I
I have a friend!... Oh! The delight of having found a kindred soul to which
to cling in the midst of torment, a tender and sure refuge in which to
breathe again while the fluttering heart beats slower! No longer to be
alone, no longer never to unarm, no longer to stay on guard with straining,
burning eyes, until from sheer fatigue he should fall into the hands of his
enemies! To have a dear companion into whose hands all his life should be
delivered--the friend whose life was delivered into his! At last to taste
the sweetness of repose, to sleep while the friend watches, watch while the
friend sleeps. To know the joy of protecting a beloved creature who should
trust in him like a little child. To know the greater joy of absolute
surrender to that friend, to feel that he is in possession of all secrets,
and has power over life and death. Aging, worn out, weary of the burden of
life through so many years, to find new birth and fresh youth in the body
of the friend, through his eyes to see the world renewed, through his
senses to catch the fleeting loveliness of all things by the way, through
his heart to enjoy the splendor of living.... Even to suffer in his
suffering.... Ah! Even suffering is joy if it be shared!
I have a friend!... Away from me, near me, in me always. I have my friend,
and I am his. My friend loves me. I am my friend's, the friend of my
friend. Of our two souls love has fashioned one.
* * * * *
Christophe's first thought, when he awoke the day after the Roussins'
party, was for Olivier Jeannin. At once he felt an irresistible longing to
see him again. He got up and went out. It was not yet eight o'clock. It was
a heavy and rather oppressive morning. An April day before its time: stormy
clouds were hovering over Paris.
Olivier lived below the hill of Sainte-Geneviève, in a little street
near the _Jardin des Plantes_. The house stood in the narrowest part of
the street. The staircase led out of a dark yard, and was full of divers
unpleasant smells. The stairs wound steeply up and sloped down towards the
wall, which was disfigured with scribblings in pencil. On the third floor a
woman, with gray hair hanging down, and in petticoat-bodice, gaping at the
neck, opened the door when she heard footsteps on the stairs, and slammed
it to when she saw Christophe. There were several flats on each landing,
and through the ill-fitting doors Christophe could hear children romping
and squalling. The place was a swarming heap of dull base creatures, living
as it were on shelves, one above the other, in that low-storied house,
built round a narrow, evil-smelling yard. Christophe was disgusted, and
wondered what lusts and covetous desires could have drawn so many creatures
to this place, far from the fields, where at least there is air enough for
all, and what it could profit them in the end to be in the city of Paris,
where all their lives they were condemned to live in such a sepulcher.
He reached Olivier's landing. A knotted piece of string was his bell-pull.
Christophe tugged at it so mightily that at the noise several doors on the
staircase were half opened. Olivier came to the door. Christophe was struck
by the careful simplicity of his dress: and the neatness of it, which at
any other time would have been little to his liking, was in that place an
agreeable surprise: in such an atmosphere of foulness there was something
charming and healthy about it. And at once he felt just as he had done the
night before when he gazed into Olivier's clear, honest eyes. He held out
his hand: but Olivier was overcome with shyness, and murmured:
"You.... You here!"
Christophe was engrossed in catching at the lovable quality of the man as
it was revealed to him in that fleeting moment of embarrassment, and he
only smiled in answer. He moved forward and forced Olivier backward, and
entered the one room in which he both slept and worked. An iron bedstead
stood against the wall near the window; Christophe noticed the pillows
heaped up on the bolster. There were three chairs, a black-painted table, a
small piano, bookshelves and books, and that was all. The room was cramped,
low, ill-lighted: and yet there was in it a ray of the pure light that
shone in the eyes of its owner. Everything was clean and tidy, as though
a woman's hands had dealt with it: and a few roses in a vase brought
spring-time into the room, the walls of which were decorated with
photographs of old Florentine pictures.
"So.... You.... You have come to see me?" said Olivier warmly.
"Good Lord, I had to!" said Christophe. "You would never have come to me?"
"You think not?" replied Olivier.
Then, quickly:
"Yes, you are right. But it would not be for want of thinking of it."
"What would have stopped you?"
"Wanting to too much."
"That's a fine reason!"
"Yes. Don't laugh. I was afraid you would not want it as much as I."
"A lot that's worried me! I wanted to see you, and here I am. If it bores
you, I shall know at once."
"You will have to have good eyes."
They smiled at each other.
Olivier went on:
"I was an ass last night. I was afraid I might have offended you. My
shyness is absolutely a disease: I can't get a word out."
"I shouldn't worry about that. There are plenty of talkers in your country:
one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasionally, even though
it be only from shyness and in spite of himself."
Christophe laughed and chuckled over his own gibe.
"Then you have come to see me because I can be silent?"
"Yes. For your silence, the sort of silence that is yours. There are all
sorts: and I like yours, and that's all there is to say."
"But how could you sympathize with me? You hardly saw me."
"That's my affair. It doesn't take me long to make up my mind. When I see a
face that I like in the crowd, I know what to do: I go after it; I simply
have to know the owner of it."
"And don't you ever make mistakes when you go after them?"
"Often."
"Perhaps you have made a mistake this time."
"We shall see."
"Ah! In that case I'm done! You terrify me. If I think you are watching me,
I shall lose what little wits I have."
