II

The more clearly Christophe saw into the vat of ideas in which Parisian art

was fermenting, the more strongly he was impressed by the supremacy of

women in that cosmopolitan community. They had an absurdly disproportionate

importance. It was not enough for woman to be the helpmeet of man. It was

not even enough for her to be his equal. Her pleasure must be law both

for herself and for man. And man truckled to it. When a nation is growing

old, it renounces its will, its faith, the whole essence of its being,

in favor of the giver of pleasure. Men make works of art: but women make

men,--(except when they tamper with the work of the men, as happened in

France at that time):--and it would be more just to say that they unmake

what they make. No doubt the Eternal Feminine has been an uplifting

influence on the best of men: but for the ordinary men, in ages of

weariness and fatigue, there is, as some one has said, another Feminine,

just as eternal, who drags them down. This other Feminine was the mistress

of Parisian thought, the Queen of the Republic.

* * * * *

Christophe closely observed the Parisian women at the houses at which

Sylvain Kohn's introduction or his own skill at the piano had made him

welcome. Like most foreigners, he generalized freely and unsparingly about

French women from the two or three types he had met: young women, not very

tall, and not at all fresh, with neat figures, dyed hair, large hats on

their pretty heads that were a little too large for their bodies: they had

trim features, but their faces were just a little too fleshy: good noses,

vulgar sometimes, characterless always: quick eyes without any great depth,

which they tried to make as brilliant and large as possible: well-cut lips

that were perfectly under control: plump little chins; and the lower part

of their faces revealed their utter materialism; they were elegant little

creatures who, amid all their preoccupations with love and intrigue, never

lost sight of public opinion and their domestic affairs. They were pretty,

but they belonged to no race. In all these polite ladies there was the

savor of the respectable woman perverted, or wanting to be so, together

with all the traditions of her class; prudence, economy, coldness,

practical common sense, egoism. A poor sort of life. A desire for pleasure

emanating rather from a cerebral curiosity than from a need of the senses.

Their will was mediocre in quality, but firm. They were very well dressed,

and had little automatic gestures. They were always patting their hair

or their gowns with the backs or the palms of their hands, with little

delicate movements. And they always managed to sit so that they could

admire themselves--and watch other women--in a mirror, near or far, not to

mention, at tea or dinner, the spoons, knives, silver coffee-pots, polished

and shining, in which they always peeped at the reflections of their faces,

which were more interesting to them than anything or anybody else. At meals

they dieted sternly: drinking water and depriving themselves altogether of

any food that might stand in the way of their ideal of a complexion of a

floury whiteness.

There was a fairly large proportion of Jewesses among Christophe's

acquaintance: and he was always attracted by them, although, since his

encounter with Judith Mannheim, he had hardly any illusions about them.

Sylvain Kohn had introduced him to several Jewish houses where he was

received with the usual intelligence of the race, which loves intelligence.

Christophe met financiers there, engineers, newspaper proprietors,

international brokers, slave-dealers of a sort from Algiers--the men of

affairs of the Republic. They were clear-headed and energetic, indifferent

to other people, smiling, affable, and secretive. Christophe felt sometimes

that behind their hard faces was the knowledge of crime in the past, and

the future, of these men gathered round the sumptuous table laden with

food, flowers, and wine. They were almost all ugly. But the women, taken

as a whole, were quite brilliant, though it did not do to look at them too

closely: in most of them there was a want of subtlety in their coloring.

But brilliance there was, and a fair show of material life, beautiful

shoulders generously exposed to view, and a genius for making their beauty

and even their ugliness a lure for the men. An artist would have recognized

in some of them the old Roman type, the women of the time of Nero, down

to the time of Hadrian. And there were Palmaesque faces, with a sensual

expression, heavy chins solidly modeled with the neck, and not without a

certain bestial beauty. Some of them had thick curly hair, and bold, fiery

eyes: they seemed to be subtle, incisive, ready for everything, more virile

than other women. And also more feminine. Here and there a more spiritual

profile would stand out. Those pure features came from beyond Rome, from

the East, the country of Laban: there was expressed in them the poetry of

silence, of the Desert. But when Christophe went nearer, and listened to

the conversations between Rebecca and Faustina the Roman, or Saint Barbe

the Venetian, he found her to be just a Parisian Jewess, just like the

others, even more Parisian than the Parisian women, more artificial and

sophisticated, talking quietly, and maliciously stripping the assembled

company, body and soul, with her Madonna's eyes.

Christophe wandered from group to group, but could identify himself with

none of them. The men talked savagely of hunting, brutally of love, and

only of money with any sort of real appreciation. And that was cold and

cunning. They talked business in the smoking-room. Christophe heard some

one say of a certain fop who was sauntering from one lady to another, with

a buttonhole in his coat, oozing heavy compliments:

"So! He is free again?"

In a corner of the room two ladies were talking of the love-affairs of a

young actress and a society woman. There was occasional music. Christophe

was asked to play. Large women, breathless and heavily perspiring,

declaimed in an apocalyptic tone verses of Sully-Prudhomme or Auguste

Dorchain. A famous actor solemnly recited a _Mystic Ballad_ to the

accompaniment of an American organ. Words and music were so stupid that

they turned Christophe sick. But the Roman women were delighted, and

laughed heartily to show their magnificent teeth. Scenes from Ibsen were

performed. It was a fine epilogue to the struggle of a great man against

the Pillars of Society that it should be used for their diversion!

And then they all began, of course, to prattle about art. That was

horrible. The women especially began to talk of Ibsen, Wagner, Tolstoy,

flirtatiously, politely, boredly, or idiotically. Once the conversation had

started, there was no stopping it. The disease was contagious. Christophe

had to listen to the ideas of bankers, brokers, and slave-dealers on art.

In vain did he refuse to speak or try to turn the conversation: they

insisted on talking about music and poetry. As Berlioz said: "Such people

use the words quite coolly: just as though they were talking of wine,

women, or some such trash." An alienist physician recognized one of his

patients in an Ibsen heroine, though to his way of thinking she was

infinitely more silly. An engineer quite sincerely declared that the

husband was the sympathetic character in the _Doll's House_. The famous

actor--a well-known Comedian--brayed his profound ideas on Nietzsche

and Carlyle: he assured Christophe that he could not see a picture of

Velasquez--(the idol of the hour)--"without the tears coursing down his

cheeks." And he confided--still to Christophe's private ear--that, though

he esteemed art very highly, yet he esteemed still more highly the art of

living, acting, and that if he were asked to choose what part he would

play, it would be that of Bismarck.... Sometimes there would be of the

company a professed wit, but the level of the conversation was not

appreciably higher for that. Generally they said nothing; they confined

themselves to a jerky remark or an enigmatic smile: they lived on their

reputations, and were saved further trouble. But there were a few

professional talkers, generally from the South. They talked about anything

and everything. They had no sense of proportion: everything came alike

to them. One was a Shakespeare. Another a Molière. Another a Pascal, if

not a Jesus Christ. They compared Ibsen with Dumas _fils_, Tolstoy with

George Sand: and the gist of it all was that everything came from France.

Generally they were ignorant of foreign languages. But that did not disturb

them. It mattered so little to their audience whether they told the truth

or not! What did matter was that they should say amusing things, things as

flattering as possible to national vanity. Foreigners had to put up with

a good deal--with the exception of the idol of the hour: for there was

always a fashionable idol: Grieg, or Wagner, or Nietzsche, or Gorki, or

D'Annunzio. It never lasted long, and the idol was certain one fine morning

to be thrown on to the rubbish-heap.

For the moment the idol was Beethoven. Beethoven--save the mark!--was in

the fashion: at least, among literary and polite persons: for musicians had

dropped him at once, in accordance with the see-saw system which is one of

the laws of artistic taste in France. A Frenchman needs to know what his

neighbor thinks before he knows what he thinks himself, so that he can

think the same thing or the opposite. Thus, when they saw Beethoven in

popular favor, the most distinguished musicians began to discover that he

was not distinguished enough for them: they claimed to lead opinion, not to

follow it: and rather than be in agreement with it they turned their backs

on it. They began to regard Beethoven as a man afflicted with deafness,

crying in a voice of bitterness: and some of them declared that he might be

an excellent moralist, but that he was certainly overpraised as a musician.

That sort of joke was not at all to Christophe's taste. Still less did he

like the enthusiasm of polite society. If Beethoven had come to Paris just

then, he would have been the lion of the hour: it was such a pity that he

had been dead for more than a century. His vogue grew not so much out of

his music as out of the more or less romantic circumstances of his life

which had been popularized by sentimental and virtuous biographies. His

rugged face and lion's mane had become a romantic figure. Ladies wept

for him: they hinted that if they had known him he should not have been

so unhappy: and in their greatness of heart they were the more ready to

sacrifice all for him, in that there was no danger of Beethoven taking them

at their word: the old fellow was beyond all need of anything. That was why

the virtuosi, the conductors, and the _impresarii_ bowed down in pious

worship before him: and, as the representatives of Beethoven, they gathered

the homage destined for him. There were sumptuous festivals at exorbitant

prices, which afforded society people an opportunity of showing their

generosity--and incidentally also of discovering Beethoven's symphonies.

