
 in the train they shouted with laughter whenever they looked 
 at each other. They parted assuring each other that they had 
 had a hugely delightful {holossal entzuchend) day,, and 
 that conviction gained with them when they were alone once 
 more. ^ I 
 
 They resumed their work of construction more patient', and 
 ingenious even than that of the bees, for of a few medic'^cre 
 scraps of memory they fashioned a marvelous image of them- 
 selves and their friendship. After having idealized each otl|er 
 during the week, they met again on the Sunday, and in spite 
 of the discrepancy between the truth and their illusion, theby 
 got used to not noticing it and to twisting things to fit in witri 
 their desires. 1 . 
 
 They were proud of being friends. The very contrast of their 
 natures brought them together. Jean-Christophe knew nothing) 
 so beautiful as Otto. His fine hands, his lovely hair, his fresh i 
 complexion, his shy speech, the politeness of his manners, and v, 
 his scrupulous care of his appearance delighted him. Otto was | 
 subjugated by Jean-Christophe’s brimming strength and in- | 
 dependence. Accustomed by age-old inheritance to religious 
 respect for all authority, he took a fearful joy in the cumpany 
 of a comrade in whose nature was so little reverence for the ; 
 established order of things. He had a little voluptuous thrill ; 
 of terror whenever he heard him decry every reputation in the | 
 town, and even mimic the Grand Duke himself. Jean-Chris- I 
 tophe knew the fascination that he exercised over his friend, ! 
 and used to exaggerate his aggressive temper. Like some ] 
 old revolutionary, he hewed away at social conventions and 
 the laws of the State. Otto would listen, scandalized and ^ 
 delighted. He used timidly to try and join in, but he w^as 
 always careful to look round to see if any one could hear. 
 
 Jean-Christophe never failed, when they walked together, to 
 leap the fences of a field whenever he saw a board forbidding 
 it, or he would pick fruit over the walls of private grounds. 
 Otto was in terror lest they should be discovered. But such 
 feelings had for him an exquisite savor, and in the evening, 
 when he had returned, he would think himself a hero. He 
 
MO iNING 
 
 15a 
 
 admired Jean-Christophe fearfully. His instinct of obedience 
 found a satisfying quality in a friendship in which he had 
 only to acquiesce in the will of his friend. Jean-Christophe 
 never put him to the trouble of coming to a decision. He 
 decided everything, decreed the doings of the day, decreed even 
 the ordering of life, making plans, which admitted of no dis- 
 cussion, for Otto’s future, just as he did for his own family. 
 Otto fell in with them, though he was a little put aback by hear- 
 ing Jean-Christophe dispose of his fortune for the building later 
 on of a theater of his own contriving. But, intimidated by his 
 friend’s imperious tones, he did not protest, being convinced 
 also by his friend’s conviction that the money amassed by 
 Commerzienrath Oscar Diener could be put to no nobler use. 
 Jean-Christophe never for a moment had any idea that he 
 might be violating Otto’s will. He was instinctively a despot, 
 and* never imagined that his friend’s wishes might be different 
 from his own. Had Otto expressed a desire different from his own, 
 he would not have hesitated to sacrifice his own personal prefer- 
 ence. He would have sacrificed even more for him. He was 
 consumed by the desire to run some risk for him. He wished 
 passionately that there might appear some opportunity of put- 
 ting his friendship to the test. When they were out walking 
 he used to hope that they might meet some danger, so that he 
 might fling himself forward to face it. He would have loved 
 to die for Otto. Meanwhile, he watched over him with a rest- 
 less solicitude, gave him his hand in awkward places, as though 
 he were a girl. He was afraid that he might be tired, afraid 
 that he might be hot, afraid that he might be cold. When 
 they sat down under a tree he took off his coat to put it about 
 his friend’s shoulders; when they walked he carried his cloak. 
 He would have carried Otto himself. He used to devour him 
 with his eyes like a lover, and, to tell the truth, he was in 
 love. 
 
 He did not know it, not knowing yet what love was. But 
 sometimes, when they were together, he was overtaken by a 
 strange unease — the same that had choked him on that first 
 day of their friendship in the pine-woods — and the blood would 
 rush to his face and set his cheeks aflame. He was afraid. By 
 an instinctive unanimity the two boys used furtively to separate 
 
154 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 and rnn away from each other, and one would lag behind on 
 the road. They would pretend to be busy looking for black- 
 berries in the hedges, and they did not know what it was that 
 so perturbed them. 
 
 But it was in their letters especially that their feelings flew 
 high. They were not then in any danger of being contradicted 
 by facts, and nothing could check their illusions or intimidate 
 them. They wrote to each other two or three times a week in 
 a passionately lyric style. They hardly ever spoke of real hap- 
 penings or common things; they raised great problems in an 
 apocalyptic manner, which passed imperceptibly from enthusiasm 
 to despair. They called each other, “My blessing, my hope, 
 my beloved, my Self.” They made a fearful hash of the word 
 “ Soul.” They painted in tragic colors the sadness of their 
 lot, and were desolate at having brought into the existence of 
 their friend the sorrows of their existence. 
 
 “ I am sorry, my love,^^ wrote J ean-Christophe, for the ^ 
 pain which I bring you. I cannot bear that you should suffer. ; 
 It must not be. I will not have it.” _ (He underlined the words ‘i 
 with a stroke of the pen that dug into the paper.) “ If you t 
 suffer, where shall I find strength to live? I have no happi- ; 
 ness but in you. Oh, be happy! I will gladly take all the ; 
 burden of sorrow upon myself ! Think of me ! Love me . 
 
 I have such great need of being loved. From your love there • 
 comes to me a warmth which gives me life. If you knew how 
 I shiver ! There is winter and a biting wind in my heart. I j 
 
 embrace your soul.” I 
 
 “My thought kisses yours,” replied Otto. _ J 
 
 “I take your face in my hands,” was Jean-Christophe’sl 
 answer, “and what I have not done and will not do with my' 
 lips I do with all my being. I kiss you as I love you. Pru- 
 dence ! ” 
 
 Otto pretended to doubt him. 
 
 “ Do you love me as much as I love you ? ” 
 
 “0 God,” wrote Jean-Christophe, “not as much, but ten, 
 a hundred, a thousand times more! 'V^at! Do you ^ not feel 
 it? What would you have me do to stir your heart? 
 
 “ What a lovely friendship is ours ! ” sighed Otto. “ Was 
 there ever its like in history? It is sweet and fresh as a 
 
MOENING 155 
 
 dream. If only it does not pass away! If you were to cease 
 to love me ! ” 
 
 “ How stupid you are, my beloved! ” replied Jean-Christophei 
 “ Forgive me, but your weakling fear enrages me. How can 
 you ask whether I shall cease to love you! For me to live 
 is to love you. Death is powerless against my love. You your- 
 self could do nothing if you wished to destroy it. Even if you 
 betrayed me, even if you rent my heart, I should die with a 
 blessing upon you for the love with which you fill me. Once 
 for all, then, do not be uneasy, and vex me no more with these 
 cowardly doubts ! ” 
 
 But a week later it was he who wrote: 
 
 “ It is three days now since I heard a word fall from your 
 lips. I tremble. Would you forget me? My blood freezes 
 at the thought. . . . Yes, doubtless. . . . The other day only 
 I saw your coldness towards me. You love me no longer ! You 
 are thinking of leaving me ! . . . Listen ! If you forget me,, 
 if you ever betray me, I will kill you like a dog ! ” 
 
 “You do me wrong, my dear heart,” groaned Otto. “You 
 draw tears from me. I do not deserve this. But you can do* 
 as you will. You have such rights over me that, if you were 
 to break my soul, there would always be a spark left to live 
 and love you always ! ” 
 
 “Heavenly powers!” cried Jean-Christophe. “I have made 
 my friend weep! . . . Heap insults on me, beat me, trample 
 me underfoot ! I am a wretch ! I do not deserve your love ! ” 
 
 They had special ways of writing the address on their letters, 
 of placing the stamp — upside down, askew, at bottom in a 
 corner of the envelope — to distinguish their letters from those 
 which they wrote to persons who did not matter. These childish 
 secrets had the charm of the sweet mysteries of love. 
 
 One day, a^ he was returning from a lesson, Jean-Christophe 
 saw Otto in the street with a boy of his own age. They were 
 laughing and talking familiarly. Jean-Christophe went pale, 
 and followed them with his eyes until they had disappeared 
 round the corner of the street. They had not seen him. He 
 went home. It was as though a cloud had passed over the sun ; 
 all was dark. 
 
/ 
 
 156 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 When they met on the following Sunday, Jean-Christophe 
 said nothing at first; but after they had been walking for half 
 an hour he said in a choking voice : 
 
 “ I saw you on Wednesday in the Koniggasse." 
 
 “ Ah ! ” said Otto. 
 
 And he blushed. 
 
 Jean-Christophe went on: 
 
 “ You were not alone.” 
 
 “^No,” said Otto; “I was with some one.” 
 
 Jean-Christophe swallowed down his spittle and asked in a 
 voice which he strove to make careless: 
 
 “Who was it?” 
 
 “My cousin Eranz.” 
 
 “Ah!” said Jean-Christophe; and after a moment: “You 
 have never said anything about him to me.” 
 
 “ He lives at Eheinbach.” 
 
 “ Do you see him often ? ” 
 
 “He comes here sometimes.” 
 
 “ And you, do you go and stay with him ? ” 
 
 “ Sometimes.” 
 
 “ Ah ! ” said Jean-Christophe again. 
 
 Otto, who was not sorry to turn the conversation, pointed 
 out a bird who was pecking at a tree. They talked of 
 other things. Ten minutes later Jean-Christophe broke out 
 again : 
 
 “ Are you friends with him ? ” 
 
 “ With whom ? ” asked Otto. 
 
 (He knew perfectly who was meant.) 
 
 “ With your cousin.” 
 
 “Yes. Why?” 
 
 “ Oh, nothing I ” 
 
 Otto did not like his cousin much, for he used to bother 
 him with bad jokes; but a strange malign instinct made him 
 add a few moments later: 
 
 “ He is very nice.” 
 
 “ Who ? ” asked Jean-Christophe. 
 
 (He knew quite well who was meant.) 
 
 “ Franz.” 
 
 Otto waited for Jean-Christophe to say something, but he 
 
MOENING 157 
 
 seemed not to have heard. He was cutting a switch from a 
 hazel-tree. Otto went on: 
 
 He is amusing. He has all sorts of stories.’^ 
 
 Jean-Christophe whistled carelessly. 
 
 Otto renewed the attack : 
 
 And he is so clever . . . and distinguished ! . . .” 
 
 Jean-Christophe shrugged his shoulders as though to say: 
 
 What interest can this person have for me ? 
 
 And as Otto, piqued, began to go on, he brutally cut him 
 short, and pointed out a spot to which to run. 
 
 They did not touch on the subject again the whole after- 
 noon, but they were frigid, affecting an exaggerated politeness 
 which was unusual for them, especially for Jean-Christophe. 
 The words stuck in his throat. At last he could contain him- 
 self no longer, and in the middle of the road he turned to Otto, 
 who was lagging five yards behind. He took him fiercely by 
 the hands, and let loose upon him : 
 
 Listen, Otto ! I will not — I will not let you be so friendly 
 with Fr^nz, because . . . because you are my friend, and I 
 will not let you love any one more than me! I will not! You 
 see, you are everything to me ! You cannot . . . you must not f 
 . . . If I lost you, there would be nothing left but death. 
 I do not know what I should do. I should kill myself ; I should 
 kill you! No, forgive me! . . 
 
 Tears fell from his eyes. 
 
 Otto, moved and frightened by the sincerity of such grief, 
 growling out threats, made haste to swear that he did not and 
 never would love anybody so much as Jean-Christophe, that 
 Franz was nothing to him, and that he would not see him 
 again if Jean-Christophe wished it. Jean-Christophe drank 
 in his words, and his heart took new life. He laughed and 
 breathed heavily; he thanked Otto effusively. He was ashamed 
 of having made such a scene, but he was relieved of a great 
 weight. They stood face to face and looked at each other, not 
 moving, and holding hands. They were very happy and very 
 much embarrassed. They became silent; then they began to 
 talk again, and found their old gaiety. They felt more at one 
 than ever. 
 
 But it was not the last scene of the kind. Now that Otto 
 
158 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHB 
 
 lelt his power over Jean-Christophe, he was tempted to abuse 
 it. He knew his sore spot, and was irresistibly tempted to 
 place his finger on it. Not that he had any pleasure in Jean- ■ 
 Christophe’s anger; on the contrary, it made him unhappy — 
 t)ut he felt his power by making Jean-Christophe suffer. He 
 was not bad; he had the soul of a girl. 
 
 In spite of his promises, he continued to appear arm in 
 arm with Franz or some other comrade. They made a great 
 noise between them, and he used to laugh in an affected way. 
 When Jean-Christophe reproached him with it, he used to titter 
 and pretend not to take him seriously, until, seeing Jean-Chris- 
 tophe’s eyes change and his lips tremble with anger, he would 
 change his tone, and fearfully promise not to do it again, and 
 the next day he would do it. Jean-Christophe would write 
 him furious letters, in which he called him; 
 
 “ Scoundrel ! Let me never hear of you again ! I do not 
 know you! May the devil take you and all dogs of your 
 kidney!” 
 
 But a tearful word from Otto, or, as he ever did, the sending 
 
 -of a flower as a token of his eternal constancy, was enough for , 
 
 Jean-Christophe to be plunged in remorse, and to write : , 
 
 “My angel, I am mad! Forget my idiocy. You are the • 
 best of men. Your little finger alone is worth more than all ; 
 stupid Jean-Christophe. You have the treasures of an in- ; 
 genuous and delicate tenderness. I kiss your flower with tears : 
 in my eyes. It is there on my heart. I thrust it into my] 
 skin with blows of my fist. I would that it could make me| 
 bleed, so that I might the more feel your exquisite goodness . 
 
 and my own infamous folly ! . . .” ; 
 
 But they began to weary of each other. It is false to pre- 
 tend that little quarrels feed friendship. Jean-Christophe was 
 sore against Otto for the injustice that Otto made him be 
 guilty of. He tried to argue with himself; he laid the blame 
 upon his own despotic temper. His loyal and eager nature, 
 brought for the first time to the test of love, gave itself utterly, 
 and demanded a gift as utter without the reservation of one^ 
 particle of the heart. He admitted no sharing in friendship.;’:. 
 Being ready to sacrifice all for his friend, he thought it right^ 
 and even necessary that his friend should wholly sacrifice him- 
 
MOENING 
 
 159 
 
 self and everything for him. But he was beginning to feel 
 that the world was not built on the model of his own inflexible 
 character, and that he was asking things which others could 
 not give. Then he tried to submit. He blamed himself, he 
 regarded himself as an egoist, who had no right to encroach 
 upon the liberty of his friend, and to monopolize his affection. 
 He did sincerely endeavor to leave him free, whatever it might 
 cost himself. In a spirit of humiliation he did set himself to 
 pledge Otto not tp neglect Franz; he tried to persuade himself 
 that he was glad to see him finding pleasure in society other 
 than his own. But when Otto, who was not deceived, maliciously 
 obeyed him, he could not help lowering at him, and then he 
 broke out again. 
 
 If necessary, he would have forgiven Otto for preferring 
 other friends to himself; but what he could not stomach was 
 the lie. Otto was neither liar nor hypocrite, but it was as difficult 
 for him to tell the truth as for a stutterer to pronounce words. 
 What he said was never altogether true nor altogether false. 
 Either from timidity or from uncertainty of his own feelings 
 he rarely spoke definitely. His answers were equivocal, and, 
 above all, upon every occasion he made mystery and was secret 
 in a way that set Jean-Christophe beside himself. When he 
 was caught tripping, or was caught in what, according to the 
 conventions of their friendship, was a fault, instead of admit- 
 ting it he would go on denying it and telling absurd stories. 
 One day Jean-Christophe, exasperated, struck him. He thought 
 it must be the end of their friendship and that Otto would 
 never forgive him ; but after sulking for a few hours Otto 
 came back as though nothing had happened. He had no resent- 
 ment for Jean-Christophe’s violence — perhaps even it was not 
 unpleasing to him, and had a certain charm for him — and yet 
 he resented Jean-Christophe letting himself be tricked, gulping 
 down all his mendacities. He despised him a little, and thought 
 himself superior. Jean-Christophe, for his part, resented Otto’s 
 receiving blows without revolting. 
 
 They no longer saw each other wifh the eyes of those first 
 days. Their failings showed up in full light. Otto found Jean- 
 Christophe’s independence less charming. Jean-Christophe was 
 a tiresome companion when they went walking. He had no sort 
 
160 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 of concern for correctness. He nsed to dress as he liked, take 
 off his coat, open his waistcoat, walk with open collar, roll up 
 his shirt-sleeves, put his hat on the end of his stick, and fling 
 out his chest in the air. He used to swing his arms as he 
 walked, whistle, and sing at the top of his voice. He used 
 to be red in the face, sweaty, and dusty. He looked like a 
 peasant returning from a fair. The aristocratic Otto used to 
 be mortifled at being seen in his company. When he saw a 
 carriage coming he used to contrive to lag some ten paces 
 behind, and to look as though he were walking alone. 
 
 Jean-Christophe was no less embarrassing company when he 
 began to talk at an inn or in a railway-carriage when they 
 were returning home. He used to talk loudly, and say any- 
 thing that came into his head, and treat Otto with a disgusting 
 familiarity. He used to express opinions quite recklessly con- 
 cerning people known to everybody, or even about the appear- . 
 ance of people sitting only a few yards away from him, or he ; 
 would enter into intimate details concerning his health and ] 
 domestic affairs. It was useless for Otto to roll his eyes and 
 to make signals of alarm. Jean-Christophe seemed not to 1 
 notice them, and no more controlled himself than if he had « 
 been alone. Otto would see smiles on the faces of his neigh- ; 
 bors, and would gladly have sunk into the ground. He thought ■ 
 Jean-Christophe coarse, and could not understand how he could *; 
 ever have found delight in him. ' • 
 
 What was most serious was that Jean-Christophe was just as | 
 reckless and indifferent concerning all the hedges, fences, in- I 
 closures, walls, prohibitions of entry, threats of fines, Verbot i 
 of all sorts, and everything that sought to confine his liberty j 
 and protect the sacred rights of property against it. Otto 
 lived in fear from moment to moment, and all his protests 
 were useless. Jean-Christophe grew worse out of bravado. 
 
 One day, when Jean-Christophe, with Otto at his heels, was 
 walking perfectly at home across a private wood, in spite of, 
 or because of, the walls fortified with broken bottles which 
 they had had to clear, they found themselves suddenly face to 
 face with a gamekeeper, who let Are a volley of oaths at them, 
 and after keeping them for some time under a threat of legal 
 proceedings, packed them off in the most ignominious fashion. 
 
MOENING 
 
 IGl 
 
 Otto did not shine under this ordeal. He thought that he was 
 already in jail, and wept, stupidly protesting that he had gone 
 in by accident, and that he had followed Jean-Christophe with- 
 out knowing whither he was going. When he saw that he 
 was safe, instead of being glad, he bitterly reproached Jean- 
 Christophe. He complained that Jean-Christophe had brought 
 him into trouble. Jean-Christophe quelled him with a look, 
 and called him Lily-liver ! There was a quick passage of 
 words. Otto would have left Jean-Christophe if he had known 
 how to find the way home. He was forced to follow him, but 
 they affected to pretend that they were not together. 
 
 A storm was brewing. In their anger they had not seen 
 it coming. The baking countryside resounded with the cries 
 of insects. Suddenly all was still. They only grew aware 
 of the silence after a few minutes. Their ears buzzed. They 
 raised their eyes; the sky was black; huge, heavy, livid clouds 
 overcast it. They came up from every side like a cavalry-charge. 
 They seemed all to be hastening towards an invisible point, 
 drawn by a gap in the sky. Otto, in terror, dare not tell his 
 fears, and Jean-Christophe took a malignant pleasure in pre- 
 tending not to notice anything. But without saying a word 
 they drew nearer together. They were alone in the wide coun- 
 try. Silence. Not a wind stirred, — hardly a fevered tremor 
 that made the little leaves of the trees shiver now and then. 
 Suddenly a whirling wind raised the dust, twisted the trees 
 and lashed them furiously. And the silence came again, more 
 terrible than before. Otto, in a trembling voice, spoke at 
 last. 
 
 It is a storm. We must go home.^^ 
 
 Jean-Christophe said: 
 
 Let us go home.^^ 
 
 But it was too late. A blinding, savage light flashed, the 
 heavens roared, the vault of clouds rumbled. In a moment 
 they were wrapped about by the hurricane, maddened by the 
 lightning, deafened by the thunder, drenched from head to 
 foot. They were in deserted country, half an hour from the 
 nearest house. In the lashing rain, in the dim light, came the 
 great red flashes of the storm. They tried to run but, their 
 wet clothes clinging, they could hardly walk. Their shoes 
 
162 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 slipped on their feet, the water trickled down their bodies. It 
 was difficult to breathe. Otto’s teeth were chattering, and he was 
 mad with rage. He said biting things to J ean-Christophe. He 
 wanted to stop; he declared that iUwas dangerous to walk; 
 he threatened to sit down on the road, to sleep on the soil in 
 the middle of the plowed fields. Jean-Christophe made no 
 reply. ' He went on walking, blinded by the wind, the rain, 
 and the lightning; deafened by the noise; a little uneasy, but 
 unwilling to admit it. 
 
 And suddenly it was all over. The storm had passed, as it 
 had come. But they were both in a pitiful condition. In truth, 
 Jean-Christophe was, as usual, so disheveled that a little more 
 disorder made hardly any difference to him. But Otto, so neat, 
 so careful of his appearance, cut a sorry figure. It was as 
 though he had just taken a bath in his clothes, and Jean- , 
 
 Christophe, turning and seeing him, could not help roar- , 
 
 ing with laughter. Otto was so exhausted that he could not ’ 
 
 even be angry. Jean-Christophe took pity and talked gaily | 
 
 to him. Otto replied with a look of fury. Jean-Christophe 
 made him stop at a farm. They dried themselves before | 
 
 a great fire, and drank hot wine. Jean-Christophe thought the ^ 
 
 adventure funny, and tried to laugh at it; but that was not ■ 
 
 at all to Otto’s taste, and he was morose and silent for the rest ; 
 
 of their walk. They came back sulking and did not shaken , 
 
 hands when they parted. i 
 
 As a result of this prank they did not see each other for ] 
 
 more than a week. They were severe in their judgment of I 
 
 each other. But after indicting punishment on themselves by | 
 
 depriving themselves of one of their Sunday walks, they got j 
 
 so bored that their rancor died away. Jean-Christophe made 
 the first advances as usual. Otto condescended to meet them, 
 and they made peace. 
 
 In spite of their disagreement it was impossible for them 
 to do without each other. They had many faults; they w«re 
 both egoists. But their egoism was naive ; it knew not the 
 self-seeking of maturity which makes it so repulsive; it knew 
 not itself even; it was almost lovable, and did not prevent them 
 from sincerely loving each other! Young Otto used to weep^ 
 on his pillow as he told himself stories of romantic devotion 
 
MOENING 
 
 163 
 
 of which he was the hero ; he used to invent pathetic adventures, 
 in which he was strong, valiant, intrepid, and protected Jean- 
 Christophe, whom he used to imagine that he adored. Jean- 
 Christophe never saw or .heard anything beautiful or strange 
 without thinking : '' If only Otto were here ! He carried the 
 image of his friend into his whole life, and that image used 
 to be transfigured, and become so gentle that, in spite of all 
 that he knew about Otto, it used to intoxicate him. Certain 
 words of Otto’s which he used to remember long after they 
 were spoken, and to embellish by the way, used to make him 
 tremble with emotion. They imitated each other. Otto aped 
 Jean-Christophe’s manners, gestures, and writing. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe was sometimes irritated by the shadow which repeated 
 every word that he said and dished up his thoughts as though 
 they were its own. But he did not see that he himself was 
 imitating Otto, and copying his way of dressing, walking, and 
 pronouncing certain words. They were under a fascination. 
 They were infused one in the other; their hearts were over- 
 flowing with tenderness. They trickled over with it on every 
 side like a fountain. Each imagined that his friend was the 
 cause of it. They did not know that it was the waking of their 
 adolescence. 
 
 Jean-Christophe, who never distrusted any one, used to leave 
 his papers lying about. But an instinctive modesty made him 
 keep together the drafts of the letters which he scrawled to 
 Otto, and the replies. But he did not lock them up; he just 
 placed them between the leaves of one of his music-books, where 
 he felt certain that no one would look for them. He reckoned 
 without his brothers’ malice. 
 
 He had seen them for some time laughing and whispering 
 and looking at him; they were declaiming to each other frag- 
 ments of speech which threw them into wild laughter. J ean- 
 Christophe could not catch the words, and, following his usual 
 tactics with them, he feigned utter indifference to everything 
 they might do or say. A few words roused his attention; he 
 thought he recognized them. Soon he was left without doubt 
 that they had read his letters. But when he challenged Ernest 
 and Eodolphe, who were calling each other My dear soul,” 
 
164 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 with pretended earnestness, he could get nothing from them. 
 
 The little wretches pretended not to understand, and said that 
 
 they had the right to call each other whatever they liked. Jean- 
 
 Christophe, who had found all the letters in their places, did 
 not insist farther. 
 
 Shortly afterwards he caught Ernest in the act of thieving; 
 the little beast was rummaging in the drawer of the chest in 
 which Louisa kept her money. Jean-Christophe shook him, 
 and took advantage of the opportunity to tell him everything 
 that he had stored up against him. He enumerated, in terms 
 of scant courtesy, the misdeeds of Ernest, and it was not a 
 short catalogue. Ernest took the lecture in bad part ; he replied 
 impudently that Jean-Christophe had nothing to reproach him 
 with, and he hinted at unmentionable things in his brother’s 
 friendship with Otto. Jean-Christophe did not understand, ^ 
 birt when he grasped that Otto was being dragged into the _ 
 quarrel he demanded an explanation of Ernest. The boy tit- ^ 
 tered; then, when he saw Jean-Christophe white with anger, , 
 he refused to say any more. Jean-Christophe saw that he 
 would obtain nothing in that way; he sat down, shrugged his < 
 
 shoulders, and affected a profound contempt for Ernest. , 
 
 Ernest, piqued by this, was impudent again; he set himself . 
 
 to hurt his brother, and set forth a litany of things each more : 
 
 cruel and more vile than the last. J ean-Christophe kept a ^ 
 
 tight hand on himself. When at last he did understand, he : 
 
 saw red ; he leaped from his chair. Ernest had no time to cry . 
 
 out. Jean-Christophe had hurled himself on him, and rolled | 
 
 with him into the middle of the room, and beat his head against ^ 
 
 the tiles. On the frightful cries of the victim, Louisa, Mel- . 
 
 chior, everybody, came running. They rescued Ernest in a 
 parlous state. Jean-Christophe would not loose his prey , they 
 had to beat and beat him. They called him a savage beast, 
 and he looked it. His eyes were bursting from his head, he 
 was grinding his teeth, and his only thought was to hurl him- 
 self again on Ernest. When they asked him what had happened, 
 his fury increased, and he cried out that he would kill him. 
 Ernest also refused to tell. 
 
 Jean-Christophe could not eat nor sleep. He was shaking 
 with fever, and wept in his bed. It was not only for Otto 
 
MORNING 
 
 165 
 
 that he was suffering. A revolution was taking place in him. 
 Ernest had no idea of the hurt that he had been able to 
 do his brother. \Jean-Christophe was at heart of a puritanical 
 intolerance^ which could not admit the dark ways of life, and 
 was discovering them one by one with horror. At fifteen, with 
 his free life and strong instincts, he remained strangely simple. 
 His natural purity and ceaseless toil had protected him. His 
 brother’s words had opened up abyss on abyss before him. Never 
 would he have conceived such infamies, and now that the idea 
 of it had come to him, all his joy in loving and being loved 
 was spoiled. Not only his friendship with Otto, but friendship 
 itself was poisoned. 
 
 It was much worse when certain sarcastic allusions made 
 him think, perhaps wrongly, that he was the object of tl^ un- 
 wholesome curiosity of the town, and especially, when, some 
 time afterwards, Melchior made a remark about his walks with 
 Otto. Probably there was no malice in Melchior, but Jean- 
 Christophe, on the watch, read hidden meanings into every 
 word, and almost he thought himself guilty. At the same time 
 Otto was passing through a similar crisis. 
 
 They tried still to see each other in secret. But it was 
 impossible for them to regain the carelessness of their old 
 relation. Their frankness was spoiled. The two boys who 
 loved each other with a tenderness so fearful that they had 
 never dared exchange a fraternal kiss, and had imagined that 
 there could be no greater happiness than in seeing each other, 
 and in being friends, and sharing each other’s dreams, now 
 felt that they were stained and spotted by the suspicion of evil 
 minds. They came to see evil even in the most innocent acts: 
 a look, a hand-clasp — they blushed, they had evil thoughts. 
 Their relation became intolerable. 
 
 Without saying anything they saw each other less often. 
 They tried writing to each other, but they set a watch upon 
 their expressions. Their letters became cold and insipid. They 
 grew disheartened. Jean-Christophe excused himself on the 
 ground of his work, Otto on the ground of being too busy, 
 and their correspondence ceased. Soon afterwards Otto left 
 for the University, and the friendship which had lightened a 
 few months of their lives died down and out. 
 
166 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 And also, a new love, of which this had been only the fore- 
 runner, took possession of Jean-Christophe’s heart, and made 
 every other light seem pale by its side. 
 
 Ill 
 
 MINNA 
 
 Foue or five months before these events Fran Josepha von 
 Kerich, widow of Councilor Stephan von Kerich, had left 
 Berlin, where her husband’s duties had hitherto detained them, 
 and settled down with her daughter in the little Rhine town, 
 in her native country. She had an old house with a .large 
 garden, almost a park, which sloped down to the river, not 
 far from Jean-Christophe’s home. From his attic Jean-Chris- 
 tophe could see the heavy branches of the trees hanging over 
 the walls, and the high peak of the red roof with its mossy 
 tiles. A little sloping alley, with hardly room to pass, ran 
 alongside the park to the right; from there, by climbing a post, 
 you could look over the wall. Jean-Christophe did not fail 
 to make use of it. He could then see the grassy avenues, the 
 lawns like open meadows, the trees interlacing and growing 
 wild, and the white front of the house with its shutters obsti- 
 nately closed. Once or twice a year a gardener made the rounds, 
 and aired the house. But soon Nature resumed her sway over 
 the garden, and silence reigned over all. 
 
 That silence impressed Jean-Christophe. He used often, 
 stealthily to climb up to his watch-tower, and as he grew taller, 
 his eyes, then his nose, then his mouth reached up to the top of 
 the wall; now he could put his arms over it if he stood on 
 tiptoe, and, in spite of the discomfort of that position, he used 
 to stay so, with his chin on the wall, looking, listening, while 
 the evening unfolded over the lawns its soft waves of gold, 
 which lit up with bluish rays the shade of the pines. There he 
 could forget himself until he heard footsteps approaching in 
 the street. The night scattered its scents over the garden: lilac 
 in spring, acacia in summer, dead leaves in the autumn. When 
 Jean-Christophe was on his way home in the evening from the 
 
MOEOTNG 
 
 167 
 
 Palace, however weary he might be, he used to stand by the 
 door to drink in the delicious scent, and it was hard for him 
 to go back to the smells of his room. And often he had played 
 — when he used to play — in the little square with its tufts of 
 grass between the stones, before the gateway of the house of 
 the Kerichs. On each side of the gate grew a chestnut-tree 
 a hundred years old; his grandfather used to come and sit 
 beneath them, and smoke his pipe, and the children used to 
 use the nuts for missiles and toys. 
 
 One morning, as he went up the alley, he climbed up the 
 post as usual. He was thinking of other things, and looked 
 absently. He was just going to climb down when he felt that 
 there was something unusual about it. He looked towards the 
 house. The windows w’ere open; the sun was shining into them 
 and, although no one was to be seen, the old place seemed to 
 have been roused from its fifteen years^ sleep, and to be smiling 
 in its awakening. Jean-Christophe went home uneasy in his 
 mind. 
 
 At dinner his father talked of what was the topic of the 
 neighborhood: the arrival of Frau Kerich and her daughter 
 with an incredible quantity of luggage. The chestnut square 
 was filled with rascals who had turned up to help unload, the 
 carts. Jean-Christophe was excited by the news, which, in his 
 limited life, was an important event, and he returned to his 
 work, trying to imagine the inhabitants of the enchanted house 
 from his father’s story, as usual hyperbolical. Then he became 
 absorbed in his work, and had forgotten the whole affair when, 
 just as he was about to go home in the evening, he remembered 
 it all, and he was impelled by curiosity to climb his watch- 
 tower to spy out what might be toward within the walls. He 
 saw nothing but the quiet avenue, in which the motionless trees 
 seemed to be sleeping in the last rays of the sun. In a few 
 moments he had forgotten why he was looking, and abandoned 
 himself as he always did to the sweetness of the silence. That 
 strange place — standing erect, perilously balanced on the top 
 of a post — was meet for dreams. Coming from the ugly alley, 
 stuffy and dark, the sunny gardens were of a magical radiance. 
 His spirit wandered freely through these regions of harmony, 
 and music sang in him; they lulled him, and he forgot time 
 
168 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 and material things, and was only concerned to miss none of 
 the whisperings of his heart. 
 
 So he dreamed open-eyed and open-mouthed, and he could 
 not have told how long he had been dreaming, for he saw noth- 
 ing. Suddenly his heart leaped. In front of him, at a bend 
 in an avenue, were two women’s faces looking at him. . One, 
 a young lady in black, with fine irregular features and fair hair, 
 tall, elegant, with carelessness and indifference in the poise of 
 her head, was looking at him with kind, laughing eyes. The 
 other, a girl of fifteen, also in deep mourning, looked as though 
 she were going to burst out into a fit of wild laughter; she was 
 standing a little behind her mother, who, without looking at 
 her, signed to her to be quiet. She covered her lips with her 
 hands, as if she were hard put to it not to burst out laughing. 
 She was a little creature with a fresh face, white, pink, and 
 round-cheeked; she had a plump little nose, a plump little 
 mouth, a plump little chin, firm eyebrows, bright eyes, and a 
 mass of fair hair plaited and wound round her head in a crown 
 to show her rounded neck and her smooth white forehead — a 
 Cranach face. 
 
 Jean-Christophe was turned to stone by this apparition. He 
 could not go away, but stayed, glued to his post, with his mouth 
 wide open. It was only when he saw the young lady coming 
 towards him with her kindly mocking smile that he wrenched 
 himself away, and jumped — tumbled — down into the alley, drag- 
 ging with him pieces of plaster from the wall. He heard a kind 
 voice calling him, Little boy ! ” and a shout of childish laugh- 
 ter, clear and liquid as the song of a bird. He found himself 
 in the alley on hands and knees, and, after a moment’s bewil- 
 derment, he ran away as hard as he could go, as though he was 
 afraid of being pursued. He was ashamed, and his shame kept 
 bursting upon him again when he was alone in his room at 
 home. After that he dared not go down the alley, fearing 
 oddly that they might be lying in wait for him. When he had 
 to go by the house, he kept close to the walls, lowered his head, 
 and almost ran without ever looking back. At the same time 
 he never ceased to think of the two faces that he had seen; 
 he used to go up to the attic, taking off his shoes so as not 
 to be heard, and to feok his hardest out through the skylight 
 
MOENING 
 
 16 ^ 
 
 in the direction of the Kerichs’ house and park, although he 
 knew perfectly well that it was impossible to see anything but 
 the tops of the trees and the topmost chimneys. 
 
 About a month later, at one of the weekly concerts of the 
 Hof MusiJc Verein, he was playing a concerto for piano and 
 orchestra of his own composition. He had reached the last 
 movement v/hen he chanced to see in the box facing him Frau 
 and Fraulein Kerich looking at him. He so little expected 
 to see them that he was astounded, and almost missed out his 
 reply to the orchestra. He went on playing mechanically to 
 the end of the piece. When it was finished he saw, although 
 he was not looking in their direction, that Frau and Fraulein 
 Kerich were applauding a little exaggeratedly, as though they 
 wished him to see that they were applauding. He hurried away 
 from the stage. As he was leaving the theater he saw Frau 
 Kerich in the lobby, separated from him by several rows of 
 people, and she seemed to be waiting for him to pass. It wa& 
 impossible for him not to see her, but he pretended not to do 
 so, and, brushing his way through, he left hurriedly by the 
 stage-door of the theater. Then he was angry with himself, 
 for he knew quite well that Frau Kerich meant no harm. But 
 he knew that in the same situation he would do the same again. 
 He was in terror of meeting her in the street. Whenever he 
 saw at a distance a figure that resembled her, he used to turn 
 aside and take another road. 
 
 It was she who came to him. She sought him out at home. 
 
 One morning when he came back to dinner Louisa proudly 
 told him that a lackey in breeches and livery had left a letter 
 for him, and she gave him a large black-edged envelope, on the 
 back of which was engraved the Kerich arms. Jean-Christophe 
 opened it, and trembled as he read these words: 
 
 Frau Josepha von Kerich requests the pleasure of Hof 
 Musicus Jean-Christophe KraffFs company at tea to-day at half-^ 
 past five.^^ 
 
 I shall not go,^^ declared J ean-Christophe. 
 
 What ! cried Louisa. I said that you would go.^^ 
 
170 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Jean-Christophe made a scene, and reproached his mother | 
 with meddling in affairs that were no concern of hers. * 
 
 “ The servant waited for a reply. I said that you were free 
 to-day. Yon have nothing to do then.” 
 
 In vain did Jean-Christophe lose his temper, and swear that 
 he would not go; he could not get out of it now. When the ’ 
 appointed time came, he got ready fuming; in his heart of = 
 hearts he was not sorry that chance had so done violence to 
 his whims. 
 
 Frau von Kerich had had no difficulty in recognizing in the 
 pianist at the concert the little savage whose shaggy head had 
 appeared over her garden wall on the day of her arrival. She 
 had made inquiries about him of her neighbors, and what she 
 learned about Jean-Christophe’s family and the boy’s brave and 
 difficult life had roused interest in him, and a desire to talk to 
 him. 
 
 Jean-Christophe, trussed up in an absurd coat, which made ; 
 him look like a country parson, arrived at the house quite ill > 
 with shyness. He tried to persuade himself that Frau and - 
 Fraulein Kerich had had no time to remark his features on the | 
 day when they had first seen him. A servant led him down ■ ; 
 a long corridor, thickly carpeted, so that his footsteps made no ; 
 sound, to a room with a glass-paneled door which opened on •; 
 to the garden. It was raining a little, and cold; a good fire ; 
 was burning in the fireplace. Near the window, through which • 
 he had a peep of the wet trees in the mist, the two ladies were j 
 sitting. Frau Kerich was working and her daughter was read- j 
 ing a book when Jean-Christophe entered. When they saw | 
 him they exchanged a sly look. • 
 
 “ They know me again,” thought J ean-Christophe, abashed. 
 
 He bobbed awkwardly, and went on bobbing. :• 
 
 Frau von Kerich smiled cheerfully, and held out her | 
 hand. 
 
 Good-day, my dear neighbor,” she said. “ I am glad to 
 see you. Since I heard you at the concert I have been wanting 
 to tell you how much pleasure you gave me. And as the only 
 way of telling you was to invite you here, I hope you will forgive 
 me for having done so.” 
 
 In the kindly, conventional words of welcome there was so 
 
MOENING 
 
 in 
 
 much cordiality, in spite of a hidden sting of irony, that Jean- 
 Christophe grew more at his ease. 
 
 “ They do not know me again,” he thought, comforted. 
 
 Frau von Kerich presented her daughter, who had closed her 
 hook and was looking interestedly at Jean-Christophe. 
 
 “ My daughter Minna,” she said. “ She wanted so much to 
 see you.” 
 
 “^But, mamma,” said Minna, “it is not the first time that 
 we have seen each other.” 
 
 And she laughed aloud. 
 
 “They do know me again,” thought Jean-Christophe, crest- 
 fallen. 
 
 “True,” said Frau von Kerich, laughing too, “you paid 
 us a visit the day we came.” 
 
 At these words the girl laughed again, and Jean-Christophe 
 looked so pitiful that when Minna looked at him she laughed 
 more than ever. She could not control herself, and she laughed 
 until she cried. Frau von Kerich tried to stop her, but she, 
 too, could not help laughing, and Jean-Christophe, in spite of 
 his constraint, fell victim to the contagiousness of it. Their 
 merriment was irresistible; it was impossible to take offense 
 at it. But Jean-Christophe lost countenance altogether when 
 Minna caught her breath again, and asked him whatever he 
 could be doing on the wall. She was tickled by his uneasi- 
 ness. He murmured, altogether at a loss. Frau von Kerich 
 came to his aid, and turned the conversation by pouring out 
 tea. 
 
 She questioned him amiably about his life. But he did not 
 gain confidence. He could not sit down; he could not hold 
 his cup, which threatened to upset; and whenever they offered 
 him water, milk, sugar or cakes, he thought that he had to 
 get up hurriedly and bow his thanks, stiff, trussed up in his 
 frock-coat, collar, and tie, like a tortoise in its shell, not daring 
 and not being able to turn his head to right or left, and over- 
 whelmed by Frau von Kerich’s innumerable questions, and the 
 warmth of her manner, frozen by Minna’s looks, which he felt 
 were taking in his features, his hands, his movements, his 
 clothes. They made him even more uncomfortable by trying 
 to put him at his ease — Frau von Kerich by her fiow of words, 
 
173 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Minna by the coquettish eyes which instinctively she made at 
 him to amuse herself. 
 
 Finally they gave up trying to get anything more from him 
 than bows and monosyllables, and Frau von Kerich, who had 
 the whole burden of the conversation, asked him, when she was 
 worn out, to play the piano. Much more shy of them than of 
 a concert audience, he played an adagio of Mozart. But his 
 very shyness, the uneasiness which was beginning to fill his 
 heart from the company of the two women, the ingenuous 
 emotion with which his bosom swelled, which made him happy 
 and unhappy, were in tune with the tenderness and youthful 
 modesty of the music, and gave it the charm of spring. Frau 
 von Kerich was moved by it; she said so with the exaggerated 
 words of praise customary among men and women of the world ; 
 she was none the less sincere for that, and the very excess of 
 the flattery was sweet coming from such charming lips. 
 Naughty Minna said nothing, and looked astonished at the boy ; 
 who was so stupid when he talked, but was so eloquent with his i 
 fingers. Jean-Christophe felt their sympathy, and grew bold 
 under it. He went on playing; then, half turning towards \ 
 Minna, with an awkward smile and without raising his eyes, he ; 
 said timidly: ! 
 
 “This is what I was doing on the wall.” : 
 
 He played a little piece in which he had, in fact, developed . 
 the musical ideas which had come to him in his favorite spot ^ 
 as he looked into the garden, not, be it said, on the evening i 
 when he had seen Minna and Frau von Kerich— for some ) 
 obscure reason, known only to his heart, he was trying to per- J 
 suade himself that it was so — ^but long before, and in the calm i 
 rhythm of the andante con moto, there were to be found the 
 serene impression of the singing of birds, mutterings of beasts, 
 and the majestic slumber of the great trees in the peace of the 
 sunset. 
 
 The two hearers listened delightedly. When he had finished 
 Frau von Kerich rose, took his hands with her usual vivacity, 
 and thanked him effusively. Minna clapped her hands, and • 
 cried that it was “ admirable,” and that to make him compose 
 other works as “ sublime ” as that, she would have a ladder 
 placed against the wall, so that he might work there at his 
 
MOENING 
 
 173 
 
 ease. Frau von Kerich told Jean-Christophe not to listen to 
 silly Minna; she begged him to come as often as he liked to 
 her garden, since he loved it, and she added that he need never 
 bother to call on them if he found it tiresome. 
 
 You need never bother to come and see us/^ added Minna^ 
 Only if you do not come, beware ! 
 
 She wagged her finger in menace. 
 
 Minna was possessed by no imperious desire that Jean-Chris- 
 tophe should come to see her, or should even follow the rules 
 of politeness with regard to herself, but it pleased her to pro- 
 duce a little effect which instinctively she felt to be charming. 
 
 Jean-Christophe blushed delightedly. Frau von Kerich won 
 him completely by the tact with which she spoke of his mother 
 and grandfather, whom she had known. The warmth and kind- 
 ness of the two ladies touched his heart; he exaggerated their 
 easy urbanity, their worldly graciousness, in his desire to think 
 it heartfelt and deep. He began to tell them, with his naive 
 trustfulness, of his plans and his wretchedness. He did not 
 notice that more than an hour had passed, and he jumped with 
 surprise when a servant came and announced dinner. But 
 his confusion turned to happiness when Frau von Kerich told 
 him.to stay and dine with them, like the good friends that they 
 were going to be, and were already. A place was laid for 
 him between the mother and daughter, and at table his talents^ 
 did not show to such advantage as at the piano. That part 
 of his education had been much neglected ; it was his impression 
 that eating and drinking were the essential things at table, 
 and not the manner of them. And so tidy Minna looked at 
 him, pouting and a little horrified. 
 
 They thought that he would go immediately after supper. 
 But he followed them into the little room, and sat with them, 
 and had no idea of going. Minna stified her yawns, and made 
 signs to her mother. He did not notice them, because he was 
 dumb with his happiness, and thought they were like himself — 
 because Minna, when she looked at him, made eyes at him from 
 habit — and finally, once he was seated, he did not quite know 
 how to get up and take his leave. He would have stayed all 
 night had not Frau von Kerich sent him away herself, without 
 ceremony, but kindly. 
 
174 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 He went, carrying in his heart the soft light of the brown 
 eyes of Frau von Kerich and the blue eyes of Minna; on his 
 hands he felt the sweet contact of soft fingers, soft as flowers, 
 and a subtle perfume, which he had never before breathed, 
 enveloped him, bewildered him, brought him almost to swoon- 
 ing. 
 
 He went again two days later, as was arranged, to give 
 Minna a music-lesson. Thereafter, under this arrangement, he 
 went regularly twice a week in the morning, and very often he 
 went again in the evening to play and talk. 
 
 Frau von Kerich was glad to see him. She was a clever and - 
 a kind woman. She was thirty-five when she lost her husband, | 
 and although young in body and at heart, she was not sorry 
 to withdraw from the world in which she had gone far since 
 her marriage. Perhaps she left it the more easily because she . 
 had found it very amusing, and thought wisely that she could ; 
 not both eat her cake and have it. She was devoted to the ; 
 memory of Herr von Kerich, not that she had felt anything i 
 like love for him when they married; but good-fellowship was , 
 enough for her; she was of an easy temper and an affectionate ; 
 
 disposition. ; 
 
 She had given herself up to her daughter’s education; but , 
 the same moderation which she had had in her love, held in . 
 check the impulsive and morbid quality which is sometimes in j 
 motherhood, when the child is the only creature upon whom j 
 the woman can expend her jealous need of loving and being < 
 loved. She loved Minna much, but was clear in her judgment < 
 of her, and did not conceal any of her imperfections any more | 
 than she tried to deceive herself about herself. Witty and 
 clever, she had a keen eye for discovering at a glance the weak- 
 ness, and ridiculous side, of any person ; she took great pleasure | 
 in it, without ever being the least malicious, for she was as | 
 indulgent as she was scoffing, and while she laughed at people 
 
 she loved to be of use to them. , 
 
 Young Jean-Christophe gave food both to her kindness and « 
 to her critical mind. During the first days of her sojourn in 
 the little town, when her mourning kept her out of society, 
 Jean-Christophe was a distraction for her— primarily by his| 
 
MOENING 
 
 175 
 
 talent. She loved music, although she was no musician; she 
 found in it a physical and moral well-being in which her 
 thoughts could idly sink into a pleasant melancholy. Sitting 
 by the fire — while Jean-Christophe played — a book in her hands, 
 and smiling vaguely, she took a silent delight in the mechani- 
 cal movements of his fingers, and the purposeless wanderings 
 of her reverie, hovering among the sad, sweet images of the 
 past. 
 
 But more even than the music, the musician interested her. 
 She was clever enough to be conscious of Jean-Christophe’s 
 rare gifts, although she was not capable of perceiving his really 
 original quality. It gave her a curious pleasure to watch the 
 waking of those mysterious fires which she saw kindling in 
 him. She had quickly appreciated his moral qualities, his 
 uprightness, his courage, the sort of Stoicism in him, so touch- 
 ing in a child. But for all that she did not view him the less 
 with the usual perspicacity of her sharp, mocking eyes. His 
 awkwardness, his ugliness, his little ridiculous qualities amused 
 her; she did not take him altogether seriously; she did not 
 take many things seriously. Jean-Christophe’s antic outbursts, 
 his violence, his fantastic humor, made her think sometimes 
 that he was a little unbalanced; she saw in him one of the 
 Kraffts, honest men and good musicians, but always a little 
 wrong in the head. . Her light irony escaped J ean-Christophe ; 
 he was conscious only of Frau von Kerich’s kindness. He 
 was so unused to any one being kind to him! Although his 
 duties at the Palace brought him into daily contact with the 
 world, poor Jean-Christophe had remained a little savage, un- 
 tutored and uneducated. The selfishness of the Court was only 
 concerned in turning him to its profit and not in helping him in 
 any way. He went to the Palace, sat at the piano, played, and 
 went away again, and nobody ever took the trouble to talk 
 to him, except absently to pay him some banal compliment. 
 Since his grandfather’s death, no one, either at home or out- 
 side, had ever thought of helping him to learn the conduct of 
 life, or to be a man. He suffered cruelly from his ignorance 
 and the roughness of his manners.' He went through an agony 
 and bloody sweat to shape himself alone, but he did not succeed. 
 Books, conversation, example — all were lacking. He would fain 
 
176 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 1 
 
 have confessed his distress to a friend, but could not bring 
 himself to do so. Even with Otto he had not dared, because 
 at the first words he had uttered, Otto had assumed a tone 
 of disdainful superiority which had burned into him like hot ' 
 iron. 
 
 And now with Frau von Kerich it all became easy. Of her 
 own accord, without his having to ask anything — it cost Jean- 
 Christophe’s pride so much! — she showed him gently what he 
 should not do, told him what he ought to do, advised him how 
 to dress, eat, walk, talk, and never passed over any fault of 
 manners, taste, or language ; and he could not be hurt by it, 
 so light and careful was her touch in the handling of the boy’s 
 easily injured vanity. She took in hand also his literary educa- 
 tion without seeming to be concerned with it; she never showed 
 surprise at his strange ignorance, but never let slip an oppor- 
 tunity of correcting his mistakes simply, easily, as if it were , 
 natural for him to have been in error ; and, instead of alarming , 
 him with pedantic lessons, she conceived the idea of employing ; 
 their evening meetings by making Minna or Jean-Christophe 
 read passages of history, or of the poets, German and foreign. | 
 She treated him as a son of the house, with a few fine shades , , 
 of patronizing familiarity which he never saw. She was even 
 concerned with his clothes, gave him new ones, knitted him ! 
 a woolen comforter, presented him with little toilet things, and 
 all so gently that he never was put about by her care or her ! 
 presents. In short, she gave him all the little attentions and j 
 the quasi-maternal care which come to every good woman in- | 
 stinctively for a child who is intrusted to her, or trusts himself < 
 to her, without her having any deep feeling for it. But Jean- ; 
 Christophe thought that all the tenderness was given to him 
 personally, and he was filled with gratitude ; he would break 
 out into little awkward, passionate speeches, which seemed a 
 little ridiculous to Frau von Kerich, though they did not fail to 
 give her pleasure. 
 
 With Minna his relation was very different. When Jean- 
 Christophe met her again at her first lesson, he was still in- 
 toxicated by his memories of the preceding evening and of 
 the girl’s soft looks, and he was greatly surprised to find her 
 an altogether different person from the girl he had seen only 
 
MOKNING 
 
 177 
 
 a few hours before. She hardly looked at him, and did not 
 listen to what he said, and when she raised her eyes to him, he 
 saw in them so icy a coldness that he was chilled by it. He 
 tortured himself for a long time to discover wherein lay his 
 offense. He had given none, and Minna^s feelings were neither 
 more nor less favorable than on the preceding day; just as she 
 had been then, Minna was completely indifferent to him. If 
 on the first occasion she had smiled upon him in welcome, it 
 was from a girPs instinctive coquetry, who delights to try the 
 power of her eyes on the first comer, be it only a trimmed poodle 
 who turns up to fill her idle hours. But since the preceding 
 day the too-easy conquest had already lost interest for her. She 
 had subjected Jean-Christophe to a severe scrutiny, and she 
 thought him an ugly boy, poor, ill-bred, who played the piano 
 well, though he had ugly hands, held his fork at table abomi- 
 nably, and ate his fish with a knife. Then he seemed .to her 
 very uninteresting. She wanted to have music-lessons from 
 him; she wanted, even, to amuse herself with him, because for 
 the moment she had no other companion, and because in spite 
 of her pretensions of being no longer a child, she had still 
 in gusts a crazy longing to play, a need of expending her 
 superfluous gaiety, which was, in her as in her mother, still 
 further roused by the constraint imposed by their mourning. 
 But she took no more account of Jean-Christophe than of a 
 domestic animal, and if it still happened occasionally during 
 the days of her greatest coldness that she made eyes at him, 
 it was purely out of forgetfulness, and because she was thinking 
 of something else, or simply so as not to get out of practice. 
 And when she looked at him like that, Jean-Christophe’s heart 
 used to leap. It is doubtful if she saw it ; she was telling herself 
 stories. For she was at the age when we delight the senses 
 with sweet fluttering dreams. She was forever absorbed in 
 thoughts of love, filled with a curiosity which was only innocent 
 from ignorance. And she only thought of love, as a well-taught 
 young lady should, in terms of marriage. Her ideal was far 
 from having taken definite shape. Sometimes she dreamed 
 of marrying a lieutenant, sometimes of marrying a poet, prop- 
 erly sublime, a la Schiller. One project devoured another 
 and the last was always welcomed with the same gravity and 
 
178 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 just the same amount of conviction. For the rest, all of them 
 were quite ready to give way before a profitable reality, for 
 it is wonderful to see how easily romantic girls forget their 
 dreams, when something less ideal, but more certain, appears 
 before them. 
 
 As it was, sentimental Minna was, in spite of ail, calm and 
 cold. In spite of her aristocratic name, and the pride with 
 which the ennobling particle filled her, she had the soul of a 
 little German housewife in the exquisite days of adolescence. 
 
 Naturally Jean-Christophe did not in the least understand 
 the complicated mechanism — more complicated in appearance 
 than in reality — of the feminine heart. He was often baffled 
 by the ways of his friends, but he was so happy in loving them 
 that he credited them with all that disturbed and made him 
 sad with them, so as to persuade himself that he was as much 
 loved by them as he loved them himself. A word or an affec- 
 tionate look plunged him in delight. Sometimes he was so- 
 bowled over by it that he would burst into tears. 
 
 Sitting by the table in the quiet little room, with Frau von 
 Kerich a few yards away sewing by the light of the lamp — 
 Minna reading on the other side of the table, and no one 
 talking, he looking through the half-open garden-door at the 
 gravel of the avenue glistening under the moon, a soft 
 murmur coming from the tops of the trees — ^his heart would 
 be so full of happiness that suddenly, for no reason, he would 
 leap from his chair, throw himself at Frau von Kerich’s feet, 
 seize her hand, needle or no needle, cover it with kisses, press 
 it to his lips, his cheeks, his eyes, and sob. Minna would raise 
 her eyes, lightly shrug her shoulders, and make a face. Frau 
 von Kerich would smile down at the big boy groveling at her 
 feet, and pat his head with her free hand, and say to him in 
 her pretty voice, affectionately and ironically ; 
 
 “ Well, well, old fellow ! What is it ? ” 
 
 Oh, the sweetness of that voice, that peace, that silence, that 
 soft air in which were no shouts, no roughness, no violence, 
 that oasis in the harsh desert of life, and — heroic light gilding 
 with its rays people and things — the light of the enchanted 
 world conjured up by the reading of the divine poets! Goethe, 
 
MOENING 179 
 
 Schiller, Shakespeare, springs of strength, of sorrow, and of 
 love! . . . 
 
 Minna, with her head down over the book, and her face 
 faintly colored by her animated delivery, would read in her 
 fresh voice, with its slight lisp, and try to sound important 
 when she spoke in the characters of warriors and kings. Some- 
 times Frau von Kerich herself would take the book; then she 
 would lend to tragic histories the spiritual and tender gracious- 
 ness of her own nature, but most often she would listen, lying 
 back in her chair, her never-ending needlework in her lap; 
 she would smile at her own thoughts, for always she would 
 €ome back to them through every book. 
 
 Jean-Christophe also had tried to read, but he had had to 
 give it up; he stammered, stumbled over fhe words, skipped 
 the punctuation, seemed to understand nothing, and would be 
 so moved that he would have to stop in the middle of the pathetic 
 passages, feeling tears coming. Then in a tantrum he would 
 throw the book down on the table, and his two friends would 
 burst out laughing. . . . How he loved them! He carried the 
 image of them everywhere with him, and they were mingled 
 with the persons in SJiakespeare and Goethe. He could hardly 
 distinguish between them. Some fragrant word, of the poets 
 which called up from the depths of his being passionate emo- 
 tions could not in him be severed from the beloved lips that 
 had made him hear it for the first time. Even twenty years 
 later he could never read Egmont or Eomeo, or see them played, 
 without there leaping up in him at certain lines the memory 
 of those quiet evenings, those dreams of happiness, and the 
 beloved faces of Frau von Kerich and Minna. 
 
 He would spend hours looking at them in the evening when 
 they were reading; in the night when he was dreaming in his 
 bed, awake, with his eyes closed; during the day, when he was 
 dreaming at his place in the orchestra, playing mechanically 
 with his eyes half closed. He had the most innocent tenderness 
 for them, and, knowing nothing of love, he thought he was in 
 love. But he did not quite know whether it was with the mother 
 or the daughter. He went into the matter gravely, and did 
 not know which to choose. And yet, as it seemed to him that 
 he must at all costs make his choice, he inclined towards Frau 
 
180 
 
 JEAJ^-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 von Kerich. And he did in fact discover, as soon as he had 
 made up his mind to it, that it was she that lie loved. He 
 loved her quick eyes, the absent smile upon her half-open lips, 
 her pretty forehead, so young in seeming, and the parting to 
 one side in her fine, soft hair, her rather husky voice, with its 
 little cough, her motherly hands, the elegance of her move- 
 ments, and her mysterious soul. He would thrill with happi- 
 ness when, sitting by his side, she would kindly explain to 
 him the meaning of some passage in a book which he did not 
 understand; she would lay her hand on Jean-Christophe’s shoul- 
 der; he would feel the warmth of her fingers, her breath on 
 his cheek, the sweet perfume of ^ her body; he would listen in 
 ecstasy, lose all thought of the book, and understand nothing 
 at all. She would see that and ask him to repeat what she 
 had said ; then he would say nothing, and she would laughingly , 
 be angry, and tap his nose with her book, telling him that 
 he would always be a little donkey. To that he, would reply 
 that he did not care so long as he "was her little donkey, and ; 
 she did not drive him out of her house. She would pretend to 
 make objections; then she would say that although he was an. t 
 ugly little donkey, and very stupid, she would^ agree to keep | 
 him — and perhaps even to love. him— ^although lid was good for ' 
 nothing, if at the least he would be just good. Then they • 
 would both laugh, and he would go swimming in his joy. : 
 
 When he discovered that he loved Frau von Kerich, Jean- | 
 Christophe broke away from Minna. He was beginning to be. | 
 irritated by her coldness and disdain, and as, by dint of seeing { 
 her often, he had been emboldened little by little to resume 1 
 his freedom of manner with her, he did not conceal his exaspera- 
 tion from her. She loved to sting him, and he would reply 
 sharply. They were always saying unkind things to each other, 
 and Frau von Kerich only laughed at them. Jean-Christophe, 
 who never got the better in such passages of words, used some- 
 times to issue from them so infuriated that he thought he de- 
 tested Minna; and he persuaded himself that he only went to 
 her house again because of Frau von Kerich. 
 
 He went on giving her music lessons. Twice a week, from 
 nine to ten in the morning, he superintended the girPs scales 
 
MOENING 
 
 and exercises. The room in which they did this was Minna's 
 studio— an odd workroom, which, with an amusing fidelity, 
 reflected the singular disorder of her little feminine mind. 
 
 On the table were little figures of musical cats— a whole 
 orchestra — iine playing a violin, another the violoncello— a little 
 pocket-mirror, toilet things and writing things, tidily arranged. 
 On the shelves were tiny busts of musicians- Beethoven frown- 
 ing, Wigner with his velvet cap, and the Apollo Belvedere. 
 On the mantelpiece, by a frog smoking a red pipe, a paper 
 fan on which was painted the Bayreuth Theater. On the two 
 bookshelves were a few books — Liibke, Mommsen, Schi er. 
 Sans Famille,” Jules Verne, Montaigne. On the walls large 
 photographs of the Sistine Madonna, and pictures by Herkomer, 
 edged with blue and green ribbons. There was also a view of 
 a Swiss hotel in a frame of silver thistles; and above all, every- 
 where in profusion, in every corner of the room, photographs 
 of officers, tenors, conductors, girl-friends, all with inscriptions, 
 almost all with verse — or at least what is accepted as verse in 
 Germany. In the center of the room, on a marble pillar, waa^ 
 enthroned a bust of Brahms, with a beard ; and, above the pianid. 
 little plush monkeys and cotillion trophies hung by threads. 
 
 Minna would arrive late, her eyes still puffy with sleep, 
 sulky ; she would hardly reach out her hand to Jean-Christophe, 
 coldly bid him good-day, and, without a word, gravely and with 
 dignity sit down at the Jiiano. When she was alone, it pleased 
 her to play interminable scales^ for that allowed her agreeab y 
 to prolong her half -somnolent condition and the dreams which 
 she was spinning for herself. But Jean-Christophe would com- 
 pel her to fix her attention on difficult exercises, and so some- 
 times she would avenge herself by playing them as badly as 
 she could. She was a fair musician, but she did not like music 
 — ^like many German women. But, like them, she thought she. 
 ought to like it, and she took her lessons conscientiously enough, 
 except for certain moments of diabolical malice indulged in t( 
 enrage her master. She could enrage him much more by the 
 icy indifference with which she set herself to her task. Bui 
 the worst was when she took it into her head that it was her 
 duty to throw her soul into an expressive passage: then she 
 would become sentimental and feel nothing. 
 
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 oung Jean-Christophe, sitting by her side was not very 
 polite. He never paid her compliments — far from it. She 
 resented that^, and never let any remark pass without answering 
 it. She would argue about everything that he said, and when 
 she made a mistake she would insist that she was playing what 
 was written. He would get cross, and they would go on ex- 
 changing ungracious words and impertinences. With her eyes 
 on the keys, she never ceased to watch Jean-Christophe and 
 enjoy his fury. As a relief from boredom she would invent 
 stupid little tricks, with no other object than to interrupt the 
 lesson and to annoy Jean-Christophe. She would pretend to 
 choke, so as to make herself interesting; she would have a 
 fit of coughing, or she would have something very important 
 to say to the maid. Jean-Christophe knew that she was play- 
 acting; and Minna knew that Jean-Christophe knew that she 
 was play-acting; and it amused her, for Jean-Christophe could 
 not tell her what he was thinking. 
 
 One day, when she was indulging in this amusement and 
 was coughing languidly, hiding her mouth in her handkerchief, 
 if she were on the point of choking, but in reality watching 
 Jean-Christophe^s exasperation out of the corner of her eye, 
 she conceived the ingenious idea of letting the handkerchief 
 fall, so as to make Jean-Christophe pick it up, which he did 
 with the worst grace in the world. She rewarded him with 
 a Thank you ! in her grand manner, which nearly made him 
 explode. 
 
 She thought the game too good not to be repeated. Next day 
 she did it again. Jean-Christophe did not budge; he was boil- 
 ing with rage. She waited a moment, and then said in an 
 injured tone : 
 
 1 ^* Will you please pick up my handkerchief?” 
 Jean-Christophe could not contain himself. 
 
 1 am not your servant ! ” he cried roughly. Pick it up 
 ourself ! ” 
 
 Minna choked with rage. She got up suddenly from her stool, 
 iiich fell over. 
 
 Oh, this is too much ! ” she said, and angrily thumped 
 the piano; and she left the room in a fury. 
 
 Jean-Christophe waited. She did not come back. He was 
 
MOENING 
 
 183 
 
 ashamed of what he had done ; he felt that he had behaved like 
 a little cad. And he was at the end of his tether ; she made 
 fun of him too impudently ! He was afraid lest Minna should 
 complain to her mother, and he should be forever banished from 
 Frau von Kerich’s thoughts. He knew not what to do; for if 
 he was sorry for his brutality, no power on earth would have 
 made him ask pardon. 
 
 He came again on the chance the next day, although he 
 thought that Minna would refuse to take her lesson. But 
 Minna, who was too proud to complain to anybody ^Minna, 
 whose conscience was not shielded against reproach appeared 
 again, after making him wait five minutes more than usual; 
 and she sat down at the piano, stiff, upright, without turning 
 her head or saying a word, as though Jean-Christophe no longer 
 existed for her. But she did not fail to take her lesson, and 
 all the subsequent lessons, because she knew very well that Jean- 
 Christophe was a fine musician, and that she ought to learn 
 to play the piano properly if she wished to be — what she wished 
 to be— a well-bred young lady of finished education. 
 
 But how bored she was ! How they bored each other ! 
 
 One misty morning in March, when little flakes of snow 
 were flying, like feathers, in the gray air, they were in the 
 studio. It was hardly daylight. Minna was arguing, as usual, 
 about a false note that she had struck, and pretending that it 
 “was written so.” Although he knew perfectly well that she 
 was lying, Jean-Christophe bent over the book to look at the 
 passage in question closely. Her hand was on the rack, and 
 she did not move it. His lips were near her hand. He tried 
 to read and could not; he was looking at something else— a 
 thing soft, transparent, like the petals of a flower. Suddenly 
 he did n6t know what he was thinking of — he pressed his lips 
 as hard as he could on the little hand. 
 
 They were both dumfounded by it. He flung backwards; 
 she withdrew her hand— both blushing. They said no word ; 
 they did not look at each other. After a moment of confused 
 silence she began to play again; she was very uneasy: her 
 bosom rose and fell as though she were under some weight: 
 she struck wrong note after wrong note. He did not notice it : 
 
184 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 he was more uneasy than she. His temples throbbed ; he heard 
 nothing; he knew not what she was playing; and, to break the 
 silence, he made a few random remarks in a choking voice. 
 He thought that he was forever lost in Minna’s opinion. He 
 was confounded by what he had done, thought it stupid and 
 rude. The lesson-hour over, he left Minna without looking at 
 her, and even forgot to say good-bye. She did not mind. She 
 had no thought now of deeming Jean-Christophe ill-mannered; 
 and if she made so many mistakes in playing, it was because 
 all the time she was watching him out of the corner of her 
 eye with astonishment and curiosity, and — for the first time — 
 sympathy. 
 
 When she was left alone, instead of going to look for her 
 mother as usual, she shut herself up in her room and examined 
 this extraordinary event. She sat with her face in her hands 
 in front of the mirror. Her eyes seemed to her soft and gleam- 
 ing. She bit gently at her lip in the effort of thinking. And 
 as she looked complacently at her pretty face, she visualized 
 the scene, and blushed and smiled. At dinner she was animated 
 and merry. She refused to go out at once, and stayed in the 
 drawing-room for part of the afternoon; she had some work 
 in her hand, and did not make ten stitches without a mistake, 
 but what did that matter! In a corner of the room, with her 
 back turned to her mother, she smiled; or, under a sudden 
 impulse to let herself go, she pranced about the room and 
 sang at the top of her voice. Frau von Kerich started and 
 called her mad. Minna fiung her arms round her neck, shak- 
 ing with laughter, and hugged and kissed her. 
 
 In the evening, when she went to her room, it was a long 
 time before she went to bed. She went on looking at herself 
 in the mirror, trying to remember, and having thought all 
 through the day of the same thing — ^thinking of nothing. She 
 undressed slowly; she stopped every moment, sitting on the 
 bed, trying to remember what Jean-Christophe was like. It 
 was a Jean-Christophe of fantasy who appeared, and now he 
 did not seem nearly so uncouth to her. She went to bed and 
 put out the light. Ten minutes later the scene of the morning 
 rushed back into her mind, and she burst out laughing. Her 
 mother got up softly and opened the door, thinking that, against 
 
MOENING 
 
 185 
 
 orders, she was reading in bed. She found Minna lying quietly 
 in her bed, with her eyes wide open in the dim candlelight. 
 What is it ? '' she asked. '' What is amusing you ? '' 
 Nothing,’' said Minna gravely. '' I was thinking.” 
 
 You are very lucky to find your own company so amusing. 
 But go to sleep.” 
 
 '^Yes, mamma,” replied Minna meekly. Inside ' herself she 
 was grumbling: ''Go away! Do go away!” until the door 
 was closed, and she could go on enjoying her dreams. She 
 fell into a sweet drowsiness. When she was nearly asleep, ^e 
 leaped for joy: ^ 
 
 " He loves me. . . . What happiness ! How good of him to 
 love me ! . . . How I love him ! ” 
 
 She kissed her pillow and went fast asleep. 
 
 When next they Avere together Jean-Christophe was surprised 
 at Minna’s amiability. She gave him " Good-day,” and asked 
 him how he was in a very soft voice; she sat at the piano, 
 looking wise and modest; she was an angel of docility. There 
 were none of her naughty schoolgirl’s tricks, but she listened 
 religiously to J ean-Christophe’s remarks, acknowledged that 
 they were right, gave little timid cries herself when she made a 
 mistake and set herself to be more accurate. Jean-Christophe 
 could not understand it. In a very short time she made 
 i astounding progress. Not only did she play better, but with 
 musical feeling. Little as he was given to flattery, he had to 
 pay her a compliment. She blushed with pleasure, and thanked 
 him for it with a look tearful with gratitude. She took pains 
 with her toilet for him; she wore ribbons of an exquisite shade; 
 she gave Jean-Christophe little smiles and soft glances, which 
 he disliked, for they irritated him, and moved him to the 
 I depths of his soul. And now it was she who made conversation, 
 
 ' but there was nothing childish in what she said; she talked 
 gravely, and quoted the poets in a pedantic and pretentious 
 way. He hardly ever replied; he was ill at ease. This new 
 Minna that he did not know astonished and disquieted him. 
 
 Always she watched him. She was waiting. ... For what? 
 . . . Did she know herself? . . . She was waiting for him to 
 do it again. He took good care not to, for he was convinced 
 
186 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 that he had behaved like a clod; he seemed never to give a i 
 thought to it. She grew restless, and one day when he was 
 sitting quietly at a respectful distance from her dangerous little 
 paws, she was seized with impatience : with a movement so quick 
 that she had no time to think of it, she herself thrust her little 
 hand against his lips. He was staggered by it, then furious 
 and ashamed. But none the less he kissed it very passionately. 
 Her naive effrontery enraged him; he was on the point of 
 leaving her there and then. 
 
 But he could not. He was entrapped. Whirling thoughts ’ 
 rushed in his mind ; he could make nothing of them. Like mists 
 ascending from a valley they rose from the depths of his heart. 
 
 He wandered hither and thither at random through this mist 
 of love, and whatever he did, he did but turn round and round 
 an obscure fixed idea, a Desire unknown, terrible and fascinat- 
 ing as a fiame to an insect. It was the sudden eruption of the 
 blind forces of Nature. * 
 
 They passed through a period of waiting. They watched ’ 
 each other, desired each other, were fearful of each other, i 
 They were uneasy. But they did not for that desist from their ^ 
 little hostilities and sulkinesses ; only there were no more f amili- \ 
 arities between them; they were silent. Each was busy con- ; 
 structing their love in silence. • 
 
 Love has curious retroactive effects. As soon as Jean- 1 
 Christophe discovered that he loved Minna, he discovered at the j 
 same time that he had always loved her. For three months \ 
 they had been seeing each other almost every day without ever ] 
 
 suspecting the existence of their love. But from the day when 1 
 
 he did actually love her, he was absolutely convinced that he 
 had loved her from all eternity. 
 
 It was a good, thing for him to have discovered at last whom ■ 
 he loved. He had loved for so long without knowing whom ! 4 
 
 It was a sort of relief to him, like a sick man, who, suffering | 
 from a general illness, vague and enervating, sees it become I 
 definite in sharp pain in some portion of his body. Nothing > 
 is more wearing than love without a definite object; it eats | 
 away and saps the strength like a fever. A known passion 
 leads the mind to excess; that is exhausting, but at least one 
 
MORNING 
 
 187 
 
 knows why. It is an excess; it is not a wasting away. Any- 
 thing rather than emptiness. 
 
 Although Minna had given Jean-Christophe good reason to 
 believe that she was not indifferent to him, he did not fail 
 to torture himself with the idea that she despised him. They 
 had never had any very clear idea of each other, but this idea 
 had never been more confused and false than it was now; it 
 consisted of a series of strange fantasies which could never be 
 made to agree, for they passed from one extreme to the other, 
 endowing each other in turn vnth faults and charms which they 
 did not possess — charms when they were parted, faults when 
 they were together. In either case they were wide of the 
 mark. 
 
 They did not know themselves what they desired. For Jean- 
 Christophe his love took shape as that thirst for tenderness, im- 
 perious, absolute, demanding reciprocation, which had burned in 
 him since childhood, which he demanded from others, and wished 
 to impose on them by will or force. Sometimes this despotic 
 desire of full sacrifice of himself and others — especially others, 
 perhaps — was mingled with gusts of a brutal and obscure desire, 
 which set him whirling, and he did not understand it. Minna, 
 curious above all things, and delighted to have a romance, tried 
 to extract as much pleasure as possible from it for her vanity 
 and sentimentality; she tricked herself whole-heartedly as to 
 what she was feeling. A great part of their love was purely 
 literary. They fed on the books they had read, and were forever 
 ascribing to themselves feelings which they did not possess. 
 
 But the moment was to come when all these little lies and 
 small egoisms were to vanish away before the divine light of 
 love. A day, an hour, a few seconds of eternity. . . . And it 
 was so unexpected! . . . 
 
 One evening they were alone and talking. The room was 
 growing dark. Their conversation took a serious turn. They 
 talked of the infinite, of Life, and Death. It made a larger 
 frame for their little passion. Minna complained of her loneli- 
 ness, which led naturally to Jean-Christophe’s answer jthat she 
 was not so lonely as she thought. 
 
 No,^^ she said, shaking her head. That is only words. 
 
188 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Every one lives for himself ; no one is interested in you ; nobody 
 loves you.” j 
 
 Silence. 
 
 “ And I ? ” said Jean-Christophe suddenly, pale with emotion. 
 
 Impulsive Minna jumped to her feet, and took his hands. 
 
 The door opened. They flung apart. Frau von Kerich 
 entered. Jean-Christophe buried himself in a book, which he 
 held upside down. Minna bent over her work, and pricked 
 her finger with her needle. 
 
 They were not alone together for the rest of the evening, 
 and they were afraid of being left. When Frau von Kerich got 
 up to look for something in the next room, Minna, not usually 
 obliging, ran to fetch it for her, and Jean-Christophe took 
 advantage of her absence to take his leave without saying good- 
 night to her. 
 
 Next day they met again, impatient to resume their inter- . 
 rupted conversation. They did not succeed. Yet circumstances ; 
 were favorable to them. They went a walk with Frau von ; 
 Kerich, and had plenty of opportunity for talking as much as r 
 they liked. But Jean-Christophe could not speak, and he was j 
 so unhappy that he stayed as far away as possible from Minna. ! 
 And she pretended not to notice his discourtesy; but she was ; 
 piqued by it, and showed it. When Jean-Christophe did at ; 
 last contrive to utter a few words, she listened icily ; he had j 
 hardly the courage to finish his sentence. They were coming ^ 
 to the end of the walk. Time was flying. And he was wretched i 
 at not having been able to make use of it. 
 
 A week passed. They thought they had mistaken their ^ 
 feeling for each other. They were not sure but that they had • 
 dreamed the scene of that evening. Minna was resentful against | 
 Jean-Christophe. Jean-Christophe was afraid of meeting her | 
 alone. They were colder to each other than ever. j 
 
 A day came when it had rained all morning and part of the I 
 afternoon. They had stayed in the house without speaking, 
 reading, yawning, looking out of the window ; they were bored |i 
 and cross. About four o’clock the sky cleared. They ran intoP 
 the garden. They leaned their elbows on the terrace wall, and^ 
 looked down at the lawns sloping to the river. The earth was! 
 steaming ; a soft mist was ascending to the sun ; little rain-^ 
 
MOENING 
 
 189 
 
 drops glittered on the grass; the smell of the damp earth and 
 the perfume of the flowers intermingled; around them buzzed 
 a golden swarm of bees. They were side by side, not looking 
 at each other; they could not bring themselves to break the 
 silence. A bee came up and clung awkwardly to a clump of 
 wistaria heavy with rain, and sent a shower of water down on 
 them. They both laughed, and at once they felt that they 
 were no longer cross with each other, and were friends again. 
 But still they did not look at each other. Suddenly, without 
 turning her head, she took his hand, and said: 
 
 Come ! 
 
 She led him quickly to the little labyrinth with itp box- 
 bordered paths, which was in the middle of the grove. They 
 climbed up the slope, slipping on the soaking ground, and 
 the wet trees shook out their branches over them. Near the 
 top she stopped to breathe. 
 
 Wait . . . wait . . she said in a low voice, trying to 
 take breath. 
 
 He looked at her. She was looking away; she was smiling, 
 breathing hard, with her lips parted; her hand was trembling 
 in Jean-Christophe^s. They felt the blood throbbing in their 
 linked hands and their trembling Angers. Around them all 
 was silent. The pale shoots of the trees w^ere quivering in the 
 sun; a gentle rain dropped from the leaves with silvery sounds, 
 and in the sky were the shrill cries of swallows. 
 
 She turned her head towards him; it was a lightning flash. 
 She flung her arms about his neck; he flung himself into her 
 arms. 
 
 Minna ! Minna ! My darling ! . . .^^ 
 
 I love you, J ean Christophe ! I love you ! 
 
 They sat on a wet wooden seat. They were fllled with love, 
 sweet, profound, absurd. Everything else had vanished. No 
 more egoism, no more vanity, no more reservation. Love, love 
 — that is what their laughing, tearful eyes were saying. The 
 cold coquette of a girl, the proud boy, were devoured with the 
 need of self-sacriflce, of giving, of suffering, of dying for each 
 other. They did not know each other; they were not the same; 
 everything was changed; their hearts, their faces, their eyes, 
 gave out a radiance of the most touching kindness and tender- 
 
190 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ness. Moments of purity, of self-denial, of absolute giving of ; 
 themselves, which through life will never return! 
 
 After a desperate murmuring of words and passionate prom- i 
 ises to belong to each other forever, after kisses and incoherent ■ 
 words of delight, they saw that it was late, and they ran back ' 
 hand in hand, almost falling in the narrow paths, bumping 
 into trees, feeling nothing, blind and drunk with the joy 
 
 When he left her he did not go home ; he could not have gone 
 to sleep. He left the town, and walked over the fields; he 
 walked blindly through the night. The air was fresh, the coun- ; 
 try djirk and deserted. A screech-owl hooted shrilly. Jean- ; 
 Christophe went on like a sleep-walker. The little lights of 
 the town quivered on the plain, and the stars in the dark sky. 
 He sat on a wall by the road and suddenly burst into tears. ■ 
 He did not know why. He was too happy, and the excess of . 
 his joy was compounded of sadness and delight ; there was in ^ 
 it thankfulness for his happiness, pity for those who were not | 
 happy, a melancholy and sweet feeling of the frailty of things, | 
 the mad joy of living. He wept for delight, and slept in the | 
 midst of his tears. When he awoke dawn was peeping. White | 
 mists floated over the river, and veiled the town, where Minna, ^ 
 worn out, was sleeping, while in her heart was the light of her ; 
 smile of happiness. ; 
 
 They contrived to meet again in the garden next morning | 
 and told their love once more, but now the divine unconscious- ^ 
 ness of it all was gone. She was a little playing the part | 
 
 of the girl in love, and he, though more sincere, was also 
 
 playing a part. They talked of what their life should be. He 
 
 regretted his poverty and humble estate. She affected to be , ; 
 generous, and enjoyed her generosity. She said that she cared | 
 nothing for money. That was true, for she knew nothing a 
 about it, having never known the lack of it. He promised tbatl 
 he would become a great artist; that she thought flne and amus-lj 
 ing, like a novel. She thought it her duty to behave reallyl 
 like a woman in love. She read poetry; she was sentimental.| 
 He was touched by the infection. He took pains with his dress 
 he was absurd; he set a guard upon his speech; he was preten- 
 
MORNING 
 
 191 
 
 tious. Frau von Kerich watched him and laughed, and asked 
 herself what could have made him so stupid. 
 
 But they had moments of marvelous poetry, and these would 
 suddenly burst upon them out of dull days, like sunshine through 
 a mist. A look, a gesture, a meaningless word, and they were 
 bathed in happiness; they had their good-byes in the evening 
 on the dimly-lighted stairs, and their eyes would seek each 
 other, divine each other through the half darkness, and the 
 thrill of their hands as they touched, the trembling in their 
 voices, all those little nothings that fed their memory at night, 
 as they slept so lightly that the chiming of each hour would 
 awake them, and their hearts would sing “ I am loved,” like 
 the murmuring of a stream. 
 
 They discovered the charm of things. Spring smiled with 
 a marvelous sweetness. The heavens were brilliant, the air was 
 soft, as they had never been before. All the town — the red 
 roofs, the old walls, the cobbled streets — showed with a kindly 
 charm that moved Jean-Christophe. At night, when everybody 
 was asleep, Minna would get up from her bed, and stand by 
 the window, drowsy and feverish. And in the afternoon, when 
 he was not there, she would sit in a swing, and dream, with 
 a book on her knees, her eyes half closed, sleepy and lazily 
 happy, mind and body hovering in the spring air. She would 
 spend hours at the piano, with a patience exasperating to others, 
 going over and over again scales and passages which made her 
 turn pale and cold with emotion. She would weep when she 
 heard Schumann’s music. She felt full of pity and kindness 
 for all creatures, and so did he. They would give money 
 stealthily to poor people whom they met in the street, and would 
 then exchange glances of compassion; they were happy in their 
 kindness. 
 
 To tell the truth, they were kind only by fits and starts. 
 Minna suddenly discovered how sad was the humble life of 
 devotion of old Frida, who had been a servant in the house 
 since her mother’s childhood, and at once she ran and hugged 
 her, to the great astonishment of the good old creature, who 
 was busy mending the linen in the kitchen. But that did not 
 keep her from speaking harshly to her a few hours later, when 
 Frida did not come at once on the sound of the hell. And 
 
192 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Jean-Christophe, who was consumed with love for all humanity^ 
 and would turn, aside so as not to crush an insect, was entirely 
 indifferent to his own family. By a strange reaction he was 
 colder and more curt with them the more affectionate he was 
 to all other creatures ; he hardly gave thought to them ; 
 he spoke abruptly to them, and found no interest in 
 seeing them. Both in Jean-Christophe and Minna their kind- 
 ness was only a surfeit of tenderness which overflowed at inter- 
 vals to the benefit of the first comer. Except for these over- 
 flowings they were more egoistic than ever, for their minds were 
 filled only with the one thought, and everything was brought 
 back to that. 
 
 How much of Jean-Christophe’s life was filled with the girPs 
 face! What emotion was in him when he saw her white frock 
 in the distance, when he was looking for her in the garden; 
 when at the theater, sitting a few yards away from their empty ' 
 places, he heard the door of their box open, and the mocking | 
 voice that he knew so well; when in some outside conversation 
 the dear name of Kerich cropped up! He would go pale and t 
 blush; for a moment or two he would see and hear nothing. | 
 And then there would be a rush of blood over all his body, ; 
 the assault of unknown forces. 
 
 The little German girl, naive and sensual, had odd little / 
 tricks. She would place her ring on a little pile of flour, and ' 
 he w^ould have to get it again and again with his teeth without ( 
 whitening his nose. Or she would pass a thread through a 1 
 biscuit, and put one end of it in her mouth and one in his, J 
 and then they had to nibble the thread to see who could get j 
 to the biscuit first. Their faces would come together; they ‘ 
 would feel each others breathing; their lips would touch, and 
 they would laugh forcedly, while their hands would turn to 
 ice. Jean-Christophe would feel a desire to bite, to hurt; he 
 would fling back, and she would go on laughing forcedly. They 
 would turn away, pretend indifference, and steal glances at 
 each other. 
 
 These disturbing games had a disquieting attraction for them ; 
 they wanted to play them, and yet avoided them. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe was fearful of them, and preferred even the constraint 
 of the meetings when Frau von Kerich or some one else was 
 
MOENING 
 
 193 
 
 present. No outside presence could break in upon the converse 
 of their loving hearts; constraint only made their love sweeter 
 and more intense. Everything gained infinitely in value; a 
 word, a movement of the lips, a glance were enough to make 
 the rich new treasure of their inner life shine through the dull 
 veil of ordinary existence. They alone could see it, or so they 
 thought, and smiled, happy in their little mysteries. Their 
 words were no more than those of a drawing-room conversation 
 about trivial matters; to them they were an unending song 
 of love. They read the most fleeting changes in their faces 
 and voices as in an open book; they could have read as well 
 with their eyes closed, for they had only to listen to their 
 hearts to hear in them the echo of the heart of the beloved. 
 They were full of confidence in life, in happiness, in themselves. 
 Their hopes were boundless. They loved, they were loved, 
 happy, without a shadow, without a doubt, without a fear of 
 the future. Wonderful serenity of those days of spring! Not 
 a cloud in the sky. A faith so fresh that it seems that nothing 
 can ever tarnish it. A joy so abounding that nothing can ever 
 exhaust it. Are they living? Are they dreaming? Doubtless 
 they are dreaming. There is nothing in common between life 
 and their dream — nothing, except in that moment of magic: 
 they are but a dream themselves; their being has melted away 
 at the touch of love. 
 
 It was not long before Frau von Kerich perceived their little 
 intrigue, which they thought very subtly managed, though it was 
 very clumsy. Minna had suspected it from the moment when 
 her mother had entered suddenly one day when she was talking 
 to Jean-Christophe, and standing as near to him as she could, 
 and on the click of the door they had darted apart as quickly 
 as possible, covered with confusion. Frau von Kerich had pre- 
 tended to see nothing. Minna was almost sorry. She would 
 have liked a tussle with her mother; it would have been more 
 romantic. 
 
 Her mother took care to give her no opportunity for it; she 
 was too clever to be anxious, or to make any remark about it. 
 But to Minna she talked ironically about Jean-Christophe, and 
 made merciless fun of his foibles; she demolished him in a few 
 
194 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 words. She did not do it deliberately ; she acted upon instinct, ! 
 with the treachery natural to a woman who is defending her 
 own. It was useless for Minna to resist, and sulk, and be 
 impertinent, and go on denying the truth of her remarks ; there 
 was only too much justification for them, and Frau von Kerich 
 had a cruel skill in fiicking the raw spot. The largeness of 
 Jean-Christophe^s boots, the ugliness of his clothes, his ill- 
 brushed hat, his provincial accent, his ridiculous way of bowing, | 
 the vulgarity of his loud-voicedness, nothing was forgotten which 
 might sting Minna’s vanity. Such remarks were always simple 
 and made by the way ; they never took the form of a set speech, 
 and when Minna, irritated, got upon her high horse to reply, i 
 Frau von Kerich would innocently be off on another subject. 
 But the blow struck home, and Minna was sore under it. 
 
 She began to look at Jean-Christophe with a less indulgent 
 eye. He was vaguely conscious of it, and uneasily asked her : 
 Why do you look at me like that? ” ■ 
 
 And she answered: ' 
 
 Oh, nothing ! ” ^ 
 
 But a moment after, when he was merry, she would harshly ■ 
 reproach him for laughing so loudly. He was abashed; he 
 never would have thought that he would have to take care not 
 to laugh too loudly with her: all his gaiety was spoiled. Or 
 when he was talking absolutely at his ease, she would absently : 
 
 interrupt him to make some unpleasant remark about his clothes, ? 
 or she would take exception to his common expressions with | 
 pedantic aggressiveness. Then he would lose all desire to talk, 
 and sometimes would be cross. Then he would persuade him- > 
 self that these ways which so irritated him were a proof of 
 Minna’s interest in him, and she would persuade herself also 
 that it was so. He would try humbly to do better. But she 
 was never much pleased with him, for he hardly ever succeeded. 
 
 But he had no time — nor had Minna — to perceive the change 
 that was taking place in her. Easter came, and Minna had 
 to go with her mother to stay with some relations near Weimar. 
 
 During the last week before the separation they returned 
 to the intimacy of the first days. Except for little outbursts 
 of impatience Minna was more affectionate than ever. On the 
 eve of her departure they went for a long walk in the park; 
 
MORNING 
 
 195 
 
 she led Jean-Christophe mysteriously to the arbor, and put 
 about his neck a little scented bag, in which she had placed 
 a lock of her hair; they renewed their eternal vows, and swore 
 to write to each other every day; and they chose a star out 
 of the sky, and arranged to look at it every evening at the 
 same time. 
 
 The fatal day arrived. Ten times during the night he had 
 asked himself, “ Where will she be to-morrow ? ” and now he 
 thought, “ It is to-day. This morning she is still here ; to-night 
 she will be here no longer.” He went to her house before eight 
 o’clock. She was not up; he set out to walk in the park; 
 he could not; he returned. The passages were full of boxes 
 and parcels; he sat down in a corner of the room listening for 
 the creaking of doors and floors, and recognizing the footsteps 
 on the floor above him. Frau von Kerich passed, smiled as 
 she saw him and, without stopping, threw him a mocking good- 
 day. Minna came at last ; she was pale, her eyelids were swollen ; 
 she had not slept any more than he during the night. She 
 gave orders busily to the servants; she held out her hand to 
 Jean-Christophe, and went on talking to old Frida. She was 
 ready to go. Frau von Kerich came back. They argued about 
 a hat-box. Minna seemed to pay no attention to Jean-Chris- 
 tophe, who was standing, forgotten and unhappy, by the piano. 
 She went out with her mother, then came back; from the door 
 she called out to Frau von Kerich. She closed the door. They 
 were alone. She ran to him, took his hand, and dragged him 
 into the little room next door; its shutters were closed. Then 
 she put her face up to Jean-Christophe’s and kissed him wildly. 
 With tears in her eyes she said: 
 
 “ You promise — you promise that you will love me always ? ” 
 
 They sobbed quietly, and made convulsive efforts to choke 
 their sobs do^vn so as not to be heard. They broke apart as 
 they heard footsteps approaching. Minna dried her eyes, and 
 resumed her busy air with the servants, but her voice trembled. 
 
 He succeeded in snatching her handkerchief, which she had 
 let fall — her little dirty handkerchief, crumpled and wet with 
 her tears. 
 
 He went to the station with his friends in their carriage. 
 Sitting opposite each other Jean-Christophe and Minna hardly 
 
196 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 dared look at each other for fear of bursting into tears. Their 
 hands sought each other, and clasped until they hurt. Frau 
 von Kerich watched them with quizzical good-humor, and 
 seemed not to see anything. The time arrived. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe was standing by the door of the train when it began to 
 move, and he ran alongside the carriage, not looking where 
 he was going, jostling against porters, his eyes fixed on Minna’s 
 eyes, until the train was gone. He went on running until it 
 was lost from sight. Then he stopped, out of breath, and 
 found himself on the station platform among people of no 
 importance. He went home, and, fortunately, his family were 
 all out, and all through the morning he wept. 
 
 For the first time he knew the frightful sorrow of parting, 
 an intolerable torture for all loving hearts. The world is 
 empty; life is empty; all is empty. The heart is choked; it 
 is impossible to breathe; there is mortal agony; it is difficult, ; 
 impossible, to live — especially when all around you there are ! 
 the traces of the departed loved one, when everything about ; 
 you is forever calling up her image, when you remain in the j 
 surroundings in which you lived together, she and you, when | 
 it is a torment to try to live again in the same places the i 
 happiness that is gone. Then it is as though an abyss were j 
 opened at your feet; you lean over it; you turn giddy; you I 
 almost fall. You fall. You think you are face to face with | 
 Death. And so you are; parting is one of his faces. You { 
 watch the beloved of your heart pass away ; life is effaced ; only | 
 a black hole is left — nothingness. 
 
 Jean-Christophe went and visited all the beloved spots, so ^ 
 as to suffer more. Frau von Kerich had left him the key of 
 the garden, so that he could go there while they were away. 
 He went there that very day, and was like to choke with sorrow. 
 
 It seemed to him as he entered that he might find there a little 
 q£ who was gone ; he found only too much of her , her 
 image hovered over all the lawns ; he expected to see her appear 
 at all the corners of the paths; he knew well that she would 
 not appear, but he tormented himself with pretending that she 
 might, and he went over the tracks of his memories of love— . 
 the path to the labyrinth, the terrace carpeted with wistaria, | 
 
MOENING 
 
 197 
 
 the seat in the arbor, and he inflicted torture on himself by 
 saying : A week ago . . . three days ago . . . yesterday, it 
 was so. Yesterday she was here . . . this very morning. . . P 
 He racked his heart with these thoughts until he had to stop, 
 choking, and like to die. In his sorrow'' was mingled anger with 
 himself for having wasted all that time, and not having made 
 use of it. So many minutes, so many hours, when he had 
 enjoyed the infinite happiness of seeing her, breathing her, and 
 feeding upon her. And he had not appreciated it! He had 
 let the time go by without having tasted to the full every tiny 
 moment! And now! . . . Now it was too late. . . . Irrepara- 
 ble ! Irreparable ! 
 
 He went home. His family seemed odious to him. He could 
 not bear their faces, their gestures, their fatuous conversation, 
 the same as that of the preceding day, the same as that of all 
 the preceding days — always the same. They went on living 
 their usual life, as though no such misfortune had come to 
 pass in their midst. And the town had no more idea of it 
 than they. The people were all going about their affairs, laugh- 
 ing, noisy, busy; the crickets were chirping; the sky was bright. 
 He hated them all; he felt himself crushed by this universal 
 egoism. But he himself was more egoistic than the whole 
 universe. Nothing was worth while to him. He had no kind- 
 ness. He loved nobody. 
 
 He passed several lamentable days. His work absorbed him 
 again automatically: but he had no heart for living. 
 
 One evening w^hen he was at supper with his family, silent 
 and depressed, the postman knocked at the door and left a 
 letter for him. His heart knew the sender of it before he had 
 seen the handwriting. Four pairs of eyes, fixed on him with 
 undisguised curiosity, waited for him to read it, clutching at 
 the hope that this interruption might take them out of their 
 usual boredom. He placed the letter by his plate, and would 
 not open it, pretending carelessly that he knew what it was 
 about. But his brothers, annoyed, would not believe it, and 
 went on prying at it; and so he was in tortures until the meal 
 was ended. Then he was free to lock himself up in his room. 
 His heart was beating so that he almost tore the letter as he 
 opened it. He trembled to think what might be in it; but 
 
198 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 as soon as he had glanced over the first words he was filled with 
 joy. 
 
 A few very affectionate words. Minna was writing to him 
 by stealth. She called him “Dear CJiristlein’’ and told him 
 that she had wept much, had looked at the star every evening, 
 that she had been to Frankfort, which was a splendid town, 
 where there were wonderful shops, but that she had never both- 
 ered about anything because she was thinking of him. She 
 reminded him that he had sworn to be faithful to her, and not 
 to see anybody while she was away, so that he might think only 
 of her. She wanted him to work all the time while she was 
 gone, so as to make himself famous, and her too. She ended 
 by asking him if he remembered the little room where they 
 had said good-bye on the morning when she had left him: she 
 assured him that she would be there still in thought, and that 
 she would still say good-bye to him in the same way. She 
 signed herself, “ Eternally yours ! Eternally ! . . .” and she ■ 
 had added a postscript bidding him buy a straw hat instead of i 
 his ugly felt— all the distinguished people there were wearing 1 
 them — a coarse straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon. , 
 
 Jean-Christophe read the letter four times before he could i 
 quite take it all in. He was so overwhelmed that he could not ■ 
 even be happy ; and suddenly he felt so tired that he lay down 
 and read and re-read the letter and kissed it again and again. ^ 
 He put it under his pillow, and his hand was forever making ; 
 sure that it was there. An ineffable sense of weU-being per- j 
 meated his whole soul. He slept all through the night. | 
 
 His life became more tolerable. He had ever sweet, soaring : 
 thoughts of Minna. He set about answering her; but he could ^ 
 not write freely to her; he had to hide his feelings: that was i 
 painful and difficult for him. He continued clumsily to conceal 
 his love beneath formulae of ceremonious politeness, which he 
 always used in an absurd fashion. 
 
 When he had sent it he awaited Minna’s reply, and only 
 lived in expectation of it. To win patience he tried to go for 
 walks and to read. But his thoughts were only of Minna^ 
 he went on crazily repeating her name oyer and over again; 
 he was so abject in his love and worship of her name that ;he 
 carried everywhere with him a volume of Lessin g, because tl ^ 
 
MOENING 
 
 199 
 
 name of Mnaa occurT^ in E, and every day when he left 
 
 WthiSto he went a long distance out of his way so as to 
 pass a mercery shop, on whose signboard the five adored letters 
 
 were written. , i 
 
 He reproached himself for wasting time when she liad bid 
 
 him so urgently to work, so as to make her famous. The naive 
 vanity of her request touched him, as a mark of her confidence 
 in him. He resolved, by way of fulfilling it, to write a work 
 which should be not only dedicated, but consecrated, to her. 
 He could not have written any other at that time. Har y 
 had the scheme occurred to him than musical ideas rushed in 
 unon him. It was like a flood of water accumulated in a 
 reservoir for several months, until it should suddenly rush down, 
 breaking all its dams. He did not leave his room for a week. 
 Louisa left his dinner at the door; for he did not allow even 
 
 her to enter. , . ■ rri,.. 
 
 He wrote a quintette for clarionet and strings, 
 movement was a poem of youthful hope and desire; the last 
 a lover’s ioke, in which Jean-Christophe’s wild humor peeped 
 out But the whole work was written for the sake of the second 
 movement, the larghetto, in which Jean-Christophe had depicted 
 an ardent and ingenuous little soul, which was, or was meant 
 to be, a portrait of Minna. No one would have recognized it, 
 least of all herself ; but the great thing was that it was perfectly 
 recognizable to himself; and he had a thrill of pleasure in the 
 illusion of feeling that he had caught the essence of his beloved. 
 No work had ever been so easily or happily written; it was an 
 outlet for the excess of love which the parting had stored up 
 in him; and at the same time his care for the work of art, the 
 effort necessary to dominate and concentrate his passion into 
 a beautiful and clear form, gave him a healthiness of mind, a 
 balance in his faculties, which gave him a sort of physical 
 delight — a sovereign enjoyment known to every creative artist. 
 While he is creating he escapes altogether from the slavery ot 
 desire and sorrow ; he becomes then master in his turn ; and 
 all that gave him joy or suffering seems then to him to be 
 only the fine play of his will. Such moments are too short; 
 for when they are done he finds about him, more heavy an 
 ever, the chains of reality. 
 
300 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 While Jean-Christophe was busy with his work he hardly had 
 time to think of his parting from Minna; he was living with 
 her. Minna was no longer in Minna; she was in himself. But 
 when he had finished he found that he was alone, more alone 
 than before, more weary, exhausted by the effort; he remembered 
 that it was a fortnight since he had written to Minna and that 
 she had not replied. 
 
 He wrote to her again, and this time he could not bring 
 himself altogether to exercise the constraint which he had im- 
 posed on himself for the first letter. He reproached Minna 
 jocularly— for he did not believe it himself — with having for- 
 gotten him. He scolded her for her laziness and teased her 
 affectionately. He spoke of his work with much mystery, so 
 as to rouse her curiosity, and because he wished to keep it 
 as a surprise for her when she returned. He described minutely 
 the hat that he had bought ; and he told how, to carry out 
 the little despot s orders — for he had taken all her commands 
 literally— he did not go out at all, and said that he was ill 
 as an excuse for refusing invitations. He did not add that he 
 was even on bad terms with the Grand Duke, because, in excess 
 of zeal, he had refused to go to a party at the Palace to which 
 he had been invited. The whole letter was full of a careless 
 joy, and conveyed those little secrets so dear to lovers. He 
 imagined that Minna alone had the key to them, and thought 
 himself very clever, because he had carefully replaced every 
 word of love with words of friendship. 
 
 After he had written he felt comforted for a moment; first, 
 because the letter had given him the illusion of conversation 
 with his absent fair, but chiefiy because he had no doubt but 
 lhat Minna would reply to it at once. He was very patient 
 for the three days which he had allowed for the post to take 
 his letter to Minna and bring back her answer; but when the 
 fourth day had passed he began once more to find life difficult. 
 He had no energy or interest in things, except during the hour 
 before the post’s arrival. Then he was trembling with im- 
 patience. He became superstitious, and looked for the smallest 
 sign the crackling of the fire, a chance word — to give him an 
 assurance that the letter would come. Once that hour was 
 passed he would collapse again. Ho more work, no more walks; 
 
MOENMG 201 
 
 the only object of bis existence was to wait for the next post, 
 and all his energy was expended in finding strength to wait 
 for so long. But when evening came, and all hope was gone 
 for the day, then he was crushed; it seemed to him that he 
 could never live until the morrow, and he wouW stay for hours, 
 sitting at his table, without speaking or thinking, without even 
 the power to go to bed, until some remnant of his will would 
 take him off to it; and he would sleep heavily, haunted by 
 stupid dreams, which made him think that the night would 
 
 never end. -u • i 
 
 This continual expectation became at length a physical tor- 
 ture, an actual illness. Jean-Christophe went so far as to 
 suspect his father, his brother, even the postman, of having 
 taken the letter and hidden it from him. He was racked with 
 uneasiness. He never doubted Minna’s fidelity for an instant. 
 If she did not write, it must be because she was ill, dying, 
 perhaps dead. Then he rushed to his pen and wrote a third 
 letter, a few heartrending lines, in which he had no mme 
 thought of guarding his feelings than of taking care with his 
 spelling. The time for the post to go was drawing near; he 
 had crossed out and smudged the sheet as he turned it over, 
 dirtied the envelope as he closed it. No matter! He could 
 not wait until the next post. He ran and hurled his letter 
 into the box and waited in mortal agony. On the next night 
 but one he had a clear vision of Minna, ill, calling to him; 
 he got up, and was on the point of setting out on foot to go 
 to her. But where? Where should he find her? 
 
 On the fourth morning Minna’s letter came at last— hardly 
 a half-sheet — cold and stiff. Minna said that she did not 
 understand what could have filled him with such stupid fears, 
 that she was quite well, that she had no time to write, and 
 begged him not to get so excited in future, and not to write 
 
 Jean-Christophe was stunned. He never doubted Minna s 
 sincerity. He blamed himself ; he thought that Minna was 
 justly annoyed by the impudent and absurd letters that he had 
 written. He thought himself an idiot, and beat at his head 
 with his fist. But it was all in vain; he was forced to feel 
 that Minna did not love him as much as he loved her. 
 
202 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE ‘ 
 
 The days that followed ware so mournful that it is impossible 
 to describe them. Nothingness cannot be described. Deprived 
 
 of the only boon that made living worth while for him his 
 
 letters to Minna — Jean-Christophe now only lived mechanically, 
 and the only thing which interested him at all was when in 
 the evening, as he was going to bed, he ticked off on the calendar, 
 like a schoolboy, one of the interminable days which lay between 
 himself and Minna’s return. The day of the return was past. 
 They ought to have been at home a week. Feverish excitement 
 had succeeded Jean-Christophe’s prostration. Minna had prom- 
 ised when she left to advise him of the day and hour of their 
 arrival. He waited from moment to moment to go and meet 
 them; and he tied himself up in a web of guesses as to the 
 reasons for their delay. 
 
 One evening one of their neighbors, a friend of his grand- 
 father, Fischer, the furniture dealer, came in to smoke and 
 chat with Melchior after dinner as he often did. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe, in torment, was going up to his room after waiting for ■ 
 
 the postman to pass when a word made him tremble. Fischer ! 
 
 said that next day he had to go early in the morning to the 
 Kerichs’ to hang up the curtains. Jean-Christophe stopped ' 
 dead, and asked: ' 
 
 “ Have they returned ? ” 
 
 “ You wag ! You know that as well as I do,” said old Fischer 
 roguishly. “Fine weather! They came back the day before i 
 
 yesterday.” ! 
 
 Jean-Christophe heard no more; he left the room, and | 
 
 got ready to go out. His mother, who for some time 1 
 
 had secretly been watching him without his knowing it, fol- « 
 
 lowed him into the lobby, and asked him timidly where he \ 
 
 was going. He made no answer, and went out. He was 
 hurt. 
 
 He ran to the Kerichs’ house. It was nine o’clock in the 
 evening. They were both in the drawing-room and did not 
 appear to be surprised to see him. They said “ Good-evening ” 
 quietly. Minna was busy writing, and held out her hand over 
 the table and went on with her letter, vaguely asking him for 
 his news. She asked him to forgive her discourtesy, and pre- 
 tended to be listening to what he said, but she interrupted him 
 
MOENING 
 
 203 
 
 to ask something of her mother. He had prepared touehing 
 words concerning all that he had suffered during her absence ; 
 he could hardly summon a few words; no one was interested 
 in them, and he had not the heart to go on— it all rang so 
 f 3/lSG 
 
 When Minna had finished her letter she took up some work, 
 and, sitting a little away from him, began to tell him about 
 her travels. She talked about the pleasant weeks she had spent 
 — riding on horseback, country-house life, interesting society; 
 she got excited gradually, and made allusions to events and 
 people whom Jean-Christophe did not know, and the memory 
 of them made her mother and herself laugh. ^ Jean-Christophe 
 felt that he was a stranger during the story; 'he did not know 
 how to take it, and laughed awkwardly. He never took his 
 eyes from Minna’s face, beseeching her to look at him, implor- 
 ing her to throw him a glance for alms. But when she did 
 look at him — which was not often, for she addressed herself 
 more to her mother than to him — her eyes, like her voiee, were 
 cold and indifferent. Was she so constrained because of her 
 mother, or was it that he did not understand? He wished 
 to speak to her alone, but Frau von Kerich never left them 
 for a moment. He tried to bring the conversation round to 
 some subject interesting to himself; he spoke of his work and 
 his plans ; he was dimly conscious that Minna was evading him, 
 and instinctively he tried to interest her in himself. Indeed, 
 she seemed to listen attentively enough; she broke in upon his 
 narrative with various interjeetions, which were never very apt, 
 but always seemed to be full of interest. But just as he was 
 beginning to hope once more, carried off his feet by one of 
 her charming smiles, he saw Minna put her little hand to her 
 lips and yawn. He broke off short. She sa,w that, and asked 
 his pardon amiably, saying that she was tired. He got up, 
 thinking that they would persuade him to stay, but they said 
 nothing. He spun out his “ Good-bye,” and waited for a word 
 to ask him to come again next day; there was no suggestion 
 of it. He had to go. Minna did not take -him to the door. 
 She held out her hand to him— an indifferent hand that drooped 
 limply in his — and he took his leave of them in the middle 
 of the room. 
 
204 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 He went home with terror in his heart. Of the Minna of two 
 months before, of his beloved Minna, nothing was left. What 
 had happened? , What had become of her? For a poor boy 
 who has never yet experienced the continual change, the com- 
 plete disappearance, and the absolute renovation of living souls, 
 of which the majority are not so much souls as collections of 
 souls in succession changing and dying away continually, the 
 simple truth was too cruel for him to be able to believe it. 
 
 He rejected the idea of it in terror, and tried to persuade him- 
 self that he had not been able to see properly, and that Minna 
 was just the same. He decided to go again to the house next 
 morning, and to talk to her at all costs. 
 
 He did not sleep. Through the night he counted one after 
 another the chimes of the clock. From one o’clock on he was 
 rambling round the Kerichs’ house; he entered it as soon as 
 he could. He did not see Minna, but Frau von Kerich. Always ; 
 
 busy and an early riser, she was watering the pots of flowers | 
 
 on the veranda. She gave a mocking cry when she saw Jean- 
 Christophe. t 
 
 Ah ! ” she said. It is you ! ... I am glad you have * 
 come. I have something to talk to you about. Wait a mo- ; 
 ment. . . i 
 
 She went in for a moment to put down her watering can ^ 
 
 and to dry her hands, and came back with a little smile as she 1 
 
 saw Jean-Christophe’s discomfiture; he was conscious of the f 
 
 approach of disaster. ' i 
 
 '' Come into the garden,” she said ; we shall be quieter.” ^ 
 
 In the garden that was full still of his love he followed Frau j 
 
 von Kerich. She did not hasten to speak, and enjoyed the ' 
 boy’s uneasiness. 
 
 '' Let us sit here,” she said at last. They were sitting on 
 the seat in the place where Minna had held up her lips to him 
 on the eve of her departure. 
 
 I think you know what is the matter,” said Frau von 
 Kerich, looking serious so as to complete his confusion. I 
 should never have thought it of you, Jean-Christopfie. I thought 
 you a serious boy. I had every confidence in you. I should 
 never have thought that you would abuse it to try and turn 
 my daughter’s head. She was in your keeping. You ought 
 
MOENING 205 
 
 to have shown respect for her, respect for me, respect for your- 
 self/^ 
 
 There was a light irony in her accents. Fran von Kerich 
 attached not the least importance to this childish love affair; 
 but Jean-Christophe was not conscious of it, and her reproaches, 
 which he took, as he took everything, tragically, went to his 
 heart. 
 
 "‘'But, Madam . . . but. Madam . . he stammered, with 
 tears in his eyes, I have never abused your confidence. . . . 
 Please do not think that. ... I am not a bad man, that I 
 swear! ... I love Fraulein Minna. I love her with all my 
 soul, and I wish to marry her.^’ 
 
 Frau von Kerich smiled. 
 
 "" No, my poor boy,''' she said, with that kindly smile in which 
 was so much disdain, as at last he was to understand, ""no, 
 it is impossible,; it is just a childish folly." 
 
 ""my? Why?" he asked. 
 
 He took her hands, not believing that she could be speaking 
 seriously, and almost reassured by the new softness in her voice. 
 She smiled still, and said: 
 
 "" Because . . ." 
 
 He insisted. With ironical deliberation — she did not take 
 him altogether seriously — she told him that he had no fortune, 
 that Minna had different tastes. He protested that that made 
 no difference; that he would be rich, famous; that he would 
 win honors, money, all that Minna could desire. Frau von 
 Kerich looked skeptical; she was amused by his self-confidence, 
 and only shook her head by way of saying no. But he stuck 
 to it. 
 
 ""Ko, Jean-Christophe," she said firmly, ^^no. It is not 
 worth arguing. It is impossible. It is hot only a question of 
 money. So many things 1 The position . . ." 
 
 She had no need to finish. That was a needle that pierced 
 to his very marrow. His eyes were opened. He saw the irony 
 of the friendly smile, he saw the coldness of the kindly look, 
 he understood suddenly what it was that separated him from 
 this woman whom he loved as a son, this woman who seemed 
 to treat him like a mother; he was conscious of all that was 
 patronizing and disdainful in her affection. He got up. He 
 
206 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 was pale. Frau von Kerich went on talking to him in 
 her caressing voice, but it was the end; he heard no more 
 the music of the words; he perceived under every word the 
 falseness of that elegant soul. He could not answer a 
 word. He went. Everything about him was going round and 
 round. 
 
 When he regained his room he flung himself on his bed, 
 and gave way to a fit of anger and injured pride, just as he 
 used to do when he was a little boy. He bit his pillow; he 
 crammed his handkerchief into his mouth, so that no one should 
 hear him crying. He hated Frau von Kerich. He hated Minna. 
 
