A blind hurricane, mad, intoxicated

_With its own rough force or gentleness profound,_

tumultuous forces, the epic of the illusions of those who sing the wild

fever of the crowd, the conflicts of human gods, the breathless toilers,

_Faces inky black and golden peering through darkness and mist,

Muscular backs stretching, or suddenly crouching

Round mighty furnaces and gigantic anvils..._

forging the City of the Future.

In the flickering light and shadow falling on the glaciers of the mind

there was the heroic bitterness of those solitary souls which devour

themselves with desperate joy.

* * * * *

Many of the characteristics of these idealists seemed to the German more

German than French. But all of them had the love for the "fine speech of

France" and the sap of the myths of Greece ran through their poetry. Scenes

of France and daily life were by some hidden magic transformed in their

eyes into visions of Attica. It was as though antique souls had come to

life again in these twentieth-century Frenchmen, and longed to fling off

their modern garments to appear again in their lovely nakedness.

Their poetry as a whole gave out the perfume of a rich civilization that

has ripened through the ages, a perfume such as could not be found anywhere

else in Europe. It were impossible to forget it once it had been breathed.

It attracted foreign artists from every country in the world. They became

French poets, almost bigotedly French: and French classical art had no more

fervent disciples than these Anglo-Saxons and Flemings and Greeks.

Christophe, under Olivier's guidance, was impregnated with the pensive

beauty of the Muse of France, while in his heart he found the aristocratic

lady a little too intellectual for his liking, and preferred a pretty girl

of the people, simple, healthy, robust, who thinks and argues less, but is

more concerned with love.

* * * * *

The same _odor di bellezza_ arose from all French art, as the scent of ripe

strawberries and raspberries ascends from autumn woods warmed by the sun.

French music was like one of those little strawberry plants, hidden in

the grass, the scent of which sweetens all the air of the woods. At first

Christophe had passed it by without seeing it, for in his own country

he had been used to whole thickets of music, much fuller and bearing

more brilliant fruits. But now the delicate perfume made him turn: with

Olivier's help among the stones and brambles and dead leaves which usurped

the name of music, he discovered the subtle and ingenuous art of a handful

of musicians. Amid the marshy fields and the factory chimneys of democracy,

in the heart of the Plaine-Saint-Denis, in a little magic wood fauns were

dancing blithely. Christophe was amazed to hear the ironic and serene notes

of their flutes which were like nothing he had ever heard:

"_A little reed sufficed for me

To make the tall grass quiver,

And all the meadow,

The willows sweet.

And the singing stream also:

A little reed sufficed, for me

To make the forest sing._"

Beneath the careless grace and the seeming dilettantism of their little

piano pieces, and songs, and French chamber-music, which German art

never deigned to notice, while Christophe himself had hitherto failed to

see the poetic accomplishment of it all, he now began to see the fever

of renovation, and the uneasiness,--unknown on the other side of the

Rhine,--with which French musicians were seeking in the unfilled fields

of their art the germs from which the future might grow. While German

musicians sat stolidly in the encampments of their forebears, and

arrogantly claimed to stay the evolution of the world at the barrier of

their past victories, the world was moving onwards: and in the van the

French plunged onward to discovery: they explored the distant realms of

art, dead suns and suns lit up once more, and vanished Greece, and the Far

East, after its age-long slumber, once more opening its slanting eyes, full

of vasty dreams, upon the light of day. In the music of the West, run off

into channels by the genius of order and classic reason, they opened up the

sluices of the ancient fashions: into their Versailles pools they turned

all the waters of the universe: popular melodies and rhythms, exotic and

antique scales, new or old beats and intervals. Just as, before them, the

impressionist painters had opened up a new world to the eyes,--Christopher

Columbuses of light,--so the musicians were rushing on to the conquest of

the world of Sound; they pressed on into mysterious recesses of the world

of Hearing: they discovered new lands in that inward ocean. It was more

than probable that they would do nothing with their conquests. As usual the

French were the harbingers of the world.

Christophe admired the initiative of their music born of yesterday and

already marching in the van of art. What valiance there was in the elegant

tiny little creature! He found indulgence for the follies that he had

lately seen in her. Only those who attempt nothing never make mistakes.

But error struggling on towards the living truth is more fruitful and more

blessed than dead truth.