There were committees of actors, men of the world, Bohemians, and

politicians, appointed by the Republic to preside over the destinies of

art, and they informed the world of their intention to erect a monument to

Beethoven: and on these committees, together with a few honest men whose

names guaranteed the rest, were all the riffraff who would have stoned

Beethoven if he had been alive, if Beethoven had not crushed the life out

of them. Christophe watched and listened. He ground his teeth to keep

himself from saying anything outrageous. He was on tenterhooks the whole

evening. He could not talk, nor could he keep silent. It seemed to him

humiliating and shameful to talk neither for pleasure nor from necessity,

but out of politeness, because he had to talk. He was not allowed to say

what he thought, and it was impossible for him to make conversation. And

he did not even know how to be polite without talking. If he looked at

anybody, he glared too fixedly and intently: in spite of himself he studied

that person, and that person was offended. If he spoke at all, he believed

too much in what he was saying; and that was disturbing for everybody, and

even for himself. He quite admitted that he was out of his element: and, as

he was clever enough to sound the general note of the company, in which his

presence was a discord, he was as upset by his manners as his hosts. He was

angry with himself and with them.

When, at last he stood in the street once more, very late at night, he was

so worn out with the boredom of it all that he could hardly drag himself

home: he wanted to lie down just where he was, in the street, as he had

done many times when he was returning as a boy from his performances at the

Palace of the Grand Duke. Although he had only five or six francs to take

him to the end of the week, he spent two of them on a cab. He flung himself

into it the more quickly to escape: and as he drove along he groaned aloud

from sheer exhaustion. When he reached home and got to bed, he groaned in

his sleep.... And then, suddenly, he roared with laughter as he remembered

some ridiculous saying. He woke up repeating it, and imitating the features

of the speaker. Next day, and for several days after, as he walked about,

he would suddenly bellow like a bull.... Why did he visit these people?

Why did he go on visiting them? Why force himself to gesticulate and make

faces, like the rest, and pretend to be interested in things that did not

appeal to him in the very least? Was it true that he was not in the least

interested? A year ago he would not have been able to put up with them for

a moment. Now, at heart, he was amused by it all, while at the same time it

exasperated him. Was a little of the indifference of the Parisians creeping

over him? He would sometimes wonder fearfully whether he had lost strength.

But, in truth, he had gained in strength. He was more free in mind in

strange surroundings. In spite of himself, his eyes were opened to the

great Comedy of the world.

Besides, whether he liked it or not, he had to go on with it if he wanted

his art to be recognized by Parisian society, which is only interested in

art in so far as it knows the artist. And he had to make himself known if

he were to find among these Philistines the pupils necessary to keep him

alive.

And, then, Christophe had a heart: his heart must have affection: wherever

he might be, there he would find food for his affections: without it he

could not live.

* * * * *

Among the few girls of that class of society--few enough--whom Christophe

taught, was the daughter of a rich motor-car manufacturer, Colette

Stevens. Her father was a Belgian, a naturalized Frenchman, the son

of an Anglo-American settled at Antwerp, and a Dutchwoman. Her mother

was an Italian. A regular Parisian family. To Christophe--and to many

others--Colette Stevens was the type of French girl.

She was eighteen, and had velvety, soft black eyes, which she used

skilfully upon young men--regular Spanish eyes, with enormous pupils; a

rather long and fantastic nose, which wrinkled up and moved at the tip as

she talked, with little fractious pouts and shrugs; rebellious hair; a

pretty little face, rather sallow complexion, dabbed with powder; heavy,

rather thick features: altogether she was like a plump kitten.

She was slight, very well dressed, attractive, provoking: she had sly,

affected, rather silly manners: her pose was that of a little girl, and she

would sit rocking her chair for hours at a time, and giving little

exclamations like: "No? Impossible...."

At meals she would clap her hands when there was a dish she loved: in the

drawing-room she would smoke cigarette after cigarette, and, when there

were men present, display an exuberant affection for her girl-friends,

flinging her arms round their necks, kissing their hands, whispering

in their ears, making ingenuous and naughty remarks, doing it most

brilliantly, in a soft, twittering voice; and in the lightest possible way

she would say improper things, without seeming to do more than hint at

them, and was even more skilful in provoking them from others; she had the

ingenuous air of a little girl, who knows perfectly well what she is about,

with her large brilliant eyes, slyly and voluptuously looking sidelong,

maliciously taking in all the gossip, and catching at all the dubious

remarks of the conversation, and all the time angling for hearts.

All these tricks and shows, and her sophisticated ingenuity, were not at

all to Christophe's liking. He had better things to do than to lend himself

to the practices of an artful little girl, and did not even care to look

on at them for his amusement. He had to earn his living, to keep his life

and ideas from death. He had no interest in these drawing-room parakeets

beyond the gaining of a livelihood. In return for their money, he gave them

lessons, conscientiously concentrating all his energies on the task, to

keep the boredom of it from mastering him, and his attention from being

distracted by the tricks of his pupils when they were coquettes, like

Colette Stevens. He paid no more attention to her than to Colette's little

cousin, a child of twelve, shy and silent, whom the Stevens had adopted, to

whom also Christophe gave lessons on the piano.

But Colette was too clever not to feel that all her charms were lost on

Christophe, and too adroit not to adapt herself at once to his character.

She did not even need to do so deliberately. It was a natural instinct with

her. She was a woman. She was like water, formless. The soul of every man

she met was a vessel, whose form she took immediately out of curiosity. It

was a law of her existence that she should always be some one else. Her

whole personality was for ever shifting. She was for ever changing her

vessel.

Christophe attracted her for many reasons, the chief of which was that he

was not attracted by her. He attracted her also because he was different

from all the young men of her acquaintance: she had never tried to pour

herself into a vessel of such a rugged form. And, finally, he attracted

her, because, being naturally and by inheritance expert in the valuation at

the first glance of men and vessels, she knew perfectly well that what he

lacked in polish Christophe made up in a solidity of character which none

of her smart young Parisians could offer her.

She played as well and as badly as most idle young women. She played a

great deal and very little--that is to say, that she was always working at

it, but knew nothing at all about it. She strummed on her piano all day

long, for want of anything else to do, or from affectation, or because it

gave her pleasure. Sometimes she rattled along mechanically. Sometimes she

would play well, very well, with taste and soul--(it was almost as though

she had a soul: but, as a matter of fact, she only borrowed one). Before

she knew Christophe, she was capable of liking Massenet, Grieg, Thomé. But

after she met Christophe she ceased to like them. Then she played Bach and

Beethoven very correctly--(which is not very high praise): but the great

thing was that she loved them. At bottom it was not Beethoven, nor Thomé,

nor Bach, nor Grieg that she loved, but the notes, the sounds, the fingers

running over the keys, the thrills she got from the chords which tickled

her nerves and made her wriggle with pleasure.

In the drawing-room of the great house, decorated with faded tapestry, and

on an easel in the middle room, a portrait of the stout Madame Stevens by

a fashionable painter who had represented her in a languishing attitude,

like a flower dying for want of water, with a die-away expression in her

eyes, and her body draped in impossible curves, by way of expressing the

rare quality of her millionaire soul--in the great drawing-room, with

its bow-windows looking on to a clump of old trees powdered with snow,

Christophe would find Colette sitting at her piano, repeating the

same passage over and over again, delighting her ear with mellifluous

dissonance.

"Ah!" Christophe would say as he entered, "the cat is still purring!"

"How wicked of you!" she would laugh.... (And she would hold out her soft

little hand.)

"... Listen. Isn't it pretty?"

"Very pretty," he would say indifferently.

"You aren't listening!... Will you please listen?"

"I am listening.... It's the same thing over and over again."

"Ah! you are no musician," she would say pettishly.

"As if that were music or anything like it!"

"What! Not music!... What is it, then, if you please?"

"You know quite well: I won't tell you, because it would not be polite."

"All the more reason why you should say it."

"You want me to?... So much the worse for you!... Well, do you know what

you are doing with your piano?... You are flirting with it."

"Indeed!"

"Certainly. You say to it: 'Dear piano, dear piano, say pretty things to

me; kiss me; give me just one little kiss!'"

"You need not say any more," said Colette, half vexed, half laughing. "You

haven't the least idea of respect."

"Not the least."

"You are impertinent.... And then, even if it were so, isn't that the right

way to love music?"

"Oh, come, don't mix music up with that."

"But that is music! A beautiful chord is a kiss."

"I never told you that."

"But isn't it true?... Why do you shrug your shoulders and make faces?"

"Because it annoys me."

"So much the better."

"It annoys me to hear music spoken of as though it were a sort of

indulgence.... Oh, it isn't your fault. It's the fault of the world you

live in. The stale society in which you live regards music as a sort of

legitimate vice.... Come, sit down! Play me your sonata."

"No. Let us talk a little longer."

"I'm not here to talk. I'm here to teach you the piano.... Come, play

away!"

"You're so rude!" said Colette, rather vexed--but at heart delighted to be

handled so roughly.

She played her piece carefully: and, as she was clever, she succeeded

fairly well, and sometimes even very well. Christophe, who was not

deceived, laughed inwardly at the skill "of the little beast, who played

as though she felt what she was playing, while really she felt nothing

at all." And yet he had a sort of amused sympathy for her. Colette, on

her part, seized every excuse for going on with the conversation, which

interested her much more than her lesson. It was no good Christophe drawing

back on the excuse that he could not say what he thought without hurting

her feelings: she always wheedled it out of him: and the more insulting it

was, the less she was hurt by it: it was an amusement for her. But, as she

was quick enough to see that Christophe liked nothing so much as sincerity,

she would contradict him flatly, and argue tenaciously They would part very

good friends.

