boy who had so often deceived her. He had a suspicion that this time it was serious, but he refused to believe it; and his eyes watched his mother’s eyes for the reproachful expression that had infuriated him when he was lying. There came a time when there was no room for doubt. Then it was terrible, both for him and his mother and sister: he did not wish to die….
When at last Grazia saw him sinking to sleep, she gave no cry and made no moan: she astonished those about her by her silence: she had no strength left for suffering: she had only one desire, to sleep also. However, she went about the business of her life with the same apparent calm. After a few weeks her smile returned to her lips, but she was more silent still. No one suspected her inward distress, Christophe least of all. She had only written to tell him the news, without a word of herself. She did not answer Christophe’s anxiously affectionate letters. He wanted to come to her: she begged him not to. At the end of two or three months, she resumed her old grave, serene tone with him. She would have thought it criminal to put upon him the burden of her weakness. She knew how the echo of all her feelings reverberated in him, and how great was his need to lean on her. She did not impose upon herself the restraint of sorrow. This discipline was her salvation. In her weariness of life only two things gave her life: Christophe’s love, and the fatalism, which, in sorrow as in joy, lay at the heart of her Italian nature. There was nothing intellectual in her fatalism: it was the animal instinct, which makes a hunted beast go on, with no consciousness of fatigue, in a staring wide-eyed dream, forgetting the stones of the road, forgetting its own body, until it falls. Her fatalism sustained her body. Love sustained her heart. Now that her own life was worn out, she lived in Christophe. And yet she was more scrupulous than ever never in her letters to tell him of the love she had for him: no doubt because her love was greater: but also because she was conscious of the _veto_ of the dead boy, who had made her affection a crime. Then she would relapse into silence, and refrain from writing for a time.
Christophe did not understand her silence. Sometimes in the composed and tranquil tone of one of her letters he would be conscious of an unexpected note that seemed to be quivering with passionate moaning. That would prostrate him: but he dared not say anything: he hardly dared to notice it: he was like a man holding his breath, afraid to breathe, for fear of destroying an illusion. He knew almost infallibly that in the next letter such notes as these would be atoned for by a deliberate coldness. Then, once more, tranquillity … _Meeresstille_….
* * * * *
Georges and Emmanuel met at Christophe’s one afternoon. Both were preoccupied with their own troubles: Emmanuel with his literary disappointments, and Georges with some athletic failure. Christophe listened to them good-humoredly and teased them affectionately. There was a ring at the door. Georges went to open it. A servant had come with a letter from Colette. Christophe stood by the window to read it. His friends went on with their discussion, and did not see Christophe, whose back was turned to them. He left the room without their noticing it. And when they realized that he had done so, they were not surprised. But as time passed and he did not return, Georges went and knocked at the door of the next room. There was no reply. Georges did not persist, for he knew his old friend’s queer ways. A few minutes later Christophe returned without a word. He seemed very calm, very kind, very gentle. He begged their pardon for leaving them, took up the conversation where he had left it, and spoke kindly about their troubles, and said many helpful things. The tone of his voice moved them, though they knew not why.
They left him. Georges went straight to Colette’s, and found her in tears. As soon as she saw him she came swiftly to him and asked:
“How did our poor friend take the blow? It is terrible.”
Georges did not understand. And Colette told him that she had just sent Christophe the news of Grazia’s death.
She was gone, without having had time to say farewell to anybody. For several months past the roots of her life had been almost torn out of the earth: a puff of wind was enough to lay it low. On the evening before the relapse of influenza which carried her off she received a long, kind letter from Christophe. It had filled her with tenderness, and she longed to bid him come to her: she felt that everything else, everything that kept them apart, was absurd and culpable. She was very weary, and put off writing to him until the next day. On the day after she had to stay in bed. She began a letter which she did not finish: she had an attack of giddiness, and her head swam: besides, she was reluctant to speak of her illness, and was afraid of troubling Christophe. He was busy at the time with rehearsals of a choral symphony set to a poem of Emmanuel’s: the subject had roused them both to enthusiasm, for it was something symbolical of their own destiny: _The Promised Land_. Christophe had often mentioned it to Grazia. The first performance was to take place the following week…. She must not upset him. In her letter Grazia just spoke of a slight cold. Then that seemed too much to her. She tore up the letter, and had no strength left to begin another. She told herself that she would write in the evening. When the evening came it was too late–too late to bid him come, too late even to write…. How swiftly everything passes! A few hours are enough to destroy the labor of ages…. Grazia hardly had time to give her daughter a ring she wore and beg her to send it to her friend. Till then she had not been very intimate with Aurora. Now that her life was ebbing away, she gazed passionately at the face of the girl: she clung to the hand that would pass on the pressure of her own, and, joyfully, she thought:
“Not all of me will pass away.”
_”Quid? hic, inquam, quis est qui complet aures meas tantus et tam dulcis sonus?…”–(The Dream of Scipio.)_
When he left Colette, on an impulse of sympathy Georges went back to Christophe’s. For a long time, through Colette’s indiscretions, he had known the place that Grazia filled in his old friend’s heart: he had even–(for youth is not respectful)–made fun of it. But now generously and keenly he felt the sorrow that Christophe must be feeling at such a loss; and he felt that he must go to him, embrace him, pity him. Knowing the violence of his passions,–the tranquillity that Christophe had shown made him anxious. He rang the bell. No answer. He rang once more and knocked, giving the signal agreed between Christophe and himself. He heard the moving of a chair and a slow, heavy tread. Christophe opened the door. His face was so calm that Georges stopped still, just as he was about to fling himself into his arms: he knew not what to say. Christophe asked him gently:
“You, my boy. Have you forgotten something?”
Georges muttered uneasily:
“Yes.”
“Come in.”
Christophe went and sat in the chair he had left on Georges’s arrival, near the window, with his head thrown back, looking at the roofs opposite and the reddening evening sky. He paid no attention to Georges. The young man pretended to look about on the table, while he stole glances at Christophe. His face was set: the beams of the setting sun lit up his cheek-bones and his forehead. Mechanically Georges went into the next room–the bedroom–as though he were still looking for something. It was in this room that Christophe had shut himself up with the letter. It was still there on the bed, which bore the imprint of a body. On the floor lay a book that had slipped down. It had been left open with a page crumpled. Georges picked it up, and read the story of the meeting of the Magdalene and the Gardener in the Gospel.
He came back into the living-room, and moved a few things here and there to gain countenance, and once more he looked at Christophe, who had not budged. He longed to tell him how he pitied him. But Christophe was so radiant with light that Georges felt that it was out of place to speak. It was rather himself who stood in need of consolation. He said timidly:
“I am going.”
Without turning his head, Christophe said:
“Good-by, my boy.”
Georges went away and closed the door without a sound.
For a long time Christophe sat there. Night came. He was not suffering: he was not thinking: he saw no definite image. He was like a tired man listening to some vague music without making any attempt to understand it. The night was far gone when he got up, cramped and stiff. He flung himself on his bed and slept heavily. The symphony went on buzzing all around him….
And now he saw _her_, the well-beloved…. She held out her hands to him, and said, smiling:
“Now you have passed through the zone of fire.”
Then his heart melted. An indescribable peace filled the starry spaces, where the music of the spheres flung out its great, still, profound sheets of water….
When he awoke (it was day), his strange happiness still endured, with the distant gleam of words falling upon his ears. He got up. He was exalted with a silent, holy enthusiasm.
“… _Or vedi, figlio,
tra Beatrice e te e questo muro….”_
Between Beatrice and himself, the wall was broken down. For a long time now more than half his soul had dwelt upon the other side. The more a man lives, the more a man creates, the more a man loves and loses those whom he loves, the more does he escape from death. With every new blow that we have to bear, with every new work that we round and finish, we escape from ourselves, we escape into the work we have created, the soul we have loved, the soul that has left us. When all is told, Rome is not in Rome: the best of a man lies outside himself. Only Grazia had withheld him on this side of the wall. And now in her turn…. Now the door was shut upon the world of sorrow.
He lived through a period of secret exaltation. He felt the weight of no fetters. He expected nothing of the things of this world. He was dependent upon nothing. He was set free. The struggle was at an end. Issuing from the zone of combat and the circle where reigned the God of heroic conflict, _Dominus Deus Sabaoth_, he looked down, and in the night saw the torch of the Burning Bush put out. How far away it was! When it had lit up his path he had thought himself almost at the summit. And since then, how far he had had to go! And yet the topmost pinnacle seemed no nearer. He would never reach it (he saw that now), though he were to march on to eternity. But when a man enters the circle of light and knows that he has not left those he loves behind him, eternity is not too long a space to be journeying on with them.