Whatever the results, the effort was amazing. Olivier showed Christophe the

work done in the last thirty-five years, and the amount of energy expended

in raising French music from the void in which it had slumbered before

1870: no symphonic school, no profound culture, no traditions, no masters,

no public: the whole reduced to poor Berlioz, who died of suffocation and

weariness. And now Christophe felt a great respect for those who had been

the laborers in the national revival: he had no desire now to jeer at their

esthetic narrowness or their lack of genius. They had created something

much greater than music: a musical people. Among all the great toilers who

had forged the new French music one man was especially dear to him: César

Franck, who died without seeing the victory for which he had paved the way,

and yet, like old Schütz, through the darkest years of French art, had

preserved intact the treasure of his faith and the genius of his race. It

was a moving thing to see: amid pleasure-seeking Paris, the angelic master,

the saint of music, in a life of poverty and work despised, preserving the

unimpeachable serenity of his patient soul, whose smile of resignation lit

up his music in which is such great goodness.

* * * * *

To Christophe, knowing nothing of the depths of the life of France, this

great artist, adhering to his faith in the midst of a country of atheists,

was a phenomenon, almost a miracle.

But Olivier would gently shrug his shoulders and ask if any other country

in Europe could show a painter so wholly steeped in the spirit of the Bible

as François Millet;--a man of science more filled with burning faith and

humility than the clear-sighted Pasteur, bowing down before the idea of the

infinite, and, when that idea possessed his mind, "in bitter agony"--as he

himself has said--"praying that his reason might be spared, so near it was

to toppling over into the sublime madness of Pascal." Their deep-rooted

Catholicism was no more a bar in the way of the heroic realism of the first

of these two men, than of the passionate reason of the other, who, sure of

foot and not deviating by one step, went his way through "the circles of

elementary nature, the great night of the infinitely little, the ultimate

abysses of creation, in which life is born." It was among the people of the

provinces, from which they sprang, that they had found this faith, which is

for ever brooding on the soil of France, while in vain do windy demagogues

struggle to deny it. Olivier knew well that faith: it had lived in his own

heart and mind.

He revealed to Christophe the magnificent movement towards a Catholic

revival, which had been going on for the last twenty-five years, the mighty

effort of the Christian idea in France to wed reason, liberty, and life:

the splendid priests who had the courage, as one of their number said, "to

have themselves baptized as men," and were claiming for Catholicism the

right to understand everything and to join in every honest idea: for "every

honest idea, even when it is mistaken, is sacred and divine": the thousands

of young Catholics banded by the generous vow to build a Christian

Republic, free, pure, in brotherhood, open to all men of good-will: and, in

spite of the odious attacks, the accusations of heresy, the treachery on

all sides, right and left,--(especially on the right),--which these great

Christians had to suffer, the intrepid little legion advancing towards the

rugged defile which leads to the future, serene of front, resigned to all

trials and tribulations, knowing that no enduring edifice can be built,

except it be welded together with tears and blood.

The same breath of living idealism and passionate liberalism brought new

life to the other religions in France. The vast slumbering bodies of

Protestantism and Judaism were thrilling with new life. All in generous

emulation had set themselves to create the religion of a free humanity

which should sacrifice neither its power for reason, nor its power for

enthusiasm.

This religious exaltation was not the privilege of the religious: it

was the very soul of the revolutionary movement. There it assumed a

tragic character. Till now Christophe had only seen the lowest form of

socialism,--that of the politicians who dangled in front of the eyes of

their famished constituents the coarse and childish dreams of Happiness,

or, to be frank, of universal Pleasure, which Science in the hands of

Power could, according to them, procure. Against such revolting optimism

Christophe saw the furious mystic reaction of the élite arise to lead the

Syndicates of the working-classes on to battle. It was a summons to "war,

which engenders the sublime," to heroic war "which alone can give the dying

worlds a goal, an aim, an ideal." These great Revolutionaries, spitting

out such "bourgeois, peddling, peace-mongering, English" socialism, set up

against it a tragic conception of the universe, "whose law is antagonism,"

since it lives by sacrifice, perpetual sacrifice, eternally renewed.--If

there was reason to doubt that the army, which these leaders urged on to

the assault upon the old world, could understand such warlike mysticism,

which applied both Kant and Nietzsche to violent action, nevertheless it

was a stirring sight to see the revolutionary aristocracy, whose blind

pessimism, and furious desire for heroic life, and exalted faith in war and

sacrifice, were like the militant religious ideal of some Teutonic Order or

the Japanese Samurai.

And yet they were all Frenchmen: they were of a French stock whose

characteristics have endured unchanged for centuries. Seeing with

Olivier's eyes Christophe marked them in the tribunes and proconsuls of

the Convention, in certain of the thinkers and men of action and French

reformers of the _Ancien Régime_. Calvinists, Jansenists, Jacobins,

Syndicalists, in all there was the same spirit of pessimistic idealism,

struggling against nature, without illusions and without loss of

courage:--the iron bands which uphold the nation.