With fond and eager curiosity Christophe watched the sensitive, mobile
face, which blushed and went pale by turns. Emotion showed fleeting across
it like the shadows of clouds on a lake.
"What a nervous youngster it is!" he thought. "He is like a woman."
He touched his knee.
"Come, come!" he said. "Do you think I should come to you with weapons
concealed about me? I have a horror of people who practise their psychology
on their friends. I only ask that we should both be open and sincere, and
frankly and without shame, and without being afraid of committing ourselves
finally to anything or of any sort of contradiction, be true to what we
feel. I ask only the right to love now, and next minute, if needs must, to
be out of love. There's loyalty and manliness in that, isn't there?"
Olivier gazed at him with serious eyes, and replied:
"No doubt. It is the more manly part, and you are strong enough. But I
don't think I am."
"I'm sure you are," said Christophe; "but in a different way. And then,
I've come just to help you to be strong, if you want to be so. For what I
have just said gives me leave to go on and say, with more frankness than I
should otherwise have had, that--without prejudice for to-morrow--I love
you."
Olivier blushed hotly. He was struck dumb with embarrassment, and could not
speak.
Christophe glanced round the room.
"It's a poor place you live in. Haven't you another room?"
"Only a lumber-room."
"Ugh! I can't breathe. How do you manage to live here?"
"One does it somehow."
"I couldn't--never."
Christophe unbuttoned his waistcoat and took a long breath.
Olivier went and opened the window wide.
"You must be very unhappy in a town, M. Krafft. But there's no danger of
my suffering from too much vitality. I breathe so little that I can live
anywhere. And yet there are nights in summer when even I am hard put to it
to get through. I'm terrified when I see them coming. Then I stay sitting
up in bed, and I'm almost stifled."
Christophe looked at the heap of pillows on the bed, and from them to
Olivier's worn face: and he could see him struggling there in the darkness.
"Leave it," he said. "Why do you stay?"
Olivier shrugged his shoulders and replied carelessly:
"It doesn't matter where I live."
Heavy footsteps padded across the floor above them. In the room below a
shrill argument was toward. And always, without ceasing, the walls were
shaken by the rumbling of the buses in the street.
"And the house!" Christophe went on. "The house reeking of filth, the hot
dirtiness of it all, the shameful poverty--how can you bring yourself to
come back to it night after night? Don't you lose heart with it all? I
couldn't live in it for a moment. I'd rather sleep under an arch."
"Yes. I felt all that at first, and suffered. I was just as disgusted as
you are. When I went for walks as a boy, the mere sight of some of the
crowded dirty streets made me ill. They gave me all sorts of fantastic
horrors, which I dared not speak of. I used to think: 'If there were an
earthquake now, I should be dead, and stay here for ever and ever'; and
that seemed to me the most appalling thing that could happen. I never
thought that one day I should live in one of them of my own free-will, and
that in all probability I shall die there. And then it became easier to put
up with: it had to. It still revolts me: but I try not to think of it. When
I climb the stairs I close my eyes, and stop my ears, and hold my nose, and
shut off all my senses and withdraw utterly into myself. And then, over the
roof there, I can see the tops of the branches of an acacia. I sit here in
this corner so that I don't see anything else: and in the evening when the
wind rustles through them I fancy that I am far away from Paris: and the
mighty roar of a forest has never seemed so sweet to me as the gentle
murmuring of those few frail leaves at certain moments."
"Yes," said Christophe. "I've no doubt that you are always dreaming; but
it's all wrong to waste your fancy in such a struggle against the sordid
things of life, when you might be using it in the creation of other lives."
"Isn't it the common lot? Don't you yourself waste energy in anger and
bitter struggles?"
"That's not the same thing. It's natural to me: what I was born for. Look
at my arms and hands! Fighting is the breath of life to me. But you haven't
any too much strength: that's obvious."
Olivier looked sadly down at his thin wrists, and said:
"Yes. I am weak: I always have been. But what can I do? One must live?"
"How do you make your living?"
"I teach."
"Teach what?"
"Everything--Latin, Greek, history. I coach for degrees. And I lecture on
Moral Philosophy at the Municipal School."
"Lecture on what?"
"Moral Philosophy."
"What in thunder is that? Do they teach morality in French schools?"
Olivier smiled:
"Of course."
"Is there enough in it to keep you talking for ten minutes?"
"I have to lecture for twelve hours a week."
"Do you teach them to do evil, then?"
"What do you mean?"
"There's no need for so much talk to find out what good is."
"Or to leave it undiscovered either."
"Good gracious, yes! Leave it undiscovered. There are worse ways of doing
good than knowing nothing about it. Good isn't a matter of knowledge: it's
a matter of action. It's only your neurasthenics who go haggling about
morality: and the first of all moral laws is not to be neurasthenic. Rotten
pedants! They are like cripples teaching people how to walk."
"But they don't do their talking for such as you. You _know_: but there are
so many who do not know!"
"Well, let them crawl like children until they learn how to walk by
themselves. But whether they go on two legs or on all fours, the first
thing, the only thing you can ask is that they should walk somehow."
He was prowling round and round and up and down the room, though less than
four strides took him across it. He stopped in front of the piano, opened
it, turned over the pages of some music, touched the keys, and said:
"Play me something."
Olivier started.
"I!" he said. "What an idea!"