However, Christophe would never have had the least illusion about their

friendship, and there would never have been the smallest intimacy between

them, had not Colette one day taken it into her head, out of sheer

instinctive coquetry, to confide in him.

The evening before her parents had given an At Home. She had laughed,

chattered, flirted outrageously: but next morning, when Christophe came for

her lesson, she was worn out, drawn-looking, gray-faced, and haggard. She

hardly spoke: she seemed utterly depressed. She sat at the piano, played

softly, made mistakes, tried to correct them, made them again, stopped

short, and said:

"I can't.... Please forgive me.... Please wait a little...."

He asked if she were unwell. She said: "No.... She was out of sorts.... She

had bouts of it.... It was absurd, but he must not mind."

He proposed to go away and come again another day: but she insisted on his

staying:

"Just a moment.... I shall be all right presently.... It's silly of me,

isn't it?"

He felt that she was not her usual self: but he did not question her: and,

to turn the conversation, he said:

"That's what comes of having been so brilliant last night. You took too

much out of yourself."

She smiled a little ironically.

"One can't say the same of you," she replied.

He laughed.

"I don't believe you said a word," she went on.

"Not a word."

"But there were interesting people there."

"Oh yes. All sorts of lights and famous people, all talking at once. But

I'm lost among all your boneless Frenchmen who understand everything, and

explain everything, and excuse everything--and feel nothing at all. People

who talk for hours together about art and love! Isn't it revolting?"

"But you ought to be interested in art if not in love."

"One doesn't talk about these things: one does them."

"But when one cannot do them?" said Colette, pouting.

Christophe replied with a laugh:

"Well, leave it to others. Everybody is not fit for art."

"Nor for love?"

"Nor for love."

"How awful! What is left for us?"

"Housekeeping."

"Thanks," said Colette, rather annoyed. She turned to the piano and began

again, made mistakes, thumped the keyboard, and moaned:

"I can't!... I'm no good at all. I believe you are right. Women aren't any

good."

"It's something to be able to say so," said Christophe genially.

She looked at him rather sheepishly, like a little girl who has been

scolded, and said:

"Don't be so hard."

"I'm not saying anything hard about good women," replied Christophe gaily.

"A good woman is Paradise on earth. Only, Paradise on earth...."

"I know. No one has ever seen it."

"I'm not so pessimistic. I say only that I have never seen it: but that's

no reason why it should not exist. I'm determined to find it, if it does

exist. But it is not easy. A good woman and a man of genius are equally

rare."

"And all the other men and women don't count?"

"On the contrary, it is only they who count--for the world."

"But for you?"

"For me, they don't exist."

"You _are_ hard," repeated Colette.

"A little. Somebody has to be hard, if only in the interest of the

others!... If there weren't a few pebbles here and there in the world, the

whole thing would go to pulp."

"Yes. You are right. It is a good thing for you that you are strong," said

Colette sadly. "But you must not be too hard on men,--and especially on

women who aren't strong.... You don't know how terrible our weakness is to

us. Because you see us flirting, and laughing, and doing silly things, you

think we never dream of anything else, and you despise us. Ah! if you could

see all that goes on in the minds of the girls of from fifteen to eighteen

as they go out into society, and have the sort of success that comes

to their youth and freshness--when they have danced, and talked smart

nonsense, and said bitter things at which people laugh because they laugh,

when they have given themselves to imbeciles, and sought in vain in their

eyes the light that is nowhere to be found,--if you could see them in their

rooms at night, in silence, alone, kneeling in agony to pray!..."

"Is it possible?" said Christophe, altogether amazed. "What! you, too, have

suffered?"

Colette did not reply: but tears came to her eyes. She tried to smile and

held out her hand to Christophe: he grasped it warmly.

"What would you have us do? There is nothing to do. You men can free

yourselves and do what you like. But we are bound for ever and ever within

the narrow circle of the duties and pleasures of society: we cannot break

free."

"There is nothing to prevent your freeing yourselves, finding some work you

like, and winning your independence just as we do."

"As you do? Poor Monsieur Krafft! Your work is not so very certain!... But

at least you like your work. But what sort of work can we do? There isn't

any that we could find interesting--for, I know, we dabble in all sorts

of things, and pretend to be interested in a heap of things that do not

concern us: we do so want to be interested in something! I do what the

others do. I do charitable work and sit on social work committees. I go

to lectures at the Sorbonne by Bergson and Jules Lemaître, historical

concerts, classical matinées, and I take notes and notes.... I never know

what I am writing!... and I try to persuade myself that I am absorbed by

it, or at least that it is useful. Ah! but I know that it is not true.

I know that I don't care a bit, and that I am bored by it all!... Don't

despise me because I tell you frankly what everybody thinks in secret I'm

no sillier than the rest. But what use are philosophy, history, and science

to me? As for art,--you see,--I strum and daub and make messy little

water-color sketches;--but is that enough to fill a woman's life? There is

only one end to our life: marriage. But do you think there is much fun in

marrying this or that young man whom I know as well as you do? I see them

as they are. I am not fortunate enough to be like your German Gretchens,

who can always create an illusion for themselves.... That is terrible,

isn't it? To look around and see girls who have married and their husbands,

and to think that one will have to do as they have done, be cramped in body

and mind, and become dull like them!... One needs to be stoical, I tell

you, to accept such a life with such obligations. All women are not capable

of it.... And time passes, the years go by, youth fades: and yet there were

lovely things and good things in us--all useless, for day by day they die,

and one has to surrender them to the fools and people whom one despises,

people who will despise oneself!... And nobody understands! One would

think that we were sphinxes. One can forgive the men who find us dull and

strange! But the women ought to understand us! They have been like us: they

have only to look back and remember.... But no. There is no help from them.

Even our mothers ignore us, and actually try not to know what we are. They

only try to get us married. For the rest, they say, live, die, do as you

like! Society absolutely abandons us."

"Don't lose heart," said Christophe. "Every one has to face the experience

of life all over again. If you are brave, it will be all right. Look

outside your own circle. There must be a few honest men in France."

"There are. I know. But they are so tedious!... And then, I tell you, I

detest the circle in which I live: but I don't think I could live outside

it, now. It has become a habit. I need a certain degree of comfort, certain

refinements of luxury and comfort, which, no doubt, money alone cannot

provide, though it is an indispensable factor. That sounds pretty poor, I

know. But I know myself: I am weak.... Please, please, don't draw away from

me because I tell you of my cowardice. Be kind and listen to me. It helps

me so to talk to you! I feel that you are strong and sound: I have such

confidence in you. Will you be my friend?"

"Gladly," said Christophe. "But what can I do?"

"Listen to me, advise me, give me courage. I am often so depressed! And

then I don't know what to do. I say to myself: 'What is the good of

fighting? What's the good of tormenting myself? One way or the other, what

does it matter? Nothing and nobody matters!' That is a dreadful condition

to be in. I don't want to get like that. Help me. Help me."

She looked utterly downcast; she looked older by ten years: she looked at

Christophe with abject, imploring eyes. He promised what she asked. Then

she revived, smiled, and was gay once more.

And in the evening she was laughing and flirting as usual.

* * * * *

Thereafter they had many intimate conversations. They were alone together:

she confided in him: he tried hard to understand and advise her: she

listened to his advice, or, if necessary, to his remonstrances, gravely,

attentively, like a good little girl: it was a distraction, an interest,

even a support for her: she thanked him coquettishly with a depth of

feeling in her eyes.--But her life was changed in nothing: it was only a

distraction the more.

Her day was passed in a succession of metamorphoses. She got up very late,

about midday, after a sleepless night: for she rarely went to sleep before

dawn. All day long she did nothing. She would vaguely call to mind a poem,

an idea, a scrap of an idea, or a face that had pleased her. She was never

quite awake until about four or five in the afternoon. Till then her

eyelids were heavy, her face was puffy, and she was sulky and sleepy. She

would revive on the arrival of a few girl-friends as talkative as herself,

and all sharing the same interest in the gossip of Paris. They chattered

endlessly about love. The psychology of love: that was the unfailing topic,

mixed up with dress, the indiscretions of others, and scandal. She had also

a circle of idle young men to whom it was necessary to spend three hours a

day among skirts: they ought to have worn them really, for they had the

souls and the conversation of girls. Christophe had his hour as her

confessor. At once Colette would become serious and intense. She was like

the young Frenchwoman, of whom Bodley speaks, who, at the confessional,

"developed a calmly prepared essay, a model of clarity and order, in

which everything that was to be said was properly arranged in distinct

categories."--And after that she flung herself once more into the business

of amusement. As the day went on she grew younger. In the evening she went

to the theater: and there was the eternal pleasure of recognizing the same

eternal faces in the audience:--her pleasure lay not in the play that was

performed, but in the actors whom she knew, whose familiar mannerisms she

remarked once more. And she exchanged spiteful remarks with the people who

came to see her in her box about the people in the other boxes and about

the actresses. The _ingénue_ was said to have a thin voice "like sour

mayonnaise," or the great comédienne was dressed "like a lampshade."--Or

else she went out to a party: and there the pleasure, for a pretty girl

like Colette, lay in being seen:--(but there were bad days: nothing is

more capricious than good looks in Paris):--and she renewed her store of

criticisms of people, and their dresses, and their physical defects. There

was no conversation.--She would go home late, and take her time about going

to bed (that was the time when she was most awake). She would dawdle about

her dressing-table: skim through a book: laugh to herself at the memory of

something said or done. She was bored and very unhappy. She could not go to

sleep, and in the night there would come frightful moments of despair.