Christophe drank in the breath of these mystic struggles, and he began to

understand the greatness of that fanaticism, into which France brought

uncompromising faith and honesty, such as were absolutely unknown to

other nations more familiar with _combinazioni_. Like all foreigners

it had pleased him at first to be flippant about the only too obvious

contradiction between the despotic temper of the French and the magic

formula which their Republic wrote up on the walls of their buildings. Now

for the first time he began to grasp the meaning of the bellicose Liberty

which they adored as the terrible sword of Reason. No: it was not for

them, as he had thought, mere sounding rhetoric and vague ideology. Among

a people for whom the demands of reason transcend all others the fight for

reason dominated every other. What did it matter whether the fight appeared

absurd to nations who called themselves practical? To eyes that see deeply

it is no less vain to fight for empire, or money, or the conquest of the

world: in a million years there will be nothing left of any of these

things. But if it is the fierceness of the fight that gives its worth to

life, and uplifts all the living forces to the point of sacrifice to a

superior Being, then there are few struggles that do more honor life than

the eternal battle waged in France for or against reason. And for those who

have tasted the bitter savor of it the much-vaunted apathetic tolerance

of the Anglo-Saxons is dull and unmanly. The Anglo-Saxons paid for it by

finding elsewhere an outlet for their energy. Their energy is not in their

tolerance, which is only great when, between factions, it becomes heroism.

In Europe of to-day it is most often indifference, want of faith, want of

vitality. The English, adapting a saying of Voltaire, are fain to boast

that "diversity of belief has produced more tolerance in England" than the

Revolution has done in France.--The reason is that there is more faith in

the France of the Revolution than in all the creeds of England.

* * * * *

From the circle of brass of militant idealism and the battles of

Reason,--like Virgil leading Dante, Olivier led Christophe by the hand to

the summit of the mountain where, silent and serene, dwelt the small band

of the elect of France who were really free.

Nowhere in the world are there men more free. They have the serenity of a

bird soaring in the still air. On such a height the air was so pure and

rarefied that Christophe could hardly breathe. There he met artists who

claimed the absolute and limitless liberty of dreams,--men of unbridled

subjectivity, like Flaubert, despising "the poor beasts who believe in

the reality of things":--thinkers, who, with supple and many-sided minds,

emulating the endless flow of moving things, went on "ceaselessly trickling

and flowing," staying nowhere, nowhere coming in contact with stubborn

earth or rock, and "depicted not the essence of life, but the _passage_,"

as Montaigne said, "the eternal passage, from day to day, from minute to

minute";--men of science who knew the emptiness and void of the universe,

wherein man has builded his idea, his God, his art, his science, and went

on creating the world and its laws, that vivid day's dream. They did not

demand of science either rest, or happiness, or even truth:--for they

doubted whether it were attainable: they loved it for itself, because it

was beautiful, because it alone was beautiful, and it alone was real.

On the topmost pinnacles of thought these men of science, passionately

Pyrrhonistic, indifferent to all suffering, all deceit, almost indifferent

to reality, listened, with closed eyes, to the silent music of souls,

the delicate and grand harmony of numbers and forms. These great

mathematicians, these free philosophers,--the most rigorous and positive

minds in the world,--had reached the uttermost limit of mystic ecstasy:

they created a void about themselves, they hung over the abyss, they were

drunk with its dizzy depths: into the boundless night with joy sublime they

flashed the lightnings of thought.

Christophe leaned forward and tried to look over as they did: and his head

swam. He who thought himself free because he had broken away from all laws

save those of his own conscience, now became fearfully conscious of how

little he was free compared with these Frenchmen who were emancipated from

every absolute law of mind, from every categorical imperative, from every

reason for living. Why, then, did they live?

"For the joy of being free," replied Olivier.

But Christophe, who was unsteadied by such liberty, thought regretfully of

the mighty spirit of discipline and German authoritarianism: and he said:

"Your joy is a snare, the dream of an opium-smoker. You make yourselves

drunk with liberty, and forget life. Absolute liberty means madness to the

mind, anarchy to the State ... Liberty! What man is free in this world?

What man in your Republic is free?--Only the knaves. You, the best of the

nation, are stilled. You can do nothing but dream. Soon you will not be

able even to dream."

"No matter!" said Olivier. "My poor dear Christophe, you cannot know the

delight of being free. It is worth while paying for it with so much danger,

and suffering, and even death. To be free, to feel that every mind about

you--yes, even the knave's--is free, is a delicious pleasure which it is

impossible to express: it is as though your soul were soaring through

the infinite air. It could not live otherwise. What should I do with the

security you offer me, and your order and your impeccable discipline,

locked up in the four walls of your Imperial barracks? I should die of

suffocation. Air! give me air, more and more of it! Liberty, more and more

of that!"