"Madame Roussin told me you were a good musician. Come: play me something."
"With you listening? Oh!" he said, "I should die."
The sincerity and simplicity with which he spoke made Christophe laugh:
Olivier, too, though rather bashfully.
"Well," said Christophe, "is that a reason for a Frenchman?"
Olivier still drew back.
"But why? Why do you want me to?"
"I'll tell you presently. Play!"
"What?"
"Anything you like."
Olivier sat down at the piano with a sigh, and, obedient to the imperious
will of the friend who had sought him out, he began to play the beautiful
_Adagio in B Minor_ of Mozart. At first his fingers trembled so that he
could hardly make them press down the keys: but he regained courage little
by little: and, while he thought he was but repeating Mozart's utterance,
he unwittingly revealed his inmost heart. Music is an indiscreet confidant:
it betrays the most secret thoughts of its lovers to those who love it.
Through the godlike scheme of the _Adagio_ of Mozart Christophe could
perceive the invisible lines of the character, not of Mozart, but of his
new friend sitting there by the piano: the serene melancholy, the timid,
tender smile of the boy, so nervous, so pure, so full of love, so ready
to blush. But he had hardly reached the end of the air, the topmost point
where the melody of sorrowful love ascends and snaps, when a sudden
irrepressible feeling of shame and modesty overcame Olivier, so that he
could not go on: his fingers would not move, and his voice failed him. His
hands fell by his side, and he said:
"I can't play any more...."
Christophe was standing behind him, and he stooped and reached over him and
finished the broken melody: then he said:
"Now I know the music of your soul."
He held his hands, and stayed for a long time gazing into his face. At last
he said:
"How queer it is!... I have seen you before.... I know you so well, and I
have known you so long!..."
Olivier's lips trembled: he was on the point of speaking. But he said
nothing.
Christophe went on gazing at him for a moment or two longer. Then he smiled
and said no more, and went away.
* * * * *
He went down the stairs with his heart filled with joy. He passed two ugly
children going up, one with bread, the other with a bottle of oil. He
pinched their cheeks jovially. He smiled at the scowling porter. When he
reached the street he walked along humming to himself until he came to the
Luxembourg. He lay down on a seat in the shade, and closed his eyes. The
air was still and heavy: there were only a few passers-by. Very faintly he
could hear the irregular trickling of the fountain, and every now and then
the scrunching of the gravel as footsteps passed him by. Christophe was
overcome with drowsiness, and he lay basking like a lizard in the sun: his
face had been out of the shadow of the trees for some time: but he could
not bring himself to stir. His thoughts wound about and about: he made
no attempt to hold and fix them: they were all steeped in the light of
happiness. The Luxembourg clock struck: he did not listen to it: but, a
moment later, he thought it must have been striking twelve. He jumped up
to realize that he had been lounging for a couple of hours, had missed an
appointment with Hecht, and wasted the whole morning. He laughed, and went
home whistling. He composed a _Rondo_ in canon on the cry of a peddler.
Even sad melodies now took on the charm of the gladness that was in him. As
he passed the laundry in his street, as usual, he glanced into the shop,
and saw the little red-haired girl, with her dull complexion flushed with
the heat, and she was ironing with her thin arms bare to the shoulder and
her bodice open at the neck: and, as usual, she ogled him brazenly: for the
first time he was not irritated by her eyes meeting his. He laughed once
more. When he reached his room he was free of all the obsessions from which
he had suffered. He flung his hat, coat, and vest in different directions,
and sat down to work with an all-conquering zest. He gathered together all
his scattered scraps of music, which were lying all over the room, but his
mind was not in his work: he only read the script with his eyes: and a few
minutes later he fell back into the happy somnolence that had been upon him
in the Luxembourg Gardens; his head buzzed, and he could not think. Twice
or thrice he became aware of his condition, and tried to shake it off: but
in vain. He swore light-heartedly, got up, and dipped his head in a basin
of cold water. That sobered him a little. He sat down at the table again,
sat in silence, and smiled dreamily. He was wondering:
"What is the difference between that and love?"
Instinctively he had begun to think in whispers, as though he were ashamed.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"There are not two ways of loving.... Or, rather, yes, there are two ways:
there is the way of those who love with every fiber of their being, and the
way of those who only give to love a part of their superfluous energy. God
keep me from such cowardice of heart!"
He stopped in his thought, from a sort of shame and dread of following it
any farther. He sat for a long time smiling at his inward dreams. His heart
sang through the silence:
_Du bist mein, und nun ist das Meine Meiner als jemals..._ ("Thou art mine,
and now I am mine, more mine than I have ever been....")
He took a sheet of paper, and with tranquil ease wrote down the song that
was in his heart.
* * * * *
They decided to take rooms together. Christophe wanted to take possession
at once without worrying about the waste of half a quarter. Olivier was
more prudent, though not less ardent in their friendship, and thought it
better to wait until their respective tenancies had expired. Christophe
could not understand such parsimony. Like many people who have no money, he
never worried about losing it. He imagined that Olivier was even worse off
than himself. One day when his friend's poverty had been brought home to
him he left him suddenly and returned a few hours later in triumph with a
few francs which he had squeezed in advance out of Hecht. Olivier blushed
and refused. Christophe was put out and made to throw them to an Italian
who was playing in the yard. Olivier withheld him. Christophe went away,
apparently offended, but really furious with his own clumsiness to which he
attributed Olivier's refusal. A letter from his friend brought balm to his
wounds. Olivier could write what he could not express by word of mouth:
he could tell of his happiness in knowing him and how touched he was by
Christophe's offer of assistance. Christophe replied with a crazy, wild
letter, rather like those which he wrote when he was fifteen to his friend
Otto: it was full of _Gemüth_ and blundering jokes: he made puns in French
and German, and even translated them into music.