 He despised them mightily. It seemed to him that he had 
 been insulted, and he trembled with shame and rage. He had 
 to reply, to take immediate action. If he could not avenge j 
 himself he would die. 1 
 
 He got up, and wrote an idiotically violent letter: || 
 
 Madam, — ‘ 
 
 I do not know if, as you say, you have been deceived in me. ^ 
 
 But I do know that I have been cruelly deceived in you. I * 
 
 thought that you were my friends. You said so. You pre- ■ 
 
 tended to be so, and I loved you more than my life. I see now ; 
 
 that it was all a lie, that your affection for me was only a , 
 sham; you made use of me. I amused you, provided you with I 
 entertainment, made music for you. I was your servant. Your ( 
 servant: that I am not! I am no man^s servant! | 
 
 You have made me feel cruelly that I had no right to love ) 
 
 your daughter. Nothing in the world can prevent my heart i 
 from loving where it loves, and if I am not your equal in rank, « 
 I am as noble as you. It is the heart that ennobles a man. 
 
 If I am not a Count, I have perhaps more honor than many 
 Counts. Lackey or Count, when a man insults me, I despise 
 him. I despise as much any one who pretends to be noble, and 
 is not noble of soul. 
 
 Farewell ! You have mistaken me. You have deceived me. 
 
 I detest you ! 
 
 He who, in spite of you, loves, and will love till death, 
 Fraulein Minna, because she is his, and nothing can take her 
 from him.^^ 
 
MOENING 
 
 207 
 
 Hardly had he thrown his letter into the box than he was 
 filled with terror at what he had done. He tried not to think 
 of it, but certain phrases cropped up in his memory; he was 
 in a cold sweat as he thought of Frau von Kerich reading those 
 enormities. At first he was upheld by his very despair, hut 
 next day he saw that his letter could only bring about a final 
 separation from Minna, and that seemed to him the Jrest of 
 misfortunes. He still hoped that Frau von Kerich, who knew 
 his violent fits, would not take it seriously, that she would only 
 reprimand him severely, and— who knows?— that she would 
 be touched perhaps by the sincerity of his passiom One word 
 and he would have thrown himself at her feet. He waited for 
 five days. Then came a letter. She said: 
 
 “ Since, as you say, there has been a misunderstanding be- 
 tween us, it would be wise not any further to polong it 1 
 should be very sorry to force upon you a relationship which 
 has become painful to you. You will think it natural, there- 
 fore, that we should break it off. I hope that you will m time 
 to come have no lack of other friends who will be able to 
 appreciate you as you wish to be appreciated I have no doubt 
 as to your future, and from a distance shall, with sympathy, 
 follow your progress in your musical career. Kind regards. 
 
 ^ ^ ^jnciTi^PTTA VON Kerich. 
 
 The most bitter reproaches would have been less cruel. Jean- 
 Christophe saw that he was lost. It is possible to reply to an 
 uniust accusation. But what is to be done against the negati^- 
 ness of such polite indifference? He raged against it. He 
 thouo-ht that he would never see Minna again, and he could 
 not bear it. He felt how little all the pride in the world weighs 
 against a little love. He forgot his dignity; he became cow- 
 ardly; he wrote more letters, in which he implored forgiveness. 
 They were no less stupid than the letter in which he had rai e 
 against her. They evoked no response. And everything was said. 
 
 He nearly died of it. He thought of killing himself. He 
 thought of murder. At least, he imagined that he thought ot 
 
208 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 
 it. He was possessed by incendiary and murderous desires. 
 People have little idea of the paroxysm of love or hate which 
 sometimes devours the hearts of children. It was the most 
 terrible crisis of his childhood. It ended his childhood. It 
 stiffened his will. But it came near to breaking it forever. 
 
 He found life impossible. He would sit for hours with his 
 elbows on the window-sill looking down into the courtyard, 
 and dreaming, as he used to when he was a little boy, of some 
 means of escaping from the torture of life when it became too 
 great. The remedy was there, under his eyes. Immediate . . . 
 immediate? How could one know? . . . Perhaps after hours 
 — centuries — ^horrible sufferings! . . . But so utter was his 
 childish despair that he let himself be carried away by the 
 giddy round of such thoughts. 
 
 Louisa saw that he was suffering. She could not gauge 
 exactly what was happening to him, but her instinct gave her 
 a dim warning of danger. She tried to approach her son, to 
 discover his sorrow, so as to console him. But the poor woman 
 had lost the habit of talking intimately to Jean-Christophe. For 
 many years he had kept his thoughts to himself, and she had 
 been too much taken up by the material cares of life to find time 
 to discover them or divine them. Now that she would so gladly 
 have come to his aid she knew not what to do. She hovered 
 about him like a soul in torment; she would gladly have found 
 words to bring him comfort, and she dared not speak for fear 
 of irritating him. And in spite of all her care she did irritate 
 him by her every gesture and by her very presence, »for she 
 was not very adroit, and he was not very indulgent. And yet 
 he loved her; they loved each other. But so little is needed 
 to part two creatures who are dear to each other, and love each 
 other with all their hearts! A too violent expression, an awk- 
 ward gesture, a harmless twitching of an eye or a nose, a 
 
 trick of eating, walking, or laughing, a physical constraint 
 
 which is beyond analysis. . . . You say that these things are 
 
 nothing, and yet they are all the world. Often they are enough 
 
 to keep a mother and a son, a brother and a brother, a friend 
 and a friend, who live in proximity to each other, forever 
 strangers to each other. 
 
 Jean-Christophe did not find in his mother’s grief a sufficient 
 
MOENING 
 
 209 
 
 prop in the crisis through which he was passing. Besides, 
 what is the affection of others to the egoism of passion pre- 
 occupied with itself? 
 
 One night when his family were sleeping, and he was sitting 
 by his desk, not thinking or moving, he was engulfed in his 
 perilous ideas, when a sound of footsteps resounded down the 
 little silent street, and a knock on the door brought him from 
 his stupor. There was a murmuring of thick voices. He 
 remembered that his father had not come in, and he thought 
 angrily that they were bringing him back drunk, as they had 
 done a week or two before, when they had found him lying in 
 the street. For Melchior had abandoned all restraint, and was 
 more and more the victim of his vice, though his athletic health 
 seemed not in the least to suffer from an excess and a reckless- 
 ness which would have killed any other man. He ate enough 
 for four, drank until he dropped, passed whole nights out of 
 doors in icy rain, was knocked down and stunned in brawls, 
 and would get up again next day, with his rowdy gaiety, wanting 
 everybody about him to be gay too. 
 
 Louisa, hurrying up, rushed to open the door. Jean-Chris- 
 tophe, who had not budged, stopped his ears so as not to hear 
 Melchior’s vicious voice and the tittering comments of the 
 neighbors. ... 
 
 . Suddenly a strange terror seized him; for no reason 
 he began to tremble, with his face hidden in his hands. And 
 on the instant a piercing cry made him raise his head. He 
 rushed to the door. ... 
 
 In the midst of a group of men talking in low voices, in 
 the dark passage, lit only by the flickering light of a lantern, 
 lying, just as his grandfather had done, on a stretcher, was 
 a body dripping with water, motionless. Louisa was clinging 
 to it and sobbing. They had just found Melchior drowned in 
 the mill-race. 
 
 Jean-Christophe gave a cry. Everything else vanished; aU 
 his other sorrows were swept aside. He threw himself on his 
 father’s body by Louisa’s side, and they wept together. 
 
 Seated by the bedside, watching Melchior’s last sleep, on 
 whose face was now a severe and solemn expression, he felt 
 the dark peace of death enter into his soul. His childish passion 
 
210 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 was gone from him like a fit of fever ; the icy: breath of the 
 grave had taken it all away. Minna, his pride, his love, and 
 himself. . . . Alas ! What misery ! How small everything 
 showed by the side of this reality, the only reality — death! 
 Was it worth while to suffer so much, to desire so much, to 
 be so much put about to come in the end to that I . . . 
 
 He watched his father’s sleep, and he was filled with an 
 infinite pity. He remembered the smallest of his acts of kind- 
 ness and tenderness. For with all his faults Melchior was not 
 bad; there was much good in him. He loved his family. He 
 was honest. He had a little of the uncompromising probity of 
 the Kraffts, which, in all questions of morality and honor, 
 suffered no discussion, and never would admit the least of those 
 small moral impurities which so many people in society regard 
 not altogether as faults. He was brave, and whenever there 
 was any danger faced it with a sort of enjoyment. If he was 
 extravagant himself, he was so for others too ; he could not bear 
 anybody to be sad, and very gladly gave away all that belonged 
 to him — and did not belong to him — to the poor devils he met 
 by the wayside. All his qualities appeared to Jean-Christophe 
 now, and he invented some of them, or exaggerated them. It 
 seemed to him that he had misunderstood his father. He re- 
 proached himself with not having loved him enough. He saw 
 him as broken by Life ; he thought he heard that unhappy soul, 
 drifting, too weak to struggle, crying out for the life so use- 
 lessly lost. He heard that lamentable entreaty that had so cut 
 him to the heart one day: 
 
 ^^Jean-Christophe! Do not despise me!” 
 
 And he was overwhelmed by remorse. He threw himself on 
 the bed, and kissed the dead face and wept. And as he had 
 done that day, he said again: 
 
 Dear father, I do not despise you. I love you. Forgive 
 me!” 
 
 But that piteous entreaty was not appeased, and went on: 
 
 Do not despise me ! Do not despise me ! ” And suddenly 
 Jean-Christophe saw himself lying in the place of the dead 
 man; he heard the terrible words coming from his own lips; 
 he felt weighing on his heart the despair of a useless life, 
 irreparably lost. And he thought in terror : Ah ! everything, 
 
MOENING 
 
 211 
 
 all the suffering, all the misery in the world, rather than come 
 to that! . . r How near he had been to it! Had he not all 
 but yielded to the temptation to snap off his life himself, 
 cowardly to escape his sorrow? As if all the sorrows, all 
 betrayals, were not childish griefs beside the torture and the 
 crime of self-betrayal, denial of faith, of self-contempt in death ! 
 
 He saw that life was a battle without armistice, without 
 mercy, in which he who wishes to be a man worthy of the name 
 of a man must forever fight against whole armies of invisible 
 enemies; against the murderous forces of Nature, uneasy desires, 
 dark thoughts, treacherously leading him to degradation and 
 destruction. He saw that he had been on the point of falling 
 into the trap. He saw that happiness and love were only the 
 friends of a moment to lead the heart to disarm and abdicate. 
 And the little puritan of fifteen heard the voice of his God: 
 
 Go, go, and never rest.’^ 
 
 But whither. Lord, shall I go ? Whatsoever I do, whither- 
 soever I go, is not the end always the same? Is not the end 
 of all things in that ? 
 
 Go on to Death, you who must die ! Go and suffer, you 
 who must suffer! You do not live to be happy. You live to 
 fulfil my Law. Suffer ; die. But be what you must be — a Man.^^ 
 
YOUTH 
 
 Christofori faciem die quacunque tueris^^ 
 Ilia nempe die non morte mala morieris. 
 
 
I 
 
 THE HOUSE OF EULER 
 
 The house was plunged in silence. Since Melchior s death 
 everything seemed dead. Now that his loud voice was stilled, 
 from morning to night nothing was heard but the wearisome 
 murmuring of the river. 
 
 Christophe hurled himself into his work. He took a 
 fiercely angry pleasure in self-castigation for having wished to 
 be happy. To expressions of sympathy and kind words he made 
 no reply, but was proud and stiff. Without a word he went about 
 his daily task, and gave his lessons with icy politeness. His 
 pupils who knew of his misfortune were shocked by his in- 
 sensibility. But those who were older and had some ex- 
 perience of sorrow knew that this apparent coldness might, 
 in a child, be used only to conceal suffering: and they pitied 
 him. He was not grateful for their sympathy. Even music 
 could bring him no comfort. He played without pleasure, and 
 as a duty. It was as though he found a cruel joy in no longer 
 taking pleasure in anything, or in persuading himseH that he 
 did not: in depriving himself of every reason for living, and 
 yet going on. 
 
 His two brothers, terrified by the silence of the house of death, 
 ran away from it as quickly as possible. Kodolphe went into 
 the office of his uncle Theodore, and lived with him, and Ernest, 
 after trying two or three trades, found work on one of the 
 Ehine steamers plying between Mainz and Cologne, and he 
 used to come back only when he wanted money. Chris- 
 tophe was left alone with his mother in the house, which was 
 too large for them; and the meagerness of their resources, 
 and the payment of certain debts which had been discovered 
 after his father’s death, forced them, whatever pain it might 
 cost, to seek another more lowly and less expensive dwelling. 
 
 They found a little flat,— two or three rooms on the second 
 
 216 
 
316 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 floor of a house in the Market Street. It was a noisy district 
 in the middle of the town^ far from the river, far from the trees, 
 far from the country and all the familiar places. But they 
 had to consult reason, not sentiment, and Christophe found 
 in it a fine opportunity for gratifying his bitter creed of self- 
 mortification. Besides, the owner of the house, old registrar 
 Euler, was a friend of his grandfather, and knew the family: 
 that was enough for Louisa, who was lost in her empty house, 
 and was irresistibly drawn towards those who had known the 
 creatures whom she had loved. 
 
 They got ready to leave. They took long draughts of the 
 bitter melancholy of the last days passed by the sad, beloved 
 fireside that was to be left forever. They dared hardly tell their 
 sorrow : they were ashamed of it, or afraid. Each thought that 
 they ought not to show their weakness to the other. At .table, 
 sitting alone in a dark room with half-closed shutters, they 
 dared not raise their voices: they ate hurriedly and did not look 
 at each other for fear of not being able to conceal their trouble. 
 They parted as soon as they had finished. Christophe went 
 back to his work; but as soon as he was free for a moment, ! 
 he would come back, go stealthily home, and creep on tiptoe % 
 to his room or to the attic. Then he would shut the door, 
 sit down in a corner on an old trunk or on the window-ledge, ^ 
 or stay there without thinking, letting the indefinable buzzing ; 
 and humming of the old house, which trembled with the lightest j 
 tread, thrill through him. His heart would tremble with it. | 
 He would listen anxiously for the faintest breath in or out of i 
 doors, for the creaking of floors, for all the imperceptible 4 
 familiar noises: he knew them all. He would lose conscious- .■ 
 ness, his thoughts would be filled with the images of the past, 
 and he would issue from his stupor only at the sound of St. 
 Martinis clock, reminding him that it was time to go. 
 
 In the room below him he could hear Louisa’s footsteps pass- 
 ing softly to and fro, then for hours she could not be heard; 
 she made no noise. Christophe would listen intently. He . 
 would go down, a little uneasy, as one is for a long time after 
 a great misfortune. He would push the door ajar; Louisa would 
 turn her back on him; she would be sitting in front of a cup- 
 board in the midst of a heap of things — ^rags, old belongings. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 217 
 
 odd garments, treasures, which she had brought out intendmg 
 to sort them. But she had no strength for it; everything 
 reminded her of something; she would turn and turn it in, her 
 hands and begin to dream; it would drop from her hands; she 
 would stay for hours together with her arms hanging down, 
 lying back exhausted in a chair, given up to a stupor of sorrow. 
 
 Poor Louisa was now spending most of her life in the past 
 that sad past, which had been very niggardly of joy for her ; 
 but she was so used to suffering that she was still grateful 
 for the least tenderness shown to her, and the pale lights which 
 had shone here and there in the drab days of her life, were 
 still enough to make them bright. All the evil that Melchior 
 had done her was forgotten; she remembered only the. good. 
 Her marriage had been the great romance of her life. If 
 Melchior had been drawn into it by a caprice, of which he had 
 quickly repented, she had given herself with her whole heart, 
 she thought that she was loved as much as she had loved; and 
 to Melchior she was ever most tenderly grateful. She did not 
 try to understand what he had become in the sequel. Incapable 
 of seeing reality as it is, she only knew how to bear it as it 
 is, humbly and honestly, as a woman who has no need of under- 
 standing life in order to be able to live. What she could not 
 explain, she left to God for explanation. In her sinplar piety, 
 she put upon God the responsibility for all the injustice that 
 she had suffered at the hands of Melchior and the others, and 
 only visited them with the good that they had given her. And so 
 her life of misery had left her with no bitter memory. She 
 only felt worn out— weak as she was— by those years of priva- 
 tion and fatigue. And now that Melchior was no longer there, 
 now that two of her sons were gone from their home, and the 
 third seemed to be able to do without her, she had lost all heart 
 for action; she was tired, sleepy; her will was stupefied. She 
 was going through one of those crises of neurasthenia whmh 
 often come upon active and industrious people in the decline 
 of life, when some unforeseen event deprives them of every 
 reason for living. She had not the heart even to finish the 
 stocking she was knitting, to tidy the drawer in which she was 
 looking, to get up to shut the window; she would sit there, 
 without a thought, without strength — save for recollection. 
 
^18 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 .She was conscious of her collapse, and was ashamed of it or 
 blushed for it; she tried to hide it from her son; and 
 Christophe, wrapped up in the egoism of his own grief, never 
 noticed it. No doubt he was often secretly impatient with his 
 mother^s slowness in speaking, and acting, and doing the small- 
 est thing; but different though her ways were from her usual^ 
 activity, he never gave a thought to the matter until then. 
 
 Suddenly on that day it came home to him for the first time 
 when he surprised her in the midst of her rags, turned out 
 on the floor, heaped up at her feet, in her arms, and in her 
 lap. Her neck was drawn out, her head was bowed, her face 
 was stiff and rigid. When she heard him come in she started; 
 her white cheeks were suffused with red; with an instinctive 
 movement she tried to hide the things she was holding, and 
 muttered with an awkward smile: 
 
 ^^You see, I was sorting . . .’^ 
 
 The sight of the poor soul stranded among the relics of the 
 past cut to his heart, and he was fllled with pity. But he spoke 
 with a bitter asperity and seemed to scold, to drag her from 
 her apathy: 
 
 Come, come, mother ; you must not stay there, in the middle 
 of all that dust, with the room all shut up! It is not good 
 for you. You must pull yourself together, and have done with 
 nil this.^^ 
 
 Yes,^^ said she meekly. 
 
 She tried to get up to put the things back in the drawer. 
 But she sat down again at once and listlessly let them fall from 
 her hands. 
 
 Oh ! I can’t ... I can’t,” she moaned. I shall never 
 finish!” 
 
 He was frightened. He leaned over her. He caressed her 
 forehead with his hands. 
 
 Come, mother, what is it ? ” he said. Shall I help you ? 
 Are you ill?” 
 
 She did not answer. She gave a sort of stifled sob. He 
 took her hands, and knelt down by her side, the better to see 
 her in the dusky room. 
 
 Mother ! ” he said anxiously. 
 
 Louisa laid her head on his shoulder and burst into tears. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 219 ^ 
 
 boy, my boy/" she cried, holding close to him. "'My 
 boy! ... You will not leave me? Promise me that you will 
 not leave me?"" 
 
 His heart was torn with pity. 
 
 "No, mother, no. I will not leave you. What made you 
 think of such a thing ? "" 
 
 " I am so unhappy ! They have all left me, all. . . ."" 
 
 She pointed to the things all about her, and he did not know 
 whether she was speaking of them or of her sons and the 
 dead. 
 
 "You will stay with me? You will not leave me? . . . 
 What should I do, if you went too ? "" 
 
 " I will not go, I tell you ; we will stay together. Don"t cry. 
 I promise."" 
 
 She went on weeping. She could not stop herself. He dried 
 her eyes with his handkerchief. 
 
 " \Wiat is it, mother dear ? Are you in pain ? "" 
 
 " 1 don"t know ; I don"t know what it is."" She tried to calm 
 herself and to smile. 
 
 " I do try to be sensible. I do. But just nothing at all 
 makes me cry. ... You see, I"m doing it again. . . . Forgive 
 me. I am so stupid. I am old. I have no strength left. I 
 have no taste for anything any more. I am no good for any- 
 thing. I wish I were buried with all the rest. . . ."" 
 
 He held her to him, close, like a child. 
 
 " Don"t worry, mother ; be calm ; don"t think about it. . . ."" 
 
 Gradually she grew quiet. 
 
 "Tt is foolish. I am ashamed. . . . But what is it? What 
 is it ? "" 
 
 She who had always worked so hard could not understand 
 why her strength had suddenly snapped, and she was humili- 
 ated to the very depths of her being. He pretended not to see it. 
 
 "A little weariness, mother,"" he said, trying to speak care- 
 lessly. " It is nothing ; you will see ; it is nothing."" 
 
 But he too was anxious. From his childhood he had been 
 accustomed to see her brave, resigned, in silence withstanding 
 every test. And he was astonished to see her suddenly broken : 
 he was afraid. 
 
 He helped her to sort the things scattered on the floor. Every 
 
230 JEAK-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 now and then she would linger over something, but he would 
 gently take it from her hands, and she suffered him. 
 
 From that time on he took pains to be more with her. As 
 soon as he had finished his work, instead of shutting himself 
 up in his room, as he loved to do, he would return to her. He 
 felt her loneliness and that she was not strong enough to be 
 left alone: there was danger in leaving her alone. 
 
 He would sit by her side in the evening near the open window 
 looking on to the road. The view would slowly disappear. 
 The people were returning home. Little lights appeared in 
 the houses far off. They had seen it all a thousand times. 
 But soon they would see it no more. They would talk dis- 
 jointedly. They would point out to each other the smallest of 
 the familiar incidents and expectations of the evening, always 
 with fresh interest. They would have long intimate silences, . 
 or Louisa, for no apparent reason, would tell some remi- ^ 
 niscence, some disconnected story that passed through her • 
 mind. Her tongue was loosed a little now that she felt . 
 that she was with one who loved her. She tried hard to 
 talk. It was difiScult for her, for she had grown used ; 
 to living apart from her family ; she looked upon her sons and 
 her husband as too clever to talk to her, and she had never 
 dared to join in their conversation. Christophe’s tender j 
 care was a new thing to her and infinitely sweet, though ; 
 it made her afraid. She deliberated over her words; she found ^ 
 it difficult to express herself; her sentences were left unfinishd | 
 and obscure. Sometimes she was ashamed of what she was ,• 
 saying; she would look at her son, and stop in the middle of > 
 her narrative. But he would press her hand, and she would ; 
 be reassured. He was filled with love and pity for the childish, 
 motherly creature, to whom he had turned when he was a child, 
 and now she turned to him for support. And he took a melan- 
 choly pleasure in her prattle, that had no interest for anybody 
 but himself, in her trivial memories of a life that had always 
 been joyless and mediocre, though it seemed to Louisa to be of 
 infinite worth. Sometimes he would try to interrupt her; he 
 was afraid that her memories would make her sadder than ever, 
 and he would urge her to sleep. She would understand what 
 he was at, and would say with gratitude in her eyes . 
 
YOUTH 
 
 221 
 
 "No. I assure you, it does one good; let us stay a little 
 longer.” 
 
 They would stay until the night was far gone and the neigh- 
 bors were abed. Then they would say good-night, she a litde 
 comforted by being rid of some of her trouble, he with a heavy 
 heart under this new burden added to that which already he 
 had to bear. 
 
 The day came for their departure. On the night before 
 they stayed longer than usual in the unlighted room. They 
 did not speak. Every now and then Louisa moaned: “Fear 
 God ! Fear God ! ” Christophe tried to keep her attention 
 fixed on the thousand details of the morrow’s removal. She 
 would not go to bed until he gently compelled her. But he 
 went up to his room and did not go to bed for a long time. 
 When leaning out of the window he tried to gaze through the 
 darkness to see for the last time the moving shadows pf the 
 river beneath the house. He heard the wind in the tall trees 
 in Minna’s garden. The sky was black. There was no one 
 in the street. A cold rain was just falling. The weathercocks 
 creaked. In a house near by a child was crying. The night 
 weighed with an overwhelming heaviness upon the earth and 
 upon his soul. The didl chiming of the hours, the cracked note 
 of the halves and quarters, dropped one after another into the 
 grim silence, broken only by the sound of the rain on the 
 roofs and the cobbles. 
 
 When Christophe at last made up his mind to go to bed, 
 chilled in body and soul, he heard the window below him 
 shut. And, as he lay, he thought sadly that it is cruel for 
 the poor to dwell on the past, for they have no right to have 
 a past, like the rich: they have no home, no corner of the 
 earth wherein to house their memories: their joys, their sor- 
 rows, all their days, are scattered in the wind. 
 
 Next day in beating rain they moved their scanty furniture 
 to their new dwelling. Fischer, the old furniture dealer, lent 
 them a cart and a pony; he came and helped them himself. 
 But they could not take everything, for the rooms to which 
 they were going were much smaller than the old. Chris- 
 tophe had to make his mother leave the oldest and most useless 
 of their belongings. It was not altogether easy ; the least thing 
 
223 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 had its worth for her : a shaky table, a broken chair, she wished 
 to leave nothing behind. Fischer, fortified by the authority of 
 hill old friendship with Jean Michel, had to join Chris- 
 toj)he in complaining, and, good-fellow that he was and 
 understanding her grief, had even to promise to keep 
 some of her precious rubbish for her against the day when 
 she should want it again. Then she agreed to tear her- 
 self away. 
 
 The two brothers had been told of the removal, but Ernest 
 ohme on the night before to say that he could not be there, 
 4nd Eodolphe appeared for a moment about noon; he watched 
 / them load the furniture, gave some advice, and went away 
 again looking mightily busy. 
 
 The procession set out through the muddy streets. Chris- 
 tophe led the horse, which slipped on the greasy cobbles. , 
 Louisa walked by her son’s side, and tried to shelter him from 
 the rain. And so they had a melancholy homecoming in the 
 damp rooms, that were made darker than ever by the dull light , 
 coming from the lowering sky. They could not have fought 
 against the depression that was upon them had it not been j 
 for the attentions of their landlord and his family. But, when , 
 the cart had driven away, as night fell, leaving the furniture ■ 
 heaped up in the room; and Christophe and Louisa were 
 sitting, worn out, one on a box, the other on a sack ; they 
 heard a little dry cough on the staircase; there was a knock ! 
 at the door. Old Euler came in. He begged pardon elaborately ] 
 for disturbing his guests, and said that by way of celebrating j 
 their first evening he hoped that they would be kind, enough , 
 to sup with himself and his family. Louisa, stunned by her ; 
 sorrow, wished to refuse. Christophe was not much more 
 tempted than she by this friendly gathering, but the old man 
 insisted and Christophe, thinking that it would be better for 
 his mother not to spend their first evening in their new home 
 alone with her thoughts, made her accept. 
 
 They went down to the floor below, where they found the 
 whole family collected; the old man, his daughter, his son-in- 
 law, Vogel, and his grandchildren, a boy and a girl, both a 
 little younger than Christophe. They clustered around their 
 guests, bade them welcome, asked if they were tired, if they 
 
 \ 
 
YOUTH 
 
 223 
 
 were pleased with their rooms, if they needed anything ; putting 
 so many questions that Christophe in bewilderment could make 
 nothing of them, for everybody spoke at once. The soup was 
 placed on the table; they sat down. But the noise went on. 
 Amalia, Euler’s daughter, had set herself at once to acquaint 
 Louisa with local details: with the topography of the district, 
 the habits and advantages of the house, the time when the 
 milkman called, the time when she got up, the various trades- 
 people and the prices that she paid. She did not stop until 
 she had explained everything. Louisa, half-asleep, tried hard 
 to take an interest in the information, but the remarks which 
 she ventured showed that she had understood not a word, and 
 provoked Amalia to indignant exclamations and repetition of 
 every detail. Old Euler, a clerk, tried to explain to Chris- 
 tophe the difficulties of a musical career. Christophe’s other 
 neighbor, Eosa, Amalia’s daughter, never stopped talking from 
 the moment when they sat down, — so volubly that she had 
 no time to breathe; she lost her breath in the middle of a 
 sentence, but at once she was off again. Vogel was gloomy and 
 complained of the food, and there were embittered arguments 
 on the subject. Amalia, Euler, the girl, left off talking to 
 take part in the discussion; and there were endless controversies 
 as to whether there was too much salt in the stew or not enough ; 
 they called each other to witness, and, naturally, no two opinions 
 were the same. Each despised his neighbor’s taste, and thought 
 only his own healthy and reasonable. They might have gone 
 on arguing until the Last Judgment. 
 
 But, in the end, they all joined in crying out upon the bad 
 weather. They all commiserated Louisa and Christophe upon 
 their troubles, and in terms which moved him greatly they 
 praised him for his courageous conduct. They took great pleas- 
 ure in recalling not only the misfortunes of their guests, but 
 also their own, and those of their friends and all their acquaint- 
 ance, and they all agreed that the good are always unhappy, 
 and that there is joy only for the selfish and dishonest. They 
 decided that life is sad, that it is quite useless, and that they 
 were all better dead, were it not the indubitable will of God 
 that they should go on living so as to suffer. As these ideas 
 came very near to Christophe’s actual pessimism, he thought 
 
 \ 
 
224 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 the better of his landlord, and closed his eyes to their little 
 oddities. 
 
 When he went upstairs again with his mother to the dis- 
 ordered rooms, they were weary and sad, but they felt a little 
 less lonely; and while Christophe lay awake through the night, 
 for he could not sleep because of his weariness and the noise 
 of the neighborhood, and listened to the heavy carts shaking 
 the walls, and the breathing of the family sleeping below, he 
 tried to persuade himself that he would be, if not happy, at 
 least less unhappy here, with these good people — a little tire- 
 some, if the truth be told — who suffered from like misfortunes,, 
 who seemed to understand him, and whom, he thought, he under- 
 stood. 
 
 But when at last he did fall asleep, he was roused unpleasantly 
 at dawn by the voices of his neighbors arguing, and the creak- 
 ing of a pump worked furiously by some one who was in a 
 hurry to swill the yard and the stairs. 
 
 • 
 
 Justus Euler was a little bent old man, with uneasy, gloomy 
 eyes, a red face, all lines and pimples, gap-toothed, with 
 an unkempt beard, with which he was forever fidgeting 
 with his hands. Very honest, quite able, profoundly moral,, 
 he had been on quite good terms with Christophers grand- 
 father. He was said to be like him. And, in truth, he 
 was of the same generation and brought up with the same 
 principles; but he lacked Jean Michel’s strong physique, 
 that is, while he was of the same opinion on many points, 
 fundamentally he was hardly at all like him, for it is 
 I temperament far more than ideas that makes a man, and what- 
 " ever the divisions, fictitious or real, marked between men by 
 intellect, the great divisions between men and men are into 
 those who are healthy and those who are not. Old Euler 
 was not a healthy man. He talked morality, like Jean Michel, 
 but his morals were not the same as Jean Michel’s; he had 
 not his sound stomach, his lungs, or his Jovial strength. Every- 
 thing in Euler and his family was built on a more parsimonious 
 and niggardly plan. He had been an official for forty years, 
 was now retired, and suffered from that melancholy that comes; 
 from inactivity and weighs so heavily upon old men, who have: 
 
YOUTH 
 
 225 
 
 not made provision in their inner life for their last years. 
 All his habits, natural and acquired, all the habits of his trade 
 had given him a meticulous and peevish quality, which was 
 reproduced to a certain extent in each of his children. 
 
 His son-in-law, Vogel, a clerk at the Chancery Court, was 
 fifty years old. Tall, strong, almost bald, with gold spectacles, 
 fairly good-looking, he considered himself ill, and no doubt 
 was so, although obviously he did not have the diseases which 
 he thought he had, but only a mind soured by the stupidity 
 of his calling and a body ruined to a certain extent by his 
 sedentary life. Very industrious, not without merit, even cul- 
 tured up to a point, he was a victim of our ridiculous modern, 
 life, or like so many clerks, locked up in their offices, he had 
 succumbed to the demon of hypochondria. One of those un- 
 fortunates whom Goethe called ‘'‘’em trauriger, ungriechischer 
 Hypochondrist ” — “a gloomy and un-Greek hypochondriac,” — 
 and pitied, though he took good care to avoid them. 
 
 Amalia was neither the one nor the other. Strong, loud, 
 and active, she wasted no sympathy on her husband’s jeremiads ; 
 she used to shake him roughly. But no human strength can 
 bear up against living together, and when in a household one 
 or other .is neurasthenic, the chances are that in time they 
 will both be so. In vain did Amalia cry out upon Vogel, 
 in vain did she go on protesting either from habit or because 
 it was necessary; next moment she herself "^as lamenting her 
 condition more loudly even than he, and, passing imperceptibly 
 from scolding to lamentation, she did him no good; she in- 
 creased his ills tenfold by loudly singing chorus to his follies. 
 In the end not only did she crush the unhappy Vogel, terrified 
 by the proportions assumed by his own outcries sent sounding 
 back by this echo, but she crushed everybody, even herself. In 
 her turn she caught the trick of unwarrantably bemoaning her 
 health, and her father’s, and her daughter’s, and her son’s. 
 It became a mania; by constant repetition she came to believe 
 what she said. She took the least chill tragically ; she was 
 uneasy and worried about everybody. More than that, when 
 they were well, she still worried, because of the sickness that 
 was bound to come. So life was passed in perpetual fear. 
 Outside that they were all in fairly good health, and it seemed 
 
226 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 as though their state of continual moaning and groaning did 
 serve to keep them well. They all ate and slept and worked 
 as usual, and the life of this household was not relaxed for it 
 all. Amalia’s activity was not satisfied with working from 
 morning to night up and down the house; they all had to toil 
 with her, and there was forever a moving of furniture, a wash- 
 ing of floors, a polishing of wood, a sound of voices, footsteps, 
 quivering, movement. 
 
 The two children, crushed by such loud authority, leaving 
 nobody alone, seemed to find it natural enough to submit to it. 
 The boy, Leonard, was good looking, though insignificant of 
 feature, and stiff in manner. The girl, Eosa, fair-haired, with 
 pretty blue eyes, gentle and affectionate, would have been pleas- 
 ing especially with the freshness of her delicate complexion, 
 and her kind manner, had her nose not been quite so large 
 or so awkwardly placed; it made her face heavy and gave her 
 a foolish expression. She was like a girl of Holbein, in the 
 gallery at Basle — the daughter of burgomaster Meier — sitting, 
 with eyes cast down, her hands on her knees, her fair hair 
 falling down to her shoulders, looking embarrassed and ashamed 
 of her uncomely nose. But so far Eosa had not been troubled 
 by it, and it never had broken in upon her inexhaustible chatter. 
 Always her shrill voice was heard in the house telling stories, 
 always breathless, as though she had no time to say everything, 
 always excited and animated, in spite of the protests which 
 she drew from her mother, her father, and even her grand- 
 father, exasperated, not so much because she was forever talking 
 as because she prevented them talking themselves. For these 
 good people, kind, loyal, devoted — the very cream of good 
 people — had almost all the virtues, but they lacked one virtue 
 which is capital, and is the charm of life : the virtue of silence. 
 
 Christophe was in tolerant mood. His sorrow had soft- 
 ened his intolerant and emphatic temper. His experience of 
 the cruel indifference of the elegant made him more conscious 
 of the worth of these honest folk, graceless and devilish tire- 
 some, who had yet an austere conception of life, and because 
 they lived joylessly, seemed to him to live without weakness. 
 Having decided that they were excellent, and that he ought to 
 like them, like the German that he was, he tried to persuade 
 
YOUTH 
 
 227 
 
 himself that he did in fact like them. But he did not succeed;; 
 he lacked that easy Germanic idealism, which does not wish to 
 see, and does not see, what would be displeasing to its sight,; 
 for fear of disturbing the very proper tranquillity of its judg-: 
 ment and the pleasantness of its existence. On the contrary,' 
 he never was so conscious of the defects of these people as 
 when he loved them, when he wanted to love them absolutely 
 without reservation; it was a sort of unconscious loyalty, and 
 an inexorable demand for truth, which, in spite of himself, 
 made him more clear-sighted, and more exacting, with what was 
 dearest to him. And it was not long before he began to be 
 irritated by the oddities of the family. They made no attempt 
 to conceal them. Contrary to the usual habit they displayed 
 every intolerable quality they possessed, and all the good in 
 them was hidden. So Christophe told himself, for he judged 
 himself to have been unjust, and tried to surmount his first 
 impressions, and to discover in them the excellent qualities 
 which they so carefully concealed. 
 
 He tried to converse with old Justus Euler, who asked nothing 
 better. He had a secret sympathy with him, remembering that 
 his grandfather had liked to praise him. But good old Jean 
 Michel had more of the pleasant faculty of deceiving himself 
 about his friends than Christophe, and Christophe soon saw 
 that. In vain did he try to accept Euler’s memories of his 
 grandfather. He could only get from him a discolored cari- 
 cature of Jean Michel, and scraps of talk that were utterly 
 uninteresting. Euler’s stories used invariably to begin with: 
 
 “As I used to say to your poor grandfather . . .” 
 He could remember nothing else. He had heard only what 
 he had said himself. 
 
 Perhaps Jean Michel used only to listen .in the same way;.; 
 
 I Most friendships are little more than arrangements for mutua|| 
 S satisfaction, so that each party may talk about himself to th^l 
 other. But at least Jean Michel, however naively he used tc|| 
 give himself up to the delight of talking, had sympathy which; 
 he was always ready to lavish on all sides. He was interested 
 in everything ; he always regretted that he was no longer fifteen, 
 so as to be able to see the marvelous inventions of the new 
 generations, and to share their thoughts. He had the quality. 
 
i perhaps the most precious in life, a curiosity always fresh, 
 
 ^ never changing with the years, born anew every morning. He 
 had not the talent to turn this gift to account; but how many___ 
 men of talent might envy him ! Most men die at twenty or | i 
 thirty; thereafter they are only reflections of themselves: for I 
 the rest of their lives they are aping themselves, repeating from j 
 day to day more and more mechanically and affectedly what * 
 they said and did and thought and loved when they were alive. 
 ^/It was so Tong since old Euler had been alive, and he had 
 .fji, .V been such a small thing then, that what was left of him now 
 ,||| was very jgoor and_ ratherjidiculoua^ Outside his former trade 
 
 fil, , a^dTiis Ifamily life he knew nothing, and wished to know noth- 
 yi ing. On every subject he had ideas ready-made, dating from 
 
 his youth. He pretended to some knowledge of the arts, but 
 iit he clung to certain hallowed names of men, about whom he 
 
 *'1 was forever reiterating his emphatic formulae: everything else 
 
 1^ was naught and had never been. When modern interests were ^ 
 
 I mentioned he would not listen, and talked of something else. ^ 
 
 f He declared that he loved music passionately, and he would 
 
 ask Christophe to play. But as soon as Christophe, who « 
 
 had been caught once or twice, began to play, the old fellow ’ 
 
 i ■ would begin to talk loudly to his daughter, as though ; 
 
 •j the music only increased his interest in everything but i 
 
 ^ music. Christophe would get up exasperated in the middle ' 
 
 of his piece, so one would notice it. There were only a few : 
 
 ; ‘ old airs — three or four — some very beautiful, others very ugly, | 
 
 but all equally sacred, which were privileged to gain comparative i 
 
 silence and absolute approval. With the very first notes the i 
 
 , old man would go into ecstasies, tears would come to his eyes, 1 
 
 not so much for the pleasure he was enjoying as for the pleasure 
 
 which once he had enjoyed. In the end Christophe had 
 a horror of these airs, though some of them, like the Adelaide 
 of Beethoven, were very dear to him; the old man was always 
 humming the first bars of them, and never failed to declare, 
 
 “ There, that is music,” contemptuously comparing it with “ all 
 the blessed modern music, in which there is no melody.” Truth 
 , to tell, he knew nothing whatever about it. 
 
 j His son-in-law was better educated and kept in touch with 
 .1 artistic movements; but that was even worse, for in his judgment 
 
YOUTH 
 
 229 
 
 there was always a disparaging tinge. He was lacking neither 
 in taste nor intelligence; but he could not bring himself to 
 admire anything modern. He would have disparaged Mozart 
 and Beethoven, if they had been contemporary, just as he would 
 have acknowledged the merits of Wagner and Eichard Strauss 
 had they been dead for a century. His discontented temper/ 
 refused to allow that there might be great men living during 
 his own lifetime; the idea was distasteful to him. He was so 
 embittered by his wasted life that he insisted on pretending 
 that every life was wasted, that it could not be otherwise, and 
 that those who thought the opposite, or pretended to think so, 
 were one of two things: fools or humbugs. 
 
 And so he never spoke of any new celebrity except in a tone 
 of bitter irony, and as he was not stupid he never failed to 
 discover at the first glance the weak or ridiculous sides of them. 
 Any new name roused him to distrust; before he knew anything 
 about the man he was inclined to criticise him — ^because he 
 knew nothing about him. If he was sympathetic towards 
 Christophe it was because he thought that the misanthropic 
 boy found life as evil as he did himself, and that he was not 
 a genius. Nothing so unites the small of soul in their suffering 
 and discontent as the statement of their common impotence. 
 Nothing so much restores the desire for health or life to those 
 who are healthy and made for the joy of life as contact 
 with the stupid pessimism of the mediocre and the sick, who, 
 because they are not happy, deny the happiness of others. 
 Christophe felt this. And yet these gloomy thoughts were 
 familiar to him; but he was surprised to find them on VogeFs 
 lips, where they were unrecognizable ; more than that, they were 
 repugnant to him; they offended him. 
 
 He was even more in revolt against Amalia’s ways. The 
 good creature did no more than practise Christophe’s theories 
 of duty. The word was upon her lips at every turn. She 
 worked unceasingly, and wanted everybody to work as she 
 did. Her work was never directed towards making herself 
 and others happier; on the contrary. It almost seemed as 
 though it was mainly intended to iucommode everybody and 
 to make life as disagreeable as possible so as to sanctify it. 
 Nothing would induce her for a moment to relinquish her holy 
 
230 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 duties in the household, that sacro-sanct institution which in 
 so many women takes the place of all other duties, social and 
 moral. She would have thought herself lost had she not on 
 the same day, at the same time, polished the wooden floors, 
 washed the tiles, cleaned the door-handles, beaten the carpets, 
 moved the chairs, the cupboards, the tables. She was osten- 
 tatious about it. It was as though it was a point of honor 
 with her. And after all, is it not in much the same spirit that 
 many women conceive and defend their honor ? It is a sort 
 of piece of furniture which they have to keep polished, a well 
 waxed floor, cold, hard — and slippery. 
 
 The accomplishment of her task did not make Frau Vogel 
 more amicable. She sacrificed herself to the trivialities of the 
 household, as to a duty imposed by God. And she despised 
 those who did not do as she did, those who rested, and were 
 able to enjoy life a little in the intervals of work. She would 
 go and rouse Louisa in her room when from time to time she • 
 
 sat down in the middle of her work to dream. Louisa would ; 
 
 sigh, but she submitted to it with a half -shamed smile. Fortu- 
 nately, Christophe knew nothing about it; Amalia used to , 
 
 wait until he had gone out before she made these irruptions | 
 
 into their rooms, and so far she had not directly attacked him; ; 
 
 he would not have put up with it. When he was with her he ; 
 
 was conscious of a latent hostility within himself. What he 
 could least forgive her was the noise she made. He was mad- i 
 
 dened by it. When he was locked in his room — a little low { 
 
 room looking out on the yard— with the window hermetically | 
 
 sealed, in spite of the want of air, so as not to hear the clatter 1 
 
 in the house, he could not escape from it. Involuntarily he I 
 
 was forced to listen attentively for the least sound coming up ‘| 
 
 from below, and when the terrible voice which penetrated all | 
 the walls broke out again after a moment of silence he was 
 filled with rage; he would shout, stamp with his foot, and 
 roar insults at her through the wall.. In the general uproar, 
 no one ever noticed it; they thought he was composing. He 
 would consign Frau Vogel to the depths of hell. He had no 
 respect for her, nor esteem to check him. At such times it 
 seemed to him that he would have preferred the loosest 
 and most stupid of women, if only she did not talk, to clev- 
 
■ 
 
 YOUTH 231 
 
 erness, honesty, all the virtues, when they make too much 
 noise. 
 
 His hatred of noise brought him in touch with Leonard. 
 In the midst of the general excitement the boy was the only 
 one to keep calm, and never to raise his voice more at one 
 moment than another. He always expressed himself correctly 
 and deliberately, choosing his words, and never hurrying. 
 Amalia, simmering, never had patience to wait until he had 
 finished; the whole family cried out upon his slowness. He 
 did not worry about it. Nothing could upset his calm, respect- 
 ful deference. Christophe was the more attracted to him when 
 he learned that Leonard intended to devote his life to the 
 Church, and his curiosity was roused. 
 
 With regard to religion, Christophe was in a queer posi- 
 tion; he did not know himself how he stood towards it. He 
 had never had time to think seriously about it. He was not 
 well enough educated, and he was too much absorbed by the 
 difficulties of existence to be able to analyze himself and to 
 set his ideas in order. His violence led him from one extreme 
 to the other, from absolute facts to complete negation, without 
 troubling to find out whether in either case he agreed with 
 himself. When he was happy he hardly thought of God at 
 all, but he was quite ready to believe in Him. When he was 
 unhappy he thought of Him, but did not believe; it seemed 
 to him impossible that a God could authorize unhappiness and 
 injustice. But these difficulties did not greatly exercise him. 
 He was too fundamentally religious to think much about God. 
 He lived in God; he had no need to believe in Him. That is 
 well enough for the weak and worn, for those whose lives are 
 anemic. They aspire to God, as a plant does to the sun. The 
 dying cling to life. But he who bears in his soul the sun and 
 life, what need has he to seek them outside himself? 
 
 Christophe would probably never have bothered about 
 these questions had he lived alone. But the obligations of social 
 life forced him to bring his thoughts to bear on these puerile 
 and useless problems, which occupy a place out of all proportion 
 in the world; it is impossible not to take them into account 
 since at every step they are in the way. As if a healthy, gen- 
 erous creature, overflowing with strength and love, had not a 
 
232 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 
 thousand more worthy things to do than to worry as to whether • 
 God exists or no! ... If it were only a question of believing 
 in God! But it is needful to believe in a God, of whatever 
 shape or size and color and race. So far Christophe never 
 gave a thought to the matter. Jesus hardly occupied his 
 thoughts at all. It was not that he did not love him ; he loved 
 him when he thought of him: but he never thought of him. 
 Sometimes he reproached himself for it, was angry with himself, 
 could not understand why he did not take more interest in him. 
 
 And yet he professed, all his family professed; his grandfather 
 was forever reading the Bible; he went regularly to Mass; 
 he served it in a sort of way, for he was an organist; and he 
 set about his task conscientiously and in an exemplary manner. 
 
 But when he left the church he would have been hard put to 
 it to say what he had been thinking about. He set himself 
 to read the Holy Books in order to fix his ideas, and he found 
 amusement and even pleasure in them, just as in any beautiful ; 
 strange books, not essentially different from other books, which > 
 no one ever thinks of calling sacred. In truth, if Jesus ap- 
 pealed to him, Beethoven did no less. And at his organ in 
 Saint Florian’s Church, where he accompanied on Sundays, he ; 
 
 was more taken up with his organ than with Mass, and he | 
 
 was more religious when he played Bach than when he played ■ 
 
 Mendelssohn. Some of the ritual brought him to a fervor of j 
 
 exaltation. But did he then love God, or was it only the music, ■ 
 
 as an impudent priest said to him one day in Jest, without ] 
 
 , thinking of the unhappiness which his quip might cause in I 
 
 I him? Anybody else would not have paid any attention to it, < 
 
 1 and would not have changed his mode of living — (so many ; 
 
 I people put up with not knowing what they think!) But 
 t' Christophe was cursed with an awkward need for sincerity, 
 which filled him with scruples at every turn. And when scruples 
 came to him they possessed him forever. He tortured himself; 
 he thought that he had acted with duplicity. Did he believe 
 or did he not ? ... He had no means, material or intellectual— 
 (knowledge and leisure are necessary) — of solving the prob- 
 lem by himself. And yet it had to be solved, or he was either 
 indifferent or a hypocrite. Now, he was incapable of being 
 either one or the other. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 233 
 
 He tried timidly to sound those about him- They all seemed 
 to be sure of themselves. Christophe burned to know their 
 reasons. He could not discover them. Hardly did he receive 
 a definite answer; they always talked obliquely. Some thought 
 him arrogant, and said that there is no arguing these things, 
 that thousands of men cleverer and better than himself had 
 believed without argument, and that he needed only to do as 
 they had done. There were some who were a little hurt, as 
 though it were a personal affront to ask them such a question, 
 and yet they were of all perhaps the least certain of their facts. 
 Others shrugged their shoulders and said with a smile : “ Bah ! 
 it can’t do any harm.” And their smile said : “ And it is so 
 useful ! . . .” Christophe despised them with all his heart. 
 
 He had tried to lay his uncertainties before a priest, but 
 he was discouraged by the experiment. He could not discuss 
 the matter seriously with him. Though his interlocution was 
 quite pleasant, he made Christophe feel, quite politely, that 
 there was no real equality between them; he seemed to 
 assume in advance that his superiority was beyond dispute, and 
 that the discussion could not exceed the limits which he laid 
 down for it, without a kind of impropriety; it was just a 
 fencing bout, and was quite inoffensive. When Christophe 
 wished to exceed the limits and to ask questions, which the 
 worthy man was pleased not to answer, he stepped back with 
 a patronizing smile, and a few Latin quotations, and a fatherly 
 objurgation to pray, pray that God would enlighten him. 
 Christophe issued from the interview humiliated and wounded 
 by his love of polite superiority. Wrong or right, he would 
 never again for anything in the world have recourse to a priest. 
 He admitted that these men were his superiors in intelligence , 
 or by reason of their sacred calling ; but in argument there is j 
 neither superiority, nor inferiority, nor title, nor age, nor name ; | 
 nothing is of worth but truth, before which all men are equal. 
 
 So he was glad to find a boy of his own age who believed. 
 He asked no more than belief, and he hoped that Leonard 
 would give him good reason for believing. He made advances 
 to him. Leonard replied with his usual gentleness, but without 
 eagerness; he was never eager about anything. As they could 
 not carry on a long conversation in the house without being 
 
:234 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 interrupted every moment by Amalia or the old man, Chris- 
 tophe proposed that they should go for a walk one evening 
 after dinner. Leonard was too polite to refuse, although he 
 would gladly have got out of it, for his indolent nature dis- 
 liked walking, talking, and anything that cost him an effort. 
 
 Christophe had some difficulty in opening up the con- 
 versation. After two or three awkward sentences about triviali- 
 ties he plunged with a brusqueness that was almost brutal. He 
 asked Leonard if he were really going to be a priest, and if 
 he liked the idea. Leonard was nonplussed, and looked at him 
 uneasily, but when he saw that Christophe was not hos- 
 tilely disposed he was reassured. 
 
 Yes,^^ he replied. ^^How could it be otherwise 
 
 Ah ! said Christophe. You are very happy Leonard 
 was conscious of a shade of envy in Christophers voice and was 
 agreeably flattered by it. He altered his manner, became ex- 
 pansive, his face brightened. 
 
 Yes,rr he said, I am happy. He beamed. 
 
 What do you do to be so ? asked Christophe. 
 
 Before replying Leonard proposed that they should sit down 
 on a quiet seat in the cloisters of St. Martin’s. From there 
 they could see a corner of the little square, planted with acacias, 
 and beyond it the town, the country, bathed in the evening 
 mists. The Ehine flowed at the foot of the hill. An old 
 deserted cemetery, with graves lost under the rich grass, lay 
 in slumber beside them behind the closed gates. 
 
 Leonard began to talk. He said, with his eyes shining with 
 contentment, how happy he was to escape from life, to have 
 found a refuge, where a man is, and forever will be, in shelter. 
 Christophe, still sore from his wounds, felt passionately the 
 desire for rest and forgetfulness ; but it was mingled with regret. 
 He asked with a sigh : 
 
 And yet, does it cost you nothing to renounce life alto- 
 gether ? ” 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 ^^Oh!” said Leonard quietly. ^^What is there to regret? 
 Isn’t life sad and ugly ? ” 
 
 There are lovely things too,” said Christophe, looking at 
 the beautiful evening. 
 
 There are some beautiful things, but very few.” 
 
YOUTH 
 
 235 
 
 The few that there are are yet many to me/^ 
 
 Oh, well ! it is simply a matter of common sense. On the 
 one hand a little good and much evil ; on the other neither good, 
 nor evil on earth, and after, infinite happiness — how can one 
 hesitate 
 
 Christophe was not very pleased with this sort of arith- 
 metic. So economic a life seemed to him very poor. But he 
 
 tried to persuade himself that it was wisdom. 
 
 So,'' he asked a little ironically, there is no risk of your 
 being seduced by an hour's pleasure?" 
 
 How foolish ! When you know that it is only an hour, and 
 that after it there is all eternity!" 
 
 ^^You are quite certain of eternity?" 
 
 Of course." 
 
 Christophe questioned him. He was thrilled with hope 
 
 and desire. Perhaps Leonard would at last give him im- 
 
 pregnable reasons for believing. With what a passion he would 
 himself renounce all the world to follow him to God. 
 
 At first Leonard, proud of his role of apostle, and convinced 
 that Christophe's doubts were only a matter of form, and 
 that they would of course give way before his first argu- 
 ments, relied upon the Holy Books, the authority of the Gospel,, 
 the miracles, and traditions. But he began to grow gloomy 
 when, after Christophe had listened for a few minutes, 
 he stopped him and said that he was answering questions with 
 questions, and that he had not asked him to tell exactly what 
 it was that he was doubting, but to give some means of resolv- 
 ing his doubts. Leonard then had to realize that Christophe 
 was much more ill than he seemed, and that he would 
 only allow himself to be convinced by the light of reason. But 
 he still thought that Christophe was playing the free 
 thinker — (it never occurred to him that he might be so sin- 
 cerely). — He was not discouraged, and, strong in his recently 
 acquired knowledge, he turned back to his school learning: he 
 unfolded higgledy, piggledy, with more authority than order, 
 his metaphysical proofs of the existence of God and the im- 
 mortality of the soul. Christophe, with his mind at stretch, 
 and his brow knit in the effort, labored in silence, and made 
 him say it all over again; tried hard to gather the mean- 
 
236 
 
 JEAN-CHBISTOPHE 
 
 ing, and to take it to himself, and to follow the reason- I 
 
 ing. Then suddenly he burst out, vowed that Leonard 
 was laughing at him, that it was all tricks, jests of the fine 
 talkers who forged words and then amused themselves with 
 pretending that these words were things. Leonard was nettled, 
 and guaranteed the good faith of his authors. Christophe 
 shrugged his shoulders, and said with an oath that they were 
 only humbugs, infernal writers ; and he demanded fresh proof. 
 
 Leonard perceived to his horror that Christophe was 
 incurably attainted, and took no more interest in him. He 
 remembered that he had been told not to waste his time in 
 arguing with skeptics, — at least when they stubbornly refuse 
 to believe. There was the risk of being shaken himself, without 
 profiting the other. It was better to leave the unfortunate 
 fellow to the will of God, who, if He so designs, would see to ‘ 
 it that the skeptic was enlightened: or if not, who would «| 
 dare to go against the will of God? Leonard did not insist 
 then on carrying on the discussion. He only said gently that 
 for the time being there was nothing to be done, that no reason- ^ 
 ing could show the way to a man who was determined not to i 
 see it, and that Jean-Christophe must pray and appeal to • 
 Grace : nothing is possible without that : he must desire grace, 
 and the will to believe. 
 
 ‘ ''The will,'' thought Christophe bitterly. "So then, God ; 
 will exist because I will Him to exist? So then, death will { 
 not exist, because it pleases me to deny it! . . . Alas! How | 
 easy life is to those who have no need to see the truth, to those ) 
 who can see what they wish to see, and are forever forging i 
 pleasant dreams in which softly to sleep ! " In such a bed, 
 Christophe knew well that he would never sleep. . . . 
 
 Leonard went on talking. He had fallen back on his favorite 
 subject, the sweets of the contemplative life, and once on this 
 neutral ground, he was inexhaustible. In his monotonous voice, 
 that shook with the pleasure in him, he told of the joys of 
 the life in God, outside, above the world, far from noise, of 
 w’hich he spoke in a sudden tone of hatred (he detested it 
 almost as much as Christophe), far from violence, far 
 from friyolit}% far from the little miseries that one has to 
 suffer every day, in the warm, secure nest of faith, from which 
 
YOUTH 
 
 237 
 
 you can contemplate in peace the wretchedness of a strange 
 and distant world. And as Christophe listened, he per- 
 ceived the egoism of that faith. Leonard saw that. He hur- 
 riedly explained: the contemplative life was not a lazy life-^ 
 On the contrary, a man is more active in prayer than in action. / 
 What would the world be without prayer? You expiate the 
 sins of others, you bear the burden of their misdeeds, you 
 offer up your talents, you intercede between the world and 
 God. 
 
 Christophe listened in silence with increasing hostility. 
 He was conscious of the hypocrisy of such renunciation in 
 Leonard. He was not unjust enough to assume hypocrisy in 
 all those who believe. He knew well that with a few, such 
 abdication of life comes from the impossibility of living, from 
 a bitter despair, an appeal to death, — ^that with still fewer, 
 it is an ecstasy of passion. . . . (How long does it last?) . . . 
 But with the majority of men is it not too often the cold reason- 
 ing of souls more busied with their own ease and peace than 
 with the happiness of others, or with truth? And if sincere 
 men are conscious of it, how much they must suffer by such 
 profanation of their ideal! ... 
 
 Leonard was quite happy, and now set forth the beauty and 
 harmony of the world, seen from the loftiness of the divine 
 roost: below all was dark, unjust, sorrowful; seen from on 
 high, it all became clear, luminous, ordered: the world was 
 like the works of a clock, perfectly ordered. ... 
 
 Now Christophe only listened absently. He was asking 
 himself : “ Does he believe, or does he believe that he believes ? ” 
 And yet his own faith, his own passionate desire for faith was 
 not shaken. Not the mediocrity of soul, and the poverty of 
 argument of a fool like Leonard could touch that. ... 
 
 Night came down over the town. The seat on which they 
 were sitting was in darkness : the stars shone out, a white mist 
 came up from the river, the crickets chirped under the trees 
 in the cemetery. The bells began to ring: first the highest of 
 them, alone, like a plaintive bird, challenging the sky: then 
 the second, a third lower, joined in its plaint: at last came 
 the deepest, on the fifth, and seemed to answer them. The 
 three voices were merged in each other. At the bottom of the 
 
238 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 towers there was a buzzing, as of a gigantic hive of bees. The 
 air and the boy’s heart quivered. Christophe held his breath, 
 and thought how poor was the music of musicians com- 
 pared with such an ocean of music, with all the sounds of 
 thousands of creatures: the former, the free world of sounds, 
 compared with the world tamed, catalogued, coldly labeled by | 
 human intelligence. He sank and sank into that sonorous and 
 immense world without continents or bounds. . . . 
 
 And when the great murmuring had died away, when the 
 air had ceased at last to quiver, Christophe woke up. 
 
 He looked about him startled. . . . He knew nothing. Around 
 him and in him everything was changed. There was no 
 God. ... 
 
 As with faith, so the loss of faith is often equally a flood 
 of grace, a sudden light. Eeason counts for nothing: the - 
 smallest thing is enough — a word, silence, the sound of bells. « 
 A man walks, dreams, expects nothing. Suddenly the world ; 
 crumbles away. All about him is in ruins. He is alone. He i 
 no longer believes. . 
 
 Christophe was terrifled, and could not understand how ^ 
 it had come about. It was like the flooding of a river in the ! 
 spring. ... 
 
 Leonard’s voice was still sounding, more monotonous than . 
 the voice of a cricket. Christophe did not hear it: he heard ; 
 nothing. Night was fully come. Leonard stopped. Surprised j 
 to And Christophe motionless, uneasy because of the lateness | 
 of the hour, he suggested that they should go home. Christophe ) 
 did not reply. Leonard took his arm. Christophe trembled, i 
 and looked at Leonard with wild eyes. i 
 
 Christophe, we must go home,” said Leonard. 
 
 Go to hell ! ” cried Christophe furiously. 
 
 Oh ! Christophe ! What have I done ? ” asked Leonard 
 tremulously. He was dumfounded. 
 
 Christophe came to himself. 
 
 Yes. You are right,” he said more gently. I do not 
 know what I’m saying. Go to God ! Go to God ! ” 
 
 He was alone. He was in bitter distress. 
 
 ^^Ah! my God! my God!” he cried, wringing his hands, 
 passionately raising his face to the dark sky. Wiy do I no 
 
YOUTH 
 
 239 
 
 longer believe? Why can I believe no more? What has hap- 
 pened to me? . . . j. • 1. j XU 
 
 The disproportion between the wreck of his faith and the 
 
 conversation that he had just had with Leonard was too great: 
 it was obvious that the conversation had no more brought it 
 about than that the boisterousness of Amalia’s gabble and the 
 pettiness of the people with whom he lived were not the cause 
 of the upheaval which for some days had been taking place 
 in his moral resolutions. These were only pretexts. The un- 
 easiness had not come from without. It "was within himself. 
 He felt stirring in his heart monstrous and unknown things, 
 and he dared not rely on his thoughts to face the evil. The 
 evil? Was it evil? A languor, an intoxication, a voluptuous 
 agony filled all his being. He was no longer master of him- 
 self. In vain he sought to fortify himself with his former 
 stoicism. His whole being crashed down. He had a sudden 
 consciousness of the vast world, burning, wild, a world immeas- 
 urable. . . . How it swallows up God ! 
 
 Only for a moment. But the whole balance of his old life 
 was in that moment destroyed. 
 
 There was only one person in the family to whom Christophe 
 paid no attention: this was little Kosa. She was not beau- 
 tiful: and Christophe, who was far from beautiful himself, 
 was very exacting of beauty in others. He had that calm 
 cruelty of youth, for which a woman does not exist if she 
 be ugly, — unless she has passed the age for inspiring tender- 
 ness, and there is then no need to feel for her anything 
 but grave, peaceful, and quasi-religious sentiments. Eosa also 
 was not distinguished by any especial gift, although she was 
 not without intelligence: and she was cursed with a chattering 
 tongue which drove Christophe from her. And he had never 
 taken the trouble to know her, thinking that there was in her 
 nothing to know; and the most he ever did was to glance 
 at her. 
 
 But she was of better stuff than most girls : she was certainly 
 better than Minna, whom he had so loved. She was a good 
 girl, no coquette, not at all vain, and until Christophe came 
 it had never occurred to her that she was plain, or if it had, 
 
240 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 it had not worried her: for none of her family bothered 
 about it. Whenever her grandfather or her mother told her 
 so out of a desire to grumble, she only laughed: she did not 
 believe it, or she attached no importance to it: nor did they. 
 
 So many others, just as plain, and more, had found some one 
 to love them! The Germans are very mildly indulgent ta 
 physical imperfections: they cannot see them: they are even 
 able to embellish them, by virtue of an easy imagination which 
 finds unexpected qualities in the face of their desire to make 
 fhem like the most illustrious examples of human beauty. Old 
 Euler would not have needed much urging to make him declare 
 that his granddaughter had the nose of the Juno Ludovisi. 
 Happily he was too grumpy to pay compliments: and Eosa, 
 unconcerned about the shape of her nose, had no vanity except 
 in the accomplishment, with all the ritual, of the famous house- 
 hold duties. She had accepted as Gospel all that she had been 
 taught. She hardly ever went out, and she had very little 
 standard of comparison; she admired her family naively, and | 
 believed what they said. She was of an expansive and con- 
 fiding nature, easily satisfied, and tried to fall in with the t 
 mournfulness of her home, and docilely used to repeat the | 
 pessiriiistic ideas which she heard. She was a creature of ; 
 devotion — always thinking of others, trying to please, sharing ; 
 anxieties, guessing at what others wanted; she had a great * 
 need of loving without demanding anything in return. Nat- > 
 urally her family took advantage of her, although they were ( 
 kind and loved her: but there is always a temptation to take i 
 advantage of the love of those who are absolutely delivered 
 into your hands. Her family were so sure of her attentions ] 
 that they were not at all grateful for them: whatever she did, 
 they expected more. And then, she was clumsy; she was awk- 
 ward and hasty; her movements were jerky and boyish; she 
 had outbursts of tenderness w’hich used to end in disaster: a 
 broken glass, a jug upset, a door slammed to : things which 
 let loose upon her the wrath of everybody in the house. She 
 was always being snubbed and would go and weep in a corner. 
 Her tears did not last long. She would soon smile again, and 
 begin to chatter without a suspicion of rancor against any- 
 body. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 241 
 
 Christophe’s advent was an important event in her life. 
 She had often heard of him. Christophe had some place 
 in the gossip of the town : he was a sort of little local celebrity . 
 his name used often to recur in the family conversation, espe- 
 cially when old Jean Michel was alive, who, proud of his grand- 
 son, used to sing his praises to all of his acquaintance. Eosa 
 had seen the young musician once or twice at concerts. When 
 she heard that he was coming to live with them, she clapped 
 her hands. She was sternly rebuked for her breach of man- 
 ners and became confused. She saw no harm in it. In a life 
 so monotonous as hers, a new lodger was a great distraction. 
 She spent the last few days before his arrival in a fever of 
 expectancy. She was fearful lest he should not like the house, 
 and she tried hard to make every room as attractive as' possible. 
 On the morning of his arrival, she even put a little bunch of 
 flowers on the mantelpiece to bid him welcome. As to herself, 
 she took no care at all to look her best j and one glance was 
 enough to make Christophe decide that she was plain, 
 and slovenly dressed. She did not think the same of him, 
 though she had good reason to do so ; for Christophe, 
 busy, exhausted, ill-kempt, was even more ugly than usual. 
 But Eosa, who was incapable of thinking the least ill of any- 
 body, Eosa, who thought her grandfather, her father, and her 
 mother, all perfectly beautiful, saw Christophe exactly as 
 she had expected to see him, and admired him with all her 
 heart. She was frightened at sitting next to him at table ; and 
 unfortunately her shyness took the shape of a flood of words, 
 which at once alienated Christophe’s sympathies. She did 
 not see this, and that first evening remained a shining memory 
 in her life. When she was alone in her room, after 
 they had all gone upstairs, she heard the tread of the new 
 lodgers as they walked over her head; and the sound of it 
 ran joyously through her; the house seemed to her to have 
 taken new life. 
 
 The next morning for the first time in her life she looked 
 at herself in the mirror carefully and uneasily, and without 
 exactly knowing the extent of her misfortune she began to 
 be conscious of it. She tried to decide about her features, 
 one by one ; but she could not. She was filled with sadness 
 
243 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 and apprehension. She sighed deeply, and thought of intro- 
 ducing certain changes in her toilet, but she only made herself 
 look still more plain. She conceived the unlucky idea of 
 overwhelming Christophe with her kindness. In her naive 
 desire to be always seeing her new friends, and doing them 
 service, she was forever going up and down the stairs, bringing 
 them some utterly useless thing, insisting on helping them, 
 and always laughing and talking and shouting. Her zeal and 
 her stream of talk could only be interrupted by her mother’s 
 impatient voice calling her. Christophe looked grim ; but 
 for his good resolutions he must have lost his temper quite 
 twenty times. He restrained himself for two days ; on the 
 third, he locked his door. Eosa knocked, called, understood, 
 went downstairs in dismay, and did not try again. When he 
 saw her he explained ,that he was very busy and could not . 
 be disturbed. She humbly begged his pardon. She could not 
 deceive herself as to the failure of her innocent advances: they ■ 
 had accomplished the opposite of her intention : they had j 
 alienated Christophe. He no longer took the trouble to con- 
 ceal his ill-humor; he did not listen when she talked, and did 1 
 not disguise his impatience. She felt that her chatter irritated ^ 
 him, and by force of will she succeeded in keeping silent for • 
 a part of the evening : but the thing was stronger than herself : ’ 
 suddenly she would break out again and her words would ^ 
 tumble over each other more tumultuously than ever. Chris- '■ 
 tophe would leave her in the middle of a sentence. She was | 
 not angry with him. She was angry with herself. She thought I 
 herself stupid, tiresome, ridiculous : all her faults assumed 
 enormous proportions and she tried to wrestle with them: but j 
 she was discouraged by the check upon her first attempts, and 
 said to herself that she could not do it, that she was not strong 
 enough. But she would try again. 
 
 But there were other faults against which she was powerless : 
 what could she do against her plainness? There was no doubt 
 about it. The certainty of her misfortune had suddenly been 
 revealed to her one day when she was looking at herself in 
 the mirror; it came like a thunderclap. Of course she exag- 
 gerated the evil, and saw her nose as ten times larger than 
 it was; it seemed to her to fill all her face; she dared not 
 
YOUTH 
 
 243 
 
 show herself; she wished to die. But there is in youth such 
 a power of hope that these fits of discouragement never lasted 
 long : she would end by pretending that she had been mistaken ; 
 she would try to believe it, and for a moment or two would 
 actually succeed in thinking her nose quite ordinary and almost 
 shapely. Her instinct made her attempt, though very clumsily, 
 certain childish tricks, a way of doing her hair so as not so 
 much to show her forehead and so accentuate the disproportion 
 of her face. And yet, there was no coquetry in her ; no thought 
 of love had crossed her mind, or she was unconscious of it. 
 She asked little : nothing but a little friendship : but Christophe 
 did not show any inclination to give her that little. It seemed 
 to Eosa that she would have been perfectly happy had he only 
 condescended to say good-day when they met. A friendly good- 
 evening with^a little kindness. But Christophe usually looked 
 so hard and so cold! It chilled her. He never said anything 
 disagreeable to her, but she would rather have had cruel re- 
 proaches than such cruel silence. 
 
 One evening Christophe was playing his piano. He had 
 taken up his quarters in a little attic at the top of the house 
 so as not to be so much disturbed by the noise. Downstairs 
 Eosa was listening to him, deeply moved. She loved music 
 though her taste was bad and unformed. While her mother 
 was there, she stayed in a corner of the room and bent over 
 her sewing, apparently absorbed in her work ; but her heart was 
 with the sounds coming from upstairs, and she wished to miss 
 nothing. As soon as Amalia went out for a walk in the neigh- 
 borhood, Eosa leaped to her feet, threw down her sewing, and 
 went upstairs with her heart beating until she came to the 
 attic door. She held her breath and laid her ear against the 
 door. She stayed like that until Amalia returned. She went 
 on tiptoe, taking care to make no noise, but as she was not 
 very sure-footed, and was always in a hurry, she was always 
 tripping upon the stairs; and once while she was listening, 
 leaning forward with her cheek glued to the keyhole, she lost 
 her balance, and banged her forehead against the door. She 
 was so alarmed that she lost her breath. The piano stopped 
 dead: she could not escape. She was getting up when the 
 door opened. Christophe saw her, glared at her furiously, and 
 
244 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 then without a word, brushed her aside, walked angrily down- 
 stairs, and went out. He did not return until dinner time, 
 paid no heed to the despairing looks with which she asked his 
 pardon, ignored her existence, and for several weeks he never 
 played at all. Kosa secretly shed many tears; no one noticed 
 it, no one paid any attention to her. Ardently she prayed to 
 God . . ..for what? She did not know. She had to confide 
 her grief in some one. She was sure that Christophe detested 
 
 And, in spite of all, she hoped. It was enough for her if 
 Christophe seemed to show any sign of interest in her, if he 
 appeared to listen to what she said, if he pressed her hand 
 with a little more friendliness than usual. ... 
 
 A few imprudent words from her relations set her imagina- 
 tion off upon a false road. 
 
 The whole family was filled with sympathy for Christophe. ; 
 The big boy of sixteen, serious and solitary, who had such lofty , 
 ideas of his duty, inspired a sort of respect in them all. His ^ 
 fits of ill-temper, his obstinate silences, his gloomy air, his. 
 brusque manner, were not surprising in such a house as that., 
 Frau Vogel, herself, who regarded every artist as a loafer, dared ^ 
 not reproach him aggressively, as she would have liked to do,^ 
 with the hours that he spent in star-gazing in the evening,, 
 leaning, motionless, out of the attic window overlooking the^ 
 yard, until night fell; for she knew that during the rest of thOj 
 day he was hard at work with his lessons; and she humored.* 
 him— like the rest— for an ulterior motive which no one ex~ 
 pressed though everybody knew it. ^ _ i 
 
 Eosa had seen her parents exchanging looks and mysterious 
 whisperings when she was talking to Christophe. At first she 
 took no notice of it. Then she was puzzled and roused by 
 it; she longed to know what they were saying, but dared not 
 ^sk* 
 
 One evening when she had climbed on to a' garden seat to 
 untie the clothes-line hung between two trees, she leaned on 
 Christophe’s shoulder to jump down. Just at that moment 
 her eyes met her grandfather’s and her father’s; they were 
 sitting smoking their pipes, and leaning against the wail oi 
 
YOUTH 245 
 
 the house. The two men winked at each other, and Justus 
 Euler said to Vogel: 
 
 They will make a fine couple.^^ 
 
 Vogel nudged him, seeing that the girl was listening, and 
 he covered his remark very cleverly — (or so he thought) — with 
 a loud Hm ! hm ! that could have been heard twenty yards 
 away. Christophe, whose back was turned, saw nothing, but 
 Eosa was so bowled over by it that she forgot that she was 
 jumping down, and sprained her foot. She would have fallen 
 had not Christophe caught her, muttering curses on her clumsi- 
 ness. She had hurt herself badly, but she did not show it; 
 she hardly thought of it; she thought only of what she had 
 just heard. She walked to her room; every step was agony to 
 her; she stiffened herself against it so as not to let it be seen. 
 A delicious, vague uneasiness surged through her. She fell 
 into a chair at the foot of her bed and hid her face in the 
 coverlet. Her cheeks were burning; there were tears in her 
 eyes, and she laughed. She was ashamed, she wished to sink 
 into the depths of the earth, she could not fix her ideas; her 
 blood beat in her temples, there were sharp pains in her ankle; 
 -she was in a feverish stupor. Vaguely she heard sounds out- 
 side, children crying and playing in the street, and her grand- 
 father^’s words were ringing in her ears; she was thrilled, she 
 laughed softly, she blushed, with her face buried in the eider- 
 down: she prayed, gave ^lanks, desired, feared — she loved. 
 
 Her mother called her. She tried to get up. At the first 
 step she felt a pain so unbearable that she almost fainted; her 
 head swam. She thought she was going to die, she wished to 
 die, and at the same time she wished to live with all the forces 
 of her being, to live for the promised happiness. Her mother 
 came at last, and the whole household was soon excited. She 
 was scolded as usual, her ankle was dressed, she was put to 
 bed, and sank into the sweet bewilderment of her physical pain 
 and her inward joy. The night was sweet. . . . The smallest 
 memory of that dear evening was hallowed for her. She did 
 not think of Christophe, she knew not what she thought. She 
 was happy. 
 
 The next day, Christophe, who thought himself in some 
 measure responsible for the accident, came to make inquiries. 
 
246 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 and for the first time he made some show of affection for her. 
 She was filled with gratitude, and blessed her sprained ankle. 
 She would gladly have suffered all her life, if, all her life, she 
 might have such joy.— She liad to lie down for several days 
 and never movej she spent them in turning over and over 
 her grandfather’s words, and considering them. Had he said: 
 
 “ They will . . 
 
 Or: 
 
 “They would . . .?” 
 
 But it was possible that he had never said anything of this 
 kind?— Yes. He had said it; she was certain of it. . . . What! 
 Did they not see that she was ugly, and that Christophe could 
 not bear her ? . . . But it was so good to hope 1 She came to 
 believe that perhaps she had been wrong, that she was not as 
 ugly as she thought; she would sit up on her sofa to try and. 
 see herself in the mirror on the wall opposite, above the mantel-, 
 piece ; she did not know what to think. After all, her father jj 
 and her grandfather were better judges than herself; people; 
 cannot tell about themselves. ... Oh ! Heaven, if it were pos-^ 
 sible! ... If it could be . . . if, she never dared think it,^ 
 if ... if she were pretty! . . . Perhaps, also, she had exag-f 
 gerated Christophe’s antipathy. No doubt he was indifferent, 
 and after the interest he had shown in her the day after the 
 accident did not bother about her any more; he forgot to in-, 
 quire ; but Rosa made excuses for him, he was so busy ! How, 
 should he think of her? An artist cannot be judged like otherj 
 
 men. ... i j. 
 
 And yet, resigned though she was, she could not help expect-* 
 
 ing with beating heart a word of sympathy from him when 
 he came near her. A word only, a look . . . her imagination 
 did the rest. In the beginning love needs so little food! It 
 is enough to see, to touch as you pass ; such a power of dreams 
 flows from the soul in such moments, that almost of itself it 
 can create its love: a trifle can plunge it into ecstasy that 
 later, when it is more satisfied, and in proportion more exacting, 
 it will hardly find again when at last it does possess the object 
 of its desire.— Rosa lived absolutely, though no one knew it, 
 in a romance of her own fashioning, pieced together by her- 
 self: Christophe loved her secretly, and was too shy to confess 
 
YOUTH 
 
 247 
 
 his love, or there was some stupid reason, fantastic or romantic, 
 delightful to the imagination of the sentimental little ninny. 
 She fashioned endless stories, and all perfectly absurd; she 
 knew it herself, but tried not to know it; she lied to herself 
 voluptuously for days and days as she bent over her sewing. 
 It made her forget to talk: her flood of words was turned 
 inward, like a river which suddenly disappears underground. 
 But then the river took its revenge. What a debauch of speeches, 
 of unuttered conversations which no one heard but herself! 
 Sometimes her lips would move as they do with people who 
 have to spell out the syllables to themselves as they read so 
 as to understand them. 
 
 When her dreams left her she was happy and sad. She knew 
 that things were not as she had just told herself: but she was 
 left with a reflected happiness, and had greater confidence for 
 her life. She did not despair of winning Christophe. 
 
 She did not admit it to herself, but she set about doing it. 
 With the sureness of instinct that great affection brings, the 
 awkward, ignorant girl contrived immediately to find the road 
 by which she might reach her beloved’s heart. She did not 
 turn directly to him. But as soon as she was better and could 
 once more walk about the house she approached Louisa. The 
 smallest excuse served. She found a thousand little services 
 to render her. When she went out she never failed to under- 
 take various errands : she spared her going to the market, argu- 
 ments with tradespeople, she would fetch water for her from 
 the pump in the yard; she cleaned the windows and polished 
 the floors in spite of Louisa’s protestations, who was confused 
 when she did not do her work alone; but she was so weary that 
 she had not the strength to oppose anybody who came to help 
 her. Christophe was out all day. Louisa felt that she was 
 deserted, and the companionship of the affectionate, chattering 
 girl was pleasant to her. Eosa took up her quarters in her 
 room. She brought her sewing,, and talked all the time. By 
 clumsy devices she tried to bring ^‘conversation round to Chris- 
 tophe. Just to hear of him, even to hear his name, made 
 her happy; her hands would tremble; she would sit with down- 
 cast eyes. Louisa was delighted to talk of her beloved Chris- 
 tophe, and would tell little tales of his childhood, trivial and 
 
248 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 just a little ridiculous ; but there was no fear of Rosa thinking 
 them so: she took a great joy, and there was a dear emotion 
 for her in imagining Christophe as a child, and doing all the 
 tricks and having all the darling ways of children: in her the 
 motherly tenderness which lies in the hearts of all women was 
 mingled deliciously with that other tenderness : she would laugh 
 heartily and tears would come to her eyes. Louisa was touched 
 by the interest that Rosa took in her. She guessed dimly what 
 was in the girl’s heart, but she never let it appear that she did 
 so; but she was glad of it; for of all in the house she only 
 knew the worth of the girl’s heart. Sometimes she would stop 
 talking to look at her. Rosa, surprised by her silence, would 
 raise her eyes from her work. Louisa would smile at her. Rosa 
 would throw herself into her arms, suddenly, passionately, and 
 would hide her face in Louisa’s bosom. Then they would go • 
 on working and talking, as if nothing had happened. ( 
 
 In the evening when Christophe came home, Louisa, grateful ; 
 for Rosa’s attentions, and in pursuance of the little plan she ■ 
 had made, always praised the girl to the skies. Christophe ^ 
 was touched by Rosa’s kindness. He saw how much good ^ 
 she was doing his mother, in whose face there was more serenity : ; 
 and he would thank her effusively. Rosa would murmur, and • 
 escapG to concoal hor embarrassniGiit t so she appeared a thou- 
 sand times more intelligent and sympathetic to Christophe than ,, 
 if she had spoken. He looked at her less with a prejudiced ■ 
 eye, and did not conceal his surprise at finding unsuspected | 
 qualities in her. Rosa saw that ; she marked the progress that < 
 she made in his s}^mpathy and thought that his sympathy would i 
 lead to love. She gave herself up more than ever to her dreams, v 
 She came near to believing with the beautiful presumption of 
 youth that what you desire with all your being is always 
 accomplished in the end. Besides, how was her desire unreason- 
 able ? Should not Christophe have been more sensible than , ; 
 any other of her goodness and her affectionate need of self- 
 devotion? 
 
 But Christophe gave no thought to her. He esteemed her; 
 but she filled no room in his thoughts. He was busied with . 
 far other things at the moment. Christophe was no longer 
 Christophe. He did not know himself. He was in a mighty ^ 
 
YOUTH 249 
 
 travail that was like to sweep everything away, a complete 
 upheaval. 
 
 Christoph e was conscious of extreme weariness and great un- 
 easiness. He was for no reason worn out; his head was heavy, 
 his eyes, his ears, all his senses were dumb and throbbing. He 
 could not give his attention to anything. His mind leaped from 
 one subject to another, and was in a fever that sucked him dry. 
 The perpetual fluttering of images in his mind made him giddy. 
 At first he attributed it to fatigue and the enervation of the 
 first days of spring. But spring passed and his sickness only 
 grew worse. 
 
 It was what the poets who only touch lightly on things call 
 the unease of adolescence, the trouble of the cherubim, the 
 waking of the desire of love in the young body and soul. As 
 if the fearful crisis of all a man’s being, breaking up, dying, 
 and coming to full rebirth, as if the cataclysm in which every- 
 thing, faith, thought, action, all life, seems like to be blotted 
 out, and then to be new-forged in the convulsions of sorrow 
 and joy, can be reduced to terms of a child’s folly! 
 
 All his body and soul were in a ferment. He watched them, 
 having no strength to struggle, with a mixture of curiosity and 
 disgust. He did not understand what was happening in himself. 
 His whole being was disintegrated. He spent days together in 
 absolute torpor. Work was torture to him. At night he slept 
 heavily and in snatches, dreaming monstrously, with gusts of 
 desire; the soul of a beast was racing madly in him. Burning, 
 bathed in sweat, he watched himself in horror; he tried to 
 break free of the crazy and unclean thoughts that possessed 
 him, and he wondered if he were going mad. 
 
 The day gave him no shelter from his brutish thoughts. In 
 the depths of his soul he felt that he was slipping down and 
 down; there was no stay to clutch at; no barrier to keep back 
 chaos. All his defenses, all his citadels, with the quadruple 
 rampart that hemmed him in so proudly — ^his God, his art, his 
 pride, his moral faith, all was crumbling away, falling piece 
 by piece from him. He saw himself naked, bound, lying unable 
 to move, like a corpse on which vermin swarm. He had spasms 
 of revolt: where was his will, of which he was so proud? He 
 
350 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 called to it in vain: it was like the efforts that one makes in 
 sleep, knowing that one is dreaming, and trying to awake. Then 
 one succeeds only in falling from one dream to another like 
 a lump of load, and in being more and more choked by the 
 suffocation of the soul in bondage. At last he found that it 
 was less painful not to struggle. He decided not to do so, with 
 fatalistic apathy and despair. 
 
 The even tenor of his life seemed to be broken up. Now he 
 slipped down a subterranean crevasse and was like to disappear ; 
 now he bounded up again with a violent jerk. The chain of 
 his days was snapped. In the midst of the even plain of the 
 hours great gaping holes would open to engulf his soul. Chris- 
 tophe looked on at the spectacle as though it did not concern 
 him. Everything, everybody, — and himself — were strange to 
 him. He went about his business, did his work, automatically: 
 it seemed to him that the machinery of his life might stop at ■ 
 any moment: the wheels were out of gear. At dinner with his ^ 
 mother and the others, in the orchestra with the musicians ’ 
 and the audience, suddenly there would be a void and emptiness , 
 in his brain : he would look stupidly at the grinning faces about t 
 him : and he could not understand. He would ask himself : ■ 
 
 “ What is there between these creatures and . . . ? ” i 
 
 He dared not even say: 
 
 . . and me.” i 
 
 For he knew not whether he existed. He would speak and( 
 his voice would seem to issue from another body. He would) 
 move, and he saw his movements from afar, from above — from' 
 the top of a tower. He would pass his hand over his face, and: 
 his eyes would wander. He was often near doing crazy things. ^ 
 It was especially when he was most in public that he had 
 to keep guard on himself. For example, on the evenings when 
 he went to the Palace or was playing in public. Then he would 
 suddenly be seized by a terrific desire to make a face, or say 
 something outrageous, to pull the Grand Duke’s nose, or to take 
 a running kick at one of the ladies. One whole evening while 
 he was conducting the orchestra, he struggled against an in- 
 sensate desire to undress himself in public : and he was haunted 
 by the idea from the moment when he tried to check it: he 
 had to exert all his strength not to give way to it. When he 
 
 ■ ' 
 
YOUTH 
 
 251 
 
 issued from the brute struggle he was dripping with sweat 
 and his mind was blank. He was really mad. It was enough 
 for him to think that he must not do a thing for it to fasten 
 on him with the maddening tenacity of a fixed idea. 
 
 So his life was spent in a series of unbridled outbreaks and 
 of endless falls into emptiness. A furious wind in the desert. 
 Whence came this wind? From what abyss came these desires 
 that wrenched his body and mind ? He was like a bow stretched 
 to breaking point by a strong hand, — to what end unknown ? — 
 which then springs back like a piece of dead wood. Of what 
 force was he the prey ? He dared not probe for it. He felt that 
 he was beaten, humiliated, and he would not face his defeat. He 
 was weary and broken in spirit. He understood now the people 
 whom formerly he had despised: those who will not seek awk- 
 ward truth. In the empty hours, when he remembered that 
 time was passing, his work neglected, the future lost, he was 
 frozen with terror. But there was no reaction : and his cowardice 
 found excuses in desperate affirmation of the void in which he 
 lived: he took a bitter delight in abandoning himself to it like 
 a wreck on the waters. What was the good of fighting ? There 
 was nothing beautiful, nor good ; neither God, nor life, nor being 
 of any sort. In the street as he walked, suddenly the earth 
 would sink away from him : there was neither ground, nor air, 
 nor light, nor himself: there was nothing. He would fall, his 
 head would drag him down, face forwards : he could hardly hold 
 himself up; he was on the point of collapse. He thought he 
 was going to die, suddenly, struck down. He thought he was 
 dead. . . . 
 
 Christophe was growing a new skin. Christophe was growing 
 a new soul. And seeing the worn out and rotten soul of his 
 childhood falling away he never dreamed that he was taking 
 on a new one, young and stronger. As through life we change 
 our bodies, so also do we change our souls : and the metamor- 
 phosis does not always take place slowly over many days; there 
 are times of crisis when the whole is suddenly renewed. The 
 adult changes his soul. The old soul that is cast off dies. In 
 those hours of anguish we think that all is at an end. And 
 the whole thing begins again. A life dies. Another life has 
 already come into being. 
 
252 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 One night he was alone in his room, with his elbow on his 
 desk under the light of a candle. His back was turned to the 
 window. He was not working. He had not been able to work 
 for weeks. Everything was twisting and turning in his head. 
 He had brought everything under scrutiny at once: religion, 
 morals, art, the whole of life. And in the general dissolution 
 of his thoughts was no method, no order : he had plunged into 
 the reading of books taken haphazard from his grandfather’s 
 heterogeneous library or from Vogel’s collection of books: books 
 of theology, science, philosophy, an odd lot, of which he under- 
 stood nothing, having everything to learn: he could not finish 
 any of them, and in the middle of them went off on divagations, 
 endless whimsies, which left him weary, empty, and in mortal 
 sorrow. 
 
 So, that evening, he was sunk in an exhausted torpor. The ' 
 whole house was asleep. His window was open. Not a breath . 
 came up from the yard. Thick clouds filled the sky. Chris- ; 
 tophe mechanically watched the candle burn away at the bottom • 
 of the candlestick. He could not go to bed. He had no thought 
 of anything. He felt the void growing, growing from moment ; 
 to moment. He tried not to see the abyss that drew him to its ; 
 brink: and in spite of himself he leaned over and his eyes gazed 
 into the depths of the night. In the void, chaos was stirring, 
 and faint sounds came from the darkness. Agony filled him: . 
 a shiver ran down his spine: his skin tingled: he clutched the ^ 
 table so as not to fall. Convulsively he awaited nameless things, ; 
 
 a miracle, a God. ... . ' 
 
 Suddenly, like an opened sluice, in the yard behind him, a | 
 deluge of water, a heavy rain, large drops, down pouring, fell. > 
 The still air quivered. The dry, hard soil rang out like a bell. 
 And the vast scent of the earth, burning, warm as that of an 
 animal, the smell of the flowers, fruit, and amorous flesh rose 
 in a spasm of fury and pleasure. Christophe, under illusion, 
 at fullest stretch, shook. He trembled. . . . The veil was rent. 
 He was blinded. By a flash of lightning, he saw, in the depths 
 of the night, he saw — he was God. God was in himself; He 
 burst tlie ceiling of the room, the walls of the house; He cracked 
 the very bounds of existence. He filled the sky, the universe, 
 space. The world coursed through Him, like a cataract. In 
 
YOUTH 
 
 253 
 
 the horror and ecstasy of that cataclysm, Christophe fell too, 
 swept along by the whirlwind which brushed away and crushed 
 like straws the laws of nature. He was breathless: he was 
 drunk with the swift hurtling , down into God . . . God-abyss I 
 God-gulf ! Fire of Being ! Hurricane of life ! Madness of living, 
 — aimless, uncontrolled, beyond reason, — for the fury of living ! 
 
 When the crisis was over, he fell into a deep sleep and slept 
 as he had not done for long enough. Next day when he awoke 
 his head swam : he was as broken as though he had been drunk. 
 But in his inmost heart he had still a beam of that somber and 
 great light that had struck him down the night before. He 
 tried to relight it. In vain. The more he pursued it, the more 
 it eluded him. From that time on, all his energy was directed 
 towards recalling the vision of a moment. The endeavor was 
 futile. Ecstasy does not answer the bidding of the will. 
 
 But that mystic exaltation was not the only experience 
 that he had of it: it recurred several times, but never wdth 
 the intensity of the first. It came always at moments when 
 Christophe was least expecting it, for a second only, a time so 
 short, so sudden, — no longer than a wink of an eye or a raising 
 of a hand — that the vision was gone before he could discover 
 that it was : and then he would wonder whether he had not 
 dreamed it. After that fiery bolt that had set the night afiame, 
 it was a gleaming dust, shedding fieeting sparks, which the 
 eye could hardly see as they sped by. But they reappeared 
 more and more often: and in the end they surrounded Chris- 
 tophe with a halo of perpetual misty dreams, in which his 
 spirit melted. Everything that distracted him in his state of 
 semi-hallucination was an irritation to him. It was impossible 
 to work; he gave up thinking about it. Society was odious 
 to him ; and more than any, that of his intimates, even that 
 of his mother, because they arrogated to themselves more rights 
 over his soul. 
 
 He left the house: he took to spending his days abroad, and 
 never returned until nightfall. He sought the solitude of the 
 fields, and delivered himself up to it, drank his fill of it, like 
 a maniac who wishes not to be disturbed by anything in the 
 obsession of his fixed ideas. — But in the great sweet air, in 
 
254 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 contact with the earth, his obsession relaxed, his ideas ceased 
 to appear like specters. His exaltation was no less: rather it 
 was heightened, but it was no longer a dangerous delirium of 
 the mind but a healthy intoxication of his whole being: body 
 and soul crazy in their strength. 
 
 He rediscovered the world, as though he had never seen it. 
 
 It was a new childhood. It was as though a magic word had 
 been uttered. An “ Open Sesame! ” — Nature flamed with glad- 
 ness. The sun boiled. The liquid sky ran like a clear river. 
 The earth steamed and cried aloud in delight. The plants, 
 the trees, the insects, all the innumerable creatures were like 
 dazzling tongues of flame in the fire of life writhing upwards. 
 Everything sang aloud in joy. 
 
 And that joy was his own. That strength was his own. He 
 was no longer cut off from the rest of the world. Till then, 
 even in the happy days of childhood, when he saw nature with , 
 ardent and delightful curiosity, all creatures had seemed to ; 
 him to be little worlds shut up, terrifying and grotesque, un- i 
 related to himself, and incomprehensible. He was not even ^ 
 sure that they had feeling and life. They were strange machines. ^ 
 And sometimes Christophe had even, with the unconscious? 
 cruelty of a child,, dismembered wretched insects without dream- ; 
 ing that they might suffer— for the pleasure of watching their _ 
 queer contortions. His uncle Gottfried, usually so calm, ha . 
 one day indignantly to snatch from his hands an unhappy ^ 
 fly that he was torturing. The boy had tried to laugh at first :| 
 then he had burst into tears, moved by his uncle’s emotion :» 
 he began to understand that his victim did really exist, as well| 
 as himself, and that he had committed a crime. But if there- v 
 after nothing would have induced him to do harm to the beasts, 
 he never felt any sympathy for them: he used to pass them 
 by without ever trying to feel what it was that worked their 
 machinery: rather he was afraid to think of it: it was some- 
 thing like a bad dream.— And now everything was made plain. 
 These humble, obscure creatures became in their turn centers 
 
 of light. , 
 
 Lying on his belly in the grass where creatures swarmed, 
 
 in the shade of the trees that buzzed with insects, Christophe 
 would watch the fevered movements of the ants, the long-legged 
 
YOUTH 
 
 255 
 
 spiders, that seemed to dance as they walked, the bounding 
 grasshoppers, that leap aside, the heavy, bustling beetles, and 
 the naked worms, pink and glabrous, mottled with white, or 
 with his hands under his head and his eyes closed he would 
 listen to the invisible orchestra, the roundelay of the frenzied 
 insects circling in a sunbeam about the scented pines, the 
 trumpeting of the mosquitoes, the organ notes of the wasps, the 
 brass of the wild bees humming like bells in the tops of 
 the trees, and the godlike whispering of the swaying trees, the 
 sweet moaning of the wind in the branches, the soft whispering 
 of the waving grass, like a breath of wind rippling the limpid 
 surface of a lake, like the rustling of a light dress and lovers^ 
 
 -footsteps coming near, and passing, then lost upon the air. 
 
 He heard all these sounds and cries within himself. Through 
 all these creatures from the smallest to the greatest flowed the 
 same river of life : and in it he too swam. So, he was one of 
 them, he was of their blood, and, brotherly, he heard the echo 
 of their sorrows and their joys: their strength was merged in 
 his like a river fed with thousands of streams. He sank into 
 them. His lungs were like to burst with the wind, too freely 
 blowing, too strong, that burst the windows and forced its way 
 into the closed house of his suffocating heart. The change 
 was too abrupt: after finding everywhere a void, when he had 
 been buried only in his own existence, and had felt it slip- 
 ping from him and dissolving like rain, now everywhere he 
 found infinite and unmeasured Being, now that he longed to 
 forget himself, to find rebirth in the universe. He seemed to 
 have issued from the grave. He swam voluptuously in life 
 flowing free and full: and borne on by its current he thought 
 that he was free. He did not know that he was less free than 
 ever, that no creature is ever free, that even the law that gov- 
 erns the universe is not free, that only death — perhaps — can 
 bring deliverance. 
 
 I But the chrysalis issuing from its stifling sheath, joyously 
 stretched its limbs in its new shape, and had no time as yet 
 to mark the bounds of its new prison. 
 
 There began a new cycle of days. Days of gold and fever, 
 mysterious, enchanted, like those of his childhood, when one 
 
256 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 
 by one he discovered things for the first time. From dawn 
 to set of sun he lived in one long mirage. He deserted all his 
 business. The conscientious boy, who for years had never 
 missed a lesson, or an orchestra rehearsal, even when he was 
 ill, was forever finding paltry excuses for neglecting his work. 
 
 He was not afraid to lie. He had no remorse about it. The 
 stoic principles of life, to which he had hitherto delighted to 
 bend his will, morality, duty, now seemed to him to have no 
 truth, nor reason. Their jealous despotism was smashed against 
 Nature. Human nature, healthy, strong, free, that alone was 
 virtue: to hell with all the rest! It provoked pitying laughter 
 to see the little peddling rules of prudence and policy which 
 the world adorns with the name of morality, while it pretends 
 to inclose all life within them. A preposterous mole-hill, an 
 ant-like people ! Life sees to it that they are brought to reason. 
 Life does but pass, and all is swept away. ... 
 
 Bursting with energy Christophe had moments when he was ' 
 consumed with a desire to destroy, to burn, to smash, to glut 
 with actions blind and uncontrolled the force which choked t 
 him. These outbursts usually ended in a sharp reaction: he \ 
 would weep, and fiing himself down on the ground, and kiss 
 the earth, and try to dig into it with his teeth and hands, to 
 feed himself with it, to merge into it: he trembled then with 
 fever and desire. t 
 
 One evening he was walking in the outskirts of a wood. ( 
 His eyes were swimming with the light, his head was whirling : | 
 
 he was in that state of exaltation when all creatures and things ^ 
 were transfigured. To that was added the magic of the 1 
 soft warm light of evening. Bays of purple and gold hovered ‘ 
 in the trees. From the meadows seemed to come a phos- 
 phorescent glimmer. In a field near by a girl was making hay. 
 
 In her blouse and short skirt, with her arms and neck bare, ' 
 she was raking the hay and heaping it up. She had a short 
 nose, wide cheeks, a round face, a handkerchief thrown over* 
 her hair. The setting sun touched with red her sunburned 
 skin, which, like a piece of pottery, seemed to absorb the last 
 beams of the da 3 ^ 
 
 She fascinated Christophe. Leaning against a beech-tree 
 he watched her come towards the verge of the woods, eagerly, ' 
 
YOUTH 
 
 257 
 
 passionately. Everything else bad disappeared. She took no 
 notice of him. For a moment she looked at him cautiously: 
 he saw her eyes blue and hard in her brown face. She passed 
 so near to him that, when she leaned down to gather up the 
 hay, through her open blouse he saw a soft down on her shoul- 
 ders and back. Suddenly the vague desire which was in him 
 leaped forth. He hurled himself at her from behind, seized her 
 neck and waist, threw back her head and fastened his lips upon 
 hers. He kissed her dry, cracked lips until he came against 
 her teeth that bit him angrily. His hands ran over her rough 
 arms, over her blouse wet with her sweat. She struggled. 
 He held her tighter, he wished to strangle her. She broke 
 loose, cried out, spat, wiped her lips with her hand, and hurled 
 insults at him. He let her go and fled across the flelds. She 
 threw stones at him and went on discharging after him a litany 
 of filthy epithets. He blushed, less for anything that she might 
 say or think, but for what he was thinking himself. The sudden 
 unconscious act filled him with terror. What had he done? 
 What should he do? What he was able to understand of it 
 all only filled him with disgust. And he was tempted by his 
 disgust. He fought against himself and knew not on which 
 side was the real Christophe. A blind force beset him : in vain 
 did he fly from it: it was only to fly from himself. WTiat 
 would she do about him? WTiat should he do to-morrow . . . 
 in an hour . . . the time it took to cross the plowed field to 
 reach the road? . . . Would he ever reach it? Should he not 
 stop, and go back, and run back to the girl? And then? . . . 
 He remembered that delirious moment when he had held her 
 by the throat. Everything was possible. All things were worth 
 while. A crime even. ... Yes, even a crime. . . . The tur- 
 moil in his heart made him breathless. When he reached the 
 road he stopped to breathe. Over there the girl wa& talking to 
 another girl who had been attracted by her cries: and with 
 arms akimbo, they were looking at each other and shouting with 
 laughter. 
 
258 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 II 
 
 SABINE 
 
 He went home. He shut himself up in his room and never 
 stirred for several days. He only went out even into the town 
 when he was compelled. He was fearful of ever going out 
 beyond the gates and venturing forth into the fields : he was 
 afraid of once more falling in with the soft, maddening breath 
 that had blown upon him like a rushing wind during a calm 
 in a storm. He thought that the walls of the town might 
 preserve him from it. He never dreamed that for the enemy 
 to slip within there needed be only the smallest crack 
 in the closed shutters, no more than is needed for a peep '! 
 out. 
 
 In a wing of the house, on the other side of the yard, there .< 
 lodged on the ground fioor a young woman of twenty, some * 
 months a widow, with a little girl. Frau Sabine Froehlich ^ 
 was also a tenant of old Euler’s. She occupied the shop which i 
 opened on to the street, and she had as well two rooms looking • 
 on to the yard, together with a little patch of garden, marked 
 off from the Eulers’ by a wire fence up which ivy climbed. 
 They did not often see her: the child used to play down in ; 
 the garden from morning to night making mud pies: and the j 
 garden was left to itself, to the great distress of old Justus, j 
 who loved tidy paths and neatness in the beds. He had tried ? 
 to bring the matter to the attention of his tenant : but that < 
 was probably why she did not appear: and the garden was not < 
 improved by it. 
 
 Frau Froehlich kept a little draper’s shop which might have 
 had customers enough, thanks to its position in a street of 
 shops in the center of the town: but she did not bother about 
 it any more than about her garden. Instead of doing her 
 housework herself, as, according to Frau Vogel, every self- 
 respecting woman ought to do — especially when she is in cir- 
 cumstances which do not permit much less excuse idleness— 
 she had hired a little servant, a girl of fifteen, who came in 
 for a few hours in the morning to clean the rooms and look 
 
YOUTH 259 
 
 after the shop, while the young woman lay in bed or dawdled 
 over her toilet. 
 
 Christophe used to see her sometimes, through his windows, 
 walking about her room, with bare feet, in her long nightgown, 
 or sitting for hours together before her mirror: for she was 
 so careless that she used to forget to draw her curtains: and 
 when she saw him, she was so lazy that she could not take 
 the trouble to go and lower them. Christophe, more modest 
 than she, would leave the window so as not to incommode her : 
 but the temptation was great. He would blush a little and 
 steal a glance at her bare arms, which were rather thin, as 
 she drew them languidly around her flowing hair, and with her 
 hands clasped behind her head, lost herself in a dream, until 
 they were numbed, and then she would let them fall. Christophe 
 would pretend that he only saw these pleasant sights inadver- 
 tently as he happened to pass the window, and that they did not 
 disturb him in his musical thoughts : but he liked it, and in the 
 end he wasted as much time in watching Frau Sabine, as she 
 did over her toilet. Not that she was a coquette: she was 
 rather careless, generally, and did not take anything like the 
 meticulous care with her appearance that Amalia or Eosa did. 
 If she dawdled in front of her dressing table it was from pure 
 laziness: every time she put in a pin she had to rest from the 
 effort of it, while she made little piteous faces at herself in 
 the mirrors. She was never quite properly dressed at the end 
 of the day. 
 
 Often her servant used to go before Sabine was ready: and 
 a customer would ring the shop-bell. She would let him ring 
 and call once or twice before she could make up her mind 
 to get up from her chair. She would go down, smiling, and 
 never hurrying, — never hurrying would look for the article 
 required, — and if she could not And it after looking for some 
 time, or even (as happened sometimes) if she had to take 
 too much trouble to reach it, as for instance, taking the ladder 
 from one end of the shop to the other, — she would say calmly 
 that she did not have it in stock: and as she never bothered 
 to put her stock in order, or to order more of the articles of 
 which she had run out, her customers used to lose patience 
 and go elsewhere. But she never minded. How could you be 
 
260 
 
 JEAJ^-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 angry with such a pleasant creature who spoke so sweetly, and 
 was never excited about anything! She did not mind what 
 anybody said to her: and she made this so plain that those 
 who began to complain never had the courage to go on: they 
 used to go, answering her charming smile with a smile: but 
 they never came back. She never bothered about it. She went 
 on smiling. 
 
 She was like a little Florentine figure. Her well marked 
 eyebrows were arched: her gray eyes were half open behind 
 the curtain of her lashes. The lower eyelid was a little swollen, 
 with a little crease below it. Her little, finely drawn nose turned 
 up slightly at the end. Another little curve lay between it 
 and her upper lip, which curled up above her half-open mouth, 
 pouting in a weary smile. Her lower lip was a little thick: 
 the lower part of her face was rounded, and had the serious 
 
 expression of the little virgins of Filippo Lippi. Her com- 
 
 plexion was a little muddy, her hair was light brown, always ; 
 untidy, and done up in a slovenly chignon. She was slight of 
 figure, small-boned. And her movements were lazy. Dressed ^ 
 carelessly — a gaping bodice, buttons missing, ugly, worn shoes, \ 
 always looking a little slovenly — she charmed by her grace and 
 youth, her gentleness, her instinctively coaxing ways. When • 
 she appeared to take the air at the door of her shop, the young j 
 men who passed used to look at her with pleasure: and al- ! 
 
 though she did not bother about them, she noticed it none | 
 
 the less. Always then she wore that grateful and glad ex- | 
 
 pression which is in the eyes of all women when they know • 
 
 that they have been seen with sympathetic eyes. It seemed to ] 
 say : 
 
 Thank you ! . . . Again ! Look at me again ! But though 
 it gave her pleasure to please, her indifference would never 
 let her make the smallest effort to please. ^ 
 
 She was an object of scandal to the Euler-Vogels. Every- 
 thing about her offended them : her indolence, the untidiness 
 of her house, the carelessness of her dress, her polite indiffer- | 
 ence to their remarks, her perpetual smile, the impertinent 
 serenity with which she had accepted her husband’s death, her 
 child’s illnesses, her straitened circumstances, the great and 
 small annoyances of her daily life, while nothing could change 
 
YOUTH 
 
 261 
 
 one jot of her favorite habits, or her eternal longing, — every- 
 thing about her offended them: and the worst of all was that, 
 as she was, she did give pleasure. Frau Vogel could not forgive 
 her that. It was almost as though Sabine did it on purpose, 
 on purpose, ironically, to set at naught by her conduct the great 
 traditions, the true principles, the savorless duty, the pleasure- 
 less labor, the restlessness, the noise, the quarrels, the mooning 
 ways, the healthy pessimism which was the motive power of 
 the Euler family, as it is that of all respectable persons, and 
 made their life a foretaste of purgatory. That a woman who 
 did nothing but dawdle about all the blessed day should take 
 upon herself to defy them with her calm insolence, while they 
 bore their suffering in silence like galley-slaves, — and that 
 people should approve of her into the bargain — that was beyond 
 the limit, that was enough to turn you against respectability! 
 . . . Fortunately, thank God, there were still a few sensible 
 people left in the world. Frau Vogel consoled herself with 
 them. They exchanged remarks about the little widow, and 
 spied on her through her shutters. Such gossip was the joy 
 of the family when they met at supper. Christophe would 
 listen absently. He was so used to hearing the Vogels set them- 
 selves up as censors of their neighbors that he never took any 
 notice of it. Besides he knew nothing of Frau Sabine except 
 her bare neck and arms, and though they were pleasing enough, 
 they did not justify his coming to a definite opinion about her. 
 However, he was conscious of a kindly feeling towards her: 
 and in a contradictory spirit he was especially grateful to her 
 for displeasing Frau Vogel. 
 
 After dinner in the evening when it was very hot it was 
 impossible to stay in the stifling yard, where the sun shone 
 the whole afternoon. The only place in the house where it 
 was possible to breathe was the rooms looking into the street. 
 Euler and his son-in-law used sometimes to go and sit on the 
 doorstep with Louisa. Frau Vogel and Kosa would only appear 
 for a moment: they were kept by their housework: Frau Vogel 
 took a pride in showing that she had no time for dawdling: 
 and she used to say, loudly enough to be overheard, that all 
 the people sitting there and yawning on their doorsteps, with- 
 
263 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 out doing a stitch of work, got on her nerves. As she could 
 not — (to her sorrow) — compel them to work, she would pre- 
 tend not to see them, and would go in and work furiously. 
 Rosa thought she must do likewise. Euler and Vogel would 
 discover draughts everywhere, and fearful of catching cold, 
 would go up to their rooms: they used to go to bed early, and 
 would have thought themselves ruined had they changed the 
 least of their habits. After nine o’clock only Louisa and Chris- 
 tophe would be left. Louisa spent the day in her room: and, 
 in the evening, Christophe used to take pains to be with her, 
 whenever he could, to make her take the air. If she were left 
 alone she would never go out : the noise of the street frightened 
 her. Children were always chasing each other with shrill cries. 
 
 All the dogs of the neighborhood took it up and barked. The 
 sound of a piano came up, a little farther off a clarinet, and in 
 the next street a cornet k piston. Voices chattered. People ■ 
 came and went and stood in groups in front of their houses, s 
 
 Louisa would have lost her head if she had been left alone 
 
 in all the uproar. But when her son was with her it gave her . 
 
 pleasure. The noise would gradually die down. The children | 
 
 and the dogs would go to bed first. The groups of people would ; 
 break up. The air would become more pure. Silence would 
 descend upon the street. Louisa would tell in her thin voice 
 the little scraps of news that she had heard from Amalia or ; 
 Rosa. She was not greatly interested in them. But she never ( 
 knew what to talk about to her son, and she felt the need of r 
 keeping in touch with him, of saying something to him. And 
 Christophe, who felt her need, would pretend to be interested • 
 in everything she said : but he did not listen. He was off in 
 vague dreams, turning over in his mind the doings of the day. 
 
 One evening when they were sitting there — while his mother 
 was talking he saw the door of the draper’s shop open. A 
 woman came out silently and sat in the street. Her chair 
 'was only a few yards from Louisa. She was sitting in the 
 darkest shadow. Christophe could not see her face : but he rec- 
 ognized her. His dreams vanished. Th^ air seemed sweeter 
 to him. Louisa had not noticed Sabine’s presence, and went 
 on with her chatter in a low voice. Christophe paid more 
 attention to her, and he felt impelled to throw out a remark 
 
YOUTH 
 
 263 
 
 here and there, to talk, perhaps to be heard. The s ight fi^re 
 sat there without stirring, a little limp, with her legs lightly 
 crossed and her hands lying crossed in her lap. She was look- 
 ing straight in front of her, and seemed to hear nothing 
 was overcome with drowsiness. She went in. Christophe said 
 he would stay a little longer. 
 
 It was nearly ten. The street was empty. The people were 
 going indoors. The sound of the shops being shut was heard. 
 The lighted windows winked and then were dark again. One 
 or two were still lit: then they were blotted out. Silence. . . . 
 They were alone, they did not look at each other they held 
 their breath, they seemed not to be aware of each other Froin 
 the distant fields came the smell of the new-mown hay and 
 from a balcony in a house near by the scent of a pot of cloves^ 
 No wind stirred. Above their heads was the Milky Way. To 
 their right red Jupiter. Above a chimney Charles Wain bent 
 its axles : in the pale green sky its stars flowered like daisies. 
 From the bells of the parish church eleven o clock rang out 
 and was caught up by all the other churches, with their voices 
 clear or muffled, and, from the houses, by the dim chiming oi 
 the clock or husky cuckoos. 
 
 They awoke suddenly from their dreams, and got up at the 
 same moment. And just as they were going indoors they b^h 
 bowed without speaking. Christophe went up to his room. He 
 lighted his candle, and sat down by his desk with his head m 
 his hands, and stayed so for a long time without a thought. 
 
 Then he sighed and went to bed. . x t,- 
 
 Next day when he got up, mechanically he went to ms 
 window to look down into Sabine’s room. But the curtains 
 were drawn. They were drawn the whole morning. They were 
 drawn ever after. 
 
 Next evening Christophe proposed to his mother that they 
 should go again to sit by the door. He did so regularly. Louisa 
 was glad of it: she did not like his shutting himself up in 
 his room immediately after dinner with the window and shutters 
 
 closed The little silfent shadow never failed to come and sit 
 
 in its usual place. They gave each other a quick nod, which 
 Louisa never noticed. Christophe would talk to his mother. 
 