"There must be law in the world," replied Christophe. "Sooner or later the

master cometh."

But Olivier laughed and reminded Christophe of the saying of old Pierre de

l'Estoile:

_It is as little in the power of all the

dominions of the earth to curb the French

liberty of speech, as

to bury the sun in the earth

or to shut it up

inside a

hole._

* * * * *

Gradually Christophe grew accustomed to the air of boundless liberty. From

the lofty heights of French thought, where those minds dream that are all

light, he looked down upon the slopes of the mountain at his feet, where

the heroic elect, fighting for a living faith, whatever faith it be,

struggle eternally to reach the summit:--those who wage the holy war

against ignorance, disease, and poverty: the fever of invention, the mental

delirium of the modern Prometheus and Icarus conquering the light and

marking out roads in the air: the Titanic struggle between Science and

Nature, being tamed;--lower down, the little silent band, the men and women

of good faith, those brave and humble hearts, who, after a thousand

efforts, have climbed half-way, and can climb no farther, being held bound

in a dull and difficult existence, while in secret they burn away in

obscure devotion:--lower still, at the foot of the mountain, in a narrow

gorge between rocky crags, the endless battle, the fanatics of abstract

ideas and blind instincts, fiercely wrestling, with never a suspicion that

there may be something beyond, above the wall of rocks which hems them

in:--still lower, swamps and brutish beasts wallowing in the mire.--And

everywhere, scattered about the sides of the mountain, the fresh flowers of

art, the scented strawberry-plants of music, the song of the streams and

the poet birds.

And Christophe asked Olivier:

"Where are your people? I see only the elect, all sorts, good and bad."

Olivier replied:

"The people? They are tending their gardens. They never bother about us.

Every group and faction among the elect strives to engage their attention.

They pay no heed to any one. There was a time when it amused them to listen

to the humbug of the political mountebanks. But now they never worry about

it. There are several millions who do not even make use of their rights as

electors. The parties may break each other's heads as much as they like,

and the people don't care one way or another so long as they don't trample

the crops in their wrangling: if that happens then they lose their tempers,

and smash the parties indiscriminately. They do not act: they react in one

way or another against all the exaggerations which disturb their work and

their rest. Kings, Emperors, republics, priests, Freemasons, Socialists,

whatever their leaders may be, all that they ask of them is to be protected

against the great common dangers: war, riots, epidemics,--and, for the

rest, to be allowed to go on tending their gardens. When all is said and

done they think:

"'Why won't these people leave us in peace?'

"But the politicians are so stupid that they worry the people, and won't

leave off until they are pitched out with a fork,--as will happen some day

to our members of Parliament. There was a time when the people were

embarked upon great enterprises. Perhaps that will happen again, although

they sowed their wild oats long ago: in any case their embarkations are

never for long: very soon they return to their age-old companion: the

earth. It is the soil which binds the French to France, much more than the

French. There are so many different races who for centuries have been

tilling that brave soil side by side, that it is the soil which unites

them, the soil which is their love. Through good times and bad they

cultivate it unceasingly: and it is all good to them, even the smallest

scrap of ground."

Christophe looked down. As far as he could see, along the road, around the

swamps, on the slopes of rocky hills, over the battlefields and ruins of

action, over the mountains and plains of France, all was cultivated and

richly bearing: it was the great garden of European civilization. Its

incomparable charm lay no less in the good fruitful soil than in the blind

labors of an indefatigable people, who for centuries have never ceased to

till and sow and make the land ever more beautiful.

A strange people! They are always called inconstant: but nothing in them

changes. Olivier, looking backward, saw in Gothic statuary all the types of

the provinces of to-day: and so in the drawings of a Clouet and a

Dumoustier, the weary ironical faces of worldly men and intellectuals: or

in the work of a Lenain the clear eyes of the laborers and peasants of

Île-de-France or Picardy. And the thoughts of the men of old days lived in

the minds of the present day. The mind of Pascal was alive, not only in the

elect of reason and religion, but in the brains of obscure citizens or

revolutionary Syndicalists. The art of Corneille and Racine was living for

the people even more than for the elect, for they were less attainted by

foreign influences: a humble clerk in Paris would feel more sympathy with a

tragedy of the time of Louis XIV than with a novel of Tolstoi or a drama of

Ibsen. The chants of the Middle Ages, the old French _Tristan_, would be

more akin to the modern French than the _Tristan_ of Wagner. The flowers of

thought, which since the twelfth century have never ceased to blossom in

French soil, however different they may be, were yet kin one to another,

though utterly different from all the flowers about them.