At last they went into their rooms. In the Montparnasse quarter, near the
_Place Denfert_, on the fifth floor of an old house they had found a flat
of three rooms and a kitchen, all very small, and looking on to a tiny
garden inclosed by four high walls. From their windows they looked out over
the opposite wall, which was lower than the rest, on to one of those large
convent gardens which are still to be found in Paris, hidden and unknown.
Not a soul was to be seen in the deserted avenues. The old trees, taller
and more leafy than those in the Luxembourg Gardens, trembled in the
sunlight: troops of birds sang: in the early dawn the blackbirds fluted,
and then there came the riotously rhythmic chorus of the sparrows: and
in summer in the evening the rapturous cries of the swifts cleaving the
luminous air and skimming through the heavens. And at night, under the
moon, like bubbles of air mounting to the surface of a pond, there came
up the pearly notes of the toads. Almost they might have forgotten the
surrounding presence of Paris but that the old house was perpetually
shaken by the heavy vehicles rumbling by, as though the earth beneath were
shivering in a fever.
One of the rooms was larger and finer than the rest, and there was a
struggle between the friends as to who should not have it. They had to toss
for it: and Christophe, who had made the suggestion, contrived not to win
with a dexterity of which he found it hard to believe himself capable.
* * * * *
Then for the two of them there began a period of absolute happiness. Their
happiness lay not in any one thing, but in all things at once: their every
thought, their every act, were steeped in it, and it never left them for a
moment.
During this honeymoon of their friendship, the first days of deep and
silent rejoicing, known only to him "who in all the universe can call
one soul his own" ... _Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele sein nennt auf dem
Erdenrund_... they hardly spoke to each other, they dared hardly breathe a
word; it was enough for them to feel each other's nearness, to exchange a
look, a word in token that their thoughts, after long periods of silence,
still ran in the same channel. Without probing or inquiring, without
even looking at each other, yet unceasingly they watched each other.
Unconsciously the lover takes for model the soul of the beloved: so
great is his desire to give no hurt, to be in all things as the beloved,
that with mysterious and sudden intuition he marks the imp...erceptible
movements in the depths of his soul. One friend to another is
crystal-clear: they exchange entities. Their features are assimilated. Soul
imitates soul,--until that day comes when deep-moving force, the spirit of
the race, bursts his bonds and rends asunder the web of love in which he is
held captive.
Christophe spoke in low tones, walked softly, tried hard to make no
noise in his room, which was next to that of the silent Olivier: he
was transfigured by his friendship: he had an expression of happiness,
confidence, youth, such as he had never worn before. He adored Olivier.
It would have been easy for the boy to abuse his power if he had not been
so timorous in feeling that it was a happiness undeserved: for he thought
himself much inferior to Christophe, who in his turn was no less humble.
This mutual humility, the product of their great love for each other,
was an added joy. It was a pure delight--even with the consciousness of
unworthiness--for each to feel that he filled so great a room in the heart
of his friend. Each to other they were tender and filled with gratitude.
Olivier had mixed his books with Christophe's: they made no distinction.
When he spoke of them he did not say "_my_ book," but "_our_ book." He kept
back only a few things from the common stock: those which had belonged to
his sister or were bound up with her memory. With the quick perception of
love Christophe was not slow to notice this: but he did not know the reason
of it. He had never dared to ask Olivier about his family: he only knew
that Olivier had lost his parents: and to the somewhat proud reserve of his
affection, which forbade his prying into his friend's secrets, there was
added a fear of calling to life in him the sorrows of the past. Though he
might long to do so, yet he was strangely timid and never dared to look
closely at the photographs on Olivier's desk, portraits of a lady and a
gentleman stiffly posed, and a little girl of twelve with a great spaniel
at her feet.
A few months after they had taken up their quarters Olivier caught cold and
had to stay in bed. Christophe, who had become quite motherly, nursed him
with fond anxiety: and the doctor, who, on examining Olivier, had found
a little inflammation at the top of the lungs, told Christophe to smear
the invalid's chest with tincture of iodine. As Christophe was gravely
acquitting himself of the task he saw a confirmation medal hanging from
Olivier's neck. He was familiar enough with Olivier to know that he was
even more emancipated in matters of religion than himself. He could not
refrain from showing his surprise. Olivier colored and said:
"It is a souvenir. My poor sister Antoinette was wearing it when she died."
Christophe trembled. The name of Antoinette struck him like a flash of
lightning.
"Antoinette?" he said.
"My sister," said Olivier.
Christophe repeated:
"Antoinette ... Antoinette Jeannin.... She was your sister?... But," he
said, as he looked at the photograph on the desk, "she was quite a child
when you lost her?"
Olivier smiled sadly.