264 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Sabine would smile at her little girl, playing in the street: 
 about nine she would go and put her to bed and would then 
 return noiselessly. If she stayed a little Christophe would 
 begin to be afraid that she would not come back. He would 
 listen for sounds in the house, the laughter of the little girl 
 who would not go to sleep: he would hear the rustling of 
 Sabine’s dress before she appeared on the threshold of the shop. 
 Then he would look away and talk to his mother more eagerly. 
 Sometimes he would feel that Sabine was looking at him. In 
 turn he would furtively look at her. But their eyes would 
 never meet. 
 
 The child was a bond between them. She would run about 
 in the street with other children. They would find amusement 
 in teasing a good-tempered dog sleeping there with his nose 
 in his paws : he would cock a red eye and at last would emit a 
 growl of boredom: then they would fly this way and that 
 screaming in terror and happiness. The little girl would give ■ 
 piercing shrieks, and look behind her as though she were being • 
 pursued : she would throw herself into Louisa’s lap, and Louisa 
 would smile fondly. She would keep the child and question 
 her: and so she would enter into conversation with Sabine. 
 Christophe never joined in. He never spoke to Sabine. Sabine 
 never spoke to him. By tacit agreement they pretended to ^ 
 
 ignore each other. But he never lost a word of what they i 
 
 said as they talked over him. His silence seemed unfriendly ; 
 
 to Louisa. Sabine never thought it so : but it would make her j 
 
 shy, and she would grow confused in her remarks. Then she ; 
 
 would find some excuse for going in. 1 
 
 For a whole week Louisa kept indoors for a cold. Christophe ii 
 and Sabine were left alone. The first time they were fright- 
 ened by it. Sabine, to seem at her ease, took her little girl on 
 her knees and loaded her with caresses. Christophe was 
 embarrassed and did not know whether he ought to go on " 
 
 ignoring what was happening at his side. It became difficult: J 
 
 although they had not spoken a single word to each other, " 
 
 they did know each other, thanks to Louisa. He tried to begin j 
 
 several times: but the words stuck in his throat. Once more ' 
 
 the little girl extricated them from their difficulty. She played 
 hide-and-seek, and went round Christophe’s chair. He caught 
 
YOUTH 
 
 265 
 
 her as she passed and kissed her. He was not very fond of 
 children : but it was curiously pleasant to him to kiss the little 
 girl. She struggled to be free, for she was busy with her game. 
 He teased her, she bit his hands ; he let her fall. Sabine laughed. 
 They looked at the child and exchanged a few trivial words. 
 Then Christophe tried— (he thought he must)— to enter into 
 conversation: but he had nothing very much to go upon: and 
 Sabine did not make his task any the easier : she only repeated 
 
 what he said : 
 
 It is a fine evening.” 
 
 Yes. It is a very fine evening.” 
 
 Impossible to breathe in the yard.” 
 
 Yes. The yard was stifiing.” 
 
 Conversation became very difficult. Sabine discovered that 
 it was time to take the little girl in, and went in herself : and 
 she did not appear again. 
 
 Christophe was afraid she would do the same on the evenings 
 that followed and that she would avoid being left alone with 
 him, as long as Louisa was not there. But on the contrary, 
 the next evening Sabine tried to resume their conversation. 
 She did so deliberately rather than for pleasure: she was 
 obviously taking a great deal of trouble to find subjects of 
 conversation, and bored ^ith the questions she put : questions 
 and answers came between heartbreaking silences. Christophe 
 remembered his first interviews with Otto : but with Sabine 
 their subjects were even more limited than then, and she had 
 not Otto’s patience. When she saw the small success of her 
 endeavors she did not try any more : she had to give herself 
 too much trouble, and she lost interest in it. She said no more, 
 and he followed her lead. 
 
 And then there was sweet peace again. The night was calm 
 once more, and they returned to their inward thoughts. Sabine 
 rocked slowly in her chair, dreaming. Christophe also was 
 dreaming. They said nothing. After half an hour Christophe 
 began to talk to himself, and in a low voice cried out with 
 pleasure in the delicious scent brought by the soft wind that 
 came from a cart of strawberries. Sabine said a word or two 
 in reply. Again they were silent. They were enjoying the 
 charm of these indefinite silences, and trivial words. Their 
 
266 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 dreams were the same, they had but one thought : they did not ' 
 know what it was: they did not admit it to themselves. At 
 eleven they smiled and parted. 
 
 Next day they did not even try to talk: they resumed their 
 sweet silence. At long intervals a word or two let them know 
 that they were thinking of the same things. 
 
 Sabine began to laugh. 
 
 How much better it is/^ she said, not to try to talk ! One 
 thinks one must, and it is so tiresome ! 
 
 Ah ! said Christophe with conviction, if only everybody 
 thought the same.^^ 
 
 They both laughed. They were thinking of Frau Vogel. 
 
 Poor woman said Sabine; ^^how exhausting she is!^^ 
 
 She is never exhausted,^^ replied Christophe gloomily. 
 
 She was tickled by his manner and his jest. 
 
 You think it amusing? he asked. That is easy for you. ; 
 You are sheltered.^^ 
 
 So I am,^^ said Sabine. I lock myself in.’^ She had a ‘ 
 little soft laugh that hardly sounded. Christophe heard it with t 
 delight in the calm of the evening. He snulfed the fresh air^. * 
 luxuriously. ; 
 
 Ah ! It is good to be silent ! he said, stretching his limbs. 
 
 And talking is no use ! said she. 
 
 ^^Yes,"*^ returned Christophe, "^we understand each other so i 
 
 well ! I 
 
 They relapsed into silence. In the darkness they could not | 
 see each other. They were both smiling. ] 
 
 And yet, though they felt the same, when they were together — i 
 or imagined that they did — in reality they knew nothing of i 
 each other. Sabine did not bother about it. Christophe was : 
 more curious. One evening he asked her : 
 
 ^ Do you like music ? 
 
 No,^^ she said simply. It bores me. I don’t understand 
 it.” 
 
 Her frankness charmed him. He was sick of the lies of people 
 who said that they were mad about music, and were bored to 
 death when they heard it : and it seemed to him almost a virtue 
 not to like it and to say so. He asked if Sabine read. 
 
 No. She had no books.” ^ 
 
YOUTH 
 
 267 
 
 He offered to lend her his. 
 
 “ Serious books?” she asked uneasily. 
 
 “ Hot serious books if she did not want them. Poetry.” 
 
 “ But those are serious books.” 
 
 “ Novels, then.” 
 
 She pouted. 
 
 “ They don’t interest you ? ” 
 
 “Yes. She was interested in them; but they were always 
 too long ; she never had the patience to finish them. She for- 
 got the beginning : skipped chapters and then lost the thread. 
 And then she threw the book away.” 
 
 “ Fine interest you take ! ” 
 
 “ Bah ! Enough for a story that is not true. She kept her 
 interest for better things than books.” 
 
 “For the theater, then?” 
 
 “No. . . . No.” 
 
 “ Didn’t she go to the theater ? ” 
 
 “No. It was too hot. There were too many people. So 
 much better at home. The lights tired her eyes. And the 
 actors were so ugly ! ” 
 
 He agreed with her in that. But there were other things in 
 the theater: the play, for instance. 
 
 “ Yes,” she said absently. “ But I have no time.” 
 
 “ What do you do all day ? ” 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 “ There is so much to do.” 
 
 “ True,” said he. “ There is your shop.” 
 
 “ Oh ! ” she said calmly. “ That does not take much time.” 
 
 “Your little girl takes up your time then?” 
 
 “ Oh ! no, poor child ! She is very good and plays by her- 
 self.” 
 
 “Then?” 
 
 He begged pardon for his indiscretion. But she was amused 
 by it. 
 
 “ There are so many things.” 
 
 “ What things ? ” 
 
 “ She could not say. All sorts of things. Getting up, dress- 
 ing, thinking of dinner, cooking dinner, eating dinner, thinking 
 of supper, cleaning her room. . . . And then the day was over. 
 
268 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 . . . And besides you must have a little time for doing noth- 
 ing ! 
 
 And you are not bored 
 
 Never 
 
 Even when you are doing nothing ? 
 
 Especially when I am doing nothing. It is much worse 
 doing something: that bores me/^ 
 
 They looked at each other and laughed. 
 
 ^^You are very happy said Christophe. can’t do 
 
 nothing.” 
 
 It seems to me that you know how.” 
 
 I have been learning lately.” 
 
 Ah ! well, you’ll learn.” 
 
 When he left off talking to her he was at his ease and com- 
 fortable. It was enough for him to see her. He was rid of * 
 his anxieties, and irritations, and the nervous trouble that ; 
 made him sick at heart. When he was talking to her he was i 
 beyond care : and so when he thought of her. He dared not 5 
 admit it to himself : but as soon as he was in her presence, 
 he was filled with a delicious soft emotion that brought him | 
 almost to unconsciousness. At night; he slept as he had never ? 
 done. ; 
 
 When he came back from his work he would look into j 
 this shop. It was not often that he did not see Sabine. They j 
 bowed and smiled. Sometimes she was at the door and 
 then they would exchange a few words: and he would open j 
 the door and call the little girl and hand her a packet of | 
 sweets. ( 
 
 One day he decided to go in. He pretended that he wanted i 
 some waistcoat buttons. She began to look for them : but she ' 
 could not find them. All the buttons were mixed up: it was 
 impossible to pick them out. She was a 'little put out that he 
 should see her untidiness. He laughed at it and bent over the 
 better to see it. 
 
 No,” she said, trying to hide the drawers with her hands. 
 
 Don’t look ! It is a dreadful muddle. ...” 
 
 She went on looking. But Christophe embarrassed her. She 
 was cross, and as she pushed the drawer back she said : 
 
YOUTH 
 
 269 
 
 “I can’t find any. Go to Lisi, in the next street. She 
 is sure to have them. She has everything that people 
 want.” 
 
 He laughed at her way of doing business. 
 
 “ Do you send all your customers away like that ? ” 
 
 “ Well. You are not the first,” said Sabine warmly. 
 
 And yet she was a little ashamed. 
 
 “ It is too much trouble to tidy up,” she said. “ I put off 
 doing it from day to day. ... But I shall certainly do it 
 to-morrow.” 
 
 “Shall I help you?” asked Christophe. 
 
 She refused. She would gladly have accepted : but she dared 
 not, for fear of gossip. And besides it humiliated her. 
 
 They went on talking. 
 
 “ And your buttons ? ” she said to Christophe a moment later. 
 “ Aren’t you going to Lisi ? ” 
 
 “Never,” said Christophe. “I shall wait until you have 
 tidied up.” 
 
 “ Oh ! ” said Sabine, who had already forgotten what she 
 had just said, “ don’t wait all that time ! ” 
 
 Her frankness delighted them both. 
 
 Christophe went to the drawer that she had shut. 
 
 “ Let me look.” 
 
 She ran to prevent his doing so. 
 
 “ No, now please. I am sure I haven’t any.” 
 
 “ I bet you have.” 
 
 At once he found the button he wanted, and was triumphant. 
 He wanted others. He wanted to go on rummaging: but she 
 snatched the box from his hands, and, hurt in her vanity, she 
 began to look herself. 
 
 The light was fading. She went to the window. Christophe 
 sat a little away fron\ her: the little girl clambered on to his 
 knees. He pretended to listen to her chatter and answered her 
 absently. He was looking at Sabine and she knew that he was 
 looking at her. She bent over the box. He could see her neck 
 and a little of her cheek.— And as he looked he saw that she 
 was blushing. And he blushed too. 
 
 The child went on talking. No one answered her. Sabine 
 did not move. Christophe could not see what she was doing: 
 

 270 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 he was sure she was doing nothing: she was not even looking 
 at the box in her hands. The silence went on and on. The 
 little girl grew uneasy and slipped down from Christophe’s 
 knees. 
 
 “ Why don’t you say anything? ” 
 
 Sabine turned sharply and took her in her arms. The box 
 was spilled on the floor: the little girl shouted with glee and 
 ran on hands and knees after the buttons rolling under the 
 furniture. Sabine went to the window again and laid her cheek 
 
 against the pane. She seemed to be absorbed in what she saw 
 i'li'l outside. 
 
 ! ii “ Good-night ! ” said Christophe, ill at ease. She did not 
 
 turn her head, and said in a low voice : 
 
 “ Good-night.” 
 
 On Sundays the house was empty during the afternoon. The < 
 whole family went to church for Vespers. Sabine did not go. j 
 Christophe jokingly reproached her with it once when he saw ! 
 her sitting at her door in the little garden, while the lovely bells 
 were bawling themselves hoarse summoning her. She replied i 
 
 in the same tone that only Mass was compulsory : not Vespers : i 
 it was then no use, and perhaps a little indiscreet to be too I 
 zealous : and she liked to think that God would be rather pleased i 
 than angry with her. \ 
 
 “You have made God in your own image,” said Christophe. j 
 “ I should be so bored if I were in His place,” replied she with j 
 conviction. ) 
 
 “ You would not bother much about the world if you were in ■; 
 His place.” ' i 
 
 “ All that I should ask of it would be that it should not bother 
 itself about me.” 
 
 “ Perhaps it would be none the worse for that,” said Chris- | 
 tophe. V 
 
 “ Tssh ! ” cried Sabine, “ we are being irreligious.” || 
 
 “ I don’t see anything irreligious in saying that God is like | 
 you. I am sure He is flattered.” 1 
 
 “ Will you be silent ! ” said Sabine, half laughing, half angry. I 
 She was beginning to be afraid that God would be scandalized, i 
 
 She quickly turned the conversation. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 271 
 
 "Besides,” she said, “it is the only time in the week when 
 
 one can enjoy the garden in peace.” i , i. 
 
 “ Yes,” said Christophe. “ They are gone. They looked at 
 
 each other. . j j... 
 
 “ How silent it is,” muttered Sabine. We are not used to 
 
 it. One hardly knows where one is. . . .” 
 
 “Oh!” cried Christophe suddenly and angrily. 
 
 “ There are days when I would like to strangle her 1 There 
 was no need to ask of whom he was speaking. 
 
 “And the others?” asked Sabine gaily. 
 
 “ True,” said Christophe, a little abashed. “ There is 
 
 Kosa.” 
 
 “ Poor child ! ” said Sabine. 
 
 They were silent. i, 
 
 “ If only it were always as it is now ! ” sighed Christophe. 
 She raised her laughing eyes to his, and then dropped them. 
 He saw that she was working. 
 
 “ What are you doing?” he asked. 
 
 (The fence of ivy that separated the two gardens was between 
 
 them.) . , 1 . • 
 
 “ Look ! ” she said, lifting a basin that she was holdmg in 
 
 her lap. “ I am shelling peas.” 
 
 She sighed. 
 
 “But that is not unpleasant,” he said, laughing. 
 
 “ Oh! ” she replied, “ it is disgusting, always having to think 
 
 of dinner.” u 
 
 “I bet that if it were possible,” he said, you would go 
 without your dinner rather than have the trouble of cooking 
 it.” 
 
 “That’s true,” cried she. 
 
 “ Wait ! I’ll come and help you.” 
 
 He climbed over the fence and came to her. 
 
 She was sitting in a chair in the door. He sat on a step 
 at her feet. He dipped into her lap for handfuls of green 
 pods; and he poured the little round peas into the basin that 
 Sabine held between her knees. He looked down. He saw 
 Sabine’s black stockings clinging to her ankles and feet— one 
 of her feet was half out of its shoe. He dared not raise his 
 eyes to look at her. 
 
273 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 The air was heavy. The sky was dull and clouds hung low: 
 there was no wind. No leaf stirred. The garden was inclosed 
 within high walls: there was no world beyond them. 
 
 The child had gone out with one of the neighbors. They were 
 alone. They said nothing. They could say nothing. Without 
 looking he went on taking handfuls of peas from Sabine’s 
 lap: his fingers trembled as he touched her: among the fresh 
 smooth pods they met Sabine’s fingers, and they trembled too. 
 They could not go on. They sat still, not looking at each other : 
 she leaned back in her chair with her lips half-open and her 
 arms hanging: he sat at her feet leaning against her: along 
 his shoulder and arm he could feel the warmth of Sabine’s leg. 
 They were breathless. Christophe laid his hands against the 
 stones to cool them: one of his hands touched Sabine’s foot, 
 that she had thrust out of her shoe, and he left it there, could 
 not move it. They shivered. Almost they lost control. Chris- ' 
 tophe’s hand closed on the slender toes of Sabine’s little foot, i 
 Sabine turned cold, the sweat broke out on her brow, she leaned ’ 
 towards Christophe. ... , 
 
 Familiar voices broke the spell. They trembled. Christophe * 
 leaped to his feet and crossed the fence again. Sabine picked ■ 
 up the shells in her lap and went in. In the yard he turned. • 
 She was at her door. They looked at each other. Drops of ; 
 rain were beginning to patter on the leaves of the trees. ... i 
 She closed her door. Frau Vogel and Eosa came in. . . . He i 
 went up to his room. ... > 
 
 In the yellow light of the waning day drowned in the torrents ' 
 of rain, he got up from his desk in response to an irresistible i 
 impulse: he ran to his window and held out his arms to the * 
 opposite window. At the same moment through the opposite 
 window in the half-darkness of the room he saw — ^he thought 
 he saw — Sabine holding out her arms to him. 
 
 He rushed from his room. He went downstairs. He ran to 
 the garden fence. At the risk of being seen he was about to 
 clear it. But when he looked at the window at which she had 
 appeared, he saw that the shutters were closed. The house 
 seemed to be asleep. He stopped. Old Euler, going to his 
 cellar, saw him and called him. He retraced his footsteps. He 
 thought he must have been dreaming. > 
 
YOUTH 
 
 373 
 
 It was not long before Kosa began to see what was happening. 
 She had no diffidence and she did not yet know what jealousy 
 was. She was ready to give wholly and to ask nothing in return. 
 But if she was sorrowfully resigned to not being loved by 
 Christophe, she had never considered the possibility of Chris- 
 tophe loving another. 
 
 One evening, after dinner, she had just finished a piece of 
 embroidery at which she had been working for months. She 
 was happy, and wanted for once in a way to leave her work and 
 go and talk to Christophe. She waited until her mother’s 
 back was turned and then slipped from the room. She crept 
 from the house like a truant. She wanted to go and confound 
 Christophe, who had vowed scornfully that she would never 
 finish her work. She thought it would be a good joke to go 
 and take them by surprise in the street. It was no use the 
 poor child knowing how Christophe felt towards her: she was 
 always inclined to measure the pleasure which others should 
 have at seeing her by that which she had herself in meeting 
 them. 
 
 She went out. Christophe and Sabine were sitting as usual 
 in front of the house. There was a catch at Rosa’s heart. And 
 yet she did not stop for the irrational idea that was in her: 
 and she chaffed Christophe warmly. The sound of her shrill 
 voice in the silence of the night struck on Christophe like a 
 false note. He started in his chair, and frowned angrily. Rosa 
 waved her embroidery in his face triumphantly. Christophe 
 snubbed her impatiently. 
 
 “ It is finished — finished ! ” insisted Rosa. 
 
 “ Oh ! well — go and begin another,” said Christophe curtly. 
 
 Rosa was crestfallen. All her delight vanished. Christophe 
 went on crossly:. 
 
 “And when you have done thirty, when you are very old, 
 you will at least be able to say to yourself that your life has 
 not been wasted ! ” 
 
 Rosa was near weeping. 
 
 “ How cross you are, Christophe ! ” she said. 
 
 Christophe was ashamed and spoke kindly to her. She was 
 satisfied with so little that she regained confidence: and she 
 began once more to chatter noisily: she could not speak low, 
 
274 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 she shouted deafeningly, like everybody in the house. In spite 
 of himself Christophe could not conceal his ill-humor. At 
 first he answered her with a few irritated monosyllables: then 
 he said nothing at all, turned his back on her, fidgeted in his 
 chair, and ground his teeth as she rattled on. Kosa saw that 
 he was losing his temper and knew that she ought to stop: 
 but she went on louder than ever. Sabine, a few yards away, 
 in the dark, said nothing, watched the scene with ironic im- 
 passivity. Then she was weary and, feeling that the evening 
 was wasted, she got up and went in. Christophe only noticed 
 her departure after she had gone. He got up at once and 
 without ceremony went away with a curt Good-evening/^ 
 
 Eosa was left alone in the street, and looked in bewilderment 
 at the door by which he had just gone in. Tears came to her , 
 eyes. She rushed in, went up to her room without a sound, ’i 
 so as not to have to talk to her mother, undressed hurriedly, '1 
 and when she was in her bed, buried under the clothes, sobbed j 
 and sobbed. She made no attempt to think over what had ' 
 passed : she did not ask herself whether Christophe loved Sabine, ^ 
 or whether Christophe and Sabine could not bear her : she knew * 
 only that all was lost, that life was useless, that there was noth- ' 
 ing left to her but death. ; 
 
 Next morning thought came to her once more with eternal 4 
 illusive hope. She recalled the events of the evening and told 1 
 herself that she was wrong to attach so much importance to j 
 them. No doubt Christophe did not love her: she was resigned \ 
 to that, though in her heart she thought, though she did not ) 
 admit the thought, that in the end she would win his love i 
 by her love for him. But what reason had she for thinking < 
 that there was anything between Sabine and him? How could 
 he, so clever as he was, love a little creature whose insignificance 
 and mediocrity were patent? She was reassured, — ^but for that 
 she did not watch Christophe any the less closely. She saw 
 nothing all day, because there was nothing to see: but Chris- 
 tophe seeing her prowling about him all day long without any 
 sort of explanation was peculiarly irritated by it. She set the 
 crown on her efforts in the evening when she appeared again 
 and sat with them in the street. The scene of the previous 
 evening was repeated. Eosa talked alone. But Sabine did not * 
 
YOUTH 
 
 275 
 
 ■wait so long before she went indoors: and Christophe followed 
 her example. Eosa could no longer pretend that her presence 
 was not unwelcome: but the unhappy girl tried to deceive her- 
 self. She did not perceive that she could have done nothing 
 worse than to try so to impose on herself : and with her usual 
 clumsiness she went on through the succeeding days. 
 
 Next day with Eosa sitting by his side Christophe waited in 
 vain for Sabine to appear. 
 
 The day after Eosa was alone. They had given up the 
 struggle. But she gained nothing by it save resentment from 
 Christophe, who was furious at being robbed of his beloved 
 evenings, his only happiness. He was the less inclined to for- 
 give her, for being absorbed with his own feelings, he had no 
 suspicion of Eosa’s. 
 
 Sabine had known them for some time: she knew that Eosa 
 was jealous even before she knew that she herself was in love: 
 but she said nothing about it: and£,with the natural cruelty 
 of a pretty woman, who is certain of her victory, in quizzical 
 silence she watched the futile efforts of her awkward rival. 
 
 Left mistress of the field of battle Eosa gazed piteously upon 
 the results of her tactics. The best thing she could have done 
 would have been not to persist, and to leave Christophe alone, 
 at least for the time being: but that was not what she did: 
 and as the worst thing she could have done was to talk to him 
 about Sabine, that was precisely what she did. 
 
 With a fluttering at her heart, by way of sounding him, she 
 said timidly that Sabine was pretty. Christophe replied curtly 
 that she was very pretty. And although Eosa might have fore- 
 seen the reply she would provoke, her heart thumped when 
 she heard him. She knew that Sabine was pretty : but she had 
 never particularly remarked it: now she saw her for the first 
 time with the eyes of Christophe : she saw her delicate features, 
 her short nose, her fine mouth, her slender figure, her graceful 
 movements. . . . Ah! how sad! . . . What would not she have 
 given to possess Sabine’s body, and live in it! She did not go 
 closely into why it should be preferred to her own! . . . Her 
 own ! . . . What had she done to possess such a body ? What 
 a burden it was upon her. How ugly it seemed to her! It 
 
276 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 was odious to her. And to think that nothing but death could 
 ever free her from it! . . . She was at once too proud and 
 too humble to complain that she was not loved: she had no 
 right to do so: and she tried even more to humble herself. 
 But her instinct revolted. . . . No. It was not just! . . . Why 
 should she have such a body, she, and not Sabine? . . . And 
 why should Sabine be loved? What had she done to be loved? 
 
 . . . Eosa saw her with no kindly eye, lazy, careless, egoistic, 
 indifferent towards everybody, not looking after her house, or 
 her child, or anybody, loving only herself, living only for sleep- 
 ing, dawdling, and doing nothing. . . . And it was such a 
 woman who pleased . . . who pleased Christophe. . . . Chris- 
 tophe who was so severe, Christophe who was so discerning, 
 Christophe whom she esteemed and admired more than an}^- 
 body ! . . . How could Christophe be blind to it ? — She could 
 not help from time to time dropping an unkind remark about " 
 Sabine in his hearing. She did not wish to do so: but the ' 
 impulse was stronger than herself. She was always sorry for ' 
 it, for she was a kind creature and disliked speaking ill of t 
 anybody. But she was the more sorry because she drew down ^ 
 on herself such cruel replies as showed how much Christophe • 
 was in love. He did not mince matters. Hurt in his love, : 
 he tried to hurt in return: and succeeded. Eosa would make - 
 no reply and go out with her head bowed, and her lips tight ! 
 pressed to keep from crying. She thought that it was her own { 
 fault, that she deserved it for having hurt Christophe by attack- | 
 ing the object of his love. ' 
 
 Her mother was less patient. Frau Vogel, who saw every- I 
 thing, and old Euler, also, had not been slow to notice Chris- ' 
 tophe’s interviews with their young neighbor : it was not difficult 
 to guess their romance. Their secret projects of one day marry- 
 ing Eosa to Christophe were set at naught by it : and that seemed 
 to them a personal affront of Christophe, although he was not 
 supposed to know that they had disposed of him without con- 
 sulting his wishes. But Amalia^s despotism did not admit of 
 ideas contrary to her own : and it seemed scandalous to her that 
 Christophe should have disregarded the contemptuous opinion 
 she had often expressed of Sabine. 
 
 She did not hesitate to repeat it for his benefit. Whenever 
 
YOUTH 
 
 277 
 
 he was present she found some excuse for talking about her 
 neighbor: she cast about for the most injurious things to say 
 of her, things which might sting Christophe most cruelly: and 
 with the crudity of her point of view and language she had 
 no difficulty in finding them. The ferocious instinct of a 
 woman, so superior to that of a man in the art of doing evil, 
 as well as of doing good, made her insist less on Sabine’s lazi- 
 ness and moral failings than on her uncleanliness. Her in- 
 discreet and prying eye had watched through the window for 
 proofs of it in the secret processes of Sabine’s toilet: and she 
 exposed them with coarse complacency. When from decency 
 she could not say everything she left the more to be understood. 
 
 Christophe would go pale wfith shame and anger: he would 
 go white as a sheet and his lips would quiver. Eosa, foreseeing 
 what must happen, would implore her mother to have done: 
 she would even try to defend Sabine. But she only succeeded 
 in making Amalia more aggressive. 
 
 And suddenly Christophe would leap from his chair. He 
 would thump on the table and begin to shout that it was mon- 
 strous to speak of a woman, to spy upon her, to expose her 
 misfortunes: only an evil mind could so persecute a creature 
 who was good, charming, quiet, keeping herself to herself, and 
 doing no harm to anybody, and speaking no ill of anybody. 
 But they were making a great mistake if they thought they 
 could do her harm : they only made him more sympathetic and 
 made her kindness shine forth only the more clearly. 
 
 Amalia would feel then that she had gone too far: but she 
 was hurt by feeling it: and, shifting her ground, she would 
 say that it was only too easy to talk of kindness : that the word 
 was called in as an excuse for everything. Heavens! It was 
 easy enough to be thought kind when you never bothered about 
 anything or anybody, and never did your duty! 
 
 To which Christophe would reply that the first duty of all 
 was to make life pleasant for others, but that there were people 
 for whom duty meant only ugliness, unpleasantness, tiresome- 
 ness, and everything that interferes with the liberty of others 
 and annoys and injures their neighbors, their servants, their 
 families, and themselves. God save us from such people, and 
 such a notion of duty, as from the plague ! . . . 
 
278 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 They would grow venomous. Amalia would be very bitter. 
 Christophe would not budge an inch. — And the result of it all 
 was that henceforth Christophe made a point of being seen con- 
 tinually with Sabine. He would go and knock at her door. 
 He would talk gaily and laugh with her. He would choose! 
 moments when Amalia and Eosa could see him. Amalia would 
 avenge herself with angry words. But the innocent Eosa^s heart 
 was rent and torn by this refinement of cruelty: she felt that 
 he detested them and wished to avenge himself: and she wept 
 bitterly. 
 
 So, Christophe, who had suffered so much from injustice, 
 learned unjustly to inflict suffering. 
 
 Some time after that Sabine’s brother, a miller at Landegg, 
 a little town a few miles away, was to celebrate the christening 
 of a child. Sabine was to be godmother. She invited Chris-*| 
 tophe. He had no liking for these functions: but for the< 
 pleasure of annoying the Vogels and of being with Sabine he? 
 accepted eagerly. 
 
 Sabine gave herself the malicious satisfaction of inviting?, 
 Amalia and Eosa also, being quite sure that they would refuse.? 
 They did. Eosa was longing to accept. She did not dislike 
 Sabine: sometimes even her heart was filled with tenderness, 
 for her because Christophe loved her: sometimes she longed to; 
 tell her so and to throw her arms about her neck. But there# 
 was her mother and her mother’s example. She stiffened her-j 
 self in her pride and refused. Then, when they had gone, and^ 
 she thought of them together, happy together, driving in the( 
 country on the lovely July day, while she was left shut up ini 
 her room, with a pile of linen to mend, with her mother grum- 
 bling by her side, she thought she must choke: and she cursed 
 her pride. Oh! if there were still time! . . . Alas! if it were 
 all to do again, she would have done the same. . . . 
 
 The miller had sent his wagonette to fetch Christophe and 
 Sabine. They took up several guests from the town and the 
 farms on the road. It was fresh dry weather. The bright sun 
 made the red berries of the brown trees by the road and the 
 wild cherry trees in the fields shine. Sabine was smiling. Her 
 pale face was rosy under the keen wind. Christophe had her 
 
little girl on his knees. They did not try to talk to each other . 
 they talked to their neighbors without caring to whom or of 
 what: they were glad to hear each other’s voices: they were 
 glad to be driving in the same carriage. They looked at each 
 other in childish glee as they pointed out to each other a house, 
 a tree, a passerby. Sabine loved the country: but she hardly 
 ever went into it: her incurable laziness made excursions im- 
 possible: it was almost a year since she had been outside the 
 town : and so she delighted in the smallest things she saw. They 
 were not new to Christophe : but he loved Sabine, and like all 
 lovers he saw everything through her eyes, and felt all her 
 thrills of pleasure, and all and more than the emotion that 
 was in her : for, merging himself with his beloved, he endowed 
 her with all that he was himself. 
 
 When they came to the mill they found in the yard all the 
 people of the farm and the other guests, who received them 
 with a deafening noise. The fowls, the ducks, and the dogs 
 joined in. The miller, Bertold, a great fair-haired fellow, 
 square of head and shoulders, as big and tall as Sabine was 
 slight, took his little sister in his arms and put her down gently 
 as though he were afraid of breaking her. It was not long 
 before Christophe saw that the little sister, as usual, did just 
 as she liked with the giant, and that while he made heavy fun 
 of her whims, and her laziness, and her thousand and one fail- 
 ings, he was at her feet, her slave. She was used to it, and 
 thought it natural. She did nothing to win love: it seemed 
 to her right that she should be loved : and if she were not, did 
 not care : that is why everybody loved her. 
 
 Christophe made another discovery not so pleasing. For a 
 christening a godfather is necessary as well as a godmother, and 
 the godfather has certain rights over the godmother, rights 
 which he does not often renounce, especially when she is young 
 and pretty. He learned this suddenly when he saw a fa^Jer, 
 ^ with fair curly hair, and rings in his ears, go up to S™ine 
 ’ laughing and kiss her on both cheeks. Instead of telling IiLm- 
 t self that he was an ass to have forgotten this privilege, and 
 more than an ass to be huffy about it, he was cross with Sabine, 
 as though she had deliberately drawn him into the snare. His 
 crossness grew worse when he found himself separated from 
 
 h 
 
280 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 her during the ceremony. Sabine turned round every now an 
 then as the procession wound across the fields and threw hi^ 
 a friendly glance. He pretended not to see it. She felt thj‘ 
 he was annoyed, and guessed why : but it did not trouble he] . 
 it amused her. If she had had a real squabble with some or 
 she loved, in spite of all the pain it might have caused he 
 she would never have made the least effort to break down an 
 misunderstanding : it would have been too much trouble. Ever; 
 thing would come right if it were only left alone. 
 
 At dinner, sitting between the miller’s wife and a fat gi: ' 
 with red cheeks whom he had escorted to the service withoi* 
 ever paying any attention to her, it occurred to Christophe t; 
 turn and look at his neighbor: and, finding her comely, out c ‘ 
 revenge, he fiirted desperately with her with the idea of catch 
 ing Sabine’s attention. He succeeded: but Sabine was not tb 
 sort of woman to be jealous of anybody or anything: so lon^ 
 as she was loved, she did not care whether her lover did o. 
 did not pay court to others: and instead of being angry, sh 
 was delighted to see Christophe amusing himself. From th 
 other end of the table she gave him her most charming smile/ 
 Christophe was disgruntled : there was no doubt then that Sabin 
 was indifferent to him: and he relapsed into his sulky mood 
 from which nothing could draw him, neither the soft eyes of 
 his neighbor, nor the wine that he drank. Finally, when h 
 was half asleep, he asked himself angrily what on earth h*. 
 was doing at such an interminable orgy, and did not hear th 
 miller propose a trip on the water to take certain of the guest 
 home. Nor did he see Sabine beckoning him to come with hei\ 
 so that they should be in the same boat. Wlien it occurred^! 
 to him, there was no room for him : and he had to go in anotheT- 
 boat. This fresh mishap was not likely to make him mon 
 amiable until he discovered that he was to be rid of almos' 
 alkhis companions on the way. Then he relaxed and was pleas 
 antt Besides the pleasant afternoon on the water, the pleasure 
 of Fowing, the merriment of these good people, rid him of hi: 
 ill-humor. As Sabine was no longer there he lost his self 
 consciousness, and had no scruple about being frankly amusec 
 like the others. 
 
 They were in their boats. They followed each other closelj^ 
 
YOUTH 
 
 281 
 
 and tried to pass each other. They threw laughing insults at 
 each other. When the boats bumped Christophe saw Sabine’s 
 smiling face : and he could not help smiling too : they felt that 
 peace was made. He knew that very soon they would return 
 together. 
 
 They began to sing part songs. Each voice took up a line 
 in time and the refrain was taken up in chorus. The people 
 in the different boats, some way from each other, now echoed 
 each other. The notes skimmed over the water like birds. From 
 time to time a boat would go in to the bank: a few peasants 
 would climb out : they would stand there and wave to the boats 
 as they went further and further away. Little by little they 
 were disbanded. One by one voices left the chorus. At last they 
 were alone, Christophe, Sabine, and the miller. 
 
 They came back in the same boat, floating down the river. 
 Christophe and Bertold held the oars, but they did not row. 
 Sabine sat in the stern facing Christophe, and talked to her 
 brother and looked at Christophe. Talking so, they were able 
 to look at each other undisturbedly. They could never have 
 done so had the words ceased to flow. The deceitful words 
 seemed to say : “ It is not you that I see.” But their eyes said 
 to each other: ‘'Who are you? Who are you? You that I 
 love ! ... You that I love, whoever you be ! . . .” 
 
 The sky was clouded, mists rose from the fields, the river 
 steamed, the sun went down behind the clouds. Sabine shivered 
 and wrapped her little black shawl round her head and shoul- 
 ders. She seemed to be tired. As the boat, hugging the bank, 
 passed under the spreading branches of the willows, she closed 
 her eyes: her thin face was pale: her lips were sorrowful: she 
 did not stir, she seemed to suffer, — ^to have suffered, — to be 
 dead. Christophe’s heart ached. He leaned over to her. She 
 opened her eyes again and saw Chfistophe’s uneasy eyes upon 
 her and she smiled into them. It was like a ray of sunli^t 
 to him. He asked in a whisper: to 
 
 “ Are you ill ? ” ^ 
 
 She shook her head and said : 
 
 “ I am cold.” 
 
 The two men put their overcoats about her, wrapped up 
 her feet, her legs, her knees, like a child being tucked up in 
 
283 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 bed. She suffered it and thanked them with her eyes. A fine, 
 cold rain was beginning to fall. They took the oars and went 
 quietly home. Heavy clouds hung in the sky. The river was 
 inky black. Lights showed in the windows of the houses here 
 and there in the fields. When they reached the mill the rain 
 was pouring down and Sabine was numbed. 
 
 They lit a large fire in the kitchen and waited until the deluge 
 should be over. But it only grew worse, and the wind rose. 
 They had to drive three miles to get back to the town. The 
 miller declared that he would not let Sabine go in such weather : 
 and he proposed that they should both spend the night in the 
 farmliouse. Christophe was reluctant to accept: he looked at 
 Sabine for counsel : but her eyes were fixed on the fire on the 
 hearth : it was as though they were afraid of influencing Chris- 
 tophe’s decision. But when Christophe had said “ Yes,” she , 
 turned to him and she was blushing — (or was it the reflection , 
 of the fire?) — and he saw that she was pleased. ; 
 
 A jolly evening. . . . The rain stormed outside. In the black , 
 chimney the fire darted jets of golden sparks. They spun round 
 and round. Their fantastic shapes were marked against the * 
 wall. The miller showed Sabine’s little girl how to make, 
 shadows with her hands. The child laughed and was not alto- 
 gether at her ease. Sabine leaned over the fire and poked it: 
 mechanically with a heavy pair of tongs : she was a little weary, ; 
 and smiled dreamily, while, without listening, she nodded to; 
 her sister-in-law’s chatter of her domestic affairs. Christophe | 
 sat in the shadow by the miller’s side and watched Sabine smil-: 
 ing. He knew that she was smiling at him. They never had^ 
 an opportunity of being alone all evening, or of looking at each| 
 other: they sought none. 
 
 They parted early. Their rooms were adjoining, and com- 
 
 f nicated by a door. Christophe examined the door and found 
 t the lock was on Sabine’s side. He went to bed and tried 
 sleep. The rain was pattering against the windows. The 
 wind howled in the chimney. On the floor above him a door 
 was banging. Outside the window a poplar bent and groaned 
 under the tempest. Christophe could not close his eyes. He 
 was thinking that he was under the same roof, near her. A 
 
YOUTH 
 
 283 
 
 wall only divided them. He heard no sound in Sabine’s room. 
 But he thought he could see her. He sat up in his bed and 
 called to her in a low voice through the wall : tender, passionate 
 words he said : he held out his arms to her. And it seemed to 
 him that she was holding out her arms to him. In his heart 
 he heard the beloved voice answering him, repeating his words, 
 calling low to him : and he did not know whether it was he 
 who asked and answered all the questions, or whether it was 
 really she who spoke. The voice came louder, the call to him: 
 he could not resist : he leaped from his bed : he groped his way 
 to the door: he did not wish to open it: he was reassured by 
 the closed door. And when he laid his hand once more on the 
 handle he found that the door was opening. . . . 
 
 He stopped dead. He closed it softly : he opened it once more : 
 he closed it again. Was it not closed just now? Yes. He was 
 sure it was. Who had opened it? . . . His heart beat so that 
 he choked. He leaned over his bed, and sat down to breathe 
 again. He was overwhelmed by his passion. It robbed him 
 of the power to see or hear or move: his whole body shook. 
 He was in terror of this unknown joy for which for months 
 he had been craving, which was with him now, near him, so 
 that nothing could keep it from him. Suddenly the violent 
 boy filled with love was afraid of these desires newly realized 
 and revolted from them. He was ashamed of them, ashamed 
 of what he wished to do. He was too much in love to dare 
 to enjoy what he loved: he was afraid: he would have done 
 anything to escape his happiness. Is it only possible to love, 
 to love, at the cost of the profanation of the beloved? . . . 
 
 He went to the door again : and trembling with love and fear, 
 with his hand on the latch he could not bring himself to open it. 
 
 And on the other side of the door, standing barefooted on 
 the tiled floor, shivering with cold, was Sabine. 
 
 So they stayed . . . for how long ? Minutes ? Hours ? . . . 
 They did not know that they were there : and yet they did know. 
 They held out their arms to each other, — he was overwhelmed 
 by a love so great that he had not the courage to enter, — she 
 called to him, waited for him, trembled lest he should enter. 
 
 . . And when at last he made up his mind to enter, she had 
 just made up her mind to turn the lock again. 
 
384 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Then he cursed himself for a fool. He leaned against the 
 door with all his strength. With his lips to the lock he implored 
 her; 
 
 “ Open.” 
 
 He called to Sabine in a whisper: she could hear his heated 
 breathing. She stayed motionless near the door : she was frozen : 
 her teeth were chattering: she had no strength either to open 
 the door or to go to bed again. ... • 
 
 The storm made the trees crack and the doors in the house 
 bang. . . . They turned away and went to their beds, worn out, 
 sad and sick at heart. The cocks crowed huskily. The first 
 light of dawn crept through the wet windows, a wretched, pale 
 dawn, drowned in the persistent rain. . . . 
 
 Christophe got up as soon as he could: he went down to the 
 kitchen and talked to the people there. He was in a hurry to 
 be gone and was afraid of being left alone with Sabine again. •, 
 He was almost relieved when the miller’s wife said that Sabine : 
 was unwell, and had caught cold during the drive and would * 
 not be going that morning. t 
 
 His journey home was melancholy. He refused to drive, * 
 and walked through the soaking fields, in the yellow mist that ' 
 covered the earth, the trees, the houses, with a shroud. Like : 
 the light, life seemed to be blotted out. Everything loomed like 
 a specter. He was like a specter himself. I 
 
 i 
 
 At home he found angry faces. They were all scandalized | 
 at his having passed the night God knows where with Sabine. ; 
 He shut himself up in his room and applied himself to his| 
 work. Sabine returned the next day and shut herself up also. ! 
 They avoided meeting each other. The weather was still wet 
 and cold : neither of them went out. They saw each other 
 through their closed windows. Sabine was wrapped up by 
 her fire, dreaming. Christophe was buried in his papers. They 
 bowed to each other a little coldly and reservedly and then pre- 
 tended to be absorbed again. They did not take stock of what 
 they were fefeling : they were angry with each other, with them- 
 selves, with things generally. The night at the farmhouse had 
 been thrust aside in their memories: they were ashamed of it, 
 and did not know whether they were more ashamed of their 
 
YOUTH 
 
 285 
 
 folly or of not having yielded to it. It was painful to them 
 to see each other: for that made them remember things from 
 which they wished to escape: and by joint agreement they 
 retired into the depths of their rooms so as utterly to forget 
 each other. But that was impossible, and they suffered keenly 
 under the secret hostility which they felt was between them. 
 Christophe was haunted by the expression of dumb rancor which 
 he had once seen in Sabine^s cold eyes. From such thoughts 
 her suffering was not less: in vain did she struggle against 
 them, and even deny them: she could not rid herself of them. 
 They were augmented by her shame that Christophe should have 
 guessed what was happening within her: and the shame of 
 having offered herself . . . the shame of having offered herself 
 without having given. 
 
 Christophe gladly accepted an opportunity which cropped up 
 to go to Cologne and Diisseldorf for some concerts. He was 
 glad to spend two or three weeks away from home. Prepara- 
 tion for the concerts and the composition of a new work that 
 he wished to play at them took up all his time and he succeeded 
 in forgetting his obstinate memories. They disappeared from 
 Sabine’s mind too, and she fell back into the torpor of her 
 usual life. They came to think of each other with indifference. 
 Had they really loved each other? They doubted it. Chris- 
 tophe was on the point of leaving for Cologne without saying 
 good-bye to Sabine. 
 
 On the evening before his departure they were brought to- 
 gether again by some imperceptible influence. It was one of 
 the Sunday afternoons when everybody was at church. Chris- 
 tophe had gone out too to make his final preparations for the 
 journey. Sabine was sitting in her tiny garden warming her- 
 self in the last rays of the sun. Christophe came home: he 
 was in a hurry and his first inclination when he saw her was 
 to bow and pass on. But something held him back as he was 
 passing: was it Sabine’s paleness, or some indefinable feeling: 
 remorse, fear, tenderness? ... He stopped, turned to Sabine, 
 and, leaning over the fence, he bade her good-evening. Without 
 replying she held out her hand. Her smile was all kindness, — 
 such kindness as he had never seen in her. Her gesture seemed 
 to say : Peace between us. . . He took her hand over the 
 
286 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 fence, bent over it, and kissed it. She made, no attempt to 
 withdraw it. He longed to go down on his knees and say, 
 
 I love you.” . . . They lookfed at each other in silence. But 
 they offered no explanation. After a moment she removed her 
 hand and turned her head. He turned too to hide his emotion. 
 Then they looked at each other again with untroubled eyes. 
 The sun was setting. Subtle shades of color, violet, orange, and 
 mauve, chased across the cold clear sky. She shivered and drew 
 her shawl closer about her shoulders with a movement that 
 he knew well. He asked: 
 
 “ How are you ? ” 
 
 She made a little grimace, as if the question were not worth 
 answering. They went on looking at each other and were happy. 
 It was as though they had lost, and had just found each other 
 again. ... 
 
 At last he broke the silence and said : 
 
 “ I am going away to-morrow.” , 
 
 There was alarm in Sabine’s eyes. t 
 
 “ Going away ? ” she said. j 
 
 He added quickly: i 
 
 “ Oh ! only for two or three weeks.” ! 
 
 “ Two or three weeks,” she said in dismay. i 
 
 He explained that he was engaged for the concerts, but that , 
 when he came back he would not stir all winter. . 
 
 Winter,” she said. “ That is a long time off. ...” • 
 
 “ Oh ! no. It will soon be here.” | 
 
 She saddened and did not look at him. 
 
 “When shall we meet again?” she asked a moment later. | 
 He did not understand the question: he had already an-'s 
 
 swered it. , .1 
 
 “ As soon as I come back : in a fortnight, or three weeks at 
 
 mosV’ 
 
 She still looked dismayed. He tried to tease her : 
 
 “ It won’t be long for you,” he said. “ You will sleep.” 
 
 Yes/’ said Sabine. 
 
 She looked down, she tried to smile : but her eyes trembled. 
 “ Christophe ! . . .” she said suddenly, turning towards him. 
 There was a note of distress in her voice. She seemed to say: 
 “ Stay ! Don’t go ! . . .” 
 
YOUTH 
 
 287 
 
 He took her hand, looked at her, did not understand the 
 importance she attached to his fortnight’s absence: but he was 
 only waiting for a word from her to say: 
 
 “ I will stay. . . 
 
 And just as she was going to speak, the front door was opened 
 and Eosa appeared. Sabine withdrew her hand from Chris- 
 tophe’s and went hurriedly into her house. At the door she 
 turned and looked at him once more and disappeared. 
 
 Christophe thought he should see her again in the evening. 
 But he was watched by the Vogels, and followed everywhere 
 by his mother: as usual, he was behindhand with his prepara- 
 tions for his journey and could not find time to leave the house 
 for a moment. 
 
 Next day he left very early. As he passed Sabine’s door he 
 longed to go in, to tap at the window : it hurt him to leave her 
 without saying good-bye : for he had been interrupted by Eosa 
 before he had had time to do so. But he thought she must be 
 asleep and would be cross with him if he woke her up. And 
 then, what could he say to her? It was too late now to abandon 
 his journey: and what if she were to ask him to do so? . . . He 
 did not admit to himself that he was not averse to exercising his 
 power over her, — if need be, causing her a little pain. ... He 
 did not take seriously the grief that his departure brought 
 Sabine: and he thought that his short absence would increase 
 the tenderness which, perhaps, she had for him. 
 
 He ran to the station. In spite of everything he was a little 
 remorseful. But as soon as the train had started it was all for- 
 gotten. There was youth in his heart. Gaily he saluted the old 
 town with its roofs and towers rosy under the sun: and with 
 the carelessness of those who are departing he said good-bye 
 to those whom he was leaving, and thought no more of them. 
 
 The whole time that he was at Diisseldorf and Cologne Sabine 
 never once recurred to his mind. Taken up from morning till 
 night with rehearsals and concerts, dinners and talk, busied 
 with a thousand and one new things and the pride and satis- 
 faction of his success he had no time for recollection. Once 
 only, on the fifth night after he left home, he woke suddenly 
 after a dream and knew that he had been thinking of her in 
 
288 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 his sleep and that the thought of her had wakened him up: 
 but he could not remember how he had been thinking of her. 
 He was unhappy and feverish. It was not surprising: he had 
 been playing at a concert that evening, and when he left the 
 hall he had been dragged off to a supper at which he had drunk 
 several glasses of champagne. He could not sleep and got up. 
 He was obsessed by a musical idea. He pretended that it was 
 that which had broken in upon his sleep and he wrote it down. 
 As he read through it he was astonished to see how sad it 
 was. There was no sadness in him when he wrote: at least, 
 so he thought. But he remembered that on other occasions 
 when he had been sad he had only been able to write joyous 
 music, so gay that it offended his mood. He gave no more 
 thought to it. He was used to the surprises of his mind world 
 without ever being able to understand them. He went to sleep 
 at once, and knew no more until the next morning. | 
 
 He extended his stay by three or four days. It pleased him ? 
 to prolong it, knowing he could return whenever he liked: he ’ 
 was in no hurry to go home. It was only when he was on the y 
 way, in the train, that the thought of Sabine came back to him. * 
 He had not written to her. He was even careless enough never ; 
 to have taken the trouble to ask at the post-ofBce for any letters ; 
 that might have been written to him. He took a secret delight ^ 
 in his silence: he knew that at home he was expected, that he I 
 was loved. . . . Loved? She had never told him so: he had \ 
 never told her so. No doubt they knew it and had no need to \ 
 tell it. And yet there was nothing so precious as the certainty | 
 of such an avow^al. Why had they waited so long to make it ? i 
 WTien they had been on the point of speaking always something ‘ 
 — some mischance, shyness, embarrassment, — had hindered them. 
 Why ? Why ? How much time they had lost ! ... He longed 
 to hear the dear words from the lips of the beloved. He longed ^ 
 to say them to her: he said them aloud in the empty carriage. ; 
 As he neared the town he was torn with impatience, a sort of : 
 agony. . . . Faster! Faster! Oh! To think that in an hour 
 he would see her again! ... | 
 
 It was half-past six in the morning when he reached home. 
 Nobody was up yet. Sabine’s windows were closed. He went ' 
 
YOUTH 
 
 289 
 
 into the yard on tiptoe so that she should not hear him. He 
 chuckled at the thought of taking her by surprise. He went 
 up to his room. His mother was asleep. He washed and brushed 
 his hair without making any noise. He was hungry: but he was 
 afraid of waking Louisa by rummaging in the pantry. He 
 heard footsteps in the yard: he opened his window softly and 
 saw Eosa^ first up as usual, beginning to sweep. He called her 
 gently. She started in glad surprise when she saw him: then 
 she looked solemn. He thought she was still offended with him : 
 but for the moment he was in a very good temper. He went 
 down to her. 
 
 ^^Eosa, Eosa/^ he said gaily, ^^give me something to eat or 
 I ^hall eat you ! I am dying of hunger ! 
 
 Eosa smiled and took him to the kitchen on the ground floor. 
 She poured him out a bowl of milk and then could not refrain 
 from plying him with a string of questions about his travels 
 and his concerts. But although he was quite ready to answer 
 them, — (in the happiness of his return he was almost glad to 
 hear Eosa^s chatter once more) — Eosa stopped suddenly in the 
 middle of her cross-examination, her face fell, her eyes turned 
 away, and she became sorrowful. Then her chatter broke out 
 again : but soon it seemed that she thought it out of place 
 and once more she stopped short. And he noticed it then and 
 said : 
 
 WTiat is the matter, Eosa ? Are you cross with me ? 
 
 She shook her head violently in denial, and turning to- 
 wards him with her usual suddenness took his arm with both 
 hands : 
 
 Oh ! Christophe !...’’ she said. 
 
 He was alarmed. He let his piece of bread fall from his 
 hands. 
 
 What ! What is the matter ? he stammered. 
 
 She said again: 
 
 Oh ! Christophe ! . . . Such an awful thing has happened ! 
 
 He thrust away from the table. He stuttered : 
 
 H— here?^^ 
 
 She pointed to the house on the other side of the yard. 
 
 He cried : 
 
 Sabine!’^ 
 
290 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHB 
 
 / 
 
 She wept : j 
 
 “ She is dead.” 
 
 Christophe saw nothing. He got up : he almost fell : he clung 
 to the table, upset the things on it : he wished to cry out. He 
 suffered fearful agony. He turned sick. 
 
 Eosa hastened to his side: she was frightened: she held his 
 head and wept. 
 
 As sopn as he could speak he said: 
 
 “ It is not true ! ” 
 
 He knew that it was true. But he wanted to deny it, he 
 wanted to pretend that it could not be. When he saw Eosa’s 
 face wet with tears he could doubt no more and he sobbed 
 aloud. 
 
 Eosa raised her head: 
 
 “ Christophe ! ” she said. ^ 
 
 He hid his face in his hands. She leaned towards him. ‘ 
 
 “ Christophe ! . . . Mamma is coming ! . . .” j 
 
 Christophe got up. , | 
 
 “ No, no,” he said. “ She must not see me.” i 
 
 She took his hand and led him, stumbling and blinded by | 
 his tears, to a little woodshed which opened on to the yard. 
 She closed the door. They were in darkness. He sat on a ; 
 block of wood used for chopping sticks. She sat on the fagots. : 
 Sounds from without were deadened and distant. There he | 
 could weep without fear of being heard. He let himself go | 
 and sobbed furiously. Eosa had never seen him weep : she had | 
 even thought that he could not weep: she knew only her own 
 girlish tears and such despair in a man filled her with terror | 
 and pity. She was filled with a passionate love for Christophe. 
 
 It was an absolutely unselfish love: an immense need of sacri- j 
 fice, a maternal self-denial, a hunger to suffer for him, to take j 
 his sorrow upon herself. She put her arm round his shoulders. | 
 Dear Christophe,’^ she said, do not cry ! ” | 
 
 Christophe turned from her. 
 
 I \\^sh,to die ! ” 
 
 Eosa clasped her hands. i 
 
 Don’t say that, Christophe ! ” 
 
 I wish to die. I cannot . . • cannot live now. . . . What 
 is the good of living?” ; 
 
YOUTH 
 
 291 
 
 “ Christophe, dear Chris tophe ! You are not alone. You are 
 loved. ...” 
 
 "What is that to me? I love nothing now. It is nothing 
 to me whether everything else live or die. I love nothing: I 
 loved only her. I loved only her ! ” 
 
 He sobbed louder than ever with his face buried in his hands. 
 Eosa could find nothing to say. The egoism of Christophe’s 
 passion stabbed her to the heart. Now when she thought her- 
 self most near to him, she felt more isolated and more miserable 
 than ever. Grief instead of bringing them together thrust them 
 only the more widely apart. She wept bitterly. 
 
 After some time, Christophe stopped weeping and asked: 
 
 " How ? . . . How ? . . .” 
 
 Eosa understood. 
 
 " She fell ill of infiuenza on the evening you left. And she 
 was taken suddenly. . . .” 
 
 He groaned. 
 
 "Dear God! ... Why did you not write to me?” 
 
 She said: 
 
 " I did write. I did not know your address : you did not 
 give us any. I went and asked at the theater. Nobody knew 
 it.” 
 
 He knew how timid she was, and how much it must have cost 
 her. He asked: 
 
 "Did she . . . did she tell you to do that?” 
 
 She shook her head : 
 
 " No. But I thought . . .” 
 
 He thanked her with a look. Eosa’s heart melted. 
 
 " My poor . . . poor Christophe ! ” she said. 
 
 She fiung her arms round his neck and wept. Christophe 
 felt the worth of such pure tenderness. He had so much need 
 of consolation! He kissed her: 
 
 " How kind you are,” he said. " You loved her too? ” 
 
 She broke away from him, she threw him a passionate look, 
 did not reply, and began to weep again. 
 
 That look was a revelation to him. It meant: 
 
 " It was not she whom I loved. . . .” 
 
 Christophe saw at last what he had not known — what for 
 months he had not wished to see. He saw that she loved him. 
 
893 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 “’Ssh,” she said. “They are calling me.” They heard 
 Amalia’s voice. 
 
 Eosa asked: 
 
 “ Do you want to go back to your room ? ” 
 
 He said: 
 
 “No. I could not yet : I could not bear to talk to my 
 mother. . . . Later on. . . 
 
 She said: 
 
 “ Stay here. I will come back soon.” 
 
 He stayed in the dark woodshed to which only a thread of 
 light penetrated through a small airhole filled with cobwebs. 
 From the street there came up the cry of a hawker, against the 
 wall a horse in a stable next door was snorting and kicking. 
 The revelation that had just come to Christophe gave him no 
 pleasure : but it held his attention for a moment. It made plain 
 many things that he had not understood. A multitude of little 
 things that he had disregarded occurred to him and were ex- 
 plained. He was surprised to find himself thinking of it: he 
 was ashamed to be turned aside even for a moment from his 
 misery. But that misery was so frightful, so irrepressible that 
 the mistrust of self-preservation, stronger than his will, than 
 his courage, than his love, forced him to turn away from it, 
 seized on this new idea, as the suicide drowning seizes in spite 
 of himself on the first object which can help him, not to save 
 himself, but to keep himself for a moment longer above the 
 water. And it was because he was suffering that he was able 
 to feel what another was suffering — suffering through him. He 
 understood the tears that he had brought to her eyes. He was 
 filled with pity for Eosa. He thought how cruel he had been 
 to her — ^how cruel he must still be. For he did not love her. 
 What good was it for her to love him ? Poor girl ! ... In vain 
 did he tell himself that she was good (she had just proved 
 it). What was her goodness to him? What was her life to 
 him? . . . 
 
 He thought: 
 
 “ Why is it not she who is dead, and the other who is alive ? ” 
 
 He thought : 
 
 “ She is alive : she loves me : she can tell me that to-day, to- 
 morrow, all my life: and the other, the woman I love, she is 
 
YOUTH 
 
 293 
 
 dead and never told me that she loved me: I never have told 
 her that I loved her : I shall never hear her say it : she will never 
 know it. . . P 
 
 And suddenly he remembered that last evening: he remem- 
 bered that they were just going to talk when Eosa came and 
 prevented it. And he hated Eosa. ... 
 
 The door of the woodshed was opened. Eosa called Chris- 
 tophe softly, and groped towards him. She took his hand. He 
 felt an aversion in her near presence: in vain did he reproach 
 himself for it : it was stronger than himself. 
 
 Eosa was silent : her great pity had taught her silence. Chris- 
 tophe was grateful to her for not breaking in upon his grief 
 with useless words. And yet he wished to know . . . she was 
 the only creature who could talk to him of her. He asked in 
 a whisper: 
 
 When did she . . 
 
 (He dared not say: die.) 
 
 She replied: 
 
 ^^Last Saturday week.^^ 
 
 Dimly he remembered. He said : 
 
 ^^At night 
 
 Eosa looked at him in astonishment and said: 
 
 > Yes. At night. Between two and three.^^ 
 
 The sorrowful melody came back to him. He asked, trem- 
 bling : 
 
 Did she suffer much ? 
 
 ^^No, no. God be thanked, dear Christophe: she hardly suf- 
 fered at all. She was so weak. She did not struggle against 
 it. Suddenly they saw that She was lost. . . 
 
 And she . . . did she know it ? 
 
 I donT know. I think . . 
 
 ^^Did she say anything?” 
 
 No. Nothing. She was sorry for herself like a child.” 
 
 You were there ? ” 
 
 ^^Yes. For the first two days I was there alone, before her 
 brother came.” 
 
 He pressed her hand in gratitude. 
 
 Thank you.” 
 
 She felt the bipod rush to her heart. 
 
294 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 After a silence he said, he murmured the question which was j 
 choking him: 
 
 “ Did she say anything ... for me ? ” 
 
 Eosa shook her head sadly. She would have given much to 
 be able to let him have the answer he expected : she was almost 
 sorry that she could not lie about it. She tried to console 
 him: 
 
 “ She was not conscious.” 
 
 “But she did speak?” : 
 
 “ One could not make out what she said. It was in a very , 
 
 low voice.” 
 
 “ Where is the child? ” | 
 
 “Her brother took her away with him to the country.” ( 
 
 “ And she f ” | 
 
 “ She is there too. She was taken away last Monday week.” | 
 
 They began to weep again. | 
 
 Frau Vogel’s voice called Eosa once more. Christophe, left i 
 
 alone again, lived through those days of death. A week, already 
 a week ago. ... 0 God! What had become of her? How i 
 it had rained that week ! . . . And all that time he was laugh- * 
 ing, he was happy! :! 
 
 In his pocket he felt a little parcel wrapped up in soft paper : | 
 
 they were silver buckles that he had brought her for her shoes. * 
 He remembered the evening when he had placed his hand on ^ 
 the little stockinged foot. Her little feet : where were they ( 
 now? How cold they must be! . . . He thought the memory | 
 of that warm contact was the only one that he had of the ^ 
 beloved creature. He had never dared to touch her, to take her 1 
 in his arms, to hold her to his breast. She was gone forever, 
 and he had never known her. He knew nothing of her, neither i 
 soul nor body. He had no memory of her body, of her life, of | 
 her love. . '. . Her love ? . . . What proof had he of that ? . . . | 
 
 He had not even a letter, a token, — nothing. Where could he i 
 seek to hold her, in himself, or outside himself? . . . Oh! j 
 Nothing! There was nothing left him but the love he had for : 
 her, nothing left him but himself. — And in spite of all, his ] 
 desperate desire to snatch her from destruction, his need of 
 denying death, made him cling to the last piece of wreckage, 
 in an act of blind faith : 
 
YOUTH 
 
 295 
 
 . . he son gia morto: e hen c'albergo cangi resto in te 
 vivo, C'or mi vedi e piangi, se Vun nelV altro amante si tras- 
 forma'' 
 
 . I am not dead: I have changed my dwelling. I live 
 still in thee who art faithful to me. The soul of the beloved 
 is merged in the soul of the lover.’^ 
 
 He had never read these sublime words: but they were in 
 him. Each one of us in turn climbs the Calvary of the age. 
 Each one of us finds anew the agony, each one of us finds anew 
 the desperate hope and folly of the ages. Each one of us follows 
 in the footsteps of those who were, of those before us who 
 struggled with death, denied death — and are dead. 
 
 He shut himself up in his room. His shutters were closed 
 all day so as not to see the windows of the house opposite. He 
 avoided the Vogels: they were odious to his sight. He had 
 nothing to reproach them with: they were too honest, and too 
 pious not to have thrust back their feelings in the face of death. 
 They knew Christophers grief and respected it, whatever they 
 might think of it : they never uttered Sabine’s name in his pres- 
 ence. But they had been her enemies when she was alive : that 
 was enough to make him their enemy now that she was dead. 
 
 Besides they had not altered their noisy habits: and in spite 
 of the sincere though passing pity that they had felt, it was 
 obvious that at bottom they were untouched by the misfortune — 
 (it was too natural) — perhaps even they were secretly relieved 
 by it Christophe imagined so at least. Now that the Vogels’ 
 intentions with regard to himself were made plain he exag- 
 gerated them in his own mind. In reality they attached little 
 importance to him : he set too great store by himself. But 
 he had no doubt that the death of Sabine, by removing the 
 greatest obstacle in the way of his landlords’ plans, did seem to 
 them to leave the field clear for Eosa. So he detested her. That 
 they — (the Vogels, Louisa, and even Eosa) — should have tacitly 
 disposed of him, without consulting him, was enough in any 
 case to make him lose all affection for the person whom he was 
 destined to love. He shied whenever he thought an attempt was 
 made upon his umbrageous sense of liberty. But now it was 
 
296 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 not only a question of himself. The rights which these others 
 had assumed over him did not only infringe upon his own rights 
 but upon those of the dead woman to whom his heart was given. 
 
 So he defended them doggedly, although no one was for attack- 
 ing them. He suspected Eosa’s goodness. She suffered in see- 
 ing him suffer and would often come and knock at his door to 
 console him and talk to him about the other. He did not drive 
 her away: he needed to talk of Sabine with some one who had 
 known her: he wanted to know the smallest of what had hap- 
 pened during her illness. But he was not grateful to Eosa : he 
 attributed ulterior motives to her. Was it not plain that her 
 family, even Amalia, permitted these visits and long colloquies 
 which she would never have allowed if they had not fallen in 
 with her wishes ? Was not Eosa in league with her family ? He 
 could not believe that her pity was absolutely sincere and free 
 of personal thoughts. 
 
 And, no doubt, it was not. Eosa pitied Christophe with all j 
 her heart. She tried hard to see Sabine through Christophers 
 eyes, and through him to love her: she was angry with herself t 
 for all the unkind feelings that she had ever had towards her, | 
 and asked her pardon in her prayers at night. But could she 
 forget that she was alive, that she was seeing Christophe every : 
 moment of the day, that she loved him, that she was no longer ^ 
 
 afraid of the other, that the other was gone, that her memory | 
 
 would also fade away in its turn, that she was left alone, that ( 
 
 one day perhaps . . .? In the midst of her sorrow, and the 1 
 
 sorrow of her friend more hers than her own, could she repress { 
 a glad impulse, an unreasoning hope? For that too she was 1 
 angry Vith herself. It was only a flash. It was enough. He 
 3 aw it. He threw her a glance which froze her heart : she read 
 in it hateful thoughts: he hated her for being alive while the 
 other was dead. 
 
 The miller brought his cart for Sabine^s little furniture. 
 Coming back from a lesson Christophe saw heaped up before 
 the door in the street the bed, the cupboard, the mattress, the i 
 linen, all that she had possessed, all that was left of her. It i 
 was a dreadful sight to him. He rushed past it. In the door- 
 way he bumped into Bertold, who stopped him. 
 
 Ah ! my dear sir,’^ he said, shaking his hand effusively. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 297 
 
 ^^Ah! who would have thought it when we were together? 
 How happy we were! And yet it was because of that day, 
 because of that cursed row on the water, that she fell ill. Oh ! 
 well. It is no use complaining! She is dead. It will be our 
 turn next. That is life. . . . And how are you? I’m very well, 
 thank God ! ” 
 
 He was red in the face, sweating, and smelled of wine. The 
 idea that he was her brother, that he had rights in her memory, 
 hurt Christophe. It offended him to hear this man talking 
 of his beloved. The miller on the contrary was glad to find 
 a friend with whom he could talk of Sabine: he did not under- 
 stand Christophe’s coldness. He had no idea of all the sorrow 
 that his presence, the sudden calling to mind of the day at 
 his farm, the happy memories that he recalled so blunderingly, 
 the poor relics of Sabine, heaped upon the ground, which he 
 kicked as he talked, set stirring in Christophe’s soul. He made 
 some excuse for stopping Bertold’s tongue. He went up the 
 steps: but the other clung to him, stopped him, and went on 
 with his harangue. At last when the miller took to telling him 
 of Sabine’s illness, with that strange pleasure which certain 
 people, and especially the common people, take in talking of 
 illness, with a plethora of painful details, Christophe could 
 bear it no longer — (he took a tight hold of himself so as not 
 to cry out in his sorrow). He cut him short: 
 
 Pardon,” he said curtly and icily. I must leave you.” 
 
 He left him without another word. 
 
 His insensibility revolted the miller. He had guessed the 
 secret affection of his sister and Christophe. And that Chris- 
 tophe should now show such indifference seemed monstrous to 
 him : he thought he had no heart. 
 
 Christophe had fled to his room: he was choking. Until the 
 removal was over he never left his room. He vowed that he 
 would never look out of the window, but he could not help doing 
 so: and hiding in a corner behind the curtain he followed the 
 departure of the goods and chattels of the beloved eagerly and 
 with profound sorrow. When he saw them disappearing for- 
 ever he all but ran down to the street to cry : No ! no ! Leave 
 them to me ! Do not take them from me ! ” He longed to 
 beg at least for some little thing, only one little thing, so that 
 
298 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 she should not be altogether taken from him. But how could 
 he ask such a thing of the miller? It was nothing to him. 
 She herself had not known his love: how dared he then reveal 
 it to another? And besides, if he had tried to say a word he 
 would have burst out crying. ... No. No. He had to say 
 nothing, to watch all go, without being able— without daring to 
 save one fragment from the wreck. ... 
 
 And when it was all over, when the house was empty, when 
 the yard gate was closed after the miller, when the wheels of 
 his cart moved on, shaking the windows, when they were out 
 of hearing, he threw himself on the floor — not a tear left in 
 him, not a thought of suffering, of struggling, frozen, and like 
 one dead. 
 
 There was a knock at the door. He did not move. Another 
 knock. He had forgotten to lock the door. Rosa came in. She 
 cried out on seeing him stretched on the floor and stopped in 
 terror. He raised his head angrily: ■ 
 
 “ What ? What do you want ? Leave me ! ” 
 
 She did not go: she stayed, hesitating, leaning against the , 
 door, and said again: ' 
 
 “ Christophe. . . .” 
 
 He got up in silence: he was ashamed of having been seen ; 
 60. He dusted himself with his hand and asked harshly: ^ 
 
 “ Well. What do you want ? ” i 
 
 Rosa said shyly : ( 
 
 “ Forgive me . . . Christophe ... I came in ... I was | 
 bringing you ...” i 
 
 He saw that she had something in her hand. i 
 
 “ See,” she said, holding it out to him. “ I asked Bertold ' 
 to give me a little token of her. I thought you would like 
 it. ...” 
 
 It was a little silver mirror, the pocket mirror in which she i 
 used to look at herself for hours, not so much from coquetry | 
 as from want of occupation. Christophe took it, took also the ,| 
 hand which held it. | 
 
 “ Oh ! Rosa ! . . .” he said. 
 
 He was filled with her kindness and the knowledge of his | 
 own injustice. On a passionate impulse he knelt to her and 15 
 kissed her hand. I 
 
YOUTH 
 
 299 
 
 Forgive . . . Forgive . . P he said. 
 
 Eosa did not understand at first: then she understood only 
 too well: she blushed, she trembled, she began to weep. She 
 understood that he meant: 
 
 '^Forgive me if I am unjust. : . . Forgive me if I do not 
 love you. . . . Forgive me if I cannot ... if I cannot love 
 you, if I can never love you! . . 
 
 She did not withdraw her hand from him: she knew that 
 it was not herself that he was kissing. And with his cheek 
 against Eosa's hand, he wept hot tears, knowing that she was 
 reading through him : there was sorrow and bitterness in being 
 unable to love her and making her suffer. 
 
 They stayed so, both weeping, in the dim light of the room. 
 
 At last she withdrew her hand. He went on murmuring: 
 
 Forgive! . . 
 
 She laid her hand gently on his hand. He rose to his feet. 
 They kissed in silence: they felt on their lips the bitter savor 
 of their tears. 
 
 We shall always be friends,’^ he said softly. She bowed her 
 head and left him, too sad to speak. 
 
 They thought that the world is ill made. The lover is un- 
 loved. The beloved does not love. The lover who is loved is 
 sooner or later torn from his love. . . . There is suffering. 
 There is the bringing of suffering. And the most wretched 
 is not always the one who suffers. 
 
 Once more Christophe took to avoiding the house. He could 
 not bear it. He could not bear to see the curtainless windows, 
 the empty rooms. 
 
 A worse sorrow awaited him. Old Euler lost no time in 
 reletting the ground fioor. One day Christophe saw strange 
 faces in Sabine^s room. New lives blotted out the traces of the 
 life that was gone. , 
 
 It became impossible for him to stay in his rooms. He passed 
 whole days outside, not coming back until nig)itfall, when it 
 was too dark to see anything. Once more he took to making 
 expeditions in the country. Irresistibly he was drawn to Ber- 
 told^s farm. But he never went in, dared not go near it, wan- 
 dered about it at a distance. He discovered a place on a hill 
 
.300 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 from which he could see the house, the plain, the river: it was 
 thither that his steps usually turned. From thence he could 
 follow with his eyes the meanderings of the water down to the 
 willow clump under which he had seen the shadow of death pass 
 across Sabine’s face. From thence he could pick out the two 
 windows of the rooms in which they had waited, side by side, 
 so near, so far, separated by a door — the door to eternity. From 
 thence he could survey the cemetery. He had never been able 
 to bring himself to enter it£ from childhood he had had a horror 
 of those fields of decay G 3 (rwrruption, and refused to think of 
 those whom he loved in connection with themj) But from a 
 distance and seen from above, the little graveyard never looked 
 grim, it was calm, it slept with the sun. ... Sleep! . . . She 
 loved to sleep ! Nothing would disturb her there. The crowing , 
 cocks answered each other across the plains. From the home- 
 stead rose the roaring of the mill, the clucking of the poultry.^ 1 
 yard, the cries of children playing. He could make out Sabine’s -S] 
 little girl, he could see her running, he could mark her laughter, i 
 Once he lay in wait for her near the gate of the farmyard, in a ! 
 turn of the sunk road made by the walls: he seized her as , 
 she passed and kissed her. The child was afraid and began • 
 to cry. She had almost forgotten him already. He asked ' 
 her : i 
 
 “ Are you happy here ? ” | 
 
 « Yes. It is fun. . . .” | 
 
 “You don’t want to come back?” I 
 
 “No!” 
 
 He let her go. The child’s indifference plunged him in sorrow. 
 Poor Sabine! . . . And yet it was she, something of her. . . . 
 So little! The child was hardly at all like her mother: had 
 lived in her, but was not she : in that mysterious passage through 
 her being the child had hardly retained more than the faintest 
 perfume of the creature who was gone : inflections of her voice, 
 a pursing of the lips, a trick of bending the head. The rest 
 of her was another being altogether: and that being mingled 
 with the being of Sabine was repulsive to Christophe though 
 he never admitted it to himself. 
 
 It was only in himself that Christophe could find the image 
 •of Sabine. It followed him everywhere, hovering above him: 
 
 1 
 
 s 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
YOUTH 
 
 301 
 
 but he only felt himself really to be with her when he was^^ 
 alone. Nowhere was she nearer to him than in this refuge, 
 on the hill, far from strange eyes, in the midst of the country 
 that was so full of the memory of her. He would go miles to it,, 
 climbing at a run, his heart beating as though he were going to 
 a meeting with her: and so it was indeed. When he reached 
 it he would lie on the ground — the same earth in which her 
 body was laid : he would close his eyes : and she would come to 
 him. He could not see her face: he could not hear her voice: 
 he had no need: she entered into him, held him, he possessed 
 her utterly. In this state of passionate hallucination he would 
 lose the power of thought, he would be unconscious of what 
 was happening: he was unconscious of everything save that he 
 was with her. 
 
 That state of things did not last long. — To tell the truth 
 he was only once altogether sincere. From the day following, 
 his will had its share in the proceedings. And from that time 
 on Christophe tried in vain to bring it back to life. It was 
 only then that he thought of evoking in himself the face and 
 form of Sabine: until then he had never thought of it. He 
 succeeded spasmodically and he was fired by it. But it was only 
 at the cost of hours of waiting and of darkness. 
 
 Poor Sabine ! he would think. They have all forgotten 
 you. There is only I who love you, who keep your memory 
 alive forever. Oh, my treasure, my precious! I have you, I 
 hold you, I will never let you go! . . 
 
 He spoke these words because already she was escaping him: 
 she was slipping from his thoughts like water through his 
 fingers. He would return again and again, faithful to the tryst. 
 He wished to think of her and he would close his eyes. But 
 after half an hour, or an hour, or sometimes two hours, he 
 would begin to see that he had been thinking of nothing. The 
 sounds of the valley, the roar of the wind, the little bells of the 
 two goats browsing on the hill, the noise of the wind in the 
 little slender trees under which he lay, were sucked up by his 
 thoughts soft and porous like a sponge. He was angry with 
 his thoughts : they tried to obey him, and to fix the vanished 
 image to which he was striving to attach his life: but his 
 thoughts fell back weary and chastened and once more with a 
 
303 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 sigh of comfort abandoned themselves to the listless stream of 
 sensations. 
 
 He shook off his torpor. He strode through the country 
 hither and thither seeking Sabine, He sought her in the mirror 
 that once had held her smile. He sought her by the river bank 
 where her hands had dipped in the water. But the mirror and 
 the water gave him only the reflection of himself. The excite- 
 ment of walking, the fresh air, the beating of his own healthy 
 blood awoke music in him once more. He wished to find 
 change. 
 
 “ Oh ! Sabine ! . . he sighed. 
 
 He dedicated his songs to her : he strove to call her to life in 
 his music, his love, and his sorrow. ... In vain; love and sor- 
 row came to life surely ; but poor Sabine had no share in them. 
 Love and sorrow looked towards the future, not towards the past. ^ 
 Christophe was powerless against his youth. The sap of hfe/i 
 swelled up again in him with new vigor. His grief, his regrets, | 
 his chaste and ardent love, his baffled desires, heightened the | 
 fever that was in him. In spite of his sorrow, his heart beat ’ 
 in lively, sturdy rhythm : wild songs leaped forth in mad, in- 
 toxicated strains : everything in him hymned life and even sad- 
 ness took on a festival shape. Christophe was too frank to 
 persist in self-deception: and he despised himself. But life 
 swept him headlong : and in his sadness, with death in his heart, 
 and life in all his limbs, he abandoned himself to the forees 
 newborn in him, to the absurd., delicious joy of living, which 
 grief, pity, despair, the aching wound of an irreparable loss, 
 all the torment of death, can only sharpen and kindle into being 
 in the strong, as they rowel their sides with furious spur. 
 
 And Christophe knew that, in himself, in the secret hidden 
 depths of his soul, he had an inaccessible and inviolable sanc- 
 tuary where lay the shadow of Sabine. That the flood of life 
 could not bear away. . . . Each of us bears in his soul as it 
 were a little graveyard of those whom he has loved. They sleep 
 there, through the years, untroubled. But a day cometh, ^this 
 we know, — when the graves shall reopen. The dead issue from 
 the tomb and smile with their pale lips— loving, always— on '' 
 the beloved, and the lover, in whose breast their memory dwells, ' 
 like the child sleeping in the mother’s womb. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 303 
 
 III 
 
 ADA 
 
 After the wet summer the autumn was radiant. In the 
 orchards the trees were weighed down with fruit. The red 
 apples shone like billiard balls. Already some of the trees were 
 taking on their brilliant garb of the falling year: flame color, 
 fruit color, color of ripe melon, of oranges and lemons, of good 
 cooking, and fried dishes. Misty lights glowed through the 
 woods: and from the meadows there rose the little pink flames 
 of the saffron. 
 
 He was going down a hill. It was a Sunday afternoon. He 
 was striding, almost running, gaining speed down the slope. 
 He was singing a phrase, the rhythm of which had been ob- 
 sessing him all through his walk. He was red, disheveled . he 
 was walking, swinging his arms, and rolling his eyes like a 
 madman, when as he turned a bend in the road he came suddenly 
 on a fair girl perched on a wall tugging with all her might at 
 a branch of a tree from which she was greedily plucking and 
 eating purple plums. Their astonishment' was mutual. She 
 looked at him, stared, with her mouth full. Then she burst 
 out laughing. So did he. She was good to see, with her round 
 face framed in fair curly hair, which was like a sunlit cloud 
 about her, her full pink cheeks, her wide blue eyes, her rather 
 large nose, impertinently turned up, her little red mouth show- 
 ing white teeth— the canine little, strong, and projecting— her 
 plump chin, and her full figure, large and plump, well built, 
 solidly put together. He called out: 
 
 “Good eating!” And was for going on his road. But she 
 called to him : 
 
 “ Sir ! Sir I Will you be very nice ? Help me to get down. 
 I can’t ...” 
 
 He returned and asked her how she had climbed up. 
 
 “With my hands and feet. ... It is easy enough to get 
 
 up. ...” 
 
 “ Especially when there are tempting plums hanging above 
 your head. ...” 
 
 / 
 
304 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 "Yes. . . . But when you have eaten your courage goes. 
 You canH find the way to get down.” 
 
 He looked at her on her perch. He said: 
 
 " You are all right there. Stay there quietly. 1^11 come and 
 see you to-morrow. Good-night ! ” 
 
 But he did not budge, and stood beneath her. She pretended 
 to be afraid, and begged him with little glances not to leave 
 her. They stayed looking at each other and laughing. She 
 showed him the branch to which she was clinging and asked : 
 
 " Would you like some ? ” 
 
 Respect for property had not developed in Christophe since 
 the days of his expeditions with Otto: he accepted without 
 hesitation. She amused herself with pelting him with plums. 
 When he had eaten she said: 
 
 "Now! . . .” 
 
 He took a wicked pleasure in keeping her waiting. She grew ;| 
 impatient on her wall. At last he said : J 
 
 " Come, then ! ” and held his hand up to her. 5 
 
 But just as she was about to jump down she thought a ^ 
 moment. i 
 
 "Wait! We must make provision first! ” ? 
 
 She gathered the finest plums within reach and filled the ! 
 front of her blouse with them. , 
 
 " Carefully ! DonT crush them ! ” ; 
 
 He felt almost inclined to do so. ^ 
 
 She lowered herself from the wall and jumped into his arms, i 
 Although he was sturdy he bent under her weight and all but ; 
 dragged her down. They were of the same height. Their | 
 faces came together. He kissed her lips, moist and sweet with j 
 the juice of the plums : and she returned his kiss without more 
 ceremony. 
 
 " Where are you going ? ” he asked. 
 
 " I donT know.” 
 
 " Are you out alone ? ” 
 
 "No. I am with friends. But I have lost them. ... Hi ! 
 
 Hi ! ” she called suddenly as loudly as she could. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 She did not bother about it any more. They began to walk, 
 at random, following their noses. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 305 
 
 "And you . . . where are you going?” said she. 
 
 " I don’t know, either.” 
 
 " Good. We’ll go together.” 
 
 She took some plums from her gaping blouse and began to 
 
 munch them. 
 
 “ You’ll make yourself sick,” he said. 
 
 " Not I ! I’ve been eating them all day.” 
 
 Through the gap in her blouse he saw the white of her 
 chemise. 
 
 " They are all warm now,” she said. 
 
 “ Let me see ! ” 
 
 She held him one and laughed. He ate it. She watched 
 him out of the corner of her eye as she sucked at the fruit 
 like a child. He did not know how the adventure would end. 
 It is probable that she at least had some suspicion. She waited. 
 
 " Hi ! Hi ! ” Voices in the woods. 
 
 " Hi ! Hi ! ” she answered. “ Ah ! There they are ! ” she 
 
 said to Christophe. "Not a bad thing, either!” 
 
 / But oFThe^twntewy^shr^^ that it was rather a 
 
 I pity. But speech was not given to woman for her to say what 
 I she is thinking. . . . Thank God ! for there would be an end of 
 
 L,,moralitx,5Jl.,G^ft^j.-*-'---''''''''^ . „ 
 
 The voices came near. Her friends were near the road. She 
 leaped the ditch, climbed the hedge, and hid behind the trees. 
 He watched her in amazement. She signed to him imperiously 
 to come to her. He followed her. She plunged into the depths 
 of the wood. 
 
 “ Hi I Hi ! ” she called once more when they had gone some 
 distance. “ You see, they must look for me ! ” she explained 
 to Christophe. 
 
 Her friends had stopped on the road and were listening for 
 her voice to mark where it came from. They answered her 
 and in their turn entered the woods. But she did not wait for 
 them. She turned about on right and on left. They bawled 
 loudly after her. She let them, and then went and called in 
 the opposite direction. At last they wearied of it, and, making 
 sure that the best way of making her come was to give up 
 seeking her, they called : 
 
 “ Good-bye ! ” and went ofE singing. 
 
 
306 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 She was furious that they should not have bothered about 
 her any more than that. She had tried to be rid of them : but 
 she had not counted on their going off so easily. Christophe 
 looked rather foolish: this game of hide-and»seek with a girl 
 whom he did not know did not exactly enthrall him: and he 
 had no thought of taking advantage of their solitude. Nor 
 did she think of it : in her annoyance she forgot Chris- 
 tophe. 
 
 Oh ! IPs too much/^ she said, thumping her hands together. 
 
 They have left me.^^ 
 
 But/^ said Christophe, you wanted them to.’^ 
 
 Not at all.^^ 
 
 ^^You ran away.’^ 
 
 ^^If I ran away from them that is my affair, not theirs. 
 They ought to look for me. What if I were lost? . . 
 
 Already she was beginning to be sorry for herself because 1 
 of what might have happened if ... if the opposite of what ; 
 actually had occurred had come about. 
 
 Oh ! she said. 1^11 shake them ! She turned back and ^ 
 strode off. ] 
 
 As she went she remembered Christophe and looked at him 
 once more. — But it was too late. She began to laugh. The 
 little demon which had been in her the moment before was ; 
 gone. While she was waiting for another to come she saw • 
 Christophe with the eyes of indifference. And then, she was | 
 hungry. Her stomach was reminding her that it was supper- | 
 time : she was in a hurry to rejoin her friends at the inn. She • 
 took Christophers arm, leaned on it with all her weight, groaned, ] 
 and said that she was exhausted. That did not keep her from 
 dragging Christophe down a slope, running, and shouting, and 
 laughing like a mad thing. 
 
 They talked. She learned who he was : she did not know 
 his name, and seemed not to be greatly impressed by his title 
 of musician. He learned that she was a shop-girl from a dress- 
 maker’s in the Kaiserstrasse (the most fashionable street in the 
 town) : her name was Adelheid — to friends, Ada. Her com- 
 panions on the excursion were one of her friends, who worked 
 at the same place as herself, and two nice young men, a clerk 
 ut Weiller’s bank, and a clerk from a big linen-draper’s. They 
 
YOUTH 
 
 307 
 
 were turning their Sunday to account: they had decided to 
 dine at the Brochet inn, from which there is a fine view over 
 the Ehine, and then to return by boat. 
 
 The others had already established themselves at the inn 
 when they arrived. Ada made a scene with her friends: she 
 complained of their cowardly desertion and presented Chris- 
 tophe as her savior. They did not listen to her complaints: 
 but they knew Christophe, the bank-clerk by reputation, the 
 clerk from having heard some of his compositions — (he thought 
 it a good idea to hum an air from one of them immediately 
 afterwards) — and the respect which they showed him made an 
 impression on Ada, the more so as Myrrha, the other young 
 woman — (her real name was Hansi or Johanna) — a brunette 
 with blinking eyes, bumpy forehead, hair screwed back, Chinese 
 face, a little too animated, but clever and not without charm, 
 in spite of her goat-like head and her oily golden-yellow 
 complexion, — at once began to make advances to their Hof 
 Mnsicus. They begged him to be so good as to honor their 
 repast with his presence. 
 
 Never had he been in such high feather: for he was over- 
 whelmed with attentions, and the two women, like good friends 
 as they were, tried each to rob the other of him. Both courted 
 him : Myrrha with ceremonious manners, sly looks, as she rubbed 
 her leg against his under the table — Ada, openly making play 
 with her fine eyes, her pretty mouth, and all the seductive 
 resources at her command. Such coquetry in its almost coarse- 
 ness incommoded and distressed Christophe. These two bold 
 young women were a change from the unkindly faces he was 
 accustomed to at home. Myrrha interested him, he guessed her 
 to be more intelligent than Ada: but her obsequious manners 
 and her ambiguous smile were curiously attractive and repulsive 
 to him at the same time. She could do nothing against Ada’s 
 radiance of life and pleasure: and she was aware of it. When 
 she saw that she had lost the bout, she abandoned the effort, 
 turned in upon herself, went on smiling, and patiently waited 
 for her day to come. Ada, seeing herself mistress of the field, 
 did not seek to push forward the advantage she had gained: 
 what she had done had been mainly to despite her friend: she 
 had succeeded, she was satisfied. But she had been caught in 
 
308 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 her own game. She felt as she looked into Christophe’s eyes 
 the passion that she had kindled in him : and that same passion 
 began to awake in her. She was silent: she left her vulgar 
 teasing : they looked at each other in silence : on their lips they 
 had the savor of their kiss. From time to time by fits and 
 starts they joined vociferously in the jokes of the others: then 
 they relapsed into silence, stealing glances at each other. At 
 last they did not even look at each other, as though they were 
 afraid of betraying themselves. Absorbed in themselves they 
 brooded over their desire. 
 
 When the meal was over they got ready to go. They had 
 to go a mile and a half through the woods to reach the pier. 
 Ada got up first: Christophe followed her. They waited on 
 the steps until the others were ready: without speaking, side 
 by side, in the thick mist that was hardly at all lit up by the ■: 
 single lamp hanging by the inn door. — Myrrha was dawdling . 
 by the mirror. j 
 
 Ada took Christophe’s hand and led him along the house to- i 
 wards the garden into the darkness. Under a balcony from 
 which hung a curtain of vines they hid. All about them was j 
 dense darkness. They could not even see each other. The wind • 
 stirred the tops of the pines. He felt Ada’s warm fingers en- 
 twined in his and the sweet scent of a heliotrope fiower that 
 she had at her breast. ; 
 
 Suddenly she dragged him to her: Christophe’s lips found ^ 
 Ada’s hair, wet with the mist, and kissed her eyes, her eye- | 
 brows, her nose, her cheeks, the corners of her mouth, seeking 
 her lips, and finding them, staying pressed to them. | 
 
 The others had gone. They called: i 
 
 ‘^Ada! . . .” 
 
 They did not stir, they hardly breathed, pressed close to each : 
 other, lips and bodies. 
 
 They heard Myrrha: 
 
 “ They have gone on.” 
 
 The footsteps of their companions died away in the night. 
 They held each other closer, in silence, stifling on their lips a 
 passionate murmuring. 
 
 In the distance a village clock rang out. They broke apart. 
 They had to run to the pier. Without a word they set out. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 309 
 
 arms and hands entwined, keeping step — a little quick, firm step, 
 like hers. The road was deserted: no creature was abroad: 
 they could not see ten yards ahead of them: they went, serene 
 and sure, into the beloved night. They never stumbled over 
 the pebbles on the road. As they were late they took a short 
 cut. The path led for some way down through vines and then 
 began to ascend and wind up the side of the hill. Through 
 the mist they could hear the roar of the river and the heavy 
 paddles of the steamer approaching. They left the road and 
 ran across the fields. At last they found themselves on the 
 bank of the Ehine but still far from the pier. Their serenity 
 was not disturbed. Ada had forgotten her fatigue of the even- 
 ing. It seemed to them that they could have walked all night 
 like that, on the silent grass, in the hovering mists, that grew 
 wetter and more dense along the river that was wrapped in a 
 whiteness as of the moon. The steamer's siren hooted: the 
 invisible monster plunged heavily away and away. They said, 
 laughing : 
 
 We will take the next." 
 
 By the edge of the river soft lapping waves broke at their 
 feet. At the landing stage they were told : 
 
 The last boat has just gone." 
 
 Christophe's heart thumped. Ada's hand grasped his arm 
 more tightly. 
 
 But," she said, there will be another one to-morrow." 
 
 A few yards away in a halo of mist was the dickering light 
 of a lamp hung on a post on a terrace by the river. A little 
 farther on were a few lighted windows — a little inn. 
 
 They went into the tiny garden. The sand ground under 
 their feet. They groped their way to the steps. When they 
 entered, the lights were being put out. Ada, on Christophe's 
 arm, asked for a room. The room to which they were led 
 opened on to the little garden. Christophe leaned out of the 
 window and saw the phosphorescent flow of the river, and the 
 shade of the lamp on the glass of which were crushed mosquitoes 
 with large wings. The door was closed. Ada was standing by 
 the bed and smiling. He dared not look at her. She did not 
 look at him : but through her lashes she followed Christophe's 
 every movement. The floor creaked with every step. They 
 
310 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 could hear the least noise in the house. They sat on the bed 
 and embraced in silence. 
 
 The flickering light of the garden is dead. All is dead. . . . 
 
 Night. . . . The abyss. . . . Neither light nor consciousness. 
 
 . . . Being. The obscure, devouring forces of Being. Joy all- 
 powerful. Joy rending. Joy which sucks down the human 
 creature as the void a stone. The sprout of desire sucking up 
 thought. The absurd delicious law of the blind intoxicated 
 worlds which roll at night. ... 
 
 ... A night which is many nights, hours that are centuries, 
 records which are death. . . . Dreams shared, words spoken 
 with eyes closed, tears and laughter, the happiness of loving in 
 the voice, of sharing the nothingness of sleep, the swiftly pass- 
 ing images flouting in the brain, the hallucinations of the roar-' 
 ing night. . . . The Rhine laps in a little creek by the house:; 
 in the distance his waters over the dams and breakwaters make: 
 a sound as of a gentle rain falling on sand. The hull of the 
 boat cracks and groans under the weight of water. The chain, 
 by which it is tied sags and grows taut with a rusty clattering.' 
 The voice of the river rises: it Alls the room. The bed is like' 
 a boat. They are swept along side by side by a giddy current : 
 hung in mid-air like a soaring bird. The night grows ever more 
 dark, the void more empty. Ada weeps, Christophe loses con- 
 sciousness ; both are swept down under the flowing waters of the{ 
 
 night. ... I 
 
 Night. . . . Death. . . . Why wake to life again? ... ' 
 
 The light of the dawning day peeps through the dripping 
 panes. The spark of life glows once more in their languorous 
 bodies. He awakes. Ada’s eyes are looking at him. A whole 
 life passes in a few moments : days of sin, greatness, and 
 peace. ... 
 
 “ Wliere am I ? And am I two ? Do I still exist ? I am no 
 longer conscious of being. All about me is the inflnite : I have 
 the soul of a statue, with large tranquil eyes, fllled with Olym- 
 pian peace. ...” 
 
 They fall back into the world of sleep. «And the familiar 
 sounds of the dawn, the distant bells, a passing boat, oari 
 dripping water, footsteps on the road, all caress without dis- 
 
YOUTH 
 
 311 
 
 turbing their happy sleep, reminding them that they are alive^ 
 and making them delight in the savor of their happiness. . . . 
 
 The puffing of the steamer outside the window brought Chris- 
 tophe from his torpor. They had agreed to leave at seven so 
 as to return to the town in time for their usual occupations. 
 He whispered: 
 
 Do you hear ? 
 
 She did not open her eyes ; she smiled, she put out her lips, 
 she tried to kiss him and then let her head fall back on his 
 shoulder. . . . Through the window panes he saw the funnel 
 of the steamer slip by against the sky, he saw the empty deck, 
 and clouds of smoke. Once more he slipped into dreami- 
 ness. ... 
 
 An hour passed without his knowing it. He heard it strike 
 and started in astonishment. 
 
 Ada ! . . .^’ he whispered to the girl. Ada ! he said 
 again. It’s eight o’clock.” 
 
 Her eyes were still closed: she frowned and pouted pettishly. 
 
 Oh ! let me sleep ! ” she said. 
 
 She sighed wearily and turned her back on him and went to 
 sleep once more. 
 
 He began to dream. His blood ran bravely, calmly through 
 him. His limpid senses received the smallest impressions simply 
 and freshly. He rejoiced in his strength and youth. Unwit- 
 tingly he was proud of being a man. He smiled in his happi- 
 ness, and felt himself alone : alone as he had always been, more 
 lonely even but without sadness, in a divine solitude. No more 
 fever. No more shadows. Nature could freely cast her reflec- 
 tion upon his soul in its serenity. Lying on his back, facing 
 the window, his eyes gazing deep into the dazzling air with its 
 luminous mists, he smiled: 
 
 How good it is to live ! . . .” 
 
 To live! ... A boat passed. . . . The thought suddenly of 
 those who were no longer alive, of a boat gone by on which 
 they were together: he — she. . . . She? ... Not that one, 
 sleeping by his side. — She, the only she, the beloved, the poor 
 little woman who was dead. — But is it that one? How came 
 she there? How did they come to this room? He looks at 
 
312 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 her, he does not know her: she is a stranger to him: yesterday 
 morning she did not exist for him. What does he know of her ? 
 — He knows that she is not clever. He knows that she is not 
 good. He knows that she is not even beautiful with her face 
 spiritless and bloated with sleep, her low forehead, her mouth 
 open in breathing, her swollen dried lips pouting like a fish. 
 He knows that he does not love her. And he is filled with a 
 bitter sorrow when he thinks that he kissed those strange lips, 
 in the first moment with her, that he has taken this beautiful 
 body for which he cares nothing on the first night of their meet- 
 ing, — and that she whom he loved, he watched her live and die 
 by his side and never dared touch her hair with his lips, that 
 he will never know the perfume of her being. Nothing more. 
 All is crumbled away. The earth has taken all from him. And 
 he never defended what was his. ... 
 
 And while he leaned over the innocent sleeper and scanned ^ 
 her face, and looked at her with eyes of unkindness, she felt : 
 his eyes upon her. Uneasy under his scrutiny she made a great ! 
 effort to raise her heavy lids and to smile : and she said, stam- . 
 mering a little like a waking child : i 
 
 “ Don’t look at me. I’m ugly. . . .” ! 
 
 She fell back at once, weighed down with sleep, smiled once ! 
 more, murmured. ^ 
 
 Oh ! I’m so ... so sleepy ! . . .” and went off again into ; 
 her dreams. * ^ 
 
 He could not help laughing: he kissed her childish lips more | 
 tenderly. He watched the girl sleeping for a moment longer, ; 
 and got up quietly. She gave a comfortable sigh when he was | 
 gone. He tried not to wake her as he dressed, though there was ■ 
 no danger of that : and when he had done he sat in the chair 
 near the window and watched the steaming smoking river 
 which looked as though it were covered with ice : and he fell into 
 a brown study in which there hovered music, pastoral, melan- 
 choly. 
 
 From time to time she half opened her eyes and looked at 
 him vaguely, took a second or two, smiled at him, and passed 
 from one sleep to another. She asked him the time. 
 
 ^^A quarter to nine.” ^ 
 
 Half asleep she pondered: . :> 
 
YOUTH 
 
 313 
 
 What ! Can it be a quarter to nine ? 
 
 At half-past nine she stretched^ sighed, and said that she was 
 going to get up. 
 
 It was ten o^clock before she stirred. She was petu- 
 lant. 
 
 Striking again ! . . . The clock is fast ! . . /’ He laughed 
 and went and sat on the bed by her side. She put her arms 
 round his neck and told him her dreams. He did not listen 
 very attentively and interrupted her with little love words. But 
 she made him be silent and went on very seriously, as though 
 she were telling something of the highest importance : 
 
 She was at dinner : the Grand Duke was there : Myrrha was 
 a Newfoundland dog. ... No, a frizzy sheep who waited at 
 table. . . . Ada had discovered a method of rising from the 
 earth, of walking, dancing, and lying down in the air. You 
 see it was quite simple: you had only to do . . - thus . . . 
 thus . . . and it was done. . . 
 
 Christophe laughed at her. She laughed too, though a little 
 ruffled at his laughing. She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 Ah ! you donT understand ! . . .^^ 
 
 They breakfasted on the bed from the same cup, with the 
 same spoon. 
 
 At last she got up: she threw off the bedclothes and slipped 
 down from the bed. Then she sat down to recover her breath 
 and looked at her feet. Finally she clapped her hands and 
 told him to go out: and as he was in no hurry about it she 
 took him by the shoulders and thrust him out of the door and 
 then locked it. 
 
 After she had dawdled, looked over and stretched each of 
 her handsome limbs, she sang, as she washed, a sentimental Lied 
 in fourteen couplets, threw water at Christophers face — he was 
 outside drumming on the window — and as they left she plucked 
 the last rose in the garden and then they took the steamer. 
 The mist was not yet gone: but the sun shone through it: 
 they floated through a creamy light. Ada sat at the stern with 
 Christophe: she was sleepy and a little sulky: she grumbled 
 about the light in her eyes, and said that she would have a 
 headache all day. And as Christophe did not take her com- 
 plaints seriously enough she returned into morose silence. Her 
 
314 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 eyes were hardly opened and in them was the funny gravity of 
 children who have just woke up. But at the next landing-stage 
 an elegant lady came and sat not far from her, and she grew 
 lively at once: she talked eagerly to Christophe about things 
 sentimental and distinguished. She had resumed with him the 
 ceremonious Sie. 
 
 Christophe was thinking about what she could say to her 
 employer by way of excuse for her lateness. She was hardly 
 at all concerned about it. 
 
 “ Bah ! It’s not the first time.” 
 
 “ The first time that . . . what ? ” 
 
 “ That I have been late,” she said, put out by the question. 
 
 He dared not ask her what had caused her lateness. 
 
 “ What will you tell her ? ” i 
 
 “ That my mother is ill, dead . . . how do I know ? ” 
 
 He was hurt by her talking so lightly. ' 
 
 “I don’t want you to lie.” ; 
 
 She took offense: 1 
 
 “ First of all, I never lie. . . . And then, I cannot very well, 
 
 tell her . . .” ' 
 
 He asked her half in jest, half in earnest: 
 
 “Why not?” 
 
 She laughed, shrugged, and said that he was coarse and ill- 
 bred, and that she had already asked him not to use the Dii, 
 
 to her. I 
 
 “ Haven’t I the right ? ” | 
 
 “ Certainly not.” , < 
 
 “ After what has happened ? ” j 
 
 “ Nothing has happened.” 
 
 She looked at him a little defiantly and laughed : and although 
 she was joking, he felt most strongly that it would not have 
 cost her much to say it seriously and almost to believe it. Bu^ 
 some pleasant memory tickled her : for she burst out laughing 
 and looked at Christophe and kissed him loudly without any 
 concern for the people about, who did not seem to be in tht 
 least surprised by it. 
 
 Now on all his excursions he was accompanied by shop-gir^ 
 and clerks: he did not like their vulgarity, and used to try t 
 
YOUTH 
 
 315 
 
 lose them : but Ada out of contrariness was no longer disposed 
 for wandering in the woods. When it rained or for some other 
 reason they did not leave the town he would take her to the 
 theater, or the museum, or the Thiergarten : for she insisted 
 on being seen with him. She even wanted him to go to church 
 with her; but le was so absurdly sincere that he would not set 
 foot inside a church since he had lost his belief — (on some other 
 excuse he had resigned his position as organist) — and at the 
 same time, unknown to himself, remained much too religious 
 not to think Ada’s proposal sacrilegious. 
 
 He used to go to her rooms in the evening. Myrrha would 
 be there, for she lived in the same house. Myrrha was not at 
 all resentful against him: she would hold out her soft hand 
 caressingly, and talk of trivial and improper things and then 
 slip away discreetly. The two women had never seemed to be 
 such friends as since they had had small reason for being so: 
 they were always together. Ada had no secrets from Myrrha: 
 she told her everything: Myrrha listened to everything: they 
 seemed to be equally pleased with it all. 
 
 Christophe was ill at ease in the company of the two women. 
 Their friendship, their strange conversations, their freedom of 
 manner, the crude way in which Myrrha especially viewed and 
 spoke of things — (not so much in his presence, however, as 
 when he was not there, but Ada used to repeat her sayings to 
 him) — ^their indiscreet and impertinent curiosity, which was 
 forever turned upon subjects that were silly or basely sensual, 
 the whole equivocal and rather animal atmosphere oppressed 
 him terribly, though it interested him : for he knew nothing like 
 it. He was at sea in the conversations of the two little beasts, 
 who talked of dress, and made silly jokes, and laughed in an 
 inept way with their eyes shining with delight when they were 
 off on the track of some spicy story. He was more at ease when 
 Myrrha left them. When the two women were together it was 
 like being in a foreign country without knowing the language. 
 It was impossible to make himself understood: they did not 
 even listen: they poked fun at the foreigner. 
 
 When he was alone with Ada they went on speaking different 
 languages: but at least they did make some attempt to under- 
 stand each other. To tell the truth, the more he understood 
 
316 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 her, the less he understood her. She was the- first woman he 
 had known. For if poor Sabine was a woman he had known, 
 he had known nothing of her: she had always remained for 
 him a phantom of his heart. Ada took upon herself to make 
 him make up for lost time, ( in his'lum"M'tned~toToIveTE^ 
 riddle br'wnTnan r t^ perhaps is no enigma except] 
 
 for.those who seek some meaning in it. 
 
 "Xda war without TnTenigencef^^^^ was the least of her faults. 
 Christophe would have commended her for it, if she had ap- 
 proved it herself. But although she was occupied only with 
 stupidities, she claimed to have some knowledge of the things 
 of the spirit: and she judged everything with complete assur- 
 ance. She would talk about music, and explain to Christophe 
 things which he knew perfectly, and would pronounce absolute 
 judgment and sentence. It was useless to try to convince her : ■ 
 she had pretensions and susceptibilities in everything ; she gave ; 
 herself airs, she was obstinate, vain : she would not — she could : 
 not understand anything. Why would she not accept that she i 
 could understand nothing ? He loved her so much -better when 
 she was content with being just what she was, simply, with j 
 her own qualities and failings, instead of trying to impose: 
 on others and herself ! . 
 
 In fact, she was little concerned with thought. She was con- . 
 cerned with eating, drinking, singing, dancing, crying, laugh- ^ 
 ing, sleeping : she wanted to be happy : and that would have ^ 
 been all right if she had succeeded. But although she had | 
 every gift for it: she was greedy, lazy, sensual, and frankly^ 
 egoistic in a way that revolted and amused Christophe: although^ 
 she had almost all the vices which make life pleasant for their ^ 
 fortunate possessor, if not for their friends (and even then 
 does not a happy face, at least if it be pretty, shed happiness 
 on all those who come near it?) — in spite of so many reasons 
 for being satisfied with life and herself Ada was not even clever 
 enough for that. The pretty, robust girl, fresh, hearty, healthy- 
 looking, endowed with abundant spirits and fierce appetites, 
 was anxious about her health. She bemoaned her weakness, 
 while she ate enough for four. She was always sorry for her- 
 self: she could not drag herself along, she could not breathe, 
 she had a headache, feet-ache, her eyes ached, her stomach 
 
YOUTH 
 
 317 
 
 ached, her soul ached. She was afraid of everything, and 
 madly superstitious, and saw omens everywhere: at meals the 
 crossing of knives and forks, the number of the guests, the 
 upsetting of a salt-cellar : then there must be a whole ritual 
 to turn aside misfortune. Out walking she would count the 
 crows, and never failed to watch which side they flew to: she 
 would anxiously watch the road at her feet, and when a spider 
 crossed her path in the morning she would cry out aloud : then 
 she would wish to go home and there would be no other means 
 of not interrupting the walk than to persuade her that it was 
 after twelve, and so the omen was one of hope rather than 
 of evil. She was afraid of her dreams : she would recount them 
 at length to Christophe; for hours she would try to recollect 
 some detail that she had forgotten; she never spared him one; 
 absurdities piled one on the other, strange marriages, deaths, 
 dressmakers’ prices, burlesque, and sometimes, obscene things. 
 He had to listen to her and give her his advice. Often she 
 would be for a whole day under the obsession of her inept 
 fancies. She would And life ill-ordered, she would see things 
 and people rawly and overwhelm Christophe with her jere- 
 miads: and it seemed hardly worth while to have broken away 
 from the gloomy middle-class people with whom he lived to 
 And once more the eternal enemy : the trauriger ungriechischer 
 Hypochondrist/' 
 
 But suddenly in the midst of her sulks and grumblings, she 
 would become gay, noisy, exaggerated: there was no more deal- 
 ing with her gaiety than with her moroseness: she would burst 
 out laughing for no reason and seem as though she were never 
 going to stop : she would rush across the fields, play mad tricks 
 and childish pranks, take a delight in doing silly things, in 
 mixing with the earth, and dirty things, and the beasts, and the 
 spiders, and worms, in teasing them, and hurting them, and 
 making them eat each other: the cats eat the birds, the fowls 
 the worms, the ants the spiders, not from any wickedness, or 
 perhaps from an altogether unconscious instinct for evil, from 
 curiosity, or from having nothing better to do. She seemed to 
 be driven always to say stupid things, to repeat senseless words 
 again and again, to irritate Christophe, to exasperate him, set 
 his nerves on edge, and make him almost beside himself. And 
 
318 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHB 
 
 her coquetry as soon as anybody — no matter who— appeared on ; 
 the road! . . . Then she would talk excitedly, laugh noisily, 
 make faces, draw attention to herself: she would assume an 
 affected mincing gait. Christophe would have a horrible pre- 
 sentiment that she was going to plunge into serious discussion.— 
 And, indeed, she would do so. She would become sentimental, 
 uncontrolledly, just as she did everything: she would unbosom 
 herself in a loud voice. Christophe would suffer and long to 
 beat her. Least of all could he forgive her her lack of sin- 
 - cerity. He did not yet know that sincerity is a gift as rare as 
 I intelligence or beauty and that it cannot justly be expected of 
 1 everybody. He could not bear a lie : and Ada gave him lies 
 in full measure. She was always lying, quite calmly, in spite 
 of evidence to the contrary. She had that astounding faculty 
 for forgetting what is displeasing to them— or even what has | 
 been pleasing to them— which those women possess who live.,^ 
 
 from moment to moment. i 
 
 And, in spite of everything, they loved each other with all: 
 their hearts. Ada was as sincere as Christophe in her love.^^ 
 Their love was none the less true for not being based on in^ 
 tellectual sympathy : it had nothing in common with base pas- 
 sion. It was the beautiful love of youth : it was sensual, but 
 not vulgar, because it was altogether youthful: it was naive, 
 almost chaste, purged by the ingenuous ardor of pleasure. Al- 
 though Ada was not, by a long way, so ignorant as Christophe. 
 yet siie had still the divine privilege of youth of soul anq 
 body, that freshness of the senses, limpid and vivid as a runj 
 Tiing stream, which almost gives the illusion of purity anc^ 
 through life is never replaced. Egoistic, commonplace, insincere 
 in her ordinary life,— love made her simple, true, almost good; 
 she understood in love the joy that is to be found in self-forget- 
 fulness. Christophe saw this with delight : and he would gladlj 
 have died for her. Who can tell all the absurd and touching 
 illusions that a loving heart brings to its love! And th( 
 natural illusion of the lover was magnified an hundredfold ii 
 Christophe by the power of illusion which is born in the artist 
 Ada’s smile held profound meanings for him: an affectionafe 
 word was the proof of the goodness of her heart. He lovec 
 in her all that is good and beautiful in the universe. He callec 
 
YOUTH 319 ^ 
 
 her his own^ his soul, his life. They wept together over their 
 love. 
 
 Pleasure was not the only bond between them : there was an 
 indefinable poetry of memories and dreams, — their own? or 
 those of the men and women who had loved before them, who had 
 been before them, — in them? . . . Without a word, perhaps 
 without knowing it, they preserved the fascination of the first 
 moments of their meeting in the woods, the first days, the first 
 nights together : those hours of sleep in each other’s arms, still, 
 unthinking, sinking down into a fiood of love and silent joy. 
 Swift fancies, visions, dumb thoughts, titillating, and making 
 them go pale, and their hearts sink under their desire, bringing 
 all about them a buzzing as of bees. A fine light, and tender. 
 
 . . . Their hearts sink and beat no more, borne down in excess 
 of sweetness. Silence, languor, and fever, the mysterious weary 
 smile of the earth quivering under the first simlight of spring. 
 ... So fresh a love in two young creatures is like an April 
 morning. Like April it must pass. Youth of the heart is like 
 an early feast of sunshine. 
 
 Nothing could have brought Christophe closer to Ada in his 
 love than the way in which he was judged by others. 
 
 The day after their first meeting it was known all over the 
 town. Ada made no attempt to cover up the adventure, and 
 rather plumed herself on her conquest. Christophe would have 
 liked more discretion: but he felt that the curiosity of the 
 people was upon him: and as he did not wish to seem to fly 
 from it, he threw in his lot with Ada. The little town buzzed 
 with tattle. Christophe’s colleagues in the orchestra paid him 
 sly compliments to which he did not reply, because he would 
 not allow any meddling with his affairs. The respectable 
 people of the town judged his conduct very severely. He lost 
 his music lessons with certain families. With others, the mothers 
 thought that they must now be present at the daughters’ lessons, 
 watching with suspicious eyes, as though Christophe were in- 
 tending to carry off the precious darlings. The young ladies 
 were supposed to know nothing. Naturally they knew every- 
 thing: and while they were cold towards Christophe for his 
 lack of taste, they were longing to have further details. It was 
 
330 
 
 JEAX-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 only among the small tradespeople, and the shop people, that 
 Christophe was popular: but not for long: he was just as an- 
 noyed by their approval as by the condemnation of the 
 rest: and being unable to do anything against that con- 
 demnation, he took steps not to keep their approval: there 
 was no difficulty about that. He was furious with the general 
 indiscretion. 
 