He closed his doors. No one knocked. Georges had expended all his compassion and sympathy in the one impulse; he was reassured by the time he reached home, and forgot all about it by the next day. Colette had gone to Rome. Emmanuel knew nothing, and hypersensitive as usual, he maintained an affronted silence because Christophe had not returned his visit. Christophe was not disturbed in his long colloquy with the woman whom he now bore in his soul, as a pregnant woman bears her precious burden. It was a moving intercourse, impossible to translate into words. Even music could hardly express it. When his heart was full, almost overflowing, Christophe would lie still with eyes closed, and listen to its song. Or, for hours together, he would sit at his piano and let his fingers speak. During this period he improvised more than he had done in the whole of his life. He did not set down his thoughts. What was the good?
When, after several weeks, he took to going out again and seeing other men, while none of his friends, except Georges, had any suspicion of what had happened, the daimon of improvisation pursued him still. It would take possession of Christophe just when he was least expecting it. One evening, at Colette’s, Christophe sat down at the piano and played for nearly an hour, absolutely surrendering himself, and forgetting that the room was full of strangers. They had no desire to laugh. His terrible improvisations enslaved and overwhelmed them. Even those who did not understand their meaning were thrilled and moved: and tears came to Colette’s eyes…. When Christophe had finished he turned away abruptly: he saw how everybody was moved, and shrugged his shoulders, and–laughed.
He had reached the point at which sorrow also becomes a force–a dominant force. His sorrow possessed him no more: he possessed his sorrow: in vain it fluttered and beat upon its bars: he kept it caged.
From that period date his most poignant and his happiest works: a scene from the Gospel which Georges recognized–
“_Mulier, quid ploras?”–“Quia tulerunt Dominium meum, et nescio ubi posuerunt eum.”
Et cum hoec dixisset, conversa est retrorsum, et vidit Jesum stantem: et non sciebat quia Jesus est_.
–a series of tragic _lieder_ set to verses of popular Spanish _cantares_, among others a gloomy sad love-song, like a black flame–
“_Quisiera ser el sepulcro
Donde a ti te han de enterrar,
Para tenerte en mis brazos
Por toda la eternidad_.”
(“Would I were the grave, where thou art to be buried, that I might hold thee in my arms through all eternity.”)
–and two symphonies, called _The Island of Tranquillity_ and _The Dream of Scipio_, in which, more intimately than in any other of the works of Jean-Christophe Krafft, is realized the union of the most beautiful of the forces of the music of his time: the affectionate and wise thought of Germany with all its shadowy windings, the clear passionate melody of Italy, and the quick mind of France, rich in subtle rhythms and variegated harmonies.
This “enthusiasm begotten of despair at the time of a great loss” lasted for a few months. Thereafter Christophe fell back into his place in life with a stout heart and a sure foot. The wind of death had blown away the last mists of pessimism, the gray of the Stoic soul, and the phantasmagoria of the mystic chiaroscura. The rainbow had shone upon the vanishing clouds. The gaze of heaven, purer, as though it had been laved with tears, smiled through them. There was the peace of evening on the mountains.
IV
The fire smoldering in the forest of Europe was beginning to burst into flames. In vain did they try to put it out in one place: it only broke out in another: with gusts of smoke and a shower of sparks it swept from one point to another, burning the dry brushwood. Already in the East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the nations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was skeptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were possessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point of breaking out. It was stamped out, but it sprang to life again. The world felt that it was the mercy of an accident that might let loose the dogs of war. The world lay in wait. The feeling of inevitability weighed heavily even upon the most pacifically minded. And ideologues, sheltered beneath the massive shadow of the cyclops, Proudhon, hymned in war man’s fairest title of nobility….
This, then, was to be the end of the physical and moral resurrection of the races of the West! To such butchery they were to be borne along by the currents of action and passionate faith! Only a Napoleonic genius could have marked out a chosen, deliberate aim for this blind, onward rush. But nowhere in Europe was there any genius for action. It was as though the world had chosen the most mediocre to be its governors. The force of the human mind was in other things.–So there was nothing to be done but to trust to the declivity down which they were moving. This both governors and governed were doing. Europe looked like a vast armed vigil.
Christophe remembered a similar vigil, when he had had Olivier’s anxious face by his side. But then the menace of war had been only a passing cloud. Now all Europe lay under its shadow. And Christophe’s heart also had changed. He could not share in the hatred of the nations. His state of mind was like that of Goethe in 1813. How could a man fight without hatred? And how could he hate without youth? He had passed through the zone of hatred. Which of the great rival nations was the dearest to him? He had learned to know all their merits, and what the world owed to them. When a man has reached a certain stage in the development of the soul _”he knows no nation, he feels the happiness or unhappiness of the neighboring peoples as his own.”_ The storm-clouds are at his feet. Around him is nothing but the sky–_”the whole Heavens, the kingdom of the eagle.”_
And yet Christophe was sometimes embarrassed by this ambient hostility. In Paris he was made to feel too clearly that he was of the hostile race: even his friend Georges could not resist the pleasure of giving vent, in his presence, to feelings about Germany which made him sad. Then he rushed away, on the excuse that he wanted to see Grazia’s daughter: and he went and stayed for a time in Rome. But there the atmosphere was no more serene. The great plague of national pride had spread there, and had transformed the Italian character. The Italians, whom Christophe had known to be indifferent and indolent, were now thinking of nothing but military glory, battle, conquests, Roman eagles flying over the sands of Libya: they believed they had returned to the time of the Emperors. The wonderful thing was that this madness was shared, with the best faith in the world, by the opposition parties, socialists and clericals, as well as by the monarchists, and they had not the least idea that they were being unfaithful to their cause. So little do politics and human reason count when the great epidemic passions sweep over the nations. Such passions do not even trouble to suppress individual passions; they use them; and everything converges on the one goal. In the great periods of action it was ever thus. The armies of Henri IV., the Councils of Louis XIV., which forged the greatness of France, numbered as many men of faith and reason as men of vanity, interest, and enjoyment. Jansenists and libertines, Puritans and gallants, served the same destiny in serving their instincts. In the forthcoming wars no doubt internationalists and pacificists will kindle the blaze, in the conviction, like that of their ancestors of the Convention, that they are doing it for the good of the nations and the triumph of peace.
With a somewhat ironical smile, Christophe, from the terrace of the Janiculum, looked down on the disparate and harmonious city, the symbol of the universe which it dominated; crumbling ruins, “baroque” facades, modern buildings, cypress and roses intertwined–every age, every style, merged into a powerful and coherent unity beneath the clear light. So the mind should shed over the struggling universe the order and light that are in it.
Christophe did not stay long in Rome. The impression made on him by the city was too strong: he was afraid of it. Truly to profit by its harmony he needed to hear it at a distance: he felt that if he stayed he would be in danger of being absorbed by it, like so many other men of his race.–Every now and then he went and stayed in Germany. But, when all was told, and in spite of the imminence of a Franco-German war, Paris still had the greatest attraction for him. No doubt this was because his adopted son, Georges, lived there. But he was not only swayed by reasons of affection. There were other reasons of an intellectual order that were no less powerful. For an artist accustomed to the full life of the mind, who generously shares in all the sufferings, all the hopes, and all the passions of the great human family, it was difficult to grow accustomed to life in Germany. There was no lack of artists there. But the artists lacked air. They were isolated from the rest of the nation, which took no interest in them: other preoccupations, social or practical, absorbed the attention of the public. The poets shut themselves up in disdainful irritation in their disdained art; it became a point of honor with them to sever the last ties which bound them to the life of the people: they wrote only for a few, a little aristocracy full of talent, refined and sterile, being itself divided into rival groups of jaded initiates, and they were stifled in the narrow room in which they were huddled together: they were incapable of expanding it, and set themselves to dig down; they turned the soil over until it was exhausted. Then they drifted away into their archaic dreams, and never even troubled to bring their dreams into the common stock. Each man fought for his place in the mist. They had no light in common. Each man had to look for light within himself.
Yonder, on the other hand, on the other side of the Rhine, among their neighbors on the West, the great winds of collective passion, of public turbulence and tribulation, swept periodically over art. And, high above the plain, like their Eiffel Tower above Paris, shone afar off the never-dying light of a classic tradition, handed down from generation to generation, which, while it never enslaved nor constrained the mind, showed it the road followed by past ages, and established the communion of a whole nation in its light. Many a German spirit–like birds strayed in the night–came winging towards the distant beacon. But who is there in France can dream of the power of the sympathy which drives so many generous hearts from the neighboring nation towards France! So many hands stretched out: hands that are not responsible for the aims of the politicians!… And you see no more of us, our brothers in Germany, though we say to you: “Here are our hands. In spite of lies and hatred, we will not be parted. We have need of you, you have need of us, to build the greatness of our spirits and our people. We are the two wings of the West. If one be broken, there is an end of flight! Let the war come! It will not break the clasp of our hands or the flight of our genius in brotherhood.”