"It is a photograph of her as a child," he said. "Alas! I have no other....
She was twenty-five when she left me."
"Ah!" said Christophe, who was greatly moved. "And she was in Germany, was
she not?"
Olivier nodded.
Christophe took Olivier's hands in his.
"I knew her," he said.
"Yes, I know," replied Olivier.
And he flung his arms round Christophe's neck.
"Poor girl! Poor girl!" said Christophe over and over again.
They were both in tears.
Christophe remembered then that Olivier was ill. He tried to calm him, and
made him keep his arms inside the bed, and tucked the clothes up round his
shoulders, and dried his eyes for him, and then sat down by the bedside and
looked long at him.
"You see," he said, "that is how I knew you. I recognized you at once, that
first evening."
(It were hard to tell whether he was speaking of the present or the absent
friend.)
"But," he went on a moment later, "you knew?... Why didn't you tell me?"
And through Olivier's eyes Antoinette replied:
"I could not tell you. You had to see it for yourself."
They said nothing for some time: then, in the silence of the night,
Olivier, lying still in bed, in a low voice told Christophe, who held
his hand, poor Antoinette's story:--but he did not tell him what he had
no right to tell; the secret that she had kept locked,--the secret that
perhaps Christophe knew already without needing to be told.
From, that time on the soul of Antoinette was ever near them. When they
were together she was with them. They had no need to think of her: every
thought they shared was shared with her too. Her love was the meeting-place
wherein their two hearts were united.
Often Olivier would conjure up the image of her: scraps of memory and brief
anecdotes. In their fleeting light they gave a glimpse of her shy, gracious
gestures, her grave, young smile, the pensive, wistful grace that was so
natural to her. Christophe would listen without a word and let the light of
the unseen friend pierce to his very soul. In obedience to the law of his
own nature, which everywhere and always drank in life more greedily than
any other, he would sometimes hear in Olivier's words depths of sound which
Olivier himself could not hear: and more than Olivier he would assimilate
the essence of the girl who was dead.
Instinctively he supplied her place in Olivier's life: and it was a
touching sight to see the awkward German hap unwittingly on certain of the
delicate attentions and little mothering ways of Antoinette. Sometimes
he could not tell whether it was Olivier that he loved in Antoinette or
Antoinette in Olivier. Sometimes on a tender impulse, without saying
anything, he would go and visit Antoinette's grave and lay flowers on it.
It was some time before Olivier had any idea of it. He did not discover it
until one day when he found fresh flowers on the grave: but he had some
difficulty in proving that it was Christophe who had laid them there. When
he tried bashfully to speak about it Christophe cut him short roughly and
abruptly. He did not want Olivier to know: and he stuck to it until one day
when they met in the cemetery at Ivry.
Olivier, on his part, used to write to Christophe's mother without letting
him know. He gave Louisa news of her son, and told her how fond he was
of him and how he admired him. Louisa would send Olivier awkward, humble
letters in which she thanked him profusely: she used always to write of her
son as though he were a little boy.
After a period of fond semi-silence--"a delicious time of peace and
enjoyment without knowing why,"--their tongues were loosed. They spent
hours in voyages of discovery, each in the other's soul.
They were very different, but they were both pure metal. They loved each
other because they were so different though so much the same.
Olivier was weak, delicate, incapable of fighting against difficulties.
When he came up against an obstacle he drew back, not from fear, but
something from timidity, and more from disgust with the brutal and coarse
means he would have to employ to overcome it. He earned his living by
giving classes, and writing art-books, shamefully underpaid, as usual, and
occasionally articles for reviews, in which he never had a free hand and
had to deal with subjects in which he was not greatly interested:--there
was no demand for the things that did interest him: he was never asked
for the sort of thing he could do best: he was a poet and was asked
for criticism: he knew something about music and he had to write about
painting: he knew quite well that he could only say mediocre things, which
was just what people liked, for there he could speak to mediocre minds in a
language which they could understand. He grew disgusted with it all and
refused to write. He had no pleasure except in writing for certain obscure
periodicals, which never paid anything, and, like so many other young men,
he devoted his talents to them because they left him a free hand. Only in
their pages could he publish what was worthy of publicity.
He was gentle, well-mannered, seemingly patient, though he was excessively
sensitive. A harsh word drew blood: injustice overwhelmed him: he suffered
both on his own account and for others. Certain crimes, committed ages ago,
still had the power to rend him as though he himself had been their victim.