 The most indignant of all with him were Justus Euler and 
 the Vogels. They took Christophe’s misconduct as a personal 
 outrage. They had not made any serious plans concerning 
 him: they distrusted — especially Frau Vogel — these artistic tern- i 
 peraments. But as they were naturally discontented and always 
 inclined to think themselves persecuted by fate, they persuaded 
 themselves that they had counted on the marriage of Christophe 
 and Eosa; as soon as they were quite certain that such a mar- 
 riage would never come to pass, they saw in it the mark of * 
 the usual ill luck. Logically, if fate were responsible for their j 
 miscalculation, Christophe could not be: but the Vogels’ logic * 
 was that which gave them the greatest opportunity for finding , 
 reasons for being sorry for themselves. So they decided that if * 
 Christophe had misconducted himself it was not so much for ; 
 his own pleasure as to give offense to them. They were scan- ; 
 dalized. Very religious, moral, and oozing domestic virtue, they j 
 were of those to whom the sins of the flesh are the most shame- ; 
 ful, the most serious, almost the only sins, because they are | 
 the only dreadful sins — (it is obvious that respectable people | 
 are never likely to be tempted to steal or murder). — And so | 
 Christophe seemed to them absolutely wicked, and they changed ( 
 their demeanor towards him. They were icy towards him and I 
 turned away as they passed him. Christophe, who was in no | 
 particular need of their conversation, shrugged his shoulders ? 
 at all the fuss. He pretended not to notice Amalia’s insolence : 
 who, while she affected contemptuously to avoid him, did all ; 
 that she could to make him fall in with her so that she might ; 
 tell him all that was rankling in her. 
 
 Christophe was only touched by Eosa’s attitude. The girl 
 condemned him more harshly even than his family. Not that 
 this new love of Christophe’s seemed to her to destroy her last ^ 
 chances of being loved by him : she knew that she had no chance ; 
 
YOUTH 
 
 left — (although perhaps she went on hoping: she 
 hoped). — But she had made an idol of Christophe: and the 
 idol had crumbled away. It was the worst sorrow for her 
 yes, a sorrow more cruel to the innocence and honesty of her 
 heart, than being disdained and forgotten by him. Brought up 
 puritanically, with a narrow code of morality, in which she 
 believed passionately, what she had heard about Christophe 
 had not only brought her to despair but had broken her heart. 
 She had suffered already when he was in love with Sabine: 
 she had begun then to lose some of her illusions about her hero. 
 That Christophe could love so commonplace a creature seemed 
 to her inexplicable and inglorious. But at least that love was 
 pure, and Sabine was not unworthy of it. And in the end 
 death had passed over it and sanctified it. . . . But that at once 
 Christophe should love another woman, — and such a woman! — 
 was base, and odious! She took upon herself the defense of 
 the dead woman against him. She could not forgive him for 
 having forgotten her. . . . Alas! He was thinking of her 
 more than she : but she never thought that in a passionate heart 
 there might be room for two sentiments at once: she thought 
 it impossible to be faithful to the past without sacrifice of the 
 present. Pure and cold, she had no idea of life or of Christophe : 
 everything in her eyes was pure, narrow, submissive to duty, 
 like herself. Modest of soul, modest of herself, she had only 
 one source of pride: purity: she demanded it of herself and of 
 others.. She could not forgive Christophe for having so lowered 
 himself, and she would never forgive him. 
 
 Christophe tried to talk to her, though not to explain himself 
 — (what could he say to her? what could he say to a little 
 puritanical and naive girl?). — He would have liked to assure 
 her that he was her friend, that he wished for her esteem, and 
 had still the right to it. He wished to prevent her absurdly 
 estransfino: herself from him. — But Eosa avoided him in stern 
 
 silence : he felt that she despised him. 
 
 He was both sorry and angry. He felt that he did not deserve 
 such contempt : and yet in the end he was bowled over by it : 
 and thought himself guilty. Of all the reproaches cast against 
 him the most bitter came from himself when he thought of 
 Sabine. He tormented himself. 
 
JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Oh! God, how is it possible? What sort of creature am 
 
 But he could not resist the stream that bore him on. He 
 thought that life is criminal: and he closed his eyes so as to 
 live without seeing it. He had so great a need to live, and be 
 happy, and love, and believe! ... No: there was nothing des- 
 picable in his love ! He knew that it was impossible to be very 
 wise, or intelligent, or even very happy in his love for Ada: 
 but what was there in it that could be called vile? Suppose — 
 (he forced the idea on himself) — that Ada were not a woman 
 of any great moral worth, how was the love that he had for 
 her the less pure for that? Love is in the lover, not in the 
 beloved. Everything is worthy of the lover, everything is 
 worthy of love. To the pure all is pure. All is pure in the 
 strong and the healthy of mind. Love, which adorns certain 
 birds with their loveliest colors, calls forth from the souls that 
 are true all that is most noble in them. The desire to ^how 
 to the beloved only what is worthy makes the lover take pleasure 
 only in those thoughts and actions which are in harmony with 
 the beautiful image fashioned by love. And the waters of youth 
 in which the soul is bathed, the blessed radiance of strength 
 and joy, are beautiful and health-giving, making the heart 
 great. 
 
 That his friends misunderstood him filled him with bitter- 
 ness. But the worst trial of all was that his mother was begin- 
 ning to be unhappy about it. 
 
 The good creature was far from sharing the narrow views of 
 the Vogels. She had seen real sorrows too near ever to try 
 to invent others. Humble, broken by life, having received little 
 joy from it, and having asked even less, resigned to every- 
 thing that happened, without even trying to understand it, she 
 was careful not to judge or censure others: she thought she 
 had no right. She thought herself too stupid to pretend that 
 they were wrong when they did not think as she did : it would 
 have seemed ridiculous to try to impose on others the inflexible 
 rules of her morality and belief. Besides that, her morality 
 and' her belief were purely instinctive : pious and pure in her- 
 self she closed her eyes to the conduct of others, with the in- 
 dulgence of her class for certain faults and certain weaknesses. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 That had been one of the complaints that her father-in-law, 
 Jean Michel, had lodged against her: she did not sufficiently 
 distinguish between those who were honorable and those who 
 were not: she was not afraid of stopping in the street or the 
 market-place to shake hands and talk with young women, no- 
 torious in the neighborhood, whom a respectable woman ought 
 to pretend to ignore. She left it to God to distinguish between 
 good and evil, to punish or to forgive. From others she asked 
 only a little of that affectionate sympathy which is so necessary 
 to soften the ways of life. If people were only kind she asked 
 no more. 
 
 But since she had lived with the Vogels a change had come 
 about in her. The disparaging temper of the family had found 
 her an easier prey because she was crushed and had no strength 
 to resist. Amalia had taken her in hand: and from morning 
 to night when they were working together alone, and Amalia 
 did all the talking, Louisa, broken and passive, unconsciously 
 assumed the habit of Judging and criticising everything. Frau 
 Vogel did not fail to tell her what she thought of Christophers 
 conduct. Louisans calmness irritated her. She thought it in- 
 decent of Louisa to be so little concerned about what put him 
 beyond the pale: she was not satisfied until she had upset her 
 altogether. Christophe saw it. Louisa dared not reproach him: 
 but every day she made little timid remarks, uneasy, insistent: 
 and when he lost patience and replied sharply, she said no more : 
 but still he could see the trouble in her eyes : and when he came 
 home sometimes he could see that she had been weeping. He 
 knew his mother too well not to be absolutely certain that her 
 uneasiness did not come from herself. — And he knew well whence 
 it came. 
 
 He determined to make an end of it. One evening when 
 Louisa was unable to hold back her tears and had got up from 
 the table in the middle of supper without Christophe being able 
 to discover what was the matter, he rushed downstairs four 
 steps at a time and knocked at the Vogels’ door. He was boiling 
 with rage. He was not only angry about Frau Vogel’s treat- 
 ment of his mother: he had to avenge himself for her having 
 turned Eosa against him, for her bickering against Sabine, for 
 all that he had had to put up with at her hands for months. For 
 
JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 months he had borne his pent-up feelings against her and ; 
 now made haste to let them loose. 
 
 He burst in on Frau Vogel and in a voice that he tried to 
 keep calm, though it was trembling with fury, he asked her 
 what she had told his mother to bring her to such a state. 
 
 Amalia took it very badly: she replied that she would say ^ 
 what she pleased, and was responsible to no one for her actions — 
 to him least of all. And seizing the opportunity to deliver the 
 speech which she had prepared, she added that if Louisa was 
 unhappy he had to go no further for the cause of it than his 
 own conduct, which was a shame to himself and a scandal to 
 everybody else. 
 
 Christophe was only waiting for her onslaught to strike out. 
 
 He shouted angrily that his conduct was his own affair, that . 
 he did not care a rap whether it pleased Frau Vogel or not, ^ 
 that if she wished to complain of it she must do so to him, and i 
 that she could say to him whatever she liked: that rested with ; 
 her, but he forbade her — (did she hear ?) — forbade her to say 
 anything to his mother : it was cowardly and mean so to attack | 
 a poor sick old woman. , 
 
 ‘ ^rau Vogel cried loudly. Never had any one dared to speak 
 to her in such a manner. She said that she was not to be lectured ? 
 by a rapscallion, — and in her own house, too ! — And she treated : 
 him with abuse. ■ 
 
 The others came running up on the noise of the quarrel, — | 
 except Vogel, who fled from anything that might upset his | 
 health. Old Euler was called to witness by the indignant | 
 Amalia and sternly bade Christophe in future to refrain from j 
 speaking to or visiting them. He said that they did not need 
 him to tell them what they ought to do, that they did their 
 duty and would always do it. . 
 
 Christophe declared that he would go and would never again | 
 set foot in their house. However, he did not go until he had | 
 relieved his feelings by telling them what he had still to say ^ 
 about their famous ‘Duty, which had become to him a personal | 
 enemy. He said that their Duty was the sort of thing to make 
 him love vice. It was people like them who discouraged good, S 
 by insisting on making it unpleasant. It was their fault that ^ 
 so many find delight by contrast among those who are dishonest,, ; 
 
YOUTH 
 
 325 
 
 but amiable and laughter-loving. It was a profanation of the 
 name of duty to apply it to everything, to the most stupid tasks, 
 to trivial things, with a stiff and arrogant severity which ends 
 by darkening and poisoning life. Duty, he said, was exceptional : 
 it should be kept for moments of real sacrifice, and not used 
 to lend the lover of its name to ill-humor and the desire to 
 be disagreeable to others. There was no reason, because they 
 were stupid enough or ungracious enough to be sad, to want 
 everybody else to be so too and to impose on everybody their 
 decrepit way of living. . . . The first of all virtues is joy. Vir- 
 tue must be happy, free, and unconstrained. He who does 
 good must give pleasure to himself. But this perpetual upstart 
 Duty, this pedagogic tyranny, this peevishness, this futile dis- 
 cussion, this acrid, puerile quibbling, this ungraciousness, this 
 charmless life, without politeness, without silence, this mean- 
 spirited pessimism, which lets slip nothing that can make exist- 
 ence poorer than it is, this vainglorious unintelligence, which 
 finds it easier to despise others than to understand them, all 
 this middle-class morality, without greatness, without large- 
 ness, without happiness, without beauty, all these things are 
 odious and hurtful: they make vice appear more human than 
 virtue. 
 
 So thought Christophe : and in his desire to hurt those who 
 had wounded him, he did not see that he was being as unjust 
 as those of whom he spoke. 
 
 No doubt these unfortunate people were almost as he saw 
 them. But it was not their fault: it was the fault of their 
 ungracious life, which had made their faces, their doings, and 
 their thoughts ungracious. They had suffered the deformation 
 of misery — not that great misery which swoops down and slays 
 or forges anew — ^but the misery of ever recurring ill-fortune, 
 that small misery which trickles down drop by drop from the 
 first day to the last. . . . Sad, indeed! For beneath these 
 rough exteriors what treasures in reserve are there, of upright- 
 ness, of kindness, of silent heroism ! . . . The whole strength of 
 a people, all the sap of the future. 
 
 Christophe was not wrong in thinking duty exceptional. But 
 love is so no less. Everything is exceptional. Everything that 
 is of worth has no worse enemy — not the evil (the vices are of 
 
326 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 worth) — ^but the habitual. The mortal enemy of the soul is 
 the daily wear and tear. 
 
 Ada was beginning to weary of it. She was not clever enough 
 to find new food for her love in an abundant nature like that 
 of Christophe. Her senses and her vanity had extracted from 
 it all the pleasure they could find in it. There was left her 
 only the pleasure of destroying it. She had that secret instinct 
 .common to so many women, even good women, to so many 
 men, even clever men, who are not creative either of art, or of 
 children, or of pure action, — no matter what: of life — and yet 
 have too much life in apathy and resignation to bear with their 
 uselessness. They desire others to be as useless as themselves 
 and do their best to make them so. Sometimes they do so 
 in spite of themselves: and when they become aware of their 
 criminal desire they hotly thrust it back. But often they hug 
 it to themselves: and they set themselves according to their 
 strength — some modestly in their own intimate circle — others 
 largely with vast audiences — ^to destroy everything that has life, 
 everything that loves life, everything that deserves life. The 
 critic who takes upon himself to diminish the stature of 
 great men and great thoughts — and the girl who amuses 
 herself with dragging down her lovers, are both mischievous 
 beasts of the same kind. — ^But the second is the pleasanter of 
 the two. 
 
 Ada then would have liked to corrupt Christophe a little, to 
 humiliate him. In truth, she was not strong enough. More 
 intelligence was needed, even in corruption. She felt that: 
 and it was not the least of her rankling feelings against Chris- 
 tophe that her love could do him no harm. She did not admit 
 the desire that was in her to do him harm : perhaps she would 
 have done him none if she had been able. But it annoyed her 
 that she could not do it. It is to fail in love for a woman 
 not to leave her the illusion of her power for good or evil over 
 her lover : to do that must inevitably be to impel her irresistibly 
 to the test of it. Christophe paid no attention to it. When 
 Ada asked him jokingly: 
 
 “Would you leave your music for me?” 
 
 (Although she had no wish for him to do so.) 
 
 He replied frankly: 
 
YOUTH 
 
 327 
 
 No, my dear : neither you nor anybody else can do anything 
 against that. I shall always make music.^^ 
 
 And you say you love ? cried she, put out. 
 
 She hated his music — the more so because she did not under- 
 stand it, and it was impossible for her to find a means of coming 
 to grips with this invisible enemy and so to wound Christophe 
 in his passion. If she tried to talk of it contemptuously, or 
 scornfully to judge Christophers compositions, he would 
 shout with laughter; and in spite of her exasperation Ada 
 would relapse into silence: for she saw that she was being 
 ridiculous. 
 
 But if there was nothing to be done in that direction, she 
 had discovered another weak spot in Christophe, one more easy 
 of access: his moral faith. In spite of his squabble with the 
 Vogels, and in spite of the intoxication of his adolescence, Chris- 
 tophe had preserved an instinctive modesty, a need of purity, 
 of which he was entirely unconscious. At first it struck Ada, 
 attracted and charmed her, then made her impatient and irri- 
 table, and finally, being the woman she was, she detested it. She 
 did not make a frontal attack. She would ask insidiously: 
 
 Do you love me ? 
 
 Of course ! 
 
 How much do you love me ? 
 
 As much as it is possible to love.” 
 
 That is not much ... after all ! . . . What would you do 
 for me ? ” 
 
 Whatever you like.” 
 
 Would you do something dishonest.” 
 
 That would be a queer way of loving.” 
 
 ^^That is not what I asked. Wpuld you?” 
 
 ^^Tt is not necessary.” 
 
 ^^But if I wished it?” 
 
 ^^You would be wrong.” 
 
 Perhaps. . . . Would you do it ? ” 
 
 He tried to kiss her. But she thrust him away. 
 
 Would you do it? Yes or no?” 
 
 No, my dear.” 
 
 She turned her back on him and was furious. 
 
 ^^You do not love me. You do not know what love is.” 
 
328 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 “ That is quite possible,” he said good-humoredly. He knew 
 that, like anybody else, he was capable in a moment of passion 
 of committing some folly, perhaps something dishonest, and — 
 who knows ? — even more : but he would have thought shame of 
 himself if he had boasted of it in cold blood, and certainly it 
 would be dangerous to confess it to Ada. Some instinct warned 
 him that the beloved foe was lying in ambush, and taking stock 
 of his smallest remark: he would not give her any weapon 
 against him. 
 
 She would return to the charge again, and ask him : 
 
 “ Do YOU love me because you love me, or because I love 
 you ? ” 
 
 “ Because I love you.” 
 
 “Then if I did not love you, you would still love me?” 
 
 “ Yes.” 
 
 “ And if I loved some one else you would still love me ? ” 
 
 “ Ah ! I don’t know about that. ... I don’t think so. . . . 
 In any case you would be the last person to whom I should say 
 so.” 
 
 “ How would it be changed ? ” 
 
 “ Many things would be changed. Myself, perhaps. You, 
 certainly.” 
 
 “ And if I changed, what would it matter ? ” 
 
 “ All the difference in the world. I love you as you are. If 
 you become another creature I can’t promise to love you.” 
 
 “You do not love, you do not love! What is the use of 
 all this quibbling? You love or you do not love. If you 
 love me you ought to love me just as I am, whatever I do, 
 always.” 
 
 “ That would be to love you like an animal.” 
 
 “ I want to be loved like that.” 
 
 “ Then you have made a mistake,” said he jokingly. “ I am 
 not the sort of man you want. I would like to be, but I cannot 
 And I will not.” 
 
 “ You are very proud of your intelligence ! You love your 
 intelligence more than you do me.” 
 
 “ But I love you, you wretch, more than you love yourself. 
 The more beautiful and the more good you are, the more I love 
 you.” 
 
YOUTH 
 
 329 
 
 "You are a schoolmaster,” she said with asperity. 
 
 “ What would you ? I love what is beautiful. Anything ugly 
 disgusts me.” 
 
 “ Even in me ? ” 
 
 " Especially in you.” 
 
 She drummed angrily with her foot. 
 
 " I will not be judged.” 
 
 "Then complain of what I judge you to be, and of what 
 I love in you,” said he tenderly to appease her. 
 
 She let him take her in his arms, and deigned to smile, and 
 let him kiss her. But in a moment when he thought she had 
 forgotten she asked uneasily; 
 
 " What do you think ugly in me ? ” » 
 
 He would not tell her: he replied cowardly: 
 
 " I don’t think anything ugly in you.” 
 
 She thought for a moment, smiled, and said: 
 
 “Just a moment, Christli: you say that you do not like 
 lying?” 
 
 "I despise it.” 
 
 "You are right,” she said. “I despise it too. I am of a 
 good conscience. I never lie.” 
 
 He stared at her : she was sincere. Her unconsciousness dis- 
 armed him. 
 
 " Then,” she went on, putting her arms about his neck, " why 
 would you be cross with me if I loved some one else and told 
 you so ? ” 
 
 “ Don’t tease me.” 
 
 " I’m not teasing : I am not saying that I do love some one 
 else : I am saying that I do not. . . . But if I did love some one 
 later on . . .” 
 
 “ Well, don’t let us think of it.” 
 
 “ But I want to think of it. ... You would not be angry 
 with me? You could not be angry with me? ” 
 
 " I should not be angry with you. I should leave you. That 
 is all.” 
 
 “ Leave me ? Why ? If I still loved you. . . . ? ” 
 
 " While you loved some one else ? ” 
 
 "Of course. It happens sometimes.” 
 
 “ Well, it will not happen with us.’* 
 
330 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 “Why?” / 
 
 “ Because as soon as you love some one else, I shall love you 
 no longer, my dear, never, never again.” | 
 
 “ But just now you said perhaps. . . . Ah ! you see you do • 
 not love me ! ” 
 
 “Well then: all the better for you.” 
 
 “ Because . . . ? ” 
 
 “ Because if I l^ved you when you loved some one else it 
 might turn out badly for you, me, and him.” 
 
 “ Then ! ... Now you are mad. Then I am condemned to 
 stay with you all my life ? ” 
 
 “Be calm. You are free. You shall leave me when you 
 like. Only it will not be au revoir : it will be good-bye.” 
 
 “ But if I still love you ? ” 
 
 “ When people love, they sacrifice themselves to each other.” 
 
 “ Well, then . . . sacrifice yourself ! ” 
 
 He could not help laughing at her egoism : and she laughed ; 
 
 too. ; 
 
 “ The sacrifice of one only,” he said, “ means the love of one ‘ 
 
 only.” ! 
 
 “ Not at all. It means the love of both. I shall not love ^ 
 you much longer if you do not sacrifice yourself for me. And 
 think, Christli, how much you will love me, when you have . 
 sacrificed yourself, and how happy you will be.” ; 
 
 They laughed and were glad to have a change from the ; 
 seriousness of the disagreement. | 
 
 He laughed and looked at her. At heart, as she said, she. 
 had no desire to leave Christophe at present: if he irritated 
 her and often bored her she knew the worth of such devotion"^ 
 as his : and she loved no one else. She talked so for fun, partly 
 because she knew he disliked it, partly because she took pleasure 
 in playing with equivocal and unclean thoughts like a child 
 which delights to mess about with dirty water. He knew this. 
 He did not mind. But he was tired of these unwholesome dis- 
 cussions, of the silent struggle against this uncertain and uneasy 
 creature whom he loved, who perhaps loved him : he was tired 
 from the effort that he had to make to deceive himself about 
 her, sometimes tired almost to tears. He would think: “Why, 
 why is she like this? Why are people like this? How second- 
 
 I 
 
YOUTH 
 
 331 
 
 rate life is ! At the same time he would smile as he 
 
 saw her pretty face above him, her blue eyes, her flower-like 
 complexion, her laughing, chattering lips, foolish a little, half 
 open to reveal the brilliance of her tongue and her white teeth. 
 Their lips would almost touch: and he would look at her as 
 from a distance, a great distance, as from another world: he 
 would see her going farther and farther from him, vanishing 
 in a mist. . . . And then he would lose sight of her. He could 
 hear her no more. He would fall into a sort of smiling oblivion 
 in which he thought of his music, his dreams, a thousand things 
 foreign to Ada. ... Ah! beautiful music! ... so sad, so mor- 
 tally sad ! and yet kind, loving. . . . Ah ! how good it is ! . . . 
 It is that, it is that. . . . Nothing else is true. . . . 
 
 She would shake his arm. A voice would cry : 
 
 Eh, what’s the matter with you? You are mad, quite mad. 
 Why do you look at me like that? Why don’t you answer?” 
 
 Once more he would see the eyes looking at him. Who was 
 it ? ... Ah ! yes. ... He would sigh. 
 
 She would watch him. She would try to discover what he 
 was thinking of. She did not understand: but she felt that it 
 was useless: that she could not keep hold of him, that there 
 was always a door by which he could escape. She would conceal 
 her irritation. 
 
 Why are you crying ? ” she asked him once as he returned 
 from one of his strange journeys into another life. 
 
 He drew his hands across his eyes. He felt that they were 
 wet. 
 
 do not know,” he said. 
 
 Why don’t you answer ? Three times you have said the 
 same thing.” 
 
 What do you want ? ” he asked gently. 
 
 She went back to her absurd discussions. He waved his hand 
 wearily. 
 
 ^^Yes,” she said. ^^I’ve done. Only a word more!” And 
 off she started again. 
 
 Christophe shook himself angrily. 
 
 Will you keep your dirtiness to yourself ! 
 
 I was only joking.” 
 
 Find cleaner subjects, then ! ” 
 
 i 
 
332 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 “ Tell me why, then. Tell me why you don’t like it.” 
 
 “ Why ? You can’t argue as to why a dump-heap smells. It 
 does smell, and that is all ! I hold my nose and go away.” 
 
 He went away, furious : and he strode along taking in great 
 breaths of the cold air. 
 
 But she would begin again, once, twice, ten times. She 
 would bring forward every possible subject that could shock 
 him and offend his conscience. 
 
 He thought it was only a morbid jest of a neurasthenic girl, 
 amusing herself by annoying him. He would shrug his shoul- 
 ders or pretend not to hear her : he would not take her seriously. 
 But sometimes he would long to throw her out of the window: 
 for neurasthenia and the neurasthenics were very little to his 
 taste. ... 
 
 But ten minutes away from her were enough to make him 
 forget everything that had annoyed him. He would return to 
 Ada with a fresh store of hopes and new illusions. He loved , 
 ^ her. Love is a perpetual act of faith. Whether God exist or ■ 
 I no is a small matter: we believe, because we believe. We love . 
 I because we love : there is no need of reasons ! . . . 
 
 i 
 
 After Christophe’s quarrel with the Vogels it became im- ; 
 possible for them to stay in the house, and Louisa had to seek ; 
 another lodging for herself and her son. : 
 
 One day Christophe’s younger brother Ernest, of whom they : 
 had not heard for a long time, suddenly turned up. He was , 
 out of work, having been dismissed in turn from all the situa- j 
 tions he had procured : his purse was empty and his health < 
 ruined : and so he had thought it would be as well to re-establish ^ 
 himself in his mother’s house. • 
 
 Ernest was not on bad terms with either of his brothers:' 
 they thought very little of him and he knew it: but he did not 
 bear any grudge against them, for he did not care. They had 
 no ill-feeling against him. It was not worth the trouble. 
 Everything they said to him slipped off his back without leav- 
 ing a mark. He just smiled with his sly eyes, tried to look 
 contrite, thought of something else, agreed, thanked them, and 
 in the end always managed to extort money from one or other 
 of them. In spite of himself Christophe was fond of the pleas-^ 
 
YOUTH 
 
 333 
 
 ant mortal who, like himself, and more than himself, resembled 
 their father Melchior in feature. Tall and strong like Chris- 
 tophe, he had regular features, a frank expression, a straight 
 nose, a laughing mouth, fine teeth, and endearing manners. 
 When even Christophe saw him he was disarmed and could not 
 deliver half the reproaches that he had prepared: in his heart 
 he had a sort of motherly indulgence for the handsome boy 
 who was of his blood, and physically at all events did him credit.. 
 He did not believe him to be bad: and Ernest was not a fooL. 
 Without culture, he was not without brains: he was even not 
 incapable of taking an interest in the things of the mind. He 
 enjoyed listening to music : and without understanding his 
 brother’s compositions he would listen to them with interest. 
 Christophe, who did not receive too much sympathy from his 
 family, had been glad to see him at some of his concerts. 
 
 But Ernest’s chief talent was the knowledge that he pos- 
 sessed of the character of his two brothers, and his skill in 
 making use of his knowledge. It was no use Christophe know- 
 ing Ernest’s egoism and indifference: it was no use his seeing 
 that Ernest never thought of his mother or himself except 
 when he had need of them: he was always taken in by his 
 affectionate ways and very rarely did he refuse him anything. 
 He much preferred him to his other brother Eodolphe, who 
 was orderly and correct, assiduous in his business, strictly moral, 
 never asked for money, and never gave any either, visited his 
 mother regularly every Sunday, stayed an hour, and only talked 
 about himself, boasting about himself, his firm, and everything 
 that concerned him, never asking about the others, and taking 
 no interest in them, and going away when the hour was up, 
 quite satisfied with having done his duty. Christophe could 
 not bear him. He always arranged to be out when Eodolphe 
 came. Eodolphe was jealous of him: he despised artists, and 
 Christophe’s success really hurt him, though he did not fail 
 to turn his small fame to account in the commercial circles in 
 which he moved: but he never said a word about it either to 
 his mother or to Christophe: he pretended to ignore it. On 
 the other hand, he never ignored the least of the unpleasant 
 things that happened to Christophe. Christophe despised such 
 pettiness, and pretended not to notice it: but it would really 
 
334 
 
 JEAN-CIIEISTOPHE 
 
 have hurt him to know, though he never thought about it, that ; 
 much of the unpleasant information that Eodolphe had about ' 
 him came from Ernest. The young rascal fed the differences 
 between Christophe and Eodolphe : no doubt he recognized Chris- i 
 tophe’s superiority and perhaps even sympathized a little ironi- 
 cally with his candor. But he took good care to turn it to 
 account: and while he despised Eodolphe’s ill-feeling he ex- 
 ploited it shamefully. He flattered his vanity and jealousy, 
 accepted his rebukes deferentially and kept him primed with 
 the scandalous gossip of the town, especially with everything 
 concerning Christophe, — of which he was always marvelously 
 informed. So he attained his ends, and Eodolphe, in spite of 
 his avance, allowed Ernest to despoil him just as Christophe 
 did. 
 
 So Ernest made use and a mock of them both, impartially. 
 And so both of them loved him. 
 
 In spite of his tricks Ernest was in a pitiful condition, 
 when he turned up at his mother’s house. He had come | 
 from Munich, where he had found and, as usual, almost im-! 
 mediately lost a situation. He had had to travel the best^ 
 part of the way on foot, through storms of rain, sleeping, 
 God knows where. He was covered with mud, ragged, look-' 
 ing like a beggar, and coughing miserably. Louisa was up- ! 
 set and Christophe ran to him in alarm when they saw him 
 come in. Ernest, whose tears flowed easily, did not fail to; 
 make use of the effect he had produced : and there was a | 
 general reconciliation: all three wept in each other’s arms. i 
 
 Christophe gave up his room: they warmed the bed, and laid' 
 the invalid in it, who seemed to be on the point of death. ^ 
 Louisa and Christophe sat by his bedside and took it in turns i 
 to watch by him. They called in a doctor, procured medicines, 
 made a good Are in the room, and gave him special food. 
 
 Then they had to clothe him from head to foot : linen, shoes, 
 clothes, everything new. Ernest left himself in their hands. 
 Louisa and Christophe sweated to squeeze the money from their 
 expenditure. They were very straitened at the moment: the 
 removal, the new lodgings, which were dearer though just as 
 uncomfortable, fewer lessons for Christophe and more expenses. 
 They could just make both ends meet. They managed 
 
YOUTH 
 
 335 
 
 somehow. No doubt Christophe could have applied to 
 Eodolphe, who was more in a position to help Ernest, 
 but he would not : he made it a point of honor to help his 
 brother alone. He thought himself obliged to do so as the 
 eldest,— and because he was Christophe. Hot with shame he 
 had to accept, to declare his willingness to accept an offer which 
 he had indignantly rejected a fortnight before, — a proposal from 
 an agent of an unknown wealthy amateur who wanted to 
 buy a musical composition for publication under his own name. 
 Louisa took work out, mending linen. They hid their sacrifice 
 from each other: they lied about the money they brought 
 home. 
 
 When Ernest was convalescent and sitting huddled up by 
 the fire, he confessed one day between his fits of coughing that 
 he had a few debts.— They were paid. No one reproached him. 
 That would not have been kind to an invalid and a prodigal 
 son who had repented and returned home. For Ernest seemed 
 to have been changed by adversity and sickness. With tears 
 in his eyes he spoke of his past misdeeds: and Louisa kissed 
 him and told him to think no more of them. He was fond: 
 he had always been able to get round his mother by his demon- 
 strations of affection: Christophe had once been a little jealous 
 of him. Now he thought it natural that the youngest and the 
 weakest son should be the most loved. In spite of the small 
 difference in their ages he regarded him almost as a son rather 
 than as a brother. Ernest showed great respect for him : some- 
 times he would allude to the burdens that Christophe was taking 
 upon himself, and to his sacrifice of money: but Christophe 
 would not let him go on, and Ernest would content himself 
 with showing his gratitude in his eyes humbly and affectionately. 
 He would argue with the advice that Christophe gave him : and 
 he would seem disposed to change his way of living and to 
 ' work seriously as soon as he was well again. 
 
 He recovered: but had a long convalescence. The doctor 
 declared that his health, which he had abused, needed to be 
 fostered. So he stayed on in his mother’s house, sharing 
 Christophe’s bed, eating heartily the bread that his brother 
 earned, and the little dainty dishes that Louisa prepared for 
 him. He never spoke of going. Louisa and Christophe never 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
336 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 mentioned it either. They were too happy to have found again 
 the son and the brother they loved. 
 
 Little by little in the long evenings that he spent with Ernest 
 Christophe began to talk intimately to him. He needed to 
 confide in somebody. Ernest was clever: he had a quick mind 
 and understood — or seemed to understand — on a hint only. 
 There was pleasure in talking to him. And yet Christophe 
 dared not tell him about what lay nearest to his heart : his 
 love. He was kept back by a sort of modesty. Ernest, who 
 knew all about it, never let it appear that he knew. 
 
 One day when Ernest was quite well again he went in the 
 sunny afternoon and lounged along the Rhine. As he passed 
 a noisy inn a little way out of the town, where there were 
 drinking and dancing on Sundays, he saw Christophe sitting 
 with Ada and Myrrha, who were making a great noise. Chris- 
 tophe saw him too, and blushed. Ernest was discreet and passed . 
 on without acknowledging him. 
 
 Christophe was much embarrassed by the encounter: it made 
 him more keenly conscious of the company in which he was: j 
 it hurt him that his brother should have seen him then; not 
 only because it made him lose the right of judging Ernest’s | 
 conduct, but because he had a very lofty, very naive, and rather , 
 archaic notion of his duties as an elder brother which would ^ 
 have seemed absurd to many people : he thought that in failing 
 in that duty, as he was doing, he was lowered in his own eyes. ; 
 
 In the evening when they were together in their room, he ' 
 waited for Ernest to allude to what had happened. But Ernest ] 
 prudently said nothing and waited also. Then while they were i 
 undressing Christophe decided to speak about his love. He was * 
 so ill at ease that he dared not look at Ernest: and in his shy- | 
 ness he assumed a gruff way of speaking. Ernest did not help 
 him out: he was silent and did not look at him, though he 
 watched him all the same: and he missed none of the humor 
 of Christophers awkwardness and clumsy words. Christophe 
 hardly dared pronounce Ada’s name: and the portrait that he 
 drew of her would have done just as well for any woman who 
 was loved. But he spoke of his love : little by little he was 
 carried away by the flood of tenderness that filled his heart: 
 he said how good it was to love, how wretched he had been before 
 
YOUTH 
 
 337 
 
 he had found that light in the darkness, and that life was 
 nothing without a dear, deep-seated love. His brother listened 
 gravely: he replied tactfully, and asked no questions: but a 
 warm handshake showed that he was , of Christophers way of 
 thinking. They exchanged ideas concerning love and life. 
 Christophe was happy at being so well understood. They ex- 
 changed a brotherly embrace before they went to sleep. 
 
 Christophe grew accustomed to confiding his love to Ernest, 
 though always shyly and reservedly. Ernest’s discretion re- 
 assured him. He let him know his uneasiness about Ada: but 
 he never blamed her: he blamed himself: and with tears in 
 his eyes he would declare that he could not live if he were to 
 lose her. 
 
 He did not forget to tell Ada about Ernest: he praised his 
 wit and his good looks. 
 
 Ernest never approached Christophe with a request to be 
 introduced to Ada: but he would shut himself up in his room 
 and sadly refuse to go out, saying that he did not know any- 
 body. Christophe would think ill of himself on Sundays for 
 going on his excursions with Ada, while his brother stayed 
 at home. And yet he hated not to be alone with his beloved: 
 he accused himself of selfishness and proposed that Ernest 
 should come with them. 
 
 The introduction took place at Ada’s door, on the landing. 
 Ernest and Ada bowed politely. Ada came out, followed by 
 her inseparable Myrrha, who when she saw Ernest gave a little 
 cry of surprise. Ernest smiled, went up to Myrrha, and 
 kissed her : she seemed to take it as a matter of course. 
 
 What ! You know each other? ” asked Christophe in aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 Why, yes ! ” said Myrrha, laughing. 
 
 Since when ? ” 
 
 Oh, a long time ! ” 
 
 And you knew ? ” asked Christophe, turning to Ada. Why 
 did you not tell me?” 
 
 Do you think I know all Myrrha’s lovers ? ” said Ada, shrug- 
 ging her shoulders. 
 
 Myrrha took up the word and pretended in fun to be angry. 
 Christophe could not find out any more about it. He was 
 
338 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 depressed. It seemed to him that Ernest and Myrrha and Ada i 
 had been lacking in honesty, although indeed he could not have . 
 brought any lie up against them : but it was difficult to believe 
 that Myrrha, who had no secrets from Ada, had made a mys- | 
 tery of this, and that Ernest and Ada were not already ac- j 
 quainted with each other. He watched them. But they only 
 exchanged a few trivial words and Ernest only paid attention 
 to Myrrha all the rest of the day. Ada only spoke to Chris- 
 tophe: and she was much more amiable to him than usual. 
 
 From that time on Ernest always joined them. Christophe 
 could have done without him : but he dared not say so. He 
 had no other motive for wanting to leave his brother out than 
 his shame in having him for boon companion. He had no 
 suspicion of him. Ernest gave him no cause for it; he seemed 
 to be in love with Myrrha and was always reserved and polite 
 with Ada, and even affected to avoid her in a way that was a . 
 little out of place: it was as though he wished to show his 
 brother’s mistress a little of the respect he showed to himself. 
 Ada was not surprised by it and was none the less careful. 
 
 They went on long excursions together. The two brothers 
 would walk on in front. Ada and Myrrha, laughing and whis- ! 
 pering, would follow a few yards behind. They would stop ; 
 in the middle of the road and talk. Christophe and Ernest ; 
 would stop and wait for them. Christophe would lose patience ^ 
 and go on : but soon he would turn back annoyed and irritated, ; 
 by hearing Ernest talking and laughing with the two young ^ 
 women. He would want to know what they were saying: but ] 
 when they came up with him their conversation would stop. < 
 
 “What are you three always plotting together?” he would ^ 
 
 ask. i 
 
 They would reply with some joke. They had a secret under- 
 standing like thieves at a fair. 
 
 Christophe had a sharp quarrel with Ada. They had been 
 cross with each other all day. Strange to say, Ada had not 
 assumed her air of offended dignity, to which she usually 
 resorted in such cases, so as to avenge herself, by making her- 
 self as intolerably tiresome as usual. Now she simply pre- 
 tended to ignore Christophe’s existence and she was in excellent 
 
YOUTH 
 
 339 
 
 spirits with the other two. It was as though in her heart she 
 was not put out at all by the quarrel. 
 
 Christophe, on the other hand, longed to make peace: he 
 was more in love than ever. His tenderness was now mingled 
 with a feeling of gratitude for all the good things love had 
 brought him, and regret for the hours he had wasted in stupid 
 argument and angry thoughts — and the unreasoning fear, the 
 mysterious idea that their love was nearing its end. Sadly he 
 looked at Ada’s pretty face and she pretended not to see him 
 while she was laughing with the others: and the sight of her 
 woke in him so many dear memories, of great love, of sincere 
 intimacy. — Her face had sometimes — ^it had now— so much good- 
 ness in it, a smile so pure, that Christophe asked himself why 
 things were not better between them, why they spoiled their 
 happiness with their whimsies, why she would insist on for- 
 getting their bright hours, and denying and combating all that 
 was good and honest in her — what strange satisfaction she 
 could find in spoiling, and smudging, if only in thought, the 
 purity of their love. He was conscious of an immense need 
 of believing in the object of his love, and he tried once more 
 to bring back his illusions. He accused himself of injustice: 
 he was remorseful for the thoughts that he attributed to her, 
 and of his lack of charity. 
 
 He went to her and tried to talk to her: she answered him 
 with a few curt words: she had no desire for a reconciliation 
 with him. He insisted: he begged her to listen to him for a 
 moment away from the others. She followed him ungraciously. 
 When they were a few yards away so that neither Myrrha nor 
 Ernest could see them, he took her hands and begged her 
 I pardon, and knelt at her feet in the dead leaves of the wood. 
 
 He told her that he could not go on living so at loggerheads 
 I with her: that he found no pleasure in the walk, or the fine 
 i day: that he could enjoy nothing, and could not even breathe, 
 
 I knowing that she detested him: he needed her love. Yes: he 
 I was often unjust, violent, disagreeable : he begged her to forgive 
 j him: it was the fault of his love, he could not bear anything 
 second-rate in her, nothing that was altogether unworthy of 
 , her and their memories of their dear past. He reminded her 
 of it all, of their first meeting, their first days together: he 
 
340 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 said that he loved her just as much, that he would always love 
 her, that she should not go away from him! She was every- 
 thing to him. . . . 
 
 Ada listened to him, smiling, uneasy, almost softened. She 
 looked at him with kind eyes, eyes that said that they loved 
 each other, and that she was no longer angry. They kissed, 
 and holding each other close they went into the leafless woods. 
 She thought Christophe good and gentle, and was grateful to 
 him for his tender words : but she did not relinquish the naughty 
 whims that were in her mind. But she hesitated, she did not 
 cling to them so tightly : and yet she did not abandon what she 
 had planned to do. Why ? Who can say ? . . . Because she 
 had vowed what she would do? — Who knows? Perhaps she 
 thought it more entertaining to deceive her lover that day, to 
 prove to him, to prove to herself her freedom. She had no 
 thought of ISsing him : she did not wish for that. She thought 
 herself more sure of him than ever. 
 
 They reached a clearing in the forest. There were two 
 paths. Christophe took one. Ernest declared that the other 
 led more quickly to the top of the hill whither they were going. 
 Ada agreed with him. Christophe, who knew the way, having 
 often been there, maintained that they were wrong. They did 
 not yield. Then they agreed to try it : and each wagered that 
 he would arrive first. Ada went with Ernest. Myrrha accom- 
 panied Christophe: she pretended that she was sure that he 
 was right: and she added, “As usual.” Christophe had taken 
 the game seriously: and as he never liked to lose, he walked 
 quickly, too quickly for Myrrha’s liking, for she was in much 
 less of a hurry than he. 
 
 “ Don’t be in a hurry, my friend,” she said, in her quiet, 
 ironic voice, “ we shall get there first.” 
 
 He was a little sorry. 
 
 “ True,” he said, I am going a little too fast : there is no 
 need.” 
 
 He slackened his pace. 
 
 “But I know them,” he went on. “I am sure they will 
 run so as to be there before us.” 
 
 Myrrha burst out laughing. 
 
 “ Oh ! no,” she said. “ Oh ! no : don’t you worry about that.” 
 
YOUTH 
 
 341 
 
 She hung on his arm and pressed close to him. She was 
 a little shorter than Christophe, and as they walked she raised 
 her soft eyes to his. She was really pretty and alluring. He 
 hardly recognized her: the change was extraordinary. Usually 
 her face was rather pale and puffy : but the smallest excitement, 
 a merry thought, or the desire to please, was enough to make 
 her worn expression vanish, and her cheeks go pink, and the 
 little wrinkles in her eyelids round and below her eyes dis- 
 appear, and her eyes flash, and her whole face take on a youth, 
 a life, a spiritual quality that never was in Ada’s. Christophe 
 was surprised by this metamorphosis, and turned his eyes away 
 from hers : he was a little uneasy at being alone with her. She 
 embarrassed him and prevented him from dreaming as he 
 pleased : he did not listen to what she said, he did not answer 
 her, or if he did it was only at random: he was thinking — 
 he wished to think only of Ada. He thought of the kindness 
 in her eyes, her smile, her kiss: and his heart was filled with 
 love. Myrrha wanted to make him admire the beauty of the 
 trees with their little branches against the clear sky. . . . Yes : 
 it was all beautiful: the clouds were gone, Ada had returned 
 to him, he had succeeded in breaking the ice that lay between 
 them: they loved once more: near or far, they were one. He 
 sighed with relief : how light the air was ! Ada had come back 
 to him. . . . Everything brought her to mind. ... It was a 
 little damp : would she not be cold ? . . . The lovely trees were 
 powdered with hoar-frost : what a pity she should not see them ! 
 
 . . . But he remembered the wager, and hurried on: he was 
 concerned only with not losing the way. He shouted joyfully 
 as they reached the goal : 
 
 We are first ! ” 
 
 He waved his hat gleefully. Myrrha watched him and smiled. 
 
 The place' where they stood was a high, steep rock in the 
 middle pf the woods. From this flat summit with its fringe 
 of nut-trees and little stunted oaks they could see, over the 
 wooded slopes, the tops of the pines bathed in a purple mist, 
 ind the long ribbon of the Ehine in the blue valley. Not a bird 
 :ialled. Not a voice. Not a breath of air. A still, calm winter’s 
 lay, its chilliness faintly warmed by the pale beams of a misty 
 ;3un. Now and then in the distance there came the sharp 
 
343 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 whistle of a train in the valley. Christophe stood at the edge 
 of the rock and looked down at the countryside. Myrrha watched 
 Christophe. 
 
 He turned to her amiably: 
 
 “Well! The lazy things. I told them so! . . . Well, we 
 must wait for them. ... 
 
 He lay stretched out in the sun on the cracked eartti. 
 
 “ Yes.^ Let us wait . . .” said Myrrha, taking off her hat , 
 In her voice there was something so quizzical that he raised 
 
 his head and looked at her. 
 
 “What is it?” she asked quietly. 
 
 “ What did you say ? ” „ 
 
 “ I said : Let us wait. It was no use making me run so last. 
 
 They waited lying on the rough ground. Myrrha hummed a , 
 tune. ^Christophe took it up for a few phrases. But he stopped^ 
 every now and then to listen. ; 
 
 “ I think I can hear them.” | 
 
 Myrrha went on singing. . 
 
 “ Do stop for a moment.” | 
 
 Myrrha stopped. ; 
 
 “No. It is nothing.” ; 
 
 She went on with her song. , ; 
 
 Christophe could not stay still. ] 
 
 “ Perhaps they have lost their way.” | 
 
 , “Lost? They could not. Ernest knows all the paths. j 
 A fantastic idea passed through Christophe’s mind. j 
 
 “ Perhaps they arrived first, and went away before we cam . j 
 Myrrha was lying on her back and looking at the sum 
 was Lized with a wild burst of laughter in the middle of het 
 song and all but choked. Christophe insisted He wanted to 
 go down to the station, saying that their friends would be the 
 alreadv Myrrha at last made up her mind to move. 
 
 “You »ould be certein to lose them! . . . There was neve, 
 
 any talk about the station. We were to meet here. 
 
 He sat down by her side. She was amused by is g • 
 
 He was conscious of the irony in her gaze as she looked a 
 
 him He began to be seriously troubled— to be anxious abw 
 tliem- he did not suspect them. He got up once more. Hi 
 
YOUTH 
 
 343 
 
 spoke of going down into the woods again and looking for them, 
 calling to them. Myrrha gave a little chuckle; she took from 
 her pocket a needle, scissors, and thread: and she calmly undid, 
 and sewed ip again the feathers in her hat: she seemed to have 
 established herself for the day. 
 
 “ No, no, silly,” she said. If they wanted to come do you 
 think they would not come of their own accord? 
 
 There was a catch at his heart. He turned towards her: 
 she did not look at him : she was busy with her work. He went 
 up to her. 
 
 “ Myrrha ! ” he said. 
 
 “ Eh ? ” she replied without stopping. He knelt now to look 
 more nearly at her. 
 
 “ Myrrha ! ” he repeated. 
 
 ‘^Well?” she asked, raising her eyes from her work and 
 looking at him with a smile. “ What is it? ” 
 
 She had a mocking expression as she saw his downcast 
 
 face. , • 1 » 
 
 “ Myrrha ! ” he asked, choking, “ tell me what you think . . . 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and went on working. 
 
 He caught her hands and took away the hat at which she was 
 sewing. 
 
 “ Leave off, leave off, and tell me. ...” 
 
 She looked squarely at him and waited. She saw that Chris- 
 tophe’s lips were trembling. 
 
 “ You think,” he said in a low voice, “ that Ernest and 
 Ada . . .?” 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 “ Oh ! well ! ” 
 
 He started back angrily. 
 
 «No! No! It is impossible! You don’t think that! . . . 
 
 No ! No ! ” . , , 
 
 She put her hands on his shoulders and rocked with laughter. 
 
 “How dense you are, how dense, my dear!” 
 
 He shook her violently. 
 
 “Don’t laugh! Why do you laugh? You would not laugh 
 if it were true. You love Ernest. ...” 
 
 She went on laughing and drew him to her and kissed him. 
 ' In spite of himself he returned her kiss. But when he felt her 
 
344 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 lips on his, her lips, still warm with his brother’s kisses, he 
 flung her away from him and held her face away from his 
 own: he asked: 
 
 “You knew it? It was arranged between you?” 
 
 She said “Yes,” and laughed. 
 
 Christophe did not cry out, he made no movement of anger. 
 He opened his mouth as though he could not breathe : he closed 
 his eyes and clutched at his breast with his hands: his heart 
 was bursting. Then he lay down on the ground with his face 
 buried in his hands and he was shaken by a crisis of disgust 
 and despair like a child. i 
 
 Myrrha, who was not very soft-hearted, was sorry for him: 
 involuntarily she was filled with motherly compassion, and 
 leaned over him, and spoke affectionately to him, and tried to 
 make him sniff at her smelling-bottle. But he thrust her away 
 in horror and got up so sharply that she was afraid. He had 
 neither strength nor desire for revenge. He looked at her with • 
 his face twisted with grief. i 
 
 “You drab,” he said in despair. “You do not know the ' 
 harm you have done. ...” ^ 
 
 She tried to hold him back. He fled through the woods, i 
 spitting out his disgust with such ignominy, with such muddy ■ 
 hearts, with such incestuous sharing as that to which they had ; 
 tried to bring him. He wept, he trembled : he sobbed with dis- ! 
 gust. He was filled with horror, of them all, of himself, of ; 
 his body and soul. A storm of contempt broke loose in him: ( 
 it had long been brewing: sooner or later there had to come j 
 the reaction against the base thoughts, the degrading com- ) 
 promises, the stale and pestilential atmosphere in which he had i 
 been living for months: but the need of loving, of deceiving ' 
 himself about the woman he loved, had postponed the crisis 
 as long as possible. Suddenly it burst upon him : and it was 
 better so. There was a great gust of wind of a biting purity, 
 an icy breeze which swept away the miasma. Disgust in one 
 swoop had killed his love for Ada. 
 
 If Ada thought more firmly to establish her domination over 
 Christophe by such an act, that proved once more her gross 
 inappreciation of her lover. Jealousy which binds souls that 
 are besmirched could only revolt a nature like Christophe’s, 
 
YOUTH 
 
 345 
 
 young, proud, and pure. But what he could not forgive, what 
 he never would forgive, was that the betrayal was not the out- 
 come of passion in Ada, hardly even of one of those absurd 
 and degrading though often irresistible caprices to which the 
 reason of a woman is sometimes hard put to it not to surrender, 
 jfo — he understood now, — it was in her a secret desire to de- 
 grade him, to humiliate him, to punish him for his moral 
 resistance, for his inimical faith, to lower him to the common 
 level, to bring him to her feet, to prove to herself her own 
 power for evil. And he asked himself with horror: what is 
 this impulse towards dirtiness, which is in the majority of 
 human beings — this desire to besmirch the purity of themselves 
 and others, — these swinish souls, who take a delight in rolling 
 in filth, and are happy when not one inch of their skins is left 
 clean! . . . 
 
 Ada waited two days for Christophe to return to her. Then 
 she began to be anxious, and sent him a tender note in which 
 she made no allusion to what had happened. Christophe did 
 not even reply. He hated Ada so profoundly that no words 
 could express his hatred. He had cut her out of his life. She 
 no longer existed for him. 
 
 Christophe was free of Ada, but he „ was not free of himself 
 In vain did he try to return into illusion and to take up again, 
 the calm and chaste strength of the past. We cannot return 
 to the past. We have to go onward: it is useless to turn back, 
 save only to see the places by which we have passed, the distant 
 smoke from the roofs under which we have slept, dying away 
 on the horizon in the mists of memory. But nothing so dis- 
 tances us from the soul that we had as a few months of 
 passion. The road takes a sudden turn : the country is changed r 
 it is as though we were saying good-bye for the last time to 
 all that we are leaving behind. 
 
 Christophe could not yield to it. He held out his arms to 
 the past: he strove desperately to bring to life again the soul 
 that had been his, lonely and resigned. But it was gone. 
 Passion itself is not so dangerous as the ruins that it heaps up 
 and leaves behind. In vain did Christophe not love, in vain — 
 for a moment — did he despise love: he bore the marks of its 
 
346 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 talons : his whole being was steeped in it : there was in his 
 heart a void which must be filled. With that terrible need of 
 tenderness and pleasure which devours men and women when 
 they have once tasted it, some other passion was needed, were 
 it only the contrary passion, the passion of contempt, of proud 
 purity, of faith in virtue. — They were not enough, they were 
 not enough to stay his hunger: they were only the food of a 
 moment. His life consisted of a succession of violent reactions — 
 leaps from one extreme to the other. Sometimes he would 
 bend his passion to rules inhumanly ascetic: not eating, drink- 
 ing water, wearing himself out with walking, heavy tasks, and 
 so not sleeping, denying himself every sort of pleasure. Some- 
 times he would persuade himself that strength is the true 
 morality for people like himself : and he would plunge into the 
 quest of joy. In either case he was unhappy. He could no 
 longer be alone. He could no longer not be alone. 
 
 The only thing that cQuld^have saved him would have been- 
 Jo find a true friendship, — Rosa’s perhaps: he could have taken ; 
 refuge in that. But the rupture was complete between the’ 
 two families. They no longer met. Only once had Christophe, 
 seen Rosa. She was just coming out from Mass. He had^ 
 hesitated to bow to her: and when she saw him she had made' 
 a movement towards him: but when he had tried to go to her: 
 through the stream of the devout walking down the steps, she 
 had turned her eyes away: and when he approached her she 
 bowed coldly and passed on. In the girl’s heart he felt intense,.; 
 icy contempt. And he did not feel that she still loved him| 
 and would have liked to tell him so : but she had come to think' 
 of her love as a fault and foolishness: she thought Christophev 
 bad and corrupt, and further from her than ever. So they^ 
 were lost to each other forever. And perhaps it was as well 
 for both of them. In spite of her goodness, she was not near 
 enough 4o life to be able to understand him. In spite of his 
 need of affection and respect he would have stifled in a com- 
 monplace and confined existence, without joy, without sorrow, 
 without air. They would both have suffered. The unfortunate 
 occurrence which cut them apart was, when all was told, per- 
 haps, fortunate as often happens — as always happens — to those 
 who are strong and endure. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 347 
 
 But at the moment it was a great sorrow and a great mis- 
 fortune for them. Especially for Christophe. Such virtuous 
 intolerance, such narrowness of soul, which sometimes seems 
 to deprive those who have the most of them of all intelligence, 
 and those who are most good of kindness, irritated him, hurt 
 him, and flung him back in protest into a freer life. 
 
 During his loafing with Ada in the beer gardens of the 
 neighborhood he had made acquaintance with several good fel- 
 lows — Bohemians, whose carelessness and freedom of manners 
 had not been altogether distasteful to him. One of them, Friede- 
 mann, a musician like himself, an organist, a man of thirty, 
 was not without intelligence, and was good at his work, but 
 he was incurably lazy and rather than make the slightest effort 
 to be more than mediocre, he would have died of hunger, though 
 not, perhaps, of thirst. He comforted himself in his indolence; 
 by speaking ill of those who lived energetically, God knows 
 why: and his sallies, rather heavy for the most part, generally 
 made- people laugh. Having more liberty than his companions, 
 he was not afraid, — though timidly, and with winks and nods 
 and suggestive remarks, — to sneer at those who held positions : 
 he was even capable of not having ready-made opinions about 
 music, and of having a sly fling at the forged reputations of 
 the great men of the day. He had no mercy upon women 
 either: when he was making his jokes he loved to repeat the 
 old saying of some misogynist monk about them, and Chris- 
 tophe enjoyed its bitterness just then more than anybody : 
 
 “ Femina mors animae.” 
 
 In his state of upheaval Christophe found some distraction 
 in talking to Friedemann. He judged him, he could not long 
 take pleasure in this vulgar bantering wit: his mockery and 
 perpetual denial became irritating before long and he felt the 
 impotence of it all: but it did soothe his exasperation with the 
 self-sufficient stupidity of the Philistines. While he heartily 
 despised his companion, Christophe could not do without him. 
 They were continually seen together sitting with the unclassed 
 and doubtful people of Friedemann’s acquaintance, who were 
 even more worthless than himself. They used to play, and 
 harangue, and drink the whole evening. Christophe would 
 sudderdy wake up in the midst of the dreadful smell of food' 
 
548 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 and tobacco : he would look at the people about him with strange ; 
 eyes : he would not recognize them : he would think in 
 agony : 
 
 " Where am I ? Who are these people ? What have I to do 
 with them ? ” 
 
 Their remarks and their laughter would make him sick. But 
 he could not bring himself to leave them: he was afraid of 
 going home and of being left alone face to face with his soul, 
 his desires, and remorse. He was going to the dogs: he knew 
 it: he was doing it deliberately, — with cruel clarity he saw in 
 Eriedemann the degraded image of what he was — of what he 
 would be one day: and he was passing through a phase of 
 such disheartenedness and disgust that instead of being brought 
 to himself by such a menace, it actually brought him low. 
 
 He would have gone to the dogs, if he could. Fortunately, 
 like all creatures of his kind, he had a spring, a succor against ' 
 destruction which others do not possess : his strength, his in- ■ 
 stinct for life, his instinct against letting himself perish, an : 
 Instinct more intelligent than his intelligence, and stronger than i 
 his will. ‘ And also, unknown to himself, he had the strange ^ 
 curiosity of the artist, that passionate, impersonal quality, which i 
 is in every creature really endowed with creative power. In' 
 vain did he love, suffer, give himself utterly to all his passions : , 
 he saw them. They were in him but they were not himself.. 
 A myriad of little souls moved obscurely in him towards a fixed ; 
 point unknown, yet certain, just like the planetary worlds ^ 
 which are drawn through space into a mysterious abyss. That* 
 perpetual state of unconscious action and reaction was shown ^ 
 especially in those giddy moments when sleep came over his, 
 daily life, and from the depths of sleep and the night rose the; 
 multiform face of Being with its sphinx-like gaze. For a year 
 Christophe had been obsessed with dreams in which in a second 
 ■of time he felt clearly with perfect illusion that he was at one 
 and the same time several different creatures, often far i^moved 
 from each other by countries, worlds, centuries. In his waking 
 state Christophe was still under his hallucination and uneasi- 
 ness, though he could not remember what had caused it. It 
 was like the weariness left by some fixed idea that is gone, 
 though traces of it are left and there is no understanding it. 
 
YOUTH 
 
 349 
 
 But while his soul was so troublously struggling through the 
 network of the days, another soul, eager and serene, was watch- 
 ing all his desperate efforts. He did not see it: but it cast 
 over him the reflection of its hidden light. That soul was joy- 
 ously greedy to feel everything, to suffer everything, to observe 
 and understand men, women, the earth, life, desires, passions, 
 thoughts, even those that were torturing, even those that were 
 mediocre, even those that were vile: and it was enough to lend 
 them a little of its light, to save Christophe from destruction. 
 It made Kim feel — he did not know how — that he was not 
 altogether alone. That love of being and of knowing everything, 
 that second soul, raised a rampart against his destroying pas- 
 sions. 
 
 But if it was enough to keep his head above water, it did 
 not allow him to climb out of it unaided. He could not succeed 
 in seeing clearly into himself, and mastering himself, and re- 
 gaining possession of himself. Work was impossible for him. 
 He was passing through an intellectual crisis : the most fruitful 
 of his life: all his future life was germinating in it: but that 
 inner wealth for the time being only showed itself in extrava- 
 gance: and the immediate effect of such superabundance was 
 not different from that of the flattest sterility. Christophe was 
 submerged by his life. All his powers had shot up and grown 
 too fast, all at once, suddenly. Only his will had not grown 
 with them : and it was dismayed by such a throng of monsters. 
 His personality was cracking in every part. Of this earth- 
 quake, this inner cataclysm, others saw nothing. Christophe 
 himself could see only his impotence to will, to create, to be. 
 Desires, instincts, thoughts issued one after another like clouds 
 of sulphur from the Assures of a volcano: and he was forever 
 asking himself: ^^And now, what will come out? What will 
 become of me? Will it always be so? or is this the end of all? 
 Shall I be nothing, always ? 
 
 And now there sprang up in him his hereditary fires, the 
 vices of those who had gone before him. — He got drunk. He 
 would return home smelling of wine, laughing, in a state of 
 collapse. 
 
 Poor Louisa would look at him, sigh, say nothing, and pray. 
 
 But one evening when he was coming out of an inn by the 
 
350 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 gates of the town he saw, a few yards in front of him on the 
 road, the droll shadow of his uncle Gottfried, with his pack 
 on his back. The little man had not been home for months, ; 
 and his periods of absence were growing longer and longer."|i 
 Christophe hailed him gleefully. Gottfried, bending under 
 his load, turned round: he looked at Christophe, who was mak- ' 
 ing extravagant gestures, and sat down on a milestone to wait 
 for him. Christophe came up to him with a beaming face, : 
 skipping along, and shook his uncle’s hand with great demon- 
 strations of affection. Gottfried took a long look at him and 
 then he said: 
 
 “ Good-day, Melchior.” 
 
 Christophe thought his uncle had made a mistake, and bursts 
 <out laughing. 
 
 “The poor man is breaking up,” he thought; “he is losing 
 
 his memory.” 
 
 Indeed, Gottfried did look old, shriveled, shrunken, and dried: 
 his breathing came short and painfully. Christophe went on. 
 talking. Gottfried took his pack on his shoulders again and! 
 went on in silence. They went home together, Christophe^ 
 gesticulating and talking at the top of his voice, Gottfried i 
 coughing and saying nothing. And when Christophe questioned' 
 him, Gottfried still called him Melchior. And then Christophe: 
 
 asked him: . - 
 
 “What do you mean by calling me Melchior? My name iS; 
 Christophe, you know. Have you forgotten my name ? ” j 
 
 Gottfried did not stop. He raised his eyes toward Christophej 
 and looked at him, shook his head, and said coldly: | 
 
 “ No. You are Melchior : I know you.” \ 
 
 Christophe stopped dumfounded. Gottfried trotted along :; 
 Christophe followed him without a word. He was sobered. 
 As they passed the door of a cafe he went up to the dark panes 
 of glass, in which the gas-jets of the entrance and the empty 
 streets were reflected, and he looked at himself : he recognized 
 Melchior. He went home crushed. 
 
 He spent the night — a night of anguish — in examining him- 
 self, in soul-searching. He understood now. Yes: he recog- 
 nized the instincts and vices that had come to light in him: 
 they horrifled him. He thought of that dark watching by the 
 
YOUTH 
 
 351 
 
 body of Melchior, of all that he had sworn to do, and, surveying 
 his life since then, he knew that he had failed to keep his vows. 
 What had he done in the year? What had he done for his 
 God, for his art, for his soul? What had he done for eternity? 
 There was not a day that had not been wasted, botched, be- 
 smirched. Not a single piece of work, not a thought, not an 
 effort of enduring quality. A chaos of desires destructive of 
 each other. Wind, dust, nothing. . . . What did his intentions 
 avail him? He had fulfilled none of them. He had done 
 exactly the opposite of what he had intended. He had become 
 what he had no wish to be: that was the balance-sheet of his 
 life. 
 
 He did not go to bed. About six in the morning it was still 
 dark, — he heard Gottfried getting ready to depart. — For Gott- 
 fried had had no intentions of staying on. As he was passing 
 the town he had come as usual to embrace his sister and nephew : 
 but he had announced that he would go on next morning. 
 
 Christophe went downstairs. Gottfried saw his pale face and 
 his eyes hollow with a night of torment. He smiled fondly 
 at him and asked him to go a little of the way with him. They 
 set out together before dawn. They had no need to talk : they 
 understood each other. As they passed the cemetery Gottfried 
 said : 
 
 “ Shall we go in ? ” 
 
 When -he came to the place he never failed to pay a visit to 
 Jean Michel and Melchior. Christophe had not been there for 
 a year. Gottfried knelt by Melchior’s grave and said : 
 
 “ Let us pray that they may sleep well and not come to 
 torment us.” 
 
 His thought was a mixture of strange superstitions and 
 sound sense : sometimes it surprised Christophe : but now it was 
 only too clear to him. They said no more until they left the 
 cemetery. 
 
 When they had closed the creaking gate, and were walking 
 along the wall through the cold fields, waking from slum- 
 ber, by the little path which led them under the cypress 
 trees from which the snow was dropping, Christophe began to 
 weep. 
 
 “ Oh ! uncle,” he said, “ how wretched I am ! ” 
 
352 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 He dared not speak of his experience in love, from an 
 odd fear of embarrassing or hurting Gottfried : but he 
 spoke of his shame, his mediocrity, his cowardice, his broken 
 vows. 
 
 What am I to do, uncle ? I have tried, I have struggled : 
 and after a year I am no further on than before. Worse: I 
 have gone back. I am good for nothing. I am good for noth- 
 ing ! I have ruined my life. I am perjured ! . . 
 
 They were walking up the hill above the town. Gottfried 
 said kindly : 
 
 ^^Not for the last time, my boy. We do not do what we 
 will to do. We will and we live: two things. You must be 
 comforted. The great thing is, you see, never to give up willing 
 and living. The rest does not depend on us.’^ 
 
 Christophe repeated desperately: 
 have perjured myself.^^ 
 
 Do you hear ? ” said Gottfried. 
 
 (The cocks were crowing in all the countryside.) ; 
 
 They, too, are crowing for another who is perjured. They 5 
 crow for every one of us, every morning.’’ 
 
 A day will come,” said Christophe bitterly, when they will ^ 
 no longer crow for me. ... A day to which there is no to- ^ 
 morrow. And what shall I have made of my life ? ” 
 
 There is always a to-morrow,” said Gottfried. 
 
 But what can one do, if willing is no use ? ” ; 
 
 Watch and pray.” t 
 
 I do not believe.” i 
 
 Gottfried smiled. \ 
 
 You would not be alive if you did not believe. Every one : 
 believes. Pray.” i 
 
 Pray to what ? ” 
 
 Gottfried pointed to the sun appearing on the horizon, red 
 and frozen. 
 
 Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what 
 will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave 
 your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are 
 bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. 
 Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully 
 it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when 
 
YOUTH 
 
 353 
 
 it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It 
 is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will 
 awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the 
 earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. 
 If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, 
 3^ou must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can 
 do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you 
 cannot do? We all have to do what we can. . , . Als ich kann/' 
 
 It is not enough,^’ said Christophe, making a face. 
 
 Gottfried laughed pleasantly. 
 
 It is more than anybody does. You are a vain fellow. You 
 want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. . . . 
 A hero! ... I donT quite know what that is: but, you see, 
 I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The 
 others do not do it.^^ 
 
 Oh ! sighed Christophe. Then what is the good of 
 living? It is not worth while. And yet there are people who 
 say : ^ He who wills can ! ^ ^^ . . . 
 
 Gottfried laughed again softly. 
 
 Yes ? . . . Oh ! well, they are liars, my friend. Or they 
 do not will anything much. . . ” 
 
 They had reached the top of the hill. They embraced affec- 
 tionately. The little peddler went on, treading wearily. Chris- 
 tophe stayed there, lost in thought, and watched him go. He 
 repeated his uncle^s saying : 
 
 Als ich kann (The best I can).^^ 
 
 And he smiled, thinking: 
 
 Yes. . . . All the same. ... It is enough.” 
 
 He returned to the town. The frozen snow crackled under 
 his feet. The bitter winter wind made the bare branches 
 of the stunted trees on the hill shiver. It reddened his cheeks, 
 and made his skin tingle, and set his blood racing. The red 
 roofs of the town below were smiling under the brilliant, cold 
 sun. The air was strong and harsh. The frozen earth seemed 
 to rejoice in bitter gladness. And Christophers heart was like 
 that. He thought: 
 
 ^^I, too, shall wake again.” 
 
 There were still tears in his eyes. - He dried them with 
 the back of his hand, and laughed to see the sun dipping down 
 
354 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 behind a veil of mist. The clouds, heavy with snow, were float- 
 ing over the town, lashed by the squall. He laughed at them. 
 The wind blew icily. ... 
 
 “ Blow, blow ! ... Do what you will with me. Bear me 
 with you! ... I know now where I am going.” 
 
REVOLT 
 
 i 
 
I 
 
 SHIFTING SANDS 
 
 Free ! He felt that he was free ! . . . Free of others and of 
 himself! The network of passion in which he had been en- 
 meshed for more than a year had suddenly been burst asunder. 
 How? He did not know. The filaments had given before the 
 growth of his being. It was one of those crises of growth in 
 which robust natures tear away the dead casing of the year that 
 is past, the old soul in which they are cramped and stified. 
 
 Christophe breathed deeply, without understanding what had 
 happened. An icy whirlwind was rushing through the great 
 gate of the town as he returned from taking Gottfried on his 
 way. The people were walking with heads lowered against the 
 storm. Girls going to their work were struggling against the 
 wind that blew against their skirts : they stopped every now and 
 then to breathe, with their nose and cheeks red, and they looked 
 exasperated, and as though they wanted to cry. He thought 
 of that other torment through which he had passed. He looked 
 at the wintry sky, the town covered with snow, the people 
 struggling along past him: he looked about him, into himself: 
 he was no longer bound. He was alone! . . . Alone! How 
 happy to be alone, to be his own! What joy to have escaped 
 from his bonds, from his torturing memories, from the hallu- 
 cinations of faces that he loved or detested! What joy at 
 ; last to live, without being the prey of life, to have become his 
 own master! ... 
 
 He went home white with snow. He shook himself gaily like 
 a dog. As he passed his mother, who was sweeping the passage, 
 
 I he lifted her up, giving little inarticulate cries of affection 
 i such as one makes to a tiny child. Poor old Louisa struggled 
 1 in her son’s arms : she was wet with the melting snow : and she 
 I called him, with a jolly laugh, a great gaby. 
 
 357 
 
358 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 He went up to his room three steps at a time. — He could 
 hardly see himself in his little mirror it was so dark. But 
 his heart was glad. His room was low and narrow and it was 
 difficult to move in it, but it was like a kingdom to him. He 
 locked the door and laughed with pleasure. At last he was 
 finding himself ! How long he had been gone astray ! He was | 
 eager to plunge into' thought like a bather into water. It was 
 like a great lake afar off melting into the mists of blue and 
 gold. After a night of fever and oppressive heat he stood by 
 the edge of it, with his legs bathed in the freshness of the water, 
 his body kissed by the wind of a summer morning. He plunged 
 in and swam: he knew not whither he was going, and did 
 not care: it was Joy to swim whithersoever he listed. He was 
 silent, then he laughed, and listened for the thousand thousand 
 sounds of his soul: it swarmed with life. He could make out 
 nothing: his head was swimming: he felt only a bewildering • 
 happiness. He was glad to feel in himself such unknown forces : 
 and indolently postponing putting his powers to the test he 
 sank back into the intoxication of pride in the inward flowering, ■ 
 which, held back for months, now burst forth like a sudden ^ 
 spring. ! 
 
 His mother called him to breakfast. He went down: he ; 
 was giddy and light-headed as though he had spent a day in 
 the open air : but there was such a radiance of Joy in him that 
 Louisa asked what was the matter. He made no reply: he , 
 seized her by the waist and forced her to dance with him round ' 
 the table on which the tureen was steaming. Out of breath j 
 Louisa cried that he was mad : then she clasped her hands. * 
 “Dear God!” she said anxiously. “Sure, he is in love 
 again ! ” i 
 
 Christophe roared with laughter. He hurled his napkin into 
 the air. 
 
 “In love? . . .” he cried. “Oh! Lord! ... but no! I’ve 
 had enough ! You can be easy on that score. That is done, 
 done, forever ! . . . Ouf ! ” 
 
 He drank a glassful of water. 
 
 Louisa looked at him, reassured, wagged her head, and smiled. 
 
 “ That’s a drunkard’s pledge,” she said. “ It won’t last until 
 to-night.” 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 35 & 
 
 “ Then the day is clear gain ” he replied good-humoredly. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! ” she said. “ But what has made you so 
 happy ? ” 
 
 “ I am happy. That is all.” 
 
 Sitting opposite her with his elbows on the table he tried to 
 tell her all that he was going to do. She listened with kindly 
 skepticism and gently pointed out that his soup was going cold. 
 He knew that she did not hear what he was saying : but he did 
 not care : he was talking for his own satisfaction. 
 
 They looked at each other smiling: he talking: she hardly 
 listening. Although she was proud of her son she attached no 
 great importance to his artistic projects: she was thinking: 
 “He is happy: that matters most.” — While he was growing 
 more and more excited with his discourse he watched his 
 mother’s dear face, with her black shawl tightly tied round 
 her head, her white hair, her young eyes that devoured him 
 lovingly, her sweet and tranquil kindliness. He knew exactly 
 what she was thinking. He said to her jokingly : 
 
 “ It is all one to you, eh ? You don’t care about what I’m 
 telling you ? ” 
 
 She protested weakly: 
 
 “ Oh, no ! Oh, no ! ” 
 
 He kissed her. 
 
 “ Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! You need not defend yourself. You 
 are right. Only love me. There is no need to understand me — 
 either for you or for anybody else. I do not need anybody 
 or anything now: I have everything in myself. . . .” 
 
 “ Oh ! ” said Louisa. “ Another maggot in his brain ! . . . 
 But if he must have one I prefer this to the other.” 
 
 What sweet happiness to float on the surface of the lake of his 
 thoughts! . . . Lying in the bottom of a boat with his body 
 bathed in sun, his face kissed by the light fresh wind that 
 skims over the face of the waters, he goes to sleep : he is swung 
 by threads from the sky. Under his body lying at full length, 
 under the rocking boat he feels the deep, swelling water: his 
 hand dips into it. He rises: and with his chin on the edge 
 of the boat he watches the water flowing by as he did when 
 he was a child. He sees the reflection of strange creatures 
 
360 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 darting by like lightning. . . . More, and yet more. . . . They 
 are never the same. He laughs at the fantastic spectacle that 
 is unfolded within him : he laughs at his own thoughts ; he has 
 no need to catch and hold them. Select? Why select among 
 so many thousands of dreams? There is plenty of time! . . . 
 Later on ! ... He has only to throw out a line at will to draw 
 in the monsters whom he sees gleaming in the water. He lets 
 them pass. . . . Later on! . . . 
 
 The boat floats on at the whim of the warm wind and the 
 insentient stream. All is soft, sun, and silence. 
 
 At last languidly he throws out his line. Leaning out over 
 the lapping water he follows it with his eyes until it disappears. 
 After a few moments of torpor he draws it in slowly: as he 
 draws it in it becomes heavier: Just as he is about to fish it 
 out of the water he stops to take breath. He knows that he 
 has his prey: he does not know what it is: he prolongs the 
 pleasure of expectancy. 
 
 At last he makes up his mind: fish with gleaming, many- 
 colored scales appear from the water: they writhe like a nest 
 of snakes. He looks at them curiously, he stirs them with his 
 finger: but hardly has he drawn them from the water than 
 their colors fade and they slip between his fingers. He throws 
 them back into the water and begins to fish for others. He 
 is more eager to see one after another all the dreams stirring 
 in him than to catch at any one of them: they all seem more 
 beautiful to him when they are freely swimming in the trans- 
 parent lake. . . . 
 
 He caught all kinds of them, each more extravagant than 
 the last. Ideas had been heaped up in him for months and 
 he had not drawn upon them, so that he was bursting with 
 riches. But it was all higgledy-piggledy : his mind was a Babel, 
 an old Jew’s curiosity shop in which there were piled up in 
 the one room rare treasures, precious stuffs, scrap-iron, and 
 rags. He could not distinguish their values : everything amused 
 him. There were thrilling chords, colors which rang like bells, 
 harmonies which buzzed like bees, melodies smiling like lovers’ 
 lips. There were visions of the country, faces, passions, souls, 
 characters, literary ideas, metaphysical ideas. There were great 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 361 
 
 projects, vast and impossible, tetralogies, decalogies, pretending 
 to depict everything in music, covering whole worlds. And, 
 most often there were obscure, flashing sensations, called forth 
 by a trifle, the sound of a voice, a man or a woman passing in 
 the street, the pattering of rain. An inward rhythm. — Many 
 of these projects advanced no further than their title: most 
 of them were never more than a note or two: it was enough. 
 Like all very young people, he thought he had created what he 
 dreamed of creating. 
 
 But he was too keenly alive to be satisfied for long with such 
 fantasies. He wearied of an illusory possession: he wished to 
 seize his dreams. — How to begin? They seemed to him all 
 equally important. He turned and turned them: he rejected 
 them, he took them up again. ... No, he never took them up 
 again: they were no longer the same, they were never to be 
 caught twice: they were always changing: they changed in his 
 hands, under his eyes, while he was watching them. He must 
 make haste: he could not: he was appalled by the slowness 
 with which he worked. He would have liked to do everything 
 in one day, and he found it horribly difficult to complete the 
 smallest thing. His dreams were passing and he was passing 
 himself : while he was doing one thing it worried him not to 
 be doing another. It was as though it was enough to have 
 chosen one of his fine subjects for it to lose all interest for 
 him. And so all his riches availed him nothing. His thoughts 
 had life only on condition that he did not tamper with 
 them: everything that he succeeded in doing was still-born. 
 It was the torment of Tantalus: within reach were fruits that 
 became stones as soon as he plucked them: near his lips was 
 a clear stream which sank away whenever he bent down to 
 drink. 
 
 To slake his thirst he tried to sip at the springs that he had 
 conquered, his old compositions. . . . Loathsome in taste ! At 
 the first gulp he spat it out again, cursing. What ! That tepid 
 water, that insipid music, was that his music ? — He read through 
 all his compositions: he was horrified: he understood not a 
 1 note of them, he could not even understand how he had come 
 to write them. He blushed. Once after reading through a 
 
362 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 page more foolish than the rest he turned round to make sure 
 that there was nobody in the room, and then he went and hid 
 his face in his pillow like a child ashamed. Sometimes they 
 seemed to him so preposterously silly that they were quite funny, 
 and he forgot that they were his own. . . . 
 
 “What an idiot!” he would cry, rocking with laughter. 
 
 But nothing touched him more than those compositions in 
 which he had set out to express his own passionate feelings : the 
 sorrows and joys of love. Then he would bound in his chair 
 as tlrough a fly had stung him: he would thump on the table, 
 beat his head, and roar angrily: he would coarsely apostrophize 
 himself : he would vow himself to be a swine, trebly a scoundrel, 
 a clod, and a clown — a whole litany of denunciation. In the i 
 end he would go and stand before his mirror, red with shouting, 
 and then he would take hold of his chin and say: 
 
 “ Look, look, you scurvy knave, look at the ass-face that is 
 yours! I’ll teach you to lie, you blackguard! Water, sir, ■ 
 water.” ; 
 
 He would plunge his face into his basin, and hold it under ’ 
 water until he was like to choke. When he drew himself up, , 
 scarlet, with his eyes starting from his head, snorting like a t 
 seal, he would rush to his table, without bothering to sponge ; 
 away the water trickling down him: he would seize the un- ; 
 happy compositions, angrily tear them in pieces, growling: ^ 
 
 “There, you beast! . . . There, there, there! ...” | 
 
 Then he would recover. I ( 
 
 What exasperated him most in his compositions was their un- j 
 truth. Not a spark of feeling in them. A phraseology got ] 
 by heart, a schoolboy’s rhetoric: he spoke of love like a blind f 
 man of color: he spoke of it from hearsay, only repeating the i 
 current platitudes. And it was not only love : it was the same 
 with all the passions, which had been used for themes and 
 declamations.— And yet he had always tried to be sincere.— 
 But it is not enough to wish to be sincere: it is necessary to 
 have the power to be so: and how can a man be so when as 
 yet he knows nothing of life? What had revealed the falseness 
 of his work, what had suddenly digged a pit between himself ,, 
 and his past was the experience which he had had during the ,^ 
 last six months of life. He had left fantasy : there was now | 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 363 
 
 in him a real standard to which he could bring all the thoughts 
 for judgment as to their truth or untruth. 
 
 The disgust which his old work, written without passion, 
 roused in him, made him decide with his usual exaggeration 
 that he would write no more until he was forced to write by 
 some passionate need; and leaving the pursuit of his ideas at 
 that, he swore that he would renounce music forever, unless 
 creation were imposed upon him in a thunderclap. 
 
 He made this resolve because he knew quite well that the 
 storm was coming. 
 
 Thunder falls when it will, and where it will. But there 
 are peaks which attract it. Certain places — certain souls — 
 breed storms: they create them, or draw them from all points 
 of the horizon: and certain ages of life, like certain months 
 of the year, are so saturated with electricity, that thunderstorms 
 i are produced in them, — ^if not at will — at any rate when they 
 ! are expected. 
 
 The whole being of a man is taut for it. Often the storm 
 lies brooding for days and days. The pale sky is hung with 
 burning, fleecy clouds. No wind stirs. The still air ferments, 
 and seems to boil. The earth lies in a stupor : no sound comes 
 from it. The brain hums feverishly: all nature awaits the 
 explosion of the gathering forces, the thud of the hammer which 
 is slowly rising to fall back suddenly on the anvil of the clouds. 
 Dark, warm shadows pass : a fiery wind rises through the body, 
 the nerves quiver like leaves. . . . Then silence falls again. 
 The sky goes on gathering thunder. 
 
 In such expectancy there is voluptuous anguish. In spite 
 of the discomfort that weighs so heavily upon you, you feel 
 in your veins the fire which is consuming the universe. The 
 soul surfeited boils in the furnace, like wine in a vat. Thou- 
 sands of germs of life and death are in labor in it. What will 
 issue from it? The soul knows not. Like a woman with child, 
 it is silent : it gazes in upon itself ; it listens anxiously for the 
 stirring in its womb, and thinks : “ What will be born of 
 me?” ... 
 
 Sometimes such waiting is in vain. The storm passes without 
 breaking : but you \^ake heavy, cheated, enervated, disheartened. 
 
364 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 But it is only postponed: the storm will break: if not to-day, 
 then to-morrow: the longer it is delayed, the more violent will 
 
 it be. . . . 
 
 Now it comes ! . . . The clouds have come up from all corners ! 
 of the souh Thick masses, blue and black, torn by the frantic 
 darting of the lightning: they advance heavily, drunkenly, 
 darkening the soul’s horizon, blotting out light. An hour of 
 madness! . . . The exasperated Elements, let loose from the 
 cage in which they are held bound by the Laws which hold 
 the balance between the mind and the existence of things, 
 reign, formless and colossal, in the night of consciousness. The 
 soul is in agony. There is no longer the will to live. There 
 is only longing for the end, for the deliverance of death. . . . 
 
 And suddenly there is lightning! 
 
 Christophe shouted for joy. 
 
 / Joy, furious joy, the sun that lights up all that is and will 
 ^ be, the godlike joy of creation! There is no joy but in crea- ^ 
 tion. There are no living beings but those who create. All 
 the rest are shadows, hovering over the earth, strangers to life. 
 All the joys of life are the joys of creation : love, genius, action, 
 — quickened by flames issuing from one and the same fire. ' 
 Even those who cannot find a place by the great fireside: the 
 ambitious, the egoists, the sterile sensualists,— try to gain 
 warmth in the pale reflections of its light. ; 
 
 To create in the region of the body, or in the region of the ^ 
 mind, is to issue from the prison of the body : it is to ride upon i 
 the storm of life : it is to be He who Is. To create is to triumph 
 over death. t 
 
 Wretched is the sterile creature, that man or that woman •; 
 who remains alone and lost upon the earth, scanning their 
 withered bodies, and the sight of themselves from which no flame 
 of life will ever leap ! Wretched is the soul that does not feel 
 its own fruitfulness, and know itself to he big with life and 
 love, as a tree with blossom in the spring ! The world may heap 
 honors and benefits upon such a soul : it does but crown a corpse. 
 
 When Christophe was struck by the flash of lightning, an 
 electric fluid coursed through his body: he trembled under the 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 365 
 
 shock. It was as though on the high seas, in the dark night, 
 he had suddenly sighted land. Or it was as though in a crowd 
 he had gazed into two eyes saluting him. Often it would happen 
 to him after hours of prostration when his mind was leaping 
 desperately through the void. But more often still it came 
 in moments when he was thinking of something else, talking 
 to his mother, or walking through the streets. If he were in 
 the street a certain human respect kept him from too loudly 
 demonstrating his joy. But if he were at home nothing could 
 keep him back. He would stamp. He would sound a blare 
 of triumph: his mother knew that well, and she had come to 
 know what it meant. She used to tell Christophe that he was 
 like a hen that has laid an egg. 
 
 He was permeated with his musical imagination. Sometimes 
 it took shape in an isolated phrase complete in itself : more often 
 it would appear as a nebula enveloping a whole work: the 
 structure of the work, its general lines, could be perceived 
 through a veil, torn asunder here and there by dazzling phrases 
 which stood out from the darkness with the clarity of sculp- 
 ture. It was only a flash: sometimes others would come in 
 quick succession: each lit up other corners of the night. But 
 usually, the capricious force having once shown itself un- 
 expectedly, would disappear again for several days into its 
 mysterious retreats, leaving behind it a luminous ray. 
 
 This delight in inspiration was so vivid that Christophe 
 was disgusted by everything else. The experienced artist knows 
 that inspiration is rare and that intelligence is left to com- 
 plete the work of intuition: he puts his ideas under the press 
 and squeezes out of them the last drop of the divine juices that 
 are in them — (and if need be sometimes he does not shrink 
 from diluting them with clear water). — Christophe was too 
 young and too sure of himself not to despise such contemptible 
 practices. He dreamed impossibly of producing nothing thati..-' 
 was not absolutely spontaneous. If he had not been deliberately 
 : blind he would certamly have seen the absurdity of his aims. 
 
 ! No doubt he was at that time in a period of inward abundance 
 i in which there was no gap, no chink, through which boredom 
 or emptiness could creep. Everything served as an excuse to 
 his inexhaustible fecundity: everything that his eyes saw or 
 
366 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 his ears heard, everything with which he came in contact in | 
 his daily life : every look, every word, brought forth a crop of 
 dreams. In the boundless heaven of his thoughts he saw circling 
 millions of milky stars, rivers of living light. — And yet, even 
 then, there were moments when everything was suddenly blotted 
 out. And although the night could not endure, although he 
 had hardly time to suffer from these long silences of his soul, 
 he did not escape a secret terror of that unknown power which 
 came upon him, left him, came again, and disappeared. . . . 
 How long, this time? Would it ever come again? — His pride 
 rejected that thought and said : “ This force is myself. When 
 it ceases to be, I shall cease to be: I shall kill myself.”— He 
 never ceased to tremble : but it was only another delight. 
 
 But, if, for the moment, there was no danger of the spring 
 running dry, Christophe was able already to perceive that it 
 was never enough to fertilize a complete work. Ideas almost 
 always appeared rawly: he had painfully to dig them out of* 
 the ore. And always they appeared without any sort of se- ; 
 quence, and by fits and starts : to unite them he had to bring ! 
 to bear on them an element of reflection and deliberation and 
 cold will, which fashioned them into new form. Christophe; 
 was too much of an artist not to do so: but he would not accept 
 it : he forced himself to believe that he did no more than tran- ! 
 scribe what was within himself, while he was always compelled, 
 more or less to transform it so as to, make it intelligible. — ; 
 More than that: sometimes he would absolutely forge a mean-- 
 ing for it. However violently the musical idea might comoj 
 upon him it would often have been impossible for him to say'! 
 what it meant. It would come surging up from the depths of ' 
 life, from far beyond the limits of consciousness: and in that; 
 absolutely pure Force, which eluded common rhythms, con- 
 sciousness could never recognize in it any of the motives which 
 stirred in it, none of the human feelings which it defines and 
 classifies: joys, sorrows, they were all merged in one single 
 passion which was unintelligible, because it was above the in- 
 telligence. And yet, whether it understood or no, the intelli- 
 gence needed to give a name to this form, to bind it down to 
 one or other of the structures of logic, which man is forever 
 building indefatigably in the hive of his brain. 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 So Christophe convinced himself — ^l]e wished to do so — thi 
 the obscure power that moved him had an exact meaning, 
 that its meaning was in accordance with his will. His free 
 instinct, risen from the unconscious depths, was willy-nilly 
 forced to plod on under the yoke of reason with perfectly clear 
 ideas which had nothing at all in common with it. And work 
 so produced was no more than a lying juxtaposition of one 
 of those great subjects that Christophers mind had marked 
 out for itself, and those wild forces which had an altogether 
 different meaning unknown to himself. 
 
 He groped his way, head down, borne on by the contradic- 
 tory forces warring in him, and hurling into his incoherent 
 works a fiery and strong quality of life which he could 
 not express, though he was joyously and proudly conscious 
 of it. 
 
 The consciousness of his new vigor made him able for the 
 first time to envisage squarely everything about him, everything 
 that he had been taught to honor, everything that he had re- 
 spected without question: and he judged it all with insolent 
 freedom. The veil was rent : he saw the German lie. 
 
 Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed 
 with a little truth and many lies. The human mind is feeble: 
 pure truth agrees with it but ill: its religion, its morality, its 
 states, its poets, its artists, must all be presented to it swathed 
 in lies. These lies are adapted to the mind of each race : they 
 vary from one to the other: it is they that make it so difficult 
 for nations to understand each other, and so easy for them 
 to despise each other. Truth is the same for all of tis: but 
 every nation has its own lie, which it calls its idealism. : every 
 creature therein breathes it from birth to death: it has become 
 a condition of life: there are only a few men of genius who can 
 break free from it through heroic moments of crisis, when 
 they are alone in the free world of their thoughts. 
 
 It was a trivial thing which suddenly revealed to Christophe 
 the lie of German art. It was not because it had not always 
 been visible that he had not seen it: he was not near it, he 
 had not recoiled from it. Now the mountain appeared to his 
 gaze because he had moved away from it. 
 
 I 
 
JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 He w&s &t 9- concert of tlio Std^dtiscJic Towtihallc* Tlie 
 concert was given in a large hall occupied by ten or twelve 
 rows of little tables— about two or three hundred of them. 
 At the end of the room was a stage where the orchestra was 
 sitting. All round Christophe were officers dressed up in their 
 long, dark coats,— with broad, shaven faces, red, serious, and 
 commonplace ; women talking and laughing noisily, ostenta- 
 tiously at their ease: jolly little girls smiling and showing all 
 their teeth: and large men hidden behind their beards and 
 spectacles, looking like kindly spiders with round eyes. They 
 got up with every fresh glass to drink a toast : they did this 
 almost religiously : their faces, their voices changed : it was as 
 though they were saying Mass: they offered each other the 
 libations, they drank of the chalice with a mixture of solemnity 
 and buffoonery. The music was drowned under the conversation 
 and the clinking of glasses. And yet everybody was trying to. 
 talk and eat quietly. The Herr Konzertmeister, a tall, bent old. 
 man, with a white beard hanging like a tail froni his chin,’ 
 and a long aquiline nose, with spectacles, looked like a phil-- 
 ologist. — All these types were familiar to Christophe. But on^ 
 that day he had an inclination — ^he did not know why to| 
 see them as caricatures. There are days like that when,; 
 for no apparent reason, the grotesque in people and thingsj 
 which in ordinary life passes unnoticed, suddenly leaps intoj 
 
 view. 
 
 The programme of the music included the Egmont overture,j| 
 a valse of Waldteufel, Tannhduser’s Pilgrimage to Rome, the" 
 overture to the Merry Wives of Nicolai, the religious march oi 
 Athalie, and a fantasy on the North Star. The orchestra playedj 
 the Beethoven overture correctly, and the valse deliciously. Dur-, 
 ing the Pilgrimage of Tannhduser, the uncorking of bottles 
 was heard. A big man sitting at the table next to Christophe 
 beat time to the Merry Wives by imitating Falstaff. A stout 
 old lady, in a pale blue dress, with a white belt, golden pince- 
 nez on her flat nose, red arms, and an enormous waist, sang 
 in a loud voice Lieder of Schumann and Brahms. She raised 
 her eyebrows, made eyes at the wings, smiled with a smile thal 
 seemed to curdle on her moon-face, made exaggerated gestures 
 which must certainly have called to mind the cafe-concert bul 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 369 
 
 for the majestic honesty which shone in her: this mother of a 
 family played the part of the giddy girl, youth, passion: and 
 Schumann’s poetry had a faint smack of the nursery. The 
 audience was in ecstasies. — But they grew solemn and attentive 
 when there appeared the Choral Society of the Germans of 
 the South {Suddeutschen Manner Liedertafel) , who alternately 
 cooed and roared part songs full of feeling. There were forty, 
 and they sang four parts: it seemed as though they had set 
 themselves to free their execution of every trace of style that 
 could properly be called choral : a hotch-potch of little melodious 
 effects, little timid puling shades of sound, dying pianissimos, 
 with sudden swelling, roaring crescendos, like some one beating 
 on an empty box : no breadth or balance, a mawkish style : it was 
 like Bottom: 
 
 ^^Let me play the lion. I will roar you as gently as any 
 sucking dove. I will roar you as it were a nightingale.” 
 
 Christophe listened from the beginning with growing amaze- 
 ment. There was nothing new in it all to him. He knew 
 these concerts, the orchestra, the audience. But suddenly it 
 all seemed to him false. All of it : even to what he most loved, 
 the Egmont overture, in which the pompous disorder and cor- 
 rect agitation hurt him in that hour like a want of frankness. 
 No doubt it was not Beethoven or Schumann that he heard, 
 but their absurd interpreters, their cud-chewdng audience whose 
 crass stupidity was spread about their works like a heavy mist. — 
 No matter, there was in the works, even the most beautiful of 
 them, a disturbing quality which Christophe had never before 
 felt. — What was it? He dared not analyze it, deeming it a 
 sacrilege to question his beloved masters. But in vain did he 
 shut his eyes to it : he had seen it. And, in spite of himself, 
 he went on seeing it: like the Vergognosa at Pisa he looked 
 between his fingers. 
 
 He saw German art stripped. All of them — ^the great and 
 I the idiots — laid bare their souls with a complacent tenderness. 
 
 ! Emotion overfiowed, moral nobility trickled down, their hearts 
 i melted in distracted effusions: the sluice gates were opened to 
 !the fearful German tender-heartedness: it weakened the energy 
 I of the stronger, it drowned the weaker under its grayish waters: 
 it was a fiood: in the depths of it slept German thought. And 
 
JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 what thoughts were those of a Mendelssohn, a Brahms, a Schu- 
 mann, and, following them, the whole legion of little writers 
 of affected and tearful Lieder! Built on sand. Never rock. 
 Wet and shapeless clay. — It was all so foolish, so childish often, 
 that Christophe could not believe that it never occurred to the 
 audience. He looked about him : but he saw only gaping faces, 
 convinced in Advance of the beauties they were hearing and 
 the pleasure that they ought to find in it. How could they 
 admit their own right to judge for themselves? They were 
 filled with respect for these hallowed names. What did they 
 not respect? They were respectful before their programmes, 
 before their glasses, before themselves. It was clear that men- 
 tally they dubbed everything excellent that remotely or nearly 
 
 concerned them. 
 
 Christophe passed in review the audience and the music al- 
 ternately: the music reflected the audience, the audience re- . 
 fleeted the music. Christophe felt laughter overcoming him . 
 and he made faces. However, he controlled himself. But when j 
 the ' Germans of the South came and solemnly sang the Con- • 
 fession that reminded him of the blushes of a girl in love, ^ 
 Christophe could not contain himself. He shouted with laugh- ; 
 ter. Indignant cries of “ Ssh ! ” were raised. His neighbors j 
 looked at him, scared: their honest, scandalized faces filled him j 
 with joy: he laughed louder than ever, he laughed, he laughed ; 
 until he cried. Suddenly the audience grew angry. They cried : ; 
 "Put him out!” He got up, and went, shrugging his shoul- j 
 ders, shaking with suppressed laughter. His departure caused j 
 a scandal. It was the beginning of hostilities between Chris- I 
 tophe and his birthplace. | 
 
 After that experience Christophe shut himself up and set | 
 himself to read once more the works of the “ hallowed ” musi- 
 cians. He was appalled to. find that certain of the masters 
 whom he loved most had lied. He tried hard to doubt it at| 
 first, to believe that he was mistaken. — But no, there was no| 
 way out of it. He was staggered by the conglomeration of 
 mediocrity, and untruth which constitutes the artistic treasure 
 of a great people. How many pages could bear examination! 
 
 Prom that time on he could begin to read other works, other 
 
 fv 
 
 f ■ 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 371 
 
 masters, who were dear to him, only with a fluttering heart. 
 . . . Alas ! There was some spell cast upon him : always there 
 was the same discomfiture. With some of them his heart was 
 rent: it was as though he had lost a dear friend, as if he had 
 suddenly seen that a friend in whom he had reposed entire 
 confidence had been deceiving him for years. He wept for it. 
 He did not sleep at night: he could not escape his torment. 
 He blamed himself: perhaps he had lost his judgment? Per- 
 haps he had become altogether an idiot? — No, no. More than 
 ever he saw the radiant beauty of the day and with more fresh- 
 ness and love than ever he felt the generous abundance of life: 
 his heart was not deceiving him. . . . 
 
 But for a long time he dared not approach those who were 
 the best for him, the purest, the Holy of Holies. He trembled 
 at the thought of bringing his faith in them to the test. But 
 how resist the pitiless instinct of a brave and truthful soul, 
 which will go on to the end, and see things as they are, whatever 
 suffering may be got in doing so ? — So he opened the sacred 
 works, he called upon the last reserve, the imperial guard. . . . 
 At the first glance he saw ♦that they were no more immaculate 
 I than the others. He had not the courage to go on. Every now 
 i and then he stopped and closed the book : like the son of Noah, 
 
 I he threw his cloak about his father’s nakedness. . . . 
 
 ! Then he was prostrate in the midst of all these ruins. He 
 i would rather have lost an arm, than have tampered with his 
 blessed illusions. In his heart he mourned. But there was so 
 1 much sap in him, so much reserve of life, that his confidence 
 ; in art was not shaken. With a young man’s naive presump- 
 tion he began life again as though no one had ever lived it 
 ' before him. Intoxicated by his new strength, he felt — not with- 
 : out reason, perhaps — that with a very few exceptions there is 
 almost no relation between living passion and the expression 
 I which art has striven to give to it. But he was mistaken in 
 ! thinking himself more happy or more true when he expressed 
 . it. As he was filled with passion it was easy for him to dis- 
 I cover it at the back of what he had written : but no one else 
 : would have recognized it through the imperfect Vocabulary 
 I with which he designated its variations. Many artists whom 
 he condemned were in the same case. They had had, and had 
 
372 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 translated profound emotions: but the secret of their language^ 
 had died with them. 
 
 Christophe was no psychologist: he was not bothered with 
 all these arguments: what was dead for him had always been 
 so. He revised his judgment of the past with all the confident 
 and fierce injustice of youth. He stripped the noblest souls, 
 and had no pity for their foibles. There were the rich melan- 
 choly, the distinguished fantasy, the kindly thinking emptiness 
 of Mendelssohn. There were the bead-stringing and the affecta- 
 tion of Weber, his dryness of heart, his cerebral emotion. There 
 was Liszt, the noble priest, the circus rider, neo-classical and 
 vagabond, a mixture in equal doses of real and false nobility, 
 of serene idealism and disgusting virtuosity. Schubert, swal- 
 lowed up by his sentimentality, drowned at the bottom of 
 leagues of stale, transparent water. The men of the heroic 
 age's, the demi-gods, the Prophets, the Fathers of the Church, ■ 
 were not spared. Even the great Sebastian, the man of ages, ^ 
 who bore in himself the past and the future,— Bach,— was not ; 
 free of untruth, of fashionable folly, of school-chattering. The . 
 man who had seen God, the man who lived in God, seemed ^ 
 sometimes to Christophe to have had an insipid and sugared ] 
 religion, a Jesuitical style, rococo. In his cantatas there were ; 
 languorous and devout airs — (dialogues of the Soul coquetting ; 
 with Jesus)— which sickened Christophe: then he seemed to ; 
 see chubby cherubims with round limbs and flying draperies. , 
 And also he had a feeling that the genial Cantor always wrote j 
 in a closed room : his work smacked of stuffiness : there was | 
 not in his music that brave outdoor air that was breathed j 
 in others, not such great musicians, perhaps, but greater men | 
 more human — than he. Like Beethoven or Handel. What hurt ; 
 him in all of them, especially in the classics, was their lack 
 of freedom : almost all their works were “ constructed.” Some- 
 times an emotion was filled out with all the commonplaces of 
 musical rhetoric, sometimes with a simple rhythm, an orna- 
 mental design, repeated, turned upside down, combined in 
 every conceivable way in a mechanical fashion. These sym- 
 metrical and twaddling constructions — classical and neo-classical 
 sonatas and symphonies — exasperated Christophe, who, at that 
 time, was not very sensible of the beauty of order, and vast 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 373 
 
 and well-conceived plans. That seemed to him to be rather 
 masons^ work than musicians\ 
 
 But he was no less severe with the romantics. It was a 
 
 strange thing, and he was more surprised by it than anybody, 
 
 but no musicians irritated him more than those who had pre- 
 tended to be— and had actually been— the most free, the most 
 spontaneous, the least constructive,— those, who, like Schumann, 
 had poured drop by drop, minute by minute, into their in- 
 numerable little works, their whole life. He was the more in- 
 dignantly in revolt against them as he recognized in them his 
 adolescent soul and all the follies that he had vowed to pluck 
 out of it. In truth, the candid Schumann could not be taxed 
 with falsity; he hardly ever said anything that he had not felt. 
 But that was just it: his example made Christophe under- 
 stand that the worst falsity in German art came into it not 
 when the artists tried to express something which they had 
 not felt, but rather when they tried to express the feelings 
 which^ they did in fact feel — feelings which were false. Music 
 is an implacable mirror of the soul. The more a German musi- 
 cian IS naive and in good faith, the more he displays the 
 ^weaknesses of the German soul, its uncertain depths, its soft 
 [tenderness, its want of frankness, its rather sly idealism, its 
 jincapacity for seeing itself, for daring to come face to face 
 with itself. That false idealism is the secret sore even of the 
 greatest of Wagner. As he read his works Christophe ground 
 tais teeth. Lohengrin seemed to him a blatant lie. He loathed 
 -he huxtering chivalry, the hypocritical mummery, the* hero 
 Ivithout fear and without a heart, the incarnation of cold and 
 iielfish virtue admiring itself and most patently self-satisfied. 
 Te knew it too well, he had seen it in reality, the type of 
 German Pharisee, foppish, impeccable, and hard, bowing down 
 jiefore its own image, the divinity to which it has no scruple 
 I bout sacrificing others. The Flying Dutchman overwhelmed 
 ‘iim with its massive, sentimentality and its gloomy boredom, 
 'he loves of the barbarous decadents of the Tetralogy were of 
 sickening staleness. Siegmund carrying off his sister sang 
 tenor drawing-room song. Siegfried and Briinnhilde, like re- 
 spectable German married people, in the Odtterddmmerung laid 
 are before each other, especially for the benefit of the audience. 
 
374 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 their pompous and voluble conjugal passion. Every sort of 
 lie had arranged to meet in that work ; false idealism, false 
 Christianity, false Gothicism, false legend, false gods, false 
 humans. Never did more monstrous convention appear than 
 in that theater which was to upset all the conventions. Neither 
 eyes nor mind, nor heart could be deceived by it for a moment: 
 if they were, then they must wish to be so. — They did wish to 
 be so. Germany was delighted with that doting, childish art, 
 an art of brutes let loose, and mystic, namby-pamby little' 
 
 ^ And Christophe could do nothing : as soon as he heard the 
 music he was caught up like the others, more than the others, 
 by the flood, and the diabolical will of the man who had let 
 it loose. He laughed, and he trembled, and his cheeks burned, 
 and he felt galloping armies rushing through him ! And he 
 thought that those who bore such storms within themselves, 
 ' mio-ht have all allowances made for them. What cries of joy^ 
 he^’uttered when in the hallowed works which he could not, 
 read without trembling he felt once more his old emotion,, 
 ardent still, with nothing to tarnish the purity of what he 
 loved! These were glorious relics that he saved from the wreck.| 
 What happiness they gave him! It seemed to him that he, 
 had saved a part of himself. And was it not himself? Theso 
 great Germans, against whom he revolted, were they not his 
 blood, his flesh, his most precious life? He was only severe 
 with them because he was severe with himself. Who loved them 
 better than he? Who felt more than he the goodness o^ 
 Schubert, the innocence of Haydn, the tenderness of Mozart/ 
 the great heroic heart of Beethoven? Who more often than he 
 took refuge in the murmuring of the forests of Weber, and th^ 
 cool shade of the cathedrals of John Sebastian, raising against 
 the gray sky of the North, above the plains of Germany, their 
 pile of stone, and their gigantic towers with their sun-tipped 
 spires?— But he suffered from their lies, and he could not forget 
 them. He attributed them to the race, their greatness to them- 
 selves He was wrong. Greatness and weaknesses belong equally 
 to the race whose great, shifting thought flows like the greatest 
 river of music and poetry at which Europe comes to drink.-- 
 And in what other people would he have found the simph 
 
EEVOLT 375 
 
 purity which now made it possible for him to condemn it so 
 harshly ? 
 
 He had no notion of that. With the ingratitude of a spoiled 
 child he turned against his mother the weapons which he had 
 received from her. Later, later, he was to feel all that he owed 
 to her, and how dear she was to him. . . . 
 
 But he was in a phase of blind reaction against all the idols 
 of his childhood. He was angry with himself and with them 
 because he had believed in them absolutely and passionately — 
 and it was well that it was so. There is an age in life when 
 we must dare to be unjust, when we must make a clean sweep 
 of all admiration and respect got at second-hand, and deny 
 everything — truth and untruth — everything which we have not 
 of ourselves known for truth. Through education, and through 
 everything that he sees and hears about him, a child absorbs 
 so many lies and blind follies mixed with the essential verities 
 of life, that the first duty of the adolescent who wishes to 
 grow into a healthy man is to sacrifice everything. 
 
 Christophe was passing through that crisis of healthy disgust. 
 His instinct was impelling him to eliminate from his life all 
 the undigested elements which encumbered it. 
 
 First of all to go was that sickening sweet tenderness which 
 sucked away the soul of Germany like a damp and moldy river- 
 bed. Light! Light! A rough, dry wind which should sweep 
 away the miasmas of the swamp, the misty staleness of the 
 Lieder, Liedchen, Liedlein, as numerous as drops of rain in 
 which inexhaustibly the Germanic Gemut is poured forth: the 
 countless things like Sehnsucht (Desire), Heimweh (Home- 
 sickness), Aufschwung (Soaring), Trage (A question), 
 Warum? (Why?), an den Mond (To the Moon), an die Sterne 
 (To the Stars), an die Nachtigall (To the Nightingale), an 
 ien Fruhling (To Spring), an den Sonnenschein (To Sun- 
 shine) : like Fruhlingslied (Spring Song), Fruhling slust (De- 
 ights of Spring), Fruhlingsgruss (Hail to the Spring), Fruh^ 
 'ingsfahrt (A Spring Journey), Fruhlingsnacht (A Spring 
 flight), Fruhling siotschaft (The Message of Spring) : like 
 Stimme der Liebe (The Voice of Love), Sprache der Liebe 
 (The Language of Love), Trauer der Liebe (Lovers Sorrow), 
 
376 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Geist der Lteie (The Spirit of Love), Fiille der Liehe (The 
 Fullness of Love) : like Blumenlied (The Song of the Flowers), 
 Blumenbrief (The Letter of the Flowers), Blumengruss (Flow- 
 ers’ Greeting) : like Herzeleid (Heart Pangs), Mein Herz ist 
 schwer (My Heart is Heavy), Mein Herz ist betrilbt (My 
 Heart is Troubled), Mein Aug’ ist triib (My Eye is Heavy) : 
 like the candid and silly dialogues with the Bdselein (The Little 
 Rose), with the brook, with the turtle dove, with the lark: like | 
 those idiotic questions: “If the briar could have no thorns ?” — i 
 “Is an old husband like a lark who has built a nest?” — “Is 
 she newly plighted ? ” : the whole deluge of stale tenderness, 
 stale emotion, stale melancholy, stale poetry. . . . How many 
 lovely things profaned, rare things, used in season or out! 
 For the worst of it was that it was all useless : a habit of un- 
 dressing their hearts in public, a fond and foolish propensity 
 of the honest people of Germany for plunging loudly into confi-“ 
 dences. With nothing to say they were always talking ! Would- 
 their chatter never cease? — As well bid frogs in a pond be| 
 . silent. * 
 
 It was in the expression of love that Christophe was most, 
 rawly conscious of untruth: for he was in a positiQla "to com-; 
 pare it with the reality.-^ The conventional love songs, lacrymose: 
 ' and proper, contained nothing like the desires of man or the 
 heart of woman. And yet the people who had written them 
 , must have loved at least once in their lives! Was it possible 
 
 that they could have loved like that? vNo, no, they had lied,, 
 as they always did, they had lied to themselves : they had triedj 
 to idealize themselves. . . . Idealism ! That meant that they, 
 were afraid of looking at life squarely, were incapable of seeing? 
 things like a man, as they are. — Everywhere the same timidity,; 
 the same lack of manly frankness. Everywhere the same chilly 
 enthusiasm, the same pompous lying solemnity, in their patriot- 
 ism, in their drinking, in their religion. The Trinklieder, 
 (Drinking Songs) were prosopopeia to wine and the bowl: Dw/ 
 herrlich Glas . . ("Thou, noble glass . . .”). Faith— the 
 one thing in the world which should be spontaneous, springing^ 
 from the soul like an unexpected sudden stream— was a manu^ 
 factured article, a commodity of trade. Their patriotic song^ 
 were made for docile flocks of sheep basking in unison. . . ^ • 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 377 
 
 Shout, then ! — What ! Must you go on lying — idealizing '' 
 
 < — till you are surfeited, till it brings you to slaughter and mad- 
 ness! ... 
 
 Christophe ended by hating all idealism. He preferred frank 
 brutality to such lying. But at heart he was more of an idealist 
 than the rest, and he had not — he could not have — any more 
 real enemies than the brutal realists whom he thought he pre- 
 ferred. 
 
 He was blinded by passion. He was frozen by the mist, the 
 anaemic lying, ^^the sunless phantom Ideas.’^ With his whole 
 being he reached upwards to the sun. In his youthful contempt 
 for the hypocrisy with which he was surrounded, or for what 
 he took to be hypocrisy, he did not see the high, practical wis- 
 dom of the race which little by little had built up for itself ^ 
 its grandiose idealism in order to suppress its savage instincts, 1 
 or to turn them to account. Not arbitrary reasons, not moral ! 
 and religious codes, not legislators and statesmen, priests and 
 philosophers, transform the souls of peoples and often impose I 
 upon them a new nature: but centuries of misfortune and ex- 
 perience^ which forge the life of peoples who have the will tol 
 live. 
 
 And yet Christophe went on composing : and his compositions 
 were not examples of the faults which he found in others. In 
 him creation was an irresistible necessity which would not sub- 
 mit to the rules which his intelligence laid down for it. No 
 man creates from reason, but from necessity. — It is not enough 
 to have recognized the untruth and affectation inherent in the 
 majority of the feelings to avoid falling into them: long and 
 painful endeavor is necessary : nothing is more difficult than 
 to be absolutely true in modern society with its crushing heri- 
 tage of indolent habits handed down through generations. It 
 is especially difficult for those people, those nations who are 
 I possessed by an indiscreet mania for letting their hearts speak — 
 for making them speak — unceasingly, when most generally it 
 had much better have been silent. 
 
 Christophers heart was very German in that: it had not yet 
 ; learned the virtue of silence : and that virtue did not belong 
 to his age. He had inherited from his father a need for talk- 
 
378 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 ing, and talking loudly. He knew it and struggled against it : 
 but the conflict paralyzed part of his forces. — And he had an- 
 other gift of heredity, no less burdensome, which had come to 
 him from his grandfather: an extraordinary difficulty — in ex- 
 pressing himself exactly.— He was the son of a virtuoso. He 
 was conscious of the dangerous attraction of virtuosity : a physi- 
 cal pleasure, the pleasure of skill, of agility, of satisfled mus- 
 cular activity, the pleasure of conquering, of dazzling, of en- 
 thralling in his own person the many-headed audience : an 
 excusable pleasure,- in a young man almost an innocent pleasure, 
 though none the less destructive of art and soul: Christophe 
 knew it: it was in his blood: he despised it, but all the sam6 
 he yielded to it. 
 