So thought Christophe. He felt the mutual completion which the two races could give each other, and how lame and halting were the spirit, the art, the action of each without the help of the other. For his own part, born in the Rhine-lands where the two civilizations mingle in one stream, from his childhood he had instinctively felt their inevitable union; all through his life the unconscious effort of his genius had been to maintain the balance and equilibrium of the two mighty wings. The greater was his wealth of Germanic dreams, the more he needed the Latin clarity of mind and order. It was for this reason that France was so dear to him. In France he had the joy of better knowledge and mastery of himself. Only in France was he wholly himself.
He turned to account all the elements that were or might be noxious to him. He assimilated foreign energy in his own. A vigorous healthy mind absorbs every kind of force, even that which is hostile to it, and makes it bone and flesh of its bone and flesh. There even comes a time when a man is most attracted by what least resembles him, for therein he finds his most plentiful nourishment.
Christophe did in fact find more pleasure in the work of artists who were set up as his rivals than in the work of his imitators:–for he had imitators who called themselves his disciples, to his great despair. They were honest, laborious, estimable, and altogether virtuous people who were full of respect and veneration for him. Christophe would have given much if he could have liked their music; but–(it was just his luck!)–he could not do it: he found it meaningless. He was a thousand times more pleased with the talent of musicians who were personally antipathetic to him, and in art represented tendencies hostile to his own…. Well! What did it matter? These men were at least alive! Life is, in itself, such a virtue, that, if a man be deprived of it, though he possess all the other virtues, he will never be a really good man, for he cannot really be a man. Christophe used jokingly to say that the only disciples he recognized were the men who attacked him. And when a young artist came and talked to him about his musical vocation, and tried to win his sympathy by flattering him, Christophe would say:
“So. My music satisfies you? That is how you would express your love, or your hatred?”
“Yes, master.”
“Well. Don’t. You have nothing to say.”
His horror of the submissive temper of mind, of men born to obey, his need of absorbing other ideas than his own, attracted him to circles whose ideas were diametrically opposed to his own. He had friends among men to whom his art, his idealistic faith, his moral conceptions, were a dead letter: they had absolutely different ways of envisaging life, love, marriage, the family, every social relationship:–but they were good fellows, though they seemed to belong to another stage of moral evolution: the anguish and the scruples that had consumed a part of Christophe’s life were incomprehensible to them. No doubt that was all the better for them! Christophe had no desire to make them understand. He did not ask others to confirm his ideas by thinking as he did: he was sure of his own thoughts. He asked them to let him know their thoughts, and to love their souls. He asked always to know and to love more, to see and to learn how to see. He had reached the point not only of admitting in others tendencies of mind that he had once combated, but also of rejoicing in them, for they seemed to him to contribute to the fecundity of the universe. He loved Georges the more because he did not take life tragically, as he did. Humanity would be too poor and too gray in color if it were to be uniformly clad in the moral seriousness, and the heroic restraint with which Christophe was armed. Humanity needed joy, carelessness, irreverent audacity in face of its idols, all its idols, even the most holy. Long live “the Gallic salt which revives the world”! Skepticism and faith are no less necessary. Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of to-morrow…. How clear everything becomes to the man who stands away from life, and, as in a fine picture, sees the contrasting colors merge into a magical harmony, where, when they were closely seen, they clashed.
Christophe’s eyes had been opened to the infinite variety of the material, as of the moral, world. It had been one of his greatest conquests since his first visit to Italy. In Paris he especially sought the company of painters and sculptors; it seemed to him that the best of the French genius was in them. The triumphant audacity with which they pursued and captured movement, vibrant color, and tore away the veils that cover life, made his heart leap with delight. The inexhaustible riches that he who has eyes to see can find in a drop of light, a second of life! Against such sovereign delights of the mind what matters the vain tumult of dispute and war?… But dispute and war also are a part of the marvelous spectacle. We must embrace everything, and, valiantly, joyously, fling into the crucible of our burning hearts both the forces of denial and the forces of affirmation, enemies and friends, the whole metal of life. The end of it all is the statue which takes shape in us, the divine fruit of our minds; and all is good that helps to make it more beautiful even at the cost of the sacrifice of ourselves. What does the creator matter? Only that which is created is real…. You cannot hurt us, ye enemies who seek to reach us with your hostility. We are beyond the reach of your attacks…. You are rending the empty cloak. I have been gone this many a day.
His music had found a more serene form. No longer did it show the storms of spring, which gathered, burst, and disappeared in the old days, but, instead, the white clouds of summer, mountains of snow and gold, great birds of light, slowly soaring, and filling the sky…. Creation. Ripening crops in the calm August sunlight….
At first a vague, mighty torpor, the obscure joy of the full grape, the swollen ear of corn, the pregnant woman brooding over her ripe fruit. A buzzing like the sound of an organ; the hive all alive with the hum of the bees…. Such somber, golden music, like an autumn honeycomb, slowly gives forth the rhythm which shall mark its path: the round of the planets is made plain: it begins to spin….
Then the will appears. It leaps onto the back of the whinnying dream as it passes, and grips it with its knees. The mind recognizes the laws of the rhythm which guides it: it tames the disordered forces and fixes the path they shall take, the goal towards which they shall move. The symphony of reason and instinct is organized. The darkness grows bright. On the long ribbon of the winding road, at intervals, there are brilliant fires, which in their turn shall be in the work of creation the nucleus of little planetary worlds linked up in the girdle of their solar system….
The main lines of the picture are henceforth fixed. Now it looms through the uncertain light of dawn. Everything is becoming definite: the harmony of the colors, the outline of the figures. To bring the work to its close all the resources of his being are brought into requisition. The scent-box of memory is opened and exhales its perfumes. The mind unchains the senses: it lets them wax delirious and is silent: but, crouching there, it watches them and chooses its prey….
All is ready: the team of workmen carries out, with the materials snatched from the senses, the work planned by the mind. A great architect must have good journeymen who know their trade and will not spare themselves.–The cathedral is finished.
“And God looked down on his work. And He saw that _it was not yet good._”
The Master’s eyes take in the whole of His creation, and His hand perfects its harmony….
* * * * *
The dream is ended. _Te Deum_….
The white clouds of summer, like great birds of light, slowly soar and hover; and the heavens are filled with their widespread wings.
And yet his life was very far from being one with his art. A man of his kind cannot do without love, not merely that equable love which the spirit of an artist sheds on all things in the world, but a love that knows _preference_: he must always be giving himself to the creatures of his choice. They are the roots of the tree. Through them his heart’s blood is renewed.
Christophe’s heart’s blood was nothing like dried up. He was steeped in a love which was the best part of his joy, a twofold love, for Grazia’s daughter and Olivier’s son. He united them in thought, and was to unite them in reality.
* * * * *
Georges and Aurora had met at Colette’s: Aurora lived in her cousin’s house. She spent part of the year in Rome and the rest in Paris. She was eighteen: Georges five years older. She was tall, erect, elegant, with a small head, and an open countenance, fair hair, a dark complexion, a slight down on her lips, bright eyes with a laughing expression behind which lay busy thoughts, a rather plump chin, brown hands, beautiful round strong arms, and a fine bust; and she always looked gay, proud, and worldly. She was not at all intellectual, hardly at all sentimental, and she had inherited her mother’s careless indolence. She would sleep eleven hours on end. The rest of the time she spent in lounging and laughing, only half awake. Christophe called her _Dornroschen_–the Sleeping Beauty. She reminded him of his old love, Sabine. She used to sing as she went to bed, and when she got up, and laugh for no reason at all, with merry childish laughter, and then gulp it down with a sort of hiccough. It were impossible to tell how she spent the time. All Colette’s efforts to equip her with the brilliant artificiality which is so easily imposed on the mind of a young girl, like a kind of lacquered varnish, had been wasted: the varnish would not hold. She learned nothing: she would take months to read a book, and would like it immensely, though in a week she would forget both its title and its subject: without the least embarrassment she would make mistakes in spelling, and when she spoke of learned matters she would fall into the most comical blunders. She was refreshing in her youth, her gaiety, her lack of intellectuality, even in her faults, her thoughtlessness which sometimes amounted to indifference, and her naive egoism. She was always so spontaneous. Young as she was, and simple and indolent, she could when she pleased play the coquette, though in all innocence: then she would spread her net for young men and go sketching, or play the nocturnes of Chopin, or carry books of poetry which she had not read, and indulge in conversations and hats that were about equally idealistic.