He would go pale, and shudder, and be utterly miserable as he thought how
wretched he must have been who suffered them, and how many ages cut him off
from his sympathy. When any unjust deed was done before his eyes he would
be wild with indignation and tremble all over, and sometimes become quite
ill and lose his sleep. It was because he knew his weakness that he drew on
his mask of calmness: for when he was angry he knew that he went beyond all
limits and was apt to say unpardonable things. People were more resentful
with him than with Christophe, who was always violent, because it seemed
that in moments of anger Olivier, much more than Christophe, expressed
exactly what he thought: and that was true. He judged men and women without
Christophe's blind exaggeration, but lucidly and without his illusions. And
that is precisely what people do pardon the least readily. In such cases
he would say nothing and avoid discussion, knowing its futility. He had
suffered from this restraint. He had suffered more from his timidity, which
sometimes led him to betray his thoughts, or deprived him of the courage to
defend his thoughts conclusively, and even to apologize for them, as had
happened in the argument with Lucien Lévy-Coeur about Christophe. He had
passed through many crises of despair before he had been able to strike
a compromise between himself and the rest of the world. In his youth and
budding manhood, when his nerves were not hopelessly out of order, he
lived in a perpetual alternation of periods of exaltation and periods of
depression which came and went with horrible suddenness. Just when he was
feeling most at his ease and even happy he was very certain that sorrow was
lying in wait for him. And suddenly it would lay him low without giving
any warning of its coming. And it was not enough for him to be unhappy: he
had to blame himself for his unhappiness, and hold an inquisition into his
every word and deed, and his honesty, and take the side of other people
against himself. His heart would throb in his bosom, he would struggle
miserably, and he would scarcely be able to breathe.--Since the death of
Antoinette, and perhaps thanks to her, thanks to the peace-giving light
that issues from the beloved dead, as the light of dawn brings refreshment
to the eyes and soul of those who are sick, Olivier had contrived, if
not to break away from these difficulties, at least to be resigned to
them and to master them. Very few had any idea of his inward struggles.
The humiliating secret was locked up in his breast, all the immoderate
excitement of a weak, tormented body, surveyed serenely by a free and keen
intelligence which could not master it, though it was never touched by
it,--"_the central peace which endures amid the endless agitation of the
heart_."
Christophe marked it. This it was that he saw in Olivier's eyes. Olivier
had an intuitive perception of the souls of men, and a mind of a wide,
subtle curiosity that was open to everything, denied nothing, hated
nothing, and contemplated the world and things with generous sympathy: that
freshness of outlook, which is a priceless gift, granting the power to
taste with a heart that is always new the eternal renewal and re-birth. In
that inward universe, wherein he knew himself to be free, vast, sovereign,
he could forget his physical weakness and agony. There was even a certain
pleasure in watching from a great height, with ironic pity, that poor
suffering body which seemed always so near the point of death. So there was
no danger of his clinging to _his_ life, and only the more passionately did
he hug life itself. Olivier translated into the region of love and mind all
the forces which in action he had abdicated. He had not enough vital sap to
live by his own substance. He was as ivy: it was needful for him to cling.
He was never so rich as when he gave himself. His was a womanish soul with
its eternal need of loving and being loved. He was born for Christophe, and
Christophe for him. Such are the aristocratic and charming friends who are
the escorts of the great artists and seem to have come to flower in the
lives of their mighty souls: Beltraffio, the friend of Leonardo: Cavalliere
of Michael Angelo: the gentle Umbrians, the comrades of young Raphael: Aërt
van Gelder, who remained faithful to Rembrandt in his poor old age. They
have not the greatness of the masters: but it is as though all the purity
and nobility of the masters in their friends were raised to a yet higher
spiritual power. They are the ideal companions for men of genius.
Their friendship was profitable to both of them. Love lends wings to the
soul. The presence of the beloved friend gives all its worth to life: a man
lives for his friend and for his sake defends his soul's integrity against
the wearing force of time.
Each enriched the other's nature. Olivier had serenity of mind and a sickly
body. Christophe had mighty strength and a stormy soul. They were in some
sort like a blind man and a cripple. Now that they were together they felt
sound and strong. Living in the shadow of Christophe Olivier recovered his
joy in the light: Christophe transmitted to him something of his abounding
vitality, his physical and moral robustness, which, even in sorrow, even in
injustice, even in hate, inclined to optimism. He took much more than he
gave, in obedience to the law of genius, which gives in vain, but in love
always takes more than it gives, _quia nominor leo_, because it is genius,
and genius half consists in the instinctive absorption of all that is great
in its surroundings and making it greater still. The vulgar saying has it
that riches go to the rich. Strength goes to the strong. Christophe fed on
Olivier's ideas: he impregnated himself with his intellectual calmness and
mental detachment, his lofty outlook, his silent understanding and mastery
of things. But when they were transplanted into him, the richer soil, the
virtues of his friend grew with a new and other energy.
They both marveled at the things they discovered in each other. There were
so many things to share! Each brought vast treasures of which till then he
had never been conscious: the moral treasure of his nation: Olivier the
wide culture and the psychological genius of France: Christophe the innate
music of Germany and his intuitive knowledge of nature.
Christophe could not understand how Olivier could be a Frenchman. His
friend was so little like all the Frenchmen he had met! Before he found
Olivier he had not been far from taking Lucien Lévy-Coeur as the type of
the modern French mind, Lévy-Coeur who was no more than the caricature of
it. And now through Olivier he saw that there might be in Paris minds just
as free, more free indeed than that of Lucien Lévy-Coeur, men who remained
as pure and stoical as any in Europe. Christophe tried to prove to Olivier
that he and his sister could not be altogether French.
"My poor dear fellow," said Olivier, "what do you know of France?"
Christophe avowed the trouble he had taken to gain some knowledge of the
country: he drew up a list of all the Frenchmen he had met in the circle
of the Stevens and the Roussins: Jews, Belgians, Luxemburgers, Americans,
Russians, Levantines, and here and there a few authentic Frenchmen.