Christophe knew too little of France to be able to grasp how these

characteristics had endured. What struck him most of all in all the wide

expanse of country was the extremely small divisions of the earth. As

Olivier said, every man had his garden: and each garden, each plot of land,

was separated from the rest by walls, and quickset hedges, and inclosures

of all sorts. At most there were only a few woods and fields in common, and

sometimes the dwellers on one side of a river were forced to live nearer to

each other than to the dwellers on the other. Every man shut himself up in

his own house: and it seemed that this jealous individualism, instead of

growing weaker after centuries of neighborhood, was stronger than ever.

Christophe thought:

"How lonely they all are!"

* * * * *

In that sense nothing could have been more characteristic than the house in

which Christophe and Olivier lodged. It was a world in miniature, a little

France, honest and industrious, without any bond which could unite its

divers elements. A five-storied house, a shaky house, leaning over to one

side, with creaking floors and crumbling ceilings. The rain came through

into the rooms under the roof in which Christophe and Olivier lived: they

had had to have the workmen in to botch up the roof as best they could:

Christophe could hear them working and talking overhead. There was one man

in particular who amused and exasperated him: he never stopped talking to

himself, and laughing, and singing, and babbling nonsense, and whistling

inane tunes, and holding long conversations with himself all the time he

was working: he was incapable of doing anything without proclaiming exactly

what it was:

"I'm going to put in another nail. Where's my hammer? I'm putting in a

nail, two nails. One more blow with the hammer! There, old lady, that's

it...."

When Christophe was playing he would stop for a moment and listen, and then

go on whistling louder than ever: during a stirring passage he would beat

time with his hammer on the roof. At last Christophe was so exasperated

that he climbed on a chair, and poked his head through the skylight of the

attic to rate the man. But when he saw him sitting astride the roof, with

his jolly face and his cheek stuffed out with nails, he burst out laughing,

and the man joined in. And not until they had done laughing did he remember

why he had come to the window:

"By the way," he said, "I wanted to ask you: my playing doesn't interfere

with your work?"

The man said it did not: but he asked Christophe to play something faster,

because, as he worked in time to the music, slow tunes kept him back. They

parted very good friends. In a quarter of an hour they had exchanged more

words than in six months Christophe had spoken to the other inhabitants of

the house.

There were two flats on each floor, one of three rooms, the other of only

two. There were no servants' rooms: each household did its own housework,

except for the tenants of the ground floor and the first floor, who

occupied the two flats thrown into one.

On the fifth floor Christophe and Olivier's next-door neighbor was the Abbé

Corneille, a priest of some forty years old, a learned man, an independent

thinker, broad-minded, formerly a professor of exegesis in a great

seminary, who had recently been censured by Rome for his modernist

tendency. He had accepted the censure without submitting to it, in silence:

he made no attempt to dispute it and refused every opportunity offered to

him of publishing his doctrine: he shrank from a noisy publicity and would

rather put up with the ruin of his ideas than figure in a scandal.

Christophe could not understand that sort of revolt in resignation. He had

tried to talk to the priest, who, however, was coldly polite and would not

speak of the things which most interested him, and seemed to prefer as a

matter of dignity to remain buried alive.

* * * * *

On the floor below in the flat corresponding to that of the two friends

there lived a family of the name of Elie Elsberger: an engineer, his wife,

and their two little girls, seven and ten years old: superior and

sympathetic people who kept themselves very much to themselves, chiefly

from a sort of false shame of their straitened means. The young woman who

kept her house most pluckily was humiliated by it: she would have put up

with twice the amount of worry and exhaustion if she could have prevented

anybody knowing their condition: and that too was a feeling which

Christophe could not understand. They belonged to a Protestant family and

came from the East of France. Both man and wife, a few years before, had

been bowled over by the storm of the Dreyfus affair: both of them had taken

the affair passionately to heart, and, like thousands of French people,

they had suffered from the frenzy brought on by the turbulent wind of that

exalted fit of hysteria which lasted for seven years. They had sacrificed

everything to it, rest, position, relations: they had broken off many dear

friendships through it: they had almost ruined their health. For months at

a time they did not sleep nor act, but went on bringing forward the same

arguments over and over again with the monotonous insistence of the insane:

they screwed each other up to a pitch of excitement: in spite of their

timidity and their dread of ridicule, they had taken part in demonstrations

and spoken at meetings, from which they returned with minds bewildered and

aching hearts, and they would weep together through the night. In the

struggle they had expended so much enthusiasm and passion that when at last

victory was theirs they had not enough of either to rejoice: it left them

dry of energy and broken for life. Their hopes had been so high, their

eagerness for sacrifice had been so pure, that triumph when it came had

seemed a mockery compared with what they had dreamed. To such single-minded

creatures for whom there could exist but one truth, the bargaining of

politics, the compromises of their heroes had been a bitter disappointment.