Christophe would watch her and laugh gently to himself. He had a fatherly tenderness, indulgent and teasing, for Aurora. And he had also a secret feeling of worship for the woman he had loved who had come again with new youth for another love than his. No one knew the depth of his affection. Only Aurora ever suspected it. From her childhood she had almost always been used to having Christophe near her, and she used to regard him as one of her family. In her old sorrow at being less loved than her brother she had instinctively drawn near to Christophe. She divined that he had a similar sorrow; he saw her grief: and though they never exchanged confidences, they shared each other’s feelings. Later, when she discovered the feeling that united her mother and Christophe, it seemed to her that she was in the secret, though they had never told her. She knew the meaning of the message with which Grazia had charged her as she lay dying, and of the ring which was now on Christophe’s hand. So there existed hidden ties between her and Christophe, ties which she did not need to understand, to feel them in their complexity. She was sincerely attached to her old friend, although she could never have made the effort necessary to play or to read his work. Though she was a fairly good musician, she had never even had the curiosity to cut the pages of a score he had dedicated to her. She loved to come and have an intimate talk with him.–She came more often when she found out that she might meet Georges Jeannin in his rooms.
And Georges, too, found an extraordinary interest in Christophe’s company.
However, the two young people were slow to realize their real feelings. They had at first looked at each other mockingly. They were hardly at all alike. He was quicksilver, she was still water. But it was not long before quicksilver tried to appear more at rest, and sleeping water awoke. Georges would criticise Aurora’s clothes, and her Italian taste–a slight want of feeling for modulation and a certain preference for crude colors. Aurora used to delight in teasing Georges, and imitating his rather hurried and precious way of speaking. And while they laughed at each other, they both took pleasure … in laughing, or in entertaining each other? They used to entertain Christophe too, and, far from gainsaying them, he would maliciously transpose these little poisoned darts from one to the other. They pretended not to care: but they soon discovered that they cared only too much; and both, especially Georges, being incapable of concealing their annoyance, as soon as they met they would begin sparring. Their wounds were slight: they were afraid of hurting each other: and the hand which dealt the blow was so dear to the recipient of it that they both found more pleasure in the hurts they received than in those they gave. They used to watch each other curiously, and their eyes, seeking defects, would find only attractions. But they would not admit it. Each, to Christophe, would declare that the other was unbearable, but, for all that, they were not slow to seize every opportunity of meeting that Christophe gave them.
One day when Aurora was with her old friend to tell him that she would come and see him on the following Sunday in the morning, Georges rushed in, like a whirlwind as usual, to tell Christophe that he was coming on Sunday afternoon. On Sunday morning Christophe waited in vain for Aurora. At the hour mentioned by Georges she appeared, and asked him to forgive her because it had been impossible for her to come in the morning: she embroidered her excuses with a circumstantial story. Christophe was amused by her innocent roguery, and said:
“It is a pity. You would have seen Georges: he came and lunched with me; but he would not stay this afternoon.”
Aurora was discomfited, and did not listen to anything Christophe said. He went on talking good-humoredly. She replied absently, and was not far from being cross with him. Came a ring at the bell. It was Georges. Aurora was amazed. Christophe looked at her and laughed. She saw that he had been making fun of her, and laughed and blushed. He shook his finger at her waggishly. Suddenly she ran and kissed him warmly. He whispered to her:
_”Biricchina, ladroncella, furbetta….”_
And she laid her hand on his lips to silence him.
Georges could make nothing of their kissing and laughter. His expression of astonishment, almost of vexation, added to their joy.
So Christophe labored to bring the two young people together. And when he had succeeded he was almost sorry. He loved them equally; but he judged Georges more hardly: he knew his weakness: he idolized Aurora, and thought himself responsible for her happiness even more than for Georges’s; for it seemed to him that Georges was as a son to him, a part of himself, and he wondered whether it was not wrong to give Aurora in her innocence a companion who was very far from sharing it.
But one day as he passed by an arbor where the two young people were sitting–(a short time after their betrothal)–his heart sank as he heard Aurora laughingly questioning Georges about one of his past adventures, and Georges telling her, nothing loth. Other scraps of conversation, which they made no attempt to disguise, showed him that Aurora was far more at home than himself with Georges’s moral ideas. Though they were very much in love with each other it was clear that they did not regard themselves as bound forever; into their discussions of questions relating to love and marriage, they brought a spirit of liberty, which might have a beauty of its own, though it was singularly at variance with the old ideal of mutual devotion _usque ad mortem._ And Christophe would look at them a little sadly…. How far they were from him already! How swiftly does the ship that bears our children speed on!… Patience! A day will come when we shall all meet in harbor.
Meanwhile the ship paid no heed to the way marked out for it: it trimmed its sails to every wind.–It would have seemed natural for the spirit of liberty, which was then tending to modify morality, to take up its stand also in the other domains of thought and action. But it did nothing of the kind: human nature cares little for contradiction. While morality was becoming more free, the mind was becoming less so; it was demanding that religion should restore its yoke. And this twofold movement in opposite directions was, with a magnificent defiance of logic, taking place in the same souls. Georges and Aurora had been caught up by the new current of Catholicism which was conquering many people of fashion and many intellectuals. Nothing could be more curious than the way in which Georges, who was naturally critical and perfectly irreligious, skepticism being to him as easy as breathing, Georges, who had never cared for God or devil–a true Frenchman, laughing at everything–suddenly declared that there lay the truth. He needed truth of some sort, and this sorted well with his need of action, his atavistic French bourgeois characteristics, and his weariness of liberty. The young fool had wandered long enough, and he returned of his own accord to be harnessed to the plow of his race. The example of a number of his friends was enough for him. Georges was hypersensitive to the least atmospheric pressure of the ideas that surrounded him, and he was one of the first to be caught. And Aurora followed him, as she would have followed him anywhere. At once they felt sure of themselves, and despised everybody who did not think as they did. The irony of it! These two frivolous children were sincerely devout, while the moral purity, the serious and ardent efforts of Grazia and Olivier had never helped them to be so, in spite of their desire.
Christophe watched their spiritual evolution with sympathetic curiosity. He did not try to fight against it, as Emmanuel would have done, for Emmanuel’s free idealism was up in arms against this return of the ancient foe. It is vain to fight against the passing wind. One can only wait for it to go. The reason of humanity was exhausted. It had just made a gigantic effort. It was overcome with sleep, and, like a child worn out by a long day, before going to sleep, it was saying its prayers. The gate of dreams had reopened; in the train of religion came little puffs of theosophy, mysticism, esoteric faiths, occultism to visit the chambers of the Western mind. Even philosophy was wavering. Their gods of thought, Bergson and William James, were tottering. Even science was attainted, even science was showing the signs of the fatigue of reason. We have a moment’s respite. Let us breathe. To-morrow the mind will awake again, more alert, more free…. Sleep is good when a man has worked hard. Christophe, who had had little time for it, was happy that these children of his should enjoy it in his stead, and should have rest for the soul, security of faith, absolute, unshakable confidence in their dreams. He would not nor could he have exchanged his lot for theirs. But he thought that Grazia’s melancholy and Olivier’s distress of mind had found solace in their children, and that it was well.
“All that we have suffered, I, my friends, and so many others whom I never knew, others who lived before us, all has been, that these two might attain joy…. The joy, Antoinette, for which thou wast made, the joy that was refused thee!… Ah! If only the unhappy could have a foretaste of the happiness that will one day spring forth from the sacrifice of their lives!”
What purpose could be served by his trying to dispute their happiness? We must not try to make others happy in our way, but in their own. At most he only asked Georges and Aurora not to be too contemptuous of those who, like himself, did not share their faith.
They did not even take the trouble to argue with him. They seemed to say to each other:
“He cannot understand….”
In their eyes he belonged to the past. And, to be frank, they did not attach much importance to the past. When they were alone they used often to talk innocently of the things they would do when Christophe “was no longer with them.”…–However, they loved him well…. How terrible are the children who grow up over us like creepers! How terrible is the force of Nature, hurrying, hurrying, driving us out….
“Go! Go! Remove thyself! It is my turn now!…”
Christophe, overhearing their thoughts, longed to say to them:
“Don’t be in such a hurry! I am quite happy here. Please regard me still as a living being.”
He was amused by their naive impertinence.
“You may as well say straight out,” he observed one day when they had crushed him with their disdainful manner. “You may as well say that I am a stupid old man.”
“No, no, my dear old friend,” said Aurora, laughing heartily. “You are the best of men, but there are some things that you do not know.”
“And that you do know, my girl? You are very wise!”
“Don’t laugh at me. I know nothing much. But Georges knows.”
Christophe smiled:
“Yes. You are right, my dear. The man you love always knows.”