 And so, torn between the instincts of his race and those of 
 his genius, weighed down by the burden of a parasitical past, 
 which covered him with a crust that he could not break through, 
 he floundered along, and was much nearer than he thought to 
 all that he shunned and banned. All his compositions were a 
 mixture of truth and turgidness, of lucid strength and faltering ! 
 stupidity. It was only in rare moments that his personality , 
 could pierce the casing of the dead personality which hampered t 
 his movements. • 
 
 He was alone. He had no guide to help him out of the mire. ; 
 When he thought he was out of it he slipped back again. He ^ 
 went blindly on, wasting his time and strength in futile efforts. ; 
 He was spared no trial: and in the disorder of his creative j 
 striving he never knew what was of greatest worth in what he | 
 created. He tied himself up in absurd projects, symphonic ' 
 poems, which pretended to philosophy and were of monstrous t 
 dimensions. He was too sincere to be able to hold to them for : 
 long together : -and he would discard them in disgust before 
 he had stretched out a single movement. Or he would set out 
 to translate into overtures the most inaccessible works of poetry. 
 Then he would flounder about in a domain which was not his 
 own. Wlien he drew up scenarios for himself — (for he stuck 
 at nothing) — they were idiotic: and when he attacked the great 
 works of Goethe, Hebbel, Kleist, or Shakespeare, he under-, 
 stood them all wrong. It was not want of intelligence but want 
 of the critical spirit: he could not yet understand others, he , 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 379 
 
 was too much taken up with himself : he found himself every- 
 where with his naive and turgid soul. 
 
 But besides these monsters who were not really begotten, he 
 wrote a quantity of small pieces, which were the immediate 
 expression of passing emotions — ^the most eternal of all: musi- 
 cal thoughts, Lieder. In this as in other things he was in 
 passionate reaction against current practices. He would take 
 up the most famous poems, already set to music, and was im- 
 pertinent enough to try to treat them differently and with 
 greater truth than Schumann and Schubert. Sometimes he 
 would try to give to the poetic figures of Goethe— to Mignon, 
 the Harpist in WtlJiclTiz their individual character, 
 
 exact and changing. Sometimes he would tackle certain love 
 songs which the weakness of the artists and the dullness of the 
 audience in tacit agreement had clothed about with sickly senti- 
 mentality: and he would unclothe them: he would restore to 
 them their rough, crude sensuality. In a word, he set out to 
 make passions and people live for themselves and not to serve 
 as toys for German families seeking an easy emotionalism on 
 Sundays when they sat about in some Biergarten. 
 
 But generally he would find the poets, even the greatest of 
 them, too literary: and he would select the simplest texts for 
 preference: texts of old Lieder, jolly old songs, which he had 
 read perhaps in some improving work: he would take care not 
 to preserve their choral character: he would treat them with a 
 fine, lively, and altogether lay audacity. Or he would take 
 words from the Gospel, or proverbs, sometimes even words heard 
 by chance, scraps of dialogues of the people, children’s thoughts : 
 words often awkward and prosaic in which there was only°pure 
 feeling. With them he was at his ease, and he would reach 
 a depth with them which was not in his other compositions, 
 a depth which he himself never suspected. >. 
 
 Good or bad, more often bad than .good, his works as a whole 
 had a.bounding vitality. They were not altogether new: far 
 from it. Christophe was often banal, through his very sincerity : 
 he repeated sometimes forms already used because they exactly 
 rendered his thought, because he also felt in that way and not 
 otherwise. Nothing would have induced him to try to be 
 original: it seemed to him that a man must be very common- 
 
380 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE ; 
 
 place to burden himself with such an idea. He tried to be him- , 
 self, to say what he felt, without worrying as to whether what ; 
 he said had been said before him or not. He took a pride in 
 believing that it was the best way of being original and that 
 Christophe had only been and only would be alive once. 
 With the magnificent impudence of youth, nothing seemed to 
 him to have been done before: and everything seemed to him 
 to be left for doing — or for doing again. And the feeling of 
 this inward fullness of life, of a life stretching endless before 
 him, brought him to a state of exuberant and rather indiscreet 
 happiness. He was perpetually in a state of jubilation, which 
 had no need of joy: it could adapt itself to sorrow: its source 
 overflowed with life, was, in its strength, mother of all happiness 
 and virtue. To live, to live too much! ... A man who does 
 not feel within himself this intoxication of strength, this jubila- 
 tion in living— even in the depths of misery,— is not an artist. ■ 
 That is the touchstone. True greatness is shown in this power , 
 of rejoicing through joy and sorrow. A Mendelssohn or a ^ 
 Brahms, gods of the mists of October, and of fine rain, have . 
 never known the divine power. . . . t 
 
 Christophe was conscious of it : and he showed his joy simply, ^ 
 impudently. He saw no harm in it, he only asked to share it ! 
 with others. He did not see how such joy hurts the majority ’ 
 of men, who never can possess it and are always envious of it. ; 
 For the rest he never bothered about pleasing or displeasing : . 
 he was sure of himself, and nothing seemed to him simpler than , 
 to communicate his conviction to others, to conquer. In- j 
 stinctively he compared his riches with the general poverty of- 
 the makers of music: and he thought that it would be very^ 
 easy to make his superiority recognized. Too easy, even. He ; 
 had only to show himself. 
 
 He showed himself. 
 
 They were waiting for him. 
 
 Christophe had made no secret of his feelings. Since he had 
 become aware of German Pharisaism, which refuses to see^ 
 things as they are, he had made it a law for himself that he^ 
 should be absolutely, continually, uncompromisingly sincere in 
 everything without regard for anything or anybody or himself.' 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 381 
 
 And as he could do nothing without going to extremes, he 
 was extravagant in his sincerity; he would say outrageous things 
 and scandalize people a thousand times less naive than him- 
 self. He never dreamed that it might annoy them. When he 
 realized the idiocy of some hallowed composition he would make 
 haste to impart his discovery to everybody he encountered: 
 musicians of the orchestra, or amateurs of his acquaintance. 
 He would pronounce the most absurd judgments with a beam-^ 
 ing face. At first no one took him seriously: they laughed 
 at his freaks. But it was not long before they found that he 
 was always reverting to them, insisting on them in a way that 
 was really bad taste. It became evident that Christophe be- 
 lieved in his paradoxes: and they became. less amusing. He 
 was a nuisance : at concerts he would make ironic remarks in 
 a loud voice, or would express his scorn for the glorious masters 
 in no veiled fashion wherever he might be. 
 
 Everything passed from mouth to mouth in the little town: 
 not a word was lost. People were already affronted by his con- 
 duct during the past year. They had not forgotten the scan- 
 dalous fashion in which he had shown himself abroad with 
 Ada and the troublous times of the sequel. He had forgotten 
 it himself : one day wiped out another, and he was very different 
 from what he had been two months before. But others had 
 not forgotten: those who, in all small towns, take upon them- 
 selves scrupulously to note down all the faults, all the imper- 
 fections, all the sad, ugly, and unpleasant happenings concern- 
 ing their neighbors, so that nothing is ever forgotten. Chris- 
 tophers new extravagances were naturally set, side by side with 
 his former indiscretions, in the scroll. The former explained 
 the latter. The outraged feelings of offended morality were now 
 bolstered up by those of scandalized good taste. The kindliest 
 of them said: 
 
 He is trying to be particular.^^ 
 
 But most alleged: 
 
 Total verrucht! (Absolutely mad.) 
 
 An opinion no less severe and even more dangerous was 
 I beginning to find currency — an opinion assured of success by 
 Ireason of its illustrious origin: it was said that, at the Palace, 
 whither Christophe still went upon his official duties, he had 
 
382 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 had the bad taste in conversation with the Grand Duke himself, 
 with revolting lack of decency, to give vent to his ideas con- 
 cerning the illustrious masters: it was said that he had called 
 Mendelssohn’s Elijah “a clerical humbug’s paternoster,” and 
 he had called certain Lieder of Schumann “ Backfisch Musik : 
 and that in the face of the declared preference of the august 
 Princess for those works ! The Grand Duke had cut short his 
 impertinences by saying dryly : 
 
 “ To hear you, sir, one would doubt your being a German.” 
 
 This vengeful utterance, coming from so lofty an eminence, 
 reached the* lowest depths: and everybody who thought he I 
 had reason to be annoyed with Christophe, either for his success, 
 or for some more personal if not more cogent reason, did not 
 fail to call to mind that he was not in fact pure German. His 
 father’s family, it was remembered, came originally from Bel- 
 gium. It was not surprising, therefore, that this immigrant 
 should decry the national glories. That explained everything, 
 and German vanity found reasons therein for greater self-esteem, , 
 and at the same time for despising its adversary. ! 
 
 Christophe himself most substantially fed this Platonic 
 vengeance. It is very imprudent to criticise others when you^' 
 are yourself on the point of challenging criticism. A cleverer or 
 less frank artist would have shown more modesty and more 
 respect for his predecessors. But Christophe could see no rea-, 
 son for hiding his contempt for mediocrity or his joy in his: 
 own strength, and his joy was shown in no temperate fashion.. 
 Although from childhood Christophe had been turned in upon, 
 himself for want of any creature to confide in, of late he had; 
 come by a need of expansiveness. He had too much joy for\ 
 himself : his breast was too small to contain it : he would have; 
 burst if he had not shared his delight. Failing a friend, he 
 had confided in his colleague in the orchestra, the second 
 Kapellmeister, Siegmund Ochs, a young Wurtemberger, a good 
 fellow, though crafty, who showed him an effusive deference. 
 Christophe did not distrust him : and, even if he had, how could 
 it have occurred to him that it might be harmful to confide his 
 joy to one who did not care, or even to an enemy? Ought they 
 not rather to be grateful to him? Was it not for them also 
 that he was working? He brought happiness for all, friends 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 383 
 
 and enemies alike. — He had nn idea that there is nothing more 
 difficult than to make men accept a new happiness ; they almost 
 prefer their old misery : they need food that has been masticated 
 for ages. But what is most intolerable to them is the thought 
 that they owe such happiness to another. They cannot forgive 
 that offense until there is no way of evading it : and in any case, 
 they do contrive to make the giver pay dearly for it. 
 
 There were, then, a thousand reasons why Christophe’s con- 
 fidences should not be kindly received by anybody. But there 
 were a thousand and one reasons why they should not be accept- 
 able to Siegmund Ochs. The first Kapellmeister, Tobias Pfeif- 
 fer, was on the point of retiring: and, in spite of his youth, 
 Christophe had every chance of succeeding him. Ochs was too 
 good a German not to recognize that Christophe was worthy of 
 the position, since the Court was on his side. But he had too 
 good an opinion of himself not to believe that he would have 
 been more worthy had the Court known him better. And so 
 he received Christophe’s effusions with a strange smile when 
 he arrived at the theater in the morning with a face that he 
 tried hard to make serious, though it beamed in spite of him- 
 self. 
 
 “ Well ? ” he would say slyly as he came up to him, another 
 masterpiece ? ” 
 
 Christophe would take his arm. 
 
 “Ah! my friend. It is the best of all. ... If you could 
 hear it! . . . Devil take me, it is too beautiful! There has 
 never been an3'thing like it. God help the poor audience ! 
 They will only long for one thing when they have heard it: to 
 die.” 
 
 His words did not fall upon deaf ears. Instead of smiling, 
 or of chaffing Christophe about his childish enthusiasm— he 
 would have been the first to laugh at it and beg pardon if he 
 had been made to feel the absurdity of it— Ochs went into 
 ironic ecstasies : he drew Christophe on to further enormities : 
 and when he left him made haste to repeat them all, making 
 them even more grotesque. The little circle of musicians 
 chuckled over them : and every one was impatient for the oppor- 
 tunity of judging the unhappy compositions. — They were all 
 judged beforehand. 
 
384 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 At last they appeared — Christophe had chosen from the better 
 of his works an overture to the Judith of Hebbel, the savage 
 energy of which had attracted him, in his reaction against 
 German atony, although he was beginning to lose his taste 
 for it, knowing intuitively the unnaturalness of such assumption 
 of genius, always and at all costs. He had added a symphony 
 which bore the bombastic title of the Basle Boecklin, “The 
 Dream of Life,” and the motto : " Yita somnium hreve.” A 
 song-cycle completed the programme, with a few classical works, 
 and a Festmarsch by Ochs, which Christophe had kindly offered 
 to include in his concert, though he knew it to be mediocre. 
 
 Nothing much happened during the rehearsals. Although 
 the orchestra understood absolutely nothing of the composition 
 it was playing and everybody was privately disconcerted by the 
 oddities of the new music, they had no time to form an opinion: 
 they were not capable of doing so until the public had pro- • 
 nounced on it. Besides, Christophe’s confidence imposed on , 
 the artists, who, like every good German orchestra, were docile - 
 and disciplined. His only difficulties were with the singer. She 
 was the blue lady of the Townhalle concert. She was famous 
 through Germany: the domestic creature sang Briinnhilde and | 
 Kundry at Dresden and Bayreuth with undoubted lung-power. ; 
 But if in the Wagnerian school she had learned the art of ' 
 which that school is justly proud, the art of good articulation, ^ 
 of projecting the consonants through space, and of battering , 
 the gaping audience with the vowels as with a club, she had ■ 
 not learned — designedly — the art of being natural. She pro- j 
 vided for every word : everything was accentuated : the syllables I 
 moved with leaden feet, and there was a tragedy in every • 
 sentence. Christophe implored her to moderate her dramatic ; 
 power a little. She tried at first graciously enough: but her 
 natural heaviness and her need for letting her voice go carried 
 her away. Christophe became nervous. He told the respectable 
 lady that he had tried to make human beings speak with his 
 speaking-trumpet and not the dragon Fafner. She took his 
 insolence in bad part — naturally. She said that, thank Heaven ! 
 she knew what singing was, and that she had had the honor of 
 interpreting the Lieder of Maestro Brahms, in the presence of | 
 that great man, and that he had never tired of hearing her. | 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 385 
 
 So much the worse ! So much the worse ! cried Christophe. 
 
 She asked him with a haughty smile to be kind enough to 
 explain the meaning of his energetic remark. He replied that 
 never in his life had Brahms known what it was to be natural, 
 that his eulogies were the worst possible censure, and that 
 although he — Christophe — was not very polite, as she had justly 
 observed, never would he have gone so far as to say anything so 
 unpleasant. 
 
 The argument went on in this fashion : and the lady insisted 
 on singing in her own way, with heavy pathos and melodramatic 
 effects — until one day when Christophe declared coldly that he 
 saw the truth : it was her nature and nothing could change it : 
 but since the Lieder could not be sung properly, they should 
 not be sung at all : he withdrew them from the programme.---I1? 
 was on the eve of the concert and they were counting on the 
 Lieder : she had talked about them : she was musician enough 
 to appreciate certain of their qualities : Christophe insulted her : 
 and as she was not sure that the morrow^s concert would not 
 set the seal on the young man’s fame, she did not wish to quarrel 
 with a rising star. She gave way suddenly: and during the 
 last rehearsal she submitted docilely to all Christophe’s wishes. 
 But she had made up her mind — at the concert — to have her 
 own way. 
 
 The day came. Christophe had no anxiety. He was too full 
 of his music to be able to judge it. He realized that some of 
 his works in certain places bordered on the ridiculous. But 
 what did that matter? Nothing great can be written without 
 touching the ridiculous. To reach the heart of things it is 
 necessary to dare human respect, politeness, modesty, the timid- 
 5 ity of social lies under which the heart is stifled. If nobody 
 j is to be affronted and success attained, a man must be resigned 
 I all his life to remain bound by convention and to give to second- 
 rate people the second-rate truth, mitigated, diluted, which they 
 are capable of receiving: he must dwell in prison all his life. 
 A man is great only when he has set his foot on such anxieties. 
 Christophe trampled them underfoot. Let them hiss him: he 
 was sure of not leaving them indifferent. He conjured up the 
 faces that certain people of his acquaintance would make as 
 
386 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 they heard certain rather bold passages. He expected bitter 
 criticism: he smiled at it already. In any case they would have 
 to be blind— or deaf— to deny that there was force in it— pleas- 
 ant or otherwise, what did it matter? Pleasant! Pleasant! 
 
 Force! That is enough. Let it go its way, and bear all * 
 
 before it, like the Rhine! ... , ^ ^ 
 
 He had one setback. The Grand Duke did not come. The 
 royal box was only occupied by Court people, a few ladies-in- 
 waiting. Christophe was irritated by it. He thought: “The 
 fool is cross with me. He does not know what to think of my 
 work- he is afraid of compromising himself.” He shrugged 
 his shoulders, pretending not to be put out by such idiocy. 
 Others paid more attention to it: it was the first lesson for 
 
 him, a menace of his future. _ n ;i 
 
 The public had not shown much more interest than the Orand 
 Duke: quite a third of the hall was empty. Christophe could 
 not help thinking bitterly of the crowded halls at his concerts 
 when he was a child. He would not have been surprised by 
 the change if he had had more experience : it would have seemed 
 natural to him that there were fewer people come to hear 
 him when he made good music than when he made bad : tor 
 it is not music but the musician in which the greater part of 
 the public is interested: and it is obvious that a musician who 
 is a man and like everybody else is much less interesting than 
 a musician in a child’s little trowsers or short frock, who tickles 
 sentimentality or amuses idleness. _ , j 
 
 After waiting in vain for the hall to fill, Christophe decided 
 to begin. He tried to pretend that it was better so, saying, 
 “ A few friends but good.” — His optimism did not last long. 
 
 His pieces were played in silence. — There is a silence in ^ 
 audience which seems big and overflowing with love. But 
 there was nothing in this. Nothing. Utter sleep. Blankness 
 Every phrase seemed to drop into depths of indifference. With 
 his back turned to the audience, busy with his orchestra, yli”®" 
 tophe was fully aware of everything that was happening in y ® 
 hall, with those inner antennal, with which every true musician 
 is endowed, so that he knows whether what he is playing is 
 waking an echo in the hearts about him. He went on conduct- 
 ing and growing excited while he was frozen by the co 
 
REVOLT 387 
 
 mist of boredom rising from the stalls and the boxes behind 
 him. 
 
 At last the overture was ended : and the audience applauded. 
 It applauded coldly, politely, and was then silent. Christophe 
 would rather have had them hoot. ... A hiss! One hiss! 
 Anything to give a sign of life, or at least of reaction against 
 his work! . . . Nothing. — He looked at the audience. The 
 people were looking at each other, each trying to find out what 
 the other thought. They did not succeed and relapsed into 
 indifference. 
 
 The music went on. The symphony was played. — Christophe 
 found it hard to go on to the end. Several times he was on 
 the point of throwing down his baton and running away. Their 
 apathy overtook him: at last he could not understand what he 
 was conducting : he could not breathe : he felt that he was falling 
 into fathomless boredom. There was not even the whispered 
 ironic comment which he had anticipated at certain passages: 
 the audience were reading their programmes. Christophe heard 
 the pages turned all together with a dry rustling: and then 
 once more there was silence until the last chord, wien the same 
 polite applause showed that they had not understood that the 
 symphony was finished. — And yet there were four pairs of hands 
 went on clapping when the others had finished: but they awoke 
 no echo, and stopped ashamed: that made the emptiness seem 
 more empty, and the little incident served to show the audience 
 how bored it had been. 
 
 Christophe took a seat in the middle of the orchestra: he 
 dared not look to right or left. He wanted to cry: and at the 
 same time he was quivering with rage. He was fain to get 
 up and shout at them : You bore me ! Ah ! How you bore 
 me! I cannot bear it! ... Go away! Go away, all of 
 , you! . . .^^ 
 
 i The audience woke up a little: they were expecting the singer, 
 — they were accustomed to applauding her. In that ocean of new 
 I music in which they were drifting without a compass, she at, 
 least was sure, a known land, and a solid, in which there was 
 no danger of being lost. Christophe divined their thoughts 
 , exactly : and he laughed bitterly. The singer was no less con- 
 scious of the expectancy of the audience : Christophe saw that 
 
388 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 in her regal airs when he came and told her that it was her turn 
 to appear. They looked at each other inimically. Instead of 
 offering her his arm, Christophe thrust his hands into his 
 pockets and let her go on alone. Furious and out of counte- 
 nance she passed him. He followed her with a bored expression. 
 As soon as she appeared the audience gave her an ovation: that 
 made everybody happier: every face brightened, the audience 
 grew interested, and glasses were brought into play. Certain 
 of her power she tackled the Lieder, in her own way, of course, 
 and absolutely disregarded Christophe’s remarks of the evening 
 before. Christophe, who was accompanying her, went pale. He 
 had foreseen her rebellion. At the first change that she made 
 he tapped on the piano and said angrily : 
 
 “ Ho ! ” . . 
 
 She went on. He whispered behind her back in a low voice 
 
 of fury: 
 
 “ Ho ! Ho ! Hot like that ! . . . Hot that ! ” 
 
 Unnerved by his fierce growls, which the audience could not 
 hear, though the orchestra caught every syllable, she stuck to 
 it, dragging her notes, making pauses like organ stops. He 
 paid no heed to them and went ahead: in the end they got 
 out of time. The audience did not notice it : for some time 
 they had been saying that Christophe’s music was not made 
 to seem pleasant or right to the ear : but Christophe,^ who was 
 not of that opinion, was making lunatic grimaces: and at last 
 he exploded. He stopped short in the middle of a bar : 
 
 “ Stop,” he shouted. 
 
 She was carried on by her own impetus for half a bar and 
 then stopped: 
 
 « That’s enough,” he said dryly. _ _ 
 
 There was a moment of amazement in tl^e audience. After 
 a few seconds he said icily : 
 
 “ Begin again ! ” , , i j t. 
 
 She looked at him in stupefaction: her hands trembled: she 
 thought for a moment of throwing his book at his head : after- 
 wards she did not understand how it was that she did not do 
 so. But she was overwhelmed by Christophe’s authority and his 
 unanswerable tone of voice: she began again. She sang the 
 whole song-cycle, without changing one shade of meaning, or 
 
EBVOLT 389 
 
 a single movement: for she felt that he would spare her noth- 
 ing: and she shuddered at the thought of a fresh insult. 
 
 When she had finished the audience recalled her frantically. 
 They were not applauding the Lieder — (they would have ap- 
 plauded just the same if she had sung any others) — ^but the 
 famous singer who had grown old in harness: they knew that 
 they could safely admire her. Besides, they wanted to make 
 up to her for the insult she had just received. They were not 
 quite sure, but they did vaguely understand that the singer had 
 made a mistake : and they thought it indecent of Christophe to 
 call their attention to it. They encored the songs. But Chris- 
 tophe shut the piano firmly. 
 
 The singer did not notice his insolence: she was too much 
 upset to think of singing again. She left the stage hurriedly 
 and shut herself up in her box: and then for a quarter of an 
 hour she relieved her heart of the flood of wrath and rage that 
 was pent up in it : a nervous attack, a deluge of tears, indignant 
 outcries and imprecations against Christophe, — she omitted 
 nothing. Her cries of anger could be heard through the closed 
 door. Those of her friends who had made their way there 
 told everybody when they left that Christophe had behaved like 
 a cad. Opinion travels quickly in a concert hall. And so 
 when Christophe went to his desk for the last piece of music 
 the audience was stormy. But it was not his composition: it 
 was the 'Festniarsch by Ochs, which Christophe had kindly in- 
 cluded in his programme. The audience — who were quite at 
 their ease with the dull music — found a very simple method of 
 displaying their disapproval of Christophe without going so far 
 as to hiss him : they acclaimed Ochs ostentatiously, recalled the 
 composer two or three times, and he appeared readily. And 
 that was the end of the concert. 
 
 The Grand Duke and everybody at the Court — ^the bored, 
 gossiping little provincial town — lost no detail of what had 
 happened. The papers which were friendly towards the ainger 
 made no allusion to the incident: but they all agreed in exalt- 
 ing her art while they only mentioned the titles of the Lieder 
 which she had sung. They published only a few lines about 
 Christophe’s other compositions, and they all said almost the 
 same things : “. . . Knowledge of counterpoint. Complicated 
 
390 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 writing. Lack of inspiration. No melody. Written with the 
 head, not with the heart. Want of sincerity. Trying to be 
 original. . . .” Followed a paragraph on true originality, that 
 of the masters who are dead and buried, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 Loewe, Schubert, Brahms, “those who are original without 
 thinking of it.” — Then by a natural transition they passed to 
 the revival at the Grand Ducal Theater of the Nachtlager von 
 Granada of Konradin Kreutzer: a long account was given of 
 “the delicious music, as fresh and jolly as when it was first 
 written.” 
 
 Christophe’s compositions met with absolute and astonished 
 lack of comprehension from the most kindly disposed critics: 
 veiled hostility from those who did not like him, and were 
 arming themselves for later ventures: and from the general 
 public, guided by neither friendly nor hostile critics, silence. 
 Left to its own thoughts the general public does not think at 
 all : that goes without saying. 
 
 Christophe was bowled over. 
 
 And yet there was nothing surprising in his defeat. There 
 were reasons, three to one, why his compositions should not 
 please. They were immature. They were, secondly, too ad- 
 vanced to be understood at once. And, lastly, people were only 
 too glad to give a lesson to the impertinent youngster. — But 
 Christophe was not cool-headed enough to admit that his reverse 
 was legitimate. He had none of that serenity which the true 
 artist gains from the mournful experience of long misunder- 
 standing at the hands of men and their incurable stupidity. 
 His naive confidence in the public and in success which he 
 thought he could easily gain because he deserved it, crumbled 
 away. He would have thought it natural to have enemies. But 
 what staggered him was to find that he had not a single friend. 
 Those on whom he had counted, those who hitherto had seemed 
 to be interested in everything that he wrote, had not given him 
 a single word of encouragement since the concert. He tried 
 to probe them: they took refuge behind vague words. He in- 
 sisted, he wanted to know what they really thought: the most 
 sincere of them referred back to his former works, his foolish 
 early efforts. — More than once in his life he was to hear his 
 
EEVOLT 391 
 
 new works condemned by comparison with the older ones, — 
 and that by the same people who, a few years before, had con- 
 demned his older works when they were new: that is the usual 
 ordering of these things. Christophe did not like it: he ex- 
 claimed loudly. If people did not like him, well and good: 
 he accepted that: it even pleased him since he could not be 
 friends with everybody. But that people should pretend to 
 be fond of him and not allow him to grow up, that they should 
 try to force him all his life to remain a child, was beyond the 
 pale! What is good at twelve is not good at twenty: and he 
 hoped not to stay at that, but to change and to go on changing 
 always. . . . These idiots who tried to stop life! . . . What 
 was interesting in his childish compositions was not their child- 
 ishness and silliness, but the force in them hungering for the 
 future. And they were trying to kill his future ! ... No, they 
 had never understood what he was, they had never loved him, 
 never then or now: they only loved the weakness and vulgarity 
 in him, everything that he had in common with others, and not 
 himself, not what he really was: their friendship was a mis- 
 understanding. . . . 
 
 He was exaggerating, perhaps. It often happens with quite 
 nice people who are incapable of liking new work which they 
 sincerely love when it is twenty years old. New life smacks 
 too strong for their weak senses : the scent of it must evaporate 
 in the winds of Time. A work of art only becomes intelligible 
 : to them when it is crusted over with the dust of years. 
 
 But Christophe could not admit of not being understood 
 when he was present, and of being understood when he was past. 
 He preferred to think that he was not understood at all, in 
 any case, even. And he raged against it. He was foolish 
 ! enough to want to make himself understood, to explain himself, 
 to argue. Although no good purpose was served thereby: he 
 would have had to reform the taste of his time. But he was 
 afraid of nothing. He was determined by hook or by crook to 
 clean up German taste. But it was utterly impossible: he 
 could not convince anybody by means of conversation, in which 
 he found it difficult to find words, and expressed himself with 
 an excess of violence about the great musicians and even about 
 the men to whom he was talking: he only succeeded in making 
 
392 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 a few more enemies. He would have had to prepare his ideas 
 beforehand, and then to force the public to hear him. . . . 
 
 And just then, at the appointed hour, his star — ^his evil star — 
 gave him the means of doing so. 
 
 He was sitting in the restaurant of the theater in a group 
 of musicians belonging to the orchestra whom he was scandaliz- 
 ing by his artistic judgments. They were not all of the same 
 opinion : but they were all ruffled by the freedom of his language. 
 Old Krause, the alto, a good fellow and a good musician, who 
 sincerely loved Christophe, tried to turn the conversation: he 
 coughed, then looked out for an opportunity of making a pun. 
 But Christophe did not hear him: he went on: and Krause 
 mourned and thought: 
 
 “ What makes him say such things ? God bless him ! You 
 can think these things : Mt you must not say them.” 
 
 The odd thing was that he also thought “ these things ” : at 
 least, he had a glimmering of them, and Christophe’s words 
 roused many doubts in him: but he had not the courage to 
 confess it, or openly to agree — ^half from fear of compromising 
 himself, half from modesty and distrust of himself. 
 
 Weigl, the cornet-player, did not want to know anything : he 
 was ready to admire anything, or anybody, good or bad, star 
 or gas-jet: everything was the same to him: there were no 
 degrees in his admiration: he admired, admired, admired. It 
 was a vital necessity to him: it hurt him when anybody tried 
 to curb him. 
 
 Old Kuh, the violoncellist, suffered even more. He loved 
 bad music with all his heart. Everything that Christophe 
 hounded down with his sarcasm and invective was infinitely 
 dear to him: instinctively his choice pitched on the most con- 
 ventional works : his soul was a reservoir of tearful and high- 
 flown emotion. Indeed, he was not dishonest in his tender 
 regard for all the sham great men. It was when he tried to 
 pretend that he liked the real great men that he was lying to 
 himself — in perfect innocence. There are “Brahmins” who 
 think to find in their God the breath of old men of genius: 
 they love Beethoven in Brahms. Kuh went one better: he loved 
 Brahms in Beethoven. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 393 
 
 But the most enraged of all with Christophe’s paradoxes was 
 Spitz, the bassoon. It was not so much his musical instinct 
 that was wounded as his natural servility. One of the Eoman 
 Emperors wished to die standing. Spitz wished to die, as he 
 had lived, crawling; that was his natural position: it was de- 
 lightful to him to grovel at the feet of everything that was 
 official, hallowed, “ arrived ” : and he was beside himself when 
 anybody tried to keep him from playing the lackey, comfort- 
 
 ably. . n . T • 
 
 So, Kuh groaned, Weigl threw up his hands in despair, 
 
 Krause made jokes, and Spitz shouted in^ a shrill voice. But 
 Christophe went on imperturbably shouting louder than the 
 rest: and saying monstrous things about Germany and the 
 
 Germans. . * . , v • j 
 
 At the next table a young man was listening to him and 
 rocking with laughter. He had black curly hair, fine, intelligent 
 eyes, a large nose, which at its end could not make up its mind 
 to go either to right or left, and rather than go straight on, went 
 to both sides at once, thick lips, and a clever, mobile face : he 
 was following everything that Christophe said, hanging on his 
 lips, reflecting every word with a sympathetic and yet mocking 
 attention, wrinkling up his forehead, his temples, the corners 
 of his eyes, round his nostrils and cheeks, grimacing with 
 laughter, and every now and then shaking all over convulsively. 
 He did not join in the conversation, but he did not miss a 
 word of it. He showed his joy especially when he saw Chris- 
 tophe, involved in some argument and heckled by Spitz, flounder 
 about, stammer, and stutter with anger, until he had found 
 the word he was seeking, — a rock with which to crush his 
 adversary. And his delight knew no bounds when Christophe, 
 swept along by his passions far beyond the capacity of his 
 thought, enunciated monstrous paradoxes which made his hear- 
 
 ! ers snort. ^ . j. v 
 
 i At last they broke up, each of them tired out with feeling 
 and alleging his own superiority. As Christophe, the last to 
 go, was leaving the room he was accosted by the young man 
 who had listened to his words with such pleasure. He had 
 not yet noticed him. The other politely removed his hat, smiled, 
 and asked permission to introduce himself: 
 
394 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Franz Mannheim/^ ] 
 
 He begged pardon for his indiscretion in listening to the I 
 argument, and congratulated Christophe on the maestria with ' 
 which he had pulverized his opponents. He was still laughing ; 
 at the thought of it. Christophe was glad to hear it, and looked ■ 
 at him a little distrustfully : 
 
 Seriously ? he asked. ^^You are not laughing at 
 
 me ? 
 
 The other swore by the gods. Christophers face lit up. 
 
 ^^Then you think I am right? You are of my opinion ?r^ ’ 
 
 Well,r^ Mannheim, I am not a musician. I know 
 nothing of music. The only music I like — (if it is not too 
 flattering to say so) — is yours. . . . That may show you that ^ 
 my taste is not so^bad. . . ; 
 
 Oh ! said Christophe skeptically, though he was flattered ! 
 all the same, that proves nothing.r^ ) 
 
 ^^You are difficult to please. . . . Good! ... I think as : 
 you do: that proves nothing. And I don^t venture to judge ; 
 what you say of German musicians. But, anyhow, it is so true j 
 of the Germans in general, the old Germans, all the romantic J 
 idiots with their rancid thought, their sloppy emotion, their | 
 senile reiteration which we are asked to admire, the eternal ] 
 Yesterday, which has always teen, and always will he, and will | 
 te law to-morrow because it is law to-day/ . . . ! | 
 
 He recited a few lines of the famous passage in Schiller: | 
 
 . . Das ewig Gestrige, | 
 
 Das immer war und immer wiederJcehrt. . . | 
 
 ii 
 
 i 
 
 Himself, first of all ! He stopped in the middle of his i 
 recitation. i 
 
 ^^Who?^^ asked Christophe. 
 
 The pump-maker who wrote that ! | 
 
 Christophe did not understand. But Mannheim went 1 
 on: 
 
 I should like to have a general cleaning up of art and ■ 
 -thought every fifty years — nothing to be left standing.^^ 
 
 ^^A little drastic,^^ said Christophe, smiling. 
 
 ^^No, I assure you. Fifty years is too much: I should say, 
 
REVOLT 
 
 395 
 
 thirty. . . . And even less ! ... It is a hygienic measure. One 
 does not keep one’s ancestors in one’s house. One gets rid of 
 them, when they are dead, and sends them elsewhere, there 
 politely to rot, and one places stones on them to be quite sure 
 that they will not come back. Nice people put flowers on them, 
 too. I don’t mind if they like it. All I ask is to be left in 
 peace. I leave them alone ! Each for his own side, say I : the 
 dead and the living.” 
 
 There are some dead who are more alive than the living.” 
 
 No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some 
 living who are more dead than the dead.” 
 
 Maybe. In any case, there are old things which are still 
 young.” 
 
 Then if they are still young we can And them for ourselves. 
 
 . . . But I don’t believe it. What has been good once never is 
 good again. Nothing is good but change. Before all we have 
 to rid ourselves of the old men and things. There are too many 
 of them in Germany. Death to them, say I ! ” 
 
 Christophe listened to these squibs attentively and labored 
 to discuss them: he was in part in sympathy with them, he 
 recognized certain of his own thoughts in them: and at the 
 same time he felt a little embarrassed at having them so blown 
 out to the point of caricature. But as he assumed that every- 
 body else was as serious as himself, he thought that perhaps 
 Mannheim, who seemed to be more learned than himself and 
 spoke more easily, was right, and was drawing the logical con- 
 clusions from his principles. Vain Christophe, whom so many 
 people could not forgive for his faith in himself, was really 
 most naively modest, often tricked by his modesty when he was 
 with those who were better educated than himself, — especially 
 when they consented not to plume themselves on it to avoid an 
 awkward discussion. Mannheim, who was amusing himself 
 with his own paradoxes, and from one sally to another had 
 reached extravagant quips and cranks, at which he was laugh- 
 ing immensely, was not accustomed to being taken seriously: 
 he was delighted with the trouble that Christophe was taking 
 to discuss his nonsense, and even to understand it: and while 
 he laughed, he was grateful for the importance which Chris- 
 tophe gave him: he thought him absurd and charming. 
 
396 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 They parted very good friends: and Christophe was not a 
 little surprised three hours later at rehearsal to see Mannheim^s 
 head poked through the little door leading to the orchestra, 
 smiling and grimacing, and making mysterious signs at him. 
 When the rehearsal was over Christophe went to him. Mann- 
 heim took his arm familiarly. 
 
 ^^You can spare a moment? . . . Listen. I have an idea. 
 Perhaps you will think it absurd. . . . Would not you like 
 for once in a way to write what you think of music and the 
 musicos? Instead of wasting your breath in haranguing four 
 dirty knaves of your band who are good for nothing but scrap- 
 ing and blowing into bits of wood, would it not be better to 
 address the general public 
 
 ^^Not better? Would I like? . . . My word! And when 
 do you want me to write ? It is good of you I . . .” 
 
 I\e a proposal for you. . . . Some friends and I : Adal- 
 bert von Waldhaus, Eaphael Goldenring, Adolf Mai, and Lucien 
 Ehrenfeld, — ^have started a Eeview, the only intelligent Eeview 
 in the town: the Dionysos . — (You must know it. . . .) — We all 
 admire each other and should be glad if you would join us. 
 Will you take over our musical criticism ? 
 
 Christophe was abashed by such an honor: he was longing 
 to accept : he was only afraid of not being worthy : he could not 
 write. 
 
 Oh ! come,^^ said Mannheim, I am sure you can. And 
 besides, as soon as you are a critic you can do anything you 
 like. You’ve no need to be afraid of the public. The public 
 is incredibly stupid. It is nothing to be an artist: an artist 
 is only a sort of comedian : an artist can be hissed. But a critic 
 has the right to say : ^ Hiss me that man 1 ’ The whole audi- 
 ence lets him do its thinking. Think whatever you like. Only 
 look as if you were thinking something. Provided you give the 
 fools their food, it does not much matter what, they will gulp 
 down anything.” 
 
 In the end Christophe consented, with effusive thanks. He 
 only made it a condition that he should be allowed to say what 
 he liked. 
 
 Of course, of course,” said Mannheim. Absolute free- 
 dom! We are all free.” 
 
 i 
 
 
REYOLT 
 
 397 
 
 He looked him up at the theater once more after the perform- 
 ance to introduce him to Adalbert von Waldhaus and his friends. 
 They welcomed him warmly. 
 
 With the exception of Waldhaus, who belonged to one of 
 the noble families of the neighborhood, they were all Jews and 
 all very rich: Mannheim was the son of a banker: Mai the son 
 of the manager of a metallurgical establishment: and Ehren- 
 f eld’s father was a great jeweler. Their fathers belonged to 
 the older generation of Jews, industrious and acquisitive, at- 
 tached to the spirit of their race, building their fortunes with 
 keen energy, and enjoying their energy much more than their 
 fortunes. Their sons seemed to be made to destroy what their 
 fathers had builded : they laughed at family prejudice and their 
 ant-like mania for economy and delving: they posed as artists, 
 affected to despise money and to fling it out of window. But 
 in reality they hardly ever let it slip through their fingers : and 
 in vain did they do all sorts of foolish things : they never could 
 altogether lead astray their lucidity of mind and practical sense. 
 For the rest, their parents kept an eye on them, and reined 
 them in. The most prodigal of them, Mannheim, would sin- 
 cerely have given away all that he had: but he never had any- 
 thing: and although he was always loudly inveighing against 
 his father’s niggardliness, in his heart he laughed at it and 
 thought that he was right. In fine, there was only Waldhaus 
 really who was in control of his fortune, and went into it whole- 
 ; heartedly and reckless of cost, and bore that of the Review. 
 He was a poet. He wrote “ PolymHres” in the manner of 
 Arno Holz and Walt Whitman, with lines alternately very long 
 and very short, in which stops, double and triple stops, dashes, 
 silences, commas, italics and italics, played a great part. And so 
 , did alliteration and repetition — of a word — of a line — of a 
 ' whole phrase. He interpolated words of every language. He 
 wanted — (no one has ever known why) — ^to render the Cezanne 
 • into verse. In truth, he was poetic enough and had a distin- 
 guished taste for stale things. He was sentimental and dry, 
 naive and foppish: his labored verses affected a cavalier careless- 
 I ness. He would have been a good poet for men of the world. 
 But there are too many of the kind in the Reviews and artistic 
 circles : and he wished to be alone. He had taken it into his 
 
398 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 head to play the great gentleman who is above the prejudices 
 of his caste. He had more prejudices than anybody. He did 
 not admit their existence. He took a delight in surrounding 
 himself with Jews in the Eeview which he edited, to rouse the 
 indignation of his family, who were very anti-Semite, and to 
 prove his own freedom of mind to himself. With his colleagues 
 he assumed a tone of courteous equality. But in his heart 
 he had a calm and boundless contempt for them. He was not 
 unaware that they were very glad to make use of his name and 
 money : and he let them do so because it pleased him to despise 
 them. 
 
 And they despised him for letting them do so : for they knew 
 very well that it served his turn. A fair exchange. Waldhaus 
 lent them his name and fortune: and they brought him their 
 talents, their eye for business and subscribers. They were much 
 tnore intelligent than he. Not that they had more personality. 
 They had perhaps even less. But in the little town they were, 
 as the Jews are everywhere and always, — ^by the mere fact of 
 their difference of race which for centuries has isolated them . 
 and sharpened their faculty for making observation — they were 
 the most advanced in mind, the most sensible of the absurdity ; 
 of its moldy institutions and decrepit thought. Only, as their ! 
 character was less free than their intelligence, it did not help 
 them, while they mocked, from trying rather to turn those 
 institutions and ideas to account than to reform them. ' 
 In spite of their independent professions of faith, they were 
 like the noble Adalbert, little provincial snobs, rich, idle young : 
 men of family, who dabbled and flirted with letters for the fun i 
 of it. They were very glad to swagger about as giant-killers: . 
 but they were kindly enough and never slew anybody but a ! 
 few inoffensive people or those whom they thought could never 
 harm them. They cared nothing for setting by the ears a 
 society to which they knew very well they would one day return 
 and embrace all the prejudices which they had combated. And 
 when they did venture to make a stir on a little scandal, or 
 loudly to declare war on some idol of the day, — who was begin- 
 ning to totter, — they took care never to burn their boats: in 
 case of danger they re-embarked. Whatever then might be the 
 issue of the campaign, — ^when it was finished it was a long^ 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 399 
 
 time before war would break out again: the Philistines could 
 sleep in peace. All that these new Davidsbiindler wanted to 
 do was to make it appear that they could have been terrible if 
 they had so desired: but they did not desire. They preferred 
 to be on friendly terms with artists and to give suppers to 
 actresses. 
 
 Christophe was not happy in such a set. They were always 
 talking of women and horses: and their talk was not refined. 
 They were stiff and formal. Adalbert spoke in a mincing, slow 
 voice, with exaggerated, bored, and boring politeness. Adolf 
 Mai, the secretary of the Eeview, a heavy, thick-set, bull-necked, 
 brutal-looking young man, always pretended to be in the right : 
 he laid down the law, never listened to what anybody said, 
 seemed to despise the opinion of the person he was talking to, 
 and also that person. Goldenring, the art critic, who had a 
 twitch, and eyes perpetually winking behind his large spectacles, 
 — no doubt in imitation of the painters whose society he cul- 
 tivated, wore long hair, smoked in silence, mumbled scraps of 
 sentences which he never finished, and made vague gestures in 
 the air with his thumb. Ehrenfeld was little, bald, and smil- 
 ing, had a fair beard and a sensitive, weary-looking face, a 
 hooked nose, and he wrote the fashions and the society notes 
 in the Eeview. In a silky voice he used to talk obscurely : he had 
 a wit, though of a malignant and often ignoble kind. — All these 
 young millionaires were anarchists, of course : when a man pos- 
 sesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny soci- 
 ety : for in that way he can evade his responsibilities. So might 
 a robber, who has just fleeced a traveler, say to him : “ What 
 are you staying for ? Get along ! I have no more use for you.” 
 
 Of the whole bunch Christophe was only in sympathy with 
 Mannheim : he was certainly the most lively of the five : he 
 was amused by everything that he said and everything that 
 was said to him: stuttering, stammering, blundering, snigger- 
 ing, talking nonsense, he was incapable of following an argu- 
 ment, or of knowing exactly what he thought himself : but he 
 was quite kindly, bearing no malice, having not a spark of 
 ambition. In truth, he was not very frank: he was always 
 playing a part: but quite innocently, and he never did anybody 
 '4 any harm. 
 
400 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 He espoused all sorts of strange Utopias — most often gen- 
 erous. He was too subtle and too skeptical to keep his head 
 .even in his enthusiasms, and he never compromised himself by 
 applying his theories. But he had to have some hobby : it was 
 a game to him, and he was always changing from one to an- 
 other. For the time being his craze was for kindness. It was 
 not enough for him to be kind naturally: he wished to be 
 thought kind: he professed kindness, and acted it. Out of 
 reaction against the hard, dry activity of his kinsfolk, and 
 against German austerity, militarism, and Philistinism, he was 
 a Tolstoyan, a Nirvanian, an evangelist, a Buddhist, — ^he was 
 not quite sure what, — an apostle of a new morality that was 
 soft, boneless, indulgent, placid, easy-living, effusively forgiving 
 every sin, especially the sins of the flesh, a morality which did 
 not conceal its predilection for those sins and much less readily 
 forgave the virtues — a morality which was only a compact of 
 pleasure, a libertine association of mutual accommodations, 
 which amused itself by donning the halo of sanctity. There 
 was in it a spice of hypocrisy which was a little offensive to 
 delicate palates, and would have even been frankly nauseating 
 if it had taken itself seriously. But it made no pretensions 
 towards that : it merely amused itself. His blackguardly Chris- 
 tianity was only meant to serve until some other hobby came 
 along to take its place — no matter what: brute force, imperial- 
 ism, laughing lions.^^ — Mannheim was always playing a part, 
 playing with his whole heart : he was trying on all the feelings 
 that he did not possess before becoming a good Jew like the 
 rest and with all the spirit of his race. He was very sympa- 
 thetic, and extremely irritating. For some time Christophe was 
 one of his hobbies. Mannheim swore by him. He blew his 
 trumpet everywhere. He dinned his praises into the ears of 
 his family. According to him Christophe was a genius, 
 an extraordinary man, who made strange music and talked 
 about it in an astonishing fashion, a witty man — and a 
 handsome : fine lips, magnificent teeth. He added that Chris- 
 tophe admired him. — One evening he took him home to din- 
 ner. Christophe found himself talking to his new friend’s 
 father, Lothair Mannheim, the banker, and Franz’s sister, 
 J udith. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 401 
 
 It was the first time that he had been in a Jew’s house. Al- 
 though there were many Jews in the little town, and although 
 they played an important part in its life by reason of their 
 wealth, cohesion, and intelligence, they lived a little apart. There 
 were always rooted prejudices in the minds of the people and 
 a secret hostility that was credulous and injurious against them. 
 Christophe’s family shared these prejudices. His grandfather 
 did not love Jews: but the irony of fate had decreed that his 
 two best pupils should be of the race — (one had become a com- 
 poser, the other a famous virtuoso) : for there had been moments 
 when he was fain to embrace these two good musicians : and 
 then he would remember sadly that they had crucified the Lord : 
 and he did not know how to reconcile his two incompatible 
 currents of feeling. But in the end he did embrace them. He 
 was inclined to think that the Lord would forgive them because 
 of their love for music. — Christophe’s father, Melchior, who 
 pretended to be broad-minded, had had fewer scruples about 
 taking money from the Jews: and he even thought it good to 
 do so: but he ridiculed them, and despised them. — As for his 
 mother, she was not sure that she was not committing a sin 
 when she went to cook for them. Those whom she had had to 
 do with were disdainful enough with her: but she had no 
 grudge against them, she bore nobody any ill-will : she was 
 filled with pity for these unhappy people whom God had damned : 
 sometimes she would be filled with compassion when she saw 
 the daughter of one of them go by or heard the merry laughter 
 of their children. 
 
 “ So pretty she is ! . . . Such pretty children ! . . . How 
 dreadful ! . . .” she would think. 
 
 She dared not say anything to Christophe, when he told 
 her that he was going to dine with the Mannheims: but her 
 heart sank. She thought that it was unnecessary to believe 
 ' everything bad that was said about the Jews — (people speak 
 1 ill of everybody) — and that there are honest people everywhere, 
 i but that it was better and more proper to' keep themselves to 
 themselves, the Jews on their side, the Christians on theirs. 
 
 Christophe shared none of these prejudices. In his perpetual 
 reaction against his surroundings he was rather attracted to- 
 f wards the different race. But he hardly knew them. He had 
 
402 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 only come in contact with the more vulgar of the Jews: little 
 shopkeepers, the populace swarming in certain streets between 
 the Ehine and the cathedral, forming, with the gregarious in- 
 stinct of all human beings, a sort of little ghetto. He had often 
 strolled through the neighborhood, catching sight of and feeling 
 a sort of sympathy with certain types of women with hollow 
 cheeks, and full lips, and wide cheek-bones, a da Vinci smile, 
 rather depraved, while the coarse language and shrill laughter 
 destroyed this harmony that was in their faces when in repose. 
 Even in the dregs of the people, in those large-headed, beady- 
 eyed creatures with their bestial faces, their thick-set, squat 
 bodies, those degenerate descendants of the most noble of all 
 peoples, even in that thick, fetid muddiness there were strange 
 phosphorescent gleams, like will-o’-the-wisps dancing over a 
 swamp: marvelous glances, minds subtle and brilliant, a subtle 
 electricity emanating from the ooze which fascinated and dis- 
 turbed Christophe. He thought that hidden deep were fine 
 souls struggling, great hearts striving to break free from the 
 dung : and he would have liked to meet them, and to aid them : 
 without knowing them, he loved them, while he was a little 
 fearful of them. And he had never had any opportunity of 
 meeting the best of the Jews. 
 
 His dinner at the Mannheims’ had for him the attraction of 
 novelty and something of that of forbidden fruit. The Eve 
 who gave him the fruit sweetened its fiavor. From the first 
 moment Christophe had eyes only for Judith Mannheim. She 
 was utterly different from all the women he had known. Tall 
 and slender, rather thin, though solidly built, with her face 
 framed in her black hair, not long, but thick and curled low 
 on her head, covering her temples and her broad, golden brow ; 
 rather short-sighted, with large pupils, and slightly prominent 
 eyes : with a largish nose and wide nostrils, thin cheeks, a heavy 
 chin, strong coloring, she had a fine profile showing much 
 energy and alertness : full face, her expression was more chang- 
 ing, uncertain, complex : her eyes and her cheeks were irregular. 
 She seemed to give revelation of a strong race, and in the mold 
 of that race, roughly thrown together, were manifold ineon- 
 gruous elements, of doubtful and unequal quality, beautiful and 
 vulgar at the same time. Her beauty lay especially in her silent 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 403 
 
 lips, and in her eyes, in which there seemed to be greater depth 
 by reason of their short-sightedness, and darker by reason of 
 the bluish markings round them. 
 
 It needed to be more used than Christophe was to those eyes, 
 which are more those of a race than of an individual, to be 
 able to read through the limpidity that unveiled them with 
 such vivid quality, the real soul of the woman whom he thus 
 encountered. It was the soul of the people of Israel that he 
 saw in her sad and burning eyes, the soul that, unknown to 
 them, shone forth from them. He lost himself as he gazed into 
 them. It was only after some time that he was able, after los- 
 ing his way again and again, to strike the track again on that 
 oriental sea. 
 
 She looked at him: and nothing could disturb the clearness 
 of her gaze: nothing in his Christian soul seemed to escape 
 her. He felt that. Under the seduction of the woman^s eyes 
 upon him he was conscious of a virile desire, clear and cold, 
 which stirred in him brutally, indiscreetly. There was no evil 
 in the brutality of it. She took possession of him: not like a 
 coquette, whose desire is to seduce without caring whom she se- 
 duces. Had she been a coquette she would have gone to greatest 
 lengths : but she knew her power, and she left it to her natural 
 instinct to make use of it in its own way, — especially when she 
 had so easy a prey as Christophe. — What interested her more 
 was to know her adversary — (any man, any stranger, was an 
 adversary for her, — an adversary with whom later on, if occa- 
 sion served, she could sign a compact of alliance). — She wished 
 to know his quality. Life being a game, in which the cleverest 
 wins, it was a matter of reading her opponent's cards and of 
 not showing her own. When she succeeded she tasted the sweets 
 of victory. It mattered little whether she could turn it to any 
 account. It was purely for her pleasure. She had a passion 
 for intelligence: not abstract intelligence, although she had 
 brains enough, if she had liked, to have succeeded in any 
 ; branch of knowledge and would have made a much better suc- 
 cessor to Lothair Mannheim, the banker, than her brother. But 
 she preferred inte)ligence in the quick, the sort of intelligence 
 which studies men. She loved to pierce through to the soul 
 land to weigh its value — (she gave as scrupulous an attention 
 
404 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 to it as the Jewess of Matsys to the weighing of her gold) — 
 with marvelous divination she could find the weak spot in the 
 armor, the imperfections and foibles which are the key to the 
 soul, — she could lay her hands on its secrets; it was her way 
 of feeling her sway over it. But she never dallied with her 
 victory: she never did anything with her prize. Once her 
 curiosity and her vanity were satisfied she lost her interest 
 and passed on to another specimen. All her power was sterile. 
 There was something of death in her living soul. She had 
 the genius of curiosity and boredom. 
 
 And so she looked at Christophe and he looked at her. She 
 hardly spoke. An imperceptible smile was enough, a little 
 movement of the corners of her mouth : Christophe was hypno- 
 tized by her. Every now and then her smile would fade away, 
 her face would become cold, her eyes indifferent: she would 
 attend to the meal or speak coldly to the servants: it was as ^ 
 though she were no longer listening. Then her eyes would light : 
 up again : and a few words coming pat would show that she : 
 had heard and understood everything. 
 
 She coldly examined her brother’s judgment of Christophe: > 
 she knew Franz’s crazes : her irony had had fine sport when 
 she saw Christophe appear, whose looks and distinction had been 
 vaunted by her brother — (it seemed to her that Franz had 
 a special gift for seeing facts as they are not: or perhaps he 
 only thought it a paradoxical joke). — ^But when she looked at ■ 
 Christophe more closely she recognized that what Franz had ; 
 said was not altogether false ; and as she went on with her ' 
 scrutiny she discovered in Christophe a vague, unbalanced, ; 
 though robust and bold power ; that gave her pleasure, for she ; 
 knew, better than any, the rarity of power. She was able to 
 make Christophe talk about whatever she liked, and reveal his 
 thoughts, and display the limitations and defects of his mind: 
 she made him play the piano : she did not love music but she 
 understood it: and she saw Christophe’s musical originality, 
 although his music had roused no sort of emotion in her. With- 
 out the least change in the coldness of her manner, with a few ^ 
 short, apt, and certainly not flattering, remarks she showed her 
 growing interest in Christophe. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 405 
 
 Christophe saw it: and he was proud of it: for he felt the 
 worth of such judgment and the rarity of her approbation. 
 He made no secret of his desire to win it: and he set about it 
 so naively as to make the three of them smile: he talked only 
 to Judith and for Judith: he was as unconcerned with the 
 others as though they did not exist. 
 
 Franz watched him as he talked : he followed his every word, 
 with his lips and eyes, with a mixture of admiration and amuse- 
 ment : and he laughed aloud as he glanced at his father and his 
 sister, who listened impassively and pretended not to notice 
 
 him. 
 
 Lothair Mannheim, — a tall old man, heavily built, stooping a 
 little, red-faced, with gray hair standing straight up on end, 
 very black mustache and eyebrows, a heavy though energetic 
 and jovial face, which gave the impression of great vitality — 
 had also studied Christophe during the first part of the dinner, 
 slyly but good-naturedly: and he too had recognized at once 
 that there was something” in the boy. But he was not in- 
 terested in music or musicians : it was not in his line : he knew 
 nothing about it and made no secret of his ignorance : he even 
 boasted of it — (when a man of that sort confesses his ignorance 
 of anything he does so to feed his vanity). — As Christophe had 
 clearly shown at once, with a rudeness in which there was no 
 shade of malice, that he could without regret dispense with the 
 society of the banker, and that the society of Fraulein Judith 
 Mannheim would serve nerfectly to fill his evening, old Lothair 
 in some amusement had taken his seat by the fire : he read his 
 paper, listening vaguely and ironically to Christophers crotchets 
 and his queer music, which sometimes made him laugh inwardly 
 at the idea that there could be people who understood it and 
 found pleasure in it. He did not trouble to follow the con- 
 (versation: he relied on his daughter’s cleverness to tell him 
 I exactly what the newcomer was worth. She discharged her duty 
 j conscientiously. 
 
 j When Christophe had gone Lothair asked Judith: 
 
 ^^Well, you probed him enough: what do you think of the 
 j artist ? ” 
 
 She laughed, thought for a moment, reckoned up, and said: 
 ^^He is a little cracked: but he is not stupid.” 
 
406 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 “ Good,” said Lothair. “ I thought so too. He will succeed, 
 then?” 
 
 “ Yes, I think so. He has power.” 
 
 “ Very good,” said Lothair with the magnificent logic of the 
 strong who are only interested in the strong, “we must help 
 him.” 
 
 Christophe went away filled with admiration for Judith 
 Mannheim. He was not in love with her as Judith thought. 
 They were both — she with her subtlety, he with his instinct 
 which took the place of mind in him, — mistaken about each 
 other. Christophe was fascinated by the enigma and the intense 
 activity of her mind : but he did not love her. His eyes and 
 his intelligence were ensnared: his heart escaped. — Why? — It 
 were difficult to tell. Because he had caught a glimpse of some 
 doubtful, disturbing quality in her? — In other circumstances ' 
 that would have been a reason the more for loving: love is 
 never stronger than when it goes out to one who will make it 
 suffer. — If Christophe did not love Judith it was not the fault 
 of either of them. The real reason, humiliating enough for , 
 both, was that he was still too near his last love. Experience ; 
 had not made him wiser. But he had loved Ada so much, he ■ 
 had consumed so much faith, force, and illusion in that passion 
 that there was not enough left for a new passion. Before an- , 
 other flame could be kindled he would have to build a new pyre : 
 in his heart : short of that there could only be a few flickerings, j 
 remnants of the conflagration that had escaped by chance, which | 
 asked only to be allowed to burn, cast a brief and brilliant light ; 
 and then died down for want of food. Six months later, per-i 
 haps, he might have loved Judith blindly. Now he saw ini 
 her only a friend, — a rather disturbing friend in truth — but 
 he tried to drive his uneasiness back: it reminded him of Ada: 
 there was no attraction in that memory: he preferred not to 
 think of it. What attracted him in Judith was everything in 
 her which was different from other women, not that which she 
 had in common with them. She was the first intelligent woman 
 he had met. She was intelligent from head to foot. Even her 
 beauty — ^her gestures, her movements, her features, the fold of 
 her lips, her eyes, her hands, her slender elegance — was the 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 407 
 
 reflection of her intelligence: her body was molded by her in- 
 telligence: without her intelligence she would have passed un- 
 aotiwd : and no doubt she would even have been thought plain 
 by most people. Her intelligence delighted Christophe. He 
 thought it larger and more free than it was: he could not yet 
 know how deceptive it was. He longed ardently to confide in 
 her and to impart his ideas to her. He had never found any- 
 body to take an interest in his dreams: he was turned in upon 
 himself : what joy then to find a woman to be his friend ! That 
 he had not a sister had been one of the sorrows of his child- 
 hood: it seemed to him that a sister would have understood 
 him more than a brother could have done. And when he met 
 Judith he felt that childish and illusory hope of having a 
 brotherly love spring up in him. Not being in love, love seemed 
 to him a poor thing compared with friendship. 
 
 Judith felt this little shade of feeling and was hurt by it. 
 She was not in love with Christophe, and as she had excited 
 other passions in other young men of the town, rich young 
 men of better position, she could not feel any great satisfaction 
 in knowing Christophe to be in love with her. But it piqued 
 her to know that he was not in love. No doubt she was pleased 
 with him for confiding his plans : she was not surprised by it : 
 d)ut it was a little mortifying for her to know that she could 
 only exercise an intellectual influence over him — (an unreason- 
 ling influence is much more precious to a woman). — She did 
 not even exercise her influence : Christophe only courted her 
 mind. Judith’s intellect was imperious. She was used to 
 molding to her will the soft thoughts of the young men of her 
 acquaintance. As she knew their mediocrity she found no pleas- 
 ure in holding sway over them. With Christophe the pursuit 
 was more interesting because more difficult. She was not in- 
 terested in his projects : but she would have liked to direct his, 
 originality of thought, his ill-grown power, and to make them 
 good, — in her own way, of course, and not in Christophe’s, 
 which she did not take the trouble to understand. She saw 
 at once that she could not succeed without a struggle : she had 
 marked down in Christophe all sorts of notions and ideas which 
 she thought childish and extravagant : they were weeds to her : 
 i she tried hard to eradicate them. She did not get rid of a 
 
408 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 single one. She did not gain the least satisfaction for her 
 vanity. Christophe was intractable. Not being in love he had 
 no reason for surrendering his ideas to her. 
 
 She grew keen on the game and instinctively tried for some 
 time to overcome him. Christophe was very nearly taken in 
 again in spite of his lucidity of mind at that time. Men are 
 easily taken in by any flattery of their vanity or their desires: 
 and an artist is twice as easy to trick as any other man because 
 he has more imagination. Judith had only to draw Christophe 
 into a dangerous flirtation to bowl him over once more more 
 thoroughly than ever. But as usual she soon wearied of the 
 game: she found that such a conquest was hardly worth while: 
 Christophe was already boring her: she did not understand 
 him. 
 
 She did not understand him beyond a certain point. Up to 
 that she understood everything. Her admirable intelligence ’ 
 could not take her beyond it : she needed a heart, or in default ; 
 of that the thing which could give the illusion of one for a 
 time : love. She understood Christophers criticism of people J 
 and things : it amused her and seemed to her true enough : she 
 had thought much the same herself. But what she did not r 
 understand was that such ideas might have an influence on 
 practical life when it might be dangerous or awkward to 
 apply them. The attitude of revolt against everybody and 
 everything which Christophe had taken up led to nothing : he 
 could not imagine that he was going to reform the world. . . . ^ 
 And then ? ... It was waste of time to knock one^s head against i 
 a wall. A clever man judges men, laughs at them in secret, ‘ 
 despises them a little: but he does as they do — only a little: 
 better : it is the only way of mastering them. Thought is one ■ 
 world: action is another. What boots it for a man to be the 
 victim of his thoughts? Since men are so stupid as not to 
 be able to bear the truth, why force it on them? To accept 
 their weakness, to seem to bow to it, and to feel free to despise 
 them in his heart, is there not a secret joy in that? The joy 
 of a clever slave ? Certainly. But all the world is a slave : 
 there is no getting away from that : it is useless to protest 
 against it: better to be a slave deliberately of one^s own free 
 will and to avoid jidiculous and futile conflict. Besides, the 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 409 
 
 worst slavery of all is to be the slave of one’s own thoughts 
 md to sacrifice everything to them. There is no need to deceive 
 one’s self.— She saw clearly that if Christophe went on, as 
 be seemed determined to do, with his aggressive refusal to com- 
 promise with the prejudices of German art and German mind, 
 he would turn everybody against him, even his patrons; he 
 was courting inevitable ruin. She did not understand why he 
 so obstinately held out against himself, and so took pleasure in 
 
 digging his own ruin. ,-,,^1,114. 
 
 To have understood him she would have had to be able to 
 understand that his aim was not success but his own faith. 
 He believed in art ; he believed in Ms art : he believed in hini- 
 self as realities not only superior to interest, but also to his 
 own life. When he was a little out of patience with her re- 
 marks and told her so in his naive arrogance, she just shrugged 
 her shoulders: she did not take him seriously. She thought he 
 was using big words such as she was accustomed to hearing 
 from her brother when he announced periodically his absurd 
 and ridiculous resolutions, which he never hy any chance put 
 into practice. And then when she saw that Christophe really 
 believed in what he said, she thought him mad and lost interest 
 
 After that she took no trouble to appear to advantage, and 
 she showed herself as she was: much more German, and averap 
 German, than she seemed to be at first, more perhaps than she 
 thought.— The Jews are quite erroneously reproached with not 
 belonging to any nation and with forming from one end of 
 Europe to the other a homogeneous people impervious to the 
 influence of the different races with which they have pitched 
 i their tents. In reality there is no race which more easily takes 
 ion the impress of the country through which it passes; and 
 ;if there are many characteristics in common between a French 
 I Jew and a German Jew, there are many more different charac- 
 Iteristics derived from their new country, of which with in- 
 I credible rapidity they assimilate the habits of mind : more the 
 hahits than the mind, indeed. But habit, which is a second 
 nature to all men, is in most of them all the nature that they 
 have, and the result is that the majority of the autochthonous 
 citizens of any country have very little right to reproach the 
 
410 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Jews with the lack of a profound and reasonable national feel- 
 ing of which they themselves possess nothing at all. 
 
 The women, always more sensible to external influences, more 
 easily adaptable to the conditions of life and to change with 
 them — Jewish women throughout Europe assume the physical 
 and moral customs, often exaggerating them, of the country 
 in which they live, — without losing the shadow and the strange 
 fluid, solid, and haunting quality of their race. — This idea came 
 to Christophe. At the Mannheims’ he met Judith’s aunts, 
 cousins, and friends. Though there was little of the German 
 in their eyes, ardent and too close together, their noses going 
 down to their lips, their strong features, their red blood cours- 
 ing under their coarse brown skins: though almost all of them 
 seemed hardly at all fashioned to be German — they were all 
 extraordinarily German: they had the same way of talking, of 
 dressing, — of overdressing. — Judith was much the best of them' 
 all : and comparison with them made all that was exceptional- 
 in her intelligence, all that she had made of herself, shine forth.^; 
 But she had most of their faults just as much as they. She! 
 was much more free than they morally — almost absolutely free ■ 
 — ^but socially she was no more free: or at least her practical; 
 sense usurped the place of her freedom of mind. She believed! 
 in society, in class, in prejudice, because when all was told she! 
 found them to her advantage. It was idle for her to laugh at 
 the German spirit: she followed it like any German. Her in-; 
 telligence made her see the mediocrity of some artist of reputa-i 
 tion : but she respected him none the less because of his reputa-j 
 tion : and if she met him personally she would admire him : for' 
 her vanity was flattered. She had no love for the works of; 
 Brahms and she suspected him of being an artist of the second; 
 rank : but his fame impressed her : and as she had received flve 
 or six letters from him the result was that she thought him 
 the greatest musician of the day. She had no doubt as to 
 Christophe’s real worth, or as to the stupidity of Lieutenant 
 Hetlev von Fleischer : but she was more flattered by fhe homage 
 the lieutenant deigned to pay to her millions than by Chris- 
 tophe’s friendship : for a dull officer is a man of another caste : 
 it is more difficult for a German Jewess to enter that caste than 
 for any other woman. Although she was not deceived by these 
 
 I 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 411 
 
 feudal follies, and although she knew quite well that if she did 
 marry Lieutenant Detlev von Fleischer she would be doing him 
 a great honor, she set herself to the conquest: she stooped so 
 low as to make eyes at the fool and to flatter his vanity. The 
 proud Jewess, who had a thousand reasons for her pride — the 
 clever, disdainful daughter of Mannheim the banker lowered 
 herself, and acted like any of the little middle-class German 
 women whom she despised. 
 
 That experience was short. Christophe lost his illusions about 
 Judith as quickly as he had found them. It is only just to 
 say that Judith did nothing to preserve them. As soon as a 
 woman of that stamp has judged a man she is done with him : he 
 ceases to exist for her: she will not see him again. And she 
 no more hesitates to reveal her soul to him, with calm impudence, 
 that to appear naked before her dog, her cat, or any other 
 domestic animal. Christophe saw Judith’s egoism and cold- 
 ness, and the mediocrity of her character. He had not had 
 time to be absolutely caught. But he had been enough caught to 
 make him suffer and to bring him to a sort of fever. He did 
 not so much love Judith as what she might have been — what 
 she ought to have been. Her fine eyes exercised a melancholy 
 fascination over him: he could not forget them: although he 
 knew now the drab soul that slumbered in their depths he went 
 on seeing them as he wished to see them, as he had first seen 
 them. It was one of those loveless hallucinations of love which 
 take up so much of the hearts of artists when they are not 
 entirely absorbed by their work. A passing face is enough to 
 create it: they see in it all the beauty that is in it, unknown 
 to its indifferent possessor. And they love it the more for its 
 indifference. They love it as a beautiful thing that must die 
 without any man having known its worth or that it even had 
 life. 
 
 Perhaps he was deceiving himself, and Judith Mannheim 
 could not have been anything more than she was. But for a 
 moment Christophe had believed in her: and her charm en- 
 dured: he could not judge her impartially. All her beauty 
 seemed to him to be hers, to be herself. All that was vulgar 
 in her he cast back upon her twofold race, Jew and German, 
 
412 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 and perhaps he was more indignant with the German than with 
 the Jew, for it had made him suffer more. As he did not yet 
 know any other nation, the German spirit was for him a sort 
 of scapegoat: he put upon it all the sins of the world. That 
 Judith had deceived him was a reason the more for combating 
 it: he could not forgive it for having crushed the life out of 
 such a soul. 
 
 Such was his first encounter with Israel. He had hoped 
 much from it. He had hoped to find in that strong race living 
 apart from the rest an ally for his fight. He lost that hope. 
 With the fiexibility of his passionate intuition, which made him 
 leap from one extreme to another, he persuaded himself that 
 the Jewish race was much weaker than it was said to be, and 
 much more open — much too open — to outside infiuence. It 
 had all its own weaknesses augmented by those of the rest of 
 the world picked up on its way. It was not in them that he 
 could find assistance in working the lever of his art. Bather 
 he was in danger of being swallowed with them in the sands 
 
 of the desert. ! 
 
 Having seen the danger, and not feeling sure enough of him- 
 self to brave it, he suddenly gave up going to the Mannheims’i 
 He was invited several times and begged to be excused without 
 giving any reason. As up till then he had shown an ex- 
 cessive eagerness to accept, such a sudden change was remarked . 
 it was attributed to his « originality ” : but the Mannheims had 
 no doubt that the fair Judith had something to do with itj 
 Lothair and Franz joked about it at dinner. Judith shrugge(| 
 her shoulders and said it was a fine conquest, and she askeq 
 her brother frigidly not to make such a fuss about it. Bui 
 she left no stone unturned in her effort to bring Christoph^ 
 back. She wrote to him for some musical information which 
 no one else could supply : and at the end of her letter she made 
 a friendly allusion to the rarity of his visits and the pleasure 
 it would give them to see him. Christophe replied, giving the 
 desired information, said that he was very busy, and did noi 
 <ro. They met sometimes at the theater. Christophe obstinately 
 looked away from the Mannheims’ box: and he would pretenc 
 not to see Judith, who held herself in readiness to give hm 
 her most charming smile. She did not persist. As she did no 
 
 I 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 413 
 
 count on him for anything she was annoyed that the little 
 artist should let her do all the labor of their friendship, and 
 pure waste at that. If he wanted to come, he would. If not — 
 oh, well, they could do without him. . . . 
 
 They did without him: and his absence left no very great 
 gap in the Mannheims’ evenings. But in spite of herself Judith 
 was really annoyed with Christophe. It seemed natural enough 
 not to bother about him when he was there: and she could 
 allow him to show his displeasure at being neglected : but that 
 his displeasure should go so far as to break otf their relation- 
 ship altogether seemed to her to show a stupid pride and a 
 heart more egoistic than in love. — Judith could not tolerate 
 her own faults in others. 
 
 She followed the more attentively everything that Christophe 
 did and wrote. Without seeming to do so, she would lead her 
 brother to the subject of Christophe: she would make him tell 
 her of his intercourse with him: and she would punctuate the 
 narrative with clever ironic comment, which never let any 
 ridiculous feature escape, and gradually destroyed Franz’s en- 
 thusiasm without his knowing it. 
 
 At first all went well with the Eeview. Christophe had not 
 yet perceived the mediocrity of his colleagues: and, since he 
 was one of them, they hailed him as a genius. Mannheim, 
 who had discovered him, went everywhere repeating that Chris- 
 tophe was an admirable critic, though he had never read any- 
 thing he had written, that he had mistaken his vocation, and 
 that he, Mannheim, had revealed it to him. They advertised 
 his articles in mysterious terms which roused curiosity : and his 
 first effort was in fact like a stone falling into a duck-pond in 
 the atony of the little town. It was called: Too much music. 
 
 “Too much music, too much drinking, too much eating,” 
 wrote Christophe. “Bating, drinking, hearing, without hun- 
 ger, thirst, or need, from sheer habitual gormandizing. Liv- 
 ing like Strasburg geese. These people are sick from a diseased* 
 appetite. It matters little what you give them : Tristram or the 
 Trompeter von Sakhingen, Beethoven or Mascagni, a fugue or 
 a two-step, Adam, Bach, Puccini, Mozart, or Marschner : they do 
 not know what they are eating : the great thing is to eat. They 
 find no pleasure in it. Look at them at a concert. Talk of 
 
4:14 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 German gaiety! These people do not know what gaiety means; 
 they are always gay ! Their gaiety, like their sorrow, drops like 
 rain: their joy is dust: there is neither life nor force in it. 
 They would stay for hours smilingly and vaguely drinking in 
 sounds, sounds, sounds. They think of nothing : they feel noth- 
 ing: they are sponges. True joy, or true sorrow— strength— 
 is not drawn out over hours like beer from a cask. They take 
 you by the throat and have you down : after they are gone 
 there is no desire left in a man to drink in anything : he is 
 full! ... 
 
 “ Too much music ! You are slaying each other and it. If 
 you choose to murder each other that is your affair: I can’t 
 help it. But where music is concerned, — ^hands off! I will 
 not suffer you to debase the loveliness of the world by heaping 
 up in the same basket things holy and things shameful, by 
 giving, as you do at present, the prelude to Parsifal between a, 
 fantasia on the Daughter of the Regiment and a saxophone 
 quartette, or an adagio of Beethoven between a cakewalk and. 
 the rubbish of Leoncavallo. You boast of being a musical, 
 people. You pretend to love music. What sort of music do 
 you love? Good or bad? You applaud both equally. Well,|| 
 then, choose! What exactly do you want? You do not know 
 yourselves. You do not want to know : you are too fearful 
 of taking sides and compromising yourselves. ... To the devil 
 with your prudence !— You are above party, do you say?— ; 
 Above? You mean below. ...” , 
 
 And he quoted the lines of old Gottfried Keller, the rud^ 
 citizen of Zurich— one of the German writers who was most- 
 dear to him by reason of his vigorous loyalty and his keen 
 savor of the soil : ; 
 
 '' Wer ilher den Partein sich w'dhnt mit stolzen Mienen 
 Der steht zumeist vielmehr betrdchtlich unter ihnenP 
 
 {“ He who proudly preens himself on being above parties is 
 rather immeasurably beneath them.”) 
 
 "Have courage and be true,” he went on. "Have courage 
 and be ugly. If you like bad music, then say so frankly. Show 
 
REVOLT 
 
 415 
 
 yourselves, see yourselves as you are. Rid your souls of the 
 loathsome burden of all your compromise and equivocation. 
 Wash it in pure water. How long is it since you have seen 
 yourselves in a mirror? I will show you yourselves. Composers, 
 vivtuosi, conductors, singers, and you, dear public. V ou shall 
 for once know yourselves. ... Be what you like: but, for any 
 sake, be true! Be true even though art and artists — and I 
 myself— have to suffer for it! If art and truth cannot live 
 together, then let art disappear. Truth is life. Lies are death. 
 
 Naturally, this youthful, wild outburst, which was all of a 
 piece, and in very bad taste, produced an outcry. And yet, as 
 everybody was attacked and nobody in particular, its pertinency 
 was not recognized. Every one is, or believes himself to be, 
 or says that he is the best friend of truth : there was therefore 
 no danger of the conclusions of the article being attacked. Only 
 people were shocked by its general tone : everybody agreed that 
 it was hardly proper, especially from an artist in a semi-official 
 position. A few musicians began to be uneasy and protested 
 bitterly : they saw that Christophe would not stop at that. Others 
 thought themselves more clever and congratulated Christophe 
 on his courage : they were no less uneasy about his next articles. 
 
 Both tactics produced the same result. Christophe had 
 plunged: nothing could stop him: and as he had promised, 
 everybody was passed in survey, composers and interpreters alike. 
 
 The first victims were the Kapellmeisters. Christophe did 
 not confine himself to general remarks on the art of conducting 
 an orchestra. He mentioned his colleagues of his own town 
 and the neighboring towns by name : or if he did not name 
 them his allusions were so transparent that nobody could be 
 mistaken. Everybody recognized the apathetic conductor of the 
 Court, Alois von Werner, a cautious old man, laden with honors, 
 who was afraid of everything, dodged everything, was too timid 
 to make a remark to his musicians and meekly followed what- 
 ever they chose to do, — who never risked anything on his pro- 
 gramme that had not been consecrated by twenty years of success, 
 or, at least, guaranteed by the official stamp of some academic 
 dignity. Christophe ironically applauded his boldness: he con- 
 gratulated him on having discovered Gade, Dvorak, or Tschai- 
 kowsky: he waxed enthusiastic over his unfailing correctness. 
 
416 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 his metronomic eq’saiity, the always fein-nuanciert (finely 
 shaded) playing of his orchestra: he proposed to orchestrate 
 the l^cole de la Velocite of Czerny for his next concert, and 
 implored him not to try himself so much, not to give rein ta 
 his passions, to look after his precious health. — Or he cried out 
 indignantly upon the way in which he had conducted the Eroica 
 of Beethoven: 
 
 A cannon ! A cannon ! Mow me down these people ! . . . 
 
 But have you then no idea of the conflict, the fight between 
 human stupidity and human ferocity, — and the strength which 
 tramples them underfoot with a glad shout of laughter? — How | 
 
 could you know it? It is you against whom it fights! You 
 expend all the heroism that is in you in listening or in playing 
 the Eroica of Beethoven without a yawn — (for it bores you. . . . 
 Confess that it bores you to death!) — or in risking a draught 
 as you stand with bare head and bowed back to let some Serene 
 Highness pass.’^ ^ 
 
 He could not be sarcastic enough about the pontiffs of the ? 
 
 Conservatories who interpreted the great men of the past as ’ 
 
 classics.^^ t 
 
 Classical ! That word expresses everything. Free passion^ i 
 
 arranged and expurgated for the use of schools! Life, that ; 
 
 vast plain swept by the winds, — inclosed within the four walls ; 
 
 of a school playground! The fierce, proud beat of a heart in , 
 
 anguish, reduced to the tic-tacs of a four-tune pendulum, which ; 
 
 goes its jolly way, hobbling and imperturbably leaning on the ( 
 
 crutch of time ! ... To enjoy the Ocean you need to put it j 
 
 in a bowl with goldfish. You only understand life when you ) 
 
 have killed it.^^ i 
 
 If he was not kind to the bird-stuffers,” as he called them, { 
 
 he was even less kind to the ringmen of the orchestra, the 
 illustrious Kapellmeisters who toured the country to show off 
 their flourishes and their dainty hands, those who exercised | 
 
 their virtuosity at the expense of the masters, tried hard to rj- 
 
 make the most familiar works unrecognizable, and turned somer- 
 saults through the hoop of the Symphony in C minor. He 1 
 made them appear as old coquettes, prima donnas of the orches- | 
 tra, gipsies, and rope-dancers. | 
 
 The virtuosi naturally provided him with splendid material. ! 
 
REVOLT 
 
 4ir 
 
 He declared himself incompetent when he had to criticise their 
 conjuring performances. He said that such mechanical exercises 
 belonged to the School of Arts and Crafts, and that not musical 
 criticism but charts registering the duration, and number of 
 the notes, and the energy expended, could decide the merit of 
 such labors. Sometimes he would set at naught some famous 
 piano virtuoso who during a two hours’ concert had surmounted 
 the formidable difficulties, with a smile on his lips and his hair 
 hanging down into his eyes — of executing a childish andante 
 of Mozart. — He did not ignore the pleasure of overcoming diffi- 
 culties. He had tasted it himself: it was one of the joys of 
 life to him. But only to see the most material aspect of it, 
 and to reduce all the heroism of art to that, seemed to him 
 grotesque and degrading. He could not forgive the “ lions ” or 
 panthers ” of the piano. — But he was not very indulgent either 
 towards the town pedants, famous in Germany, who, while 
 they are rightly anxious not to alter the text of the masters, 
 carefully suppress every flight of thought, and, like E. d’ Albert 
 and H. von Biilow, seem to be giving a lesson in diction when 
 they are rendering a passionate sonata. 
 
 The singers had their turn. Christophe was full to the brim 
 of things to say about their barbarous heaviness and their pro- 
 vincial affectations. It was not only because of his recent mis- 
 adventures with the enraged lady, but because of all the torture 
 he had suffered during so many performances. It was difficult 
 to know which had suffered most, ears or eyes. And Christophe 
 had not enough standards of comparison to be able to have 
 any idea of the ugliness of the setting, the hideous costumes, 
 the screaming colors. He was only shocked by the vulgarity 
 of the people, their gestures and attitudes, their unnatural 
 playing, the inability of the actors to take on other souls than 
 their own, and by the stupefying indifference with which they 
 passed from one role to another, provided they were written 
 more or less in the same register. Matrons of opulent flesh, 
 hearty and buxom, appeared alternately as Ysolde and Carmen. 
 Amfortas played Figaro. — But what most offended Christophe 
 was the ugliness of the singing, especially in the classical works 
 in which the beauty of melody is essential. No one in Germany 
 could sing the perfect music of the eighteenth century: no one 
 
418 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 would take the trouble. The clear, pure style of Gluck and 
 Mozart which, like that of Goethe, seems to be bathed in the 
 light of Italy — the style which begins to change and to become 
 vibrant and dazzling with Weber — the style ridiculed by the 
 ponderous caricatures of the author of Crociato — had been 
 killed by the triumph of Wagner. The wild flight of the 
 Valkyries with their strident cries had passed over the Grecian 
 sky. The heavy clouds of Odin dimmed the light. No one 
 now thought of singing music : they sang poems. Ugliness and 
 carelessness of detail, even false notes were let pass under pre- 
 text that only the whole, only the thought behind it mat- 
 tered. ... 
 
 Thought ! Let us talk of that. As if you understood it ! 
 
 . . . But whether or no you do understand it, I pray you respect 
 the form that thought has chosen for itself. Above all, let 
 music be and remain music ! 
 
 And the great concern of German artists with expression 
 and profundity of thought was, according to Christophe, a 
 good joke. Expression? Thought? Yes, they introduced them 
 into everything — everything impartially. They would have ^ 
 found thought in a skein of wool just as much — neither more i 
 nor less — as in a statue of Michael Angelo. They played any- 
 thing, anybody’s music with exactly the same energy. For 
 most of them the great thing in music — so he declared — ^was 
 the volume of sound, just a musical noise. The pleasure of 
 singing so potent in Germany was in some sort a pleasure of j 
 vocal gymnastics. It was just a matter of being inflated with | 
 air and then letting it go vigorously, powerfully, for a long " 
 time together and rhythmically. — And by way of compliment \ 
 he accorded a certain great singer a certificate of good health, i 
 He was not content with flaying the artists. He strode over 
 the footlights and trounced the public for coming, gaping^ 
 to such performances. The public was staggered and did not 
 know whether it ought to laugh or be angry. They had every 
 right to cry out upon his injustice: they had taken care not 
 to be mixed up in any artistic conflict: they stood aside pru- 
 dently from any burning question: and to avoid making any 
 mistake they applauded everything! And now Christophe de- 
 clared that it was a crime to applaud! ... To applaud bad 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 419 
 
 works?— That would have been enough! But Christophe went 
 further: he stormed at them for applauding great works: 
 
 “ Humbugs ! ” he said. “ You would have us believe that 
 you have as much enthusiasm as that ? . . . Oh I Come ! Spare 
 yourselves the trouble! You only prove exactly the opposite 
 of what you are trying to prove. Applaud if you like those 
 works and passages which in some measure deserve applause. 
 Applaud those loud final movements which are written, as 
 Mozart said, “ for long ears.” Applaud as much as you like, 
 then : your braying is anticipated : it is part of the concert. 
 But after the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven! ... Poor 
 wretches! ... It is the Last Judgment. You have just seen 
 the maddening Gloria pass like a storm over the ocean. You 
 have seen the waterspout of an athletic and tremendous well, 
 which stops, breaks, reaches up to the clouds clinging by its 
 two hands above the abyss, then plunging once more into space 
 in full swing. The squall shrieks and whirls along. And 
 when the hurricane is at its height there is a sudden modula- 
 tion, a radiance of sound which cleaves the darkness of the 
 sky and falls upon the livid sea like a patch of light. It is 
 the end: the furious flight of the destroying angel stops short, 
 its wings transfixed by these flashes of lightning. Around 
 you all is buzzing and quivering. The eye gazes flxedly forward 
 in stupor. The heart beats, breathing stops, the limbs are 
 paralyzed. . . . And hardly has the last note sounded than 
 already you are gay and merry. You shout, you laugh, you 
 criticise, you applaud. . . . But you have seen nothing, heard 
 nothing, felt nothing, understood nothing, nothing, nothing, 
 absolutely nothing! The sufferings of an artist are a show to 
 you. You think the tears of agony of a Beethoven are flnely 
 painted. You would cry. ‘Encore ’ to the Crucifixion. A 
 great soul struggles all its life long in sorrow to divert your 
 idleness for an hour! . . .” 
 
 So, without knowing it, he confirmed Goethels great words : 
 but he had not yet attained his lofty serenity: 
 
 “The people make a sport of the sublime. If they could 
 see it as it is, they would be unable to bear its aspect.” 
 
 If he had only stopped at that! — But, whirled along by his 
 -luthusiasm, he swept past the public and plunged like a cannon 
 
420 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ball into the sanctuary, the tabernacle, the inviolable refuge of 
 mediocrity: Criticism. He bombarded his colleagues. One of 
 them had taken upon himself to attack the most gifted of 
 living composers, the most advanced representative of the new 
 school, Hassler, the writer of programme symphonies, extrava- 
 gant in truth, but full of genius. Christophe who — as perhaps 
 will be remembered — had been presented to him when he was a 
 child, had always had a secret tenderness for him in his grati- 
 tude for the enthusiasm and emotion that he had had then. 
 
 To see a stupid critic, whose ignorance he knew, instructing 
 a man of that caliber, calling him to order, and reminding 
 him of set principles, infuriated him : 
 
 “ Order ! Order ! ” he cried. “ You do not know any order 
 but that of the police. Genius is not to be dragged along the 
 beaten track. It creates order, and makes its will a law.” 
 
 'After this arrogant declaration he took the unlucky critic, ' 
 considered all the idiocies he had written for some time past, s 
 and administered correction. : 
 
 All the critics felt the affront. Up to that time they had ! 
 stood aside from the conflict. They did not care to risk a . 
 rebuff: they knew Christophe, they knew his efficiency, and j 
 they knew also that he was not long-suffering. Certain of them i 
 had discreetly expressed their regret that so gifted a composer : 
 should dabble in a profession not his own. Whatever might . 
 be their opinion (when they had one), and however hurt they ; 
 might be by Christophe, they respected in him their own privi- | 
 lege of being able to criticise everything without being criticised | 
 themselves. But when they saw Christophe rudely break the 
 tacit convention which bound them, they saw in him an enemy ( 
 of public order. With one consent it seemed revolting to them i 
 that a very young man should take upon himself to show scant 
 respect for the national glories : and they began a furious cam- 
 paign against him. They did not write long articles or con- 
 secutive arguments — (they were unwilling to venture upon such 
 ground with an adversary better armed than themselves: al- 
 though a journalist has the special faculty of being able to 
 discuss without taking his adversary’s arguments into con- 
 sideration, and even without having read them) — ^but long ex- 
 perience had taught them, that, as the reader of a paper always 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 431 
 
 agrees with it, even to appear to argue was to weaken its credit 
 with him: it was necessary to afiBrm, or better still, to deny — 
 (negation is twice as powerful as affirmation: it is a direct 
 consequence of the law of gravity: it is much easier to drop 
 a stone than to throw it up). — They adopted, therefore, a sys- 
 tem of little notes, perfidious, ironic, injurious, which were re- 
 peated day by day, in an easily accessible position, with un- 
 wearying assiduity. They held the insolent Christophe up to 
 ridicule, though they never mentioned him by name, but always 
 transparently alluded to him. They twisted his words to make 
 them look absurd: they told anecdotes about him, true for 
 the most part, though the rest were a tissue of lies, nicely 
 calculated to set him at loggerheads with the whole town, and, 
 worse still, with the Court : even his physical appearance, his 
 features, his manner of dressing, were attacked and caricatured 
 in a way that by dint of repetition came to be like him. 
 
 It would have mattered little to Christophe’s friends if their 
 Eeview had not also come in for blows in the battle. In truth, 
 it served rather as an advertisement: there was no desire to 
 commit the Eeview to the quarrel : rather the attempt was made 
 to cut Christophe off from it: there was astonishment that 
 it should so compromise its good name, and they were given 
 to understand that if they did not take care steps would be 
 taken, however unpleasant it might be, to make the whole 
 editorial staff responsible. There were signs of attack, gentle 
 enough, upon Adolf Mai and Mannheim, which stirred up the 
 wasps’ nest. Mannheim only laughed at it: he tlmught that 
 it would infuriate his father, his uncles, cousins, Imd his in- 
 numerable family, who took upon themselves to watch every- 
 thing he did and to be scandalized by it. But Adolf Mai took 
 it very seriously and blamed Christophe for compromising the 
 Eeview. Christophe sent him packing. The others who had 
 not been attacked found it rather amusing that Mai, who was 
 apt to pontificate over them, should be their scapegoat. Wald- 
 haus was secretly delighted: he said that there was never a 
 fight without a few heads being broken. Naturally he took 
 good care that it should not be his own : he thought he was 
 sheltered from onslaught by the position of his family and his 
 
422 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 relatives: and he saw no harm in the Jews, his allies, being 
 mauled a little. Ehrenfeld and Goldenring, who were so far 
 untouched, would not have been worried by attack: they could 
 reply. But what did touch them on the raw was that Chris- 
 tophe should go on persistently putting them in the wrong 
 with their friends, and especially their women friends. They 
 had laughed loudly at the first articles and thought them good 
 fun: they admired Christophers vigorous window-smashing: 
 they thought they had only to give the word to check his com- | 
 bativeness, or at least to turn his attack from men and women 
 whom they might mention. — But no. Christophe would listen 
 to nothing: he paid no heed to any remark and went on like 
 a madman. If they let him go on there would be no living 
 in the place. Already their young women friends, furious and 
 in tears, had come and made scenes at the offices of the Eeview. 
 They brought all their diplomacy to bear on Christophe to per- 
 suade him at least to moderate certain of his criticisms : Chris- 
 tophe changed nothing. They lost their tempers: Christophe ; 
 
 lost his, but he changed nothing. Waldhaus was amused by * 
 
 the unhappiness of his friends, which in no wise touched him, 
 and took Christophers part to annoy them. Perhaps also he 
 was more capable than they of appreciating Christophe’s ex- 
 travagance, who with head down hurled himself upon every- 
 thing without keeping any line of retreat, or preparing any 
 refuge for the future. As for Mannheim he was royally amused 
 by the farce: it seemed to him a good joke to have introduced 
 this madman among these correct people, and he rocked with 
 laughter both at the blows which Christophe dealt and at those 
 which he received. Although under his sister^s influence he 
 was beginning to think that Christophe was decidedly a little 
 cracked, he only liked him the more for it — (it was necessary 
 for him to find those who were in sympathy with him a little 
 absurd). — And so he joined Waldhaus in supporting Chris- 
 tophe against the others. 
 
 As he was not wanting in practical sense, in spite of all his 
 efforts to pretend to the contrary, he thought very justly that 
 it would be to his friend^s advantage to ally himself with the 
 cause of the most advanced musical party in the country. 
 
 As in most German towns, there was in the town a Wagner* 
 
 I 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 433 
 
 Verein, whicH represented new ideas against the conservative 
 element. — In truth, there was no great risk in defending Wagner 
 when his fame was acknowledged everywhere and his works 
 included in the repertory of every Opera House in Germany. 
 And yet his victory was rather won by force than by universal 
 accord, and at heart the majority were obstinately conservative, 
 especially in the small towns such as this which have been 
 rather left outside the great modern movements and are rather 
 proud of their ancient fame. More than anywhere else there 
 reigned the distrust, so innate in the German people, of any- 
 thing new, the sort of laziness in feeling anything true or 
 powerful which has not been pondered and digested by several 
 generations. It was apparent in the reluctance with which — 
 if not the works of Wagner which are beyond discussion — 
 every new work inspired by the Wagnerian spirit was accepted. 
 And so the Wagner-V ereine would have had a useful task to 
 fulfil if they had set themselves to defend all the young and 
 original forces in art. Sometimes they did so, and Bruckner 
 or Hugo Wolf found in some of them their best allies. But 
 too often the egoism of the master weighed upon his disciples: 
 and just as Bayreuth serves only monstrously to glorify one 
 man, the offshoots of Bayreuth were little churches in which 
 Mass was eternally sung in honor of the one God. At the 
 most the faithful disciples were admitted to the side chapels, 
 the disciples who applied the hallowed doctrines to the letter, 
 and, prostrate in the dust, adored the only Divinity with His 
 many faces: music, poetry, drama, and metaphysics. 
 
 The Wagner-V erein of the town was in exactly this case. — 
 However, they went through the form of activity: they were 
 always trying to enroll young men of talent who looked as 
 though they might be useful to it: and they had long had their 
 eyes on Christophe. They had discreetly made advances to 
 him, of which Christophe had not taken any notice, because 
 he felt no need of being associated with anybody: he could not 
 understand the necessity which drove his compatriots always 
 to be banding themselves together in groups, being unable to 
 do anything alone: neither to sing, nor to walk, nor to drink. 
 He was averse to all Vereinswesen. But on the whole he was 
 more kindly disposed to the Wag-ner-V erein than to any other 
 
424 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Verein: at least they did provide an excuse for fine concerts: 
 and although he did not share all the Wagnerian ideas on art, 
 he was much nearer them than to those of any other group 
 in music. He could he thought find common ground with a 
 party which was as unjust as himself towards Brahms and I 
 the Brahmins.” So he let himself be put up for it. Mann- 
 heim introduced him: he knew everybody. Without being a 
 musician he was a member of the Wagner-^Verein, — The manag- 
 ing committee had followed the campaign which Christophe 
 was conducting in the Eeview. His slaughter in the opposing 
 camp had seemed to them to give signs of a strong grip which 
 it would be as well to have in their service. Christophe had 
 also let fly certain disrespectful remarks about the sacred fetish : 
 but they had preferred to close their eyes to that: and perhaps 
 his attacks, not yet very offensive, had not been without their 
 influence, unconsciously, in making them so eager to enroll 
 Christophe before he had time to deliver himself manfully. - 
 They came and very amiably asked his permission to play some j 
 of his compositions at one of the approaching concerts of the > 
 Association. Christophe was flattered, and accepted: he went , 
 to the Wagner-Verein, and, urged by Mannheim, he was made i 
 a member, ? 
 
 At that time there were at the head of the Wagner-Vereiri i 
 two men, of whom one enjoyed a certain notoriety as a writer, ^ 
 and the other as a conductor. Both had a Mohammedan belief ; 
 in Wagner. The first, Josias Kling, had compiled a Wagner ^ 
 Dictionary — Wagner Lexikon — ^which made it possible in a | 
 moment to know the master’s thoughts de omni re scibili: ) 
 it had been his life’s work. He was capable of reciting whole { 
 chapters of it at table, as the French provincials used to troll i 
 the songs of the Maid. He used also to publish in the Bay- 
 reuther Blatter articles on Wagner and the Aryan Spirit. Of 
 course, Wagner was to him the type of the pure Aryan, of whom 
 the German race had remained the last inviolable refuge against 
 the corrupting influences of Latin Semitism, especially the 
 French. He declared that the impure French spirit was finally 
 destroyed, though he did not desist from attacking it bitterly 
 day by day as though the eternal enemy were still a menace. 
 He would only acknowledge one great man in France : the ; 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 425 
 
 Count of Gobineau. Kling was a little man, very little, and 
 he used to blush like a girl. — The other pillar of the Wagner- 
 Verein, Erich Lauber, had been manager of a chemical works 
 until four years before: then he had given up everything to 
 become a conductor. He had succeeded by force of will, and 
 because he was very rich. He was a Bayreuth fanatic: it was 
 said that he had gone there on foot, from Munich, wearing 
 pilgrim’s sandals. It was a strange thing that a man who 
 had read much, traveled much, practised divers professions, and 
 in everything displayed an energetic personality, should have 
 become in music a sheep of Panurge: all his originality was 
 expended in his being a little more stupid than the others. 
 He was not sure enough of himself in music to trust to his own 
 personal feelings, and so he slavishly followed the interpreta- 
 tions of Wagner given by the Kapellmeisters, and the licensees, 
 of Bayreuth. He desired to reproduce even to the smallest 
 detail the setting and the variegated costnmes which delighted 
 the puerile and barbarous taste of the little Court of Wahn- 
 fried. He was like the fanatical admirer of Michael Angelo 
 who used to reproduce in his copies even the cracks in the 
 wall of the moldy patches which had themselves been hallowed 
 by their appearance in the hallowed pictures. 
 
 Christophe was not likely to approve greatly of the two men. 
 But they were men of the world, pleasant, and both well-read: 
 and Lauber’s conversation was always interesting on any other 
 subject than music. He was a bit of a crank : and Christophe 
 did not dislike cranks: they were a change from the horrible 
 banality of reasonable people. He did not yet know that there 
 is nothing more devastating than an irrational man, and that 
 originality is even more rare among those who are called 
 “originals” than among the rest. For these “originals” 
 are simply maniacs whose thoughts are reduced to clock- 
 work. 
 
 Josias Kling and Lauber, being desirous of winning Chris- 
 tophe’s support, were at first very keenly interested in him. 
 Kling wrote a eulogistic article about him and Lauber followed 
 all his directions when he conducted his compositions at one 
 of the concerts of the Society. Christophe was touched by it 
 all. Unfortunately all their attentions were spoiled by the 
 
426 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 stupidity of those who paid them. He had not the faculty of 
 pretending about people because they admired him. He was 
 exacting. He demanded that no one should admire him for 
 the opposite of what he was: and he was always prone to regard 
 as enemies those who were his friends, by mistake. And so 
 he was not at all pleased with Kling for seeing in him a disciple 
 of Wagner, and trying to see connections between passages of 
 his Lieder and passages of the Tetralogy, which had nothing in 
 common but certain notes of the scale. And he had no pleasure 
 in hearing one of his works sandwiched — ^together with a worth- 
 less imitation by a Wagnerian student — ^between two enormous 
 blocks of Wagnerian drama. 
 
 It was not long before he was stifled in the little chapel. 
 It was just another Conservatoire, as narrow as the old Con- ; 
 ^servatoires, and more intolerant because it was the latest comer 
 in art. Christophe began to lose his illusions about the absolute ’ 
 value of a form of art or of thought. Hitherto he had always ^ 
 believed that great ideas bear their own light within them- < 
 selves. Now he saw that ideas may change, but that men 5 
 remain the same : and, in fine, nothing counted but men : ideas ^ 
 were what they were. If they were born mediocre and servile, \ 
 even genius became mediocre in its passage through their souls, ^ 
 and the shout of freedom of the hero breaking his bonds became . 
 the act of slavery of succeeding generations. — Christophe could 
 not refrain from expressing his feelings. He let no opportunity ; 
 slip of jeering at fetishism in art. He declared that there was ^ 
 no need of idols, or classics of any sort, and that he only had | 
 the right to call himself the heir of the spirit of Wagner who ' 
 was capable of trampling Wagner underfoot and so walking | 
 on and keeping himself in close communion with life. Kling’s 1 
 stupidity made Christophe aggressive. He set out all the faults 
 and absurdities he could see in Wagner. The Wagnerians at 
 once credited him with a grotesque jealousy of their God. 
 Christophe for his part had no doubt that these same people, 
 who exalted Wagner since he was dead would have been the 
 first to strangle him in his life : and he did them an injustice. 
 The Klings and the Laubers also had had their hour of illumina- 
 tion: they had been advanced twenty years ago: and then like 
 most people they had stopped short at that. Man has so little 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 427 ' 
 
 force that he is out of breath after the first ascent: very few 
 are long-winded enough to go on. 
 
 Christophers attitude quickly alienated him from his new 
 friends. Their sympathy was a bargain: he had to side with 
 them if they were to side with him: and it was quite evident 
 that Christophe would not yield an inch: he would not join 
 them. They lost their enthusiasm for him. The eulogies 
 which he refused to accord to the gods and demi-gods who were 
 approved by the cult, were withheld from him. They showed 
 less eagerness to welcome his compositions: and some of the 
 members began to protest against his name being too often on 
 the programmes. They laughed at him behind his back, and 
 criticism went on: Kling and Lauber by not protesting seemed 
 to take part in it. They would have avoided a breach with 
 Christophe if possible : first because the minds of the Germans of 
 the Ehine like mixed solutions, solutions which are not solu- 
 tions, and have the privilege of prolonging indefinitely an 
 ambiguous situation : and secondly, because they hoped in spite 
 of everything to be able to make use of him, by wearing him 
 down, if not by persuasion. 
 
 Christophe gave them no time for it. Whenever he thought 
 he felt that at heart any man disliked him, but would not admit 
 it and tried to cover it up so as to remain on good terms with 
 him, he would never rest until he had succeeded in proving 
 to him that he was his enemy. One evening at the Wagner- 
 Verein when he had come up against a wall of hypocritical 
 hostility, he could bear it no longer and sent in his resignation 
 I to Lauber without wasting words. Lauber could not under- 
 I stand it : and Mannheim hastened to Christophe to try and 
 pacify him. At his first words Christophe burst out: 
 
 No, no, no, — no ! DonT talk to me about these people. 
 I will not see them again. ... I cannot. I cannot. ... I am 
 j disgusted, horribly, with men: I can hardly bear to look at 
 I one.” 
 
 Mannheim laughed heartily. He was thinking much less* 
 [of smoothing Christophe down than of having the fun of it. 
 i know that they are not beautiful,” he said; ^^but that is. 
 nothing new : what new thing has happened ? ” 
 
 Nothing. I have had enough, that is all. ... Yes, laugh,, 
 
428 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 laugh at me: everybody knows I am mad. Prudent people 
 actdn accordance with the laws of logic and reason and sanity. 
 
 I am not like that: I am a man who acts only on his own 
 impulse. When a certain quantity of electricity is accumulated 
 in me it has to expend itself, at all costs: and so much the 
 worse for the others if it touches them! And so much the 
 worse for them ! I am not made for living in society. Hence- 
 forth I shall belong only to myself.” 
 
 “ You think you can do without everybody else? ” said Mann- 
 heim. “You cannot play your music all by yourself. You 
 need singers, an orchestra, a conductor, an audience, a 
 claque. . . .” 
 
 Christophe shouted. 
 
 “ No ! no ! no ! ” 
 
 But the last word made him jump. 
 
 “A claque! Are you not ashamed?” 
 
 “ I am not talking of a paid claque— (although, indeed, it is* 
 the only means yet discovered of revealing the merit of a com-; 
 position to the audience).— But you must have a claque: the' 
 author’s coterie is a claque, properly drilled by him: every, 
 author has his claque : that is what friends are for.” | 
 
 “ I don’t want any friends ! ” 
 
 “ Then you will be hissed.” 
 
 “ I want to be hissed ! ” 
 
 Mannheim was in. the seventh heaven. 
 
 “You won’t have even that pleasure for long. They won’t 
 play you.” 
 
 “ So be it, then ! Do you think I care about being a famous 
 
 man? . . . Yes. I was making for that with all my might. . . 
 Nonsense ! Polly ! Idiocy ! . . . As if the satisfaction of the 
 vulgarest sort of pride could compensate for all the sacrifices— 
 weariness, suffering, infamy, insults, degradation, ignoble con- 
 cessions — which are the price of fame ! Devil take me if I ever 
 bother my head about such things again ! Never again ! Pub.^ 
 licity is a vulgar infamy. I will be a private citizen and live 
 for m3fself and those whom I love. . . .” 
 
 “ Good,” said Mannheim ironically. “ You must choose a 
 profession. Why shouldn’t you make shoes ? ” 
 
 “Ah! if I were a cobbler like the incomparable Sachs!” 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 429 
 
 cried Christophe. How happy my life would be ! A cobbler 
 all through the week^ — and a musician on Sunday, privately, 
 intimately, for my own pleasure and that of my friends ! What 
 a life that would be! . . . Am I mad, to waste my time and 
 trouble for the magnificent pleasure of ^ being a prey to the 
 judgment of idiots? Is it not much better and finer to be 
 loved and understood by a few honest men than to be heard, 
 criticised, and toadied by thousands of fools? . . . The devil 
 of pride and thirst for fame shall never again take me: trust 
 me for that ! 
 
 Certainly,” said Mannheim. He thought : 
 
 ^^In an hour he will say just the opposite.” He remarked 
 quietly : 
 
 Then I am to go and smooth things down with the Waqner^ 
 Verein?’’ 
 
 Christophe waved his arms. 
 
 What is the good of my shouting myself hoarse with telling 
 you ^ No,^ for the last hour? ... I tell you that I will never 
 set foot inside it again! I loathe all these Wagner-Vereine, 
 all these Vereine, all these flocks of sheep who have to huddle 
 together to be able to baa in unison. Go and tell those sheep 
 from me that I am a wolf, that I have teeth, and am not made 
 for the pasture ! ” 
 
 ^^ Good, good. I will tell them,” said Mannheim, as he 
 went. He was delighted with his morning^s entertainment. 
 He thought: 
 
 He is mad, mad, mad as a hatter. . . .” 
 
 His sister, to whom he reported the interview, at once 
 shrugged her shoulders and said: 
 
 ^^Mad? He would like us to think so! ... He is stupid,, 
 and absurdly vain. ...” 
 
 Christophe went on with his fierce campaign in Waldhaus’s 
 Review. It was not that it gave him pleasure: criticism dis- 
 gusted him, and he was always wishing it at the bottom of the 
 sea. But he stuck to it because people were trying to stop him : 
 he did not wish to appear to have given in. 
 
 Waldhaus was beginning to be uneasy. As long as he was 
 out of reach he had looked on at the affray with the calmness. 
 
430 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 of an Olympian god. But for some weeks past the other papers 
 had seemed to be beginning to disregard his inviolability: they i 
 had begun to attack his vanity as a writer with a rare malev- 
 olence in which, had Waldhaus been more subtle, he might have ^ 
 recognized the hand of a friend. As a matter of fact, the 
 attacks' were cunningly instigated by Ehrenfeld and Golden- 
 ring: they could see no other way of inducing him to stop 
 Christophe’s polemics. Their perception was justified. Wald- 
 haus at once declared that Christophe was beginning to weary 
 him : and he withdrew his support. All the staff of the Keview 
 then tried hard to silence Christophe! But it were as easy to 
 muzzle a dog who is about to devour his prey ! Everything they 
 said to him only excited him more. He called them poltroons 
 and declared that he would say everything— everything that he 
 ought to say. If they wished to get rid of him, they were free 
 to do so! The whole town would know that they were as' 
 cowardly as the rest : but he would not go of his own accord. ■ 
 They looked at each other in consternation, bitterly blaming; 
 Mannheim for the trick he had played them in bringing such' 
 a madman among them. Mannheim laughed and tried hard, 
 to curb Christophe himself : and he vowed that with the next; 
 article Christophe would water his wine. They were incredu- 
 lous: but the event proved that Mannheim had not boasted; 
 Tainly. Christophe’s next article, though not a model of cour- 
 tesy, did not contain a single offensive remark about anybody.: 
 Mannheim’s method was very simple: they were all amazed- 
 at not having thought of it before : Christophe never read whatj 
 he wrote in the Review, and he hardly read the proofs of his! 
 articles, only very quickly and carelessly. Adolf Mai had mor& 
 than once passed caustic remarks on the subject: he said that 
 :a ptinter’s error was a disgrace to a Review : and Christophe, 
 who did not regard criticism altogether as an art, replied that 
 those who were upbraided in it would understand well enough. 
 Mannheim turned this to account : he said that Christophe was 
 right and that correcting proofs was printers’ work: and he 
 offered to take it over. Christophe Avas overwhelmed with 
 gratitude: but they told him that such an arrangement would 
 be of service to them and a saving of time for the Review. So 
 Christophe left his proofs to Mannheim and asked him to 
 
 i 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 431 
 
 correct them carefully. Mannheim did: it was sport for him. 
 At first he only ventured to tone down certain phrases and to 
 delete here and there certain ungracious epithets. Emboldened 
 by success, he went further with his experiments: he began 
 to alter sentences and their meaning : and he was really skilful 
 in it. The whole art of it consisted in preserving the general 
 appearance of the sentence and its characteristic form while 
 making it say exactly the opposite of what Christophe had 
 meant. Mannheim took far more trouble to disfigure Chris- 
 tophers articles than he would have done to write them himself : 
 never had he worked so hard. But he enjoyed the result: 
 certain musicians whom Christophe had hitherto pursued with 
 his sarcasms were astounded to see him grow gradually gentle 
 and at last sing their praises. The staff of the Eeview were 
 delighted. Mannheim used to read aloud his lucubrations to 
 them. They roared with laughter. Ehrenfeld and Goldenring 
 would say to Mannheim occasionally: 
 
 Be careful ! You are going too far.” 
 
 There^s no danger/^ Mannheim would say. And he would 
 go on with it. 
 
 Christophe never noticed anything. He used to go to the 
 office of the Eeview, leave his copy, and not bother about it 
 any more. Sometimes he would take Mannheim aside and say: 
 
 This time I really have done for the swine. J ust read. . . .” 
 
 Mannheim would read. 
 
 Well, what do you think of it ? ” 
 
 Terrible, my dear fellow, there’s nothing left of them ! ” 
 
 What do you think they will say ? ” 
 
 Oh ! there will be a fine row.” 
 
 But there never was a row. On the contrary, everybody 
 beamed at Christophe: people whom he detested would bow to 
 him in the street. One day he came to the office uneasy and 
 scowling: and, throwing a visiting card on the table, he asked: 
 
 What does this mean ? ” 
 
 It was the card of a musician whom he slaughtered. 
 
 A thousand thanhs/' 
 
 Mannheim replied with a laugh: 
 
 It is ironical.” 
 
 Christophe was set at rest. 
 
432 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Oh ! he said. I was afraid my article had pleased him.^^ 
 
 ^^He is furious,” said Ehrenfeld: ^^but he does not wish to 
 seem so : he is posing as the strong man, and is just laughing.” 
 
 Laughing ? . . . Swine ! ” said Christophe, furious once 
 more. shall write another article about him. He laughs 
 best who laughs last.” 
 
 ^^No, no,” said Waldhaus anxiously. don’t think he is 
 laughing at you. It is humility: he is a good Christian. He 
 is holding out the other cheek to the smiter.” 
 
 So much the better ! ” said Christophe. Ah ! Coward ! 
 
 He has asked for it: he shall have his flogging.” 
 
 Waldhaus tried to intervene. But the others laughed. 
 
 Let him be . . .” said Mannheim. 
 
 After all . . .” replied Waldhaus, suddenly reassured, ^^a 
 little more or less makes no matter! . . .” 
 
 Christophe went away. His colleagues rocked and roared 
 with laughter. When they had had their fill of it Waldhaus < 
 said to Mannheim: i 
 
 All the same, it was a narrow squeak. . . . Please be care- i 
 ful. We shall be caught yet.” 
 