Christophe, who only saw Colette for a few hours at intervals, and could

only be present at a few of these transformations, found it difficult to

understand her at all. He wondered when she was sincere,--or if she were

always sincere--or if she were never sincere. Colette herself could not

have told him. Like most girls who are idle and circumscribed in their

desires, she was in darkness. She did not know what she was, because she

did not know what she wanted, because she could not know what she wanted

without having tried it. She would try it, after her fashion, with the

maximum of liberty and the minimum of risk, trying to copy the people about

her and to take their moral measure. She was in no hurry to choose. She

would have liked to try everything, and turn everything to account.

But that did not work with a friend like Christophe. He was perfectly

willing to allow her to prefer people whom he did not admire, even people

whom he despised: but he would not suffer her to put him on the same level

with them. Everybody to his own taste: but at least let everybody have his

own taste.

He was the less inclined to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take

a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely

to exasperate Christophe: disgusting little snobs, most of them wealthy,

all of them idle, or jobbed into a sinecure in some government

office--which amounts to the same thing. They all wrote--or pretended to

write. That was an itch of the Third Republic. It was a sort of indolent

vanity,--intellectual work being the hardest of all to control, and most

easily lending itself to the game of bluff. They never gave more than a

discreet, though respectful hint, of their great labors. They seemed to be

convinced of the importance of their work, staggering under the weight of

it. At first Christophe was a little embarrassed by the fact that he had

never heard of them or their works. He tried bashfully to ask about them:

he was especially anxious to know what one of them had written, a young

man who was declared by the others to be a master of the theater. He was

surprised to hear that this great dramatist had written a one-act play

taken from a novel, which had been pieced together from a number of short

stories, or, rather, sketches, which he had published in one of the

Reviews during the past ten years. The baggage of the others was not more

considerable: a few one-act plays, a few short stories, a few verses. Some

of them had won fame with an article, others with a book "which they were

going to write." They professed scorn for long-winded books. They seemed

to attach extreme importance to the handling of words. And yet the word

"thought" frequently occurred in their conversation: but it did not seem

to have the same meaning as is usually given to it: they applied it to the

details of style. However, there were among them great thinkers, and great

ironists, who, when they wrote, printed their subtle and profound remarks

in _italics_, so that there might be no mistake.

They all had the cult of the letter _I_: it was the only cult they had.

They tried to proselytize. But, unfortunately, other people were

subscribers to the cult. They were always conscious of their audience in

their way of speaking, walking, smoking, reading a paper, carrying their

heads, looking, bowing to each other.--Such players' tricks are natural to

young people, and the more insignificant--that is to say, unoccupied--they

are, the stronger hold do they have on them. They are more especially

paraded before women: for they covet women, and long--even more--to be

coveted by them. But even on a chance meeting they will trot out their bag

of tricks: even for a passer-by from whom they can expect only a glance of

amazement. Christophe often came across these young strutting peacocks:

budding painters, and musicians, art-students who modeled their appearance

on some famous portrait: Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Beethoven; or

fitted it to the parts they wish to play: painter, musician, workman, the

profound thinker, the jolly fellow, the Danubian peasant, the natural

man.... They were always on the lookout to see if they were attracting

attention. When Christophe met them in the street he took a malicious

pleasure in looking the other way and ignoring them. But their discomfiture

never lasted long: a yard or so farther on they would start strutting for

the next comer.--But the young men of Colette's little circle were rather

more subtle: their coxcombry was mental: they had two or three models, who

were not themselves original. Or else they would mimic an idea: Force, Joy,

Pity, Solidarity, Socialism, Anarchism, Faith, Liberty: all these were

parts for their playing. They were horribly clever in making the dearest

and rarest thoughts mere literary stuff, and in degrading the most heroic

impulses of the human soul to the level of drawing-room commodities,

fashionable neckties.

But in love they were altogether in their element: that was their special

province. The casuistry of pleasure had no secrets for them: they were

so clever that they could invent new problems so as to have the honor

of solving them. That has always been the occupation of people who have

nothing else to do: in default of love, they "make love": above all, they

explain it. Their notes took up far more room than their text, which, as

a matter of fact, was very short. Sociology gave a relish to the most

scabrous thoughts: everything was sheltered beneath the flag of sociology:

though they might have had pleasure in indulging their vices, there would

have been something lacking if they had not persuaded themselves that they

were laboring in the cause of the new world. That was an eminently Parisian

sort of socialism: erotic socialism.

Among the problems that were then exercising the little Court of Love was

the equality of men and women in marriage, and their respective rights

in love. There had been young men, honest, protestant, and rather

ridiculous,--Scandinavians and Swiss--who had based equality on virtue:

saying that men should come to marriage as chaste as women. The Parisian

casuists looked for another sort of equality, an equality based on loss

of virtue, saying that women should come to marriage as besmirched as

men,--the right to take lovers. The Parisians had carried adultery, in

imagination and practice, to such a pitch that they were beginning to find

it rather insipid: and in the world of letters attempts were being made to

support it by a new invention: the prostitution of young girls,--I mean

regularized, universal, virtuous, decent, domestic, and, above all, social

prostitution.--There had just appeared a book on the question, full of

talent, which apparently said all there was to be said: through four

hundred pages of playful pedantry, "strictly in accordance with the rules

of the Baconian method," it dealt with the "best method of controlling

the relations of the sexes." It was a lecture on free love, full of talk

about manners, propriety, good taste, nobility, beauty, truth, modesty,

morality,--a regular Berquin for young girls who wanted to go wrong.--It

was, for the moment, the Gospel in which Colette's little court rejoiced,

while they paraphrased it. It goes without saying, that, like all

disciples, they discarded all the justice, observation, and even humanity

that lay behind the paradox, and only retained the evil in it. They

plucked all the most poisonous flowers from the little bed of sweetened

blossoms,--aphorisms of this sort: "The taste for pleasure can only sharpen

the taste for work":--"It is monstrous that a girl should become a mother

before she has tasted the sweets of life."--"To have had the love of a

worthy and pure-souled man as a girl is the natural preparation of a woman

for a wise and considered motherhood":--"Mothers," said this author,

"should organize the lives of their daughters with the same delicacy and

decency with which they control the liberty of their sons."--"The time

would come when girls would return as naturally from their lovers as now

they return from a walk or from taking tea with a friend."

Colette laughingly declared that such teaching was very reasonable.

Christophe had a horror of it. He exaggerated its importance and the evil

that it might do. The French are too clever to bring their literature into

practice. These Diderots in miniature are, in ordinary life, like the

genial Panurge of the encyclopedia, honest citizens, not really a whit less

timorous than the rest. It is precisely because they are so timid in action

that they amuse themselves with carrying action (in thought) to the limit

of possibility. It is a game without any risk.

But Christophe was not a French dilettante.

* * * * *

Among the young men of Colette's circle, there was one whom she seemed to

prefer, and, of course, he was the most objectionable of all to Christophe.

He was one of those young parvenus of the second generation who form an

aristocracy of letters, and are the patricians of the Third Republic. His

name was Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He had quick eyes, set wide apart, an aquiline

nose, a fair Van Dyck beard clipped to a point: he was prematurely bald,

which did not become him: and he had a silky voice, elegant manners, and

fine soft hands, which he was always rubbing together. He always affected

an excessive politeness, an exaggerated courtesy, even with people he did

not like, and even when he was bent on snubbing them.

Christophe had met him before at the literary dinner, to which he was taken

by Sylvain Kohn: and though they had not spoken to each other, the sound of

Lévy-Coeur's voice had been enough to rouse a dislike which he could not

explain, and he was not to discover the reason for it until much later.

There are sudden outbursts of love; and so there are of hate,--or--(to

avoid hurting those tender souls who are afraid of the word as of every

passion)--let us call it the instinct of health scenting the enemy, and

mounting guard against him.

Lévy-Coeur was exactly the opposite of Christophe, and represented the

spirit of irony and decay which fastened gently, politely, inexorably,

on all the great things that were left of the dying society: the family,

marriage, religion, patriotism: in art, on everything that was manly, pure,

healthy, of the people: faith in ideas, feelings, great men, in Man. Behind

that mode of thought there was only the mechanical pleasure of analysis,

analysis pushed to extremes, a sort of animal desire to nibble at thought,

the instinct of a worm. And side by side with that ideal of intellectual

nibbling was a girlish sensuality, the sensuality of a blue-stocking: for

to Lévy-Coeur everything became literature. Everything was literary copy

to him: his own adventures, his vices and the vices of his friends. He had

written novels and plays in which, with much talent, he described the

private life of his relations, and their most intimate adventures, and

those of his friends, his own, his _liaisons_, among others one with the

wife of his best friend: the portraits were well-drawn: everybody praised

them, the public, the wife, and his friend. It was impossible for him to

gain the confidence or the favors of a woman without putting them into a

book.--One would have thought that his indiscretions would have produced

strained relations with his "friends." But there Was nothing of the kind;

they were hardly more than a little embarrassed: they protested as a matter

of form: but at heart they were delighted at being held up to the public

gaze, _en déshabille_: so long as their faces were masked, their modesty

was undisturbed. But there was never any spirit of vengeance, or even of

scandal, in his tale-telling. He was no worse a man or lover than the

majority. In the very chapters in which he exposed his father and mother

and his mistress, he would write of them with a poetic tenderness and

charm. He was really extremely affectionate: but he was one of those men

who have no need to respect when they love: quite the contrary: they rather

love those whom they can despise a little: that makes the object of their

affection seem nearer to them and more human. Such men are of all the

least capable of understanding heroism and purity. They are not far from

considering them lies or weakness of mind. It goes without saying that such

men are convinced that they understand better than anybody else the heroes

of art whom they judge with a patronizing familiarity.