It was much more difficult for him to tolerate their music than to put up with their intellectual superiority. They used to try his patience severely. The piano was given no rest when they were in his rooms. It seemed that love had roused them to song, like the birds. But they were by a long way not so skilled in singing. Aurora had no illusions as to her talent, but she was quite otherwise about her fiance: she could see no difference between Georges’s playing and Christophe’s. Perhaps she preferred Georges’s style, and Georges, in spite of his ironic subtlety, was never far from being convinced by his sweetheart’s belief in him. Christophe never contradicted them: maliciously he would concur in the girl’s opinion (except when, as sometimes happened, he could bear it no longer, and would rush away, banging the doors). With an affectionate, pitying smile he would listen to Georges playing _Tristan_ on the piano. The unhappy young man would conscientiously apply himself to the transcription of the formidable pages with all the amiable sweetness of a young girl, and a young girl’s tender feeling. Christophe used to laugh to himself. He would never tell the boy why he laughed. He would kiss him. He loved him as he was. Perhaps he loved him the more for it…. Poor boy!… Oh! the vanity of art!…
He used often to talk about “his children”–(for so he called them)–to Emmanuel. Emmanuel, who was fond of Georges, used jokingly to say that Christophe ought to hand him aver to him. He had Aurora, and it was not fair. He was grabbing everything.
Their friendship had become almost legendary in Parisian society, though they lived apart from it. Emmanuel had grown passionately devoted to Christophe, though his pride would not let him show it. He covered it up with his brusque manners, and sometimes used to be absolutely rude to Christophe. But Christophe was not deceived. He knew how deeply attached to him Emmanuel was, and he knew the worth of his affection. No week went by but they met two or three times. When they were prevented by ill-health from going out, they used to write to each other. Their letters might have been written from places far removed from Paris. They were less interested in external happenings than in the progress of the mind in science and art. They lived in their ideas, pondering their art, or beneath the chaos of facts perceiving the little undistinguished gleam which reveals the progress of the history of the human mind.
Generally it was Christophe who visited Emmanuel. Although, since a recent illness, he was not much better in health than his friend, he had grown used to thinking that Emmanuel’s health called for more consideration than his own. Christophe could not now ascend Emmanuel’s six flights of stairs without difficulty, and when he reached the top he had to wait a moment to recover his breath. They were both incapable of taking care of themselves. In defiance of their weak throats and their fits of despondency, they were inveterate smokers. That was one of the reasons why Christophe preferred that they should meet in Emmanuel’s rooms rather than in his own, for Aurora used to declare war on his habit of smoking, and he used to hide away from her. Sometimes they would both break out coughing in the middle of their conversation, and then they would break off and look at each other guiltily like schoolboys, and laugh: and sometimes one would lecture the other while he was coughing; but as soon as he had recovered his breath the other would vigorously protest that smoking had nothing to do with it.
On Emmanuel’s table, in a clear space among the papers, a gray cat would sit and gravely look at the smokers with an air of reproach. Christophe used to say that it was their living conscience, and, by way of stifling it, he would cover it up with his hat. It was a wretched beast, of the commonest kind, that Emmanuel had picked up half-dead in the street; it had never really recovered from the brutal handling it had received, and ate very little, and hardly ever played, and never made any noise: it was very gentle, and used to follow its master about with its intelligent eyes, and be unhappy when he was absent, and quite content to sit on the table by his side, only breaking off its musing ecstatically, for hours together, to watch the cage where the inaccessible birds fluttered about, purring politely at the least mark of attention, patiently submitting to Emmanuel’s capricious, and Christophe’s rough, attentions, and always being very careful not to scratch or bite. It was very delicate, and one of its eyes was always weeping: it used to cough: and if it had been able to speak it would certainly not have had the effrontery, like the two men, to declare that “the smoke had nothing to do with it”; but it accepted everything at their hands, and seemed to think:
“They are men. They know what they are doing.” Emmanuel was fond of the beast because he saw a certain similarity between its lot and his own. Christophe used to declare that the resemblance was even extended to the expression in their eyes.
“Why not?” Emmanuel would say.
Animals reflect their surroundings. Their faces grow refined or the reverse according to the people with whom they live. A fool’s cat has a different expression from that of a clever man’s cat. A domestic animal will become good or bad, frank or sly, sensitive or stupid, not only according to what its master teaches it, but also according to what its master is. And this is true not only of the influence of men. Places fashion animals in their own image. A clear, bright landscape will light up the eyes of animals.–Emmanuel’s gray cat was in harmony with the stuffy garret and its ailing master, who lived under the Parisian sky.
Emmanuel had grown more human. He was not the same man that he had been at the time of his first acquaintance with Christophe. He had been profoundly shaken by a domestic tragedy. His companion, whom, in a moment of exasperation, he had made too clearly feel how tiresome the burden of her affection was to him, had suddenly disappeared. Frantic with anxiety, he spent a whole night looking for her, and at last he found her in a police station where she was being retained. She had tried to throw herself into the Seine; a passer-by had caught hold of her by the clothes, and pulled her back just as she was clambering over the parapet of the bridge; she had refused to give her name and address, and made another attempt on her life. The sight of her grief had overwhelmed Emmanuel; he could not bear the thought that, having suffered so much at the hands of others, he, in his turn, was causing suffering. He brought the poor crazed creature back to his rooms, and did his best to heal the wound he had dealt her, and to win her back to the confidence in his affection she so sorely needed. He suppressed his feeling of revolt, and resigned himself to her absorbing love, and devoted to her the remainder of his life. The whole sap of his genius had rushed back to his heart. The apostle of action had come to the belief that there was only one course of action that was really good–not to do evil. His part was played. It seemed that the Force which raises the great human tides had used him only as an instrument, to let loose action. Once his orders were carried out, he was nothing: action pursued its way without him. He watched it moving on, almost resigned to the injustice which touched him personally, though not altogether to that which concerned his faith. For although, as a free-thinker, he claimed to be free of all religion and used humorously to call Christophe a clerical in disguise, like every sturdy spirit, he had his altar on which he deified the dreams to which he sacrificed himself. The altar was deserted now, and Emmanuel suffered. How could he without suffering see the blessed ideas, which he had so hardly led to victory, the ideas for which, during the last hundred years, all the finest men had suffered such bitter torment–how could he see them tramped underfoot by the oncoming generation? The whole magnificent inheritance of French idealism–the faith in Liberty, which had its saints, martyrs, heroes, the love of humanity, the religious aspiration towards the brotherhood of nations and races–all, all was with blind brutality pillaged by the younger generation! What madness is it in them that makes them sigh for the monsters we had vanquished, submit to the yoke that we had broken, call back with great shouts the reign of Force, and kindle Hatred and the insanity of war in the heart of my beloved France!
“It is not only in France,” Christophe would say laughingly, “it is throughout the entire world. From Spain to China blows the same keen wind. There is not a corner anywhere for a man to find shelter from the wind! It is becoming a joke: even in my little Switzerland, which is turning nationalist!”
“You find that comforting?”
“Certainly. It shows that such waves of feeling are not due to the ridiculous passions of a few men, but to a hidden God who controls the universe. And I have learned to bow before that God. If I do not understand Him, that is my fault, not His. Try to understand Him. But how many of you take the trouble to do that? You live from day to day, and see no farther than the next milestone, and you imagine that it marks the end of the road. You see the wave that bears you along, but you do not see the sea! The wave of to-day is the wave of yesterday; it is the wave of our souls that prepared the way for it. The wave of to-day will plow the ground for the wave of to-morrow, which will wipe out its memory as the memory of ours is wiped out. I neither admire nor dread the naturalism of the present time. It will pass away with the present time: it is passing, it has already passed. It is a rung in the ladder. Climb to the top of it! It is the advance-guard of the coming army. Hark to the sound of its fifes and drums!…”
(Christophe drummed on the table, and woke the cat, which sprang away.)
“… Every nation now feels the imperious necessity of gathering its forces and making up its balance-sheet. For the last hundred years all the nations have been transformed by their mutual intercourse and the immense contributions of all the brains of the universe, building up new morality, new knowledge, new faith. Every man must examine his conscience, and know exactly what he is and what he has, before he can enter with the rest into the new age. A new age is coming. Humanity is on the point of signing a new lease of life. Society is on the point of springing into new vigor with new laws. It is Sunday to-morrow. Every one is making up his accounts for the week, setting his house in order, making it clean and tidy, that, with other men, we may go into the presence of our common God and make a new compact of alliance with Him.”
Emmanuel looked at Christophe, and his eyes reflected the passing vision. He was silent for some time after Christophe had finished speaking, and then he said:
“You are lucky, Christophe! You do not see the night!”
“I can see in the dark,” said Christophe. “I have lived in it enough. I am an old owl.”
About this time his friends noticed a change in his manner. He was often distracted and absent-minded. He hardly listened to what was said to him. He had an absorbed, smiling expression. When his absent-mindedness was commented upon he would gently excuse himself. Sometimes he would speak of himself in the third person:
“Krafft will do that for you….”
or,
“Christophe will laugh at that….”
People who did not know him said:
“What extraordinary self-infatuation!”
But it was just the opposite. He saw himself from the outside, as a stranger. He had reached the stage when a man loses interest even in the struggle for the beautiful, because, when a man has done his work, he is inclined to believe that others will do theirs, and that, when all is told, as Rodin says, “the beautiful will always triumph.” The malevolence and injustice of men did not repel him.–He would laugh and tell himself that it was not natural, that life was ebbing away from him.