 Bah ! ” said Mannheim. We have plenty of time. ... \ 
 
 And besides, I am making friends for him.” i 
 
 ENGULFED J 
 
 Christophe had got so far with his clumsy efforts towards | 
 the reform of German art when there happened to pass through j 
 the town a troupe of French actors. It would be more exact to ' 
 say, a band ; for, as usual, they were a collection of poor devils, 
 picked up goodness knows where, and young unknown players ^ 
 too happy to learn their art, provided they were allowed to act. . 
 They were all harnessed to the chariot of a famous and elderly | 
 actress who was making tour of Germany, and passing through | 
 the little princely town, gave their performances there. 
 
 Waldhaus’ review made a great fuss over them. Mannheim 
 and his friends knew or pretended to know about the literary and 
 
I 
 
 EEVOLT 433 
 
 social life of Paris: they used to repeat gossip picked up in 
 the boulevard newspapers and more or less understood; they 
 represented the French spirit in Germany. That robbed Chris- 
 tophe of any desire to know more about it. Mannheim used 
 to overwhelm him with praises of Paris. He had been there 
 several times; certain members of his family were there. He 
 had relations in every country in Europe, and they had every- 
 where assumed the nationality and aspect of the country : this 
 tribe of the seed of Abraham included an English baronet, 
 a Belgian senator, a French minister, a deputy in the Eeichstag, 
 - and a Papal Count; and all of them, although they were united 
 and filled with respect for the stock from which they sprang, 
 were sincerely English, Belgian, French, German, or Papal, for 
 their pride never allowed of doubt that the country of their 
 adoption was the greatest of all. Mannheim was paradoxically 
 the only one of them who was pleased to prefer all the countries 
 to which he did not belong. He used often to talk of Paris en- 
 thusiastically, but as he was always extravagant in his talk, and, 
 by way of praising the Parisians, used to represent them as a 
 species of scatterbrains, lewd and rowdy, who spent their time 
 in love-making and revolutions without ever taking them- 
 selves seriously, Christophe was not greatly attracted by the 
 Byzantine and decadent republic beyond the Vosges.^^ He used 
 rather to imagine Paris as it was presented in a naive engraving 
 which he had seen as a frontispiece to a book that had recently 
 appeared in a German art publication ; the Devil of Notre Dame 
 appeared huddled up above the roofs of the town with the 
 legend : 
 
 Eternal luxury like an insatiable Vampire devours its prey 
 above the great cityf^ 
 
 Like a good German he despised the debauched Yolcae and 
 their literature, of which he only knew lively buffooneries like 
 ' UAiglon, Madame Sans Oene, and a few cafe songs. The snob- 
 
 I bishness of the little town, where those people who were most 
 
 ' notoriously incapable of being interested in art flocked noisily 
 
 j to take places at the box office, brought him to an affectation 
 
 of scornful indifference towards the great actress. He vowed 
 that he would not go one yard to hear her. It was the easier 
 
434 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 for him to keep his promise as seats had reached an exorbitant 
 price which he could not afford. 
 
 The repertory which the French actors had brought included 
 a few classical pieces; but for the most part it was composed ' 
 of those idiotic pieces which are expressly manufactured in j 
 Paris for exportation, for nothing is more international than 
 mediocrity. Christophe knew La Tosca, which was to be the 
 first production of the touring actors; he had seen it in trans- 
 lation adorned with all those easy graces which the company of 
 a little Rhenish theater can give to a French play: and he 
 laughed scornfully and declared that he was very glad, when 
 he saw his friends go off to the theater, not to have to see it 
 again. But next day he listened none the less eagerly, without 
 seeming to listen, to the enthusiastic tales of the delightful 
 evening they had had: he was angry at having lost the right 
 to contradict them by having refused to see what everybody was ■ 
 talking about. ; 
 
 The second production announced was a French translation ; 
 of Hamlet. Christophe had never missed an opportunity of : 
 seeing a play of Shakespeare’s. Shakespeare was to him of the 
 same order as Beethoven, an inexhaustible spring of life. Ham~ ( 
 let had been specially dear to him during the period of stress ; 
 and tumultuous doubts through which he had just passed. In ] 
 spite of his fear of seeing himself reflected in that magic mirror ; 
 he was fascinated by it: and he prowled about the theater ; 
 notices, though he did not admit that he was longing to book ^ 
 a seat. But he was so obstinate that after what he had said j 
 to his friends he would not eat his words: and he would have \ 
 stayed at home that evening if chance had not brought him ‘ 
 in contact with Mannheim just as he was sadly going home. j 
 
 Mannheim took his arm and told him angrily, though he 
 never ceased his banter, that an old beast of a relation, his 
 father’s sister, had just come down upon them with all her 
 retinue and that they had all to stay at home to welcome her. 
 
 He had time to get out of it: but his father would brook no 
 trifling with questions of family etiquette and the respect due 
 to elderly relatives: and as he had to handle his father care- 
 fully because he wanted presently to get money out of him, 
 he had had to give in and not go to the play. 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 435 
 
 You had tickets?^’ asked Christophe. 
 
 An excellent box: and I have to go and give it — (I am 
 just going now) — ^to that old pig, Griinebaum, papa^s partner, 
 so that he can swagger there with the she Griinebaum and their 
 turkey hen of a daughter. Jolly! ... I want to find 
 something very disagreeable to say to them. They won’t mind 
 so long as I give them the tickets — although they would much 
 rather they were banknotes.” 
 
 He stopped short with his mouth open and looked at Chris- 
 tophe : 
 
 Oh ! but — but just the man I want ! ” He chuckled : 
 
 Christophe, are you going to the theater ? ” 
 
 No.” 
 
 Good. You shall go. I ask it as a favor. You cannot 
 refuse.” 
 
 Christophe did not understand. 
 
 But I have no seat.” 
 
 Here you are ! ” said Mannheim triumphantly, thrusting 
 the ticket into his hand. 
 
 Y ou are mad,” said Christophe. What about your father’s 
 orders ? ” 
 
 Mannheim laughed: 
 
 He will be furious ! ” he said. 
 
 He dried his eyes and went on: 
 
 shall tap him to-morrow morning as soon as he is up 
 before he knows anything.^’ 
 
 I cannot accept,” said Christophe, knowing that he would 
 not like it.” 
 
 It does not concern you : you know nothing about it.” 
 
 Christophe had unfolded the ticket: 
 
 And what would I do with a box for four ? ” 
 
 Whatever you like. You can sleep in it, dance if you like. 
 Take some women. You must know some? If need be we 
 can lend you some.” 
 
 Christophe held out the ticket to Mannheim: 
 
 Certainly not. Take it back.” 
 
 ^^Not I,” said Mannheim, stepping back a pace. ^^I can’t 
 force you to go if it bores you, but I shan’t take it back. You 
 
436 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 can throw it in the fire or even take it virtuously to the Griine- 
 baums. I don’t care. Good-night ! ” 
 
 He left Christophe in the middle of the street, ticket in 
 hand, and went away. 
 
 Christophe was unhappy about it. He said to himself that 
 he ought to take it to the Griinebaums: but he was not keen 
 about the idea. He went home still pondering, and when later 
 he looked at the clock he saw that he had only just time 
 enough to dress for the theater. It would be too silly to waste 
 the ticket. He asked his mother to go with him. But Louisa 
 declared that she would rather go to bed. He went. At heart 
 he was filled with childish glee at the thought of his evening. 
 Only one thing worried him: the thought of having to be 
 alone in such a pleasure. He had no remorse about Mann- 
 heim’s father or the Griinebaums, whose box he was taking: 
 but he was remorseful about those whom he might have taken 
 with him. He thought of the joy it could give to other young * 
 people like himself : and it hurt him not to be able to give it ; 
 them. He cast about but could find nobody to whom he could 
 offer his ticket. Besides, it was late and he must hurry. t 
 As he entered the theater he passed by the closed window 
 on which a poster announced that there was not a single seat , 
 left in the office. Among the people who were turning away : 
 from it disappointedly he noticed a girl who could not make ^ 
 up her mind to leave and was enviously watching the people i 
 
 going in. She was dressed very simply in black ; she was not very | 
 
 tall; her face was thin and she looked delicate; and at the i 
 moment he did not notice whether she were pretty or plain. ; 
 He passed her: then he stopped, turned, and without stopping t 
 
 to think : , • . 1,1 i 
 
 “You can’t get a seat, Fraulein?” he asked point-blank. 
 
 ‘ She blushed and said with a foreign accent : 
 
 « No sir/^ 
 
 I have a box which I don’t know what to do with. Will . 
 yon make nse of it with me ? ” 
 
 She blushed again and thanked him and said she could not| 
 accept. Christophe was embarrassed by her refusal^ begged herl 
 pardon and tried to insist, but he could not persuade her,! 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 437 
 
 although it was obvious that she was dying to accept. He 
 was very perplexed. He made up his mind suddenly. 
 
 “ There is a way out of the difficulty/’ he said. “ You take 
 the ticket. I don’t want it. I have seen the play.” (He was 
 boasting). “It will give you more pleasure than me. Take 
 it, please.” 
 
 The girl was so touched by his proposal and the cordial 
 manner in which it was made that tears all but came to her 
 eyes. She murmured gratefully that she could not think of 
 depriving him of it. 
 
 “ Then, come,” he said, smiling. 
 
 He looked so kind and honest that she was ashamed of 
 having refused, and she said in some confusion: 
 
 “Thank you. I will come.” 
 
 They went in. The Mannheims’ box was wide, big, and faced 
 the stage: it was impossible not to be seen in it if they had 
 wished. It is useless to say that their entry passed unnoticed. 
 Christophe made the girl sit at the front, while he stayed a 
 little behind so as not to embarrass her. She sat stiffly up- 
 right, not daring to turn her head: she was horribly shy: she 
 would have given much not to have accepted. To give her 
 time to recover her composure and not knowing what to talk 
 to her about, Christophe pretended to look the other way. Which- 
 ever way he looked it was easily seen that his presence with an 
 unknown companion among the brilliant people of the boxes 
 was exciting much curiosity and comment. He darted furious 
 glances at those who were looking at him : he was angry that 
 people should go on being interested in him when he took no 
 interest in them. It did not occur to him that their indiscreet 
 I curiosity was more busied with his companion than with him- 
 iself and that there was more offense in it. By way of showing 
 ihis utter indifference to anything they might say or think he 
 leaned towards the girl and began to talk to her. She looked 
 so scared by his talking and so unhappy at having to reply, 
 and it seemed to be so difficult for her to wrench out a “Yes” 
 or a “No” without ever daring to look at him, that he took 
 ipity on her shyness, and drew back to a corner. Fortunately 
 the play began. 
 
438 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 Christophe had not seen the play bill and he hardly cared 
 to know what part the great actress was playing: he was one 
 
 of al simple people 'ho SO to the theater to see tlm PlV 
 
 and not the actors. He had never wondered whether the fa- 
 mens player would be Ophelia or the Queen; if he had wondered 
 lout it L would have inclined towards the Queen, bearing in 
 mind the ages of the two ladies. But it could ^ver have o^ 
 curred to him that she would play Hamlet. When he saw 
 Hamlet, and heard his mechanical dolly squeak, it was some 
 time before he could believe it; he wondered if he were not 
 
 ^^‘‘^But^who? Who is it?” he asked half aloud. “It can’t 
 
 ^^And when he had to accept that it was Hamlet, he rapped 
 out an oath, which fortunately his companion did not 
 hear, because she was a foreigner, though it 
 in the next box: for he was at once indignantly bidden to be 
 silent. He withdrew to the back of the box to swear his fiU 
 He could not recover his temper. If he had been just h 
 would have given homage to the elegance of the travesty and , 
 the tour de force of nature and art, which made it possible for 
 l ;lTn of sirfy 10 appeor in a youth’s ; 
 
 seem beautiful in it— at least to kindly eyes. But he h^ed , 
 all tours de force, everything which violates and \ 
 
 ture He liked a woman to be a woman, and a man a^ man. . 
 (K 'dot not often happen nowadays.) The chddieh and i 
 
 (It does not oiten nappes - 
 
 absurd travesty of the Leonora of Beethoven did please 
 
 aosuru i-idvc j- wnss bevond all dreams 
 
 esty ot tne nieouora uj. - a , 
 
 him much. But this travesty of Hamlet was beyond all dreams * 
 of the nreposterous. To make of the robust Dane, fat and | 
 nale choleric cunning, intellectual, subject to hallucinations,- 
 rw^man-not even a^woman: for a woman playing the man 
 cZ Zh be a monster,-to make of Hamlet a eunuch or an 
 androgynous betwixt and between,-the times must 1 ^^ ^by 
 indeed criticism must be idiotic, to let ^ 
 
 tolerated for a single day not hissed off the ’ 
 
 actress’s voice infuriated Christophe. She ^ g 
 
 labored diction, that monotonous melopceia ^^ich see 
 have been dear to the least poetic people in the world since 
 ttTdrys of the CUmpm.sU and the IMUl de Bourgogne. 
 
EEVGLT 
 
 439 
 
 Christophe was so exasperated by it that he wanted to go away. 
 He turned his back on the scene, and he made hideous faces 
 against the wall of the box like a child put in the corner. 
 Fortunately his companion dared not look at him: for if she 
 had seen him she would have thought him mad. 
 
 Suddenly Christophe stopped making faces. He stopped still 
 and made no sound. A lovely musical voice, a young woman^s 
 voice, grave and sweet, was heard. Christophe pricked his 
 ears. As she went on with her words he turned again, keenly 
 interested to see what bird could warble so. He saw Ophelia. 
 In truth she was nothing like the Ophelia of Shakespeare. She^, 
 was a beautiful girl, tall, big and fine like a young fresh statue 
 — Electra or Cassandra. She was brimming with life. In spite 
 of her efforts to keep within her part, the force of youth and 
 joy that was in her shone forth from her body, her movements, 
 her gestures, her brown eyes that laughed in spite of herself. 
 Such is the power of physical beauty that Christophe who a 
 moment before had been merciless in judging the interpreta- 
 tion of Hamlet never for a moment thought of regretting that 
 I Ophelia was hardly at all like his image of her: and he sacri- 
 ificed his image to the present vision of her remorselessly. With 
 [the unconscious faithlessness of people of passion he even found 
 I a profound truth in the youthful ardor brimming in the 
 jdepths of the chaste and unhappy virgin heart. But the magic 
 jof the voice, pure, warm, and velvety, worked the spell: every 
 jword sounded like a lovely chord: about every syllable there 
 jhovered like the scent of thyme or wild mint the laughing 
 jaccent of the Midi with its full rhythm. Strange was this 
 vision of an Ophelia from Arles ! In it was something of that 
 golden sun and its wild northwest wind, its mistral, 
 
 Christophe forgot his companion and came and sat by her 
 side at the front of the box: he never took his eyes off the 
 beautiful actress whose name he did not know. But the audi- 
 ence who had not come to see an unknown player paid no 
 attention to her, and only applauded when the female Hamlet 
 spoke. That made Christophe growl and call them : Idiots ! 
 in a low voice which could be heard ten yards away. 
 
 It was not until the curtain was lowered upon the 'first act 
 that he remembered the existence of his companion, and seeing 
 
440 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 that she was still shy he thought with a smile of how he must 
 have scared her with his extravagances. He was not far wrong : 
 the girl whom chance had thrown in his company for a few 
 hours was almost morbidly shy; she must have been in an 
 abnormal state of excitement to have accepted Christophers 
 invitation. She had hardly accepted it than she had wished at 
 any cost to get out of it, to make some excuse and to escape. 
 It had been much worse for her when she had seen that she 
 was an object of general curiosity, and her unhappiness had 
 been increased almost past endurance when she heard behind 
 her back — (she dared not turn round) — ^her companion’s low 
 growls and imprecations. She expected anything now, and 
 when he came and sat by her she was frozen with terror : what 
 eccentricity would he commit next? She would gladly have 
 sunk into the ground fathoms down. She drew back instinc- 
 tively: she was afraid of touching him. 
 
 But all her fears vanished when the interval came and she 
 heard him say quite kindly: ' 
 
 am an unpleasant companion, eh? I beg your pardon.” ’ 
 Then she looked at him and saw his kind smile which had ^ 
 induced her to come with him. * 
 
 He went on: ; 
 
 I cannot hide what I think. . . . But you know it is too ; 
 much! . . . That woman, that old woman! ...” , 
 
 He made a face of disgust. 1 
 
 She smiled and said in a low voice: \ 
 
 ^^It is fine in spite of everything.” | 
 
 He noticed her accent and asked: 5 
 
 ^^You are a foreigner?” t 
 
 ^^Yes,” said she. ‘ 
 
 He looked at her modest gown. 
 
 A governess ? ” he said. 
 
 ^^Yes.” 
 
 ^^What nationality?” 
 
 She said : 
 
 am French.” 
 
 He made a gesture of surprise: 
 
 French? I should not have thought it.” 
 
 ^^Why?” she asked tinfidly. ; 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 441 
 
 . . . Are you 
 
 One would never 
 
 You are so . . . serious ! said he. 
 
 (She thought it was net altogether a compliment from him.) 
 
 There are serious people also in France/^ said she con- 
 fusedly. 
 
 He looked at her honest little face, with its broad forehead, 
 little straight nose, delicate chin, and thin cheeks framed in 
 her chestnut hair. It was not she that he saw : he was thinking 
 of the beautiful actress. He repeated: 
 
 It is strange that you should be French ! 
 really of the same nationality as Ophelia? 
 think it.^^ 
 
 After a moment’s silence he went on: 
 
 How beautiful she is ! ” without noticing that he seemed to 
 be making a comparison between the actress and his companion 
 that was not at all flattering to her. But she felt it: but she 
 did not mind : for she was of the same opinion. He tried to And 
 out about the actress from her: but she knew nothing: it was 
 plain that she did not know much about the theater. 
 
 You must be glad to hear French ? ” he asked. He meant 
 it in jest, but he touched her. 
 
 Ah ! ” she said with an accent of sincerity which struck 
 him, it does me so much good ! I am stifled here.” 
 
 He looked at her more closely: she clasped her hands, and 
 seemed to be oppressed. But at once she thought of how her 
 words might hurt him: 
 
 Forgive me,” she said. I don’t know what I am saying.” 
 
 He laughed: 
 
 Don’t beg pardon ! You are quite right. You don’t need 
 :o be French to be stifled here. Ouf ! ” 
 
 He threw back bis shoulders and took a long breath. 
 
 But she was ashamed of having been so free and relapsed into 
 [dlence. Besides she had just seen that the people in the boxes 
 lext to them were listening to what they were saying: he 
 loticed it too and was wrathful. They broke off: and until 
 he end of the interval he went out into the corridor. The 
 Jprl’s words were ringing in his ears, but he was lost in dreams : 
 he image of Ophelia filled his thoughts. During the succeed- 
 ,ng acts she took hold of him completely, and when the beautiful 
 iictress came to the mad scene and the melancholv sonsfs of 
 
442 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 love and death, her voice gave forth notes so moving that he 
 was bowled over: he felt that he was going to burst into tears. 
 Angry with himself for what he took to be a sign of weakness— 
 (for he would not admit that a true artist can weep) and 
 not wishing to make an object of himself, he left the box 
 abruptly. .The corridors and the foyer were empty. In his 
 agitation he went down the stairs of the theater and went out 
 without knowing it. He had to breathe the cold night air, 
 and to go striding through the dark, half-empty streets. He 
 came to himself by the edge of a canal, and leaned on the para- 
 pet of the bank and watched the silent water whereon the re- 
 flections of the street lamps danced in the darkness. His soul 
 was like that; it was dark and heaving; he could see nothing 
 in it but great joy dancing on the surface. The clocks rang 
 the hour. It was impossible for him to go back to the theater 
 and hear the end of the play. To see the triumph of Fortin- 
 bras? No, that did not tempt him. A fine triumph that! 
 Who thinks of envying the conqueror? Who would be he after, 
 being gorged with all the wild and absurd savagery of life?} 
 The whole play is a formidable indictment of life. But there 
 is such a power of life in it that sadness becomes joy, and 
 bitterness intoxicates. ... 
 
 Christophe went home without a thought for the unknown 
 girl, whose name even he had not ascertained. 
 
 Next morning he went to see the actress at the little third-^ 
 rate hotel in which the impresario had quartered her with her| 
 comrades while the great actress had put up at the best hotel 
 in the town. He was conducted to a very untidy room where 
 the remains of breakfast were left on an open piano, together 
 with hairpins and torn and dirty sheets of music. In the next 
 room Ophelia was singing at the top of her voice, like a child, 
 for the pleasure of making a noise. She stopped for a moment 
 when her visitor was announcefd to ask merrily in a loud voice 
 without ever caring whether she were heard through the wall ; 
 
 ''What does he want? What is his name? Christophe? 
 Christophe what ? Christophe Krafft ? What a name ! 
 
 (She repeated it two or three times, rolling her r’s terribly.) 
 
 " It is like a swear 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 443 
 
 (She swore.) 
 
 he young or old? Pleasant? Very well. I’ll come.’^ 
 
 She began to sing again: 
 
 ''Nothing is sweeter than my love . . while she rushed 
 
 about her room cursing a tortoise-shell pin which had got lost 
 in all the rubbish. She lost patience, began to grumble, and 
 roared. Although he could not see her Christophe followed all 
 her movements on the other side of the wall in imagination 
 and laughed to himself. At last he heard steps approaching, 
 the door was flung open, and Ophelia appeared. 
 
 She was half dressed, in a loose gown which she was holding 
 about her waist: her bare arms showed in her wide sleeves: 
 her hair was carelessly done, and locks of it fell down into 
 her eyes and over her cheeks. Her fine brown eyes smiled, her 
 lips smiled, her cheeks smiled, and a charming dimple in her 
 chin smiled. In her beautiful grave melodious voice she asked 
 him to excuse her appearance. She knew that there was noth- 
 ing to excuse and that he could only be very grateful to her 
 for it. She thought he was a journalist come to interview her. 
 Instead of being annoyed when he told her that he had come 
 to her entirely of his own accord and because he admired her, 
 she was delighted. She was a good girl, affectionate, delighted 
 to please, and making no effort to conceal her delight. Chris- 
 tophe’s visit and his enthusiasm made her very happy — (she 
 was not yet spoiled by flattery). She was so natural in all her 
 movements and ways, even in her little vanities and her naive 
 delight in giving pleasure, that he was not embarrassed for a 
 single moment. They became old friends at once. He could 
 jabber a few words of French: and she could jabber a few 
 words of German : after an hour they told each other all their 
 secrets. She never thought of sending him away. The splen- 
 did gay southern creature, intelligent and warm-hearted, who 
 would have been bored to tears with her stupid companions and 
 in a country whose language she did not know, a country with- 
 out the natural joy that was in herself, was glad to And some 
 ]me to talk to. As for Christophe it was an untold blessing for 
 Itiim to meet the free-hearted girl of the Midi filled with 
 jthe life of the people, in the midst of his narrow and insincere 
 tellow citizens. He did not yet know the workings of such 
 
444 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 natures which, unlike the Germans, have no more in their 
 minds and hearts than they show, and often not even as much. 
 But at the least she was young, she was alive, she said frankly, 
 rawly, what she thought: she judged everything freely from a 
 new and a fresh point of view : in her it was possible to breathe 
 a little of the northwest wind that sweeps away mists. She 
 was gifted. Uneducated and unthinking, she could at once feel 
 with her whole heart and be sincerely moved by things which 
 were beautiful and good ; and then, a moment later, she would 
 burst out laughing. /She was a coquette and made eyes; she 
 did not mind showing her bare arms and neck under her half 
 open gown; she would have liked to turn Christophe’s head, 
 but it was all purely instinctive. There was no thought of 
 gaining her own ends in her, and she much preferred to laugh, 
 and talk blithely, to be a good fellow, a good chum, without 
 ceremony or awkwardness. She told him about the under- 
 world of the theater, her little sorrows, the silly susceptibilities • 
 of her comrades, the bickerings of Jezebel — (so she called the i 
 great actress) — who took good care not to let her shine. He ! 
 confided his sufferings at the hands of the Germans : she clapped 
 her hands and played chords to him. She was kind and • 
 would not speak ill of anybody; but that did not keep her 
 from doing so, and while she blamed herself for her malice, 
 when she laughed at anybody, she had a fund of mocking 
 humor and that realistic and witty gift of observation which ; 
 belongs to the people of the South; she could not resist it and; 
 drew cuttingly satirical portraits. With her pale lips shej 
 laughed merrily to show her teeth, like those of a puppy, and' 
 dark eyes shone in her pale face, which was a little discolored ; 
 by grease paint. i 
 
 They noticed suddenly that they had been talking for more 
 than an hour. Christophe proposed to come for Corinne — (that 
 was her stage name) — in the afternoon and show her over the 
 town. She was delighted with the idea, and they arranged to 
 meet immediately after dinner. 
 
 At the appointed hour, he turned up. Corinne was sitting 
 in the little drawing-room of the hotel, with a book in her 
 hand, which she was reading aloud. She greeted him with 
 smiling eyes but did not stop reading until she had finished 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 445 
 
 her sentence. Then she signed to him to sit down on the sofa 
 by her side : 
 
 ^^Sit there/' she said, "^and don't talk. I am going over 
 my part. I shall have finished in a quarter of an hour." 
 
 She followed the script with her finger nail and read very 
 quickly and carelessly like a little girl in a hurry. He offered 
 to hear her her words. She passed him the book and got up to 
 repeat what she had learned. She fioundered and would re- 
 peat the end of one sentence four times before going on to the 
 next. She shook her head as she recited her part; her hair- 
 pins fell down and all over the room. When she could not 
 recollect sometimes some word she was as impatient as a naughty 
 child; sometimes she swore comically or she would use big 
 words — one word with which she apostrophized herself was 
 very big and very short. Christophe was astonished by the 
 mixture of talent and childishness in her. She would produce 
 moving tones of voice quite aptly, but in the middle of a speech 
 into which she seemed to be throwing her whole heart she 
 would say a whole string of words that had absolutely no 
 meaning. She recited her lesson like a parrot, without trou- 
 bling about its meaning, and then she produced burlesque non- 
 sense. She did not worry about it. When she saw it she would 
 shout with laughter. At last she said : "" Zut ! ", snatched the 
 book from him, fiung it into a corner of the room, and said : 
 
 Holidays! The hour has struck! . . . Now let us go 
 
 out." 
 
 ^ He was a little anxious about her part and asked; 
 
 You think you will know it?" 
 
 I She replied confidently: 
 
 Certainly. What is the prompter for?" She went into 
 her room to put on her hat. Christophe sat at the piano while 
 he was waiting for her and struck a few chords. From the 
 aext room she called; 
 
 Oh ! What is that? Play some more ! How pretty it is ! " 
 She ran in, pinning on her hat. He went on. When he had 
 dnished she wanted him to play more. She went into ecstasies 
 vith all the little arch exclamations habitual to Frenchwomen 
 rvhich they make about Tristan and a cup of chocolate equally, 
 t made Christophe laugh ; it was a change from the tremendous 
 
446 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 affected, clumsy exclamations of the Germans; they were both 
 exaggerated in different directions; one made a mountain^out 
 of a mole-hill, the other made a mole-hill out of a mountain; 
 the French was not less ridiculous than the German, hut for 
 the moment it seemed more pleasant because he loved the lips 
 from which it came. Corinne wanted to know what he was 
 playing, and when she learned that he had composed it she 
 gave a shout. He had told her during their conversation m 
 the morning that he was a composer, but she had hardly 
 listened to him. She sat by him and insisted on his playing 
 everything that he had composed. Their walk was forgotten. 
 It was not mere politeness on her part ; she adored music and 
 had an admirable instinct for it which supplied the deficiencies 
 of her education. At first he did not take her seriously and 
 played his easiest melodies. But when he had played a passage 
 by which he set more store and saw that she preferred it too,, 
 although he had not said anything about it, he was joyfully, 
 surprised. With the naive astonishment of the Germans when- 
 they meet a Frenchman who is a good musician he said: • 
 
 “ Odd. How good your taste is ! I should never have thought 
 
 it . . .” , f 
 
 Corinne laughed in his face. * 
 
 He amused himself then by selecting compositions more and 
 more difficult to understand, to see how far she would go 
 with him. But she did not seem to be put out by his boldness, 
 and after a particularly new melody which Christophe himself 
 had almost come to doubt because he had never succeeded ii^ 
 having it accepted in Germany, he was greatly astonished when 
 Corinne begged him to play it again, and she got up and be^n 
 to sing the notes from memory almost without a mistake . H^ 
 turned towards her and took her hands warmly . 
 
 “ But you are a musician ! ” he cried. 
 
 She began to laugh and explained that she had made hei 
 debut as a singer in provincial opera houses, but that an im- 
 presario of touring companies had recognized her dispositior 
 towards the poetic theater and had enrolled her in its services 
 He exclaimed: 
 
 « What a pity ! ” 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 447 
 
 Why ? ” said she. Poetry also is a sort of music.” 
 
 She made him explain to her the meaning of his Lieder; 
 he told her the German words, and she repeated them with 
 easy mimicry, copying even the movements of his lips and eyes 
 as he pronounced the words. When she had these to sing from 
 memory, then she made grotesque mistakes, and when she 
 forgot, she invented words, guttural and barbarously sonorous, 
 which made them both laugh. She did not tire of making him 
 play, nor he of playing for her and hearing her pretty voice; 
 she did not know the tricks of the trade and sang a little from 
 the throat like little girls, and there was a curious fragile 
 quality in her voice that was very touching. She told him 
 frankly what she thought. Although she could not explain 
 why she liked or disliked anything there was always some grain 
 of sense hidden in her judgment. The odd thing was that she 
 found least pleasure in the most classical passages which were 
 most appreciated in Germany ; she paid him a few compliments 
 out of politeness; but they obviously meant nothing. As she 
 had no musical culture she had not the pleasure which ama- 
 teurs and even artists find in what is already heard, a pleasure 
 which often makes them unconsciously reproduce, or, in a new 
 composition, like forms or formulae which they have already 
 used in old compositions. Nor did she have the German taste 
 for melodious sentimentality (or, at least, her sentimentality 
 was different; Christophe did not yet know its failings) — she 
 did not go into ecstasies over the soft insipid music preferred 
 in Germany; she did not single out the most melodious of his 
 Lieder , — a melody which he would have liked to destroy be- 
 cause his friends,, only too glad to be able to compliment 
 him on something, were always talking about it. Corinne^s 
 dramatic instinct made her prefer the melodies which frankly- 
 reproduced a certain passion; he also set most store by them. 
 And yet she did not hesitate to show her lack of sympathy with 
 certain rude harmonies which seemed quite natural to Chris- 
 tophe ; they gave her a sort of shock when she came upon them ; 
 she would stop then and ask if it was really so.” When he said 
 ^^Yes,” then she would rush at the difficulty; but she would 
 make a little grimace which did not escape Christophe. Some- 
 
448 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 times even she would prefer to skip the bar. Then he would 
 play it again on the piano. 
 
 “You don’t like that?” he would ask. 
 
 She would screw up her nose. 
 
 “ It is wrong,” she would say. 
 
 “Not at all,” he would reply with a laugh. “It is quite 
 right. Think of its meaning. It is rhymthic, isn’t it ? ” 
 
 (He pointed to her heart.) 
 
 But she would shake her head: 
 
 “May be; but it is wrong here.” (She pulled her ear.) 
 
 And she would be a little shocked by the sudden outbursts 
 of German declamation. 
 
 “Wliy should he talk so loud?” she would ask. “He is 
 all alone. Aren’t you afraid of his neighbors overhearing him? 
 
 It is as though— (Forgive me! You won’t be angry?)— he 
 were hailing a boat.” 
 
 He was not angry; he laughed heartily, he recognized that 
 there was some truth in what she said. Her remarks amused : 
 him; nobody had ever said such things before. They agreed : 
 that declamation in singing generally deforms the natural 
 word like a magnifying glass. Corinne asked Christophe to 
 write music for a piece in which she would speak to the ac- 
 companiment of the orchestra, singing a few sentences every 
 now and then. He was fired by the idea in spite of the diffi- 
 culties of the stage setting which, he thought, Corinne’s musi- 
 cal voice would easily overcome, and they made plans for the . 
 future. It was not far short of five o’clock when they thought j 
 of going out. Night fell early. They could not think of going ■' 
 for a walk. Corinne had a rehearsal at the theater in the ■ 
 evening; nobody was allowed to be present. She made him j 
 promise to come and fetch her during the next afternoon to 
 take the walk they had planned. 
 
 Next day they did almost the same again. He found Corinne 
 in front of her mirror, perched on a high stool, swinging her 
 legs; she was trying on a wig. Pier dresser was there and a 
 hair dresser of the town to whom she was giving instructions 
 about a curl which she wished to have higher up. As she 
 looked in the glass she saw Christophe smiling behind her 
 
EEVOLT 1 1 
 
 back; she put out her tongue at him. T;;e ;ha>: dressr ^ } t; 
 away with the wig and she turned ^aily o ( v iFrophe: 
 
 Good-day, my friend ! she said. 
 
 She held up her cheek to be kissed. He hm not e^ipected 
 such intimacy, but he took advantage of it all irie si jit;. She 
 did not attach so much importance to the favo' ; It wae to her 
 a greeting like any other. 
 
 Oh ! I am happy ! said she. It will do very well 
 night.^^ (She was talking of her wig.) was so -^retched! 
 If you had come this morning you would have fou7 ne abso- 
 lutely miserable.^^ 
 
 He asked why. 
 
 It was because the Parisian hair dresser had made a mistake 
 in packing and had sent a wig which was not suitable to the 
 part. 
 
 Quite flat,” she said, and falling straight down. When 
 I saw it I wept like a Magdalen. Didnh I, Desiree?” 
 
 When I came in,” said Desiree, I was afraid for Madame. 
 Madame was quite white. Madame looked like death.” 
 
 Christophe laughed. Cbrinne saw him in her mirror: 
 
 Heartless wretch ; it makes you laugh,” she said indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 She began to laugh too. 
 
 He asked her how the rehearsal had gone. Everything had 
 gone off well. She would have liked the other parts to be cut 
 more and her own less. They talked so much that they wasted 
 part of the afternoon. She dressed slowly; she amused herself 
 by asking Christophers opinion about her dresses. Christophe 
 i praised her elegance and told her naively in his Franco-German 
 , jargon, that he had never seen anybody so luxurions.^r She 
 looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. 
 
 I What have I said ? ” he asked. Have I said anything 
 
 ; wrong ? ” 
 
 ! Yes, yes,rr she cried, rocking with laughter. You have 
 indeed.” 
 
 At last they went out. Her striking costume and her ex- 
 uberant chatter attracted attention. She looked at everything 
 ^with her mocking eyes and made no effort to conceal her im- 
 pressions. She chuckled at the dressmakers’ shops, and at the 
 
. !ei ; 
 
 post-Ci 
 dravi ’ 
 
 
 S- 
 
 f’d'- 
 
 
 EAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ; . is in which sentimental scenes, comic and 
 ' ::c\vn prostitutes, the imperial family, the 
 
 ■ e'Vi - - aolding the wheel of the Germania and 
 
 ■ ■ ■'>rc all thrown together higgledy-piggledy. 
 
 > rt;ririer-service decoration with Wagner’s cross- 
 
 >r at a hair dresser’s shop-window in which there 
 ^ ^ad of -r> man. She made no attempt to modify 
 tlv. i iitriotic monument representing the old 
 coat and a peaked cap, together with 
 ' ! stes, and a nude Genius of War. She 
 
 .e i'emarkt ...oac anything in the faces of the people or their 
 of speaking that struck her as funny. Her victims were 
 left in no doubt about it as she maliciously picked out their 
 absurdities. Her instinctive mimicry made her sometimes imi- 
 tate with her mouth and nose their broad grimaces and frowns, 
 without thinking; and she would blow out her cheeks as she 
 repeated fragments of sentences and words that struck her as 
 grotesque in sound as she caught them. He laughed heartily 
 and was not at all embarrassed by her impertinence, for he was 
 no longer easily embarrassed. Fortunately he had no great 
 reputation to lose, or his walk would have ruined it for ever. 
 
 They visited the cathedral. Corinne wanted to go to the 
 top of the spire, in spite of her high heels, and long dress which 
 swept the stairs or was caught in a corner of the staircase; she 
 did not worry about it, but pulled the stulf which split, and 
 went on climbing, holding it up. She wanted very much to 
 ring the bells. From the top of the tower she declaimed Victor 
 Hugo (he did not understand it), and sang a popular French 
 song. After that she played the muezzin. Dusk was falling. 
 They went down into the cathedral where the dark shadows 
 were creeping along the gigantic walls in which the magic eyes 
 of the windows were shining. Kneeling in one of the side 
 chapels, Christophe saw the girl who had shared his box at 
 Hamlet. She was so absorbed in her prayers that she did not 
 see him ; he saw that she was looking sad and strained. He 
 would have liked to speak to her, just to say, ‘‘ How do you 
 do ? ” but Corinne dragged him off like a whirlwind. 
 
 They parted soon afterwards. She had to get ready for the 
 performance, which began early, as usual in Germany. He 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 451 
 
 had hardly reached home when there was a ring at the door 
 and a letter from Corinne was handed in: 
 
 ^^Lnck! Jezebel ill! No performance! No school! Come! 
 Let ns dine together ! Your friend, 
 
 CORINETTE. 
 
 P. S. Bring plenty of music ! 
 
 It was some time before he understood. When he did under- 
 stand he was as happy as Corinne, and went to the hotel at 
 once. He was afraid of finding the whole company assembled 
 at dinner 5 but he saw nobody. Corinne herself was not there. 
 At last he heard her laughing voice at the back of the house : 
 he went to look for her and found her in the kitchen. She 
 had taken it into her head to cook a dish in her own way, one 
 of those southern dishes which fills the whole neighborhood 
 with its aroma and would awaken a stone. She was on excel- 
 lent terms with the large proprietress of the hotel, and they 
 were jabbering in a horrible jargon that was a mixture of 
 German, French, and negro, though there is no word to describe 
 it in any language. They were laughing loudly and making 
 each other taste their cooking. Christophers appearance made 
 them noisier than ever. They tried to push him out; but he 
 I struggled and succeeded in tasting the famous dish. He made 
 I a face. She said he was a barbarous Teuton and that it was 
 I no use putting herself out for him. 
 
 They went up to the little sitting-room when the table was 
 laid; there were only two places, for himself and Corinne. He 
 could not help asking her where her companions were. Corinne 
 waved her hands carelessly : 
 
 I don’t know.” 
 
 Don’t you sup together ? ” 
 
 1 Never ! We see enough of each other at the theater ! . . . 
 [ And it would be awful if we had to meet at meals ! . . .” 
 
 It was so different from German custom that he was sur- 
 I prised and charmed by it. 
 
 I thought,” he said, you were a sociable people ! ” 
 
 Well,” said she, am I not sociable ? ” 
 
 Sociable means living in society. We have to see each 
 
452 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 other! Men, women, children, we all belong to societies from 
 birth to death. We are always making societies: we eat, sing, 
 think in societies. When the societies sneeze, we sneeze too: 
 we don^t have a drink except with onr societies.^^ 
 
 ^^That must be amnsing,^^ said she. ^^Why not out of the | 
 same glass ? I 
 
 Brotherly, isn’t it?” 
 
 That for fraternity 1 I like being ' brotherly ’ with people 
 I like: not with the others • . . Pooh! That’s not society: 
 that is an ant heap.” 
 
 Well, you can imagine how happy I am here, for I think 
 as you do.” 
 
 Come to us, then ! ” 
 
 He asked nothing better. He questioned her about Paris 
 and the French. She told him much that was not perfectly 
 accurate. Her southern propensity for boasting was mixed 
 with an instinctive desire to shine before him. According to - 
 her, everybody in Paris was free: and as everybody in Paris : 
 was intelligent, everybody made good use of their liberty, and ’ 
 no one abused it. Everybody did what they liked : thought, , 
 believed, loved or did not love, as they liked ; nobody had any- i 
 thing to say about it. There nobody meddled with other people’s ! 
 beliefs, or spied on their consciences or tried to regulate their . 
 thoughts. There politicians never dabbled in literature or the . 
 arts, and never gave orders, jobs, and money to their friends ; 
 or clients. There little cliques never disposed of reputation or j 
 success, journalists were never bought; there n^en of letters | 
 never entered into controversies with the church, that could lead 
 to nothing. There criticism never stifled unknown talent, or | 
 exhausted its praises upon recognized talent. There sue- • 
 cess, success at all costs, did not justify the means, 
 and command the adoration of the public. There were only 
 gentle manners, kindly and sweet. There was never any bit- 
 terness, never any scandal. Everybody helped everybody else. 
 Every worthy newcomer was certain to find hands held out to 
 him and the way made smooth for him. Pure love of beauty .. 
 filled the chivalrous and disinterested souls of the French, and 
 they were only absurd in their idealism, which, in spite of their 
 acknowledged wit, made them the dupes of other nations. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 453 
 
 Christophe listened open-mouthed. It was certainly mar- 
 velous. Corinne marveled herself as she heard her words. 
 She had forgotten what she had told Christophe the day before 
 .about the difficulties of her past life. He gave no more thought 
 to it than she. 
 
 And yet Corinne was not only concerned with making the 
 Germans love her country: she wanted to make herself loved, 
 too. A whole evening without flirtation v/ould have seemed 
 austere and rather absurd to her. She made eyes at Chris- 
 tophe; but it was trouble wasted: he did not notice it. Chris- 
 tophe did not know what it was to flirt. He loved or did not 
 love. When he did not love he was miles from any thought of 
 love. He liked Corinne enormously. He felt the attraction 
 of her southern nature; it was so new to him. And her sweet- 
 ness and good humor, her quick and lively intelligence: many 
 more reasons than he needed for loving. But the spirit blows 
 where it listeth. It did not blow in that direction, and as for 
 playing at love, in lovers absence, the idea had never occurred 
 to him. 
 
 Corinne was amused by his coldness. She sat by his side 
 at the piano while he played the music he had brought with 
 him, and put her arm round his neck, and to follow the music 
 she leaned towards the keyboard, almost pressing her cheek 
 against his. He felt her hair touch his face, and quite close 
 to him saw the corner of her mocking eye, her pretty little 
 mouth, and the light down on her tip-tilted nose. She waited, 
 smiling — she waited. Christophe did not understand the invi- 
 tation. Corinne was in his way: that was all he thought of. 
 Mechanically he broke free from her and moved his chair. 
 And when, a moment later, he turned to speak to Corinne, he 
 i saw that she was choking with laughter: her cheeks were 
 dimpled, her lips were pressed together, and she seemed to be 
 holding herself in. 
 
 What is the matter ? he said, in his astonishment. 
 
 She looked at him and laughed aloud. 
 
 He did not understand. 
 
 ^^Why are you laughing he asked. ^^Did I say anything 
 funny 
 
 The more he insisted, the more she laughed. When she 
 
454 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 had almost finished she had only to look at his crestfallen ap- 
 pearance to break out again. She got up, ran to the sofa at 
 the other end of the room, and buried her face in the cushions 
 to laugh her fill; her whole body shook with it. He began to 
 laugh too, came towards her, and slapped her on the back. 
 When she had done laughing she raised her head, dried the 
 tears in her eyes, and held out her hands to him. 
 
 What a good boy you are ! she said. 
 
 No worse than another.’^ 
 
 She went on, shaking occasionally with laughter, still hold- 
 ing his hands. 
 
 ^^Frenchwomen are not serious she asked. (She pro- 
 nounced it: Frangouese/^) 
 
 ^^You are making fun of me,^^ he said good-humoredly. 
 
 She looked at him kindly, shook his hands vigorously, and 
 said: 
 
 Friends ? 
 
 Friends ! said he, shaking her hand. | 
 
 You will think of Corinette when she is gone? You won^t 
 be angry with the Frenchwoman for not being serious ? t 
 
 And Corinette won’t be angry with the barbarous Teuton | 
 for being so stupid ? ” 
 
 That is why she loves him. ... You will come and see : 
 her in Paris?” 
 
 It is a promise. . . . And she — she will write to him ? ” ; 
 
 I swear it. . . . You say : ^ I swear.’ ” { 
 
 swear.” | 
 
 No, not like that. You must hold up your hand.” She ; 
 recited the oath of the Horatii. She made him promise to 1 
 write a play for her, a melodrama, which could be translated ' 
 into French and played in Paris by her. She was going away 
 next day with her company. He promised to go and see her 
 again the day after at Frankfort, where they were giving a 
 performance. 
 
 They stayed talking for some time. She presented Chris- 
 tophe with a photograph in which she was much decolletee, 
 draped only in a garment fastening below her shoulders. They 
 parted gaily, and kissed like brother and sister. And, indeed, 
 once Corinne had seen that Christophe was fond of her, but 
 
MB 
 
 I 
 
 EEVOLT 455 
 
 not at all in love, she began to be fond of him, too, without 
 love, as a good friend. 
 
 Their sleep was not troubled by it. He could not see her 
 off next day, because he was occupied by a rehearsal. But on 
 the day following he managed to go to Frankfort as he had 
 promised. It was a few hours’ journey by rail. Corinne hardly 
 believed Christophe’s promise. But he had taken it seriously, 
 and when the performance began he was there. When he 
 knocked at her dressing-room door during the interval, she 
 gave a cry of glad surprise and threw her arms round his neck 
 with her usual exuberance. She was sincerely grateful to him 
 for having come. Unfortunately for Christophe, she was much 
 more sought after in the city of rich, intelligent Jews, who 
 could appreciate her actual beauty and her future success. Al- 
 most every minute there was a knock at the door, and it opened 
 to reveal men with heavy faces and quick eyes, who said the 
 conventional things with a thick accent. Corinne naturally 
 made eyes, and then she would go on talldng to Christophe in 
 the same affected, provoking voice, and that irritated him. And 
 he found no pleasure in the calm lack of modesty with which 
 she went on dressing in his presence, and the paint and grease 
 with which she larded her arms, throat, and face filled him 
 with profound disgust. He was on the point of going away 
 without seeing her again after the performance; but when he 
 said good-bye and begged to be excused from going to the 
 supper that was to be given to her after the play, she was so 
 hurt by it and so affectionate, too, that he could not hold out 
 against her. She had a time-table brought, so as to prove that 
 he could and must stay an hour with her. He only needed 
 to be convinced, and he was at the supper. He was even able 
 to control his annoyance with the follies that were indulged 
 in and his irritation at Corinne’s coquetries with all and 
 sundry. It was impossible to be angry with her. She was an 
 honest girl, without any moral principles, lazy, sensual, pleas- 
 ure-loving, childishly coquettish; but at the same time so loyal, 
 so kind, and all her faults were so spontaneous and so healthy 
 that it was only possible to smile at them and even to love 
 them. Christophe, who was sitting opposite, her, watched her 
 animation, her radiant eyes, her sticky lips, with their Ital- 
 
456 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ian smile — that smile in which there is kindness, subtlety, and 
 a sort of heavy greediness. He saw her more clearly than he 
 had yet done. Some of her features reminded him of Ada: 
 certain gestures, certain looks, certain sensual and rather coarse 
 tricks — the eternal feminine. But what he loved in her was her 
 southern nature, that generous nature which is not niggardly 
 v/ith its gifts, which never troubles to fashion drawing-room 
 beauties and literary cleverness, but harmonious creatures who 
 are made body and mind to grow in the air and the sun. When 
 he left she got up from the table to say good-bye to him away 
 from the others. They kissed and renewed their promises to 
 write and meet again. 
 
 He took the last train home. At a station the train coming 
 from the opposite direction was waiting. In the carriage 
 opposite his — a third-class compartment — Christophe saw the 
 young Frenchwoman who had been with him to the perform- ‘ 
 ance of Hamlet. She saw Christophe and recognized him. 
 They were both astonished. They bowed and did not move, 
 and dared not look again. And yet he had seen at once that 
 she was wearing a little traveling toque and had an old valise 
 by her side. It did not occur to him that she was leaving 
 the country. He thought she must be going away for a few ■ 
 days. He did not know whether he ought to speak to her. 
 
 He stopped, turned over in his mind what to say, and was 
 just about to lower the window of the carriage to address a ! 
 few words to her, when the signal was given. He gave up ^ 
 the idea. A few seconds passed before the train moved. They j 
 looked straight at each other. Each was alone, and their faces i 
 were pressed against the windows and they looked into each 1 
 other’s eyes through the night. They were separated by two i 
 windows. If they had reached out their hands they could 
 have touched each other. So near. So far. The carriages 
 shook heavily. She was still looking at him, shy no longer, 
 now that they were parting. They were so absorbed in look- 
 ing at each other that they never even thought of bowing for 
 the last time. She was slowly borne away. He saw her dis- 
 appear, and the train which bore her plunged into the night. 
 Like two circling worlds, they had passed close to each other in 
 infinite space, and now they sped apart perhaps for eternity. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 457 
 
 When she had disappeared he felt the emptiness that her 
 strange eyes had left in him, and he did not understand why; 
 but the emptiness was there. Sleepy, with eyes half-closed, 
 lying in a corner of the carriage, he felt her eyes looking into 
 his, and all other thoughts ceased, to let him feel them more 
 keenly. The image of Corinne fluttered outside his heart like 
 an insect breaking its wings against a window ; but he did 
 not let it in. 
 
 He found it again when he got out of the train on his arri- 
 val, when the keen night air and his walk through the streets 
 of the sleeping town had shaken off his drowsiness. He scowled 
 at the thought of the pretty actress, with a mixture of pleasure 
 and irritation, according as he recalled her affectionate ways 
 or her vulgar coquetries. 
 
 “ Oh ! these French people,” he growled, laughing softly, 
 while he was undressing quietly, so as not to waken his mother, 
 who was asleep in the next room. 
 
 A remark that he had heard the other evening in the box 
 occurred to him : 
 
 “ There are others also.” 
 
 At his first encounter with France she laid before him the 
 enigma of her double nature. But, like all Germans, he did 
 not trouble to solve it, and as he thought of the girl in the 
 train he said quietly: 
 
 “ She does not look like a Frenchwoman.” 
 
 As if a German could say what is French and what is 
 not. 
 
 French or not, she fllle^ his thoughts; for he woke in the 
 middle of the night with a pang; he had just remembered the 
 valise on the seat by the girl’s side; and suddenly the idea 
 that she had gone forever crossed his mind. The idea must 
 have come to him at the time, but he had not thought of it. It 
 filled him with a strange sadness. He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 “ What does it matter to me ? ” he said. “ It is not my 
 affair.” 
 
 He went to sleep. 
 
 But next day the first person he met when he went out was 
 Mannheim, who called him “ Bliicher,” and asked him if he 
 
458 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 had made up his mind to conquer all France. From the gar- 
 rulous newsmonger he learned that the story of the box had had 
 a success exceeding all Mannheim^s expectations. 
 
 Thanks to you ! Thanks to you ! cried Mannheim. You 
 are a great man. I am nothing compared with you.^^ 
 
 ^^What have I done?^^ said Christophe. 
 
 You are wonderful ! Mannheim replied. I am jealous 
 of you. To shut the box in the Griinebaums^ faces, and then 
 to ask the French governess instead of them — no, that takes 
 the cake ! I should never have thought of that ! 
 
 She was the Griinebaums^ governess ? said Christophe in 
 amazement. 
 
 ^^Yes. Pretend you don’t know, pretend to be innocent. 
 You’d better! . . . My father is beside himself. The Griine- 
 baums are in a rage! ... It was not for long: they have 
 sacked the girl.” 
 
 What ! ” cried Christophe. They have dismissed her ? 
 Dismissed her because of me?” 
 
 Didn’t you know?” said Mannheim. Didn’t she tell 
 you?” 
 
 Christophe was in despair. 
 
 ^^You mustn’t be angry, old man,” said Mannheim. ^^It 
 does not matter. Besides, one had only to expect that the 
 Griinebaums would find out . . .” 
 
 What ? ” cried Christophe. Find out what ? ” 
 
 That she was your mistress, of course ! ” 
 
 But I do not even know her. I don’t know who she is.” 
 
 Mannheim smiled, as if to say: 
 
 You take me for a fool.” 
 
 Christophe lost his temper and bade Mannheim do him the 
 honor of believing what he said. Mannheim said: 
 
 Then it is even more humorous.” 
 
 Christophe worried about it, and talked of going to the 
 Griinebaums and telling them the facts and justifying the 
 girl. Mannheim dissuaded him. 
 
 My dear fellow,” he said, anything you may say will 
 only convince them of the contrary. Besides, it is too late. 
 The girl has gone away.” 
 
 Christophe was utterly sick at heart and tried to trace the 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 459 
 
 young Frenchwoman. He wanted to write to her to beg her 
 pardon. But nothing was known of her. He applied to the 
 Grriinebaums, but they snubbed him. They did not know 
 themselves where she had gone, and they did not care. The 
 idea of the harm he had done in trying to do good tortured 
 Christopher he was remorseful. But added to his remorse 
 was a mysterious attraction, which shone upon him from the 
 eyes of the woman who was gone. Attraction and remorse 
 both seemed to be blotted out, engulfed in the flood of the 
 day's new thoughts. But they endured in the depths of his 
 heart. Christophe did not forget the woman whom he called 
 his victim. He had sworn to meet her again. He knew how 
 small were the chances of his ever seeing her again: and he 
 was sure that he would see her again. 
 
 As for Corinne, she never answered his letters. But three 
 months later, when he had given up expecting to hear from 
 her, he received a telegram of forty words of utter nonsense, 
 in which she addressed him in little familiar terms, and 
 asked ^^if they were still fond of each other." Then, after 
 nearly a year's silence, there came a scrappy letter scrawled in 
 her enormous childish zigzag writing, in which she tried to 
 play the lady, — a few affectionate, droll words. And there 
 she left it. She did not forget him, but she had no time 
 to think of him. 
 
 Still under the spell of Corinne and full of the ideas they 
 had exchanged about art, Christophe dreamed of writing the 
 music for a play in which Corinne should act and sing a few 
 ^irs — a sort of poetic melodrama. That form of art once so 
 much in favor in Germany, passionately admired by Mozart, 
 and practised by Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schu- 
 mann, and all the great classics, had fallen into discredit 
 since the triumph of Wagnerism, which claimed to have realized 
 the deflnite formula of the theater and music. The Wagnerian 
 pedants, not content with proscribing every new melodrama, 
 busied themselves with dressing up the old melodramas and 
 operas. They carefully effaced every trace of spoken dialogue and 
 wrote for Mozart, Beethoven, or Weber, recitations in their own 
 manner ; they were convinced that they were doing a service to 
 
460 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 the fame of the masters and filling out their thoughts by the 
 pious deposit of their dung upon masterpieces. 
 
 Christophe, ^ho had been made more sensible of the heavi- 
 ness, and often the ugliness, of Wagnerian declamation by 
 Corinne, had for some time been debating whether it was not 
 nonsense and an offense against nature to harness and yoke 
 together the spoken word and the word sung in the theater: 
 it was like harnessing a horse and a bird to a cart. Speech 
 and singing each had its rhythm. It was comprehensible that 
 an artist should sacrifice one of the two arts to the triumph 
 of that which he preferred. But to try to find a compromise 
 between them was to sacrifice both : it was to want speech no 
 longer to be speech, and singing no longer to be singing; to 
 want singing to let its vast flood be confined between the banks 
 of monotonous canals, to want speech to cloak its lovely naked 
 limbs with rich, heavy stuffs which must paralyze its gestures 
 and movements. Why not leave both with their spontaneity 
 and freedom of movement? Like a beautiful girl walking 
 tranquilly, lithely along a stream, dreaming as she goes: the 
 gay murmur of the water lulls her dreams, and unconsciously 
 she brings her steps and her thoughts in tune with the song 
 of the stream. So being both free, music and poesy would go 
 side by side, dreaming, their dreams mingling. Assuredly all 
 music was not good for such a union, nor all poetry. The oppo- 
 nents of melodrama had good ground for attack in the coarse- 
 ness of the attempts which had been made in that form, and of 
 the interpreters. Christophe had for long shared their dis- 
 like: the stupidity of the actors who delivered these recitations 
 spoken to an instrumental accompaniment, without bothering 
 about the accompaniment, without trying to merge their voices 
 in it, rather, on the contrary, trying to prevent anything being 
 heard but themselves, was calculated to revolt any musical ear. 
 But since he had tasted the beauty of Corinne’s harmonious 
 voice — ^that liquid and pure voice which played upon music 
 like a ray of light on water, which wedded every turn of a 
 melody, which was like the most fluid and most free singing, — 
 he had caught a glimpse of the beauty of a new art. 
 
 Perhaps he was right, but he was still too inexperienced to 
 venture without peril upon a form which — if it is meant to 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 461 
 
 be beautiful and really artistic — is the most difficult of all. 
 That art especially demands one essential condition, the per- 
 fect harmony of the combined efforts of the poet, the musicians, 
 and the actors. Christophe had no tremors about it : he 
 hurled himself blindly at an unl^nown art of which the laws 
 were only known to himself. 
 
 His first idea had been to clothe in music a fairy fantasy of 
 Shakespeare or an act of the second part of Faust, But the 
 theaters showed little disposition to make the experiment. It 
 would be too costly and appeared absurd. They were quite 
 willing to admit Christophers efficiency in music, but that he 
 should take upon himself to have ideas about poetry and the 
 theater made them smile. They did not take him seriously. 
 The world of music and the world of poesy were like two for- 
 eign and secretly hostile states. Christophe had to accept the 
 collaboration of a poet to be able to set foot upon poetic ter- 
 ritory, and he was not allowed to choose his own poet. He 
 would not have dared to choose himself. He did not trust his 
 taste in poetry. He had been told that he knew nothing about 
 it; and, indeed, he could not understand the poetry which was 
 admired by those about him. With his usual honesty and 
 stubbornness, he had tried hard sometimes to feel the beauty of 
 some of these works, but he had always been bewildered and a 
 little ashamed of himself. No, decidedly he was not a poet. 
 In truth, he loved passionately certain old poets, and that 
 consoled him a little. But no doubt he did not love them as 
 they should be loved. Had he not once expressed the ridicu- 
 lous idea that those poets only are great who remain great even 
 when they are translated into prose, and even into the prose 
 of a foreign language, and that words have no value apart 
 from the soul which they express? His friends had laughed 
 at him. Mannheim had called him a goose. He did not try 
 to defend himself. As every day he saw, through the example 
 of writers who talk of music, the absurdity of artists who 
 attempt to image any art other than their own, he resigned 
 himself — though a little incredulous at heart — to his incom- 
 petence in poetry, and he shut his eyes and accepted the judg- 
 ments of those whom he thought were better informed than 
 himself. So he let his friends of the Eeview impose one of 
 
462 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 their number on him, a great man of a decadent coterie, 
 Stephen von Hellmuth, who brought him an Iphigehia. It 
 was at the time when German poets (like their colleagues in 
 France) were recasting all the Greek tragedies. Stephen von 
 Hellmuth^s work was one of those astounding Graeco-German 
 plays in which Ibsen, Homer, and Oscar Wilde are compounded 
 — and, of course, a few manuals of archaeology. Agamemnon 
 was neurasthenic and Achilles impotent: they lamented their 
 condition at length, and naturally their outcries produced no 
 change. The energy of the drama was concentrated in the role 
 of Iphigenia— a nervous, hysterical, and pedantic Iphigenia, 
 who lectured the hero, declaimed furiously, laid bare for the 
 audience her Nietzschian pessimism and, glutted with death, cut 
 her throat, shrieking with laughter. 
 
 Nothing could be more contrary to Christophers mind than 
 Such pretentious, degenerate, Ostrogothic stuff, in Greek dress. 
 It was hailed as a masterpiece by everybody about him. He 
 was cowardly and was overpersuaded. In truth, he was burst- 
 ing with music and thinking much more of his music than 
 of the text. The text was a new bed into which to let loose 
 the flood of his passions. He was as far as possible from the 
 state of abnegation and intelligent impersonality proper to 
 musical translation of a poetic work. He was thinking only 
 of himself and not at all of the work. He never thought of 
 adapting himself to it. He was under an illusion: he saw in 
 the poem something absolutely different from what was actually 
 in it — just as when he was a child he used to compose in his 
 mind a play entirely different from that which was upon the 
 stage. 
 
 It was not until it came to rehearsal that he saw the real 
 play. One day he was listening to a scene, and he thought it 
 so stupid that he fancied the actors must be spoiling it, and 
 went so far as to explain it to them in the poet’s presence; but 
 also to explain it to the poet himself, who was defending his 
 interpretation. The author refused bluntly to hear him, and 
 said with some asperity that he thought he knew what he had 
 meant to write. Christophe would not give in, and maintained 
 that Hellmuth knew nothing about it. The general merriment 
 told him that he was making himself ridiculous. He said no 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 463 
 
 more, agreeing that after all it was not he who had written 
 the poem. Then he saw the appalling emptiness of the play 
 and was overwhelmed by it: he wondered how he could ever 
 have been persuaded to try it. He called himself an idiot and 
 tore his hair. He tried in vain to reassure himself by saying: 
 “You know nothing about it; it is not your business. Keep 
 to your music.” He was so much ashamed of certain idiotic 
 things in it, of the pretentious pathos, the crying falsity of 
 the words, the gestures and attitudes, that sometimes, when 
 he was conducting the orchestra, he hardly had the strength to 
 raise his baton. He wanted to go and hide in the prompter s 
 box. He was too frank and too little politic to conceal what 
 he thought. Every one noticed it: his friends, the actors, and 
 the author. Hellmuth said to him with a f rigiT smile : 
 
 “Is it not fortunate enough to please you?” 
 
 Christophe replied honestly : ^ 
 
 “ Truth to tell, no. I don’t understand it.” 
 
 “ Then you did not read it when you set it to music ? ” 
 
 “ Yes,” said Christophe naively, “ but I made a mistake. I 
 understood it differently.” 
 
 “ It is a pity you did not write what you understood your- 
 SGlf 
 
 “ Oh ! If only I could have done so ! ” said Christophe. 
 
 The poet was vexed, and in his turn criticised the music. 
 He complained that it was in the way and prevented his words 
 
 being heard. , . 
 
 If the poet did not understand the musician or the musician 
 the poet, the actors understood neither the one nor the other, 
 and did not care. They were only asking for sentences in their 
 parts on which to bring in their usual effects. They had no 
 idea of adapting their declamation to the formality of the piece 
 and the musical rhythm. They went one way, the music an- 
 other. It was as though they were constantly singing out of 
 tune. Christophe ground his teeth and shouted the note at 
 them until he was hoarse. They let him shout and went on 
 imperturbably, not even understanding what he wanted them 
 to do. 
 
 Christophe would have flung the whole thing up if the re- 
 hearsals had not been so far advanced, and he had not been 
 
464 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 bound to go on by fear of legal proceedings. Mannheim, to 
 whom he confided his discouragement, laughed at him; 
 
 " What is it?” he asked. “ It is all going well. You don’t 
 understand each other? What does that matter? Who has 
 ever understood his work but the author? It is a toss-up 
 whether he understands it himself!” 
 
 Christophe was worried about the stupidity of the poem, 
 which, he said, would ruin the music. Mannheim made no 
 difficulty about admitting that there was no common sense in 
 the poem and that Hellmuth was “ a muff,” but he would not 
 worry about him : Hellmuth gave good dinners and had a 
 pretty wife. What more did criticism want ? 
 
 Christophe shrugged his shoulders and said that he had 
 no time to listen to nonsense. 
 
 “ It is not nonsense ! ” said Mannheim, laughing. “ How 
 serious people are ! They have no idea of what matters in 
 life.” 
 
 And he advised Christophe not to bother so much about Hell- 
 muth’s business, but to attend to his own. He wanted him 
 to advertise a little. Christophe refused indignantly. To a 
 reporter who came and asked for a history of his life, he 
 replied furiously : 
 
 “ It is not your affair ! ” * 
 
 And when they asked for his photograph for a review, he 
 stamped with rage and shouted that he was not, thank God! 
 an emperor, to have his face passed from hand to hand. It 
 was impossible to bring him into touch with influential people. 
 He never replied to invitations, and when he had been forced 
 by any chance to accept, he would forget to go or would go 
 with such a bad grace that he seemed to have set himself to 
 be disagreeable to everybody. 
 
 But the climax came when he quarreled with his review, two 
 days before the performance. 
 
 The thing was bound to happen. Mannheim had gone on 
 revising Christophers articles, and he no longer scrupled about 
 deleting whole lines of criticism and replacing them with com- 
 pliments. 
 
 One day, out visiting, Christophe met a certain virtuoso — a 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 465 
 
 foppish pianist whom he had slaughtered. The man came and 
 thanked him with a smile that showed all his white teeth. He 
 replied brutally that there was no reason for it. The other 
 insisted and poured forth e.xpressions of gratitude. Christophe 
 cut him short by saying that if he was satisfied with the article 
 that was his affair, but that the article had certainly not been 
 written with a view to pleasing him. And he turned his back 
 on him. The virtuoso thought him a kindly boor and went 
 away laughing. But Christophe remembered having received a 
 card of thanks from another of his victims, and a suspicion 
 flashed upon him. He went out, bought the last number of the 
 Eeview at a news-stand, turned to his article, and read . . . 
 At first he wondered if he were going mad. Then he under- 
 stood, and, mad with rage, he ran to the office of the Dionysos. 
 
 Waldhaus and Mannheim were there, talking to an actress 
 whom they knew. They had no need to ask Christophe what 
 brought him. Throwing a number of the Eeview on the table, 
 Christophe let fly at them without stopping to take breath, with 
 extraordinary violence, shouting, calling them rogues, rascals, 
 forgers, thumping on the floor with a chair. Mannheim began 
 to laugh. Christophe tried to kick him. Mannheim took 
 refuge behind the table and rolled with laughter. But Wald- 
 haus took it very loftily. With dignity, formally, he tried to 
 make himself heard through the row, and said that he would 
 not allow any one to talk to him in such a tone, that Christophe- 
 should hear from him, and he held out his card. Christophe 
 flung it in his face. 
 
 “ Mischief-maker ! — I don’t need your card to know what 
 you are. . . . You are a rascal and a forger! . . . And you 
 think I would fight with you ... a thrashing is all you de- 
 serve! . . .” 
 
 His voice could be heard in the street. People stopped to 
 listen. Mannheim closed the windows. The actress tried to 
 escape, but Christophe was blocking the way. Waldhaus was 
 pale and choking. Mannheim was stuttering and stammering 
 and trying to reply. Christophe did not let them speak. He let 
 loose upon them every expression he could think of, and never 
 stopped until he was out of breath and had come to an end of 
 his insults. Waldhaus and Mannheim only found their tongues 
 
466 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 after he had gone. Mannheiln quickly recovered himself: 
 insults slipped from him like water from a duck's back. But 
 Waldhaus was still sore: his dignity had been outraged, and 
 what made the affront more mortifying was that there had been 
 witnesses. He would never forgive it. His colleagues joined 
 chorus with him. Mannheim only of the staff of the Eeview 
 was not angry with Christophe. He had had his fill of enter- 
 tainment out of him : it did not seem to him a heavy price 
 to pay for his pound of flesh, to suffer a few violent words. It 
 had been a good joke. If he had been the butt of it he would 
 have been the first to laugh. And so he was quite ready 
 to shake hands with Christophe as though nothing had hap- 
 pened. But Christophe was more rancorous and rejected all 
 advances. Mannheim did not care. Christophe was a toy 
 from which he had extracted all |;he amusement possible. He 
 was beginning to want a new puppet. From that very day all 
 was over between them. But that did not prevent Mannheim 
 still saying, whenever Christophe was mentioned in his pres- 
 ence, that they were intimate friends. And perhaps he thought 
 they were. ^ 
 
 Two days after the quarrel the first performance of Iphi- ? 
 genia took place. It was an utter failure. Waldhaus’ review • 
 praised the poem and made no mention of the music. The 
 other papers and reviews made merry over it. They laughed 
 and hissed. The piece was withdrawn after the third perform- ; 
 ance, but the jokes at its expense did not disappear so quickly. < 
 People were only too glad of the opportunity of having a fling | 
 at Christophe, and for several weeks the Iphigenia remained \ 
 an unfailing subject for joking. They knew that Christophe ^ 
 had no weapon of defense, and they took advantage of it. The i 
 only thing which held them back a little was his position at 
 the Court. Although his relation with the Grand Duke had 
 become quite cold, for the Prince had several times made re- 
 marks to which he had paid no attention whatever, he still 
 went to the Palace at intervals, and still enjoyed, in the eye 
 of the public, a sort of official protection, though it was more 
 visionary than real. He took upon himself to destroy even 
 that last support. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 467 
 
 He suffered from the criticisms. They were concerned 
 not only with his music, but also with his idea of a new 
 form of art, which the writers did not take the trouble 
 to understand. It was very easy to travesty it and make 
 fun of it. Christophe was not yet wise enough to know that 
 the best reply to dishonest critics is to make none and to go 
 on working. For some months past he had fallen into the 
 bad habit of not letting any unjust attack go unanswered. He 
 wrote an article in which he did not spare certain of his adver- 
 saries. The two papers to which he took it returned it with 
 ironically polite excuses for being unable to publish it. Chris- 
 tophe stuck to his guns. He remembered that the socialist 
 paper in the town had made advances to him. He knew one 
 of the editors. They used to meet and talk occasionally. Chris- 
 tophe was glad to find some one who would talk freely about 
 power, the army and oppression and archaic prejudices. But 
 they could not go far with each other, for the socialist always 
 came back to Karl Marx, about whom Christophe cared' not a 
 rap. Moreover, Christophe used to find in his speeches about the 
 free man — besides a materialism which was not much to his 
 taste — a pedantic severity and a despotism of thought, a secret 
 cult of force, an inverse militarism, all of which did not sound 
 very different from what he heard every day in German. 
 
 However, he thought of this man and his paper when he 
 saw all other doors in journalism closed to him. He knew that 
 his doing so would cause a scandal. The paper was violent, 
 malignant, and always being condemned. But as Christophe 
 never read it, he only thought of the boldness of its ideas, of 
 which he was not afraid, and not of the baseness of its tone, 
 which would have repelled him. Besides, he was so angry at 
 seeing the other papers in alliance to suppress him that perhaps 
 he would have gone on even if he had been warned. He wanted 
 to show people that he was not so easily got rid of. So he 
 took his article to the socialist paper, which received it with 
 open arms. The next day the article appeared, and the paper 
 announced in large letters that it had engaged the support of 
 the young and talented maestro, Jean-Christophe Krafft, whose 
 keen sympathy with the demands of the working classes was 
 well known. 
 
468 
 
 J^AN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Christophe read neither the note nor the article, for he had 
 gone out before dawn for a walk in the country, it being Sun- 
 day. He was in fine fettle. As he saw the sun rise he shouted, | 
 laughed, yodeled, leaped, and danced. No more review, no | 
 more criticisms to do ! It was spring and there was once more 
 the music of the heavens and the earth, the most beautiful of 
 all. No more dark concert rooms, stuffy and smelly, unpleas- 
 ant people, dull performers. Now the marvelous song of the 
 murmuring forests was to be heard, and over the fields like 
 waves there passed the intoxicating scents of life, breaking 
 through the crust of the earth and issuing from the grave. 
 
 He went home with his head buzzing with light and music, 
 and his mother gave him a letter which had been brought from 
 the Palace while he was away. The letter was in an imper- 
 sonal form, and told Herr Krafft that he was to go to the 
 Palace that morning. The morning was past, it was nearly - 
 one o’clock. Christophe was not put about. 
 
 It is too late now,” he said. It will do to-morrow.” ; 
 But his mother said anxiously: * 
 
 No, no. You cannot put off an appointment with His 
 Highness like that: you must go at once. Perhaps it is a | 
 matter of importance.” ? 
 
 Christophe shrugged his shoulders. ; 
 
 Important! As if those people could have anything im- ■ 
 portant to say ! . . . He wants to tell me his ideas about music. , 
 That will be funny ! . . . If only he has not taken it into his • 
 head to rival Siegfried MeyeP and wants to show me a ] 
 Hymn to Aegis! I vow that I will not spare him. I shall say: \ 
 ^ Stick to politics. You are master there. You will always be ‘ 
 right. But beware of art ! In art you are seen without your ! 
 plumes, your helmet, your uniform, your money, your titles, 
 your ancestors, your policemen — and just think for a moment 
 what will be left of you then ! ’ ” 
 
 Poor Louisa took him quite seriously and raised her hands 
 in horror. 
 
 You won’t say that ! . . . You are mad ! Mad ! ” 
 
 It amused him to make her uneasy by playing upon her 
 
 nickname given by German pamphleteers to H. M. (His Ma- 
 jesty) the Emperor. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 469 
 
 credulity until he became so extravagant that Louisa began 
 to see that he was making fun of her. 
 
 You are stupid, my boy ! 
 
 He laughed and kissed her. He was in a wonderfully good 
 humor. On his walk he had found a beautiful musical theme, 
 and he felt it frolicking in him like a fish in water. He re- 
 fused to go to the Palace until he had had something to eat. 
 He was as hungry as an ape. Louisa then supervised his dress- 
 ing, for he was beginning to tease her again, pretending that 
 he was quite all right as he was with his old clothes and dusty 
 boots. But he changed them all the same, and cleaned his 
 boots, whistling like a blackbird and imitating all the instru- 
 ments in an orchestra. When he had finished his mother in- 
 spected him and gravely tied his tie for him again. For once 
 in a way he was very patient, because he was pleased with him- 
 self — which was not very usual. He went off saying that he 
 was going to elope with Princess Adelaide — ^the Grand Duke’s 
 daughter, quite a pretty woman, who was married to a German 
 princeling and had come to stay with her parents for a few 
 weeks. She had shown sympathy for Christophe when he was 
 a child, and he had a soft side for her. Louisa used to declare 
 that he was in love with her, and he would pretend to be so in 
 fun. 
 
 He did not hurry ; he dawdled and looked into the shops, and 
 stopped to pat some dog that he knew as it lay on its side and 
 yawned in the sun. He jumped over the harmless railings 
 which inclosed the Palace square — a great empty square, sur- 
 rounded with houses, with two little fountains, two symmetrical 
 bare flower-beds, divided, as by a parting, by a gravel path, 
 carefully raked and bordered by orange trees in tubs. In the 
 middle was the bronze statue of some unknown Grand Duke in 
 the costume of Louis Philippe, on a pediment adorned at the 
 four corners by allegorical figures representing the Virtues. 
 On a seat one solitary man was dozing over his paper. Behind 
 the silly moat of the earthworks of the Palace two sleepy cannon 
 1 yawned upon the sleepy town. Christophe laughed at the 
 whole thing. 
 
 He entered the Palace without troubling to take on a more 
 I official manner. At most he stopped humming, but his thoughts 
 
470 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 went dancing on inside him. He threw his hat on the table 
 in the hall and familiarly greeted the old nsher, whom he had I 
 known since he was a child. (The old man had been there ■ 
 on the day when Christophe had first entered the Palace, on the 
 evening when he had seen Hassler.) But to-day the old man, 
 who always used to reply good-humoredly to Christophers dis- 
 respectful sallies, now seemed a little haughty. Christophe 
 paid no heed to it. A little farther on, in the ante-chamber, he 
 met a clerk of the chancery, who was usually full of conver- 
 sation and very friendly. He was surprised to see him hurry 
 past him to avoid having to talk. However, he did not attach 
 any significance to it, and went on and asked to be shown in. 
 
 He went in. They had just finished dinner. His Highness 
 was in one of the drawing-rooms. He was leaning against the 
 mantelpiece, smoking, and talking to his guests, among whom ^ 
 Christophe saw his princess, who was also smoking. She was 
 lying back in an armchair and talking in a loud voice to some ' 
 officers who made a circle about her. The gathering was lively. ; 
 They were all very merry, and when Christophe entered he 
 heard the Grand Duke’s thick laugh. But he stopped dead t 
 when he saw Christophe. He growled and pounced on him. J 
 ^^Ah! There you are!” he said. ^^You have condescended , 
 to come at last? Do you think you can go on making fun of : 
 me any longer? You’re a blackguard, sir!” 
 
 Christophe was so staggered by this brutal attack that it ! 
 was some time before he could utter a word. He was thinking ? 
 that he was only late, and that that could not have provoked \ 
 such violence. He murmured: ; 
 
 What have I done. Your Highness? ” « 
 
 His Highness did not listen and went on angrily : ‘ 
 
 Be silent ! I will not be insulted by a blackguard ! ” Chris- 
 tophe turned pale, and gulped so as to try to speak, for he 
 was choking. He made an effort, and said: 
 
 ^^Your Highness, you have no right — you have no right to 
 insult me without telling me what I have done.” ^ 
 
 The Grand Duke turned to his secretary, who produced a 
 paper from his pocket and held it out to him. He was in such 
 a state of exasperation as could not be explained only by his i 
 anger : the fumes of good wine had their share in it, too. He ^ 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 471 
 
 lame and stood in front of Christophe, and like a toreador with 
 lis cape, furiously waved the crumpled newspaper in his face 
 ind shouted : 
 
 “Your muck, sir! . . . You deserve to have your nose 
 •ubbed in it I ” 
 
 Christophe recognized the socialist paper. 
 
 “ I don’t see what harm there is in it,” he said. 
 
 " What ! What ! ” screamed the Grand Duke. “ You are im- 
 mdent! . . . This rascally paper, which insults me from day 
 ;o day, and spews out filthy insults upon me ! . . .” 
 
 “ Sire,” said Christophe, “ I have not read it.” 
 
 You lie ! ” shouted the Grand Duke. 
 
 “ You shall not call me a liar,” said Christophe. “ I have 
 lot read it. I am only concerned with reviews, and besides, I 
 lave the right to write in whatever paper I like.” 
 
 “You have no right but to hold your tongue. I have been 
 too kind to you. I have heaped kindness upon you, you and 
 yours, in spite of your misconduct and your father’s, which 
 would have justified me in cutting you off. I forbid you to 
 50 on writing in a paper which is hostile to me. And further ; 
 I forbid you altogether to write anything in future without my 
 authority. I have had enough of your musical polemics. I 
 will not allow any one who enjoys my patronage to spend his 
 time in attacking everything which is dear to people of taste 
 and feeling, to all true Germans. You would do better to 
 write better music, or if that is impossible, to practise your 
 scales and exercises. I don’t want to have anything to do with a 
 musical Bebel who amuses himself by decrying all our national 
 glories and upsetting the minds of the people. We know what 
 is good, thank God. We do not need to wait for you to tell 
 us. Go to your piano, sir, or leave us in peace ! ” 
 
 Standing face to face with Christophe the fat man glared 
 at him insultingly. Christophe was livid, and tried to speak. 
 His lips moved ; he stammered ; 
 
 “ I am not your slave. I shall say what I like and write 
 what I like ...” 
 
 He choked. He was almost weeping with shame and rage. 
 iHis legs were trembling. He jerked his elbow and upset an 
 ornament on a table by his side. He felt that he was in a 
 
472 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ridiculous position. He heard people laughing. He looked 
 down the room, and as through a mist saw the princess watch- 
 ing the scene and exchanging ironically commiserating remarks 
 with her neighbors. He lost count of what exactly happened. 
 The Grand Duke shouted. Christophe shouted louder than he 
 without knowing what he said. The Prince’s secretary and 
 another official came towards him and tried to stop him. He 
 pushed them away, and while he talked he waved an ash-tray 
 which he had mechanically picked up from the table against 
 which he was leaning. He heard the secretary say : 
 
 Put it down ! Put it down ! ” 
 
 And he heard himsdf shouting inarticulately and knocking 
 on the edge of the table with the ash-tray. 
 
 Go ! ” roared the Grand Duke, beside himself with rage. 
 Go ! Go ! I’ll have you thrown out ! ” 
 
 The officers had come up to the Prince and were trying to ' 
 calm him. The Grand Duke looked apoplectic. His eyes were-; 
 starting from his head, he shouted to them to throw the rascal ; 
 out. Christophe saw red. He longed to thrust his fist in the 5 
 Grand Duke’s face ; but he was crushed under a weight of con- 
 fiicting feelings : shame, fury, a remnant of shyness, of German , 
 loyalty, traditional respect, habits of humility in the Prince’s ^ 
 presence. He tried to speak ; he could not. He tried to move ; ; 
 he could not. He could not see or hear. He suffered them 
 to push him along and left the room. . 
 
 He passed through the impassive servants who had come up ; 
 to the door, and had missed nothing of the quarrel. He had i 
 to go thirty yards to cross the ante-chamber, and it seemed a ^ 
 lifetime. The corridor grew longer and longer as he walked ; 
 up it. He would never get out ! . . . The light of day which ; 
 he saw shining downstairs through the glass door was his 
 haven. He went stumbling down the stairs. He forgot that 
 he was bareheaded. The old usher reminded him to take his 
 hat. He had to gather all his forces to leave the castle, cross 
 the court, reach his home. His teeth were chattering when he 
 opened the door. His mother was terrified by his face and his 
 trembling. He avoided her and refused to answer her ques- 
 tions. He went up to his room, shut himself in, and lay down. 
 He was shaking so that he could not undress. His breathing 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 47a 
 
 came in jerks and his whole body seemed shattered. . . . Oh ! 
 If only he could see no more, feel no more, no longer have 
 to bear with his wretched body, no longer have to struggle 
 against ignoble life, and fall, fall, breathless, without thought, 
 and no longer be anywhere! ... With frightful difficulty 
 he tore off his clothes and left them on the ground, and 
 then flung himself into his bed and drew the coverings over 
 him. There was no sound in the room save that of the little 
 iron be^4 rattling on the tiled floor. 
 
 Louisa listened at the door. She knocked in vain. She called 
 softly. There was no reply. She waited, anxiously listening; 
 through the silence. Then she went away. Once or twice 
 during the day she came and listened, and again at night, before 
 she went to bed. Day passed, and the night. The house was 
 still. Christophe was shaking with fever. Every now and 
 then he wept, and in the night he got up several times and 
 shook his fist at the wall. About two o’clock, in an access of 
 madness, he got up from his bed, sweating and half naked. He 
 wanted to go and kill the Grand Duke. He was devoured by 
 hate and shame. His body and his heart writhed in the fire of 
 it. Nothing of all the storm in him could be heard outside; 
 not a word, not a sound. With clenched teeth he fought it 
 down and forced it back into himself. 
 
 Next morning he came down as usual. He was a wreck. He 
 said nothing and his mother dared not question him. She* 
 knew, from the gossip of the neighborhood. All day he stayed 
 sitting by the fire, silent, feverish, and with bent head, like a 
 little old man. And when he was alone he wept in silence. 
 
 In the' evening the editor of the socialist paper came to see 
 him. Naturally he had heard and wished to have details. 
 Christophe was touched by his coming, and interpreted it 
 naively as a mark of sympathy and a desire for forgiveness 
 on the part of those who had compromised him. He made a 
 point of seeming to regret nothing and he let himself go and 
 said everything that was rankling in him. It was some solace 
 for him to talk freely to a man who shared his hatred of oppres- 
 sion. The other urged him on. He saw a good chance for his 
 journal in the event, and an opportunity for a scandalous ar* 
 
474 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 tide, for which he expected Christophe to provide him with 
 material if he did not write it himself j for he thought that 
 after such an explosion the Court musician would put his very 
 considerable political talents and his no less considerable little 
 tit-bits of secret information about the Court at the service 
 of “the cause.” As he did not plume himself on his subtlety 
 he presented the thing rawly in the crudest light. Christophe 
 started. He declared that he would write nothing and said that 
 any attack on the Grand Duke that he might make would be 
 interpreted as an act of personal vengeance, and that he would 
 be more reserved now that he was free than when, not being 
 free, he ran some risk in saying what he thought. The journal- 
 ist could not understand his scruples. He thought Christophe 
 narrow and clerical at heart, but he also decided that Christophe 
 was afraid. He said: 
 
 “Oh, well! Leave it to us. I will write it myself. You 
 need not bother about it.” 
 
 Christophe begged him to say nothing, but he had no means 
 of restraining him. Besides, the journalist declared that the 
 affair was not his concern only: the insult touched the paper, 
 which had the right to avenge itself. There was nothing to be 
 said to that. All that Christophe could do was to ask him on 
 his word of honor not to abuse certain of his confidences which 
 had been made to his friend and not to the journalist. The 
 other made no difficulty about that. Christophe was not reas- 
 sured by it. He knew too well how imprudent he had been. 
 When he was left alone he turned over everything that he hacj 
 said, and shuddered. Without hesitating for a moment, h^ 
 wrote to the journalist imploring him once more not to repeat 
 what he had confided to him. (The poor wretch repeated ii 
 in part himself in the letter.) 
 
 Next day, as he opened the paper with feverish haste, the 
 first thing he read was his story at great length on the front 
 page. Everything that he had said on the evening before was 
 immeasurably enlarged, having suffered that peculiar deforma- 
 tion which everything has to suffer in its passage through the 
 mind of a journalist. The article attacked the Grand Duke 
 and the Court with low invective. Certain details which it 
 gave were too personal to Christophe, too obviously known onlj 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 475 - 
 
 ) him, for the article not to be attributed to him in its en- 
 rety. 
 
 Christophe was crushed by this fresh blow, xis he read a 
 old sweat came out on his face. When he had finished he was 
 umfounded. He wanted to rush to the office of the paper, 
 ut his mother withheld him, not unreasonably being fearful of 
 is violence. He was afraid of it himself. He felt that if he 
 'ent there he would do something foolish; and he stayed — -and 
 id a very foolish thing. He wrote an indignant letter to the 
 ournalist in which he reproached him for his conduct in insult- 
 ig terms, disclaimed the article, and broke with the party, 
 ’he disclaimer did not appear. 
 
 Christophe wrote again to the paper, demanding that his 
 ;tter should be published. They sent him a copy of his first , 
 jtter, written on the night of the interview and confirming it. 
 ’hey asked if they were to publish that, too. He felt that he 
 ras in their hands. Thereupon he unfortunately met the indis- 
 reet interviewer in the street. He could not help telling him of 
 lis contempt for him. Next day the paper, without a spark of 
 hame, published an insulting paragraph about the servants of 
 he Court, who even when they are dismissed remain servants 
 ,nd are incapable of being free. A few allusions to recent 
 vents left no room for doubt that Christophe was meant. 
 
 When it became evident to everybody that Christophe had 
 10 single support, there suddenly cropped up a host of enemies 
 vhose existence he had never suspected. All those whom he- 
 lad offended, directly or indirectly, either by personal criticism 
 )r by attacking their ideas and taste, now took the offensive 
 ind avenged themselves with interest. The general public 
 vhom Christophe had tried to shake out of their apathy were 
 juite pleased to see the insolent young man, who had pre- 
 lumed to reform opinion and disturb the rest of people of 
 moperty, taken down a peg. Christophe was in the water. 
 Sverybody did their best to duck him. 
 
 They did not come down upon him all at once. One tried’ 
 irst, to spy out the land. Christophe made no response, and 
 le struck more lustily. Others followed, and then the whole- 
 rang of them. Some joined in the sport simply for fun, like 
 
476 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 puppies who think it funny to leave their mark in inappropriate i 
 places. They were the flying squadron of incompetent journal- 
 ists, who, knowing nothing, try to hide their ignorance by be- 
 lauding the victors and belaboring the vanquished. Others 
 brought the weight of their principles and they shouted like 
 •deaf people. Nothing was left of anything when they had 
 passed. They were the critics — with the criticism which kills. 
 
 Fortunately for Christophe, he did not read the papers. A 
 few devoted friends took care to send him the most insulting. 
 But he left them in a heap on his desk and never thought of 
 opening them. It was only towards the end of it that his eyes 
 were attracted by a great red mark round an article. He 
 read that his Lieder were like the roaring of a wild beast ; that 
 his symphonies seemed to have come from a madhouse; that 
 his art was hysterical, his harmony spasmodic, as a change 
 from the dryness of his heart and the emptiness of his thought. 
 The critic, who was well known, ended with these words: 
 
 “Herr Kraflt as a journalist has lately given astounding; 
 proof of his style and taste, which roused irresistible merriment 5 
 in musical circles. He was then given the friendly advice, 
 rather to devote himself to composition. But the latest products f 
 of his muse have shown that this advice, though well-meant, 
 was bad. Herr Krafft should certainly devote himself to jour- 
 nalism.” 
 
 After reading the article, which prevented Christophe work-; 
 ing the whole morning, naturally he began to look for the other, 
 hostile papers, and became utterly demoralized. But Louisa,) 
 who had a mania for moving everything lying about, by way'] 
 of “ tidying up,” had already burned them. He was irritated at* 
 first and then comforted, and he held out the last of the- 
 papers to her, and said that she had better do the same with 
 that. 
 
 Other rebuffs hurt him more. A quartette which he had 
 sent in manuscript to a well-known society at Frankfort was 
 rejected unanimously and returned without explanation. An 
 overture which an orchestra at Cologne seemed disposed to per- 
 form was returned after a month as unplayable. But the worst 
 of all was inflicted on him by an orchestral society in the town. 
 The Kapellmeister, H. Euphrat, its conductor, was quite a 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 477 
 
 good musician, but like many conductors, he had no curiosity 
 of mind. He suffered (or rather he carried to extremes) the 
 laziness peculiar to his class, which consists in going on and 
 on investigating familiar works, while it shuns any really new 
 work like the plague. He was never tired of organizing Beetho- 
 ven, Mozart, or Schumann festivals : in conducting these works 
 he had only to let himself be carried along by the purring of 
 the familiar rhythms. On the other hand, contemporary music 
 was intolerable to him. He dared not admit it and pretended 
 to be friendly towards young talent; in fact, whenever he was 
 brought a work built on the old lines — a sort of hotch-potch of 
 works that had been new fifty years before — he would receive 
 it very well, and would even produce it ostentatiously and force it 
 apon the public. It did not disturb either his effects or the way 
 in which the public was accustomed to be moved. On the other 
 band, he was filled with a mixture of contempt and hatred for 
 anything which threatened to disturb that arrangement and 
 put him to extra trouble. Contempt would predominate if 
 the innovator had no chance of emerging from obscurity. But 
 if there were any danger of his succeeding, then hatred would 
 predominate — of course until the moment when he had gained 
 an established success. 
 
 Christophe was not yet in that position: far from it. And 
 30 he was much surprised when he was informed, by indirect 
 Dvertures, that Herr H. Euphrat would be very glad to pro- 
 duce one of his compositions. It was all the more unex- 
 pected as he knew that the Kapellmeister was an intimate friend 
 3f Brahms and others whom he had maltreated in his criticisms. 
 Being honest himself, he credited his adversaries with the 
 same generous feelings which he would have had himself. He 
 supposed that now that he was down they wished to show him 
 :hat they were above petty spite. He was touched by it. He 
 wrote effusively to Herr Euphrat and sent him a symphonic 
 ooem. The conductor replied through his secretary coldly but 
 oolitely, acknowledging the receipt of his work, and adding 
 hat, in accordance with the rules of the society, the symphony 
 vould be given out to the orchestra immediately and put to 
 he test of a general rehearsal before it could be accepted for 
 oublic hearing. A rule is a rule. Christophe had to bow to it. 
 

 478 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 . 
 
 though it was a pure formality which served to weed out the 
 lucubrations of amateurs which were sometimes a nuisance. 
 
 A few weeks later Christophe was told that his composition 
 was to be'rehearsed. On principle everything was done privately 
 and even the author was not permitted to be present at the 
 rehearsal. But by a generally agreed indulgence the author ] 
 was always admitted; only he did not show himself. Every- 
 body knew it and everybody pretended not to know it. On 
 ihe appointed day one of his friends brought Christophe to 
 the hall, where he sat at the back of a box. He was surprised 
 to see that at this private rehearsal the hall — at least the ground 
 floor seats — were almost all filled ; a crowd of dilettante idlers 
 and critics moved about and chattered to each other. The 
 orchestra had to ignore their presence. 
 
 They began with the Brahms Rhapsody for alto, chorus of 
 male voices, and orchestra on a fragment of the Earzreise. 
 im Winter of Goethe. Christophe, who detested the majestic^ 
 sentimentality of the work, thought that perhaps the “ Brahm- 
 ins ” had introduced it politely to avenge themselves by forcing , 
 him to hear a composition of which he had written irreverently. 
 The idea made him laugh, and his good humour increased; 
 when after the Rhapsody there came two other productions by 
 known musicians whom he had taken to task ; there seemed to ^ 
 be no doubt about their intentions. And while he could not: 
 help making a face at it he thought that after all it was quite ^ 
 fair tactics; and, failing the music, he appreciated the joke. ^ 
 It even amused him to applaud ironically with the audience, j 
 which made manifest its enthusiasm for Brahms and his like. • 
 
 At last it came to Christophe’s symphony. He saw from 
 the way the orchestra and thq people in the hall were looking at 
 his box that they were aware of his presence. He hid himself. 
 He waited with the catch at his heart which every musician 
 feels at the moment when the conductor’s wand is raised and 
 the waters of the music gather in silence before bursting their 
 dam. He had never yet heard his work played. How would 
 the creatures of his dreams live? How would their voices 
 sound? He felt their roaring within him; and he leaned over 
 the abyss of sounds waiting fearfully for what should come 
 forth. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 479 
 
 What did come forth was a nameless thing, a shapeless hotch- 
 potch. Instead of the bold columns which were to support the 
 front of the building the chords came crumbling down like a 
 building in ruins; there was nothing to be seen but the dust 
 of mortar. For a moment Christophe was not quite sure 
 whether they were really playing his work. He cast back for the 
 train, the rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize it; 
 it went on babbling and hiccoughing like a drunken man 
 clinging close to the wall, and he was overcome with shame, 
 as though he had himself been seen in that condition. It was 
 of no avail to think that he had not written such stuff; when 
 an idiotic interpreter destroys a man’s thoughts he has always 
 a moment of doubt when he asks himself in consternation if he 
 is himself responsible for it. The audience never asks such 
 a question; the audience believes in the interpreter, in the 
 singers, in the orchestra whom they are accustomed to hear as 
 they believe in their newspaper; they cannot make a mistake; 
 if they say absurd things, it is the absurdity of the author. This 
 audience was the less inclined to doubt because it liked to 
 believe. Christophe tried to persuade himself that the Kapell- 
 meister was aware of the hash and would stop the or- 
 chestra and begin again. The instruments were not playing 
 together. The horn had missed his beat and had come in a 
 bar too late; he went on for a few minutes, and then stopped 
 quietly to clean his instrument. Certain passages for the oboe 
 had absolutely disappeared. It was impossible for the most 
 skilled ear to pick up the thread of the musical idea, or even 
 to imagine that there was one. Fantastic instrumentations, hu- 
 moristic sallies became grotesque through the coarseness of the 
 execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of an idiot, of 
 a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his hair. 
 He tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held 
 him back, assuring him that the Herr Kapellmeister must surely 
 see the faults of the execution and would put everything right 
 — that Christophe must not show himself and that if he made 
 any remark it would have a very bad effect. He made Chris- 
 tophe sit at the very back of the box. Christophe obeyed, but he 
 beat his head with his fists; and every fresh monstrosity drew 
 from him a groan of indignation and misery. 
 
480 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 "The wretches! The wretches! . . 
 
 He groaned, and squeezed his hands tight to keep himself 
 from crying out. 
 
 Now mingled with the wrong notes there came up to him 
 the muttering of the audience, who were beginning to be rest- 
 less. At first it was only a tremor; but soon Christophe was 
 left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of 
 the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not con- 
 ceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music 
 was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became 
 general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif 
 which the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only 
 the Kapellmeister went on through the uproar inperturbably 
 beating time. 
 
 At last they reached the end (the best things come to an 
 end). It was the turn of the audience. They exploded with 
 delight, an explosion which lasted for several minutes. Some ■ 
 hissed; others applauded ironically; the wittiest of all shouted ^ 
 " Encore ! A bass voice coming from a stage box began to • 
 imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers followed suit and ^ 
 imitated it also. Some one shouted " Author ! It was long i 
 since these witty folk had been so highly entertained. ■ 
 
 When the tumult was calmed down a little the Kapellmeister^ . 
 standing quite impassive with his face turned towards the , 
 audience though he was pretending not to see it — (the audience ; 
 was still supposed to be non-existent) — made a sign to the ^ 
 audience that he was about to speak. There was a cry of " Ssh,’^ | 
 and silence. He waited a moment longer; then — (his voice ) 
 was curt, cold, and cutting) : | 
 
 " Gentlemen, he said, " I should certainly not have let that 1 
 be played through to the end if I had not wished to make an 
 example of the gentleman who has dared to write offensively 
 of the great Brahms.’’ 
 
 That was all ; and jumping down from his stand he went out 
 amid cheers from the delighted audience. They tried to recall 
 him; the applause went on for a few minutes longer. But he 
 did not return. The orchestra went away. The audience de- 
 cided to go too. The concert was over. 
 
 It had been a good day. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 481 
 
 Christophe had gone already. Hardly had he seen the 
 wretched conductor leave his desk when he had rushed from the 
 box; he plunged down the stairs from the first fioor to meet 
 him and slap his face. His friend who had brought him fol- 
 lowed and tried to hold him back, but Christophe brushed him 
 aside and almost threw him downstairs; — (he had reason to 
 believe that the fellow was concerned in the trick which had 
 been played him). Fortunately for H. Euphrat and himself the 
 door leading to the stage was shut; and his furious knocking 
 could not make them open it. However the audience was begin- 
 ning to leave the hall. Christophe could not atay there. He 
 fled. 
 
 He was in an indescribable condition. He walked blindly, 
 waving his arms, rolling his eyes, talking aloud like a madman; 
 he suppressed his cries of indignation and rage. The street 
 was almost empty. The concert hall had been built the year 
 before in a new neighborhood a little way out of the town; 
 and Christophe instinctively fled towards the country across 
 the empty fields in which were a few lonely shanties and scaf- 
 foldings surrounded by fences. His thoughts were murderous; 
 he could have killed the man who had put such an affront upon 
 him. Alas ! and when he had killed him would there be any 
 change in the animosity of those people whose insulting laugh- 
 I ter was still ringing in his ears? They were too many; he 
 could do nothing against them; they were all agreed — they who 
 were divided about so many things — ^to insult and crush him. 
 It was past understanding; there was hatred in them. What 
 had he done to them all? There were beautiful things in him, 
 things to do good and make the heart big; he had tried to 
 say them, to make others enjoy them ; he thought they would be 
 happy like himself. Even if they did not like them they should 
 be grateful to him for his intentions; they could, if need be, 
 show him kindly where he had been wrong; but that they should 
 take such a malignant joy in insulting and odiously travestying 
 his ideas, in trampling them underfoot, and killing him 
 by ridicule, how was it possible? In his excitement he exag- 
 gerated their hatred; he thought it much more serious than 
 , such mediocre people could ever be. He sobbed : What have 
 I done to them? He choked, he thought that all was lost, just 
 
482 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 as he did when he was a child coming into contact for the first 
 time with human wickedness. 
 
 And when he looked about him he suddenly saw that he had 
 reached the edge of the mill-race, at the very spot where a few 
 years before his father had been drowned. And at once he 
 thought of drowning himself too. lie was just at the point of * 
 making the plunge. 
 
 But as he leaned over the steep bank, fascinated by the calm 
 clean aspect of the water, a tiny bird in a tree by his side 
 began to sing — ^to sing madly. He held his breath to listen. 
 The water murmured. The ripening corn moaned as it waved 
 under the soft caressing wind; the poplars shivered. Behind 
 the hedge on the road, out of sight, bees in hives in a garden 
 filled the air with their scented music. From the other side of 
 the stream a cow was chewing the cud and gazing with soft | 
 eyes. A little fair-haired girl was sitting on a wall, with a light 
 basket on her shoulders, like a little angel with wings, and she ; 
 was dreaming, and swinging her bare legs and humming aim- j 
 lessly. Far away in a meadow a white dog was leaping and 
 running in wide circles. Christophe leaned against a tree and | 
 listened and watched the earth in Spring; he was caught up by | 
 the peace and joy of these creatures; he could forget, he could j 
 forget. Suddenly he clasped the tree with his arms and leaned 
 his cheek against it. He threw himself on the ground; he | 
 buried his face in the grass; he laughed nervously, happily, i 
 All the beauty, the grace, the charm of life wrapped him round, 
 imbued his soul, and he sucked them up like a sponge. He | 
 thought : 
 
 Why are you so beautiful, and they — men — so ugly ? ^ 
 
 No matter! He loved it, he loved it, he felt that he would 
 always love it, and that nothing could ever take it from him. 
 He held the earth to his breast. He held life to his breast : ; 
 
 I love you I You are mine. They cannot take you from j 
 me. Let them do what they will ! Let them make me suffer ! J 
 . . . Suffering also is life ! i 
 
 Christophe began bravely to worl^ again. He refused to have I 
 anything more to do with men of letters — well named — I 
 makers of phrases, the sterile babblers, journalists, critics, I 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 483 
 
 the exploiters and traffickers of art. As for musicians he would 
 waste no more time in battling with their prejudices and 
 jealousy. They did not want him? Very well! He did not 
 want them. He had his work to do ^ he would do it. The 
 Court had given him back his liberty; he was grateful for it. 
 w He was grateful to the people for their hostility ; he could work 
 in peace. 
 
 Louisa approved with all her heart. She had no ambition; 
 she was not a Krafft; she was like neither his father nor his 
 grandfather. She did not want honors or reputation for her 
 son. She would have liked him to be rich and famous; but if 
 those advantages could only be bought at the price of so much 
 unpleasantness she much preferred not to bother about them. 
 She had been more upset by Christophers grief over his rupture 
 with the Palace than by the event itself; and she was heartily 
 glad that he had quarreled with the review and newspaper 
 people. She had a peasant’s distrust of blackened paper ; it was 
 only a waste of time and made enemies. She had sometimes 
 heard his young friends of the Eeview talking to Christophe; 
 she had been horrified by their malevolence; they tore every- 
 ; thing to pieces and said horrible things about everybody; and 
 the worse things they said the better pleased they were. She 
 : did not like them. No doubt they were very clever and very 
 learned^ but they were not kind, and she was very glad that 
 Christophe saw no more of them. She was full of common 
 sense: what good were they to him? 
 
 They may say, write, and think what they like of me,” said 
 Christophe. They cannot prevent my being myself. What do 
 I their ideas or their art matter to me ? I deny them ! ” 
 
 It is all very fine to deny the world. But the world is not 
 so easily denied by a young man’s boasting. Christophe was 
 sincere, but he was under illusion; he did not know himself. 
 He was not a monk ; he had not the temperament for renounc- 
 ing the world, and besides he was not old enough to do so. 
 At first he did not suffer much, he was plunged in composi- 
 . tion ; and while his work lasted he did not feel the want of any- 
 , thing. But when he came to the period of depression which fol- 
 
484 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 lows the completion of a work and lasts until a new work takes 
 possession of the mind^ he looked about him and was horrified 
 by his loneliness. He asked himself why he wrote. While a 
 man is writing he never asks himself that question; he must 
 write, there is no arguing about it. And then he finds himself 
 with the work that he has begotten: the great instinct which 
 caused it to spring forth is silent ; he does not understand why 
 it was born: he hardly recognizes it, it is almost a stranger to 
 him; he longs to forget it. And that is impossible as long 
 as it is not published or played, or living its own life in the 
 world. Till then it is like a new-born child attached to its 
 mother, a living thing bound fast to his living fiesh; it must 
 be amputated at all costs or it will not live. The more Chris- 
 tophe composed the more he suffered under the weight of these 
 creatures who had sprung forth from himself and could neither 
 live nor die. He was haunted by them. Who could deliver 
 him from them? Some obscure impulse would stir in these 
 children of his thoughts; they longed desperately to break 
 away from him to expand into other souls like the quick and 
 fruitful seed which the wind scatters over the universe. Must 
 he remain imprisoned in his sterility? He raged against it. 
 
 Since every outlet — theaters, concerts — was closed to him, 
 and nothing would induce him to approach those managers who 
 had once failed him, there was nothing left but for him to pub- 
 lish his writings, but he could not flatter himself that it would 
 be easier to find a publisher to produce his work than an or- 
 chestra to play it. The two or three clumsy attempts that he 
 had made were enough; rather than expose himself to another 
 rebuff, or to bargain with one of these music merchants and 
 put up with his patronizing airs, he preferred to publish it at 
 his own expense. It was an act of madness ; he had some small 
 savings out of his Court salary and the proceeds of a few 
 concerts, but the source from which the money had come was 
 dried up and it would be a long time before he could find 
 another; and he should have been prudent enough to be careful 
 with his scanty funds which had to help him over the difficult 
 period upon which he was entering. Not only did he not do 
 so; but, as his savings were not enough to cover the expenses of 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 485 
 
 publication, he did not shrink from getting into debt. Louisa 
 dared not say anything; she found him absolutely unreasonable, 
 and did not understand how anybody could spend money for 
 the sake of seeing his name on a book ; but since it was a way 
 of making him be patient and of keeping him with her, she 
 was only too happy for him to have that satisfaction. 
 
 Instead of offering the public compositions of a familiar 
 and undisturbing kind, in which it could feel at home, Chris- 
 tophe chose from among his manuscripts a suite very individual 
 in character, which he valued highly. They were piano pieces 
 mixed with Lieder, some very short and popular in style, others 
 very elaborate and almost dramatic. The whole formed a 
 'series of impressions, joyous or mild, linked together naturally 
 and written alternately for the piano and the voice, alone, or 
 accompanied. For,^^ said Christophe, when I dream, I do 
 not always formulate what I feel. I suffer, I am happy, and 
 have no words to say; but then comes a moment when I must 
 say what I am feeling, and I sing without thinking of what I 
 am doing; sometimes I sing only vague words, a few discon- 
 nected phrases, sometimes whole poems ; then I begin to dream 
 again. And so the day goes by; and I have tried to give the 
 impression of a day. Why these gathered impressions com- 
 posed only of songs or preludes ? There is nothing more false 
 or less harmonious. One must try to give the free play of the 
 soul.'’ He had called his suite: A Day. The different parts 
 of the composition bore sub-titles, shortly indicating the suc- 
 cession of his inward dreams. Christophe had written mysteri- 
 ous dedications, initials, dates, which only he could understand, 
 as they reminded him of poetic moments or beloved faces: the 
 gay Corinne, the languishing Sabine, and the little unknown 
 Frenchwoman. 
 
 Besides this work he selected thirty of his Lieder — those 
 which pleased him most, and consequently pleased the public 
 least. He avoided choosing the most melodious " of his 
 melodies, but he did choose the most characteristic. (The pub- 
 lic always has a horror of anything characteristic." Char- 
 acterless things are more likely to please them.) 
 
 These Lieder were written to poems of old Silesian poets of 
 
wmBm 
 
 , 486 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 the seventeenth century that Christophe had read by chance in 
 a popular collection, and whose loyalty he had loved. Two 
 especially were dear to him, dear as brothers, two creatures full 
 of genius and both had died at thirty: the charming Paul 
 Fleming, the traveler to the Caucasus and to Ispahan, who pre- 
 served his soul pure, loving and serene in the midst of the 
 savagery of war, the sorrows of life, and the corruption of his 
 time, and Johann Christian Gunther, the unbalanced genius 
 who wore himself out in debauchery and despair, casting his 
 life to the four winds. He had translated Gunther’s cries 
 of provocation and vengeful irony against the hostile God who 
 overwhelms His creatures, his furious curses like those of a 
 Titan overthrown hurling the thunder back against the heavens. 
 
 He had selected Fleming’s love songs to Anemone and Basilene, 
 soft and sweet as flowers, and the rondo of the stars, the 
 Tanzlied (dancing song) of hearts glad and limpid — and the ■ 
 calm heroic sonnet To Himself {An Sich), which Christophe , 
 used to recite as a prayer every morning. ; 
 
 The smiling optimism of the pious Paul Gerhardt also had ! 
 its charm for Christophe. It was a rest for him on recovering 
 from his own sorrows. He loved that innocent vision of nature ] 
 as God, the fresh meadows, where the storks walk gravely among t 
 the tulips and white narcissus, by little brooks singing on the 
 sands, the transparent air wherein there pass the wide-winged ' 
 swallows and flying doT«s, the gaiety of a sunbeam piercing the ; 
 rain, and the luminous sky smiling through the clouds, and ■ 
 the serene majesty of the evening, the sweet peace of the ] 
 forests, the cattle, the bowers and the fields. He had had the < 
 impertinence to set to music several of those mystic canticles i 
 which are still sung in Protestant communities. And he had | 
 avoided preserving the choral character. Far from it: he had 
 a horror of it; he had given them a free and vivacious char- a 
 acter. Old Gerhardt would have shuddered at the devilish | 
 pride which was breathed forth now in certain lines of his 
 Song of the Christian Traveler, or the pagan delight which 
 made this peaceful stream of his Song of Summer bubble over 
 like a torrent. ■ 
 
 The collection was published without any regard for common 
 sense, of course. The publisher whom Christophe paid for 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 487 
 
 printing and storing his Lieder had no other claim to his choice 
 than that of being his neighbor. He was not equiped tor 
 such important work; the printing went on for months; there 
 were mistakes and expensive corrections. Christophe knew 
 nothing about it and the whole thing cost more by a third than 
 it need have done; the expenses far exceeded anything he had 
 anticipated. Then when it was done, Christophe found an 
 enormous edition on his hands and did not know what to do 
 with it. The publisher had no customers; he took no steps to 
 circulate the work. And his apathy was quite in accord with 
 Christophe’s attitude. When he asked him, to satisfy his con- 
 science, to write him a short advertisement of it, Christophe 
 replied that “he did not want any advertisement; if his music 
 was good it would speak for itself.” The publisher religiously 
 respected his wishes; he put the edition away in his warehouse. 
 It was well kept; for in six months not a copy was sold. 
 
 While he was waiting for the public to make up its mind 
 Christophe had to find some way of repairing the hole he had 
 made in his means ; and he could not be nice about it, for he 
 had to live and pay his debts. -Not only were his debts larger 
 than he had imagined but he saw that the moneys on which 
 he had counted were less than he had thought. Had he lost 
 money without knowing it or— what was infinitely more proba- 
 ble— had he reckoned up wrongly? (He had never been able to 
 add correctly.) It did not matter much why the money was 
 missing; it was missing without a douht. Louisa had to 
 give her all to help her son. He was bitterly remorseful and 
 tried to pay her back as soon as possible and at all costs. He 
 tried to get lessons, though it was painful to him to ask and 
 to put up with refusals. He was out of favor altogether; he 
 found it very difficult to obtain pupils again. And so when it 
 was suggested that he should teach at a school he was only too 
 
 ^ It was a semi-religious institution. The director, an astute 
 gentleman, had seen, though he was no musician, how useful 
 Christophe might be, and how cheaply in his present position. 
 , He was pleasant and paid very little. When Christophe ven- 
 tured to make a timid remark the director told him with a 
 
488 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 kindly smile that as he no longer held an official position he 
 could not very well expect more. 
 
 It was a sad task ! It was not so much a matter of teaching 
 the pupils music as of making their parents and themselves i 
 believe that they had learned it. The chief thing was to make j 
 them able to sing at the ceremonies to which the public were ad- 
 mitted. It did not matter how it was done. Christophe was 
 in despair; he had not even the consolation of telling himself 
 as he fulfilled his task that he was doing useful work; his 
 conscience reproached him with it as hypocrisy. He tried to 
 give the children more solid instruction and to make them 
 acquainted with and love serious music; but they did not care 
 for it a bit. Christophe could not succeed in making them 
 listen to it ; he had no authority over them ; in truth he was not 
 made for teaching children. He took no interest in their 
 floundering; he tried to explain to them all at once the theory ‘ 
 of music. When he had to give a piano lesson he would set his j 
 pupil a symphony of Beethoven which he would play as a i 
 duet with her. Naturally that could not succeed; he would i 
 explode angrily, drive the pupil from the piano and go on i 
 playing alone for a long time. He was just the same with his 1 
 private pupils outside the school. He had not an ounce of ! 
 patience; for instance he would tell a young lady who prided ! 
 herself on her aristocratic appearance and position, that she ' 
 played like a kitchen maid; or he would even write to her ; 
 mother and say that he gave it up, that it would kill him if j 
 he went on long bothering about a girl so devoid of talent. All i 
 of which did not improve his position. His few pupils left 
 him; he could not keep any of them more than a few months, v 
 His mother argued with him; he would argue with himself. ■ 
 Louisa made him promise that at least he would not break with 
 the school he had joined; for if he lost that position he did not 
 know what he should do for a living. And so he restrained 
 himself in spite of his disgust ; he was most exemplarily 
 punctual. But how could he conceal his thoughts when a 
 donkey of a pupil blundered for the tenth time in some pas- 
 sages, or when he had to coach his class for the next concert 
 in some foolish chorus ! — (For he was not even allowed to choose 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 489 
 
 his programme: his taste was not trusted) — He was not exactly 
 zealous about it all. And yet he went stubbornly on, silent, 
 frowning, only betraying his secret wrath by occasionally 
 thumping on his desk and making his pupils jump in their 
 seats. But sometimes the pill was too bitter; he could not 
 bear it any longer. In the middle of the chorus he would in- 
 terrupt the singers: 
 
 “Oh! Stop! Stop! I’ll play you some Wagner instead.” 
 