He got on excellently well with the young women of the rich, idle

middle-class. He was a companion for them, a sort of depraved servant, only

more free and confidential, who gave them instruction and roused their

envy. They had hardly any constraint with him: and, with the lamp of Psyche

in their hands, they made a careful study of the hermaphrodite, and he

suffered them.

Christophe could not understand how a girl like Colette, who seemed to have

so refined a nature and a touching eagerness to escape from the degrading

round of her life, could find pleasure in such company. Christophe was

no psychologist. Lucien Lévy-Coeur could easily beat him on that score.

Christophe was Colette's confidant: but Colette was the confidante of

Lucien Lévy-Coeur. That gave him a great advantage. It is very pleasant to

a woman to feel that she has to deal with a man weaker than herself. She

finds food in it at once for her lower and higher instincts: her maternal

instinct is touched by it. Lucien Lévy-Coeur knew that perfectly: one of

the surest means of touching a woman's heart is to sound that mysterious

chord. But in addition, Colette felt that she was weak, and cowardly, and

possessed of instincts of which she was not proud, though she was not

inclined to deny them. It pleased her to allow herself to be persuaded by

the audacious and nicely calculated confessions of her friend that others

were just the same, and that human nature must be taken for what it is. And

so she gave herself the satisfaction of not resisting inclinations that

she found very agreeable, and the luxury of saying that it must be so,

and that it was wise not to rebel and to be indulgent with what one could

not--"alas!"--prevent. There was a wisdom in that, the practice of which

contained no element of pain.

For any one who can envisage life with serenity, there is a peculiar relish

in remarking the perpetual contrast which exists in the very bosom of

society between the extreme refinement of apparent civilization and its

fundamental animalism. In every gathering that does not consist only of

fossils and petrified souls, there are, as it were, two conversational

strata, one above the other: one--which everybody can hear--between mind

and mind: the other--of which very few are conscious, though it is the

greater of the two--between instinct and instinct, the beast in man and

woman. Often these two strata of conversation are contradictory. While mind

and mind are passing the small change of convention, body and body say:

Desire, Aversion, or, more often: Curiosity, Boredom, Disgust. The beast in

man and woman, though tamed by centuries of civilization, and as cowed as

the wretched lions in the tamer's cage, is always thinking of its food.

But Christophe had not yet reached that disinterestedness which comes only

with age and the death of the passions. He had taken himself very seriously

as adviser to Colette. She had asked for his help: and he saw her in the

lightness of her heart exposed to danger. So he made no effort to conceal

his dislike of Lucien Lévy-Coeur, At first that gentleman maintained

towards Christophe an irreproachable and ironical politeness. He, too,

scented the enemy: but he thought he had nothing to fear from him: he made

fun of him without seeming to do so. If only he could have had Christophe's

admiration he would have been on quite good terms with him, but that he

never could obtain: he saw that clearly, for Christophe had not the art of

disguising his feelings. And so Lucien Lévy-Coeur passed insensibly from

an abstract intellectual antagonism to a little, carefully veiled, war, of

which Colette was to be the prize.

She held the balance evenly between her two friends. She appreciated

Christophe's talent and moral superiority: but she also appreciated Lucien

Lévy-Coeur's amusing immorality and wit: and, at bottom, she found more

pleasure in it. Christophe did not mince his protestations: she listened

to him with a touching humility which disarmed him. She was quite a good

creature, but she lacked frankness, partly from weakness, partly from

her very kindness. She was half play-acting: she pretended to think with

Christophe. As a matter of fact, she knew the worth of such a friend; but

she was not ready to make any sacrifice for a friendship: she was not

ready to sacrifice anything for anybody: she just wanted everything to go

smoothly and pleasantly, And so she concealed from Christophe the fact that

she went on receiving Lucien Lévy-Coeur: she lied with the easy charm of

the young women of her class who, from their childhood, are expert in the

practice which is so necessary for those who wish to keep their friends

and please everybody. She excused herself by pretending that she wished to

avoid hurting Christophe: but in reality it was because she knew that he

was right and wanted to go on doing as she liked without quarreling with

him. Sometimes Christophe suspected her tricks: then he would scold her,

and wax indignant. She would go on playing the contrite little girl, and be

affectionate and sorry: and she would look tenderly at him--_feminæ ultima

ratio_.--And really it did distress her to think of losing Christophe's

friendship: she would be charmingly serious and in that way succeed in

disarming Christophe for a little while longer. But sooner or later there

had to be an explosion. Christophe's irritation was fed unconsciously by a

little jealousy. And into Colette's coaxing tricks there crept a little, a

very little, love, all of which made the rupture only the more violent.

One day when Christophe had caught Colette out in a flagrant lie he gave

her a definite alternative: she must choose between Lucien Lévy-Coeur and

himself. She tried to dodge the question: and, finally, she vindicated her

right to have whatever friends she liked. She was perfectly right: and

Christophe admitted that he had been absurd: but he knew also that he had

not been exacting from egoism: he had a sincere affection for Colette: he

wanted to save her even against her will. He insisted awkwardly. She

refused to answer. He said:

"Colette, do you want us not to be friends any more?"

She replied:

"No, no. I should be sorry if you ceased to be my friend."

"But you will not sacrifice the smallest thing for our friendship."

"Sacrifice! What a silly word!" she said. "Why should one always be

sacrificing one thing for another? It's just a stupid Christian idea.

You're nothing but an old parson at heart."

"Maybe," he said. "I want one thing or another. I allow nothing between

good and evil, not so much as the breadth of a hair."

"Yes, I know," she said. "That is why I love you. For I do love you:

but...."

"But you love the other fellow too?"

She laughed, and said, with a soft look in her eyes and a tender note in

her voice:

"Stay!"

He was just about to give in once more when Lucien Lévy-Coeur came in: and

he was welcomed with the same soft look in her eyes and the same tender

note in her voice. Christophe sat for some time in silence watching Colette

at her tricks: then he went away, having made up his mind to break with

her. He was sick and sorry at heart. It was so stupid to grow so fond,

always to be falling into the trap!

When he reached home he toyed with his books, and idly opened his Bible and

read:

"... _The Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk

with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go,

and making a tinkling with their feet,

"Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the

daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts_ ..."

He burst out laughing as he thought of Colette's little tricks: and he went

to bed well pleased with himself. Then he thought that he too must have

become tainted with the corruption of Paris for the Bible to have become a

humorous work to him. But he did not stop saying over and over again the

judgment of the great judiciary humorist: and he tried to imagine its

effect on the head of his young friend. He went to sleep laughing like a

child. He had lost all thought of his new sorrow. One more or less.... He

was getting used to it.

* * * * *

He did not give up Colette's music-lessons: but he refused to take the

opportunities she gave him of continuing their intimate conversations. It

was no use her being sorry about it or offended, and trying all sorts of

tricks: he stuck to his guns: they were rude to each other: of her own

accord she took to finding excuses for missing the lessons: and he also

made excuses for declining the Stevens' invitations.

He had had enough of Parisian society: he could not bear the emptiness

of it, the idleness, the moral impotence, the neurasthenia, its aimless,

pointless, self-devouring hypercriticism. He wondered how people could

live in such a stagnant atmosphere of art for art's sake and pleasure for

pleasure's sake. And yet the French did live in it: they had beep, a great

nation, and they still cut something of a figure in the world: at least,

they seemed to do so to the outside spectator. But where were the springs

of their life? They believed in nothing, nothing but pleasure....

Just as Christophe reached this point in his reflections, he ran into a

crowd of young men and women, all shouting at the tops of their voices,

dragging a carriage in which was sitting an old priest casting blessings

right and left. A little farther on he found some French soldiers battering

down the doors of a church with axes, and there were men attacking them

with chairs. He saw that the French did still believe in something--though

he could not understand in what. He was told that the State and the Church

were separated after a century of living together, and that as the Church

had refused to go with a good grace, standing on its rights and its power,

it was being evicted. To Christophe the proceeding seemed ungallant; but

he was so sick of the anarchical dilettantism of the Parisian artists that

he was delighted to find men ready to have their heads broken for a cause,

however foolish it might be.