They had seen their comrades in arms, men whom they had thought inspired

with the same single passion for justice,--once the enemy was overcome,

swarming about the loot, catching at power, carrying off honors and

positions, and, in their turn, trampling justice underfoot. Only a mere

handful of men held steadfast to their faith, and, in poverty and

isolation, rejected by every party, rejecting every party, they remained in

obscurity, cut off one from the other, a prey to sorrow and neurasthenia,

left hopeless and disgusted with men and utterly weary of life. The

engineer and his wife were among these wretched victims.

They made no noise in the house: they were morbidly afraid of disturbing

their neighbors, the more so as they suffered from their neighbors' noises,

and they were too proud to complain. Christophe was sorry for the two

little girls, whose outbursts of merriment, and natural need of shouting,

jumping about and laughing, were continually being suppressed. He adored

children, and he made friendly advances to his little neighbors when he met

them on the stairs. The little girls were shy at first, but were soon on

good terms with Christophe, who always had some funny story to tell them or

sweetmeats in his pockets: they told their parents about him: and, though

at first they had been inclined to look askance at his advances, they were

won over by the frank open manners of their noisy neighbor, whose

piano-playing and terrific disturbance overhead had often made them

curse:--(for Christophe used to feel stifled in his room and take to pacing

up and down like a caged bear).--They did not find it easy to talk to him.

Christophe's rather boorish and abrupt manners sometimes made Elie

Elsberger shudder. But it was all in vain for the engineer to try to keep

up the wall of reserve, behind which he had taken shelter, between himself

and the German: it was impossible to resist the impetuous good humor of the

man whose eyes were so honest and affectionate and so free from any

ulterior motive. Every now and then Christophe managed to squeeze a little

confidence out of his neighbor. Elsberger was a queer man, full of courage,

yet apathetic, sorrowful, and yet resigned. He had energy enough to bear a

life of difficulty with dignity, but not enough to change it. It was as

though he took a delight in justifying his own pessimism. Just at that time

he had been offered a post in Brazil as manager of an undertaking: but he

had refused as he was afraid of the climate and fearful of the health of

his wife and children.

"Well, leave them," said Christophe. "Go alone and make their fortune."

"Leave them!" cried the engineer. "It's easy to see that you have no

children."

"I assure you that, if I had, I should be of the same opinion."

"Never! Never!... Leave the country!... No. I would rather suffer here."

To Christophe it seemed an odd way of loving one's country and one's wife

and children to sit down and vegetate with them. Olivier understood.

"Just think," he said, "of the risk of dying out there, in a strange

unknown country, far away from those you love! Anything is better than the

horror of that. Besides, it isn't worth while taking so much trouble for

the few remaining years of life!..."

"As though one had always to be thinking of death!" said Christophe with a

shrug. "And even if that does happen, isn't it better to die fighting for

the happiness of those one loves than to flicker out in apathy?"

* * * * *

On the same landing in the smaller flat on the fourth floor lived a

journeyman electrician named Aubert.--If he lived entirely apart from the

other inhabitants of the house it was not altogether his fault. He had

risen from the lower class and had a passionate desire not to sink back

into it. He was small and weakly-looking; he had a harsh face, and his

forehead bulged over his eyes, which were keen and sharp and bored into you

like a gimlet: he had a fair mustache, a satirical mouth, a sibilant way of

speaking, a husky voice, a scarf round his neck, and he had always

something the matter with his throat, in which irritation was set up by his

perpetual habit of smoking: he was always feverishly active and had the

consumptive temperament. He was a mixture of conceit, irony, and

bitterness, cloaking a mind that was enthusiastic, bombastic, and naïve,

while it was always being taken in by life. He was the bastard of some

burgess whom he had never known, and was brought up by a mother whom it was

impossible to respect, so that in his childhood he had seen much that was

sad and degrading. He had plied all sorts of trades and had traveled much

in France. He had an admirable desire for education, and had taught himself

with frightful toil and labor: he read everything: history, philosophy,

decadent poets: he was up-to-date in everything: theaters, exhibitions,

concerts: he had a touching veneration for art, literature, and

middle-class ideas: they fascinated him. He had imbibed the vague and

ardent ideology which intoxicated the middle-classes in the first days of

the Revolution. He had a definite belief in the infallibility of reason, in

boundless progress,--_quo non ascendam?_--in the near advent of happiness

on earth, in the omnipotence of science, in Divine Humanity, and in France,

the eldest daughter of Humanity. He had an enthusiastic and credulous sort

of anti-clericalism which made him lump together religion--especially

Catholicism--and obscurantism, and see in priests the natural foe of light.