 They asked nothing better. They played cards behind his 
 back. There was always someone who reported the matter to 
 the director; and Christophe would be reminded that he was 
 not there to make his pupils like music but to make them 
 sing. He received his scoldings wdth a shudder; but he ac- 
 cepted them; he did not want to lose his work. Who would 
 have thought a few years before, when his career looked so 
 assured and brilliant (when he had done nothing), that he 
 would be reduced to such humiliation just as he was beginning, 
 to be worth something? 
 
 Among the hurts to his vanity that he came by in his work 
 at the school, one of the most painful was having to call on 
 his colleagues. He paid two calls at random ; and they bored 
 him so that he had not the heart to go on. The two privileged 
 persons were not at all pleased about it, but the others were 
 personally affronted. They all regarded Christophe as their 
 inferior in position and intelligence ; and they assumed a 
 patronizing manner towards him. Sometimes he was over- 
 whelmed by it, for they seemed to be so sure of themselves and 
 the opinion they had of him that he began to share it; he felt 
 stupid with them ; what could he have found to say to them ? 
 They were full of their profession and saw nothing beyond it. 
 They were not men. If only they had been books ! But they 
 were only notes to books, philological commentaries. 
 
 Christophe avoided meeting them. But sometimes he was 
 forced to do so. The director was at home once a month in 
 the afternoon; and he insisted on all his people being there. 
 Christophe, who had cut the first afternoon, without excuse, 
 in the vain hope that his absence would not be noticed, was 
 ever afterwards the object of sour attention. Next time he was' 
 
490 
 
 JEAlSr-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 iGctured by his mothGr and decided to go ^ he was as solemn 
 about it as though he were going to a funeral. 
 
 He found himself at a gathering of the teachers of the 
 school and other institutions of the town, and their wives 
 and daughters. They were all huddled together in a room too 
 small for them, and grouped hierarchically. They paid no 
 attention to him. The group nearest him was talking of 
 pedagogy and cooking. All the wives of the teachers had cu- 
 linary recipes which they set out with pedantic exuberance 
 and insistence. The men were no less interested in these mat- 
 ters and hardly less competent. They were as proud of the 
 domestic talents of their wives as they of their husbands’ learn- 
 ing. Christophe stood by a window leaning against the wall, 
 not knowing how to look, now trying to smile stupidly, now 
 gloomy with a fixed stare and unmoved features, and he was 
 bored to death. A little away from him, sitting in the recess ' 
 of the window, was a young woman to whom nobody was talk- i 
 ing and she was as bored as he. They both looked at the room i 
 and not at each other. It was only after some time that they 5 
 noticed each other just as they both turned away to yawn, both 
 being at the limit of endurance. Just at that moment their | 
 eyes met. They exchanged a look of friendly understanding. : 
 He moved towards her. She said in a low voice : ; 
 
 Are you amused ? ” • 
 
 He turned his back on the room, and, looking out of the 
 window, put out his tongue. She burst out laughing, and 
 suddenly waking up she signed to him to sit down by her side. 
 They introduced themselves ; she was the wife of Professor 
 Reinhart, who lectured on natural history at the school, and 
 was newly come to the town, where they knew nobody. She 
 was not beautiful ; she had a large nose, ugly teeth, and she 
 lacked freshness ; but she had keen, clever eyes and a kindly 
 smile. She chattered like a magpie; he answered her solemnly; 
 she had an amusing frankness and a droll wit; they laugh- 
 ingly exchanged impressions out loud without bothering about 
 the people round them. Their neighbors, who had not deigned to 
 notice their existence when it would have been charitable to 
 help them out of their loneliness, now threw angry looks 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
• \ ■ 
 
 EEVOLT 491 
 
 at them; it was in bad taste to be so much amused. But they 
 did not care what the others might think of them; they were 
 taking their revenge in their chatter. 
 
 In the end Frau Eeinhart introduced her husband to Chris- 
 tophe. He was extremely ugly; he had a pale, greasy, pock- 
 marked, rather sinister face, but he looked very kind. He 
 spoke low down in his throat and pronounced his words sen- 
 tentiously, stammeringly, pausing between each syllable. 
 
 Thev had been married a few months only and these two 
 plain people were in love with each other; they had an affec- 
 tionate way of looking at each other, talking to each other, 
 taking each other's hands in the presence of everybody— which 
 was comic and touching. If one wanted anything the other 
 would want it too. And so they invited Christophe to go and 
 sup with them after the reception. Christophe began jokingly 
 to beg to be excused; he said that the best thing to do that 
 evening would be to go to bed ; he was quite worn out with 
 boredom, as tired as though he had walked ten miles. But 
 Frau Eeinhart said that he could not be left in that condition; 
 it would be dangerous to spend the night with such gloomy 
 thoughts. Christophe let them drag him off. In his loneliness 
 he was glad to have met these good people, who were not very 
 distinguished in their manners but were simple and gemutlich. 
 
 The Eeinharts' little house was gemutlicli like them- 
 selves. It was a rather chattering Gemut, a Gemiit with 
 ' inscriptions. The furniture, the utensils, the china all talked, 
 and went on repeating their joy in seeing their charming 
 guest," asked after his health, and gave him pleasant and vir- 
 tuous advice. On the sofa — which was very hard — was a little 
 I cushion which murmured amiably: 
 
 Only a quarter of an hour!" (Nur ein Viertelstundchen.) 
 
 The cup of coffee which was handed to Christophe insisted 
 ! on his taking more: 
 
 Just a drop ! " (NocJi ein ScTililcTcchen.) 
 
 \ The plates seasoned the cooking with morality and otherwise 
 ! the cooking was quite excellent. One plate said : 
 
 ' Think of everything : otherwise no good will come to you ! " 
 
p 
 
 — 
 
 492 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Another : ^ 
 
 Affection and gratitude please everybody. Ingratitude 
 pleases nobody.” 
 
 Although Christophe did not smoke, the ash-tray on the 
 mantelpiece insisted on introducing itself to him: 
 
 A little resting place for burning cigars.” {Ruhepldtzchen 
 fur brennende Cigarren,) 
 
 He wanted to wash his hands. The soap on the washstand 
 said : 
 
 For our charming guest.” (Fiir nnseren lieben Gast,) 
 
 And the sententious towel, like a person who has nothing to 
 say, but thinks he must say something all the same, gave him 
 this reflection, full of good sense but not very apposite, that 
 ^Ho enjoy the morning you must rise early.” 
 
 M or genstund hat Gold im MundF 
 
 At length Christophe dared not even turn in his chair for 
 fear of hearing himself addressed by other voices coming from ; 
 •every part of the room. He wanted to say : 
 
 ^^Be silent, you little monsters! We don^t understand each ' 
 other.” 
 
 And he burst out laughing crazily and then tried to explain ^ 
 io his host and hostess that he was thinking of the gathering ■ 
 at the school. He would not have hurt them for the world. 
 And he was not very sensible of the ridiculous. Very soon he 
 grew accustomed to the loquacious cordiality of these people : 
 and their belongings. He could have tolerated an 5 dhing in { 
 them ! They were so kind ! They were not tiresome either ; | 
 if they had no taste they were not lacking in intelligence. • 
 
 They v;ere a little lost in the place to which they had come. ^ 
 The intolerable susceptibilities of the little provincial town i 
 did not allow people to enter it as though it 'were a mill, with- 
 out having properly asked for the honor of becoming part of 
 it. The Eeinharts had not sufficiently attended to the provin- 
 cial code which regulated the duties of new arrivals in the town 
 towards those who had settled in it before them. Eeinhart 
 would have submitted to it mechanically. But his wife, to 
 whom such drudgery was oppressive — she disliked being put out 
 — postponed her duties from day to day. She had selected 
 those calls which bored her least, to be paid first, or she had 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 493 
 
 put the others off indefinitely. The distinguished persons who 
 were comprised in the last category choked with indignation 
 at such a want of respect. Angelica Eeinhart— (her husband 
 called her Lili)— was a little free in her manners; she could not 
 take on the official tone. She would address her superiors in 
 the hierarchy familiarly and make them go red in the face 
 with indignation; and if need be she was not afraid of contra- 
 dicting them. She had a quick tongue and always had to say 
 whatever was in her head; sometimes she made extraordinarily 
 foolish remarks at which people laughed behind her back; and 
 also she could be malicious whole-heartedly, and that made her 
 mortal enemies. She would bite her tongue as she was saying 
 rash things and wish she had not said them, but it was too 
 late. Her husband, the gentlest and most respectful of men, 
 would chide her timidly about it. She would kiss him and 
 say that she was a fool and that he was right. But the next 
 moment she would break out again; and she would always say 
 things at the least suitable moment; she would have burst if 
 she had not said them. She was exactly the sort of woman to 
 get on with Christophe. 
 
 Among the many ridiculous things which she ought not to 
 have said, and consequently was always saying, was her trick of 
 perpetually comparing the way things were done in Germany 
 and the way they were done in France. She was a German — 
 (nobody more so) — ^but she had been brought up in Alsace 
 among French Alsatians, and she had felt the attraction of 
 Latin civilization which so many Germans in the annexed 
 countries, even those who seem the least likely to feel it, cannot 
 resist. Perhaps, to tell the truth, the attraction had become 
 stronger out of a spirit of contradiction since Angelica had 
 married a North German and lived with him in purely German 
 society. 
 
 She opened up her usual subject of discussion on her first 
 evening with Christophe. She loved the pleasant freedom 
 of conversation in France. Christophe echoed her. France to 
 him was Corinne; bright blue eyes, smiling lips, frank free 
 manners, a musical voice; he loved to know more about it. 
 
 Lili Eeinhart clapped her hands on finding herself so thor- 
 oughly agreeing with Christophe. 
 
494 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 is a pity,” she said, ^^that my little French friend has 
 gone, but she could not stand it; she has gone.” 
 
 The image of Corinne was at once blotted out. As a match 
 going out suddenly makes the gentle glimmer of the stars shine 
 out from the dark sky, another image and other eyes appeared. 
 
 Who ? ” asked Christophe with a start, the little gover- 
 ness ? ” 
 
 What ? ” said Frau Eeinhart, you knew her too ? ” 
 
 He described her; the two portraits were identical. 
 
 ^^You knew her?” repeated Christophe. ^^Oh! Tell me 
 everything you know about her! . . .” 
 
 Frau Eeinhart began by declaring that they were bosom 
 friends and had no secrets from each other. But when she 
 had to go into detail her knowledge was reduced to very 
 little. They had met out calling. Frau Eeinhart had made 
 advances to the girl; and with her usual cordiality had invited - 
 her to come and see her. The girl had come two or three times 
 and they had talked. But the curious Lili had not so easily 
 succeeded in finding out anything about the life of the little 
 Frenchwoman ; the girl was very reserved ; she had had to worm 
 her story out of her, bit by bit. Frau Eeinhart knew that \ 
 she was called Antoinette J eannin ; she had no fortune, and no ^ 
 friends, except a younger brother who lived in Paris and to ; 
 whom she was devoted. She used always to talk of him ; he was 
 the only subject about which she could talk freely; and Lili , 
 Eeinhart had gained her confidence by showing sympathy and \ 
 pity for the boy living alone in Paris without relations, without ] 
 friends, at a boarding school. It was partly to pay for his i 
 education that Antoinette had accepted a post abroad. But the < 
 two children could not live without each other; they wanted to j 
 be with each other every day, and the least delay in the 
 delivery of their letters used to make them quite ill with ^ 
 anxiety. Antoinette was always worrying about her brother, ; 
 the poor child could not always manage to hide his sadness J 
 and loneliness from her; every one of his complaints used to 
 sound through Antoinette's heart and seemed like to break it; | 
 the thought that he was suffering used to torture her and she j 
 used often to imagine that he was ill and would not say so. { 
 Frau Eeinhart in her kindness had often had to rebuke her 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 495 
 
 for her ^Toundless fears, and she used to succeed in restoring 
 her confidence for a moment. She had not been able to find 
 out anything about Antoinette’s family or position or her 
 inner self. The girl was wildly shy and used to draw into 
 herself at the first question. The little she said showed that 
 she was cultured and intelligent j she seemed to have a preco- 
 cious knowledge of life 5 she seemed to be at once naive and 
 undeceived, pious and disillusioned. She had not been happy 
 in the town in a tactless and unkind family. She used not to 
 complain, but it was easy to see that she used to suffer Frau 
 Eeinhart did not exactly know why she had gone. It had been 
 said that she had behaved badly. Angelica did not believe 
 it; she was ready to swear that it was all a disgusting calunany, 
 worthy of the foolish rotten town. But there had been stories; 
 it did not matter what, did it? 
 
 No,” said Christophe, bowing his head. 
 
 “ And so she has gone.” 
 
 “And what did she say— anything to you when she went?” 
 
 “ Ah ! ” said Lili Eeinhart, “ I had no chance. I had gone 
 to Cologne for a few days just then! When I came back— 
 spat” (too late). — She stopped to scold her maid, who had 
 brought her lemon too late for her tea. 
 
 And she added sententiously with the solemnity which the 
 true German brings naturally to the performance of the fa- 
 miliar duties of daily life; 
 
 “ Too late, as one so often is in life ! ” 
 
 (It was not clear whether she meant the lemon or her inter- 
 rupted story.) 
 
 She went on: 
 
 “ When I returned I found a line from her thanking me for 
 all I had done and telling me that she was going; she was 
 returning to Paris; she gave no address.” 
 
 “ And she did not write again ? ” 
 
 “ Not again.” 
 
 Once more Christophe saw her sad face disappear into the 
 night; once more he saw her eyes for a moment just as he 
 had seen them for the last time looking at him through the 
 carrif ge window. 
 
 The enigma of France was once more set before him more 
 
496 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 insistently than ever. Christophe never tired of asking Frau 
 Reinhart about the country which she pretended to know so 
 well. And Frau Reinhart who had never been there was not 
 reluctant to tell him about it. Reinhart, a good patriot, full 
 of prejudices against France, which he knew better than his 
 wife, sometimes used to qualify her remarks when her enthu- 
 siasm went too far ; but she would repeat her assertions only the 
 more vigorously, and Christophe, knowing nothing at all about 
 it, backed her up confidently. 
 
 What was more precious even than Lili Reinhart’s memories 
 were her books. She had a small library of French books: 
 school books, a few novels, a few volumes bought at random. 
 Christophe, greedy of knowledge and ignorant of France, 
 thought them a treasure when Reinhart went and got them for 
 him and put them at his disposal. 
 
 He began with volumes of select passages, old school books, ‘ 
 which had been used by Lili Reinhart or her husband in their 
 school days. Reinhart had assured him that he must begin 
 with them if he wished to find his way about French literature, 
 which was absolutely unknown to him. Christophe was full 
 of respect for those who knew more than himself, and obeyed i 
 religiously; and that very evening he began to read. He tried 
 first of all to take stock of the riches in his possession. 
 
 He made the acquaintance of certain French writers, namely : 
 Thedore-Henri Barrau, Frangois Petis de la Croix, Frederic 
 Baudry, Emile Delerot, Charles-Auguste-Desire Filon, Sam- 
 uel Descombaz, and Prosper Baur. He read the poetry i 
 of Abbe Joseph Eeyre, Pierre Lachambaudie, the Due de ' 
 
 Nivernois, Andre van Hasselt, Andrieux, Madame Colet, 
 Constance-Marie Princesse de Salm-Dyck, Henriette Hoi- i 
 
 lard, Gabriel-Jean-Baptiste-Ernest-Wilfrid Legouve, Hip- 
 polyte Violeau, Jean Reboul, Jean Racine, Jean de Beranger, 
 Frederic Bechard, Gustave Nadaud, Edouard Plouvier, Eugene 
 Manuel, Hugo, Millevoye, Chenedolle, James Lacour Delatre, 
 Felix Chavannes, Francis-Edouard- Joachim, known as Frangois 
 Coppee, and Louis Belmontet. Christophe was lost, drowned, 
 submerged under such a deluge of poetry and turned to prose. 
 
 He found Gustave de Molinari, Flechier, Ferdinand-Edouarcl 
 Buisson, Merimee, Malte-Brun, Voltaire, Lame-Fleury, Dumas 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 497 
 
 pere, J.-J. Eousseau, Mezieres, Mirabeau, de Mazade, Claretie, 
 Cortambert, Frederic II, and M. de Vogue. The most 
 often quoted of French historians was Maximilien Samson- 
 Frederic Schcell. In the French anthology Christophe 
 found the Proclamation of the New German Empire; 
 and he read a description of the Germans by Fr^d^ric-Constant 
 de Eougemont, in which he learned that “ the German was born 
 to live in the region of the soul. He has not the light noisy 
 gaiety of the Frenchman. His is a great soul; his affections are 
 tender and profound. He is indefatigable in toil and persever- 
 ing in enterprise. There is no more moral or long-lived people. 
 Germany has an extraordinary number of writers. She has the 
 genius of art. While the inhabitants of other countries pride 
 themselves on being French, English, Spanish, the German on 
 the other hand embraces all humanity in his love. And though 
 its position is the very center of Europe the German nation 
 seems to be at once the heart and the higher reason of 
 humanity.” 
 
 Christophe closed the book. He was astonished and tired. 
 He thought: 
 
 “The French are good fellows; but they are not strong.” 
 
 He took another volume. It was on a higher plane : it was 
 meant for high schools. Musset occupied three pages, and 
 Victor Duruy thirty, Lamartine seven pages and Thiers almost 
 forty. The whole of the Cid was included— or almost the 
 .j^^hole;— (ten monologues of Don Diegue and Eodrigue had 
 been suppressed because they were too long.) — Lanfrey exalted 
 Prussia against Napoleon I and so he had not been cut down, 
 he alone occupied more space than all the great classics of the 
 eighteenth century. Copious narrations of the French defeats 
 of 1870 had been extracted from La Debacle of Zola. Neither 
 Montaigne, nor La Eochefoucauld, nor La Bruyere, nor Diderot, 
 nor Stendhal, nor Balzac, nor Flaubert appeared. On the other 
 hand, Pascal, who did not appear in the other book, found a 
 place in this as a curiosity; and Christophe learned by the 
 way that the convulsionary “ was one of the fathers of Port- 
 Royal, a girls’ school, near Paris . . 
 
 ‘The anthologies of French literature which Jean-Christophe bor- 
 rowed from his friends the Reinharts were : 
 
498 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Christophe was on the point of throwing the book away; 
 his head was swimming; he could not see. He said to himself: 
 
 I shall never get through with it.^^ He could not formulate 
 any opinion. He turned over the leaves idly for hours without 
 knowing what he was reading. He did not read French easily, 
 and when he had labored to make out a passage, it was almost 
 always something meaningless and highfalutin. 
 
 And yet from the chaos there darted flashes of light, like 
 rapier thrusts, words that looked and stabbed, heroic laughter. 
 Gradually an impression emerged from his first reading, 
 perhaps through the biased scheme of the selections. Volun- 
 tarily or involuntarily the German editors had selected those 
 pieces of French which could seem to establish by the testimony 
 of the French themselves the failings of the French and the 
 superiority of the Germans. But they had no notion that what 
 they most exposed to the eyes of an independent mind like 
 Christophers was the surprising liberty of these Frenchmen 
 who criticised, everything in their own country and praised 
 their adversaries. Michelet praised Frederick II, Lanfrey the 
 English of Trafalgar, Charras the Prussia of 1813. No enemy 
 of Napoleon had ever dared to speak of him so harshly. Noth- 
 ing was too greatly respected to escape their disparagement. 
 Even under the great King the previous poets had had their 
 freedom of speech. Molifere spared nothing. La Fontaine 
 laughed at everything. Even Boileau gibed at the nobles. Vol- 
 taire derided war, flogged religion, scoffed at his country. Mor- 
 alists, satirists, pamphleteers, comic writers, they all vied one 
 with another in gay or somber audacity. Want of respect was 
 universal. The honest German editors were sometimes scared 
 by it, they had to throw a rope to their consciences by 
 trying to excuse Pascal, who lumped together cooks, porters, 
 soldiers, and camp followers; they protested in a note that 
 Pascal would not have written thus if he had been acquainted 
 
 I. Selected French passages for the use of secondary schools, by 
 Hubert H. Wingerath, Ph. D., director of the real-school of Saint John 
 at Strasburg. Part II : Middle forms. — 7th Edition, 1902, Dumont- 
 Schauberg. 
 
 II. L. Herrig and G. F. Biirguy: Literary France, arransred by F. 
 Tendering, director of the real-gymnasium of the Johanneum, 
 Hamburg. — 1904, Brunswick. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 I 
 
 499 
 
 with the noble armies of modern times. They did not fail to 
 remind the reader how happily Lessing had corrected the 
 Fables of La Fontaine by following, for instance, the advice 
 of the Genevese Eonsseau and changing the piece of cheese of 
 Master Crow to a piece of poisoned meat of which the vile fox 
 dies. 
 
 ''May you never gain anything hut poison. You cursed 
 flatterers!'' 
 
 They blinked at naked truth; but Christophe was pleased with 
 it; he loved this light. Here and there he was even a little 
 shocked; he was not used to such unbridled independence 
 which looks like anarchy to the eyes even of the freest of 
 Germans, who in spite of everything is accustomed to order 
 and discipline. And he was led astray by the way of the 
 French; he took certain things too seriously; and other things 
 which were implacable denials seemed to him to be amusing 
 paradoxes. No matter! Surprised or shocked he was drawn 
 on little by little. He gave up trying to classify his impres- 
 sions; he passed from one feeling to another; he lived. The 
 gaiety of the French stories — Chamfort, Segur, Dumas pere, 
 Merimee all lumped together — delighted him; and every now 
 and then in gusts there would creep forth from the printed 
 page the wild intoxicating scent of the Eevolutions. 
 
 It was nearly 4^wn when Louisa, who slept in the next room, 
 woke up and saw the light through the chinks of Christophers 
 door. She knocked on the wall and asked if he were ill. A 
 chair creaked on the floor; the door opened and Christophe 
 appeared, pale, in his nightgown, with a candle and a book 
 in his hand, making strange, solemn, and grotesque gestures. 
 Louisa was in terror and got up in her bed, thinking that he 
 was mad. He began to laugh, and, waving his candle, he de- 
 claimed a scene from Moliere. In the middle of a sentence he 
 gurgled with laughter; he sat at the foot of his mother’s bed 
 to take breath; the candle shook in his hand. Louisa was re- 
 assured, and scolded him forcibly : 
 
 What is the matter with you ? What is it ? Go to bed. 
 . . . My poor boy, are you going out of your senses ? ” 
 
 But he began again : 
 
 You must listen to this I 
 
500 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 And he sat by her bedside and read the play, going back to 
 the beginning again. He seemed to see Corinne; he heard her 
 mocking tones, cutting and sonorous. Louisa protested: 
 
 Go away ! Go away ! You will catch cold. How tiresome 
 you are. Let me go to sleep ! 
 
 He went on relentlessly. He raised his voice, waved his arms, 
 choked with laughter; and he asked his mother if she did not 
 think it wonderful. Louisa turned her back on him, buried 
 herself in the bedclothes, stopped her ears, and said : 
 
 Do leave me alone ! . . .^^ 
 
 But she laughed inwardly at hearing his laugh. At last she 
 gave up protesting. And when Christophe had finished the 
 act, and asked her, without eliciting any reply, if she did not 
 think what he had read interesting, he bent over her and saw 
 that she was asleep. Then he smiled, gently kissed her hair, 
 and stole back to his own room. 
 
 He borrowed more and more books from the Eeinharts^ 
 library. There were all sorts of books in it. Christophe de- 
 voured them all. He wanted so much to love the country of 
 Corinne and the unknown young woman. He had so much 
 enthusiasm to get rid of that he found a use for it in his 
 reading. Even in second-rate works there were sentences and 
 pages which had the effect on him of a gust of fresh air. He 
 exaggerated the effect, especially when he was talking to Frau 
 Eeinhart, who always went a little better than he. Although 
 she was as ignorant as a fish, she delighted to contrast French 
 and German culture and to decry the German to the advan- 
 tage of the French, just to annoy her husband and to avenge 
 herself for the boredom she had to suffer in the little town. 
 
 Eeinhart was really amused. Notwithstanding his learning, 
 he had stopped short at the ideas he had learned at school. To 
 him the French were a clever people, skilled in practical things, 
 amiable, talkative, but frivolous, susceptible, and boastful, in- 
 capable of being serious, or sincere, or of feeling strongly — a 
 people without music, without philosophy, without poetry (ex- 
 cept for VArt Poetique, Beranger and Francois Coppee) — a peo- 
 ple of pathos, much gesticulation, exaggerated speech, and por- 
 nography. There were not words strong enough for the de- 
 
REVOLT 
 
 501 
 
 nunciation of Latin immorality; and for want of a better he 
 always came back to frivolity, which for him, as for the ma- 
 jority of his compatriots, had a particularly unpleasant mean- 
 ing. And he would end with the usual couplet in praise of the 
 noble German people, — the moral people By that/* Herder has 
 said, it is distinguished from all other nations/*) — ^the faith- 
 ful people {treues Volk , . . Treu meaning everything: sin- 
 cere, faithful, loyal and upright) — the People par excellence, 
 as Fichte says — German Force, the symbol of justice and truth 
 — German thought — the German Gemilt — ^the German language, 
 the only original language, the only language that, like the 
 race itself, has preserved its purity — German women, German 
 wine, German song . . . Germany, Germany above everything 
 in the world! ** 
 
 Christophe would protest. Frau Reinhart would cry out. 
 They would all shout. They did not get on the less for it. 
 They knew quite well that they were all three good Germans. 
 
 Christophe used often to go and talk, dine and walk with 
 his new friends. Lili Reinhart made much of him, and used 
 to cook dainty suppers for him. She was delighted to have the 
 excuse for satisfying her own greediness. She paid him all 
 sorts of sentimental and culinary attentions. For Christophers 
 birthday she made a cake, on which were twenty candles and 
 in the middle a little wax figure in Greek costume which was 
 supposed to represent Iphigenia holding a bouquet. Chris- 
 tophe, who was profoundly German in spite of himself, was 
 touched by these rather blunt and not very refined marks of 
 true affection. 
 
 The excellent Reinharts found other more subtle ways of 
 showing their real friendship. On his wife^s instigation 
 Reinhart, who could hardly read a note of music, had bought 
 twenty copies of Christophe’s Lieder — (the first to leave 
 the publisher’s shop) — he had sent them to different 
 parts of Germany to university acquaintances. He had 
 also sent a certain number to the libraries of Leipzig 
 and Berlin, with which he had dealings through his 
 classbooks. For the moment at least their touching enter- 
 ! prise, of which Christophe knew nothing, bore no fruit. The 
 I Lieder which had been scattered broadcast seemed to'miss fire; 
 
502 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 nobody talked of them; and the Eeinharts, who were hurt by 
 this indifference, were glad they had not told Christophe about • 
 what they had done, for it would have given him more pain 
 than consolation. But in truth nothing is lost, as so often 
 appears in life; no effort is in vain. For years nothing hap- 
 pens. Then one day it appears that your idea has made its 
 way. It was impossible to be sure that Christophe’s Lieder 
 had not reached the hearts of a few good people buried in the 
 country, who were too timid or too tired to tell him so. 
 
 One person wrote to him. ' Two or three months after the 
 Eeinharts had sent them, a letter came for Christophe. It 
 was warm, ceremonious, enthusiastic, old-fashioned in form, 
 and came from a little town in Thuringia, and was signed 
 " Universitdts Musilcdirelctor Professor Dr. Peter Schulz. 
 
 It was a great joy for Christophe, and even greater for the 
 Eeinharts, when at their house he opened the letter, which he ' 
 had left lying in his pocket for two days. They read it to- 
 gether. Eeinhart made signs to his wife which Christophe did 
 not notice. He looked radiant, until suddenly Eeinhart saw 
 his face grow gloomy, and he stopped dead in the middle of his , 
 reading. 
 
 “Well, why do you stop?” he asked. 
 
 (They used the familiar du.) 
 
 Christophe flung the letter on the table angrily. 
 
 “ No. It is too much ! ” he said. 
 
 “What is?” : 
 
 “ Eead ! ” _ i 
 
 He turned, away and went and sulked in a corner. 
 
 Eeinhart and his wife read the letter, and could find in it ; 
 only fervent admiration. ' 
 
 “ I don’t see,” he said in astonishment. 
 
 “You don’t see? You don’t see? . . .” cried Christophe, 
 taking the letter and thrusting it in his face. “Can’t you 
 read? Don’t you see that he is a ‘Brahmin' 
 
 And then Eeinhart noticed that in one sentence the Univer- 
 sitdts MusikdireMor compared Christophe’s Lieder with those 
 of Brahms. Christophe moaned: 
 
 A friend ! I have found a friend at last ! . . . And I 
 have hardly found him when I have lost him ! . . .” 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 503 
 
 The comparison revolted him. If they had let him, he 
 rould have replied with a stupid letter, or perhaps, upon re- 
 lection, he would have thought himself very prudent and 
 generous in not replying at all. Fortunately, the Reinharts 
 vere amused by his ill-humor, and kept him from committing 
 my further absurdity. They succeeded in making him write 
 i letter of thanks. But the letter, written reluctantly, was cold 
 ind constrained. The enthusiasm of Peter Schulz was not 
 shaken by it. He sent two or three more letters, brimming 
 )ver with affection. Christophe was not a good correspondent, 
 ind although he was a little reconciled to his unknown friend 
 )y the sincerity and real sympathy which he could feel behind 
 bis words, he ’''t th<; correspondence drop. Schulz wrote no 
 more. Christ' - h*': never thought about him. 
 
 He now f the Reinharts every day and frequently several 
 times a d They spent almost all the evenings together. 
 
 A.fter spP 7 / ; .g the day alone in concentration he had a physi- 
 cal need . ■ iking, of saying everything that was in his mind, 
 even if •• were not understood, and of laughing with or with- 
 out reason, of expanding and stretching himself. 
 
 He played for them. Having no other means of showing his 
 gra lii'it , he would sit at the piano and play for hours to- 
 ge h-'V. Frau Reinhart was no musician, and she had diffi- 
 in keeping herself from yawning; but she sympathized 
 — 1 Christophe, and pretended to be interested in everything 
 > . layed. Reinhart was not much more of a musician than his 
 '"e, but was sometimes touched quite materially by certain 
 aces of music, certain passages, certain bars, and then he 
 Yould be violently moved sometimes even to tears, and that 
 seemed silly to him. The rest of the time he felt nothing ; it 
 was just music to him. That was the general rule. He was 
 never moved except by the least good passages of a composition 
 —absolutely insignificant passages. Both of them persuaded 
 themselves that they understood Christophe, and Christophe 
 tried to pretend that it was so. Every now and then he would 
 be seized by a wicked desire to make fun of them. He would 
 lay traps for them and play things without any meaning, inapt 
 potpourris^ and he would let them think that he had com- 
 
504 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 posed them. Then, when they had admired it, he would tell 
 them what it was. Then they would grow wary, and when 
 Christophe played them a piece with an air of mystery, they 
 would imagine that he was trying to catch them again, and 
 they would criticise it. Christophe would let them go on and 
 back them up, and argue that such music was worthless, and 
 then he would break out: 
 
 ^^EascalsI You are right! ... It is my own!^^ He 
 would be as happy as a boy at having taken them in. Frau 
 Eeinhart would be cross and come and give him a little slap; 
 but he would laugh so good-humoredly that they would laugh 
 with him. They did not pretend to be infallible. And as 
 they had no leg to stand on, Lili Eeinhart would criticise every- 
 thing and her husband would praise everything^ and so they 
 were certain that one or other of them wpnld always be in 
 agreement with Christophe. 
 
 For the rest, it was not so much the musician that attracted 
 
 them in Christophe as the crack-brained boy, with his affec- 
 tionate ways and true reality of life. The ill that they had 
 heard spoken of him had rather disposed them in Ijis favor. 
 Like him, they were rather oppressed by the atmosphere of the; 
 little town ; like him, they were frank, they judged for them- 
 selves, and they regarded him as a great baby, not vc y clever 
 in the ways of life, and the victim of his own frankness. 
 
 Christophe was not under many illusions concerning his new 
 friends, and it made him sad to think that they did not under- 
 stand the depths of his character, and that they would never 
 understand it. But he was so much deprived of friendship and; ^ 
 he stood in such sore need of it, that he was infinitely grateful ■ 
 to them for wanting to like him a little. He had learned 
 wisdom in his experiences of the last year ; he no longer 
 thought he had the right to be overwise. Two years earlier 
 he would not have been so patient. He remembered with amuse- 
 ment and remorse his severe judgment of the honest and tire- 
 some Eulers ! Alas ! How wisdom had grown in him ! He 
 sighed a little. A secret voice whispered : Yes, but for how 
 long?^^ • 
 
 That made him smile and consoled him a little. What 
 would he not have given to have a friend, one friend who \ 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 505 
 
 would understand him and share his soul! But although he 
 was still young he had enough experience of the world to know 
 that his desire was one of those which are most difficult to 
 realize in life, and that he could not hope to be happier than 
 the majority of the true artists who had gone before him. He 
 had learned the histories of some of them. Certain books, bor- 
 rowed from the Eeinharts, had told him about the terrible 
 trials through which the German musicians of the seventeenth 
 century had passed, and the calmness and resolution with which 
 one of these great souls — the greatest of all, the heroic Schiitz — 
 had striven, as unshakably he went on his way in the midst 
 of wars and burning towns, and provinces ravaged by the 
 plague, with his country invaded, trampled underfoot by the 
 hordes of all Europe, and — worst of all — ^broken, worn out, 
 degraded by misfortune, making no fight, indifferent to every- 
 thing, longing only for rest. He thought : With such an 
 
 example, what right has any man to complain? They had 
 no audience, they had no future; they wrote for themselves and 
 God. What they wrote one day would perhaps be destroyed 
 by the next. And yet they went on writing and they were not 
 sad. Nothing made them lose their intrepidity, their joviality. 
 They were satisfied with their song; they asked nothing of 
 life but to live, to earn their daily bread, to express their 
 ideas, and to find a few honest men, simple, true, not artists, 
 who no doubt did not understand them, but had confidence in 
 them and won their confidence in return. How dared he 
 have demanded more than they? There is a minimum of hap-t^" 
 ‘piness which it is permitted to demand. But no man has the 
 right to more; it rests with a man’s self to gain the surplus of 
 happiness, not with others.” 
 
 Such thoughts brought him new serenity, and he loved his 
 good friends the Eeinharts the more for them. He had no 
 idea that even this affection was to be denied him. 
 
 He reckoned without the malevolence of small towns. They 
 are tenacious in their spite — all the more tenacious because their 
 spite is aimless. A healthy hatred which knows what it wants 
 is appeased when it has achieved its end. But men who are 
 mischievous from boredom never lay down their arms, for 
 
506 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 they are always bored. Christophe was a natural prey for i 
 their want of occupation. He was beaten without a doubt; 
 but he was bold enough not to seem crushed. He did not 
 bother anybody, but then he did not bother about anybody. 
 He asked nothing. They were impotent against him. He 
 was happy with his new friends and indifferent to anything 
 that was said or thought of him. That was intolerable. — Frau 
 Eeinhart roused even more irritation. Her open friendship 
 with Christophe in the face of the whole town seemed, like his 
 attitude, to be a defiance of public opinion. But the good Lili 
 Eeinhart defied nothing and nobody. She had no thought to 
 provoke others; she did what she thought fit without asking 
 anybody else’s advice. That was the worst provocation. 
 
 All their doings were watched. They had no idea of it. 
 He was extravagant, she scatter-brained, and both even want- 
 ing in prudence when they went out together, or even at home 
 in the evening, when they leaned over the balcony talking and ■ 
 laughing. They drifted innocently into a familiarity of speech 
 and manner which could easily supply food for calumny. 
 
 One morning Christophe received an anonymous letter. He 
 was accused in basely insulting terms of being Frau Eein- ■ 
 harCs lover. His arms fell by his sides. He had never had 
 the least thought of love or even of flirtation with her. He 
 was too honest. He had a Puritanical horror of adultery. 
 The very idea of such a dirty sharing gave him a physical and 
 moral feeling of nausea. To take the wife of a friend would j 
 have been a crime in his eyes, and Lili Eeinhart would have 
 been the last person in the world with whom he could have ‘ 
 been tempted to commit such an offense. The poor woman i 
 was not beautiful, and he would not have had even the excuse 
 of passion. 
 
 He went to his friends ashamed and embarrassed. They 
 also were embarrassed. Each of them had received a similar 
 letter, but they had not dared to tell each other, and all three 
 of them were on their guard and watched each other and dared 
 not move or speak, and they just talked nonsense. If Lili 
 EeinharPs natural carelessness took the ascendant for a mo- 
 ment, or if she began to laugh and talk wildly, suddenly a 
 look from her husband or Christophe would stop her dead; 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 5or 
 
 the letter would cross her mind; she would stop in the middle 
 of a familiar gesture and grow uneasy. Christophe and Eeim 
 hart were in the same plight. And each of them was thinking : 
 
 Do the others know ? 
 
 However^ they said nothing to each other and tried -to go 
 on as though nothing had happened. 
 
 But the anonymous letters went on, growing more and more 
 insulting and dirty. They were plunged into a condition of 
 depression and intolerable shame. They hid themselves when 
 they received the letters, and had not the strength to burn 
 them unopened. They opened them with trembling hands, 
 and as they unfolded the letters their hearts would sink; and 
 when they read what they feared to read, with ^some new vari* 
 ation on the same theme — the injurious and ignoble inven- 
 tions of a mind bent on causing a hurt — ^they wept in silence. 
 They racked their brains to discover who the wretch might be 
 who so persistently persecuted them. 
 
 One day Frau Eeinhart, at the end of her letter, confessed 
 the persecution of which she was the victim to her husband, 
 and with tears in his eyes he confessed that he was suffering 
 in the same way. Should they mention it to Christophe? 
 They dared not. But they had to warn him to make him be 
 cautious. — At the first words that Frau Eeinhart said to him, 
 with a blush, she saw to her horror that Christophe had also 
 received letters. Such utter malignance appalled them. Frau 
 Eeinhart had no doubt that the whole town was in the secret. 
 Instead of helping each other, they only undermined each 
 other’s fortitude. They did not know what to do. Chris- 
 tophe talked of breaking somebody’s head. — But whose? And 
 besides, that would be to justify the calumny! . . . Inform 
 the police of the letters? — That would make their insinuations 
 public. . . . Pretend to ignore them? It was no longer pos- 
 sible. Their friendly relations were now disturbed. It was 
 i useless for Eeinhart to have absolute faith in the honesty of 
 I his wife and Christophe. He suspected them in spite of him- 
 self. He felt that his suspicions were shameful and absurd, 
 1 and tried hard not to pay any heed to them, and to leave Chris- 
 i tophe and his wife alone together. But he suffered, and hU 
 wife saw that he was suffering. 
 
508 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 It was even worse for her. She had never thought of flirt- 
 ing with Christophe, any more than he had thought of it with 
 her. The calumnious letters brought her imperceptibly to the 
 ridiculous idea that after all Christophe was perhaps in love 
 with her; and although he was never anywhere near showing 
 any such feeling for her, she thought she must defend herself, 
 not by referring directly to it, but by clumsy precautions, 
 which Christophe did not understand at first, though, when he 
 did understand, he was beside himself. It was so stupid that 
 it made him laugh and cry at the same time! He in love 
 with the honest little woman, kind enough , as she was, but 
 plain and common! . . . And to think that she should be- 
 lieve it! . . . And that he could not deny it, and tell her 
 and her husband: 
 
 Come ! There is no danger ! Be calm ! . . .’^ But no ; 
 he could not offend these good people. And besides, he was 
 beginning to think that if she held out against being loved by 
 him it was because she was secretly on the point of loving him. 
 The anonymous letters had had the fine result of having given 
 him so foolish and fantastic an idea. 
 
 The situation had become at once so painful and so silly 
 that it was impossible for this to go on. Besides, Lili Kein- 
 hart, who, in spite of her brave words, had no strength of 
 character, lost her head in the face of the dumb hostility of 
 the little town. They made shamefaced excuses for not 
 meeting : 
 
 Frau Eeinhart was unwell. . . . Eeinhart was busy. . . . 
 They were going away for a few days. . . 
 
 Clumsy lies which were always unmasked by chance, which 
 seemed to take a malicious pleasure in doing so. 
 
 Christophe was more frank, and said: 
 
 Let us part, my friends. We are not strong enough.^^ 
 
 The Eeinharts wept. — But they were happier when the breach 
 was made. 
 
 The town had its triumph. This time Christophe was quite 
 alone. It had robbed him of his last breath of air: — the af- 
 fection, however humble, without which no heart can live. 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 509 
 
 III 
 
 DELIVERAlSrCE 
 
 He had no one. All his friends had disappeared. His dear 
 Gottfried, who had come to his aid in times of difficulty, and 
 whom now he so sorely needed, had gone some months before. 
 This time forever. One evening in the summer of the last year a 
 letter in large handwriting, bearing the address of a distant vil- 
 lage, had informed Louisa that her brother had died upon one of 
 his vagabond journeys which the little peddler had insisted 
 on making, in spite of his ill health. He was buried there in 
 the cemetery of the place. The last manly and serene friend- 
 ship which could have supported Christophe had been swal- 
 lowed up. He was left alone with his old mother, who cared 
 nothing for his ideas — could only love him and not understand 
 him. About him was the immense plain of Germany, the 
 green ocean. At every attempt to climb out of it he only 
 slipped back deeper than ever. The hostile town watched him 
 drown. ... 
 
 And as he was struggling a light flashed upon him in the 
 middle of the night, the image of Hassler, the great musician 
 whom he had loved so much when he was a child. His fame 
 shone over all Germany now. He remembered the promises 
 that Hassler had made him then. And he clung to this piece 
 of wreckage in desperation. Hassler could save him ! Hassler 
 must save him! What was he asking? Not help, nor money, 
 nor material assistance of any kind. Nothing but understand- 
 ing. Hassler had been persecuted like him. Hassler was a 
 free man. He would understand a free man, whom German 
 mediocrity was pursuing with its spite and trying to crush.* 
 They were fighting the same battle. 
 
 He carried the idea into execution as soon as it occurred 
 to him. He told his mother that he would be away for a 
 week, and that very evening he took the train for the great 
 
510 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 town in the north of Germany where Hassler was Kapellmeister. 
 He could not wait. It was a last effort to breathe. 
 
 Hassler was famous. His enemies had not disarmed, but his 
 friends cried that he was the greatest musician, present, past 
 and future. He was surrounded by partisans and detractors who 
 were equally absurd. As he was not of a very firm character, 
 he had been embittered by the last, and mollified by the first. 
 He devoted his energy to writing things to annoy his critics 
 and make them cry out. He was like an urchin playing pranks. 
 These pranks were often in the most detestable taste. Not 
 only did he devote his prodigious talent to musical eccentrici- 
 ties which made the hair of the pontiffs stand on end, but he 
 showed a perverse predilection for queer themes, bizarre sub- 
 jects, and often for equivocal and scabrous situations; in a 
 word, for everything which could offend ordinary good sense ■ 
 and decency. He was quite happy when the people howled, , 
 and the people did not fail him. Even the Emperor, who 
 dabbled in art, as every one knows, with the insolent presump- ; 
 tion of upstarts and princes, regarded HasslePs fame as a 
 public scandal, and let no opportunity slip of showing his ’ 
 contemptuous indifference to his impudent works. Hassler ; 
 was enraged and delighted by such august opposition, which 
 had almost become a consecration for the advanced paths in 
 German art, and went on smashing windows. At every new ! 
 folly his friends went into ecstasies and cried that he was a , 
 genius. 
 
 Hassler^s coterie was chiefly composed of writers, painters, 
 and decadent critics who certainly had the merit of represent- < 
 ing the party of revolt against the reaction — always a menace in ! 
 North Germany — of the pietistic spirit and State morality; 
 but in the struggle the independence had been carried to a 
 pitch of absurdity of which they were unconscious. For, if 
 many of them were not lacking in a rude sort of talent, they 
 had little intelligence and less taste. They could not rise above 
 the fastidious atmosphere which they had created, and like 
 all cliques, they had ended by losing all sense of real life. 
 They legislated for themselves and hundreds of fools who read 
 their reviews and gulped down everything they were pleased to 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 511 
 
 promulgate. Their adulation had been fatal to Hassler, for it 
 had made him too pleased with himself. He accepted without 
 examination every musical idea that came into his head, and 
 he had a private conviction, however he might fall below his 
 own level, he was still superior to that of all other musicians. 
 And though that idea was only too true in the majority of 
 cases, it did not follow that it was a very fit state of mind 
 for the creation of great works. At heart Hassler had a 
 supreme contempt for everybody, friends and enemies alike; 
 and this bitter jeering contempt was extended to himself and life 
 in general. He was all the more driven back into his 
 ironic skepticism because he had once believed in a number 
 of generous and simple things. As he had not been strong 
 enough to ward off the slow destruction of the passing of the 
 days, nor hypocritical enough to pretend to believe in the 
 faith he had lost, he was forever gibing at the memory of it. 
 He was of a Southern German nature, soft and indolent, not 
 made to resist excess of fortune or misfortune, of heat or cold, 
 needing a moderate temperature to preserve its balance. He 
 had drifted insensibly into a lazy enjoyment of life. He loved 
 good food, heavy drinking, idle lounging, and sensuous thoughts. 
 His whole art smacked of these things, although he was too 
 gifted for the flashes of his genius not still to shine forth from 
 his lax music which drifted with the fashion. No one was 
 more conscious than himself of his decay. In truth, he was 
 the only one to be conscious of it — at rare moments which, 
 naturally, he avoided. Besides, he was misanthropic, absorbed 
 by his fearful moods, his egoistic preoccupations, his concern 
 about his health— he was indifferent to everything which had 
 formerly excited his enthusiasm or hatred. 
 
 Such was the man to whom Christophe came for assistance. 
 With what joy and hope he arrived, one cold, wet morning, 
 in the town wherein then lived the man who symbolized for 
 him the spirit of independence in his art! He expected words 
 of friendship and encouragement from him — words that he 
 needed to help him to go on with the ungrateful, inevitable 
 battle which every true artist has to wage against the world 
 ; until he breathes his last, without even for one day laying 
 
512 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 down his arms ; for, as Schiller has said, the only relation 
 with the public of which a man never repents^ — is war/' 
 
 Christophe was so impatient that he just left his bag at 
 the first hotel he came to near the station, and then ran tn 
 the theater to find out HasslePs address. Hassler lived some j 
 way from the center of the town, in one of the suburbs. Chris- | 
 tophe took an electric train, and hungrily atb a roll. His heart 
 thumped as he approached his goal. 
 
 The district in which Hassler had chosen his house was 
 almost entirely built in that strange new architecture into 
 which young Germany has thrown an erudite and deliberate 
 barbarism struggling laboriously to have genius. In the middle 
 of the commonplace town, with its straight, characterless- 
 streets, there suddenly appeared Egyptian hypogea, Norwegian 
 chalets, cloisters, bastions, exhibition pavilions, pot-bellied 
 houses, fakirs, buried in the ground, with expressionless faces,, 
 with only one enormous eye; dungeon gates, ponderous gates,, j 
 iron hoops, golden cryptograms on the panes of grated windows,. \ 
 belching monsters over the front door, blue porcelain tiles ' 
 plastered on in most unexpected places; variegated mosaics rep- ; 
 resenting Adam and Eve; roofs covered with tiles of jarring ^ 
 colors; houses like citadels with castellated walls, deformed ■ 
 animals on the roofs, no windows on one side, and then sud- | 
 denly, close to each other, gaping holes, square, red, angular, j 
 triangular, like wounds; great stretches of empty wall from ; 
 which suddenly there would spring a massive balcony with one / 
 window — a balcony supported by Nibelungesque Caryatides, bal- | 
 conies from which there peered thraugh the stone balustrade \ 
 two pointed heads of old men, bearded and long-haired, mer- 
 men of Boecklin. On the front of one of these prisons — a Pha- ; 
 raohesque mansion, low and one-storied, with two naked giants 
 at the gate — ^the architect had written: 
 
 Let the artist show his universe, 
 
 Which never was and yet will ever be. 
 
 Seine Welt zeige der Kiinstler, 
 
 Die niemals war noch jemals sein wird. 
 
 Christophe was absorbed by the idea of seeing Hassler, and 
 looked with the eyes of amazement and under no attempt to 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 513 
 
 understand. He reached the house he sought, one of the 
 simplest — in a Carolingian style. Inside was rich luxury, com- 
 monplace enough. On the staircase was the heavy atmosphere 
 of hot air. There was a small lift which Christophe did not use, 
 as he wanted to gain time to prepare himself for his call by go- 
 ing up the four flights of stairs slowly, with his legs giving and 
 his heart thumping with his excitement. During that short 
 ascent his former interview with Hassler, his childish enthu- 
 siasm, the image of his grandfather were as clearly in his mind 
 as though it had all been yesterday. 
 
 It was nearly eleven when he rang the hell. He was received 
 by a sharp maid, with a serva padrona manner, who looked at 
 him impertinently and began to say that “ Herr Hassler could 
 not see him, as Herr Hassler was tired.” Then the naive dis- 
 appointment expressed in Christophe’s face amused her; for 
 after making an unabashed scrutiny of him from head to foot, 
 she softened suddenly and introduced him to Hassler’s study, 
 and said she would go and see if Herr Hassler would receive 
 him. Thereupon she gave him a little wink and closed the 
 door. 
 
 On the walls were a few impressionist paintings and some 
 gallant French engravings of the eighteenth century : for 
 Hassler pretended to some knowledge of all the arts, and 
 Manet and Watteau were joined together in his taste in accord- 
 ance with the prescription of his coterie. The same mixture of 
 styles appeared in the furniture, and a very flne Louis XV 
 bureau was surrounded by new art armchairs and an oriental 
 divan with a mountain of multi-colored cushions. The doors 
 were ornamented with mirrors, and J apanese bric-a-brac covered 
 the shelves and the mantelpiece, on which stood a bust of 
 Hassler. In a bowl on a round table was a profusion of photo- 
 graphs of singers, female admirers and friends, with witty 
 remarks and enthusiastic interjections. The bureau was in- 
 credibly untidy. The piano was open. The shelves were 
 dusty, and half-smoked cigars were lying about everywhere. 
 
 In the next room Christophe heard a cross voice gruinbling. 
 It was answered by the shrill tones of the little maid. It 
 was clear that Hassler was not very pleased at having to ap- 
 pear. It was clear, also, that the young woman had decided 
 
514 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 that Hassler should appear; and she answered him with ex- 
 treme familiarity and her shrill voice penetrated the walls, j 
 Christophe was rather upset at hearing some of the remarks 
 she made to her master. But Hassler did not seem to mind. 
 On the contrary, it rather seemed as though her impertinence 
 amused him; and while he went on growling, he chaffed the 
 girl and took a delight in exciting her. At last Christophe 
 heard a door open, and, still growling and chaffing, Hassler 
 came shuffling. 
 
 He entered. Christophers heart sank. He recognized him. 
 Would to God he had not ! It was Hassler, and yet it was not 
 he. He still had his great smooth brow, his face as unwrinkled 
 as that of a babe; but he was bald, stout, yellowish, sleepy- 
 looking; his lower lip drooped a little, his mouth looked bored 
 and sulky. He hunched his shoulders, buried his hands in 
 the pockets of his open waistcoat ; old shoes flopped on his feet ; ' 
 
 his shirt was bagged above his trousers, which he had not 
 
 finished buttoning. He looked at Christophe with his sleepy 
 eyes, in which there was no light as the young man ipurmured 
 his name. He bowed automatically, said nothing, nodded 
 towards a chair, and with a sigh, sank down on the divan and ^ 
 piled the cushions about himself. Christophe repeated: 
 
 I have already had the honor ... You were kind enough 
 . . . My name is Christophe Krafft. . . 
 
 Hassler lay back on the divan, with his legs crossed, his . 
 
 hands clasped together on his right knee, which he held up • 
 
 to his chin as he replied : ] 
 
 I don^t remember.’^ '< 
 
 Christophers throat went dry, and he tried to remind him : 
 of their former meeting. Under any circumstances it would ! 
 have been difficult for him to talk of memories so intimate; 
 now it was torture for him. He bungled his sentences, could 
 not find words, said absurd things which made him blush. 
 Hassler let him flounder on and never ceased to look at him 
 with his vague, indifferent eyes. When Christophe had reached 
 the end of his story, Hassler went on rocking his knee in 
 silence for a moment, as though he were waiting for Chris- 
 tophe to go on. Then he said: 
 
515 
 
 EEVOLT 
 
 "Yes . . . That does not make us young again . . and 
 stretched his legs. 
 
 After a yawn he added : 
 
 "... I beg pardon . . . Did not sleep . . . Supper at the 
 theater last night . . .” and yawned again. 
 
 Christophe hoped that Hassler would make some reference 
 to what he had just told him, but Hassler, whom the story 
 had not interested at all, said nothing about it, and he did not 
 ask Christophe anything about his life. When he had done 
 yawning he asked; 
 
 " Have you been in Berlin long ? ” 
 
 " I arrived this morning,” said Christophe. 
 
 " Ah ! ” said Hassler, without any surprise. " What hotel? ” 
 
 He did not seem to listen to the reply, but got up lazily and 
 pressed an electric bell. 
 
 " Allow me,” he said. 
 
 The little maid appeared with her impertinent manner. 
 
 " Kitty,” said he, " are you trying to make me go without 
 breakfast this morning?” 
 
 "You don’t think I am going to bring it here while you 
 have some one with you ? ” 
 
 "Why not?” he said, with a wink and a nod in Chris- 
 tophe’s direction. “ He feeds my mind : I must feed my 
 body.” 
 
 " Aren’t you ashamed to have some one watching you eat — 
 like an animal in a menagerie ? ” 
 
 Instead of being angry, Hassler began to laugh and cor- 
 
 rGct6(i liGr * 
 
 " Like a domestic animal,” he went on. " But do bring it. 
 I’ll eat my shame with it.” 
 
 Christophe saw that Hassler was making no attempt to find 
 out what he was doing, and tried to lead the conversation back. 
 He spoke of the difficulties of provincial life, of the mediocrity 
 of the people, the narrow-mindedness, and of his own isolation. 
 He tried to interest him in his moral distress. But Hassler 
 was sunk deep in the divan, with his head lying hack on a 
 cushion and his eyes half closed, and let him go on talking 
 without even seeming to listen; or he would raise his eyelids 
 
516 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 for a moment and pronounce a few coldly ironical words, some 
 ponderous jest at the expense of provincial people, which cut 
 short Christophe’s attempts to talk more intimately. Kitty 
 returned with the breakfast tray : coffee, butter, ham, etc. She 
 put it down crossly on the desk in the middle of the untidy 
 papers. Christophe waited until she bad gone before he went 
 on with his sad story which he had such difficulty in continu- 
 ing. Hassler drew the tray towards himself. He poured him- 
 self out some coffee and sipped at it. Then in a familiar and 
 cordial though rather contemptuous way he stopped Christophe 
 in the middle of a sentence to ask if he would take a cup. 
 
 Christophe refused. He tried to pick up the thread of his 
 sentence, but he was more and more nonplussed, and did not 
 know what he was saying. He was distracted by the sight of 
 Hassler with his plate under his chin, like a child, gorging 
 pieces of bread and butter and slices of ham which he held in 
 his fingers. However, he did succeed in saying that he com- 
 posed, that he had had an overture in the J uditli of Hebbel per- 
 formed. Hassler listened absently. 
 
 "Was?” (What?) he asked. 
 
 Christophe repeated the title. 
 
 " Ach! So, so!” (Ah! Good, good!) said Hassler, dip- 
 ping his bread and his fingers into his cup. That was all. 
 
 Christophe was discouraged and was on the point of getting 
 up and going, but he thought of his long journey in vain, and 
 summoning up all his courage he murmured a proposal that he 
 should play some of his works to Hassler. At the first mention 
 of it Hassler stopped him. 
 
 “ No, no. I don’t know anything about it,” he said, with his 
 chaffing and rather insulting irony. “Besides, I haven’t the 
 time.” 
 
 Tears came to Christophe’s eyes. But he had vowed not to 
 leave until he had Hassler’s opinion about his work. He said, 
 with a mixture of confusion and anger : 
 
 “ I beg your pardon, but you promised once to hear me. 
 I came to see you for that from the other end of Germany. 
 You shall hear me.” , 
 
 Hassler, who was not used to such ways, looked at the awk- 
 ward young man, who was furious, blushing, and near tears. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 517 
 
 That amused him, and wearily shrugging his shoulders, he 
 pointed to the piano, and said with an air of comic resignation : 
 
 “ Well, then ! . . . There you are ! ” 
 
 On that he lay back on his divan, like a man who is going 
 to sleep, smoothed out his cushions, put them under his out- 
 stretched arms, half closed his eyes, opened them for a mo- 
 ment to take stock of the size of the roll of music which Chris- 
 tophe had brought from one of his pockets, gave a little sigh, 
 and lay back to listen listlessly. 
 
 Christophe was intimidated and mortified, but he began to 
 play. It was not long before Hassler opened his eyes and ears 
 with the professional interest of the artist who is struck in 
 spite of himself by a beautiful thing. At first he said nothing 
 and lay still, but his eyes became less dim and his sulky lips 
 moved. Then he suddenly woke up, growling his surprise and 
 approbation. He only gave inarticulate interjections, but the 
 form of them left no doubt as to his feelings, and they gave 
 Christophe an inexpressible pleasure. Hassler forgot to count 
 the number of pages that had been played and were left to be 
 played. When Christophe had finished a piece, he said : 
 
 “ Go on ! . . . Go on ! . . .” 
 
 He was beginning to use human language. 
 
 “ That’s good ! Good ! ” he exclaimed to himself. “ Fa- 
 mous! . . . Awfully famous! (Sclirechlich famos!) But, 
 ■damme ! ” He growled in astonishment. “ What is it ? ” 
 
 He had risen on his seat, was stretching for wind, making 
 a trumpet with his hand, talking to himself, laughing with 
 pleasure, or at certain odd harmonies, just putting out his 
 tongue as though to moisten his lips. An unexpected modu- 
 lation had such an effect on him that he got up suddenly with 
 an exclamation, and came and sat at the piano by Christophe’s 
 side. He did not seem to notice that Christophe was there. 
 He was only concerned with the music, and when the piece 
 was finished he took the book and began to read the page again, 
 then the following pages, and went on ejaculating his admira- 
 tion and surprise as though he had been alone in the room. 
 
 “The devil!” he said. “Where did the, little beast find 
 that? ...” 
 
 He pushed Christophe away with his shoulders and himself 
 
518 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 played certain passages. He had a charming touch on the 
 piano, very soft, caressing and light. Christophe noticed his 
 fine long, well-tended hands, which were a little morbidly aris- 
 tocratic and out of keeping with the rest. Hassler stopped at 
 certain chords and repeated them, winking, and clicking with his 
 tongue. He hummed with his lips, imitating the sounds of 
 the instruments, and went on interspersing the music with his 
 apostrophes in which pleasure and annoyance were mingled. 
 He could not help having a secret initiative, an unavowed 
 jealousy, and at the same time he greedily enjoyed it all. 
 
 Although he went on talking to himself as though Chris- 
 tophe did not exist, Christophe, blushing with pleasure, could 
 not help taking Hassler’s exclamations to himself, and he ex- 
 plained what he had tried to do. At first Hassler seemed not 
 to pay any attention to what the young man was saying, and 
 went on thinking out loud; then something that Christophe 
 said struck him and he was silent, with his eyes still fixed on 
 the music, which he turned over as he listened without seeming 
 to hear. Christophe grew more and more excited, and at last 
 he plumped into confidence, and talked with naive enthu- 
 siasm about his projects and his life. 
 
 V 
 
 Hassler was silent, and as he listened he slipped back into j 
 his irony. He had let Christophe take the book from his 
 hands; with his elbow on the rack of the piano and his hand ; 
 on his forehead, he looked at Christophe, who was explaining ; 
 his work with youthful ardor and eagerness. And he smiled i 
 bitterly as he thought of his own beginning, his own hopes, j 
 and of Christophers hopes, and all the disappointments that lay \ 
 in wait for him. 
 
 Christophe spoke with his eyes cast down, fearful of losing i 
 the thread of what he had to say. Hassler^s silence encour- 
 aged him. He felt that Hassler was watching him and not 
 missing a word that he said, and he thought he had broken 
 the ice between them, and he was glad at heart. When he had 
 finished he shyly raised his head — confidently, too — and looked 
 at Hassler. All the joy welling in him was frozen on the 
 instant, like too early birds, when he saw the gloomy, mocking 
 eyes that looked into his without kindness. He was silent. 
 
 After an icy moment, Hassler spoke dully. He had changed 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 519 
 
 once more; he affected a sort of harshness towards the young 
 man. He teased him cruelly about his plans, his hopes of 
 success, as though he were trying to chaff himself, now that he 
 had recovered himself. He set himself coldly to destroy his 
 faith in life, his faith in art, his faith in himself. Bitterly 
 he gave himself as an example, speaking of his actual works 
 in an insulting fashion. 
 
 Hog- waste ! he said. That is what these swine want. 
 Do you think there are ten people in the world who love music ? 
 Is there a single one?^^ 
 
 There is myself ! said Christophe emphatically. Hassler 
 looked at him, shrugged his shoulders, and said wearily: 
 
 You will be like the rest. You will do as the rest have 
 done. You will think of success, of amusing yourself, like the 
 rest. . . . And you will be right. . . P 
 
 Christophe tried to protest, but Hassler cut him short; he 
 took the music and began bitterly to criticise the works which 
 he had first been praising. Not only did he harshly pick out 
 the real carelessness, the mistakes in writing, the faults of 
 taste or of expression which had escaped the young man, but 
 he made absurd criticisms/ criticisms which might have been 
 made by the most narrow and antiquated of musicians, from 
 which he himself, Hassler, had had to suffer all his life. He 
 asked what was the sense of it all. He did not even criticise: 
 he denied; it was as though he were trying desperately to 
 efface the impression that the music had made on him in spite 
 of himself. 
 
 Christophe was horrified and made no attempt to reply. 
 How could he reply to absurdities which he blushed to hear 
 on the lips of a man whom he esteemed and loved? Besides, 
 Hassler did not listen to him. He stopped at that, stopped 
 dead, with the book in his hands, shut; no expression in his 
 eyes and his lips drawn down in bitterness. At last he said, 
 as though he had once more forgotten Christophers presence: 
 
 Ah ! the worst misery of all is that there is not a single 
 man who can understand you ! 
 
 Christophe was racked with emotion. He turned suddenly, 
 laid his hand on Hassler’s, and with love in his heart he re- 
 peated : 
 
530 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 “ There is myself ! ” z * 
 
 But Hassler did not move his hand, and if something stirred 
 in his heart for a moment at that boyish cry, no light shone 
 in his dull eyes, as they looked at Christophe. Irony and 
 evasion were in the ascendant. He made a ceremonious and 
 comic little bow in acknowledgment. 
 
 “ Honored ! ” he said. 
 
 He was thinking : 
 
 “Do you, though? Do you think I have lost my life for 
 you ? ” ■ 
 
 He got up, threw the book on the piano, and went with his 
 long spindle legs and sat on the divan again. Christophe had 
 divined his thoughts and had felt the savage insult in them, and 
 he tried proudly to reply that a man does not need to be under- 
 stood by everybody; certain souls are worth a whole people; 
 they think for it, and what they have thought the people have ‘ 
 to think. — But Hassler did not listen to him. He had fallen 
 back into his apathy, caused by the weakening of the life 
 slumbering in him. Christophe, too sane to understand the sud- 
 den change, felt that he had lost. But he could not resign him- ^ 
 self to losing after seeming to be so near victory. He made des- i 
 perate efforts to excite Hassler’s attention once more. He took i 
 up his music book and tried to explain the reason for the irregu- 
 larities which Hassler had remarked. Hassler lay back on the 
 sofa and preserved a gloomy silence. He neither agreed nor ^ 
 contradicted ; he was only waiting for him to finish. ^ 
 
 Christophe saw that there was nothing more to be done. He i 
 stopped short in the middle of a sentence. He rolled up his ; 
 music and got up. Hassler got up, too. Christophe was shy ^ 
 and ashamed, and murmured excuses. Hassler bowed slightly, ■ 
 with a certain haughty and bored distinction, coldly held out 
 his hand politely, and accompanied him to the door without 
 a word of suggestion that he should stay or come again. 
 
 Christophe found himself in the street once more, absolutely 
 crushed. He walked at random ; he did not know where he was 
 going. He walked down several streets mechanically, and 
 then found himself at a station of the train by which he had 
 come. He went back I)y it without thinking of what he was 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 521 
 
 doing. He sank down on the seat with his arms and legs limp. 
 It was impossible to think or to collect his ideas; he thought 
 of nothing, he did not try to think. He was afraid to envisage 
 himself. He was utterly empty. It seemed to him that there 
 was emptiness everywhere about him in that town. He could 
 not breathe in it. The mists, the massive houses stifled him. 
 He had only one idea, to fly, to fly as quickly as possible, — as 
 if by escaping from the town he would leave in it the bitter 
 disillusion which he had found in it. 
 
 He returned to his hotel. It was half-past twelve. It was 
 two hours since he had entered it, — with what a light shining 
 in his heart! Now it was dead. 
 
 He took no lunch. He did not go up to his room. To the 
 astonishment of the people of the hotel, he asked for his bill, 
 paid as though he had spent the night there, and said that he 
 was going. In vain did they explain to him that there was 
 no hurry, that the train he wanted to go by did not leave 
 for hours, and that he had much better wait in the hotel. He 
 insisted on going to the station at once. He was like a child. 
 He wanted to go by the first train, no matter which, and not 
 to stay another hour in the place. After the long journey and 
 all the expense he had incurred, — although he had taken his 
 holiday not only to see Hassler, but the museums, and to hear 
 concerts and to make certain acquaintances — he had only one 
 idea in his head : To go . . . 
 
 He went back to the station. As he had been told, his train 
 did not leave for three hours. And also the train was not 
 express — (for Christophe had to go by the cheapest class) — 
 stopped on the way. Christophe would have done better to 
 go by the next train, which went two hours later and caught up 
 the first. But that meant spending two more hours in the 
 place, and Christophe could not bear it. He would not even 
 leave the station while he was waiting. — A gloomy period of 
 waiting in those vast and empty halls, dark and noisy, where 
 strange shadows were going in and out, always busy, always 
 hurrying; strange shadows who meant nothing to him, all un- 
 known to him, not one friendly face. The misty day died 
 down. The electric lamps, enveloped in fog, flushed the night 
 and made it darker than ever. Christophe grew more and 
 
523 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 more depressed as time went on, waiting in agony for the time 
 to go. Ten times an hour he went to look at the train indi- 
 cators to make sure that he had not made a mistake. As he 
 was reading them once more from end to end to pass the time, 
 the name of a place caught his eye. He thought he knew it. 
 It was only after a moment that he remembered that it was 
 where old Schulz lived, who had written him such kind and 
 enthusiastic letters. In his wretchedness the idea came to him 
 of going to see his unknown friend. The town was not on the 
 direct line on his way home, but a few hours away, by a little 
 local line. It meant a whole night’s journey, with two or three 
 changes and interminable waits. Christophe never thought 
 about it. He decided suddenly to go. He had an instinctive 
 need of clinging to sympathy of some sort. He gave himself no 
 time to think, and telegraphed to Schulz to say that he would 
 arrive next morning. Hardly had he sent the telegram than he 
 regretted it. He laughed bitterly at his eternal illusions. Why 
 go to meet a new sorrow ? — But it was done now. It was too ^ 
 late to change his mind. 
 
 These thoughts filled his last hour of waiting— his train at < 
 last was ready. He was the first to get into it, and he was so 
 childish that he only began to breathe again when the train 
 shook, and through the carriage window he could see the 
 outlines of the town fading into the gray sky under the heavy 
 downpour of the night. He thought he must have died if he 
 had spent the night in it. ; 
 
 At the very hour — about six in the evening — a letter from i 
 Hassler came for Christophe at his hotel. Christophe’s visit; 
 stirred many things in him. The whole afternoon he had been 
 thinking of it bitterly, and not without sympathy for the poor ' 
 boy who had come to him with such eager affection to be re- 
 ceived so coldly. He was sorry for that reception and a little 
 angry with himself. In truth, it had been only one of those 
 fits of sulky whimsies to which he was subject. He thought 
 to make it good by sending Christophe a ticket for the opera 
 and a few words appointing a meeting after the performance. — 
 Christophe never knew anything about it. When he did not 
 see him, Hassler thought: 
 
 “ He is angry. So much the worse for him ! ” 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 523 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and did not wait long for him. 
 Next day Christophe was far away — so far that all eternity 
 would not have been enough to bring them together. And 
 they were both separated forever. 
 
 Peter Schulz was seventy-five. He had always had delicate 
 health and age had not spared him. He was fairly tall, but 
 stooping, and his head hung down to his chest. He had a 
 weak throat and difficulty in breathing. Asthma, catarrh, bron- 
 chitis were always upon him, and the marks of the struggles 
 he had to make — many a night sitting up in his bed, bending 
 forward, dripping with sweat in the effort to force a breath of 
 air into his stifling lungs — were in the sorrowful lines on his 
 long, thin, clean-shaven face. His nose was long and a little 
 swollen at the top. Deep lines came from under his eyes and 
 crossed his cheeks, that were hollow from his toothlessness. 
 Age and infirmity had not been the only sculptors of that 
 poor wreck of a man: the sorrows of life also had had their 
 share in its making. — And in spite of all he was not sad. There 
 was kindness and serenity in his large mouth. But in his eyes 
 especially there was that which gave a touching softness to the 
 old face. They were light gray, limpid, and transparent. They 
 looked straight, calmly and frankly. They hid nothing of the 
 soul. Its depths could be read in them. 
 
 His life had been uneventful. He had been alone for years. 
 His wife was dead. She was not very good, or very intelli- 
 gent, and she was not at all beautiful. But he preserved a 
 tender memory of her. It was twenty-five years since he had 
 lost her, and he had never once failed a night to have a 
 little imaginary conversation, sad and tender, with her before 
 he went to sleep. He shared all his doings with her. — He had 
 had no children. That was the great sorrow of his life. He 
 had transferred his need of affection to his pupils, to whom he 
 was attached as a father to his sons. He had found very little 
 return. An old heart can feel very near to a young heart and\ 
 almost of the same age; knowing how brief are the years that ^ 
 lie between them. But the young man never has any idea of 
 that. To him an old man is a man of another age, and be- 
 sides, he is absorbed by his immediate anxieties and instinctively 
 
524 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 turns away from the melancholy end of all his efforts. Old 
 Schulz had sometimes found gratitude in- his pupils who were 
 touched by the keen and lively interest he took in everything 
 good or ill that happened to them. They used to come and see 
 him from time to time. They used to write and. thank him 
 when they left the university. Some of them used to go on 
 writing occasionally during the years following. And then 
 old Schulz would hear nothing more of them except in the 
 papers which kept him informed of their advancement, and he 
 would be as glad of their success as though it was his own. He 
 was never hurt by their silence. He found a thousand excuses 
 for it. He never doubted their affection and used to ascribe 
 even to the most selfish the feelings that he had for them. 
 
 But his books were his greatest refuge. They neither forgot 
 nor deceived him. The souls which he cherished in them had 
 risen above the flood of time. They were inscrutable, fixed for 
 eternity in the love they inspired and seemed to feel, and gave 
 forth once more to those who loved them. He was Professor of 
 .^Esthetics and the History of Music, and he was like an old 
 wood quivering with the songs of birds. Some of these songs 
 sounded very far away. They came from the depths of the 
 ages. But they were not the least sweet and mysterious of 
 all. — Others were familiar and intimate to him, dear compan- 
 ions; their every phrase reminded him of the joys and sor- 
 rows of his past life, conscious or unconscious :—( for under 
 every day lit by the light of the sun there are unfolded other 
 days lit by a light unknown)— And there were some songs that 
 he had never yet heard, songs which said the things that he 
 had been long awaiting and needing; and his heart opened to 
 receive them like the earth to receive rain. And so old Schulz 
 listened, in the silence .of his solitary life, to the forest filled 
 with birds, and, like the monk of the legend, who slept in the 
 ecstasy of the song of the magic bird, the years passed over 
 him and the evening of life was come, but still he had the heart 
 of a boy of twenty. 
 
 He was not only rich in music. He loved the poets— old and 
 new. He had a predilection for those of his own country, 
 especially for Goethe; but he also loved those of other coun- 
 tries. He was a learned man and could read several languages. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 525 
 
 In mind he was a contemporary of Herder and the great 
 Weltburger — ^the citizens of the world/^ of the end of the 
 
 eighteenth century. He had lived through the years of bitter 
 struggle which preceded and followed seventy, and was im- 
 mersed in their vast idea. And although he adored Germany, 
 he was not vainglorious about it. He thought, with Herder, 
 that among all vainglorious men, he who is vainglorious of 
 his nationality is the completest fool/' and, with Schiller, that 
 it is a poor ideal only to write for one nation/' And he was 
 timid of mind, but his heart was large, and ready to welcome 
 lovingly everything beautiful in the world. Perhaps he was 
 too indulgent with mediocrity; but his instinct never doubted 
 as to what was the best; and if he was not strong enough to 
 condemn the sham artists admired by public opinion, he was 
 always strong enough to defend the artists of originality and 
 power whom public opinion disregarded. His kindness often 
 led him astray. He was fearful of committing any injustice, 
 and when he did not like what others liked, he never doubted 
 but that it must be he who was mistaken, and he would man- 
 age to love it. It was so sweet to him to love! Love and 
 admiration were even more necessary to his moral being than 
 air to his miserable lungs. And so how grateful he was to 
 those who gave him a new opportunity of showing them ! — 
 Christophe could have no idea of what his Lieder had been to 
 him. He himself had not felt them nearly so keenly when he 
 had written them. His songs were to him only a few sparks 
 thrown out from his inner fire. He had cast them forth 
 and would cast forth others. But to old Schulz they were a 
 whole world suddenly revealed to him — a whole world to be 
 loved. His life had been lit up by them. 
 
 A year before he had had to resign his position at the uni- 
 versity. His health, growing more and more precarious, 
 prevented his lecturing. He was ill and in bed when Wolfs 
 Library had sent him as usual a parcel of the latest music they 
 had received, and in it were Christophers Lieder, He was alone. 
 He was without relatives. The few that he had had were long 
 since dead. He was delivered into the hands of an old servant, 
 who profited by his weakness to make him do whatever she liked. 
 
526 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 A few friends hardly younger than himself used to come and 
 see him from time to time, but they were not in very good 
 health either, and when the weather was bad they too stayed in- 
 doors and missed their visits. It was winter then and the streets 
 were covered with melting snow. Schulz had not seen anybody 
 all day. It was dark in the room. A yellow fog was drawn 
 over the windows like a screen, making it impossible to see 
 out. The heat of the stove was thick and oppressive. From the 
 church hard by an old peal of bells of the seventeenth century 
 chimed every quarter of an hour, haltingly and horribly out 
 of tune, scraps of monotonous chants, which seemed grim in 
 their heartiness to Schulz when he was far from gay him- 
 self. He was coughing, propped up by a heap of pillows. He 
 was trying to read Montaigne, whom he loved ; but now he 
 did not find as much pleasure in reading him as usual. He 
 let the book fall, and was breathing with difficulty and dream- 
 ing. The parcel of music was on the bed. He had not the 
 courage to open it. He was sad at heart. At last he sighed, 
 and when he had very carefully untied the string, he put on 
 his spectacles and began to read the pieces of music. His 
 thoughts were elsewhere, always returning to memories which • 
 he was trying to thrust aside. ' 
 
 The book he was holding was Christophers. His eyes fell 
 on an old canticle the words of which Christophe had taken 
 from a simple, pious poet of the seventeenth century, and 
 had modernized them. The ChristUches Wa/nderlied (The i 
 
 Christian Wanderer^s Song) of Paul Gerhardt. 
 
 Hoff! O du arme Seel^ 
 
 Hoff! und sei unverzagt, ‘ 
 
 Erwarte nur der Zeit, 
 
 So wirst du schon erhlicTcen 
 
 Die Sonne der schonsten Freud. 
 
 Hope, oh! thou wretched soul, 
 
 Hope, hope and be valiant! 
 
 ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 
 
 Only wait then, wait. 
 
 And surely thou shalt see 
 
 The sun of lovely Joy. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 527 
 
 Old Schulz knew the ingenuous words, but never had they 
 so spoken to him, never so nearly. ... It was not the tranquil 
 piety, soothing and lulling the soul by its monotony. It was 
 a soul like his own. It was his own soul, but younger and 
 stronger, suffering, striving to hope, striving to see, and seeing, 
 Joy. His hands trembled, great tears trickled down his cheeks. 
 He read on: 
 
 Auf! Auf! gieh deinem Schmerze 
 Vnd Morgen gute Nacht! 
 
 Ldss fahren was das Herze 
 Betruht und traurig macht! 
 
 Up! Up! and give thy sorrow 
 And all thy cares good-night; 
 
 And all that grieves and saddens 
 Thy heart be put to flight 
 
 Christophe brought to these thoughts a boyish and valiant 
 ardor, and the heroic laughter in it showed forth in the last 
 naive and confident verses: 
 
 Bist du doch nicht Regente, 
 
 Der alles fuhren soli, 
 
 Gott sitzt im> Regimente, 
 
 Vnd fiihret alles woUl, 
 
 Not thou thyself art ruler 
 Whom all things must obey, 
 
 But God is Lord decreeing— 
 
 All follows in His way. 
 
 And when there came the superbly defiant stanzas which in 
 his youthful barbarian insolence he had calmly plucked from 
 their original position in the poem to form the conclusion of 
 his Lied: 
 
 Vnd ohgleich alle Teufel 
 Hier wollten iviederstefin, 
 
 Bo unrd doch ohne Zweifel, 
 
 Gott nicht zuriicJce gehn. 
 
 Was er ihm vorgenommen, 
 
 Vnd was ct hahen willt 
 
 Das muss doch endlich hommen 
 
 Zu seinem ZicecTc und Ziel. 
 
628 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 And even though all Devils 
 Came and opposed his will. 
 
 There were no cause for doubting, 
 
 God will be steadfast still: 
 
 What He has undertaken, 
 
 All His divine decree — 
 
 Exactly as He ordered 
 At last shall all things be. 
 
 . . . then there were transports of delight, the intoxication 
 of war, the triumph of a Eoman Imperator. 
 
 The old man trembled all over. Breathlessly he followed the 
 impetuous music like a child dragged along by a companion. 
 His heart beat. Tears trickled down. He stammered: 
 
 ^^Oh! My God! ... Oh! My God! . . 
 
 He began to sob and he laughed; he was happy. He choked. 
 He was attacked by a terrible fit of coughing. Salome, the old 
 servant, ran to him, and she thought the old man was going . 
 to die. He went on crying, and coughing, and saying over . 
 and over again: 
 
 ^^Oh! My God! ... My God! . . ! 
 
 And in the short moments of respite between the fits of 
 coughing he laughed a little hysterically. j 
 
 Salome thought he was going mad. When at last she under- 
 stood the cause of his agitation, she scolded him sharply: 
 
 How can anybody get into such a state over a piece of 
 foolery! . . . Give it me! I shall take it away. You shan’t 
 see it again.” • 
 
 But the old man held firm, in the midst of his coughing, and ] 
 he cried to Salome to leave him alone. As she insisted, he i 
 grew angry, swore, and choked himself with his oaths. Never . 
 had she known him to be angry and to stand out against her. ] 
 She was aghast and surrendered her prize. But she did not 
 mince her words with him. She told him he was an old fool 
 and said that hitherto she had thought she had to do with a 
 gentleman, but that now she saw her mistake; that he said 
 things which would make a plowman blush, that his eyes were 
 starting from his head, and if they had been pistols would 
 have killed her . . . She would have gone on for a long time 
 in that strain if he had not got up furiously on his pillow and 
 shouted at her: 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 529 
 
 “ Go ! ” in so peremptory a voice that she went, slamming 
 the door and declaring that he might call her as much as he 
 liked, only she would not put herself out and would leave him 
 alone to kick the bucket. 
 
 Then silence descended upon the darkening room. Once 
 more the bells pealed placidly and grotesquely through the 
 calm evening. A little ashamed of his anger, old Schulz was 
 lying on his back, motionless, waiting, breathless, for the 
 tumult in his heart to die down. He was clasping the precious 
 Lieder to his breast and laughing like a child. 
 
 He spent the following days of solitude in a sort of ecstasy. 
 He thought no more of his illness, of the winter, of the gray 
 light, or of his loneliness. Everything was bright and filled 
 with love about him. So near to death, he felt himself living 
 again in the young soul of an unknown friend. 
 
 He tried to imagine Christophe. He did not see him as 
 anything like what he was. He saw him rather as an idealized 
 version of himself, as he would have liked to be : fair, slim, 
 with blue eyes, and a gentle, quiet voice, soft, timid and tender. 
 He idealized everything about him : his pupils, his neighbors, 
 his friends, his old servant. His gentle, affectionate dispo- 
 sition and his want of the critical faculty— in part voluntary, 
 so as to avoid any disturbing thought — surrounded him with 
 serene, pure images like himself. It was the kindly lying 
 which he needed if he were to live. He was not altogether 
 deceived by it, and often in his bed at night he would sigh as 
 he thought of a thousand little things which had happened 
 during the day to contradict his idealism. He knew quite well 
 that old Salome used to laugh at him behind his back with 
 her gossips, and that she used to rob him regularly every 
 week. He knew that his pupils were obsequious with him 
 while they had need of him, and that after they had received 
 all the services they could expect from him they deserted him. 
 He knew that his former colleagues at the university had 
 forgotten him altogether since he had retired, and that his 
 successor attacked him in his articles, not by name, but by some 
 treacherous allusion, and by quoting some worthless thing that 
 he had said or by pointing out his mistakes— (a procedure 
 
530 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 very common in the world of criticism). He knew that his 
 old friend Kunz had lied to him that very afternoon, and that 
 he would never see again the books which his other friend, 
 Pottpetschmidt, had borrowed for a few days, — which was hard 
 for a man who, like himself, was as attached to his books as 
 to living people. Many other sad things, old or new, would 
 come to him. He tried not to think of them, but they were 
 there all the same. He was conscious of them. Sometimes 
 the memory of them would pierce him like some rending sorrow. 
 
 "Oh! My God! My God! . . .” 
 
 He would groan in the silence of the night. — And then 
 he would discard such hurtful thoughts; he would deny them; 
 he would try to be confident, and optimistic, and to believe in 
 human truth; and he would believe. How often had his 
 illusions been brutally destroyed! — But always others spring- 
 ing into life, always, always. . . . He could not do without . 
 them. 
 
 The unknown Christophe became a fire of warmth to his 
 life. The first cold, ungracious letter which he received from 
 him would have hurt him — (perhaps it did so) — but he would 
 not admit it, and it gave him a childish joy. He was so 
 modest and asked so little of men that the little he received , 
 from them was enough to feed his need of loving and being ■ 
 grateful to them. To see Christophe was a happiness which ■ 
 he had never dared to hope for, for he was too old now to ; 
 journey to the banks of the Ehine, and as for asking Christophe : 
 to come to him, the idea had never even occurred to him. ] 
 
 Christophe’s telegram reached him in the evening, just as i 
 he was sitting down to dinner. He did not understand at first. I 
 He thought he did not know the signature. He thought there | 
 was some mistake, that the telegram was not for him. He 
 read it three times. In his excitement his spectacles would 
 not stay on his nose. The lamp gave a very bad light, and 
 the letters danced before his eyes. When he did understand 
 he was so overwhelmed that he forgot to eat. In vain did 
 Salome shout at him. He could not swallow a morsel. He 
 threw his napkin on the table, unfolded, — a thing he never did. 
 He got up, hobbled to get his hat and stick, and went out. Old 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 531 
 
 Schulz’s first thought on receiving such good news was to go 
 and share it with others^ and to tell his friends of Christophe’s 
 coming. 
 
 He had two friends who were music mad like himself, and 
 he had succeeded in making them share his enthusiasm for 
 Christ ophe. Judge Samuel Hunz and the dentist, Oscar 
 Pottpetschmidt, who was an excellent singer. The three old 
 friends had often talked about Christophe, and they had played 
 all his music that they could find. Pottpetschmidt sang, Schulz 
 accompanied, and Kunz listened. They would go into ecstasies 
 for hours together. How often had they said while they 
 were playing: 
 
 Ah ! If only Krafft were here ! ” 
 
 Schulz laughed to himself in the street for the joy he had 
 and was going to give. Night was falling, and Kunz lived in 
 a little village half an hour away from the town. But the 
 sky was clear; it was a soft April evening. The nightingales 
 were singing. Old Schulz’s heart was overflowing with happi- 
 ness. He breathed without difficulty, he walked like a boy. 
 He strode along gleefully, without heeding the stones against 
 which he kicked in the darkness. He turned blithely into the 
 side of the road when carts came along, and exchanged a merry 
 greeting with the drivers, who looked at him in astonishment 
 when the lamps showed the old man climbing up the bank of 
 the road. 
 
 Night was fully come when he reached Kunz’s house, a little 
 way out of the village in a little garden. He drummed on the 
 door and shouted at the top of his voice. A window was 
 opened and Kunz appeared in alarm. He peered through the 
 door and asked: 
 
 Who is there ? What is it ? ” 
 
 Schulz was out of breath, but he called gladly: 
 
 Krafft — Krafft is coming to-morrow . . .” Kunz did 
 
 not understand; but he recognized the voice: 
 
 "'Schulz! . . . What! At this hour? What is it?’' 
 
 Schulz repeated: 
 
 " To-morrow, he is coming to-morrow morning ! . . .” 
 
 " What ? ” asked Kunz, still mystified. 
 
532 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 ^^Krafft!’^ cried Schulz. 
 
 Kunz pondered the word for a moment; then a loud ex- 
 clamation showed that he had understood. 
 
 I am coming down ! he shouted. 
 
 The window was closed. He appeared on the steps with a 
 lamp in his hand and came down into the garden. He was a 
 little stout old man, with a large gray head, a red beard, red 
 hair on his face and hands. He took little steps and he was 
 smoking a porcelain pipe. This good natured, rather sleepy 
 little man had never worried much about anything. For all 
 that, the news brought by Schulz excited him; he waved his 
 short arms and his lamp and asked: 
 
 ^^What? Is it him? Is he really coming 
 
 To-morrow morning ! said Schulz, triumphantly waving 
 the telegram. 
 
 The two old friends went and sat on a seat in the arbor. • 
 Schulz took the lamp. Kunz carefully unfolded the telegram ■ 
 and read it slowly in a whisper. Schulz read it again aloud 
 over his shoulder. Kunz went on looking at the paper, the ' 
 marks on the telegram, the time when it had been sent, the 
 time when it had arrived, the number of words. Then he gave ' 
 the precious paper back to Schulz, who was laughing happily, 
 looked at him and wagged his head and said: 
 
 ^^Ah! well ... Ah! well! . . 
 
 After a moments thought and after drawing in and ex- 
 pelling a cloud of tobacco smoke he put his hand on Schulz’s: 
 knee and said: 
 
 We must tell Pottpetschmidt.” 
 
 ^^I was going to him,” said Schulz. 
 
 ^^I will go with you,” said Kunz. i 
 
 He went in and put down his lamp and came back imme- 
 diately. The two old men went on arm in arm. Pottpet- 
 schmidt lived at the other end of the village. Schulz and Kunz 
 exchanged a few absent words, but they were both pondering 
 the news. Suddenly Kunz stopped and whacked on the ground 
 with his stick: 
 
 Oh ! Lord ! ” he said. . . . ^^ He is away ! ” 
 
 He had remembered that Pottpetschmidt had had to go away 
 that afternoon for an operation at a neighboring town where 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 533 
 
 he had to spend the night and stay a day or two. Schulz was 
 distressed. Kunz was equally put out. They were proud of 
 Pottpetschmidt ; they would have liked to show him off. They 
 stood in the middle of the road and could not make up their 
 minds what to do. 
 
 “What shall we do? What shall we do?” asked Kunz. 
 
 “ Krafft absolutely must hear Pottpetschmidt,” said Schulz. 
 
 He thought for a moment and said: 
 
 “ We must sent him a telegram.” 
 
 They went to the post office and together they composed a 
 long and excited telegram of which it was very difficult to 
 understand a word. Then they went back. Schulz reckoned: 
 
 “ He could be here to-morrow morning if he took the first 
 train.” 
 
 But Kunz pointed out that it was too late and that the 
 telegram would not be sent until the morning. Schulz nodded, 
 and they said : 
 
 “ How unfortunate I ” 
 
 They parted at Kunz’s door ; for in spite of his friendship 
 for Schulz it did not go so far as to make him commit the 
 imprudence of accompanying Schulz outside the village, and 
 even to the end of the road by which he would have had to 
 come back alone in the dark. It was arranged that Kunz 
 should dine on the morrow with Schulz. Schulz looked anx- 
 iously at the sky : 
 
 “ If only it is fine to-morrow ! ” 
 
 And his heart was a little lighter when Kunz, who was sup- 
 posed to have a wonderful knowledge of meteorology, looked 
 gravely at the sky — (for he was no less anxious than Schulz 
 that Christophe should see' their little countryside in all its 
 beauty) — and said: 
 
 “ It will be fine to-morrow.” 
 
 Schulz went along the road to the town and came to it not 
 without having stumbled more than once in the ruts and the 
 heaps of stones by the wayside. Before he went home he called 
 in at the confectioner’s to order a certain tart which was the 
 envy of the town. Then he went home, but just as he was 
 going in he turned back to go to the station to find out the 
 
1 
 
 534 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 exact time at whieli the train arrived. At last he did^ go 
 home and called Salome and discussed at length the dinner i 
 for the morrow. Then only he went to bed worn out; but he ' 
 was as excited as a child on Christmas Eve, and all night he | 
 turned about and about and never slept a wink. About one 
 o’clock in the morning he thought of getting up to go and tell 
 Salome to cook a stewed carp for dinner; for she was marvel- 
 ously successful with that dish. He did not tell her ; and it was 
 as well, no doubt. But he did get up to -arrange all sorts of 
 things in the room he meant to give Christophe ; he took a thou- 
 sand precautions so that Salome should not hear him, for he was 
 afraid of being scolded. All night long he was afraid of miss- 
 ing the train although Christophe could not arrive before eight 
 o’clock. He was up very early. He first looked at the sky; 
 Kunz had not made a mistake; it was glorious weather. On 
 tiptoe Schulz went down to the cellar; he had not been there 
 for a long time, fearing the cold and the steep stairs ; he se- 
 lected his best wines, knocked his head hard against the ceil- 
 ing as he came up again, and thought he was going to choke 
 when he reached the top of the stairs with his full basket. , 
 Then he went to the garden with his shears ; ruthlessly he t 
 cut his finest roses and the first branches of lilac in fiower. ^ 
 Then he went up to his room again, shaved feverishly, and cut ; 
 himself more than once. He dressed carefully and set out for ; 
 the station. It was seven o’clock. Salome had not succeeded ; 
 in making him take so much as a drop of milk, for he declared » 
 that Christophe would not have had breakfast when he ar- j 
 rived and that they would have breakfast together when they^ 
 came from the station. i 
 
 He was at the station three-quarters of an hour too soon, i 
 He waited and waited for Christophe and finally missed him. 
 Instead of waiting patiently at the gate he went on to the 
 platform and lost his head in the crowd of people coming and 
 going. In spite of the exact information of the telegram he 
 had imagined, God knows why, that Christophe would arrive by 
 a different train from that which brought him ; and besides it 
 had never occurred to him that Christophe would get out of 
 a fourth-class carriage. He stayed on for more than half an 
 hour waiting at the station, when Christophe, who had long 
 
 I 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 535 
 
 since arrived, had gone straight to his house. As a erowmng 
 misfortune Salome had just gone out to do her shopping; 
 Christophe found the door shut. The woman next door whom 
 Salome had told to say, in case any one should ring, that she 
 would soon be back, gave the message without any addition to 
 it Christophe, who had not come to see Salome and did not 
 even know who she was, thought it a very bad joke; he asked it 
 Herr Universitdts MusikdireMor Schulz was not at h(^e. 
 He was told " Yes,” but the woman could not tell him where 
 he was. Christophe was furious and went away. 
 
 When old Schulz came back with a face an ell long and learned 
 from Salome, who had just come in too, what had happened 
 he was in despair; he almost wept. He stormed at his servant 
 for her stupidity in going out while he was away and not 
 having even given instructions that Christophe was to be kept 
 waiting. Salome replied in the same way that she could not 
 imagine that he would be so foolish as to miss a man whom he 
 had gone to meet. But the old man did not stay to argue with 
 her’ without losing a moment he hobbled out of doors again 
 and’ went off to look for Christophe armed with the very vague 
 clues given him by his neighbors. _ j . 
 
 Christophe had been offended at finding nobody and not 
 even a word of excuse. Not knowing what to do until the ne^ 
 train he went and walked about the town and the fields, which 
 he thought very pretty. It was a quiet reposeful little town 
 sheltered between gently sloping hills; there were gardens round 
 the houses, cherry-trees and fiowers, green lawns, beautitul 
 shady trees, pseudo-antique ruins, white busts of bygone 
 princesses on marble columns in the midst of the trees, with 
 gentle and pleasing faces. All about the town were meadows 
 Ind hills. In the fiowering trees blackbirds whistled joyously, 
 for many little orchestras of flutes gay and solemn. It was not 
 long before Christophe’s ill-humor vanished; he forgot Peter 
 
 ^^^Th^old man rushed vainly through the streets questioning 
 people; he went up to the old castle on the hill above the town 
 and was coming back in despair when, with hp keen, far-sighte 
 eves he saw some distance away a man lying in a meadow in t e 
 shade of a thorn. He did not know Christophe; he had no 
 
636 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 means of being sure that it was he. Besides, the man’s hack j 
 was turned towards him and his face was half hidden in the 
 grass. Schulz prowled along the road and about the meadow 
 with his heart beating : i 
 
 “ It is, he . . . No, it is not he , . .” 
 
 He dared not call to him. An idea struck him; he began 
 to sing the last bars of Christophe’s Lied: 
 
 "'Auf! Auf! . . (Up! Up! . . .) 
 
 Christophe rose to it like a fish out of the water and shouted 
 the following bars at the top of his voice. He turned gladly. 
 His face was red and there was grass in his hair. They called 
 to each other hy name and ran together. Schulz strode across 
 the ditch by the road; Christophe leaped the fence. They 
 shook hands warmly and went back to the house laughing and 
 talking loudly. The old man told how he had missed him. 
 Christophe, who a moment before had decided to go away with- ■ 
 out making any further attempt to see Schulz, was at once 
 conscious of his kindness and simplicity and began to love him. 
 Before they arrived they had already confided many things to 
 each other. 
 
 When they reached the house they found Kunz, who, having 
 learned that Schulz had gone to look for Christophe, was , 
 waiting quietly. They were given cafe au lait. But Christophe 
 said that he had breakfasted at an inn. The old man was ■ 
 upset; it was a real grief to him that Christophe’s first meal ; 
 in the place should not have been in his house; such small ' 
 things were of vast importance to his fond heart. Christophe, ] 
 who understood him, was amused by it secretly, and loved him < 
 the more for it. And to console him he assured him that he • 
 had appetite enough for two breakfasts; and he proved his ! 
 assertion. 
 
 All his troubles had gone from his mind; he felt that he 
 was among true friends and he began to recover. He told 
 them about his journey and his rebuffs in a humorous way; 
 he looked like a schoolboy on holiday. Schulz beamed and 
 devoured him with his eyes and laughed heartily. 
 
 It was not long before conversation turned upon the secret 
 bond that united the three of them : Christophe’s music. Schulz 
 was longing to hear Christophe play some of his compositions; 
 
REVOLT 
 
 53 ? 
 
 but he dared not ask him to do so. Christophe was striding 
 about the room and talking. Schulz watched him whenever 
 he went near the open piano; and he prayed inwardly that he 
 might stop at it. The same thought was in Kunz. Their 
 hearts beat when they saw him sit down mechanically on the 
 piano stool, without stopping talking, and then without looking 
 at the instrument run his fingers over the keys at random. As 
 Schulz expected hardly had Christophe struck a few arpeggios 
 than the sound took possession of him; he went on striking 
 chords and still talking; then there came whole phrases; and 
 then he stopped talking and began to play. The old men ex- 
 changed a meaning glance, sly and happy. 
 
 “Do you know that?” asked Christophe, playing one of his 
 
 JjXcdcv, 
 
 “Do I know it?” said Schulz delightedly. Christophe said 
 without stopping, half turning his head: 
 
 “ Euh ! It is not very good. Your piano ! ” The old man 
 was very contrite. He begged pardon: 
 
 “ It is old,” he said humbly. " It is like myself.” Chris- 
 tophe turned round and looked at the old man, who seemed to 
 be asking pardon for his age, took both his hands, and laughed. 
 He looked into his honest eyes: 
 
 “ Oh ! ” he said, “ you are younger than I.” Schulz laughed 
 aloud and spoke of his old body and his infirmities. 
 
 “ Ta, ta, ta ! ” said Christophe, “ I don’t mean that ; I know 
 what I am saying. It is true, isn’t it, Kunz ? ” 
 
 (They had already suppressed the “Herr.”) 
 
 Kunz agreed emphatically. 
 
 Schulz tried to find the same indulgence for his piano. 
 
 “ It has still some beautiful notes,” he said timidly. 
 
 And he touched them— four or five notes that were fairly 
 true, half an octave in the middle register of the instrument. 
 Christophe understood that it was an old friend and he said 
 kindly, — ^thinking of Schulz’s eyes: 
 
 “ Yes. It still has beautiful eyes.” 
 
 Schulz’s face lit up. He launched out on an involved eulogy 
 of his old piano, but he dropped immediately, for Christophe 
 had begun to play again. Lieder followed Lieder; Christophe 
 sang them softly. With tears in his eyes Schulz followed his 
 
638 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 every movement. With his hands folded on his stomach Kunz 
 closed his eyes the better to enjoy it. From time to time 
 Christophe turned beaming towards the two old men who were 
 absolutely delighted, and he said with a naive enthusiasm at 
 which they never thought of laughing : 
 
 Hein ! It is beautiful ! . . . And this ! What do you 
 
 say about this? . . . And this again! . . . This is 
 
 the most beautiful of all. . . . Now I will play you some- 
 thing which will make your hair curl. . . ^ 
 
 As he was finishing a dreamy fragment the cuckoo clock 
 began to call. Christophe started and shouted angrily. Kunz 
 was suddenly awakened and rolled his eyes fearfully. Even 
 Schulz did not understand at first. Then when he saw Chris- 
 tophe shaking his fist at the calling bird and shouting to some- 
 one in the name of Heaven to take the idiot and throw it 
 away, the ventriloquist specter, he too discovered for the first 
 time in his life that the noise was intolerable; and he took a 
 chair and tried to mount it to take down the spoil-sport. But ' 
 he nearly fell and Kunz would not let him try again; he called ‘ 
 Salome. She came without hurrying herself, as usual, and t 
 was staggered to find the clock thrust into her hands, which \ 
 Christophe in his impatience had taken down himself. ; 
 
 What am I to do with it ? ” she asked. : 
 
 Whatever you like. Take it away ! Don’t let us see it • 
 again ! ” said Schulz, no less impatient than Christophe. | 
 
 (He wondered how he could have borne such a horror for j 
 so long.) 1 
 
 Salome thought that they were surely all cracked. ^ 
 
 The music went on. Hours passed. Salome came and an- t 
 nounced that dinner was served. Schulz bade her be silent. ‘ 
 She came again ten minutes later, then once again, ten minutes 
 after that; this time she was beside herself and boiling with 
 rage while she tried to look unperturbed; she stood firmly in 
 the middle of the room and in spite of Schulz’s desperate ges- 
 tures she asked in a brazen voice: 
 
 Do the gentlemen prefer to eat their dinner cold or burned ? 
 
 It does not matter to me. I only await your orders.” 
 
 Schulz was confused by her scolding and tried to retort; 
 but Christophe burst out laughing. Kunz followed his exam- 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 539 
 
 pie and at length Schulz laughed too. Salome, satisfied with 
 the effect she had produced, turned on her heels with the air ot 
 a queen who is graciously pleased to pardon her repentant 
 
 “ That’s a good creature ! ” said Christophe, getting up from 
 the piano. “ She is right. There is nothing so intolerable as 
 an audience arriving in the middle of a concert. j v • 
 
 They sat at table. There was an enormous and delicious 
 repast. Schulz had touched Salome’s vanity and she only 
 asked an excuse to display her art. There was no lack of 
 opportunity for her to exercise it. The old friends were tre- 
 mendous feeders. Kunz was a different man at table; he ex- 
 panded like a sun; he would have done well as a sign for a 
 restaurant. Schulz was no less susceptible to good cheer; but 
 his ill health imposed more restraint upon him. It is true that 
 generally he did not pay much heed to that; and he had to 
 for it. In that event he did not complain, if he were ill at 
 least he knew why. Like Kunz he had recipes of his own 
 handed down from father to son for generations. Salom^e was 
 accustomed therefore to work for connoisseurs. But on this oc- 
 casion she had contrived to include all her masterpieces in one 
 menu; it was like an exhibition of the unforgettable cooking 
 of Germany, honest and unsophisticated, with all the scents 
 of all the herbs, and thick sauces, substantial soups, perfect 
 stews, wonderful carp, sauerkraut, geese, plain cakes, aniseed 
 and caraway seed bread. Christophe was in raptures with his 
 mouth full, and he ate like an ogre ; he had the formidable 
 capacity of his father and grandfather, who would have de- 
 voured a whole goose. But he could live just as well for a whole 
 week on bread and cheese, and cram when occasion served 
 Schulz was cordial and ceremonious and watched him with kin 
 eyes, and plied him with all the wines of the Ehine.^ Kunz 
 was shining and recognized him as a brother. Salomes large 
 face was beaming happily. At first she had been deceived when 
 Christophe came. Schulz had spoken about him so much 
 beforehand that she had fancied him as an Excellency, laden 
 with letters and honors. When she saw him she cried out . 
 
 “What! Is that all?” , , , 
 
 But at table Christophe won her good graces; she had never 
 
540 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 seen anybody so splendidly do justice to her talent. Instead 
 of going back to her kitchen she stayed by the door to watch 
 Christophe, who was saying all sorts of absurd things without 
 missing a bite, and with her hands on her hips she roared with 
 laughter. They were all glad and happy. There was only 
 one shadow over their joy : the absence of Pottpetschmidt. They 
 often returned to it. 
 
 " Ah ! If he were here ! How he would eat ! How he would 
 drink ! How he would sing ! ” 
 
 Their praises of him were inexhaustible. 
 
 “ If only Christophe could see him ! . . . But perhaps 
 
 he would be able to. Perhaps Pottpetschmidt would return in 
 the evening, on that night at latest. . . ■” 
 
 “ Oh ! I shall be gone to-night,” said Christophe. 
 
 A shadow passed over Schulz’s beaming face. 
 
 “What! Gone!” he said in a trembling voice. “But you 
 are not going.” 
 
 “ Oh, yes,” said Christophe gailv. “ I must catch the tram 
 to-night.” 
 
 Schulz was in despair. He had counted on Christophe 
 spending the night, perhaps several nights, in his house. He 
 murmured : 
 
 “ No, no. You can’t go ! . . .” 
 
 Hunz repeated: 
 
 “ And Pottpetschmidt ! . . .” 
 
 Christophe looked at the two of them ; he was touched by 
 the dismay on their kind friendly faces and said : 
 
 “ How good you are ! . . . If vou like I will go to-mor- 
 
 row morning.” 
 
 Schulz took him by the hand. 
 
 “Ah!” he said. “How glad I am! Thank you! Thank 
 you ! ” 
 
 He was like a child to whom to-morrow seems so far, so far, 
 that it will not bear thinking on. Christophe was not going 
 to-day; to-day was theirs; they would spend the whole evening 
 together; he would sleep under his roof; that was all that 
 Schulz saw; he would not look further. 
 
 They became merry again. Schulz rose suddenly, looked 
 very solemn, and excitedly and slowly proposed the toast of 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 their guest, who had given him the immense PJ /nd honor 
 of visiting the little town and his humble house ; he dr an o is 
 happy return, to his success, to his glory, to every ^ 
 
 the world, which with all his heart he wished him And then 
 he proposed another toast “to noble music —another to his 
 
 old^friLd Kunz,-another to i^'tnd \he 
 
 Pottpetschmidt. Kunz in his turn drank to Schulz and the 
 others, and Christophe, to bring the toasts to an end, proposed 
 the health of dame Salome, who blushed crimson. Upon that, 
 without giving the orators time to reply, he began a familiar 
 song which the two old men took up ; after that fnotlmr, and 
 then another for three parts which was all about friendship and 
 music and wine; the whole was accompanied by loud laughter 
 and the clink of glasses continually touching. ,, , , , 
 
 It was half-past three when they got up from the table. 
 They were rather drowsy. Kunz sank into a chair; he was 
 longing to have a sleep. Schulz’s legs were worn out by his 
 exertions of the morning and by standing for his toasts. They 
 both hoped that Christophe would sit at the piano again an 
 go on playing for hours. But the terrible boy, who was in fine 
 form, first struck two or three chords on the piano, shut it 
 abruptly, looked out of the window, and asked if they could 
 not go for a walk until supper. The country attracted him. 
 Kunz showed little enthusiasm, but Schulz at once thought it an 
 excellent idea and declared that he must show their guest the 
 walk round the Schonluchwdlder. Kunz made a face; but he did 
 not protest and got up with the others; he was as desirous as 
 Schulz of showing Christophe the beauties of the country. 
 
 They went out. Christophe took Schulz’s arm and made him 
 walk a little faster than the old man liked. Kunz followed 
 mopping his brow. They talked gaily. The people standing 
 at their doors watched them pass and thought that Herr Pro- 
 fessor Schulz looked like a young man. When they left the 
 town they took to the fields. Kunz complained of the heat. 
 Christophe was merciless and declared that the air was ex- 
 quisite. Fortunately for the two old men, they stopped fr^ 
 quently to argue and they forgot the length of the walk in their 
 conversation. They went into the woods. Schulz recited verses 
 of Goethe and Mdrike. Christophe loved poetry, but he could 
 
 r 
 
542 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 not remember any, and while he listened he stepped into a 
 vague dream in which music replaced the words and made him 
 forget them. He admired Schulzes memory. What a difference 
 there was between the vivacity of mind of this poor rich old 
 man, almost impotent, shut up in his room for a great part of 
 the year, shut up in his little provincial town almost all his 
 life, — and Hassler, young, famous, in the very thick of the 
 artistic movement, and touring over all Europe for his concerts 
 and yet interested in nothing and unwilling to know anything ! 
 Not only was Schulz in touch with every manifestation of the 
 art of the day that Christophe knew, but he knew an immense 
 amount about musicians of the past and of other countries of 
 whom Christophe had never heard. His memory was a great 
 reservoir in which all the beautiful waters of the heavens were 
 collected. Christophe never wearied of dipping into it, and 
 Schulz was glad of Christophers interest. He had sometimes 
 found willing listeners or docile pupils, but he had never yet ’ 
 found a young and ardent heart with which he could share ' 
 his enthusiasms, which sometimes so swelled in him that he ' 
 was like to choke. 
 
 They had become the best friends in the world when un- ■ 
 happily the old man chanced to express his admiration for ' 
 Brahms. Christophe was at once coldly angry; he dropped 
 Schulzes arm and said harshly that anyone who loved Brahms 
 could not be his friend. That threw cold water on their happi- : 
 ness. Schulz was too timid to argue, too honest to lie, and \ 
 murmured and tried to explain. But Christophe stopped him : I 
 Enough ! I 
 
 It was so cutting that it was impossible to reply. There was i 
 an icy silence. They walked on. The two old men dared not ‘ 
 look at each other. Kunz coughed and tried to take up the 
 conversation again and to talk of the woods and the weather; 
 but Christophe sulked and would not talk and only answered 
 with monosyllables. Kunz, finding no response from him, tried 
 to break the silence by talking to Schulz; but Schulz’s throat 
 was dry, he could' not speak. Christophe watched him out of 
 the corner of his eyes and he wanted to laugh; he had forgiven 
 him already. He had never been seriously angry with him; 
 he even thought it brutal to make the poor old man sad; but 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 he abused his power and would not appear to go back on what 
 he had said. They remained so until they left the woods; 
 nothing was to be heard but the weary steps of the two down- 
 cast old men; Christophe whistled through his teeth and pre- 
 tended not to see them. Suddenly he could bear it no longer. 
 He burst out laughing, turned towards Schulz and gripped his 
 arm: 
 
 My dear good old Schulz ! he said, looking at him affec- 
 tionately. IsnT it beautiful ? Isn’t it beautiful ? ” 
 
 He was speaking of the country and the fine day, but his 
 laughing eyes seemed to say: 
 
 You are good. I am a brute. Forgive me! I love you 
 much.” 
 
 The old man’s heart melted. It was as though the sun had 
 shone again after an eclipse. But a short time passed befo^^ 
 he could utter a word. Christophe took his arm and went on 
 talking to him more amiably than ever ; in his eagerness he went 
 faster and faster without noticing the strain upon his two com- 
 panions. Schulz did not complain; he did not even notice his 
 fatigue; he was so happy. He knew that he would have to 
 pay for that day’s rashness; but he thought: 
 
 So much the worse for to-morrow ! When Tie gone I 
 shall have plenty of time to rest.” 
 
 But Kunz, who was not so excited, followed fifteen yards 
 behind and looked a pitiful object. Christophe noticed it at 
 last. He begged his pardon confusedly and proposed that they 
 should lie down in a meadow in the shade of the poplars. Of 
 course Schulz acquiesced without a thought for the effect it 
 might have on his bronchitis. Fortunately Kunz thought of 
 it for him; or at least he made it an excuse for not running 
 any risk from the moisture of the grass when he was in such 
 a perspiration. He suggested that they should take the train 
 back to the town from a station close by. They did so. In 
 spite of their fatigue they had to hurry, so as not to be late, 
 and they reached the station just as the train came in. 
 
 At the sight of them a big man threw himself out of the door 
 of a carriage and roared the names of Schulz and Kunz, to- 
 gether with all their titles and qualities, and he waved his arms 
 like a madman. Schulz and Kunz shouted in reply and also 
 
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 waved their arms; they rushed to the big man’s compartment 
 and he ran to meet them^ jostling the people on the platform. 
 Christophe was amazed and ran after them asking: 
 
 What is it ? ” 
 
 And the others shouted exultantly: 
 
 It is Pottpetschmidt ! ” 
 
 The name did not convey much to him. He had forgotten 
 the toasts at dinner. Pottpetschmidt in the carriage and Schulz 
 and Kunz on the step were making a deafening noise^, they were 
 marveling at their encounter. They climbed into the train as 
 it was going. Schulz introduced Christophe. Pottpetschmidt 
 bowed as stiff as a poker and his features lost all expression; 
 then when the formalities were over he caught hold of Chris- 
 tophe’s hand and shook it five or six times^ as though he were 
 ^tj-ying to pull his arm out, and then began to shout again. 
 Christophe was able to make out that he thanked God and his 
 stars for the extraordinary meeting. That did not keep him* 
 from slapping his thigh a moment later and crying ,out upon; 
 the misfortune of having had to go away — he who never went' 
 away — just when the Herr Kapellmeister was coming. Schulz’s 
 telegram had only reached him that morning an hour after the? 
 train went; he was asleep when it arrived and they had not 
 thought it worth while to wake him. He had stormed at the 
 hotel people all morning. He was still storming. He had 
 sent his patients away, cut his business appointments and taken 
 the first train in his haste to return, but the infernal train had 
 missed the connection on the main line; Pottpetschmidt had had: 
 to wait three hours at a station; he had exhausted all the* 
 expletives in his vocabulary and fully twenty times had nar-' 
 rated his misadventures to other travelers who were also wait-; 
 ing, and a porter at the station. At last he had started again. 
 He was fearful of arriving too late . . . But, thank God ! 
 