It was not long before he discovered that there were many such people in

France. The political journals plunged into the fight like the Homeric

heroes: they published daily calls to civil war. It is true that it got

no farther than words, and that they very rarely came to blows. But there

was no lack of simple souls to put into action what the others declared in

words. Strange things happened: departments threatened to break away from

France, regiments deserted, prefectures were burned, tax-collectors were on

horseback at the head of a company of gendarmes, peasants were armed with

scythes, and put their kettles on to boil to defend the churches, which the

Free Thinkers were demolishing in the name of liberty: there were popular

redeemers who climbed trees to address the provinces of Wine, that had

risen against the provinces of Alcohol. Everywhere there were millions of

men shaking hands, all red in the face from shouting, and in the end all

going for each other. The Republic flattered the people: and then turned

arms against them. The people on their side broke the heads of a few of

their own young men--officers and soldiers.--And so every one proved to

everybody else the excellence of his cause and his fists. Looked at from

a distance, through the newspapers, it was as though the country had

gone back a few centuries, Christophe discovered that France--skeptical

France--was a nation of fanatics. But it was impossible for him to find out

the meaning of their fanaticism. For or against religion? For or against

Reason? For or against the country?--They were for and against everything.

They were fanatics for the pleasure of it.

* * * * *

He spoke about it one evening to a Socialist deputy whom he met sometimes

at the Stevens'. Although he had spoken to him before, he had no idea what

sort of man he was: till then they had only talked about music. Christophe

was very surprised to learn that this man of the world was the leader of a

violent party.

Achille Roussin was a handsome man, with a fair beard, a burring way of

talking, a florid complexion, affable manners, a certain polish on his

fundamental vulgarity, certain peasant tricks which from time to time he

used in spite of himself:--a way of paring his nails in public, a vulgar

habit of catching hold of the coat of the man he was talking to, or

gripping him by the arm:--he was a great eater, a heavy drinker, a high

liver with a gift of laughter, and the appetite of a man of the people

pushing his way into power: he was adaptable, quick to alter his manners to

sort with his surroundings and the person he was talking to, full of ideas,

and reasonable in expounding them, able to listen, and to assimilate at

once everything he heard: for the rest he was sympathetic, intelligent,

interested in everything, naturally, or as a matter of acquired habit, or

merely out of vanity: he was honest so far as was compatible with his

interests, or when it was dangerous not to be so.

He had quite a pretty wife, tall, well made, and well set up, with a

charming figure which was a little too much shown off by her tight dresses,

which accentuated and exaggerated the rounded curves of her anatomy: her

face was framed in curly black hair: she had big black eyes, a long,

pointed chin: her face was big, but quite charming in its general effect,

though it was spoiled by the twitch of her short-sighted eyes, and her

silly little pursed-up mouth. She had an affected precise manner, like

a bird, and a simpering way of talking: but she was kindly and amiable.

She came of a rich shopkeeping family, broad-minded and virtuous, and she

was devoted to the countless duties of society, as to a religion, not to

mention the duties, social and artistic, which she imposed on herself:

she had her _salon_, dabbled in University Extension movements, and was

busy with philanthropic undertakings and researches into the psychology

of childhood,--all without any enthusiasm or profound interest,--from a

mixture of natural kindness, snobbishness, and the harmless pedantry of a

young woman of education, who always seems to be repeating a lesson, and

taking a pride in showing that she has learned it well. She needed to be

busy, but she did not need to be interested in what she was doing. It

was like the feverish industry of those women who always have a piece of

knitting in their hands, and never stop clicking their needles, as though

the salvation of the world depended on their work, which they themselves

do not know what to do with. And then there was in her--as in women who

knit--the vanity of the good woman who sets an example to other women.

The Deputy had an affectionate contempt for her. He had chosen well both as

regards his pleasure and his peace of mind. He enjoyed her beauty and asked

no more of her: and she asked no more of him. He loved her and deceived

her. She put up with that, provided she had her share of his attention.

Perhaps also it gave her a sort of pleasure. She was placid and sensual.

She had the attitude of mind of a woman of the harem.

They had two fine children of four and five years old, whom she looked

after, like a good mother, with the same amiable, cold attentiveness with

which she followed her husband's political career, and the latest fashions

in dress and art. And it produced in her the most odd mixture of advanced

ideas, ultra-decadent art, polite restlessness, and bourgeois sentiment.

They invited Christophe to go and see them. Madame Roussin was a good

musician, and played the piano charmingly: she had a delicate, firm touch:

with her little head bowed over the keyboard, and her hands poised above

it and darting down, she was like a pecking hen. She was talented and knew

more about music than most Frenchwomen, but she was as insensible as a fish

to the deeper meaning of music: to her it was only a succession of notes,

rhythms, and degrees of sound, to which she listened or reproduced

carefully: she never looked for the soul in it, having no use for it

herself. This amiable, intelligent, simple woman, who was always ready

to do any one a kindness, gave Christophe the graceful welcome which she

extended to everybody. Christophe was not particularly grateful to her

for it: he was not much in sympathy with her: she hardly existed for him.

Perhaps it was that unconsciously he could not forgive her acquiescence in

her husband's infidelities, of which she was by no means ignorant. Passive

acceptance was of all the vices that which he could least excuse.

He was more intimate with Achille Roussin. Roussin loved music, as he loved

the other arts, crudely but sincerely. When he liked a symphony, it became

a thing that he could take into his arms. He had a superficial culture and

turned it to good account: his wife had been useful to him there. He was

interested in Christophe because he saw in him a vigorous vulgarian such

as he was himself. And he found it absorbing to study an original of his

stamp--(he was unwearying in his observation of humanity)--and to discover

his impressions of Paris. The frankness and rudeness of Christophe's

remarks amused him. He was skeptic enough to admit their truth. He was

not put out by the fact that Christophe was a German. On the contrary: he

prided himself on being above national prejudice. And, when all was said

and done, he was sincerely "human"--(that was his chief quality);--he

sympathized with everything human. But that did not prevent his being quite

convinced of the superiority of the French--an old race, and an old

civilization--over the Germans, and making fun of the Germans.

* * * * *

At Achille Roussin's Christophe met other politicians, the Ministers of

yesterday, and the Ministers of to-morrow. He would have been only too glad

to talk to each of them individually, if these illustrious persons had

thought him worthy. In spite of the generally accepted opinion he found

them much more interesting than the other Frenchmen of his acquaintance.

They were more alive mentally, more open to the passions and the great

interests of humanity. They were brilliant talkers, mostly men from the

South, and they were amazingly dilettante: individually they were almost

as much so as the men of letters. Of course, they were very ignorant about

art, and especially about foreign art: but they all pretended more or

less to some knowledge of it: and often they really loved it. There were

Councils which were very like the coterie of some little Review. One of

them would be a playwright: another would scrape on the violin; another

would be a besotted Wagnerian. And they all collected Impressionist

pictures, read decadent books, and prided themselves on a taste for some

ultra-aristocratic art, which was almost always in direct opposition

to their ideas. It puzzled Christophe to find these Socialist or

Radical-Socialist Ministers, these apostles of the poor and down-trodden,

posing as connoisseurs of eclectic art. No doubt they had a perfect right

to do so: but it seemed to him rather disloyal.

But the odd thing was when these men who in private conversation were

skeptics, sensualists, Nihilists, and anarchists, came to action: at once

they became fanatics. Even the most dilettante of them when they came into

power became like Oriental despots: they had a mania for ordering

everything, and let nothing alone: they were skeptical in mind and

tyrannical in temper. The temptation to use the machinery of administrative

centralization created by the greatest of despots was too great, and it was

difficult not to abuse it. The result was a sort of republican imperialism

on to which there had latterly been grafted an atheistic catholicism.

For some time past the politicians had made no claim to do anything but

control the body--that is to say, money:--they hardly troubled the soul

at all, since the soul could not be converted into money. Their own souls

were not concerned with politics: they passed above or below politics,

which in France are thought of as a branch--a lucrative, though not very

exalted branch--of commerce and industry: the intellectuals despised the

politicians, the politicians despised the intellectuals.--But lately there

had been a closer understanding, then an alliance, between the politicians

and the lowest class of intellectuals. A new power had appeared upon the

scene, which had arrogated to itself the absolute government of ideas: the

Free Thinkers. They had thrown in their lot with the other power, which had

seen in them the perfect machinery of political despotism. They were trying

not so much to destroy the Church as to supplant it: and, in fact, they

created a Church of Free Thought which had its catechisms, and ceremonies,

its baptisms, its confirmations, its marriages, its regional councils,

if not its ecumenicals at Rome. It was most pitifully comic to see these

thousands of poor wretches having to band themselves together in order to

be able to "think freely." True, their freedom of thought consisted in

setting a ban on the thought of others in the name of Reason: for they

believed in Reason as the Catholics believed in the Blessed Virgin without

ever dreaming for a moment that Reason, like the Virgin, was in itself

nothing, or that the real thing lay behind it. And, just as the Catholic

Church had its armies of monks and its congregations stealthily creeping

through the veins of the nation, propagating its views and destroying every

other sort of vitality, so the Anti-Catholic Church had its Free Masons,

whose chief Lodge, the Grand-Orient, kept a faithful record of all the

secret reports with which their pious informers in all quarters of France

supplied them. The Republican State secretly encouraged the sacred

espionage of these mendicant friars and Jesuits of Reason, who terrorized

the army, the University, and every branch of the State: and it was never

noticed that while they pretended to serve the State, they were all the

time aiming at supplanting it, and that the country was slowly moving

towards an atheistic theocracy; very little, if anything, different from

that of the Jesuits of Paraguay.