"Just what I was saying," replied Olivier. "You haven't seen a single
Frenchman. A group of debauchees, a few beasts of pleasure, who are not
even French, men-about-town, politicians, useless creatures, all the fuss
and flummery which passes over and above the life of the nation without
even touching it. You have only seen the swarms of wasps attracted by a
fine autumn and the rich meadows. You haven't noticed the busy hives, the
industrious city, the thirst for knowledge."
"I beg pardon," said Christophe, "I've come across your intellectual élite
as well."
"What? A few dozen men of letters? They're a fine lot! Nowadays when
science and action play so great a part literature has become superficial,
no more than the bed where the thought of the people sleeps. And in
literature you have only come across the theater, the theater of luxury,
an international kitchen where dishes are turned out for the wealthy
customers of the cosmopolitan hotels. The theaters of Paris? Do you think
a working-man even knows what is being done in them? Pasteur did not go
to them ten times in all his life! Like all foreigners you attach an
exaggerated importance to our novels, and our boulevard plays, and the
intrigues of our politicians.... If you like I will show you women who
never read novels, girls in Paris who have never been to the theater,
men who have never bothered their heads about politics,--yes, even among
our intellectuals. You have not come across either our men of science or
our poets. You have not discovered the solitary artists who languish in
silence, nor the burning flame of our revolutionaries. You have not seen
a single great believer, or a single great skeptic. As for the people, we
won't talk of them. Outside the poor woman who looked after you, what do
you know of them? Where have you had a chance of seeing them? How many
Parisians have you met who have lived higher than the second or third
floor? If you do not know these people, you do not know France. You
know nothing of the brave true hearts, the men and women living in poor
lodgings, in the garrets of Paris, in the dumb provinces, men' and women
who, through a dull, drab life, think grave thoughts, and live in daily
sacrifice,--the little Church, which has always existed in France--small in
numbers, great in spirit, almost unknown, having no outward or apparent
force of action, though it is the very force of France, that might which
endures in silence, while the so-called élite rots away and springs to life
again unceasingly.... You are amazed when you find a Frenchman who lives
not for the sake of happiness, happiness at all costs, but to accomplish or
to serve his faith? There are thousands of men like myself, men more worthy
than myself, more pious, more humble, men who to their dying day live
unfailingly to serve an ideal, a God, who vouchsafes them no reply. You
know nothing of the thrifty, methodical, industrious, tranquil middle-class
living with a quenchless dormant flame in their hearts--the people betrayed
and sacrificed who in old days defended 'my country' against the selfish
arrogance of the great, the blue-eyed ancient race of Vauban. You do not
know the people, you do not know the élite. Have you read a single one of
the books which are our faithful friends, the companions who support us in
our lives? Do you even know of the existence of our young reviews in which
such great faith and devotion are expressed? Have you any idea of the men
of moral might and worth who are as the sun to us, the sun whose voiceless
light strikes terror to the army of the hypocrites? They dare not make
a frontal attack: they bow before them, the better to betray them. The
hypocrite is a slave, and there is no slave but he has a master. You know
only the slaves: you know nothing of the masters.... You have watched our
struggles and they have seemed to you brutish and unmeaning because you
have not understood their aim. You see the shadow, the reflected light of
day: you have never seen the inward day, our age-old immemorial spirit.
Have you ever tried to perceive it? Have you ever heard of our heroic deeds
from the Crusades to the Commune? Have you ever seen and felt the tragedy
of the French spirit? Have you ever stood at the brink of the abyss of
Pascal? How dare you slander a people who for more than a thousand years
have been living in action and creation, a people that has graven the world
in its own image through Gothic art, and the seventeenth century, and the
Revolution,--a people that has twenty times passed through the ordeal of
fire, and plunged into it again, and twenty times has come to life again
and never yet has perished!...--You are all the same. All your countrymen
who come among us see only the parasites who suck our blood, literary,
political, and financial adventurers, with their minions and their
hangers-on and their harlots: and they judge France by these wretched
creatures who prey on her. Not one of you has any idea of the real France
living under oppression, or of the reserve of vitality in the French
provinces, or of the great mass of the people who go on working heedless of
the uproar and pother made by their masters of a day.... Yes: it is only
natural that you should know nothing of all this: I do not blame you: how
could you? Why, France is hardly at all known to the French. The best of
us are bound down and held captive to our native soil.... No one will ever
know all that we have suffered, we who have guarded as a sacred charge the
light in our hearts which we have received from the genius of our race, to
which we cling with all our might, desperately defending it against the
hostile winds that strive blusteringly to snuff it out;--we are alone and
in our nostrils stinks the pestilential atmosphere of these harpies who
have swarmed about our genius like a thick cloud of flies, whose hideous
grubs gnaw at our minds and defile our hearts:--we are betrayed by those
whose duty it is to defend us, our leaders, our idiotic and cowardly
critics, who fawn upon the enemy, to win pardon for being of our race:--we
are deserted by the people who give no thought to us and do not even know
of our existence.... By what means can we make ourselves known to them? We
cannot reach them.... Ah! that is the hardest thing of all! We know that
there are thousands of men in France who all think as we do, we know that
we speak in their name, and we cannot gain a hearing! Everything is in the
hands of the enemy: newspapers, reviews, theaters.... The Press scurries
away from ideas or admits them only as an instrument of pleasure or a party
weapon. The cliques and coteries will only suffer us to break through on
condition that we degrade ourselves. We are crushed by poverty and
overwork. The politicians, pursuing nothing but wealth, are only interested
in that section of the public which they can buy. The middle-class is
selfish and indifferent, and unmoved sees us perish. The people know
nothing of our existence: even those who are fighting the same fight like
us are cut off by silence and do not know that we exist, and we do not know
that they exist.... Ill-omened Paris! No doubt good also has come of it--by
gathering together all the forces of the French mind and genius. But the
evil it has done is at least equal to the good: and in a time like the
present the good quickly turns to evil. A pseudo-élite fastens on Paris
and blows the loud trumpet of publicity and the voices of all the rest of
France are drowned. More than that: France herself is deceived by it: she
is scared and silent and fearfully locks away her own ideas.... There was a
time when it hurt me dreadfully. But now, Christophe, I can bear it calmly.