In fact, he had lost much of his old vigor. The least physical effort, a long walk, a fast drive, exhausted him. He quickly lost his breath, and he had pains in his heart. Sometimes he would think of his old friend Schulz. He never told anybody what he was feeling. It was no good. It was useless to upset his friends, and he would never get any better. Besides he did not take his symptoms seriously. He far more dreaded having to take care of himself than being ill.
He had an inward presentiment and a desire to see his country once more. He had postponed going from year to year, always saying–“next year….” Now he would postpone it no longer.
He did not tell any one, and went away by stealth. The journey was short. Christophe found nothing that he had come to seek. The changes that had been in the making on his last visit were now fully accomplished: the little town had become a great industrial city. The old houses had disappeared. The cemetery also was gone. Where Sabine’s farm had stood was now a factory with tall chimneys. The river had washed away the meadows where Christophe had played as a child. A street (and such a street!) between black buildings bore his name. The whole of the past was dead, even death itself…. So be it! Life was going on: perhaps other little Christophes were dreaming, suffering, struggling, in the shabby houses in the street that was called after him.–At a concert in the gigantic _Tonhalle_ he heard some of his music played, all topsy-turvy: he hardly recognized it…. So be it! Though it were misunderstood it might perhaps arouse new energy. We sowed the seed. Do what you will with it: feed on us.–At nightfall Christophe walked through the fields outside the city; great mists were rolling over them, and he thought of the great mists that should enshroud his life, and those whom he had loved, who were gone from the earth, who had taken refuge in his heart, who, like himself, would be covered up by the falling night…. So be it! So be it! I am not afraid of thee, O night, thou devourer of suns! For one star that is put out, thousands are lit up. Like a bowl of boiling milk, the abysm of space is overflowing with light. Thou shalt not put me out. The breath of death will set the flame of my life flickering up once more….
On his return from Germany, Christophe wanted to stop in the town where he had known Anna. Since he had left it, he had had no news of her. He had never dared to ask after her. For years her very name was enough to upset him….–Now he was calm and had no fear. But in the evening, in his room in the hotel looking out on the Rhine, the familiar song of the bells ringing in the morrow’s festival awoke the images of the past. From the river there ascended the faint odor of distant danger, which he found it hard to understand. He spent the whole night in recollection. He felt that he was free of the terrible Lord, and found sweet sadness in the thought. He had not made up his mind what to do on the following day. For a moment–(the past lay so far behind!)–he thought of calling on the Brauns. But when the morrow came his courage failed him: he dared not even ask at the hotel whether the doctor and his wife were still alive. He made up his mind to go….
When the time came for him to go an irresistible force drove him to the church which Anna used to attend: he stood behind a pillar from which he could see the seat where in old days she used to come and kneel. He waited, feeling sure that, if she were still alive, she would come.
A woman did come, and he did not recognize her. She was like all the rest, plump, full-faced, with a heavy chin, and an indifferent, hard expression. She was dressed in black. She sat down in her place, and did not stir. There was nothing in the woman to remind Christophe of the woman he was expecting. Only once or twice she made a certain queer little gesture as though to smooth out the folds of her skirt about her knees. In old days, _she_ had made such a gesture,… As she went out she passed slowly by him, with her head erect and her hands holding her prayer-book, folded in front of her. For a moment her somber, tired eyes met Christophe’s. And they looked at each other. And they did not recognize each other. She passed on, straight and stiff, and never turned her head. It was only after a moment that suddenly, in a flash of memory, beneath the frozen smile, he recognized the lips he had kissed by a certain fold in them…. He gasped for breath and his knees trembled. He thought:
“Lord, is that the body in which she dwelt whom I loved? Where is she? Where is she? And where am I, myself? Where is the man who loved her? What is there left of us and the cruel love that consumed us?–Ashes. Where is the fire?”
And his God answered and said:
“In Me.”
Then he raised his eyes and saw her for the last time in the crowd passing through the door into the sunlight.
* * * * *
It was shortly after his return to Paris that he made peace with big old enemy, Levy-Coeur, who had been attacking him for a long time with equal malicious talent and bad faith. Then, having attained the highest success, glutted with honors, satiated, appeased, he had been clever enough secretly to recognize Christophe’s superiority, and had made advances to him. Christophe pretended to notice neither attacks nor advances. Levy-Coeur wearied of it. They lived in the same neighborhood and used often to meet. As they passed each other Christophe would look through Levy-Coeur, who was exasperated by this calm way of ignoring his existence.
He had a daughter between eighteen and twenty, a pretty, elegant girl, with a profile like a lamb, a cloud of curly fair hair, soft coquettish eyes, and a Luini smile. They used to go for walks together, and Christophe often met them in the Luxembourg Gardens; they seemed very intimate, and the girl would walk arm-in-arm with her father. Absent-minded though he was, Christophe never failed to notice a pretty face, and he had a weakness for the girl. He would think of Levy-Coeur:
“Lucky beast!”
But then he would add proudly:
“But I too have a daughter.”
And he used to compare the two. In the comparison his bias was all in favor of Aurora, but it led him to create in his mind a sort of imaginary friendship between the two girls, though they did not know each other, and even, without his knowing it, to a certain feeling for Levy-Coeur.
When he returned from Germany he heard that “the lamb” was dead. In his fatherly selfishness his first thought was:
“Suppose it had been mine!”
And he was filled with an immense pity for Levy-Coeur. His first impulse was to write to him: he began two letters, but was not satisfied, was ashamed of them, and did not send either. But a few days later when he met Levy-Coeur with a weary, miserable face, it was too much for him: he went straight up to the poor wretch and held out both hands to him. Levy-Coeur, with a little hesitation, took them in his. Christophe said:
“You have lost her!…”
The emotion in his voice touched Levy-Coeur. It was so unexpected! He felt inexpressibly grateful…. They talked for a little sadly and confusedly. When they parted nothing was left of all that had divided them. They had fought: it was inevitable, no doubt: each man must fulfil the law of his nature! But when men see the end of the tragi-comedy coming, they put off the passions that masked them, and meet face to face,–two men, of whom neither is of much greater worth than the other, who, when they have played their parts to the best of their ability, have the right in the end to shake hands.
The marriage of Georges and Aurora had been fixed for the early spring. Christophe’s health was declining rapidly. He had seen his children watching him anxiously. Once he heard them whispering to each other. Georges was saying:
“How ill he looks! He looks as though he might fall ill at any moment.”
And Aurora replied:
“If only he does not delay our marriage!”
He did not forget it. Poor children! They might be sure that he would not disturb their happiness!
But he was inconsiderate enough on the eve of the marriage–(he had been absurdly excited as the day drew near: as excited as though it were he who was going to be married)–he was stupid enough to be attacked by his old trouble, a recurrence of pneumonia, which had first attacked him in the days of the Market-Place. He was furious with himself, and dubbed himself fool and idiot. He swore that he would not give in until the marriage had taken place. He thought of Grazia as she lay dying, never telling him of her illness because of his approaching concert, for fear lest he should be distracted from his work and pleasure. Now he loved the idea of doing for her daughter–for her–what she had done for him. He concealed his condition, but he found it hard to keep himself going. However, the happiness of his children made him so happy that he managed to support the long ordeal of the religious ceremony without disaster. But he had hardly reached Colette’s house than his strength gave out: he had just time enough to shut himself up in a room, and then he fainted. He was found by a servant. When he came to himself Christophe forbade them to say anything to the bride and bridegroom, who were going off on their honeymoon in the evening. They were too much taken up with themselves to notice anything else. They left him gaily, promising to write to him to-morrow, and afterwards….
As soon as they were gone, Christophe took to his bed. He was feverish, and could not shake off the fever. He was alone. Emmanuel was ill too, and could not come. Christophe did not call in a doctor. He did not think his condition was serious. Besides, he had no servant to go for a doctor. The housekeeper who came for two hours in the morning took no interest in him, and he dispensed with her services. He had a dozen times begged her not to touch any of his papers when she was dusting his room. She would do it: she thought she had a fine opportunity to do as she liked, now that he was confined to his bed. In the mirror of his wardrobe door he saw her from his bed turning the whole room upside down. He was so furious–(no, assuredly the old Adam was not dead in him!)–that he jumped out of bed, snatched a packet of papers out of her hands, and showed her the door. His anger cost him a bout of fever and the departure of the servant, who lost her temper and never returned, without even taking the trouble to tell the “old madman,” as she called him. So he was left, ill, with no one to look after him. He would get up in the morning to take in the jug of milk left at the door, and to see if the portress had not slipped under the door the promised letter from the lovers. The letter did not come: they had forgotten him in their happiness. He was not angry with them, and thought that in their place he would have done the same. He thought of their careless joy, and that it was he had given it to them.