Christophe met some of these gentry at Roussin's. They were all blind

fetish-worshippers. At that time they were rejoicing at having removed

Christ from the Courts of Law. They thought they had destroyed religion

because they had destroyed a few pieces of wood and ivory. Others were

concentrating on Joan of Arc and her banner of the Virgin, which they had

just wrested from the Catholics. One of the Fathers of the new Church,

a general who was waging war on the French of the old Church, had just

given utterance to an anti-clerical speech in honor of Vercingetorix: he

proclaimed the ancient Gaul, to whom Free Thought had erected a statue,

to be a son of the people, and the first champion against (the Church

of) Rome. The Ministers of the Marine, by way of purifying the fleet and

showing their horror of war, called their cruisers _Descartes_ and _Ernest

Renan_. Other Free Thinkers had set themselves to purify art. They

expurgated the classics of the seventeenth century, and did not allow the

name of God to sully the _Fables_ of La Fontaine. They did not allow it

in music either: and Christophe heard one of them, an old radical,--("_To

be a radical in old age_," says Goethe, "_is the height of folly_")--wax

indignant at the religious _Lieder_ of Beethoven having been given at a

popular concert. He demanded that other words should be used instead of

"God."

"What?" asked Christophe in exasperation. "The Republic?"

Others who were even more radical would accept no compromise and wanted

purely and simply to suppress all religious music and all schools in which

it was taught. In vain did a director of the University of Fine Arts, who

was considered an Athenian in that Boeotia, try to explain that musicians

must be taught music: for, as he said, with great loftiness of thought,

"when you send a soldier to the barracks, you teach him how to use a gun

and then how to shoot. And so it is with a young composer: his head is

buzzing with ideas: but he has not yet learned to put them in order." And,

being a little scared by his own courage, he protested with every sentence:

"I am an old Free Thinker.... I am an old Republican..." and he declared

audaciously that "he did not care much whether the compositions of

Pergolese were operas or Masses: all that he wanted to know was, were they

human works of art?"--But his adversary with implacable logic answered "the

old Free Thinker and Republican" that "there were two sorts of music: that

which was sung in churches and that which was sung in other places." The

first sort was the enemy of Reason and the State: and the Reason of the

State ought to suppress it.

All these silly people would have been more ridiculous than dangerous if

behind them there had not been men of real worth, supporting them, who

were, like them--and perhaps even, more--fanatics of Reason. Tolstoy

speaks somewhere of those "epidemic influences" which prevail in religion,

philosophy, politics, art, and science, "insensate influences, the folly of

which only becomes apparent to men when they are clear of them, while as

long as they are under their dominion they seem so true to them that they

think them beyond all argument." Instances are the craze for tulips, belief

in sorcery, and the aberrations of literary fashions.--The religion of

Reason was such a craze. It was common to the most ignorant and the most

cultured, to the "sub-veterinaries" of the Chamber, and certain of the

keenest intellects of the University. It was even more dangerous in the

latter than in the former: for with the latter it was mixed up with a

credulous and stupid optimism, which sapped its energy: while with the

others it was fortified and given a keener edge by a fanatical pessimism

which was under no illusion as to the fundamental antagonism of Nature and

Reason, and they were only the more desperately resolved to wage the war of

abstract Liberty, abstract Justice, abstract Truth, against the malevolence

of Nature. There was behind it all the idealism of the Calvinists, the

Jansenists, and the Jacobins, the old belief in the fundamental perversity

of mankind, which can and must be broken by the implacable pride of the

Elect inspired by the breath of Reason,--the Spirit of God. It was a very

French type, the type of intelligent Frenchman, who is not at all "human."

A pebble as hard as iron: nothing can penetrate it: it breaks everything

that it touches.

Christophe was appalled by the conversations that he had at Achille

Roussin's with some of these fanatics. It upset all his ideas about France.

He had thought, like so many people, that the French were a well-balanced,

sociable, tolerant, liberty-loving people. And he found them lunatics with

their abstract ideas, their diseased logic, ready to sacrifice themselves

and everybody else for one of their syllogisms. They were always talking of

liberty, but there never were men less able to understand it or to stand

it. Nowhere in the world were there characters more coldly and atrociously

despotic in their passion for intellect or their passion for always being

in the right.

And it was not only true of one party. Every party was the same. They

could not--they would not--see anything above or beyond their political or

religious formula, or their country, their province, their group, or their

own narrow minds. There were anti-Semites who expended all the forces of

their being in a blind, impotent hatred of all the privileges of wealth:

for they hated all Jews, and called those whom they hated "Jews." There

were nationalists who hated--(when they were kinder they stopped short

at despising)--every other nation, and even among their own people, they

called everybody who did not agree with them foreigners, or renegades, or

traitors. There were anti-protestants who persuaded themselves that all

Protestants were English or Germans, and would have them all expelled from

France. There were men of the West who denied the existence of anything

east of the Rhine: men of the North who denied the existence of everything

south of the Loire: men of the South who called all those who lived north

of the Loire Barbarians: and there were men who boasted of being of Gallic

descent: and, craziest of all, there were "Romans" who prided themselves on

the defeat of their ancestors: and Bretons, and Lorrainians, and Félibres,

and Albigeois; and men from Carpentras, and Pontoise, and Quimper-Corentin:

they all thought only of themselves, the fact of being themselves was

sufficient patent of nobility, and they wild not put up with the idea of

people being anything else. There is nothing to be done with such people:

they will not listen to argument from any other point of view: they must

burn everybody else at the stake, or be burned themselves.

Christophe thought that it was lucky that such people should live under a

Republic: for all these little despots did at least annihilate each other.

But if any one of them had become Emperor or King, it would have been the

end of him.

He did not know that there is one virtue left to work the salvation of

people of that temper of mind:--inconsequence.

The French politicians were no exception. Their despotism was tempered

with anarchy: they were for ever swinging between two poles. On one hand

they relied on the fanatics of thought, on the other they relied on the

anarchists of thought. Mixed up with them was a whole rabble of dilettante

Socialists, mere opportunists, who held back from taking any part in the

fight until it was won, though they followed in the wake of the army of

Free Thought, and, after every battle won, they swooped down on the spoils.

These champions of Reason did not labor in the cause of Reason.... _Sic

vos non vobis_ ... but in the cause of the Citizens of the World, who with

glad shouts trampled under foot the traditions of the country, and had no

intention of destroying one Faith in order to set up another, but in order

to set themselves up and break away from all restraint.

There Christophe marked the likeness of Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He was not

surprised to learn that Lucien Lévy-Coeur was a Socialist. He only thought

that Socialists must be fairly on the road to success to have enrolled

Lucien Lévy-Coeur. But he did not know that Lucien Lévy-Coeur had also

contrived to figure in the opposite camp, where he had succeeded in allying

himself with men of the most anti-Liberal opinions, if not anti-Semite, in

politics and art, He asked Achille Roussin:

"How can you put up with such men?"

Roussin replied:

"He is so clever! And he is working for us; he is destroying the old

world."

"He is doing that all right," said Christophe. "He is destroying it so

thoroughly that I don't see what is going to be left for you to build up

again. Do you think there'll be timber enough left for your new house? And

are you even sure that the worms have not crept into your building-yard?"

Lucien Lévy-Coeur was not the only nibbler at Socialism. The Socialist

papers were staffed by these petty men of letters, with their art for art's

sake, these licentious anarchists who had fastened on all the roads that

might lead to success. They barred the way to others, and filled the

papers, which styled themselves the organs of the people, with their

dilettante decadence and their _struggle for life_. They were not content

with being jobbed into positions: they wanted fame. Never had there been a

time when there were so many premature Statues, or so many speeches

delivered at the unveiling of them. But queerest of all were the banquets

that were periodically offered to one or other of the great men of the

fraternity by the sycophants of fame, not in celebration of any of their

deeds, but in celebration of some honor given to them: for those were the

things that most appealed to them. Esthetes, supermen, Socialist Ministers,

they were all agreed when it was a question of feasting to celebrate some

promotion in the Legion of Honor founded by the Corsican officer.

Roussin laughed at Christophe's amazement. He did not think the German far

out in his estimation of the supporters of his party. When they were alone

together he would handle them severely himself. He knew their stupidity

and their knavery better than any one: but that did not keep him from

supporting them in order to retain their support. And if in private he

never hesitated to speak of the people in terms of contempt, on the

platform he was a different man. Then he would assume a high-pitched voice,

shrill, nasal, labored, solemn tones, a tremolo, a bleat, wide, sweeping,

fluttering gestures like the beating of wings: exactly like Mounet-Sully.

Christophe tried hard to discover exactly how far Roussin believed in his

Socialism. It was obvious that at heart he did not believe in it at all:

he was too skeptical. And yet he did believe in it, to a certain extent;

and though he knew perfectly well that it was only a part of his mind that

believed in it--(perhaps the most important part)--he had arranged his

life and conduct in accordance with it, because it suited him best. It

was not only his practical interest that was served by it, but also his

vital interests, the foundations of his being and all his actions. His

Socialistic Faith was to him a sort of State religion.--Most people live

like that. Their lives are based on religious, moral, social, or purely

practical beliefs,--(belief in their profession, in their work, in the

utility of the part they play in life)--in which they do not, at heart,

believe. But they do not wish to know it: for they must have this apparent

faith, this "State religion," of which every man is priest, to live.