 Thank God! . . . 
 
 He took Christophe’s hands again and crushed them in his 
 vast paws with their hairy fingers. He was fabulously stout 
 and tall in proportion; he had a square head, close cut red 
 hair, a clean-shaven pock-marked face, big eyes, large nose, 
 thin lips, a double chin, a short neck, a monstrously wide back, 
 a stomach like a barrel, arms thrust out by his body, enormous 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 feet and hands ; a gigantic mass of flesh, deformed by excess in 
 eating and drinking; one of those human tobacco-jars that one 
 sees sometimes rolling along the streets in the towns of Bavaria,, 
 which keep the secret of that race of men that is produced by 
 a system of gorging similar to that of the Strasburg geese. He 
 listened with joy and warmth like a pot of butter, and with 
 his two hands on his outstretched knees, or on those of his 
 neighbors, he never stopped talking, hurling consonants into 
 the air like a catapult and making them roll along. Occa- 
 sionally he would have a fit of laughing which made him shake 
 all over ; he would throw back his head, open his mouth, snort- 
 ing, gurgling, choking. His laughter would infect Schulz and 
 Kunz and when it was over they would lool^ at Christophe as 
 they dried their eyes. They seemed to be asking him : 
 
 Hein ! . . . And what do you say ? . s 
 
 Christophe said nothing ; he thought fearfully : 
 
 ^^And this monster sings my music 
 
 They went home with Schulz. Christophe hoped to avoid 
 Pottpetschmidt^s singing and made no advances in spite of 
 Pottpetschmidfs hints. He was itching to be heard. But 
 Schulz and Kunz were too intent on showing their friend off; 
 Christophe had to submit. He sat at the piano rather ungra- 
 ciously; he thought: 
 
 My good man, my good man, you donT know what is in 
 store for you ; have a care ! I will spare you nothing.’’ 
 
 He thought that he would hurt Schulz and he was angry 
 at that; but he was none the less determined to hurt him 
 rather than have this Falstaff murdering his music. He was 
 spared the pain of hurting his old friend: the fat man had an 
 admirable voice. At the first bars Christophe gave a start of 
 surprise. Schulz, who never took his eyes off him, trembled ; he 
 thought that Christophe was dissatisfied; and he was only re- 
 assured when he saw his face grow brighter and brighter as he 
 went on playing. He was lit up by the reflection of Chris- 
 tophe’s delight; and when the song was finished and Christophe 
 turned round and declared that he had never heard any of his 
 songs sung so well, Schulz found a joy in all sweeter and greater 
 than Christophe’s in his satisfaction, sweeter and greater than 
 Pottpetschmidt’s in his triumph; for they had only their own 
 
546 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ploasure, and Schulz had that of his two friends. They went on 
 with the music. Christophe cried aloud; he could not under- 
 stand how so ponderous and common a creature could succeed 
 in reading the idea of his Lieder. No doubt there were not 
 exactly all the shades of meaning, hut there was the impulse 
 and the passion which he had never quite succeeded in impart- 
 ing to professional singers. He looked at Pottpetschmidt and 
 wondered : 
 
 “ Does he really feel that ? ” 
 
 But he could not see in his eyes any other light than that 
 of satisfied vanity. Some unconscious force stirred in that solid 
 flesh. The blind passion was like an army fighting without 
 knowing against whom or why. The spirit of the Lieder took 
 possession of it and it obeyed gladly, for it had need of action, 
 4.and, left to itself, it never would have known how. 
 
 Christophe fancied that on the day of the Creation the Great . 
 Sculptor did not take very much trouble to put in order the_ 
 scattered members of his rough-hewn creatures, and that He^ 
 had adjusted them anyhow without bothering to find out, 
 whether they were suited to each other, and so every one was 
 made up of all sorts of pieces; and one man was scattered' 
 among five or six different men; his brain was with one, his. 
 heart with another, and the body belonging to his soul with yet 
 another; the instrument was on one side, the performer on the 
 other. Certain creatures remained like wonderful violins, for-, 
 ever shut up in their cases, for want of anyone with the art to^ 
 play them. And those who were fit to play them were foundj 
 all their lives to put up with wretched scraping fiddles. He* 
 had all the more reason for thinking so as he was furious with 
 himself for never having been able properly to sing a page of 
 music. He had an untuned voice and could never hear himself 
 without disgust. 
 
 However, intoxicated by his success, Pottpetschmidt began 
 to “put expression” into Christophers Lieder, that is to say 
 he substituted his own for Christophe’s. Naturally he did not 
 think that the music gained by the change, and he grew gloomy. 
 Schulz saw it. His lack of the critical faculty and his admira- 
 tion for his friends would not have allowed him of his own 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 547 
 
 accord to set it down to Pottpetschmidt’s bad taste. But his 
 affection for Christophe made him perceptive of the young 
 man’s finest shades of thought; he was no longer in himself, 
 he was in Christophe; and he too suffered from Pottpetschmidt’s 
 affectations. He tried hard to stop his going down that peril- 
 ous slope. It was not easy to silence Pottpetschmidt. Schulz 
 found it enormously difficult, when the singer had exhausted 
 Christophe’s repertory, to keep him from breaking out into 
 the lucubrations of mediocre compositions at the mention of 
 whose names Christophe curled up and bristled like a porcu- 
 pine. 
 
 Fortunately the announcement of supper muzzled Pottpet- 
 schmidt. Another field for his valor was opened for him , 
 he had no rival there; and Christophe, who was a little weary 
 with his exploits in the afternoon, made no attempt to vie with 
 him. 
 
 It was getting late. They sat round the table and the three 
 friends watched Christophe; they drank in his words. It 
 seemed very strange to Christophe to find himself in the remote 
 little town among these old men whom he had never seen until 
 that day and to be more intimate with them than if they had 
 been his relations. He thought how fine it would be for an 
 artist if he could know of the unknown friends whom his 
 ideas find in the world, — ^how gladdened his heart wo^d be and 
 how fortified he would be in his strength. But he^ is rarely 
 that; every onejwes jn^ dies alone, fearing to say what he 
 feels theTnori^ he feels and the more he needs to express it. 
 Vulgar flatterers have no difficulty in speaking. Those who 
 love most have to force their lips open to say that they love. 
 And so he must be grateful indeed to those who dare to speak ; 
 they are unconsciously collaborators with the artist. — Chris- 
 tophe was filled with gratitude for old Schulz. He did not con- 
 found him with his two friends; he felt that he was the soul 
 of the little group ; the others were only reflections of that living 
 fire of goodness and love. The friendship that Kunz and 
 Pottpetschmidt had for him was very different. Kunz was 
 selfish; music gave him a comfortable satisfaction like a fat 
 ( cat when it is stroked. Pottpetschmidt found in it the pleasure 
 
 I 
 
548 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 of tickled vanity and physical exercise. Neither of them trou- 
 bled to understand him. But Schulz absolutely forgot himself;' 
 he loved. 
 
 It was late. The two friends went away in the night. Chris- 
 tophe was left alone with Schulz. He said : 
 
 Now I will play for you alone.^^ ^ 
 
 He sat at the piano and played, — as he knew how to play^ 
 when he had some one dear to him by his side. He played his^ 
 latest compositions. The old man was in ecstasies. He sat 
 near Christophe and never took his eyes from him and held 
 his breath. In the goodness of his heart he was incapable of 
 keeping the smallest happiness to himself, and in spite of 
 himself he said: 
 
 Ah ! What a pity Kunz is not here ! 
 
 That irritated Christophe a little. 
 
 An hour passed; Christophe was still playing; they had not 
 exchanged a word. When Christophe had finished neither 
 spoke a word. There was silence, the house, the street, was 
 asleep. Christophe turned and saw that the old man was weep- 
 ing; he got up and went and embraced him. They talked in 
 whispers in the stillness of the night. The clock ticked dully' 
 in the next room. Schulz talked in a whisper, with his hands 
 clasped, and leaning forward; he was telling Christophe, in 
 answer to his questions, about his life and his sorrow; at every. 
 turn he was .ashamed of complaining and had to say : 
 
 I am wrong ... I have no right to complain . . 
 
 Everybody has been very good to me . . P \ 
 
 And indeed he was not complaining; it was only an in-‘ 
 voluntary melancholy emanating from the dull story of his! 
 lonely life. At the most sorrowful moments he wove into iti 
 professions of faith vaguely idealistic and very sentimental 
 which amazed Christophe, though it would have been too cruel 
 to contradict him. At bottom there was in Schulz not so much 
 a firm belief as a passionate desire to believe — an uncertain hope 
 to which he clung as to a buoy. He sought the confirmation of 
 it in Christophers eyes. Christophe understood the appeal in 
 the eyes of his friend, who clung to him with touching confi- 
 dence, imploring him, — and dictating his answer. Then he 
 spoke of the calm faith or strength, sure of itself, words which 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 549 
 
 the old man was expecting, and they comforted him. The 
 old man and the young had forgotten the years that lay between 
 themj they were near each other, like brothers of the same 
 age, loving and helping each other; the weaker sought the sup- 
 port of the stronger; the old man took refuge in the young 
 man’s soul. 
 
 They parted after midnight; Christophe had to get up early 
 to catch the train by which he had come. And so he did not 
 loiter as he undressed. The old man had prepared his guest’s 
 room as though for a visit of several months. He had put a 
 bowl of roses on the table and a branch of laurel. He had 
 put fresh blotting paper on the bureau. During the morning 
 he had had an upright piano carried up. On the shelf by the 
 bed he had placed books chosen from among his most precious 
 and beloved. There was no detail that he had not lovingly 
 thought out. But it was a waste of trouble; Christophe saw 
 nothing. He flung himself on his bed and went sound asleep 
 at once. 
 
 Schulz could not sleep. He was pondering the joy that he 
 had had and the sorrow he must have at the departure of his 
 friend. He was turning over in his mind the words that had 
 been spoken. He was thinking that his dear Christophe was 
 sleeping near him on the other side of the wall against which 
 his bed lay. He was worn out, stiff all over, depressed; he 
 felt that he had caught cold during the walk and that he was 
 going to have a relapse ; but he had only one thought : 
 
 “ If only I can hold out until he has gone ! ” And he was 
 fearful of having a flt of coughing and waking Christophe. 
 He was full of gratitude to God, and began to compose verses 
 to the song of old Simeon: “Nunc dimittis . . He got 
 
 up in a sweat to write the verses down and sat at his desk 
 until he had carefully copied them out with an affectionate dedi- 
 cation, and his signature, and the date and hour. Then he 
 lay down again with a shiver and could not get warm all night. 
 
 Dawn came. Schulz thought regretfully of the' dawn of the 
 day before. But he was angry with himself for spoiling with 
 such thoughts the few minutes of happiness left to him; he 
 knew that on the morrow he would regret the time fleeting then, 
 and he tried not to waste any of it. He listened, eager for 
 
550 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 the least sound in the next room. But Christophe did not stir. 
 He lay still just as he had gone to bed; he had not moved. 
 Half-past six rang and he still slept. Nothing would have been 
 easier than to make him miss the train^ and doubtless he would 
 have taken it with a laugh. But the old man was too scru- 
 pulous to use a friend so without his consent. In vain did he 
 say to himself: 
 
 ^^It will not be my fault. I could not help it. It will be 
 enough to say nothing. And if he does not wake in time I 
 shall have another whole day with him.^^ 
 
 He answered himself: 
 
 No, I have no right.^^ 
 
 And he thought it his duty to go and wake him. He knocked 
 at his door. Christophe did not hear at first; he had to knock 
 again. That made the old man’s heart thump as he thought: 
 
 Ah ! How well he sleeps ! He would stay like that till mid- 
 day! . . 
 
 At last Christophe replied gaily through the partition. When 
 he learned the time he cried out; he was heard bustling about 
 his room, noisily dressing himself, singing scraps of melody, 
 while he chattered with Schulz through the wall and cracked 
 jokes while the old man laughed in spite of his sorrow. The 
 door opened ; Christophe appeared, fresh, rested, and happy ; he 
 had no thought of the pain he was causing. In reality there 
 was no hurry for him to go ; it would have cost him nothing to 
 stay a few days longer ; and it would have given Schulz so much 
 pleasure! But Christophe could not know that. Besides, al- 
 though he was very fond of the old man, he was glad to go; 
 he was worn out by the day of perpetual conversation, by these 
 people who clung to him in desperate fondness. And then he 
 was young, he thought there would be plenty of time to meet 
 again ; he was not going to the other ends of the earth ! — The 
 old man knew that he would soon be much farther than the 
 other ends of the earth, and he looked at Christophe for all 
 eternity. 
 
 In spite of his extreme weariness he took him to the station. 
 A fine cold rain was falling noiselessly. At the station when 
 he opened his purse Christophe found that he had not enough 
 money to buy his ticket home. He knew that Schulz would 
 
kevolt 
 
 551 
 
 cladlv lend him the money, but he would not ask him for 
 Why? Why deny those who love you the oppor- 
 tunity-the happiness of doing you a service? . . • He 
 
 would not out of discretion— perhaps out of vanity. He took 
 a ticket for a station on the way, saying that he would do the 
 rest of the journey on foot. 
 
 The time for leaving came. They embraced on the fo - 
 board of the carriage. Schulz slipped the poem he had writ- 
 ten during the night into Christophe’s hand. He stayed on the 
 platform below the compartment. They had nothing more t 
 L to each other, as usual when good-byes are too long drawn 
 out, but Schulz’s eyes went on speaking, they never left Chn 
 
 tophe’s face until the train went. ot i i i jfi. 
 
 The carriage disappeared round a curve. Schulz was left 
 
 alone. He went back by the muddy path; he dragged along, 
 suddenly he felt all his weariness, the cold, the melancholy 
 of the rainy day. He was hardly able to reach home and o 
 
 go upstairs again. Hardly had he reached his room than he 
 
 was seized with an attack of asthma and coughing. Salome 
 came to his aid. Through his involuntary groans, he said; 
 
 “What luck! . . . What luck that I was prepared for 
 
 it ” He felt very ill. He went to bed. Salome 
 
 fetched’ the doctor. In bed he became as limp as a rag. He 
 could not move; only his breast was heaving and panfang like 
 a million billows. His head was heavy and feverish. He spent 
 the whole day in living through the day before, minute by 
 minute; he tormented himself, and then was angry with himself 
 for complaining after so much happiness. With his hands 
 clasped and his heart big with love he thanked God. 
 
 Christophe was soothed by his day and restored to confidence 
 in himself by the affection that he had left behind him, so 
 be returned home. When he had gone as far as his ticket woidd 
 take him he got out blithely and took to the road on foot. ^ 
 had sixty kilometers to do. He was in no hurry and dawdled 
 like a school-boy. It was April. The country was not very 
 far on The leaves were unfolding like little wrinkled hands 
 at the ends of the black branches; the apple trees were in 
 flower, and along the hedges the frail eglantine smiled. 
 
552 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 Above the leafless forest, where a soft greenish down was be- 
 ginning to appear, on the summit of a little hill, like a trophy 
 on the end of a lance, there rose an old Eomanic castle. Three 
 black clouds sailed across the soft blue sky. Shadows chased 
 over the country in spring, showers passed, then the bright 
 sun shone forth again and the birds sang. 
 
 Christophe found that for some time he had been thinking 
 of Uncle Gottfried. He had not thought of the poor man for 
 a long time, and he wondered why the memory of him should 
 so obstinately obsess him now; he was haunted by it as he 
 walked along a path along a canal that reflected the poplars; 
 and the image of his uncle was so actual that as he turned a 
 great wall he thought he saw him coming towards him. 
 
 The sky grew dark. A heavy downpour of rain and hail fell, 
 and thunder rumbled in the distance. Christophe was near a 
 village; he could see its pink walls and red roofs among the 
 clumps of trees. He hurried and took shelter under the pro- 
 jecting roof of the nearest house. The hail-stones came lashing 
 ‘down; they rang out on the tiles and fell down into the street 
 like pieces of lead. The ruts were overflowing. Above the 
 blossoming orchards a rainbow flung its brilliant garish scarf 
 over the dark blue clouds. 
 
 On the threshold a girl was standing knitting. She. asked 
 Christophe to enter. He accepted the invitation. The room 
 into which he stepped was used as a kitchen, a dining-room, 
 and a bed-room. At the back a stew-pot hung over a great 
 fire. A peasant woman who was cleaning vegetables wished 
 Christophe good-day, and bade him go near the fire to dry 
 himself. The girl fetched a bottle of wine and gave him to 
 drink. She sat on the other side of the table and went on 
 knitting, while at the same time she looked after two children 
 who were playing at testing each other’s eyes with those grasses 
 which are known in the country as "thiefs” or “sweeps.” 
 She began to talk to Christophe. It was only after a moment 
 that he saw that she was blind. She was not pretty. She was 
 a big girl, with red cheeks, white teeth, and strong arms, but^ 
 her features were irregular; she had the smiling, rather ex- 
 pressionless air of many blind people, and also their mania for 
 talking of things and people as though they could see them. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 553 
 
 At first Christophe was startled and wondered if she were 
 making fun of him when she said that he looked well and that 
 the country was looking very pretty. But after looking from 
 the blind girl to the woman who was cleaning the vegetables 
 he saw that nobody was surprised and that it was no joke 
 (there was nothing to joke about indeed).— The two women 
 asked Christophe friendly questions as to whither he was 
 going and whence he had come. The blind girl joined in the 
 conversation with a rather exaggerated eagerness; she agreed 
 with, or commented on, Christophe’s remarks about the road 
 and the fields. Naturally her observations were often wide of 
 the mark. She seemed to be trying to pretend that she could 
 
 see as well as he. i ± ^ 
 
 Other members of the family came in : a healthy peasant of 
 thirty and his young wife. Christophe talked to them all, and 
 watched the clearing sky, waiting for the moment to set out 
 again. The blind girl hummed an air while she plied her knit- 
 ting needles. The air brought back all sorts of old memories 
 
 to Christophe. j 
 
 “ What ! ” he said. “ You know that. (Gottfried had 
 
 taught her it.) . , , . i i. 
 
 He hummed the following notes. The girl began to laugh. 
 She sang the first half of the phrases and he finished them. 
 He had just got up to go and look at the weather and he was 
 walking round the room, mechanically taking stock of every 
 corner of it, when near the dresser he saw an object which 
 made him start. It was a long twisted stick, the handle of 
 which was roughly carved to represent a little bent man bowing. 
 Christophe knew it well, he had played with it as a child. 
 He pounced on the stick and asked in a choking voice; 
 
 “ Where did you get this ? . . . Where did you get it ?” 
 
 The man looked up and said: 
 
 « A friend left it here— an old friend who is dead.” 
 Christophe cried: 
 
 “ Gottfried?” 
 
 They all turned and asked: 
 
 “How do you know . . . ?” _ 
 
 And when Christophe told them that GotHried was his uncle, 
 they were all greatly excited. The blind girl got up ; her ball 
 
654 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 of wool rolled across the room; she stopped her work and took ( 
 Christophers hands and said in a great state of emotion: | 
 
 ^^You are his nephew ?r^ ; 
 
 They all talked at once. Christophe asked: 
 
 But how . . . how do you come to know him ? The 
 
 man replied: 
 
 It was here that he died.^’ 
 
 They sat down again, and when the excitement had gone 
 down a little, the mother told, as she went on with her work, 
 that Gottfried used to go to the house for many years; he al- 
 ways used to stay there on his way to and fro from his jour- 
 neys. The last time he came — (it was in last July) — ^he 
 seemed very tired, and when he took ofiE his pack it was some 
 time before he could speak a word, but they did not take any 
 notice of it because they were used to seeing him like that when 
 he arrived and knew that he was short of breath. He did not 
 complain either. He never used to complain; he always used 
 to find some happiness in the most unpleasant things. When 
 he was doing some exhausting work he used to be glad thinking 
 how good it would be in bed at night, and when he was ill he 
 used to say how good it would be when he was not ill any 
 longer. ... 
 
 ^^And, sir, it is wrong to be always contenV^ added the 
 woman, for if you are not sorry for yourself, nobody will 
 pity you. I always complain . . .^^ 
 
 Well, nobody had paid any attention to him. They had even i 
 
 chaffed him about looking so well and Modesta — (that was the I 
 
 blind girhs name) — who had just relieved him of his pack had ' 
 
 asked him if he was never going to be tired of running like a i 
 
 young man. He smiled in reply, for he could not speak. He ' 
 
 sat on the seat by the door. Everybody went about their work, 
 the men to the fields, the woman to her cooking. Modesta went 
 near the seat, she stood leaning against the door with her 
 knitting in her hands and talked to Gottfried. He did not 
 reply; she did not ask him for any reply and told him every- 
 thing that had happened since his last visit. He breathed 
 with difficulty and she heard him trying hard 'to speak. In- 
 stead of being anxious about him she said : 
 
kevolt 
 
 555 
 
 “Don’t speak. Just rest. You shall talk presently. . . • 
 
 How can people tire themselves out like that * • • • 
 
 And then he did not talk or even try to talk. She went on 
 with her story thinking that he was listening. He sighed and 
 said nothing. When the mother came a little later she found 
 Modesta still talking and Gottfried motionless on the seat with 
 his head flung back facing the sky; for some “l^'^Jes Modesta 
 had been talking to a dead man. She understood then th 
 the poor man had been trying to say a few words before he di^ 
 but Ld not been able to; then with his sad smile he had ac- 
 cepted that and had closed his eyes in the peace of the summer 
 
 ^^The rain had ceased. The daughter-in-law went to the stables, 
 the son took his mattock and cleared the little gutter fron 
 of the door which the mud had obstructed. Modesta had dis- 
 appeared at the beginning of the story Christophe was eft 
 alone in the room with the mother, and was silent and much 
 moved. The old woman, who was rather talkative, could not 
 bear a prolonged silence; and she began to tell him the whole 
 history of her acquaintance with Gottfried. It went far ac . 
 When she was quite young Gottfried loved her. He dare 
 not tell her, but it became a joke; she made fun of him, 
 everybody made fun of him,- (it was the custom wherever he 
 went)-Gottfried usM to come faithfully every year. It 
 seemed natural to him that people should make fun of him, 
 natural that she should have married and b^n happy with 
 another man. She had been too happy, she had boasted ton 
 much of her happiness; then unhappiness came. Her husband 
 died suddenly. Then his daughter,— a flne strong girl ^“om 
 everybody admired, who was to be married to the son ot the 
 richest farmer of the district,-lost her sight as the result of an 
 accident. One day when she had climbed to the great pear 
 tree behind the house to pick the fruit the ladder slipped ; as 
 she fell a broken branch struck a blow near the eye. At hrst 
 it was thought that she would escape with a scar, but later she 
 had had unceasing pains in her forehead; one eye lost its sight, 
 then the other; and all their remedies had been useless. Of 
 course the marriage was broken off; her betrothed had van- 
 
556 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 ished without any explanation^ and of all the young men 
 who a month before had actually fought for a dance with her, 
 not one had the courage — (it is quite comprehensible) — ^to 
 take a blind girl to his arms. And so Modesta, who till then 
 had been careless and gay, had fallen into such despair that she 
 wanted to die. She refused to eat; she did nothing but weep \ 
 from morning to evening, and during the night they used to hear 
 her still moaning in her bed. They did not know what to do, 
 they could only join her in her despair; and she only wept the 
 more. At last they lost patience with her moaning; then they 
 scolded her and she talked of throwing herself into the canal. 
 The minister would come sometimes; he would talk of the 
 good God, and eternal things, and the merit she was gaining 
 for the next world by bearing her sorrows, but that did not 
 console her at all. One day Gottfried came. Modesta had 
 never been very kind to him. Not that she was naturally un- 
 kind, but she was disdainful, and besides she never thought ; she 
 loved to laugh, and there was no malice in what she said or did 
 to him. When he heard of her misfortune he was as over- 
 whelmed by it as though he were a member of the family. 
 However he did not let her see it the first time he saw her. He 
 went and sat by her side, made no allusion to her accident and 
 began to talk quietly as he had always done before. He had no 
 word of pity for her ; he even seemed not to notice that she was 
 blind. Only he never talked to her of things she could not see ; 
 he talked to her about what she could hear or notice in her * 
 
 blindness; and he did it quite simply as though it were a nat- | 
 
 ural thing; it was as though he too were blind. At first she ^ 
 
 did not listen and went on weeping. But next day she listened ■ 
 
 better and even talked to him a little. ... i 
 
 ^^And,^^ the woman went on, do not know what he can 
 have said to her. For we were hay-making and I was too busy 
 to notice her. But in the evening when we came in from the 
 fields we found her talking quietly. And after that she went 
 on getting better. She seemed to forget her affliction. But 
 every now and then she would think of it again; she would 
 weep alone or try to talk to Gottfried of sad things; but he 
 seemed not to hear, or he would not reply in the same tone ; he 
 would go on talking gravely or merrily of things which soothed 
 
EEVOLT 55^ 
 
 and interested her. At last he persuaded her to go out of the 
 house, which she had never left since her accident. He made 
 her go a few yards round the garden at first, and then for a 
 longer distance in the fields. And at last she learned to find 
 her way everywhere and to make out everything as though she 
 could see. She even notices things to which we never pay any 
 attention, and she is interested in everything, whereas before 
 she was never interested in much outside herself. That time 
 Gottfried stayed with us longer than usual. We dared not ask 
 him to postpone his departure, but he stayed of his own accord 
 until he saw that she was calmer. And one day— she was out 
 there in the yard,— I heard her laughing. I cannot tell you 
 what an effect that had on me. Gottfried looked happy too. 
 He was sitting near me. We looked at each other^ and I am 
 not ashamed to tell you, sir, that I kissed him with all my 
 heart. Then he said to me : ^ 
 
 « ‘ Now I think I can go. I am not needed any more. 
 
 “ I tried to keep him. But he said : ^ 
 
 “ ‘ No. I must go now. I cannot stay any longer. 
 
 “ Everybody knew that he was like the Wandering Jew : he 
 could not stay anywhere ; we did not insist. Then he went, but 
 he arranged to come here more often, and every time it was a 
 great joy for Modesta; she was always better after his vipts. 
 She began to work in the house again ; her brother married ; 
 she looks after the children ; and now she never complains and 
 always looks happy. I sometimes wonder if she would be so 
 happy if she had her two eyes. Yes, indeed, sir, there are days 
 when I think that it would be better to be like her and not to 
 see certain ugly people and certain evil things. The world is 
 growino' very ugly, it grows worse every day. ... n 
 yet I should be very much afraid of God taking me at my 
 word, and for my part I would rather go on seeing the world. 
 
 Ugly as it is. . . i j ni, • 
 
 Modesta came back and the conversation changed. 
 tophe wished to go now that the weather was fair again, but they 
 would not let him. He had to agree to stay to supper and to 
 spend the night with them. Modesta sat near Christophe and 
 did not leave him all the evening. He would have liked to talk 
 intimately to the girl whose lot filled him with pity. But she 
 
S58 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 .gave him no opportunity. She would only try to ask him about 
 Gottfried. When Christophe told her certain things she did 
 not know, she was happy and a little jealous. She was a little 
 unwilling to talk of Gottfried herself ; it was apparent 
 that she did not tell everything, and when she did tell every- 
 thing she was sorry for it at once; her memories were her 
 property, she did not like sharing them with another; in her 
 affection she was as eager as a peasant woman in her attach- 
 ment to her land ; it hurt her to think that anybody 
 could love Gottfried as much as she. It is true that she refused 
 to believe it; and Christophe, understanding, left her that sat- 
 isfaction. As he listened to her he saw that, although she had 
 seen Gottfried and had even seen him with indulgent eyes, 
 «ince her blindness she had made of him an image absolutely 
 -different from the reality, and she had transferred to the phan- 
 tom of her mind all the hunger for love that was in her. Noth- 
 ing had disturbed her illusion. With the bold certainty of the 
 blind, who calmly invent what they do not know, she said to 
 Christophe : 
 
 ^^You are like him.^^ 
 
 He understood that for years she had grown used to living 
 in a house with closed shutters through which the truth could 
 not enter. And now that she had learned to see in the darkness 
 that surrounded her, and even to forget the darkness, 
 perhaps she would have been afraid of a ray of light filtering 
 through the gloom. With Christophe she recalled a number of 
 rather silly trivialities in a smiling and disjointed conversation 
 in which Christophe could not be at his ease. He was irritated 
 by her chatter ; he could not understand how a creature who had 
 suffered so much had not become more serious in her suffering, 
 and he could not find tolerance for such futility; every now and 
 then he tried to talk of graver things, but they found no echo ; 
 Modesta could not — or would not — follow him. 
 
 They went to bed. It was long before Christophe could 
 sleep. He was thinking of Gottfried and trying to disengage 
 him from the image of Modesta^s childish memories. He found 
 it difficult and was irritated. His heart ached at the thought 
 that Gottfried had died there and that his body had no doubt 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 559 
 
 lain in that very bed. He tried to live through the agony of his 
 last moments, when he could neither speak nor make the blind 
 girl understand, and had closed his eyes in death. He longed 
 to have been able to raise his eyelids and to read the thoughts 
 hidden under them, the mystery of that soul, which had gone 
 without making itself known, perhaps even without knowing 
 itself ! It never tried to know itself, and all its wisdom lay in 
 not desiring wisdom, or in not trying to impose its will on cir- 
 cumstance, but in abandoning itself to the force of circumstance, 
 in accepting it and loving it. So he assimilated the mysterious 
 essence of the world without even thinking of it. And if he 
 had done so much good to the blind girl, to Christophe, and 
 doubtless to many others who would be forever unknown, it was 
 because, instead of bringing the customary words of the revolt 
 of man against nature, he brought something of the indifferent 
 peace of Nature, and reconciled the submissive soul with her. 
 He did good like the fields, the woods, all Nature with which he 
 was impregnated. Christophe remembered the evenings he had 
 spent with Gottfried in the country, his walks as a child, the 
 stories and songs in the night. He remembered also the last 
 walk he had taken with his uncle, on the hill above the town, 
 on a cold winter’s morning, and the tears came to his eyes 
 once more. He did not try to sleep, so as to remain with_ his 
 memories. He did not wish to lose one moment of that night 
 in the little place, filled with the soul of Gottfried, to which he 
 had been led as though impelled by some unknown force. But 
 while he lay listening to the irregular trickling of the foun- 
 tain and the shrill cries of the bats, the healthy fatigue of 
 youth mastered his will, and he fell asleep. 
 
 When he awoke the sun was shining: everybody on the farm 
 was already at work. In the hall he found only the old woman 
 and the children. The young couple were in the fields, and 
 Modesta had gone to milk. They looked for her in vain. She 
 was nowhere to be found. Christophe said he would not wait 
 for her return. He did not -much want to see her, and he 
 said that he was in a hurry. He set out after telling the old 
 woman to bid the others good-bye for him. 
 
 As he was leaving the village at a turn of the road he saw 
 
560 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 the blind girl sitting on a bank under a hawthorn hedge. She 
 got up as she heard him coming, approached him smiling, took 
 his hand, and said: 
 
 Come.^’ 
 
 They climbed up through meadows to a little shady flowering 
 field filled with tombstones, which looked down on the village. 
 She leji him to a grave and said: 
 
 ^^He is there.’^ 
 
 They both knelt down. Christophe remembered another 
 grave by which he had knelt with Gottfried, and he thought : 
 
 Soon it will be my turn.^^ 
 
 But there was no sadness in his thought. A great peace 
 was ascending from the earth. Christophe leaned over the 
 grave and said in a whisper to Gottfried : 
 
 Enter into me I 
 
 Modesta was praying, with her hands clasped and her lips 
 moving in silence. Then she went round the grave on her 
 knees, feeling the ground and the grass and the flowers with 
 her hands. She seemed to caress them, her quick fingers 
 seemed to see. They gently plucked the dead stalks of the ivy 
 and the faded violets. She laid her hand on the curb to get 
 up. Christophe saw her fingers pass furtively over Gofctfried^s 
 name, lightly touching each letter. She said: 
 
 The earth is sweet this morning.^^ 
 
 She held out her hand to him. He gave her his. She made 
 him touch the moist warm earth. He did not loose her hand. 
 Their locked fingers plunged into the earth. He kissed Modesta. 
 She kissed him, too. 
 
 They both rose to their feet. She held out to him a few 
 fresh violets she had gathered, and put the faded ones into 
 her bosom. They dusted their knees and left the cemetery 
 without a word. In the fields the larks were singing. \^ite 
 butterflies danced about their heads. They sat down in a 
 meadow a few yards away from each other. The smoke of 
 the village was ascending direct to the sky that was washed 
 by the rain. The still canal glimmered between the poplars. 
 A gleaming blue mist wrapped the meadows and woods in its 
 folds. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 561 
 
 Modesta broke the silence. She spoke in a whisper of the 
 beauty of the day as though she could see it. She drank in the 
 air through her half-open lips; she listened for the sounds of 
 creatures and things. Christophe also knew the worth of such 
 music. He said what she was thinking and could not have 
 said. He named certain of the cries and imperceptible tremors 
 that they could hear in the grass, in the depths of the air. She 
 said: 
 
 ^^Ah! You see that^ too?’^ 
 
 He replied that Gottfried had taught him to distinguish 
 them. 
 
 "'You, too?'' she said a little crossly. 
 
 He wanted to say to her : 
 
 " Do not be jealous." 
 
 But he saw the divine light smiling all about them : he 
 looked at her blind eyes and was filled with pity. 
 
 " So," he asked, " it was Gottfried taught you? " 
 
 She said "" Yes," and that they gave her more delight than 
 ever before. . . . She did not say before what. She 
 
 never mentioned the words eyes " or blind." 
 
 They were silent for a moment. Christophe looked at her 
 in pity. She felt that he was looking at her. He would have 
 liked to tell her how much he pitied her. He would have liked- 
 her to complain, to confide in him. He asked kindly: 
 
 "You have been very unhappy?" 
 
 She sat dumb and unyielding. She plucked the blades of 
 grass and munched them in silence. After a few moments, 
 (the song of a lark was going farther and farther from them 
 in the sky), — Christophe told her how he too had been unhappy, 
 and how Gottfried had helped him. He told her all his sor- 
 rows, his trials, as though he were thinking aloud or talking 
 to a sister. The blind girl's face lit up as he told his story, 
 which she followed eagerly. Christophe watched her and saw 
 that she was on the point of speaking. She made a movement 
 to come near him and hold his hand. He moved, too but al- 
 ready she had relapsed into her impassiveness, and when he 
 had finished, she only replied with a few banal words. Be- 
 i hind her broad forehead, on which there was not a line, there 
 
662 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 was the obstinacy of a peasant, hard as a stone. She said that 
 she must go home to look after her brothers children. She 
 talked of them with a calm smile. 
 
 He asked her: 
 
 You are happy ? 
 
 She seemed to be more happy to hear him say the word. She 
 said she was happy and insisted on the reasons she had for 
 being so: she was trying to persuade herself and him that it 
 was so. She spoke of the children, and the house, and all that 
 she had to do. . . . 
 
 Oh ! yes,^^ she said, I am very happy ! Christophe did 
 not reply. She rose to go. He rose too. They said good-bye 
 gaily and carelessly. Modesta’s hand trembled a little in Chris- 
 tophers. She said : 
 
 You will have fine weather for your walk to-day. And she 
 told him of a crossroads where he must not go wrong. It was 
 as though, of the two, Christophe were the blind one. 
 
 They parted. He went down the hill. When he reached the , 
 bottom he turned. She was standing at the summit in the i 
 same place. She waved her handkerchief and made signs to 
 him as though she saw him. ! 
 
 There was something heroic and absurd in her obstinacy in 
 denying her misfortune, something which touched Christophe 
 and hurt him. He felt how worthy Modesta was of pity and 
 even of admiration, — and he could not have lived two days with 
 her. As he went his way between fiowering hedges he thought ^ 
 of dear old Schulz, and his old eyes, bright and tender, before ' 
 which so many sorrows had passed which they refused to see, * 
 for they would not see hurtful realities. - 
 
 How does he see me, I wonder ? thought Christophe. I ; 
 am so different from his idea of me! To him I am what he 
 wants me to be. Everything is in his own image, pure and 
 noble like himself. He could not bear life if he saw it as it is.^^ 
 
 And he thought of the girl living in darkness who denied 
 the darkness, and tried to pretend that what was was not, and 
 that what was not was. 
 
 Then he saw the greatness of German idealism, which he had 
 so often loathed because in vulgar souls it is a source of hypoc- 
 risy and stupidity. He saw the beauty of the faith which 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 563 
 
 begets a world within the world, different from the world, like 
 a little island in the ocean. — But he could not bear such a 
 faith for himself, and refused to take refuge upon such an 
 Island of the Dead. Life ! Truth ! He would not be a lying 
 hero. Perhaps that optimistic lie which a German Emperor 
 tried to make law for all his people was indeed necessary for 
 weak creatures if they were to live. And Christophe would 
 have thought it a crime to snatch from such poor wretches the 
 illusion which upheld them. But for himself he never could 
 have recourse to such subterfuges. He would rather die than 
 live by illusion. Was not Art also an illusion? No. It must 
 not be. Truth! Truth! Eyes wide open, let him draw in 
 through every pore the all-puissant breath of life, see things 
 as they are, squarely face his misfortunes, — and laugh. 
 
 Several months passed. Christophe had lost all hope of escap- 
 ing from the town. Hassler, the only man who could have 
 saved him, had refused to help him. And old Schulz’s friend- 
 ship had been taken from him almost as soon as it had been 
 given. 
 
 He had written once on his return, and he had received 
 two affectionate letters, but from sheer laziness, and especially 
 because of the difficulty he had expressing himself in a letter, 
 he delayed thanking him for his kind words. He put off writ- 
 ing from day to day. And when at last he made up his mind 
 to write he had a word from Kunz announcing the death of 
 his old friend. Schulz had had a relapse of his bronchitis 
 which had developed into pneumonia. He had forbidden them 
 to bother Christophe, of whom he was always talking. In spite 
 of his extreme weakness and many years of illness, he was 
 not spared a long and painful end. He had charged Kunz 
 to convey the tidings to Christophe and to tell him that he 
 had thought of him up to the last hour; that he thanked him 
 for all the happiness he owed him, and that his blessing would 
 be on Christophe as long as he lived. Kunz did not tell him 
 that the day with Christophe had probably been the reason of 
 his relapse and the cause of his death. 
 
 Christophe wept in silence, and he felt then all the worth 
 of the friend he had lost, and how much he loved him, and he 
 
564 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 was grieved not to have told him more of how he loved him. It 
 was too late now. And what was left to him ? The good Schulz 
 had only appeared enough to make the void seem more empty, 
 the night more black after he ceased to be. As for Kunz and 
 Pottpetschmidt, they had no value outside the friendship they 
 had for Schulz and Schulz for them. Christophe valued them 
 at their proper worth. He wrote to them once and their rela- 
 tion ended there. He tried also to write to Modesta, but she 
 answered with a commonplace letter in which she spoke only 
 of trivialities. He gave up the correspondence. He wrote to 
 nobody and nobody wrote to him. 
 
 Silence. Silence. From day to day the heavy cloak of 
 silence descended upon Christophe. It was like a rain of ashes 
 falling on him. It seemed already to be evening, and Chris- 
 tophe was losing his hold on life. He would not resign him- 
 self to that. The hour of sleep was not yet come. He must 
 live. 
 
 And he could not live in Germany. The sufferings of his; 
 genius cramped by the narrowness of the little town lashed him 
 into injustice. His nerves were raw: everything drew blood.- 
 He was like one of .those wretched wild animals who perished’ 
 of boredom in the holes and cages in which they were impris- 
 oned in the Stadtgarten (town gardens) . Christophe used often- 
 to go and look at them in sympathy. He used to look at their 
 wonderful eyes, in which there burned— or every day grew 
 fainter — a fierce and desperate fire. Ah! How they would, 
 have loved the brutal bullet which sets free, or the knife that; 
 strikes into their bleeding hearts! Anything rather than the 
 savage indifference of those men who prevented them front 
 either living or dying ! 
 
 Hot the hostility of the people was the hardest for Christophe 
 to bear, but their inconsistency, their formless, shallow- natures. 
 There was no" knowing how to take them. The pig-headed 
 opposition of one of those stiff-necked, hard races who refuse 
 to understand any new thought were much better. Against 
 force it is possible to oppose force — the pick and the mine 
 which hew away and blow up the hard rock. But what 
 can be done against an amorphous mass which gives like a 
 jelly, collapses under the least pressure, and retains no imprint 
 
KEVOLT 
 
 565 
 
 of it ? All thought and energy and everything disappeared in 
 the slough. When a stone fell there were hardly more than a 
 few ripples quivering on the surface of the gulf: the monster 
 opened and shut its maw, and there was left no trace of what 
 had been. 
 
 They were not enemies. Dear God ! if they only had been 
 enemies! They were people who had not the strength to love 
 I or hate, or believe or disbelieve, — in religion, in art, in politics, 
 
 I in daily life ; and all their energies were expended in trying to 
 reconcile the irreconcilable. Especially since the German vie- 
 I tories they had been striving to make a compromise, a revolting 
 intrigue between their new power and their old principles. The 
 old idealism had not been renounced. There should have been 
 |a new effort of freedom of which they were incapable. They 
 were content with a forgery, with making it subservient to 
 German interests. Like the serene and subtle Schwabian, Hegel, 
 who had waited until after Leipzig and Waterloo to assimilate 
 the cause of his philosophy with the Prussian State — their in- 
 terests having changed, their principles had changed too. When 
 they were defeated they said that Germany’s ideal was human- 
 ity. Now that they had defeated others, they said that Ger- 
 many was the ideal of humanity. When other countries were 
 more powerful, they said, with Lessing, that patriotism is a 
 heroic weakness which it is well to he without/* and they called 
 themselves citizens of the world/* Now that they were in the 
 ascendant, they could not enough despise the Utopias a la 
 Frangaise/* Universal peace, fraternity, pacific progress, the 
 rights of man, natural equality : they said that the strongest 
 people had absolute rights against the others, and that the 
 others, being weaker, had no rights against themselves. It was 
 the living God and the Incarnate Idea, the progress of which is 
 accomplished by war, violence, and oppression. Force had be- 
 come holy now that it was on their side. Foj’ce had become 
 the only idealism and the only intelligence. 
 
 In truth, Germany had suffered so much for centuries from 
 having idealism and no fame that she had every excuse after 
 50 many trials for making the sorrowful confession that at all 
 posts Force must be hers. But what bitterness was hidden in 
 )uch a confession from the people of Herder and Goethe ! And 
 
566 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 what an abdication was the German victory, what a degradation 
 of the German ideal ! Alas ! There were only too many facili- 
 ties for such an abdication in the deplorable tendency even of 
 the best Germans to submit. 
 
 The chief characteristic of Germany/' said Moser, more than 
 a century ago, is obedience," And Madame de Stael: 
 
 They have submitted doughtily. They find philosophic 
 reasons for explaining the least philosophic theory in the world: 
 respect for power and the chastening emotion of fear which 
 changes that respect into admiration," 
 
 Christophe found that feeling everywhere in Germany, from 
 the highest to the lowest — from the William Tell of Schiller, 
 that limited little bourgeois with muscles like a porter, who, as 
 the free Jew Borne says, to reconcile honor and fear passes 
 before the pillar of dear Herr Gessler, with his eyes down so 
 as to be able to say that he did not see the hat; did not dis^, 
 obey" — ^to the aged and respectable Professor Weisse, a man 
 of seventy, and one of the most honored men of learning in the 
 town, who, when he saw a Herr Lieutenant coming, would make 
 haste to give him the path and would step down into the road. 
 Christophers blood boiled whenever he saw one of these small, 
 acts of daily servility. They hurt him as much as though he: 
 had demeaned himself. The arrogant manners of the officers 
 whom he met in the street, their haughty insolence, made him 
 speechless with anger. He never would make way for them.” 
 Whenever he passed them he returned theij arrogant stare.: 
 More than once he was very near causing a scene. He seemed| 
 to be looking for trouble. However, he was the first to under-;* 
 stand the futility of such bravado; but he had moments of 
 aberration, the perpetual constraint which he imposed on him- 
 self and the accumulation of force in him that had no outlet 
 made him furious. Then he was ready to go any length, and 
 he had a feeling that if he stayed a year longer in the place 
 he would be lost. He loathed the brutal militarism which he 
 felt weighing down upon him, the sabers clanking on the pave- 
 ment, the piles of arms, and the guns placed outside the bar- 
 racks, their muzzles gaping down on the town, ready to fire. 
 Scandalous novels, which were then making a great stir, de- 
 nounced the corruption of the garrisons, great and small: the 
 
‘fJEVOLT 
 
 567 
 
 officers were represented as mischievous creatures, who, outside 
 their automatic duties, were only idle and spent their time in 
 drinking, gambling, getting into debt, living on their families, 
 slandering one another, and from top to bottom of the hier- 
 archy they abused their authority at the expense of their in- 
 feriors. The idea that he would one day have to obey them 
 stuck in Christophe’s throat. He could not, no, he could never 
 bear it, and lose his own self-respect by submitting to their 
 humiliations and injustice. ... He had no idea of the moral 
 strength in some of them, or of all that they might be suf- 
 fering themselves: lost illusions, so much strength and youth 
 and honor and faith, and passionate desire for sacrifice, turned 
 to ill account and spoiled, — the pointlessness of a career, which, 
 if it is only a career, if it has not sacrifice as its end, is only a 
 grim activity, an inept display, a ritual which is recited with- 
 out belief in the words that are said. ... 
 
 His country was not enough for Christophe. He felt in 
 himself that unknown force which wakes suddenly, irresistibljs 
 in certain species of birds, at definite times, like the ebb and 
 flow of the tides:— the instinct of the great migrations. As 
 he read the volumes of Herder and Fichte which old Schulz 
 had left him, he found souls like his own, not "sons of the 
 soil" slavishly bound to the globe, but "spirits, sons of the 
 sun," turning invincibly to the light wheresoever it comes. 
 
 Whither should he go? He did not know. But instinctively 
 his eyes turned to the Latin South. And first to France 
 France, the eternal refuge of Germany in distress. How often 
 had German thought turned to France, without ceasing to 
 slander her ! Even since seventy, what an attraction emanated 
 from the town which had been shattered and smoking under 
 the German guns! The most revolutionary and the most re- 
 actionary forms of thought and art had found alternately and 
 sometimes at once example and inspiration there. Like so many 
 other great German musicians in distress, Christophe turned 
 towards Paris. . . . What did he know of the French? Two 
 women’s faces and some chance reading. That was enough for 
 him to imagine a country of light, of gaiety, of courage, and 
 even of a little Gallic boasting, which does not sort ill with the 
 bold youth of the heart. He believed it all, because he needed 
 
568 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 to believe it all, because, with all his soul, he would have liked 1 
 it to be so. 
 
 He made up his mind to go. But he could not go because 
 of his mother. 
 
 Louisa was growing old. She adored her son, who was her 
 only joy, and she was all that he most loved on earth. And 
 yet they were always hurting each other. She hardly under- 
 stood Christophe, and did not try to understand him. She was 
 only concerned to love him. She had a narrow, timid, dull 
 mind, and a fine heart; an immense need of loving and being 
 loved in which there was something touching and sad. She 
 respected her son because he seemed to her to be very learned ; 
 but she did all she could to stifie his genius. She thought he 
 would stay all his life with her in their little town. They had 
 lived together for years, and she could not imagine that he . 
 would not always be the same. She was happy : why should he \ 
 not be happy, too? All her dreams for him soared no higher I 
 than seeing him married to some prosperous citizen of the i 
 town, hearing him play the organ at church on Sundays, and ' 
 never having him leave her. She regarded her son as though he ; 
 were still twelve years old. She would have liked him never to 
 be more than that. Innocently she inflicted torture on the un- 
 happy man who was suffocated in that narrow world. 
 
 And yet there was much truth — moral greatness — in that un- 
 conscious philosophy of the mother, who could not understand 
 ambition and saw all the happiness of life in the family affec- : 
 tions and the accomplishment of humble duties. She was a \ 
 creature who wished to love and only to love. Sooner renounce ; 
 life, reason, logic, the material world, everything, rather than ' 
 love ! And that love was infinite, suppliant, exacting : it gave 
 everything — it wished to be given everything; it renounced life 
 for love, and it desired that renunciation from others, from 
 the beloved. What a power is the love of a simple soul! It 
 makes it find at once what the groping reasoning of an uncertain 
 genius like Tolstoy, or the too refined art of a dying civilization, 
 discovers after a lifetime — ages — of bitter struggle and exhaust- 
 ing effort! But the imperious world which was seething in 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 569 
 
 Christophe had very different laws and demanded another 
 wisdom. 
 
 For a long time he had been wanting to announce his deter- 
 mination to his mother. But he was fearful of the grief it 
 would bring to her, and just as he was about to speak he would 
 lose his courage and put it off. Two or three times he did 
 timidly allude to his departure, but Louisa did not take him 
 seriously: — perhaps she preferred not to take him seriously, so 
 as to persuade him that he was talking in jest. Then he dared 
 not go on; but he would remain gloomy and thoughtful, or it 
 was apparent that he had some secret burden upon his soul. 
 And the poor woman, who had an intuition as to the nature of 
 that secret, tried fearfully to delay the confession of it. Some- 
 times in the evening, when they were sitting, silent, in the light 
 of the lamp, she would suddenly feel that he was going to 
 speak, and then in terror she would begin to talk, very quickly, 
 at random, about nothing in particular. She hardly knew what 
 she was saying, but at all costs she must keep him from speak- 
 ing. Generally her instinct made her find the best means of 
 imposing silence on him : she would complain about her health, 
 about the swelling of her hands and feet, and the cramps in 
 her legs. She would exaggerate her sickness: call herself an 
 old, useless, bed-ridden woman. He was not deceived by her 
 simple tricks. He would look at her sadly in dumb reproach, 
 and after a moment he would get up, saying that he was tired, 
 and go to bed. 
 
 But all her devices could not save Louisa for long. One 
 evening, when she resorted to them once more, Christophe 
 gathered his courage and put his hand on his mother’s and 
 said : 
 
 “ No, mother. I have something to say to you.” Louisa 
 was horrified, but she tried to smile and say chokingly: 
 
 “ What is it, my dear ? ” 
 
 Christophe stammered out his intention of going. She tried 
 to take it as a joke and to turn the conversation as usual, but 
 he was not to be put off, and went on so deliberately and so 
 seriously that there was no possibility of doubt. Then she said 
 nothing. Her pulse stopped, and she sat there dumb, frozen, 
 
570 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 looking at him with terror in her eyes. Such sorrow showed in ] 
 her eyes as he spoke that he too stopped, and they sat, both j 
 speechless. When at last she was able to recover her breath, 
 she said — (her lips trembled) — : 
 
 It is impossible ... It is impossible . . 
 
 Two large tears trickled down her cheeks. He turned his 
 head away in despair and hid his face in his hands. They 
 wept. After some time he went to his room and shut himself 
 up until the morrow. They made no reference to what had 
 happened, and as he did not speak of it again she tried to 
 pretend that he had abandoned the project. But she lived on 
 tenterhooks. 
 
 There came a time when he could hold himself in no longer. 
 
 He had to speak even if it broke his heart: he was suffering 
 too much. The egoism of his sorrow mastered the idea of the 
 suffering he would bring to her. He spoke. He went through 
 with it, never looking at his mother, for fear of being too greatly 
 moved. He fixed the day for his departure so as to avoid a 
 second discussion — (he did not know if he could again win 
 the sad courage that was in him that day) . Louisa cried : , 
 
 No, no ! Stop, stop ! . . .^^ ? 
 
 He set his teeth and went on implacably. When he had ' 
 finished (she was sobbing) he took her hands and tried to 
 make her understand how it was absolutely necessary for his 
 art and his life for him to go away for some time. She refused 
 to listen. She wept and said: i 
 
 No, no ! . . . I will not . . | 
 
 After trying to reason with her, in vain, he left her, thinking ! 
 that the night would bring about a change in her ideas. But ^ 
 when they met next day at breakfast he began once more to i 
 talk of his plans. She dropped the piece of bread she was rais- 
 ing to her lips and said sorrowfully and reproachfully: 
 
 Why do you want to torture me ? 
 
 He was touched, but he said : 
 
 Dear mother, I must.^^ 
 
 No, no ! she replied. You must not ... You want to 
 hurt me . . . It is a madness . . 
 
 They tried to convince each other, but they did not listen 
 to each other. He saw that argument was wasted; it would 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 571 
 
 only make her suffer more, and he began ostentatiously to pre- 
 pare for his departure. 
 
 When she saw that no entreaty would stop him, Louisa re- 
 lapsed into a gloomy stupor. She spent her days locked up in 
 her room and without a light, when evening came. She did not 
 speak or eat. At night he could hear her weeping. He was 
 racked by it. He could have cried out in his grief, as he lay 
 all night twisting and turning in his bed, sleeplessly, a prey to 
 his remorse. He loved her so. Why must he make her suf- 
 fer? .. . Alas ! She would not be the only one : he saw that 
 clearly. . . . Why had destiny given him the desire and strength 
 of a mission which must make those whom he loved suffer ? 
 
 “ Ah ! ” he thought. “ If I were free, if I were not drawn on 
 by the cruel need of being what I must be, or else of dying in 
 shame and disgust with myself, how happy would I make you— 
 you whom I love ! Let me live first \ do, fight, suffer, and then 
 I will come back to you and love you more than ever. How I 
 would like only to love, love, love! . . .” 
 
 He never could have been strong enough to resist the per- 
 petual reproach of the grief-stricken soul had that reproach 
 been strong enough to remain silent. But Louisa, who was 
 weak and rather talkative, could not keep the sorrow that was 
 stifling her to herself. She told her neighbors. She told her 
 two other sons. They could not miss such a fine opportunity of 
 putting Christophe in the wrong. Eodolphe especially, who 
 had never ceased to be jealous of his elder brother, although 
 there was little enough reason for it at the time — Eodolphe, 
 who was cut to the quick by the least praise of Christophe, and 
 was secretly afraid of his future success, though he never dared 
 admit so base a thought— (for he was clever enough to feel his 
 brother’s force, and to be afraid that others would feel it, too), 
 Eodolphe was only too happy to crush Christophe beneath the 
 weight of his superiority. He had never worried much about 
 his mother, though he knew her straitened circumstances : al- 
 though he was well able to afford to help her, he left it all to 
 Christophe. But when he heard of Christophe’s intention he 
 discovered at once hidden treasures of affection. He was 
 furious at his proposing to leave his mother and called it mon- 
 strous egoism. He was impudent enough to tell Christophe 
 
572 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 so. He lectured him loftily like a child who deserves smack- 
 ing; he told him stiffly of his duty towards his mother and 
 of all that she had sacrificed for him. Christophe almost burst 
 with rage. He kicked Rodolphe out and called him a rascal 
 and a hypocrite. Rodolphe avenged himself by feeding his 
 mother’s indignation. Excited hy him, Louisa began to per- 
 suade herself that Christophe was behaving like a bad son. She 
 tried to declare that he had no right to go, and she was only 
 too willing to believe it. Instead of using only her tears, which 
 were her strongest weapon, she reproached Christophe bitterly 
 and unjustly, and disgusted him. They said cruel things to 
 each other : the result was that Christophe, who, till then, had 
 been hesitating, only thought of hastening his preparations for 
 his departure. He knew that the charitable neighbors were 
 commiserating his mother and that in the opinion of the neigh- 
 borhood she was regarded as a victim and himself as a mon- , 
 ster. He set his teeth and would not go back on his resolve. 
 
 The days passed. Christophe and Louisa hardly spoke to 
 each other. Instead of enjoying to the last drop their last 
 days together, these two who loved each other wasted the time 
 that was left — as too often happens— in one of those sterile ' 
 fits of sullenness in which so many affections are swallowed i 
 up. They only met at meals, when they sat opposite each other, 
 not looking at each other, never speaking, forcing themselves 
 to eat a few mouthfuls, not so much for the sake of eating as ; 
 for the sake of appearances. Christophe would contrive to ^ 
 mumble a few words, but Louisa would not reply; and when ^ 
 she tried to talk he would be silent. This state of things was i 
 intolerable to both of them, and the longer it went on the : 
 more difficult it became to break it. Were they going to part ! 
 like that? Louisa admitted that she had been unjust and 
 awkward, but she was suffering too much to know how to win 
 back her son’s love, which she thought she had lost, and at 
 all costs to prevent his departure, the idea of which she refused 
 to face. Christophe stole glances at his mother’s pale, swollen 
 face and he was torn by remorse; but he had made up his mind 
 to go, and knowing that he was going forever out of her life, 
 he wished cowardly to be gone to escape his remorse. 
 
 His departure was fixed for the next day but one. One of 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 573 
 
 their sad meals had just come to an end. When they finished 
 their supper, during which they had not spoken a word, Chris- 
 tophe withdrew to his room; and sitting at his desk, with his 
 head in his hands — he was incapable of working — he became 
 lost in thought. The night was drawing late: it was nearly 
 one o^clock in the morning. Suddenly he heard a noise, a chair 
 upset in the next room. The door opened and his mother ap* 
 peared in her nightgown, barefooted, and threw her arms round 
 his neck and sobbed. She was feverish. She kissed her son 
 and moaned through her despairing sobs : 
 
 Don’t go ! Don’t go ! I implore you ! I implore you ! 
 My dear, don’t go ! . . . I shall die ... I can’t, I can’t 
 bear it ! . . .” 
 
 He was alarmed and upset. He kissed her and said : Dear 
 mother, calm yourself, please, please ! ” 
 
 But she went on : 
 
 I can’t bear it . . . I have only you. If you go, what will 
 become of me? I shall die if you go. I don’t want to die 
 a wav from you. I don’t want to die alone. Wait until I am 
 dead! . . .” 
 
 Her words rent his heart. He did not know what to say 
 to console her. What arguments could hold good against such 
 an outpouring of love and sorrow ! He took her on his knees 
 and tried to calm her with kisses and little affectionate words. 
 The old woman gradually became silent and wept softly. When 
 she was a little comforted, he said : 
 
 Go to bed. You will catch cold.” 
 
 She repeated : Don’t go ! ” 
 
 He said in a low voice : I will not go.” 
 
 She trembled and took his hand. Truly?” she said. 
 Truly?” 
 
 He turned his head away sadly. To-morrow,” he answered, 
 I will tell you to-morrow. . . . Leave me now, please ! . . .”^ 
 She got up meekly and went back to her room. Next morn- 
 ing she was ashamed of her despairing outburst which had 
 come upon her like a madness in the middle of the night, and 
 she was fearful of what her son would say to her. She waited 
 , for him, sitting in a corner of the room. She had taken up 
 some knitting for occupation, but her hands refused to hold it. 
 
574 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 She let it fall. Christophe entered. They greeted each other 
 in a whisper, without looking at each other. He was gloomy, 
 and went and stood by the window, with his back to his mother, 
 and he stayed without speaking. There was a great struggle 
 in him. He knew the result of it already, and was trying to 
 delay the issue. Louisa dared not speak a word to him and 
 provoke the answer which she expected and feared. She forced 
 herself to take up her knitting again, hut she could not see 
 what she was doing, and she dropped her stitches. Outside it 
 was raining. After a long silence Christophe came to her. She 
 did not stir, but her heart was beating. Christophe stood still 
 and looked at her, then, suddenly, he went down on his knees 
 and hid his face in his mother’s dress, and without saying a 
 word, he wept. Then she understood that he was going to stay, 
 and her heart was filled with a mortal agony of joy — but at 
 once she was seized by remorse, for she felt all that her son 
 was sacrificing for her, and she began to suffer all that Chris- 
 tophe had suffered when it was she whom he sacrificed. She 
 bent over him and covered his brow and his hair with kisses. 
 In silence their tears and their sorrow mingled. At last he 
 raised his head, and Louisa took his face in her hands and 
 looked into his eyes. She would have liked to say to him: 
 
 “Go!” 
 
 But she could not. 
 
 He would have liked to say to her : 
 
 “ I am glad to stay.” 
 
 But he could not. 
 
 The situation was hopeless; neither of them could alter it. 
 She sighed in her sorrow and love : 
 
 “ Ah ! if we could all be born and all die together ! ” Her 
 simple way filled him with tenderness; he dried his tears and 
 tried to smile and said: 
 
 “We shall all die together.” 
 
 She insisted: 
 
 “ Truly you will not go ? ” 
 
 He got up: 
 
 “ I have said so. Don’t let us talk about it. There is nothing 
 more to be said.” 
 
 Christophe kept his word; he never talked of going again. 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 575 
 
 but he could not help thinking of it. He stayed, but he made 
 his mother pay dearly for his sacrifice by his sadness and bad 
 temper. And Louisa tactlessly — much more tactlessly than she 
 kne Yy never failing to do what she ought not to have done — 
 Louisa, who knew only too well the reason of his grief, insisted 
 on his telling her what it was. She worried him with her af- 
 fection, uneasy, vexing, argumentative, reminding him every 
 moment that they were very different from each other — and 
 that he was trying to forget. How often he had tried to open 
 his heart to her ! But just as he was about to speak the Great 
 Wall of China would rise between them, and he would keep his 
 secrets buried in himself. She would guess, but she never dared 
 invite his confidence, or else she could not. When she tried she 
 would succeed only in flinging back in him those secrets which 
 weighed so sorely on him and which he was so longing to tell. 
 
 A thousand little things, harmless tricks, cut her off from 
 him and irritated Christophe. The good old creature was 
 doting. She had to talk about the local gossip, and she had 
 that nurse’s tenderness which will recall all the silly little things 
 of the earliest years, and everything that is associated with the 
 cradle. We have such difficulty in issuing from it and growing 
 into men and women ! And Juliet’s nurse must forever be lay- 
 ing before us our duty-swaddling clothes, commonplace thoughts, 
 the whole unhappy period in which the growing soul struggles 
 against the oppression of vile matter or stifling surround- 
 ings! 
 
 And with it all she had little outbursts of touching tenderness 
 — as though to a little child — which used to move him greatly 
 and he would surrender to them — like a little child. 
 
 The worst of all to bear was living from morning to night 
 as they did, together, always together, isolated from the rest 
 of the world. When two people suffer and cannot help each 
 other’s suffering, exasperation is fatal ; each in the end holds the 
 other responsible for the suffering ; and each in the end believes 
 it. It were better to be alone; alone in suffering. 
 
 It was a daily torment for both of them. They would never 
 have broken free if chance had not come to break the cruel 
 indecision, against which they were struggling, in a way that 
 seemed unfortunate — but it was really fortunate. 
 
576 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 It was a Sunday in October. Four o’clock in the afternoon. 
 The weather was brilliant. Christophe had stayed in his room 
 all day, chewing the cud of melancholy. 
 
 He could bear it no longer; he wanted desperately to go out, 
 to walk, to expend his energy, to tire himself oiit, so as to stop 
 thinking. 
 
 Eolations with his mother had been strained since the day 
 before. He was just going out without saying good-bye to her; 
 but on the stairs he thought how it would hurt her the whole 
 evening when she was left alone. He went back, making an 
 excuse of having left something in his room. The door of his 
 mother’s room was ajar. He put his head in through the aper- 
 ture. He watched his mother for a few moments. • • • 
 
 (What a place those two seconds were to fill in his life ever 
 
 after!) ... ... 
 
 Louisa had just come in from vespers. She was sitting in 
 her favorite place, the recess of the window. The wall of 
 the house opposite, dirty white and cracked, obstructed the view, 
 but from the corner where she sat she could see to the right 
 through the yards of the next houses a little patch of lawn 
 the size of a pocket-handkerchief. On the window sill a pot of 
 convolvulus climbed along its threads and over this frail ladder 
 stretched its tendrils which were caressed by a ray of sunlight. 
 Louisa was sitting in a low chair bending over her great Bible 
 which was open on her lap, but she was not reading. Her hands 
 were laid flat on the book— her hands with their swollen veins, 
 worker’s nails, square and a little bent— and she was devouring 
 with loving eyes the little plant and the patch of sky she eould 
 see through it. A sunbeam, basking on the green gold leaves, 
 lit up her tired face, with its rather blotchy complexion, her 
 white, soft, and rather thick hair, and her lips, parted in a 
 smile. She was enjoying her hour of rest. It was the best mo- 
 ment ef the week to her. She made use of it to sink into that 
 state so sweet to those who suffer, when thoughts dwell on noth- 
 ing, and in torpor nothing speaks save the heart and that is half 
 
 asleep. . 
 
 ''Mother/^ he said, ''I want to go out. I am going by 
 
 Buir. I shall be rather late.” 
 
 Louisa, who was dozing off, trembled a little. Then she 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 577 
 
 turned her head towards him and looked at him with her calm, 
 kind eyes. 
 
 “ Yes, my dear, go,” she said. “ You are right; make use of 
 the fine weather.” 
 
 She smiled at him. He smiled at her. They looked at each 
 other for a moment, then they said good-night affectionately, 
 nodding and smiling with the eyes. 
 
 He closed the door softly. She slipped back into her reverie, 
 which her son’s smile had lit up with a bright ray of light like 
 the sunbeam on the pale leaves of the convolvulus. 
 
 So he left her — forever. 
 
 • 
 
 An October evening. A pale watery sun. The drowsy coun- 
 try is sinking to sleep. Little village bells are slowly ringing 
 in the silence of the fields. Columns of smoke rise slowly in 
 the midst of the plowed fields. A fine mist hovers in the 
 distance. The white fogs are awaiting the coming of the night 
 to rise. ... A dog with his nose to the ground was running 
 in circles in a field of beat. Great flocks of crows whirled 
 against the gray sky. 
 
 Christophe went on dreaming, having no fixed object, but yet 
 instinctively he was walking in a definite direction. For several 
 weeks his walks round the town had gravitated whether he liked 
 it or not towards another village where he was sure to meet a 
 pretty girl who attracted him. It was only an attraction, but it 
 was very vivid and rather disturbing. Christophe could hardly 
 do without loving some one ; and his heart was rarely left empty ; 
 it always had some lovely image for its idol. Generally it did 
 not matter whether the idol knew of his love; his need was to 
 love, the fire must never be allowed to go out ; there must never 
 be darkness in his heart. 
 
 The object of this new flame was the daughter of a peasant 
 whom he had met, as Eliezer met Rebecca, by a well; but she 
 did not give him to drink ; she threw water in his face. She 
 was kneeling by the edge of a stream in a hollow in the bank 
 between two willows, the roots of which made a sort of nest about 
 her ; she was washing linen vigorously ; and her tongue was not 
 less active than her arms ; she was talking and laughing loudly 
 with other girls of the village who were washing opposite her on 
 
578 
 
 JBAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 V' 
 
 the other side of the stream. Christophe was lying in the grass a 
 few yards away, and, with his chin resting in his hands, he 
 watched them. They were not put out by it; they Avent on 
 chattering in a style which sometimes did not lack bluntness. 
 
 He hardly listened ; he heard only the sound of their merry 
 voices, mingling with the noise of their washing pots, and Avith 
 the distant lowing of the cows in the meadows, and he was 
 dreaming, never taking his eyes off the beautiful washerwoman. 
 
 A bright young face would make him glad for a whole day. It 
 was not long before the girls made out which of them he was 
 looking at; and they made caustic remarks to each other; the 
 girl he preferred was not the least cutting in the observations 
 she threw at him. As he did not budge, she got up, took a 
 bundle of linen washed and wrung, and began to lay it out on 
 the bushes near him so as to have an excuse for looking at him. 
 
 As she passed him she continued to splash him with her wet 
 clothes and she looked at him holdly and laughed. She was 
 thin and strong: she had a fine chin, a little underhung, a short 
 nose, arching eyebrows, deep-set blue eyes, bold, bright and hard, 
 a pretty mouth with thick lips, pouting a little like those of a , 
 Greek maid, a mass of fair hair turned up in a knot on her i 
 head, and a full color. She carried her head very erect, tittered 
 at every word she said and even when she said nothing, and 
 walked like a man, swinging her sunburned arms. She went on 
 laying out her linen while she looked at Christophe with a pro- : 
 voking smile — ^waiting for him to speak. Christophe stared ; 
 
 at her too; but he had no desire to talk to her. At last she | 
 
 burst out laughing to his face and turned back towards her ' 
 
 companions. He stayed lying where he was until evening fell ! 
 
 and he saw her go Adth her bundle on her back and her bare i 
 arms crossed, her back bent under her load, still talking and 
 laughing. 
 
 He saw her again a few days later at the town market among 
 heaps of carrots and tomatoes and cucumbers and cabbages. He 
 lounged about watching the crowd of women, selling, who were 
 standing in a line by their baskets like slaves for sale. The 
 police official went up to each of them with his satchel and roll 
 of tickets, receiving a piece of money and giving a paper. The 
 coffee seller went from row to row with a basket full of little 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 579 
 
 coffee pots. And an old nun, plump and jovial, went round the 
 market with two large baskets on her arms and without any 
 sort of humility begged vegetables, or talked of the good God. 
 The women shouted : the old scales with their green painted 
 pans jingled and clanked with the noise of their chains ; the big 
 dogs harnessed to the little carts barked loudly, proud of their 
 importance. In the midst of the rabble Christophe saw Ee- 
 becca. — Her real name was Lorchen (Eleanor). — On her fair 
 hair she had placed a large cabbage leaf, green and white, which 
 made a dainty lace cap for her. She was sitting on a basket 
 by a heap of golden onions, little pink turnips, haricot beans, 
 and ruddy apples, and she was munching her own apples one 
 after another without trying to sell them. She never stopped 
 eating. From time to time she would dry her chin and wipe it 
 with her apron, brush back her hair with her arm, rub her 
 cheek against her shoulder, or her nose with the back of her 
 hand. Or, with her hands on her knees, she would go on and 
 on throwing a handful of shelled peas from one to the other. 
 And she would look to right and left idly and indifferently. 
 But she missed nothing of what was going on about her. And 
 without seeming to do so she marked every glance cast in her 
 direction. She saw Christophe. As she talked to her customers 
 she had a way of raising her eyebrows and looking at her ad- 
 mirer over their heads. She was as dignified and serious as a 
 Pope ; but inwardly she was laughing at Christophe. And he 
 deserved it; he stood there a few yards away devouring her 
 with his eyes, then he went away without speaking to her. He 
 had not the least desire to do so. 
 
 He came back more than once to prowl round the market 
 and the village where she lived. She would be about the yard 
 of the farm ; he would stop on the road to look at her. He did 
 not admit that he came to see her, and indeed he did so almost 
 unconsciously. When, as often happened, he was absorbed by 
 the composition of some work he would be rather like a som- 
 nambulist: while his conscious soul was following its musical 
 ideas the rest of him would be delivered up to the other uncon- 
 scious soul which is forever watching for the smallest distrac- 
 tion of the mind to take the freedom of the fields. He was 
 often bewildered by the buzzing of his musical ideas when he 
 
580 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 was face to face with her; and he would go on dreaming ag 
 he watched her. He could not have said that he loved her ^ 
 he did not even think of that; it gave him pleasure to see her, 
 nothing more. He did not take stock of the desire which was 
 always bringing him back to her. 
 
 His insistence was remarked. The people at the farm joked 
 about it, for they had discovered who Christophe was. But they 
 left him in peace; for he was quite harmless. He looked silly 
 enough in truth; but he never bothered about it. 
 
 There was a holiday in the village. Little boys were crush* 
 ing crackers between stones and shouting “ God save the Em- 
 peror ! ” {‘"Kaiser lele! Eoch!”). A cow shut up in the barn 
 and the men drinking at the inn were to be heard. Kites with 
 long tails like comets dipped and swung in the air above the 
 fields. The fowls were scratching frantically in the straw and 
 the golden dung-heap ; the wind blew out their feathers like the 
 skirts of an old lady. A pink pig was sleeping voluptuously on 
 
 his side in the sun. i -• .i, • 
 
 Christophe made his way towards the red roof of the inn 
 of the Three Kings above which fioated a little flag. Strings 
 of onions hung by the door, and the windows were decorated 
 with red and yellow flowers. He went into the saloon, filled 
 with tobacco smoke, where yellowing chromos hung on the 
 walls and in the place of honor a colored portrait of the Em- 
 peror-King surrounded with a wreath of oak leaves. People 
 were dancing. Christophe was sure his charmer would be there. 
 He sat in a corner of the room from which he could watch 
 the movement of the dancers undisturbed. But in spite of all 
 his care to pass unnoticed Lorchen spied him out in his corner. 
 While she waltzed indefatigably she threw quick glances at him 
 over her partner’s shoulder to make sure that he was still look- 
 ing at her; and it amused her to excite him; she coquetted with 
 the young men of the village, laughing the while with her wide 
 mouth. She talked a great deal and said silly things and was 
 not very different from the girls of the polite world who think 
 they must laugh and move about and play to the gallery when 
 anybody looks at them, instead of keeping their foolishness to 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 581 
 
 themselves. But they are not so very foolish either; for they 
 know quite well that the gallery only looks at them and does not 
 listen to what they say. — ^With his elbows on the table and his 
 chin in his hands Christophe watched the girFs tricks with 
 burning, furious eyes ; his mind was free enough not to be taken 
 in by her wiles, but he was not enough himself not to be led 
 on by them ; and he growled with rage and he laughed in silence 
 and shrugged his shoulders in falling into the snare. 
 
 Not only the girl was watching him ; Lorchen’s father also 
 had his eyes on him. Thick-set and short, bald-headed— a big 
 head with a short nose— sunburned skull with a fringe of hair 
 that had been fair and hung in thick curls like Diirer's St. John, 
 clean-shaven, expressionless face, with a long pipe in the corner 
 of his mouth, he was talking very deliberately to some other 
 peasants while all the time he was watching Christophers panto- 
 mime out of the corner of his eye ; and he laughed softly. After 
 a moment he coughed and a malicious light shone in his little gray 
 eyes and he came and sat at Christophers table. Christophe was an- 
 noyed and turned and scowled at him ; he met the cunning look 
 of the old man, who addressed Christophe familiarly without tak- 
 ing his pipe from his lips. Christophe knew him ; he knew him 
 for a common old man ; but his weakness for his daughter made 
 him indulgent towards the father and even gave him a queer 
 pleasure in being with him ; the old rascal saw that. After talk- 
 ing about rain and fine weather and some chaffing reference to 
 the pretty girls in the room, and a remark on Christophers not 
 dancing he concluded that Christophe was right not to put 
 himself out and that it was much better to sit at table with a 
 mug in his hand ; without ceremony he invited himself 
 to have a drink. While he drank the old man went on talking 
 deliberately as always. He spoke about his affairs, the difficulty 
 of gaining a livelihood, the bad weather and high prices. Chris- 
 tophe hardly listened and only replied with an occasional grunt ; 
 he was not interested; he was looking at Lorchen. Christophe 
 wondered what had procured him the honor of the old manrs 
 company and confidences. At last he understood. When the 
 old man had exhausted his complaints he passed on to another 
 chapter; he praised the quality of his produce, his vegetables. 
 
582 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 his fowls, his eggs, his milk, and suddenly he asked if Christophe 
 could not procure him the custom of the Palace. Christophe 
 started : 
 
 How the devil did he know ? . . . He knew him then ? 
 
 Oh, yes,” said the old man. Everything is known . . y 
 He did not add: 
 
 . . when you take the trouble to make enquiries.” 
 
 But Christophe added it for him. He took a wicked pleasure 
 in telling him that although everything was known, ^^he was 
 no doubt unaware that he had just quarreled with the Court 
 and that if he had ever been able to flatter himself on having 
 some credit with the servants^ quarters and butchers of the 
 Palace — (which he doubted strongly) — that credit at present 
 was dead and buried. The old man^s lips twitched impercepti- 
 bly. However, he was not put out and after a moment he asked 
 if Christophe could not at least recommend him to such and 
 such a family. And he mentioned all those with whom Chris- 
 tophe had had dealings; for he had informed himself of 
 them at the market, and there was no danger of his forgetting 
 any detail that might be useful to him. Christophe would have 
 been furious at such spying upon him had he not rather wanted ^ 
 to laugh at the thought that the old man would be robbed in ^ 
 
 spite of all his cunning (for he had no doubt of the value of 
 the recommendation he was asking — a recommendation more 
 likely to make him lose his customers than to procure him fresh ; 
 
 ones). So he let him empty all his bag of clumsy tricks and • 
 
 answered neither Yes ” nor No.” But the peasant persisted i 
 
 and finally he came down to Christophe and Louisa whom he ^ 
 
 had kept for the end, and expressed his keen desire to provide ■ 
 
 them with milk, butter and cream. He added that as Chris- i 
 
 tophe was a musician nothing was so good for the voice as a 
 fresh egg swallowed raw morning and evening ; and he tried hard 
 to make him let him provide him with these, warm from the 
 hen. The idea of the old peasant taking him for a singer made 
 Christophe roar with laughter. The peasant took advantage of 
 that to order another bottle. And then having got all he could 
 out of Christophe for the time being he went away without 
 further ceremony. 
 
 Night had fallen. The dancing had become more and more 
 
EEVOLT 583 
 
 excited. Lorchen had ceased to pay any attention to Christophe ; 
 she was too busy turning the head of a young lout of the village, 
 the son of a rich farmer, for whom all the girls were competing. 
 Christophe was interested by the struggle; the young women 
 smiled at each other and would have been only too pleased to 
 scratch each other. Christophe forgot himself and prayed for 
 the triumph of Lorchen. But when her triumph was won he 
 felt a little downcast. He was enraged by it. He did not love 
 Lorchen; he did not want to be loved by her; it was natural 
 that she should love anybody she liked. — No doubt. But it was 
 not pleasant to receive so little sympathy himself when he had 
 so much need of giving and receiving. Here, as in the tovra, 
 he was alone. All these people were only interested in him 
 while they could make use of him and then laugh at him. He 
 sighed, smiled as he looked at Lorchen, whom her joy in the 
 discomfiture of her rivals had made ten times prettier than 
 ever, and got ready to go. It was nearly nine. He had fully 
 two miles to go to the town. 
 
 He got up from the table when the door opened and a hand- 
 ful of soldiers burst in. Their entry dashed the gaiety of the 
 place. The people began to whisper. A few couples stopped 
 dancing to look uneasily at the new arrivals. The peasants 
 standing near the door deliberately turned their backs on them 
 and began to talk among themselves; but without seeming to 
 do so they presently contrived to leave room for them to pass. 
 For some time past the whole neighborhood had been at logger- 
 heads with the garrisons of the fortresses round it. The sol- 
 diers were bored to death and wreaked their vengeance on the 
 peasants. They made coarse fun of them, maltreated them, 
 and used the women as though they were in a conquered country. 
 The week before some of them, full of wine, had disturbed a 
 feast at a neighboring village and had half killed a farmer. 
 Christophe, who knew these things, shared the state of mind of 
 the peasant, and he sat down again and waited to see what 
 would happen. 
 
 The soldiers were not worried by the ill-will with which their 
 entry was received, and went noisily and sat down at the full 
 tables, jostling the people away from them to make room; it 
 was the affair of a moment. Most of the people went away 
 
584 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 grumbling. An old man sitting at the end of a bench did not | 
 move quickly enough; they lifted the bench and the old man 
 toppled over amid roars of laughter. Christophe felt the blood 
 rushing to his head; he got up indignantly; but, as he was on ■ 
 the point of interfering, he saw the old man painfully pick | 
 himself up and instead of complaining humbly crave pardon. ? 
 Two of the soldiers came to Christophers table ; he watched them 
 come and clenched his fists. But he did not have to defend 
 himself. They were two tall, strong, good-humored louts, who 
 had followed sheepishly one or two daredevils and were trying to 
 imitate them. They were intimidated by Christophers defiant 
 manner, and when he said curtly : This place is taken,rr they 
 hastily begged his pardon and withdrew to their end of the 
 bench so as not to disturb him. There had been a masterful 
 inflection in his voice; their natural servility came to the fore. 
 They saw that Christophe was not a peasant. 
 
 Christophe was a little mollified by their submission, and . 
 
 was able to watch things more coolly. It was not difficult to see ; 
 
 that the gang were led by a non-commissioned officer — a little j 
 bull-dog of a man with hard eyes — with a rascally, hypocritical 
 and wicked face ; he was one of the heroes of the affray of the | 
 Sunday before. He was sitting at the table next to Christophe. ^ 
 He was drunk already and stared at the people and threw in- 
 sulting sarcasms at them which they pretended not to hear. ! 
 He attacked especially the couples dancing, describing their 
 physical advantages or defects with a coarseness of expression • 
 which made his companions laugh. The girls blushed and j 
 tears came to their eyes ; the young men ground their teeth and I 
 raged in silence. Their tormentor’s eyes wandered slowly round | 
 the room, sparing nobody; Christophe saw them moving to- 
 wards himself. He seized his mug, and clenched his fist on the 
 table and waited, determined to throw the liquor at his head 
 on the first insult. He said to himself : 
 
 I am mad. It would be better to go away. They will slit 
 me up; and then if I escape they will put me in prison; the 
 game is not worth the candle. I’d better go before he provokes 
 me.^^ 
 
 But his pride would not let him, he would not seem to be 
 running away from such brutes as these. The officer’s cunning 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 585 
 
 brutal stare was fixed on him. Christophe stiffened and glared 
 at him angrily. The officer looked at him for a moment ; 
 Christophe’s face irritated him; he nudged his neighbor^ and 
 pointed out the young man with a snigger; and he opened his 
 lips to insult him. Christophe gathered himself together and 
 was just about to fling his mug at him. . . . Once more 
 
 chance saved him. Just as the drunken man was about to speak 
 an awkward couple of dancers bumped into him and made him 
 drop his glass. He turned furiously and let loose a flood of in- 
 sults. His attention was distracted; he forgot Christophe. 
 Christophe waited for a few minutes longer; then seeing that 
 his enemy had no thought of going on with his remarks he got 
 up, slowly took his hat and walked leisurely towards the door. 
 He did not take his eyes off the bench where the other was sit- 
 ting, just to let him feel that he was not giving in to him. But 
 the officer had forgotten him altogether; no one took any notice 
 of him. 
 
 He was just turning the handle of the door ; in a few seconds 
 he would have been outside. But it was ordered that he should 
 not leave so soon. An angry murmur rose at the end of the 
 room. When the soldiers had drunk they had decided to dance. 
 And as all the girls had their cavaliers they drove away their 
 partners, who submitted to it. But Lorehen was not going to 
 put up with that. It was not for nothing that she had her bold! 
 eyes and her firm chin which so charmed Christophe. She 
 was waltzing like a mad thing when the officer who had fixed 
 his choice upon her came and pulled her partlier away from 
 her. She stamped with her foot, screamed, and pushed the 
 soldier away, declaring that she would never dance with such a 
 boor. He pursued her. He dispersed with his fists the people 
 behind whom she was trying to hide. At last she took refuge 
 behind a table; and then protected from him for a moment 
 she took breath to scream abuse at him ; she saw that all her 
 resistance would be useless and she stamped with rage and 
 groped for the most violent words to fling at him and compared 
 his face to that of various animals of the farm-yard. He leaned 
 towards her over the table, smiled wickedly, and his eyes glit- 
 tered with rage. Suddenly he pounced and jumped over the 
 table. He caught hold of her. She struggled with feet and fists 
 
586 
 
 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
 
 like the cow-woman she was. He was not too steady on his 
 legs and almost lost his balance. In his fury he flung her 
 against the wall and slapped her face. He had no time to do it 
 again; some one had jumped on his back, and was cuffing him 
 and kicking him back into the crowd. It was Christophe who 
 had flung himself on him, overturning tables and people without 
 stopping to think of what he was doing. Mad with rage^ the 
 officer turned and drew his saber. Before he could make use 
 of it Christophe felled him with a stool. The whole thing had 
 been so sudden that none of the spectators had time to think of 
 interfering. The other soldiers ran to Christophe drawing their 
 sabers. The peasants flung themselves at them. The uproar 
 became general. Mugs flew across the room; the tables were 
 overturned. The peasants woke up ; they had old scores to pay 
 off. The men rolled about on the ground and bit each other 
 savagely. Lorchen’s partner, a stolid farm-hand, had caught 
 hold of the head of the soldier who had just insulted him and 
 was banging it furiously against the wall. Lorchen, armed with 
 a cudgel, was striking out blindly. The other girls ran away 
 screaming, except for a few wantons who joined in heartily. 
 One of them — a fat little fair girl — seeing a gigantic soldier — 
 the same who had sat at Christophers table — crushing in the 
 chest of his prostrate adversary with his boot, ran to the Are, 
 came back, dragged the brute^s head backwards and flung a 
 handful of burning ashes into his eyes. The man bellowed. 
 The girl gloated, abused the disarmed enemy, whom the peas- 
 ants now thwacked at their ease. At last the soldiers flnding 
 themselves on the losing side rushed away leaving two of their 
 number on the floor. The flght went on in the village street. 
 They burst into the houses crying murder, and trying to smash 
 everything. The peasants followed them with forks, and set 
 their savage dogs on them. A third soldier fell with his 
 belly cleft by a fork. The others had to fly and were hunted 
 out of the village, and from a distance they shouted as they 
 ran across the fields that they would fetch their comrades and 
 come back immediately. 
 
 The peasants, left masters of the field, returned to the inn; 
 they were exultant; it was a revenge for all the outrages they 
 had suffered for so long. They had as yet no thought of the 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 587 
 
 consequences of the affray. They all talked at once and boasted 
 of their prowess. They fraternized with Christophe, who was 
 delighted to feel in touch with them. Lorchen came and took 
 his hand and held it for a moment in her rough paw while she 
 giggled at him. She did not think him ridiculous for the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 They looked to the wounded. Among the villagers there were 
 only a few teeth knocked out, a few ribs broken and a few slight 
 bruises and scars. But it was very different with the soldiers. 
 They were seriously injured: the giant whose eyes had been 
 burned had had his shoulder half cut off with a hatchet; the 
 man whose belly had been pierced was dying; and there was 
 the officer who had been knocked down by Christ ophe. They 
 were laid out by the hearth. The officer, who was the least 
 injured of the three, had just opened his eyes. He took a long 
 look at the ring of peasants leaning over him, a look filled with 
 hatred. Hardly had he regained consciousness of what had 
 happened than he began to abuse them. He swore that he 
 would be avenged and would settle their hash, the whole lot 
 of them ; he choked with rage ; it was palpable that if he could 
 he would exterminate them. They tried to laugh, but their 
 laughter was forced. A young peasant shouted to the wounded 
 man : 
 
 Hold your gab or I’ll kill you.” 
 
 The officer tried to get up, and he glared at the man who 
 had just spoken to him with blood-shot eyes : 
 
 Swine! ” he said. ^^Kill me! They’ll cut your heads off.” 
 
 He went on shouting. The man who had been ripped up 
 screamed like a bleeding pig. The third was stiff and still like 
 a dead man. A crushing terror came over the peasants. Lor- 
 chen and some women carried the wounded men to another 
 room. The shouts of the officer and the screams of the dying 
 man died away. The peasants were silent; they stood fixed in 
 the circle as though the three bodies were still lying at their 
 feet ; they dared not budge and looked at each other in panic. 
 At last Lorchen’s father said: 
 
 You have done a fine piece of work ! ” 
 
 There was an agonized murmuring; their throats were dry. 
 Then they began all to talk at once. At first they whispered as 
 
588 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 though they were afraid of eavesdroppers, but soon they raised 
 their voices and became more vehement ; they accused each other ; 
 they blamed each other for the blows they had struck. Th^ 
 dispute became acrid; they seemed to be on the point of going 
 for each other. Lorchen’s father brought them to unanimity. 
 With his arms folded he turned towards Christophe and jerked 
 his chin at him : 
 
 And/^ he said, what business had this fellow here ? 
 
 The wrath of the rabble was turned on Christophe: 
 
 ^^True! True they cried. ^^He began it! But for him 
 nothing would have happened.^^ 
 
 Christophe was amazed. He tried to reply : 
 
 You know perfectly that what I did was for you, not for 
 myself.^^ 
 
 But they replied furiously: 
 
 Aren’t we capable of defending ourselves? Do you think 
 we need a gentleman from the town to tell us what we should 
 do? Who asked your advice? And besides who asked you to 
 come ? Couldn’t you stay at home ? ” 
 
 Christophe shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the 
 door. But Lorchen’s father barred the way, screaming: 
 
 That’s it ! That’s it ! ” he shouted. He would like to 
 cut away now after getting us all into a scrape. He shan’t go ! ” 
 The peasants roared: 
 
 He shan’t go ! He’s the cause of it all. He shall pay for it 
 all ! ” 
 
 They surrounded him and shook their fists at him. Chris- 
 tophe saw the circle of threatening faees closing in upon him ; 
 fear had infuriated them. He said nothing, made a face of 
 disgust, threw his hat on the table, went and sat at the end of 
 the room, and turned his back on them. 
 
 But Lorchen was angry and flung herself at the peasants. 
 Her pretty face was red and scowling with rage. She pushed 
 back the people who were crowding round Christophe: 
 
 Cowards ! Brute beasts ! ” she cried. Aren’t you 
 ashamed? You want to pretend that he brought it all on you! 
 As if they did not see you all! As if there was a single one 
 of you who had not hit out his hand as he could ! ... If 
 
 there had been a man who had stayed with his arms folded 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 589 
 
 while the others were fighting I would spit in his face and call 
 him: Coward! Coward! . . 
 
 The peasants, surprised by this unexpected outburst, stayed 
 for a moment in silence ; they began to shout again : ^ 
 
 “ He began it ! Nothing would have happened but for him. * 
 
 In vain did Lorchen’s father make signs to his daughter. 
 
 She went on : , r 
 
 “ Yes. He did begin it ! That is nothing for you to boast 
 about. But for him you would have let them insult you. You 
 would have let them insult you. You cowards ! You funks ! 
 
 She abused her partner: 
 
 “ And you, you said nothing. Your heart was in your mouth ; 
 you held out your bottom to be kicked. You would have 
 thanked them for it! Aren’t you ashamed? . . . Aren’t 
 
 you all ashamed? You are not men ! You’re as brave as sheep 
 with your noses to the ground all the time ! He had to give 
 you an example ! — And now you want to make him bear every* 
 thing? . . . Well, I tell you, that shan’t happen! He 
 fought for us. Either you save him or you’ll suffer along with 
 him. I give you my word for it ! ” 
 
 Lorchen’s father caught her arm. He was beside himself and 
 shouted : 
 
 “Shut up! Shut up! . . . Will you shut up, you 
 
 bitch! ” 
 
 But she thrust him away and went on again. The peasants 
 yelled. She shouted louder than they in a shrill, piercing 
 scream : 
 
 “What have you to say to it all? Do you think I did not 
 see you just now kicking the man who is lying half dead in 
 the next room? And you, show me your hands! . , 
 There’s blood on them. Do you think I did not see you with 
 your knife? I shall tell everything I saw if you do the least 
 thing against him. I will have you all condemned.” 
 
 The infuriated peasants thrust their faces into Lorchen’s 
 and bawled at her. One of them made as though to box her 
 ears, but Lorchen’s lover seized him by the scruff of the neck 
 and they jostled each other and were on the point of coming 
 to blows. An old man said to Lorchen: 
 
 “ If we are condemned, you will be too.” 
 
590 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 I shall be too/^ she said^ I am not so cowardly as you.” f 
 
 And. she burst out again. 
 
 They did not know what to do. They turned to her father: 
 
 CanT you make her be silent ? ” ; 
 
 The old man had understood that it was not wise to push i 
 Lorchen too far. He signed to them to be calm. Silence came. * 
 Lorchen went on talking alone; then as she found no response, ^ 
 like a fire without fuel, she stopped. After a moment her 
 father coughed and said: 
 
 ^^Well, then, what do you want? You don’t want to ruin 
 us.” 
 
 She said: 
 
 I want him to be saved.” 
 
 They began to think. Christophe had not moved from where 
 he sat; he was stiff and proud and seemed not to understand 
 that they were discussing him ; but he was touched by Lorchen’s 
 intervention. Lorchen seemed not to be aware of his presence; 
 she was leaning against the table by which he was sitting, and 
 glaring defiantly at the peasants, who were smoking and looking 
 down at the ground. At last her father chewed his pipe for a 
 little and said : ! 
 
 Whether we say anything or not, — ^if he stays he is done ^ 
 for. The sergeant major recognized him; he won’t spare him. 
 There is only one thing for him to do — ^to get away at once to ^ 
 the other side of the frontier.” 
 
 He had come to the conclusion it would be better for them all ^ 
 if Christophe escaped; in that way he would admit his guilt, ] 
 
 and when he was no longer there to defend himself it would i 
 
 not be difficult to put upon him the burden of the affair. The 
 others agreed. They understood each other perfectly. — Now ! 
 
 that they had come to a decision they were all in a hurry for 
 Christophe to go. Without being in the least embarrassed by 
 what they had been saying a moment before they came up to 
 him and pretended to be deeply interested in his welfare. 
 
 There is not a moment to lose, sir,” said Lor^^^^u’*? father. 
 
 They will come back. Half an hour to go to the fortress. 
 Half an hour to come back. . . . There is only just time to 
 
 slip away.” \ 
 
 Christophe had risen. He too had been thinking. He knew 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 591 
 
 that if he stayed he was lost. But to go, to go without seeing 
 his mother? . . . ISTo. It was impossible. He said that 
 
 he would first go back to the town and would still have time 
 to go during the night and cross the frontier. But they pro- 
 tested loudly. They had barred the door just before to prevent 
 his going; now they wanted to prevent his not going. If he 
 went back to the town he was certain to be caught ; they would 
 know at the fortress before he got there; they would await him 
 at home. — He insisted. Lorchen had understood him : 
 
 “You want to see your mother? . . . I_ will go instead 
 
 of you.” 
 
 “When?” 
 
 “ To-night.” 
 
 “Really! You will do that?” 
 
 “I will go.” 
 
 She took her shawl and put it round her head. 
 
 “Write a letter. I will take it to her. Come with me. I 
 will give you some ink.” 
 
 She took him into the inner room. At the door she turned, 
 and addressing her lover: 
 
 “ And do you get ready,” she said. “ You must take him. 
 You must not leave him until you have seen him over the 
 frontier.” 
 
 He was as eager as anybody to see Christophe over into 
 France and farther if possible. 
 
 Lorchen went into the next room with Christophe. He was 
 still hesitating. He was torn by grief at the thought that 
 he would not be able to embrace his mother. When would he 
 see her again ? She was so old, so worn out, so lonely ! This 
 fresh blow would be too much for her. What would become of 
 her without him ? . . . But what would become of him if 
 
 he stayed and were condemned and put in prison for years? 
 Would not that even more certainly mean destitution and mis- 
 ery for her? If he were free, though far away, he could alwaj's 
 help her, or she could come to him. — He had not time to see 
 clearly in his mind. Lorchen took his hands — she stood near 
 him and looked at him; their faces were almost touching; she 
 threw her arms round his neck and kissed his mouth: 
 
 “ Quick ! Quick ! ” she whispered, pointing to the table. 
 
592 
 
 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 
 
 He gave up trying to think. He sat down. She tore a sheet 
 of squared paper with red lines from an account book. 
 
 He wrote: 
 
 My Dear Mother : Forgive me. I am going to hurt you 
 much. I cannot do otherwise. I have done nothing wrong. 
 But now I must fly and leave the country. The girl who 
 brings you this letter will tell you everything. I wanted to 
 say good-bye to you. They will not let me. They say that I 
 should be arrested. I am so unhappy that I have no will left. 
 I am going over the frontier but I shall stay near it until you 
 have written to me ; the girl who brings you my letter will bring 
 me your reply. Tell me what to do. I will do whatever you 
 say. Do you want me to come back? Tell me to come back! 
 I cannot bear the idea of leaving you alone. What will you 
 do to live ? Forgive me 1 Forgive me ! I love you and I kiss 
 you . . 
 
 Be quick, sir, or we shall be too late,^^ said Lorchen^s swain, 
 pushing the door open. 
 
 Christophe wrote his name hurriedly and gave the letter to 
 Lorchen. 
 
 You will give it to her yourself ? 
 
 I am going,^^ she said. 
 
 She was already ready to go. 
 
 To-morrow,'' she went on, ''I will bring you her reply; 
 you must wait for me at Leiden, — (the first station beyond the 
 German frontier) — on the platform." 
 
 (She had read Christophe's letter over his shoulder as he 
 wrote.) 
 
 You will tell me everything and how she bore the blow and 
 everything she says to you? You will not keep anything from 
 me?" said Christophe beseechingly, 
 will tell you everything." 
 
 They were not so free to talk now, for the young man was 
 at the door watching them : 
 
 And then, Herr Christophe," said Lorchen, I will go and 
 see her sometimes and I will send you news of her ; do not be 
 anxious." 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 593 
 
 She shook hands with him vigorously like a man. 
 
 “ Let us go ! ” said the peasant. 
 
 “ Let us go ! ” said Christophe. 
 
 All three went out. On the road they parted. Lorchen went 
 one way and Christophe, with his guide, the other. They did 
 not speak. The crescent moon veiled in mists was disappear- 
 ing behind the woods. A pale light hovered over the fields. In 
 the hollows the mists had risen thick and milky white. The 
 shivering trees were bathed in the moisture of the air. They 
 were not more than a few minutes gone from the village when 
 the peasant flung back sharply and signed to Christophe to stop. 
 They listened. On the road in front of them they heard the 
 regular tramp of a troop of soldiers coming towards them. 
 Th^e peasant climbed the hedge into the fields. Christophe fol- 
 lowed him. They walked away across the plowed fields. They 
 heard the soldiers go by on the road. In the darkness the 
 peasant shook his fist at them. Christophers heart stopped like 
 a hunted animal that hears the baying of the hounds. They 
 returned to the road again, avoiding the villages and isolated 
 farms where the barking of the dogs betrayed them to the coun- 
 tryside. On the slope of a wooded hill they saw in the distance 
 the red lights of the railway. They took the direction of the 
 signals and decided to go to the first station. It was not easy. 
 As they came down into the valley they plunged into the fog. 
 They had to jump a few streams. Soon they found themselves 
 in immense fields of beetroot and plowed land; they thought 
 they would never be through. The plain was uneven; there 
 were little rises and hollows into which they were always in dan- 
 ger of falling. At last after walking blindly through the fog 
 they saw suddenly a few yards away the signal light of the rail- 
 way at the top of an embankment. They climbed the bank. At 
 the risk of being run over they followed the rails until they 
 were within a hundred yards of the station ; then they took to 
 the road again. They reached the station twenty minutes before 
 the train went. In spite of Lorchen’s orders the peasant left 
 Christophe; he was in a hurry to go back to see what had hap- 
 pened to the others and to his own property. 
 
 Christophe took a ticket for Leiden and waited alone in the 
 empty third-class waiting room. An official who was asleep 
 
594 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 on a seat came and looked at Christophers ticket and opened 
 the door for him when the train came in. There was nobody 
 in the carriage. Everybody in the train was asleep. In the 
 fields all was asleep. Only Christophe did not sleep in 
 spite of his weariness. As the heavy iron wheels approached 
 the frontier he felt a fearful longing to be out of reach. In 
 an hour he would be free. But till then a word would be 
 enough to have him arrested. . . . Arrested! His whole 
 
 being revolted at the word. To be stifled by odious force ! 
 . . . He could not breathe. His mother, his country, that 
 
 he was leaving, were no longer in his thoughts. In the egoism 
 of his threatened liberty he thought only of that liberty of his 
 life which he wished to save. Whatever it might cost ! Even 
 at the cost of crime. He was bitterly sorry that he had taken 
 the train instead of continuing the journey to the frontier on 
 foot. He had wanted to gain a few hours. A fine gain! He 
 was throwing himself into the jaws of the wolf. Surely they 
 were waiting for him at the frontier station; orders must have 
 been given; he would be arrested. . . . He thought for a 
 
 moment of leaving the train while it was moving, before it 
 reached the station; he even opened the door of the carriage, 
 but it was too late; the train was at the station. It stopped. 
 Eive minutes. An eternity. Christophe withdrew to the end of 
 the compartment and hid behind the curtain and anxiously 
 watched the platform on which a gendarme was standing mo- 
 tionless. The station master came out of his oSice with a tele- 
 gram in his hand and went hurriedly up to the gendarme. Chris- 
 tophe had no doubt that it was about himself. He looked for a 
 weapon. He had only a strong knife with two blades. He 
 opened it in his pocket. An official with a lamp on his chest 
 had passed the station master and was running along the train. 
 Christophe saw him coming. His fist closed on the handle of 
 the knife in his pocket and he thought : 
 
 I am lost.^^ 
 
 He was in such a state of excitement that he would have 
 been capable of plunging the knife into the man^s breast if he 
 had been unfortunate enough to come straight to him and open 
 his compartment. But the official stopp.ed at the next carriage 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 595 
 
 to look at the ticket of a passenger who Had just taken his 
 seat. The train moved on again. Christophe repressed the 
 throbbing of his heart. He did not stir. He dared hardly say to 
 himself that he was saved. He would not say it until he had 
 crossed the frontier. . . . Day was beginning to dawn. The 
 
 silhouettes of the trees were starting out of the night. A car- 
 riage was passing on the road like a fantastic shadow with a 
 jingle of bells and a winking eye. . . . With his face close 
 
 pressed to the window Christophe tried to see the post with the 
 imperial arms which marked the bounds of his servitude. He 
 was still looking for it in the growing light when the train 
 whistled to announce its arrival at the first Belgian station. 
 
 He got up, opened the door wide, and drank in the icy air. 
 Free! His whole life before him! The joy of life! . . . 
 
 And at once there came upon him suddenly all the sadness 
 of what he was leaving, all the sadness of what he was going 
 to meet; and he was overwhelmed by the fatigue of that night 
 of emotion. He sank down on the seat. He had hardly been 
 in the station a minute. When a minute later an official opened 
 the door of the carriage he found Christophe asleep. Chris- 
 tophe awoke, dazed, thinking he had been asleep an hour ; he got 
 out heavily and dragged himself to the customs, and when he 
 was definitely accepted on foreign territory, having no more to 
 defend himself, he lay down along a seat in the waiting room 
 and dropped off and slept like a log. 
 
 He awoke about noon. Lorchen could hardly come before 
 two or three o’clock. While he was waiting for the trains he 
 walked up and down the platform of the little station. Then 
 he went straight on into the middle of the fields. It was a 
 gray and joyless day giving warning of the approach of winter. 
 The light was dim. The plaintive whistle of a train stopping 
 was all that broke the melancholy silence. Christophe stopped 
 a few yards away from the frontier in the deserted country. 
 Before him was a little pond, a clear pool of water, in which 
 the gloomy sky was refiected. It was inclosed by a fence and 
 two trees grew by its side. On the right, a poplar with leafless 
 trembling top. Behind, -a great walnut tree with black naked 
 
596 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 branches like a monstrous polypus. The black fruit of it swung t 
 heavily on it. The last withered leaves were decaying and fall- ■ 
 ing one by one upon the still pond. ... | 
 
 It seemed to him that he had already seen them, the two | 
 trees, the pond . . . — and suddenly he had one of those I 
 
 moments of giddiness which open great distances in the plain J 
 of life. A chasm in Time. He knew not where he was, who s 
 he was, in what age he lived, through how many ages he had (. 
 been so. Christophe had a feeling that it had already been, ^ 
 that what was, now, was not, now, but in some other time. He - 
 was no longer himself. He was able to see himself from out- , 
 side, from a great distance, as though it were some one else _ 
 standing there in that place. He heard the buzzing of memory z 
 and of an unknown creature within himself ; the blood boiled in , 
 his veins and roared: 
 
 " Thus . . . Thus . . . Thus . . 
 
 The centuries whirled through him. . . >. Many other . 
 Ejaffts had passed through the experiences which were his on j 
 that day, and had tasted the wretchedness of 'the last hour on ■' 
 their native soil. A wandering race, banished everywhere for 't 
 their independence and disturbing qualities. A race always | 
 the prey of an inner demon that never let it settle anywhere. ;; 
 A race attached to the soil from which it was torn, and never, i; 
 
 never ceasing to love it. ' 
 
 Christophe in his turn was passing through these same sor- ; 
 rowful experiences; and he was finding on the way the footsteps | 
 of those who had gone before him. With tears in his eyes he - 
 watched his native land disappear in the mist, his country to ' 
 which he had to say farewell. — ^Had he not ardently desired to | 
 leave it? — ^Yes; but now that he was actually leaving it he felt 
 himself racked by anguish. Only a brutish heart can part 
 without emotion from the motherland. Happy or unhappy he ■ 
 had lived with her; she was his mother and his comrade; he 
 had slept in her, he had slept on her bosom, he was impregnated 
 with her; in her bosom she held the treasure of his dreams, all 
 his past life, the sacred dust of those whom he had loved. Chns- 
 tophe saw now in review the days of his life, and the dear men J 
 and women whom he was leaving on that soil or beneath it. His | 
 sufferings were not less dear to him than his joys. Minna, | 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 597 
 
 Sabine, Ada, his grandfather, IJncle Gottfried, old Schulz — all 
 passed before him in the space of a few minutes. He could not 
 tear himself away from the dead — (for he counted Ada also 
 among the dead) — -the idea of his mother whom he was leaving, 
 the only living creature of all those whom he loved, among these 
 phantoms was intolerable to him. 
 
 He was almost on the point of crossing the frontier again, 
 so cowardly did his flight seem to him. He made up his mind 
 that if the answer Lorchen was to bring him from his mother 
 betrayed too great grief he would return at all costs. But if 
 he received nothing? If Lorchen had not been able to reach 
 Louisa, or to bring back the answer? Well, he would go back. 
 
 He returned to the station. After a grim time of waiting the 
 train at last appeared. Christophe expected to see Lorchen^s 
 bold face in the train; for he was sure she would keep her 
 promise; but she did not appear. He ran anxiously from one 
 compartment to another; he said to himself that if she had b^en 
 in the train she would have been one of the first to get out. 
 As he was plunging through the stream of passengers coming 
 from the opposite direction he saw a face which he seemed to 
 know. It was the face of a little girl of thirteen or fourteen, 
 chubby, dimpled, and ruddy as an apple, with a little turned-up 
 nose and a large mouth, and a thick plait coiled around her 
 head. As he looked more closely at her he saw that she had 
 in her hand an old valise very much like his own. She was 
 watching him too like a sparrow; and when she saw that he 
 was looking at her she came towards him; but she stood firmly 
 in front of Christophe and stared at him with her little mouse- 
 like eyes, without speaking a word. Christophe knew her; she 
 was a little milkmaid at Lorchen’s farm. Pointing to the valise 
 he said: 
 
 That is mine, isn^t it ? 
 
 The girl did not move and replied cunningly: 
 
 I’m not sure. Where do you come from, first of all ? 
 
 Buir.” 
 
 And who sent it you ? ” 
 
 Lorchen. Come. Give it me.” 
 
 The little girl held out the valise. 
 
 There it is.” 
 
598 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 And she added: ^ 
 
 “ Oh! But I knew you at once!” ^ 
 
 “ What were you waiting for then ? ” 
 
 I was waiting for you to tell nie that it was you. 
 
 " And Lorchen? ” asked Christophe. “ Why didn’t she come?” 
 
 The girl did not reply. Christophe understood that she did 
 not want to say anything among all the people. They had first 
 to pass through the customs. When that was done Christophe 
 took the girl to the end of the platform : 
 
 " The police came,” said the girl, now very talkative. They 
 came almost as soon as you had gone. They went into all the 
 houses. They questioned everybody, and they arrested big Sami 
 and Christian and old Kaspar. And also Melanie and ^r- 
 trude, though they declared thej^ had done nothing, and they 
 wept; and Gertrude scratched the gendarmes. It was not 
 any good then saying that you had done it all.” 
 
 “I?” exclaimed Christophe. 
 
 “ Oh ! yes,” said the girl quietly. “ It was no good as you 
 had gone. Then they looked for you everywhere and hunted 
 for you in every direction.” 
 
 “ And Lorchen ? ” , j /a 
 
 “Lorchen was not there. She came hack afterwards after 
 
 she had been to the town.” 
 
 “ Did she see my mother ? ” 
 
 " Yes. Here is the letter. And she wanted to come herself, 
 but she was arrested too.” 
 
 “ How did you manage to come ? ” 
 
 " Well, she came back to the village without being seen by 
 the police, and she was going to set out again. But Irmina, 
 Gertrude’s sister, denounced her. They came to arre^ her. 
 Then when she saw the gendarmes coming she went up to her 
 room and shouted that she would come down in a minute, that 
 she was dressing. I was in the vineyard behind the house; she 
 called to me from the window: ‘Lydia! Lydia. 
 her; she threw down your valise and the letter v^ich your 
 mother had given her, and she explained where I should find 
 you. I ran, and here I am.” 
 
 “Didn’t she say anything more?” 
 
EEVOLT 
 
 599 
 
 “ Yes. She told me to give you this shawl to show you that 
 I came from her.” 
 
 Christophe recognized the white shawl with red spots and 
 embroidered flowers which Lorchen had tied round her head 
 when she left him on the night before. The naive improbability 
 of the excuse she had made for sending him such a love-token 
 did not make him smile. 
 
 “ Now,” said the girl, “ here is the return train. I must go 
 home. Good-night.” 
 
 “ Wait,” said Christophe. “ And the fare, what did you do 
 about that?” 
 
 “ Lorchen gave it me.” 
 
 “ Take this,” said Christophe, pressing a few pieces of money 
 into her hand. 
 
 He held her back as she was trying to go. 
 
 “ And then . . .” he said. 
 
 He stooped and kissed her cheeks. The girl affected to pro- 
 test. 
 
 "Don’t mind,” said Christophe jokingly. "It was not tor 
 you/^ 
 
 " Oh ! I know that,” said the girl mockingly. “ It was for 
 
 Lorchen.” i_ i • j 
 
 It was not only Lorchen that Christophe kissed as he kissed 
 
 the little milkmaid’s chubby cheeks; it was all Germany. ^ 
 
 The girl slipped away and ran towards the train which was 
 just going. She hung out of the window and waved her hand- 
 kerchief to him until she was out of sight. He followed with 
 his eyes the rustic messenger who had brought him for the 
 last time the breath of his country and of those he loved. 
 
 When she had gone he found himself utterly alone, this time, 
 a stranger in a strange land. He had in his hand his mother s 
 letter and the shawl love-token. He pressed the shawl to his 
 breast and tried to open the letter. But his hands trembled. 
 What would he find in it ? What suffering would be written in 
 it? — No; he could not bear the sorrowful words of reproach 
 which already he seemed to hear ; he would retrace his steps. 
 
 At last he unfolded the letter and read: " My poor child, 
 
 do not be anxious about me. I will be wise. God has punished 
 
600 
 
 JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 
 
 me. I must not be selfish and keep you here. Go to Paris. 
 Perhaps it will be better for you. Do not worry about me. I 
 can manage somehow. The chief thing is that you should be 
 happy. I kiss you. Mother. 
 
 “ Write to me when you can.” 
 
 Christophe sat down on his valise and wept. 
 
 The porter was shouting the train for Paris. 
 
 The heavy train was slowing down with a terrific noise. Chris- 
 tophe dried his tears, got up and said: 
 
 “ I must go.” 
 
 He looked at the sky in the direction in which Paris mu!«t 
 be. The sky, dark everywhere, was even darker there. It was 
 like a dark chasm. Christophe’s heart ached, but he said again : 
 
 "I must go.” 
 
 He climbed into the train and leaning out of the window 
 went on looking at the menacing horizon: 
 
 “ 0, Paris ! ” he thought, “ Paris ! Come to my aid ! Save 
 me ! Save my thoughts ! ” | 
 
 The thick fog grew denser still. Behind Christophe, above | 
 
 the country he was leaving, a little .patch of sky, pale blue, i 
 
 large, like two eyes — ^like the eyes of Sabine — smiled sorrowfully ' 
 
 through the heavy veil of clouds and then was gone. The train 
 departed. Rain fell. Night fell.