He was a little better and was able to get up when at last a letter came from Aurora. Georges had been content to add his signature. Aurora asked very little about Christophe and told very little, but, to make up for it, she gave him a commission, begging him to send her a necktie she had left at Colette’s. Although it was not at all important–(Aurora had only thought of it as she sat down to write to Christophe, and then only because she wanted something to say),–Christophe was only too delighted to be of use, and went out at once to fetch it. The weather was cold and gusty. The winter had taken an unpleasant turn. Melting snow, and an icy wind. There were no carriages to be had. Christophe spent some time in a parcels’ office. The rudeness of the clerks and their deliberate slowness made him irritable, which did not help his business on. His illness was partly responsible for his gusts of anger, which the tranquillity of his mind repudiated; they shook his body, like the last tremors of an oak falling under the blows of an ax. He returned chilled and trembling. As he entered, the portress handed him a cutting from a review. He glanced at it. It was a spiteful attack upon himself. They were growing rare in these days. There is no pleasure in attacking a man who never notices the blows dealt him. The most violent of his enemies were reduced to a feeling of respect for him, which exasperated them, for they still detested him.
_”We believe,”_ said Bismarck, almost regretfully, _”that nothing is more involuntary than love. Respect is even more so….”_
But the writer of the article was one of those strong men, who, being better armed than Bismarck, escape both respect and love. He spoke of Christophe in insulting terms, and announced a series of attacks during the following fortnight: Christophe began to laugh, and said as he went to bed again:
“He will be surprised! He won’t find me at home!”
They tried to make him have a nurse, but he refused obstinately, saying that he had lived alone so much that he thought he might at least have the benefit of his solitude at such a time.
He was never bored. During these last years he had constantly been engrossed in dialogues with himself; it was as though his soul was twofold; and for some months past his inward company had been considerably augmented: not two souls, but ten, now dwelt in him. They held converse among themselves, though more often they sang. He would take part in their conversation, or he would hold his peace and listen to them. He had always on his bed, or on the table, within reach of his hand, music-paper on which he used to take down their remarks and his own, and laugh at their rejoinders. It was a mechanical habit: the two actions, thinking and writing, had become almost simultaneous with him; writing was thinking out loud to him. Everything that took him away from the company of his many souls exhausted and irritated him, even the friends he loved best, sometimes. He tried hard not to let them see it, but such constraint induced an extreme lassitude. He was very happy when he came to himself again, for he would lose himself: it was impossible to hear the inward voices amid the chattering of human beings. Divine silence!…
He would only allow the portress or one of her children to come three or four times a day to see if he needed anything. He used to give them the notes which, up to the last, he exchanged with Emmanuel. They were almost equally ill, and were under no illusion as to their condition. By different ways the free religious genius of Christophe and the free irreligious genius of Emmanuel had reached the same brotherly serenity. In their wavering handwriting, which they found it more and more difficult to read, they discoursed, not of their illness, but of the perpetual subject of their conversations, their art, and the future of their ideas.
This went on until the day when, with his failing hand, Christophe wrote the words of the King of Sweden, as he lay dying on the field of battle:
_”Ich habe genug, Bruder: rette dich!”_ [FOOTNOTE: “I have had my fill, brother: save thyself!”]
* * * * *
As a succession of stages he looked back over the whole of his life: the immense effort of his youth to win self-possession, his desperate struggles to exact from others the bare right to live, to wrest himself from the demons of his race. And even after the victory, the forced unending vigil over the fruits of conquest, to defend them against victory itself. The sweetness, the tribulation of friendship opening up the great human family through conflict to the isolated heart. The fullness of art, the zenith of life. His proud dominion over his conquered spirit. His belief that he had mastered his destiny. And then, suddenly at the turn of the road, his meeting with the knights of the Apocalypse, Grief, Passion, Shame, the vanguard of the Lord. Then laid low, trampled underfoot by the horses, dragging himself bleeding to the heights, where, in the midst of the clouds, flames the wild purifying fire. His meeting face to face with God. His wrestling with Him, like Jacob with the Angel. His issue, broken from the fight. His adoration of his defeat, his understanding of his limitations, his striving to fulfil the will of the Lord, in the domain assigned to him. Finally, when the labors of seed-time and harvest, the splendid hard work, were at an end, having won the right to rest at the feet of the sunlit mountains, and to say to them:
“Be ye blessed! I shall not reach your light, but very sweet to me is your shade….”
Then the beloved had appeared to him: she had taken him by the hand; and death, breaking down the barrier of her body, had poured the pure soul of the beloved into the soul of her lover. Together they had issued from the shadow of days, and they had reached the happy heights where, like the three Graces, in a noble round, the past, the present, and the future, clasped hands, where the heart at rest sees griefs and joys in one moment spring to life, flower, and die, where all is Harmony….
He was in too great a hurry. He thought he had already reached that place. The vise which gripped his panting bosom, and the tumultuous whirl of images beating against the walls of his burning brain, reminded him that the last stage and the hardest was yet to run…. Onward!…
* * * * *
He lay motionless upon his bed. In the room above him some silly woman would go on playing the piano for hours. She only knew one piece, and she would go on tirelessly repeating the same bars; they gave her so much pleasure! They were a joy, an emotion to her; every color, every kind of form was in them. And Christophe could understand her happiness, but she made him weep with exasperation. If only she would not hit the keys so hard! Noise was as odious to Christophe as vice…. In the end he became resigned to it. It was hard to learn not to hear. And yet it was less difficult than he thought. He would leave his sick, coarse body. How humiliating it was to have been shut up in it for so many years! He would watch its decay and think:
“It will not go on much longer.”
He would feel the pulse of his human egoism and wonder:
“Which would you prefer? To have the name and personality of Christophe become immortal and his work disappear, or to have his work endure and no trace be left of his personality and name?”
Without a moment’s hesitation he replied:
“Let me disappear and my work endure! My gain is twofold: for only what is most true of me, the real truth of myself will remain. Let Christophe perish!…”
But very soon he felt that he was becoming as much a stranger to his work as to himself. How childish was the illusion of believing that his art would endure! He saw clearly not only how little he had done, but how surely all modern music was doomed to destruction. More quickly than any other the language of music is consumed by its own heat; at the end of a century or two it is understood only by a few initiates. For how many do Monteverdi and Lully still exist? Already the oaks of the classic forest are eaten away with moss. Our buildings of sound, in which our passions sing, will soon be empty temples, will soon crumble away into oblivion.–And Christophe was amazed to find himself gazing at the ruins untroubled.
“Have I begun to love life less?” he wondered.
But at once he understood that he loved it more…. Why weep over the ruins of art? They are not worth it. Art is the shadow man casts upon Nature. Let them disappear together, sucked up by the sun’s rays! They prevent my seeing the sun.–The vast treasure of Nature passes through our fingers. Human intelligence tries to catch the running water in the meshes of a net. Our music is an illusion. Our scale of sounds is an invention. It answers to no living sound. It is a compromise of the mind between real sounds, the application of the metric system to the moving infinite. The mind needs such a lie as this to understand the incomprehensible, and the mind has believed the lie, because it wished to believe it. But it is not true. It is not alive. And the delight which the mind takes in this order of its own creation has only been obtained by falsifying the direct intuition of what is. From time to time, a genius, in passing contact with the earth, suddenly perceives the torrent of reality, overflowing the continents of art. The dykes crack for a moment. Nature creeps in through a fissure. But at once the gap is stopped up. It must be done to safeguard the reason of mankind. It would perish if its eyes met the eyes of Jehovah. Then once more it begins to strengthen the walls of its cell, which nothing enters from without, except it have first been wrought upon. And it is beautiful, perhaps, for those who will not see…. But for me, I will see Thy face, Jehovah! I will hear the thunder of Thy voice, though it bring me to nothingness. The noise of art is an hindrance to me. Let the mind hold its peace! Let man be silent!…
* * * * *
But a few minutes after this harangue he groped for one of the sheets of paper that lay scattered on his bed, and he tried to write down a few more notes. When he saw the contradiction of it, he smiled and said:
“Oh, my music, companion of all my days, thou art better than I. I am an ingrate: I send thee away from me. But thou wilt not leave me: thou wilt not be repulsed at my caprice. Forgive me. Thou knowest these are but whimsies. I have never betrayed thee, thou hast never betrayed me; and we are sure of each other. We will go home together, my friend. Stay with me to the end.”
_Bleib bei uns…._
[Illustration: Musical notation]
He awoke from a long torpor, heavy with fever and dreams. Strange dreams of which he was still full. And now he looked at himself, touched himself, sought and could not find himself. He seemed to himself to be “another.” Another, dearer than himself…. Who?… It seemed to him that in his dreams another soul had taken possession of him. Olivier? Grazia?… His heart and his head were so weak! He could not distinguish between his loved ones. Why should he distinguish between them? He loved them all equally.