I know and understand my own strength and the might of my people. We must
wait until the flood dies down. It cannot touch or change the bed-rock of
France. I will make you feel that bed-rock under the mud that is borne
onward by the flood. And even now, here and there, there are lofty peaks
appearing above the waters...."
Christophe discovered the mighty power of idealism which animated the
French poets, musicians, and men of science of his time. While the
temporary masters of the country with their coarse sensuality drowned the
voice of the French genius, it showed itself too aristocratic to vie with
the presumptuous shouts of the rabble and sang on with burning ardor in
its own praise and the praise of its God. It was as though in its desire
to escape the revolting uproar of the outer world it had withdrawn to the
farthest refuge in the innermost depths of its castle-keep.
The poets--that is, those only who were worthy of that splendid name, so
bandied by the Press and the Academies and doled out to divers windbags
greedy of money and flattery--the poets, despising impudent rhetoric
and that slavish realism which nibbles at the surface of things without
penetrating to reality, had intrenched themselves in the very center of
the soul, in a mystic vision into which was drawn the universe of form
and idea, like a torrent falling into a lake, there to take on the color
of the inward life. The very intensity of this idealism, which withdrew
into itself to recreate the universe, made it inaccessible to the mob.
Christophe himself did not understand it at first. The transition was
too abrupt after the market-place. It was as though he had passed from a
furious rush and scramble in the hot sunlight into silence and the night.
His ears buzzed. He could see nothing. At first, with his ardent love of
life, he was shocked by the contrast. Outside was the roaring of the
rushing streams of passion overturning France and stirring all humanity.
And at the first glance there was not a trace of it in this art of theirs.
Christophe asked Olivier:
"You have been lifted to the stars and hurled down to the depths of hell by
your Dreyfus affair. Where is the poet in whose soul the height and depth
of it were felt? Now, at this very moment, in the souls of your religious
men and women there is the mightiest struggle there has been for centuries
between the authority of the Church and the rights of conscience. Where is
the poet in whose soul this sacred agony is reflected? The working classes
are preparing for war, nations are dying, nations are springing to new
life, the Armenians are massacred, Asia, awaking from its sleep of a
thousand years, hurls down the Muscovite colossus, the keeper of the keys
of Europe: Turkey, like Adam, opens its eyes on the light of day: the air
is conquered by man: the old earth cracks under our feet and opens: it
devours a whole people.... All these prodigies, accomplished in twenty
years, enough to supply material for twenty _Iliads_: but where are they,
where shall their fiery traces be found in the books of your poets? Are
they of all men unable to see the poetry of the world?"
"Patience, my friend, patience!" replied Olivier. "Be silent, say nothing,
listen...."
Slowly the creaking of the axle-tree of the world died away and the
rumbling over the stones of the heavy car of action was lost in the
distance. And there arose the divine song of silence....
_The hum of bees, and the perfume of the limes....
The wind,
With his golden lips kissing the earth of the plains...
The soft sound of the rain and the scent of the roses._
There rang out the hammer and chisel of the poets carving the sides of a
vase with
_The fine majesty of simple things,_
solemn, joyous life,
_With its flutes of gold and flutes of ebony,_
religious joy, faith welling up like a fountain of souls
_For whom the very darkness is clear,..._
and great sweet sorrow, giving comfort and smiling,
_With her austere face from which there shines
A clearness beyond nature,..._
and
_Death serene with her great, soft eyes._
A symphony of harmonious and pure voices. Not one of them had the full
sonorousness of such national trumpets as were Corneille and Hugo: but how
much deeper and more subtle in expression was their music! The richest
music in Europe of to-day.
Olivier said to Christophe, who was silent:
"Do you understand now?"
Christophe in his turn bade him be silent. In spite of himself, and
although he preferred more manly music, yet he drank in the murmuring of
the woods and fountains of the soul which came whispering to his ears. Amid
the passing struggles of the nations they sang the eternal youth of the
world, the
_Sweet goodness of Beauty._
While humanity,
_Screaming with terror and yelping its complaint
Marched round and round a barren gloomy field,_
while millions of men and women wore themselves out in wrangling for the
bloody rags of liberty, the fountains and the woods sang on:
"Free!... Free!... _Sanctus, Sanctus...._"
And yet they slept not in any dream selfishly serene. In the choir of the
poets there were not wanting tragic voices: voices of pride, voices of
love, voices of agony.