* * * * *

Roussin was not one of the worst. There were many, many others who called

themselves Socialists and Radicals, from--it can hardly be called ambition,

for their ambition was so short-sighted, and did not go beyond immediate

plunder and their re-election! They pretended to believe in a new order of

society. Perhaps there was a time when they believed in it: and they went

on pretending to do so: but, in fact, they had no idea beyond living on the

spoils of the dying order of society. This predatory Nihilism was saved

by a short-sighted opportunism. The great interests of the future were

sacrificed to the egoism of the present. They cut down the army; they would

have dislocated the country to please the electors. They were not lacking

in cleverness: they knew perfectly well what they ought to have done: but

they did not do it, because it would have cost them too much effort, and

they were incapable of effort. They wanted to arrange their own lives

and the life of the nation with the least possible amount of trouble and

sacrifice. All down the scale the point was to get the maximum of pleasure

with the minimum of effort. That was their morality, immoral enough, but it

was the only guide in the political muddle, in which the leaders set the

example of anarchy, and the disordered pack of politicians were chasing

ten hares at once, and letting them all escape one after the other, and

an aggressive Foreign Office was yoked with a pacific War Office, and

Ministers of War were cutting down the army in order to purify it, Naval

Ministers were inciting the workmen in the arsenals, military instructors

were preaching the horrors of war, and all the officials, judges,

revolutionaries, and patriots were dilettante. The political demoralization

was universal. Every man was expecting the State to provide him with

office, honors, pensions, indemnities: and the Government did, as a matter

of fact, feed the appetite of its supporters: honors and pensions were made

the quarry of the sons, nephews, grand-nephews, and valets of those in

power: the deputies were always voting an increase in their own salaries:

revenues, posts, titles, all the possessions of the State, were being

blindly squandered.--And, like a sinister echo of the example of the upper

classes, the lower classes were always on the verge of a strike: they had

men teaching contempt of authority and revolt against the established

order; post-office employés burned letters and despatches, workers in

factories threw sand or emery-powder into the gears of the machines, men

working in the arsenals sacked them, ships were burned, and artisans

deliberately made a horrible mess of their work,--the destruction not of

riches, but of the wealth of the world.

And to crown it all the intellectuals amused themselves by discovering that

this national suicide was based on reason and right, in the sacred right

of every human being to be happy. There was a morbid humanitarianism

which broke down the distinction between Good and Evil, and developed a

sentimental pity for the "sacred and irresponsible human" in the criminal,

the doting sentimentality of an old man:--it was a capitulation to crime,

the surrender of society to its mercies.

Christophe thought:

"France is drunk with liberty. When she has raved and screamed, she will

fall down dead-drunk. And when she wakes up she will find herself in

prison."

* * * * *

What hurt Christophe most in this demagogy was to see the most violent

political measures coldly carried through by these men whose fundamental

instability he knew perfectly well. The disproportion between the

shiftiness of these men and the rigorous Acts that they passed or

authorized was too scandalous. It was as though there were in them two

contradictory things: an inconsistent character, believing in nothing,

and discursive Reason, intent on truncating, mowing down, and crushing

life, without regard for anything. Christophe wondered why the peaceful

middle-class, the Catholics, the officials who were harassed in every

conceivable way, did not throw them all out by the window. He dared not

tell Roussin what he thought: but, as he was incapable of concealing

anything, Roussin had no difficulty in guessing it. He laughed and said:

"No doubt that is what you or I would do. But there is no danger of them

doing it. They are just a set of poor devils who haven't the energy:

they can't do much more than grumble. They're just the fag end of

an aristocracy, idiotic, stultified by their clubs and their sport,

prostituted by the Americans and the Jews, and, by way of showing how up to

date they are, they play the degraded parts allotted to them in fashionable

plays, and support those who have degraded them. They're an apathetic and

surly middle-class: they read nothing, understand nothing, don't want

to understand anything; they only know how to vilify, vilify, vaguely,

bitterly, futilely--and they have only one passion: sleep, to lie huddled

in sleep on their moneybags, hating anybody who disturbs them, and even

anybody whose tastes differ from theirs, for it does upset them to think of

other people working while they are snoozing! If you knew them you would

sympathize with us."

But Christophe could find nothing but disgust with both: for he did not

hold that the baseness of the oppressed was any excuse for that of the

oppressor. Only too frequently had he met at the Stevens' types of the rich

dull middle-class that Roussin described,

"... _L'anime triste di coloro,

Che visser senza infamia esenza lodo_,..."

He saw only too clearly the reason why Roussin and his friends were sure

not only of their power over these people, but of their right to abuse it.

They had to hand all the instruments of tyranny. Thousands of officials,

who had renounced their will and every vestige of personality, and obeyed

blindly. A loose, vulgar way of living, a Republic without Republicans:

Socialist papers and Socialist leaders groveling before Royalties when they

visited Paris: the souls of servants gaping at titles, and gold lace, and

orders: they could be kept quiet by just having a bone to gnaw, or the

Legion of Honor flung at them. If the Kings had ennobled all the citizens

of France, all the citizens of France would have been Royalist.

The politicians were having a fine time. Of the Three Estates of '89 the

first was extinct: the second was proscribed, suspect, or had emigrated:

the third was gorged by its victory and slept. And, as for the Fourth

Estate, which had come into existence at a later date, and had become a

public menace in its jealousy, there was no difficulty about squaring that.

The decadent Republic treated it as decadent Rome treated the barbarian

hordes, that she no longer had the power to drive from her frontiers;

she assimilated them, and they quickly became her best watch-dogs. The

Ministers of the middle-class called themselves Socialists, lured away

and annexed to their own party the most intelligent and vigorous of the

working-class: they robbed the proletariat of their leaders, infused

their new blood into their own system, and, in return, gorged them with

indigestible science and middle-class culture.

* * * * *

One of the most curious features of these attempts at distraint by the

middle-class on the people were the Popular Universities. They were little

jumble-sales of scraps of knowledge of every period and every country. As

one syllabus declared, they set out to teach "every branch of physical,

biological, and sociological science: astronomy, cosmology, anthropology,

ethnology, physiology, psychology, psychiatry, geography, languages,

esthetics, logic, etc." Enough to split the skull of Pico della Mirandola.

In truth there had been originally, and still was in some of them, a

certain grand idealism, a keen desire to bring truth, beauty, and morality

within the reach of all, which was a very fine thing. It was wonderful and

touching to see workmen, after a hard day's toil, crowding into narrow,

stuffy lecture-rooms, impelled by a thirst for knowledge that was stronger

than fatigue and hunger. But how the poor fellows had been tricked!

There were a few real apostles, intelligent human beings, a few upright

warm-hearted men, with more good intentions than skill to accomplish them;

but, as against them, there were hundreds of fools, idiots, schemers,

unsuccessful authors, orators, professors, parsons, speakers, pianists,

critics, anarchists, who deluged the people with their productions. Every

man jack of them was trying to unload his stock-in-trade. The most thriving

of them were naturally the nostrum-mongers, the philosophical lecturers

who ladled out general ideas, leavened with a few facts, a scientific

smattering, and cosmological conclusions.

The Popular Universities were also an outlet for the ultra-aristocratic

works of art: decadent etchings, poetry, and music. The aim was the

elevation of the people for the rejuvenation of thought and the

regeneration of the race. They began by inoculating them with all the fads

and cranks of the middle-class. They gulped them down greedily, not because

they liked them, but because they were middle-class. Christophe, who was

taken to one of these Popular Universities by Madame Roussin, heard her

play Debussy to the people between _la Bonne Chanson_ of Gabriel Fauré and

one of the later quartets of Beethoven. He who had only begun to grasp the

meaning of the later works of Beethoven after many years, and long weary

labor, asked some one who sat near him pityingly:

"Do you understand it?"

The man drew himself up like an angry cock, and said:

"Certainly. Why shouldn't I understand it as well as you?"

And by way of showing that he understood it he encored a fugue, glaring

defiantly at Christophe.

Christophe went away. He was amazed. He said to himself that the swine had

succeeded in poisoning even the living wells of the nation: the People had

ceased to be--"People yourselves!" as a working-man said to one of the

would-be founders of the Theaters of the People. "I am as much of the

middle-class as you."

* * * * *

One fine evening when above the darkening town the soft sky was like an

Oriental carpet, rich in warm faded colors, Christophe walked along by the

river from Notre Dame to the Invalides. In the dim fading light the tower

of the cathedral rose like the arms of Moses held up during the battle.

The carved golden spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, the flowering Holy Thorn,

flashed out of the labyrinth of houses. On the other side of the water

stretched the royal front of the Louvre, and its windows were like weary

eyes lit up with the last living rays of the setting sun. At the back of

the great square of the Invalides behind its trenches and proud walls,

majestic, solitary, floated the dull gold dome, like a symphony of bygone

victories. And at the top of the hill there stood the Arc de Triomphe,

bestriding the hill with the giant stride of the Imperial legions.

And suddenly Christophe thought of it all as of a dead giant lying prone

upon the plain. The terror of it clutched at his heart; he stopped to gaze

at the gigantic fossils of a fabulous race, long since extinct, that in its

life had made the whole earth ring with the tramp of its armies,--the race

whose helmet was the dome of the Invalides, whose girdle was the Louvre,

the thousand arms of whose cathedrals had clutched at the heavens, who

traversed the whole world with the triumphant stride of the Arch of

Napoleon, under whose heel there now swarmed Lilliput.