He lay bound in a sort of overwhelming beatitude. He made no attempt to move. He knew that sorrow lay in ambush for him, like a cat waiting for a mouse. He lay like one dead. Already…. There was no one in the room. Overhead the piano was silent. Solitude. Silence. Christophe sighed.
“How good it is to think, at the end of life, that I have never been alone even in my greatest loneliness!… Souls that I have met on the way, brothers, who for a moment have held out their hands to me, mysterious spirits sprung from my mind, living and dead–all living.–O all that I have loved, all that I have created! Ye surround me with your warm embrace, ye watch over me. I hear the music of your voices. Blessed be destiny, that has given you to me! I am rich, I am rich…. My heart is full!…”
He looked out through the window…. It was one of those beautiful sunless days, which, as old Balzac said, are like a beautiful blind woman…. Christophe was passionately absorbed in gazing at the branch of a tree that grew in front of the window. The branch was swelling, the moist buds were bursting, the little white flowers were expanding; and in the flowers, in the leaves, in the whole tree coming to new life, there was such an ecstasy of surrender to the new-born force of spring, that Christophe was no longer conscious of his weariness, his depression, his wretched, dying body, and lived again in the branch of the tree. He was steeped in the gentle radiance of its life. It was like a kiss. His heart, big with love, turned to the beautiful tree, smiling there upon his last moments. He thought that at that moment there were creatures loving each other, that to others this hour, that was so full of agony for him, was an hour of ecstasy, that it is ever thus, and that the puissant joy of living never runs dry. And in a choking voice that would not obey his thoughts–(possibly no sound at all came from his lips, but he knew it not)–he chanted a hymn to life.
An invisible orchestra answered him. Christophe said within himself:
“How can they know? We did not rehearse it. If only they can go on to the end without a mistake!”
He tried to sit up so as to see the whole orchestra, and beat time with his arms outstretched. But the orchestra made no mistake; they were sure of themselves. What marvelous music! How wonderfully they improvised the responses! Christophe was amused.
“Wait a bit, old fellow! I’ll catch you out.”
And with a tug at the tiller he drove the ship capriciously to left and right through dangerous channels.
“How will you get out of that?… And this? Caught!… And what about this?”
But they always extricated themselves: they countered all his audacities with even bolder ventures.
“What will they do now?… The rascals!…”
Christophe cried “bravo!” and roared with laughter.
“The devil! It is becoming difficult to follow them! Am I to let them beat me?… But, you know, this is not a game! I’m done, now…. No matter! They shan’t say that they had the last word….”
But the orchestra exhibited such an overpoweringly novel and abundant fancy that there was nothing to be done but to sit and listen open-mouthed. They took his breath away…. Christophe was filled with pity for himself.
“Idiot!” he said to himself. “You are empty. Hold your peace! The instrument has given all that it can give. Enough of this body! I must have another.”
But his body took its revenge. Violent fits of coughing prevented his listening:
“Will you hold your peace?”
He clutched his throat, and thumped his chest, wrestled with himself as with an enemy that he must overthrow. He saw himself again in the middle of a great throng. A crowd of men were shouting all around him. One man gripped him with his arms. They rolled down on the ground. The other man was on top of him. He was choking.
“Let me go. I will hear!… I will hear! Let me go, or I’ll kill you!…”
He banged the man’s head against the wall, but the man would not let him go.
“Who is it, now? With whom am I wrestling? What is this body that I hold in my grasp, this body warm against me?…”
A crowd of hallucinations. A chaos of passions. Fury, lust, murderous desires, the sting of carnal embraces, the last stirring of the mud at the bottom of the pond….
“Ah! Will not the end come soon? Shall I not pluck you off, you leeches clinging to my body?… Then let my body perish with them!”
Stiffened in shoulders, loins, knees, Christophe thrust back the invisible enemy…. He was free…. Yonder, the music was still playing, farther and farther away. Dripping with sweat, broken in body, Christophe held his arms out towards it:
“Wait for me! Wait for me!”
He ran after it. He stumbled. He jostled and pushed his way…. He had run so fast that he could not breathe. Has heart beat, his blood roared and buzzed in his ears, like a train rumbling through a tunnel….
“God! How horrible!”
He made desperate signs to the orchestra not to go on without him…. At last! He came out of the tunnel!… Silence came again. He could hear once more.
“How lovely it is! How lovely! Encore! Bravely, my boys!… But who wrote it, who wrote it?… What do you say? You tell me that Jean-Christophe Krafft wrote it? Oh! come! Nonsense! I knew him. He couldn’t write ten bars of such music as that!… Who is that coughing? Don’t make such a noise!… What chord is that?… And that?… Not so fast! Wait!…”
Christophe uttered inarticulate cries; his hand, clutching the quilt, moved as if it were writing: and his exhausted brain went on mechanically trying to discover the elements of the chords and their consequents. He could not succeed: his emotion made him drop his prize. He began all over again…. Ah! This time it was too difficult….
“Stop, stop…. I can no more….”
His will relaxed utterly. Softly Christophe closed his eyes. Tears of happiness trickled down from his closed lids. The little girl who was looking after him, unknown to him, piously wiped them away. He lost all consciousness of what was happening. The orchestra had ceased playing, leaving him on a dizzy harmony, the riddle of which could not be solved. His brain went on saying:
“But what chord is that? How am I to get out of it? I should like to find the way out, before the end….”
Voices were raised now. A passionate voice. Anna’s tragic eyes…. But a moment and it was no longer Anna. Eyes now so full of kindness…. “Grazia, is it thou?… Which of you? Which of you? I cannot see you clearly…. Why is the sun so long in coming?”
Then bells rang tranquilly. The sparrows at the window chirped to remind him of the hour when he was wont to give them the breakfast crumbs…. In his dream Christophe saw the little room of his childhood…. The bells. Now it is dawn! The lovely waves of sound fill the light air. They come from far away, from the villages down yonder…. The murmuring of the river rises from behind the house…. Once more Christophe stood gazing down from the staircase window. All his life flowed before his eyes, like the Rhine. All his life, all his lives, Louisa, Gottfried, Olivier, Sabine….
“Mother, lovers, friends…. What are these names?… Love…. Where are you? Where are you, my souls? I know that you are there, and I cannot take you.”
“We are with thee. Peace, O beloved!”
“I will not lose you ever more. I have sought you so long!”
“Be not anxious. We shall never leave thee more.”
“Alas! The stream is bearing me on.”
“The river that bears thee on, bears us with thee.”
“Whither are we going?”
“To the place where we shall be united once more.”
“Will it be soon?”
“Look.” And Christophe, making a supreme effort to raise his head–(God! How heavy it was!)–saw the river overflowing its banks, covering the fields, moving on, august, slow, almost still. And, like a flash of steel, on the edge of the horizon there seemed to be speeding towards him a line of silver streams, quivering in the sunlight. The roar of the ocean…. And his heart sank, and he asked:
“Is it He?”
And the voices of his loved ones replied:
“It is He!”
And his brain dying, said to itself:
“The gates are opened…. That is the chord I was seeking!… But it is not the end! There are new spaces!…–We will go on, to-morrow.”
O joy, the joy of seeing self vanish into the sovereign peace of God, whom all his life he had so striven to serve!…
“Lord, art Thou not displeased with Thy servant? I have done so little. I could do no more…. I have struggled, I have suffered, I have erred, I have created. Let me draw breath in Thy Father’s arms. Some day I shall be born again for a new fight.”
And the murmuring of the river and the roaring of the sea sang with him:
“Thou shalt be born again. Rest. Now all is one heart. The smile of the night and the day entwined. Harmony, the august marriage of love and hate. I will sing the God of the two mighty wings. Hosanna to life! Hosanna to death!
_”Christofori faciem die quacunque tueris, Illa nempe die non morte mala morieris.”_
Saint Christophe has crossed the river. All night long he has marched against the stream. Like a rock his huge-limbed body stands above the water. On his shoulders is the Child, frail and heavy. Saint Christophe leans on a pine-tree that he has plucked up, and it bends. His back also bends. Those who saw him set out vowed that he would never win through, and for a long time their mockery and their laughter followed him. Then the night fell and they grew weary. Now Christophe is too far away for the cries of those standing on the water’s brink to reach him. Through the roar of the torrent he hears only the tranquil voice of the Child, clasping a lock of hair on the giant’s forehead in his little hand, and crying: “March on.”–And with bowed back, and eyes fixed straight in front of him on the dark bank whose towering slopes are beginning to gleam white, he marches on.
Suddenly the Angelus sounds, and the flock of bells suddenly springs into wakefulness. It is the new dawn! Behind the sheer black cliff rises the golden glory of the invisible sun. Almost falling Christophe at last reaches the bank, and he says to the Child:
“Here we are! How heavy thou wert! Child, who art thou?”
And the Child answers:
“I am the day soon to be born.”
THE END