Socialism, individualism, Chauvinism jostled each other in his brain. He

was a humanitarian in mind, despotic in temperament, and an anarchist in

fact. He was proud and knew the gaps in his education, and, in

conversation, he was very cautious: he turned to account everything that

was said in his presence, but he would never ask advice: that humiliated

him; now, though he had intelligence and cleverness, these things could not

altogether supply the defects of his education. He had taken it into his

head to write. Like so many men in France who have not been taught, he had

the gift of style, and a clear vision: but he was a confused thinker. He

had shown a few pages of his productions to a successful journalist in whom

he believed, and the man made fun of him. He was profoundly humiliated, and

from that time on never told a soul what he was doing. But he went on

writing: it fed his need of expansion and gave him pride and delight. In

his heart he was immensely pleased with his eloquent passages and

philosophic ideas, which were not worth a brass farthing. And he set no

store by his observation of real life, which was excellent. It was his

crank to fancy himself as a philosopher, and he wished to write

sociological plays and novels of ideas. He had no difficulty in solving all

sorts of insoluble questions, and at every turn he discovered America. When

in due course he found that America was already discovered, he was

disappointed, humiliated, and rather bitter: he was never far from scenting

injustice and intrigue. He was consumed by a thirst for fame and a burning

capacity for devotion which suffered from finding no means or direction of

employment: he would have loved to be a great man of letters, a member of

that literary élite, who in his eyes were adorned with a supernatural

prestige. In spite of his longing to deceive himself he had too much good

sense and was too ironical not to know that there was no chance of its

coming to pass. But he would at least have hiked to live in that atmosphere

of art and middle-class ideas which at a distance seemed to him so

brilliant and pure and chastened of mediocrity. This innocent longing had

the unfortunate result of making the society of the people with whom his

condition in life forced him to live intolerable to him. And as the

middle-class society which he wished to enter closed its doors to him, the

result was that he never saw anybody. And so Christophe had no difficulty

in making his acquaintance. On the contrary he had very soon to bolt and

bar against him: otherwise Aubert would more often have been in

Christophe's rooms, than Christophe in his. He was only too happy to find

an artist to whom he could talk about music, plays, etc. But, as one would

imagine, Christophe did not find them so interesting: he would rather have

discussed the people with a man who was of the people. But that was just

what Aubert would not and could not discuss.

In proportion as he went lower in the house relations between Christophe

and the other tenants became naturally more distant. Besides, some secret

magic, some _Open Sesame_, would have been necessary for him to reach the

inhabitants of the third floor.--In the one flat there lived two ladies who

were under the self-hypnotism of grief for a loss that was already some

years old: Madame Germain, a woman of thirty-five who had lost her husband

and daughter, and lived in seclusion with her aged and devout

mother-in-law.--On the other side of the landing there dwelt a mysterious

character of uncertain age, anything between fifty and sixty, with a little

girl of ten. He was bald, with a handsome, well-trimmed beard, a soft way

of speaking, distinguished manners, and aristocratic hands. He was called

M. Watelet. He was said to be an anarchist, a revolutionary, a foreigner,

from what country was not known, Russia or Belgium. As a matter of fact he

was a Northern Frenchman and was hardly at all revolutionary: but he was

living on his past reputation. He had been mixed up with the Commune of '71

and condemned to death: he had escaped, how he did not know: and for ten

years he had lived for a short time in every country in Europe. He had seen

so many ill-deeds during the upheaval in Paris, and afterwards, and also in

exile, and also since his return, ill-deeds done by his former comrades now

that they were in power, and also by men in every rank of the revolutionary

parties, that he had broken with them, peacefully keeping his convictions

to himself useless and untarnished. He read much, wrote a few mildly

incendiary books, pulled--(so it was said)--the wires of anarchist

movements in distant places, in India or the Far East, busied himself with

the universal revolution, and, at the same time, with researches no less

universal but of a more genial aspect, namely with a universal language, a

new method of popular instruction in music. He never came in contact with

anybody in the house: when he met any of its inmates he did no more than

bow to them with exaggerated politeness. However, he condescended to tell

Christophe a little about his musical method. Christophe was not the least

interested in it: the symbols of his ideas mattered very little to him: in

any language he would have managed somehow to express them. But Watelet was

not to be put off, and went on explaining his system gently but firmly:

Christophe could not find out anything about the rest of his life. And so

he gave up stopping when he met him on the stairs and only looked at the

little girl who was always with him: she was fair, pale, anemic: she had

blue eyes, rather a sharp profile, a thin little figure--she was always

very neatly dressed--and she looked sickly and her face was not very

expressive. Like everybody else he thought she was Watelet's daughter. She

was an orphan, the daughter of poor parents, whom Watelet had adopted when

she was four or five, after the death of her father and mother in an

epidemic. He had an almost boundless love for the poor, especially for poor

children. It was a sort of mystic tenderness with him as with Vincent de

Paul. He distrusted official charity, and knew exactly what philanthropic

institutions were worth, and therefore he set about doing charity alone: he

did it by stealth, and took a secret joy in it. He had learned medicine so

as to be of some use in the world. One day when he went to the house of a

working-man in the district and found sickness there, he turned to and

nursed the invalids: he had some medical knowledge and turned it to

account. He could not bear to see a child suffer: it broke his heart. But,

on the other hand, what a joy it was when he had succeeded in tearing one

of these poor little creatures from the clutches of sickness, and the first

pale smile appeared on the little pinched face! Then Watelet's heart would

melt. Those were his moments of Paradise. They made him forget the trouble

he often had with his protégés: for they very rarely showed him much

gratitude. And the housekeeper was furious at seeing so many people with

dirty boots going up her stairs, and she would complain bitterly. And the

proprietor would watch uneasily these meetings of anarchists, and make

remarks. Watelet would contemplate leaving his flat: but that hurt him: he

had his little whimsies: he was gentle and obstinate, and he put up with

the proprietor's observations.

Christophe won his confidence up to a certain point by the love he showed

for children. That was their common bond. Christophe never met the little

girl without a catch at his heart: for, though he did not know why, by one

of those mysterious similarities in outline, which the instinct perceives

immediately and subconsciously, the child reminded him of Sabine's little

girl. Sabine, his first love, now so far away, the silent grace of whose

fleeting shadow had never faded from his heart. And so he took an interest

in the pale-faced little girl whom he never saw romping, or running, whose

voice he hardly ever heard, who had no little friend of her own age, who

was always alone, mum, quietly amusing herself with lifeless toys, a doll

or a block of wood, while her lips moved as she whispered some story to

herself. She was affectionate and a little offhanded in manner: there was a

foreign and uneasy quality in her, but her adopted father never saw it: he

loved her too much. Alas! Does not that foreign and uneasy quality exist

even in the children of our own flesh and blood?... Christophe tried to

make the solitary little girl friends with the engineer's children. But

with both Elsberger and Watelet he met with a polite but categorical

refusal. These people seemed to make it a point of honor to bury themselves

alive, each in his own mausoleum. If it came to a point each would have

been ready to help the other: but each was afraid of it being thought that

he himself was in need of help: and as they were both equally proud and

vain,--and the means of both were equally precarious,--there was no hope of

either of them being the first to hold out his hand to the other.

The larger flat on the second floor was almost always empty. The proprietor

of the house reserved it for his own use: and he was never there. He was a

retired merchant who had closed down his business as soon as he had made a

certain fortune, the figure of which he had fixed for himself. He spent the

greater part of the year in some hotel on the Riviera, and the summer at

some watering-place in Normandy, living as a gentleman with private means

who enjoys the illusion of luxury cheaply by watching the luxury of others,

and, like them, leading a useless existence.

* * * * *

The smaller flat was let to a childless couple: M. and Madame Arnaud. The

husband, a man of between forty and forty-five, was a master at a school.

He was so overworked with lectures, and correcting exercises, and giving

classes, that he had never been able to find time to write his thesis: and

at last he had given it up altogether. The wife was ten years younger,

pretty, and very shy. They were both intelligent, well read, in love with

each other: they knew nobody, and never went out. The husband had no time

for it. The wife had too much time: but she was a brave little creature,

who fought down her fits of depression when they came over her, and hid

them, by occupying herself as best she could, trying to learn, taking notes

for her husband, copying out her husband's notes, mending her husband's

clothes, making frocks and hats for herself. She would have liked to go to

the theater from time to time: but Arnaud did not care about it: he was too

tired in the evening. And she resigned herself to it.

Their great Joy was music. They both adored it. He could not play, and she

dared not although she could: when she played before anybody, even before

her husband, it was like a child strumming. However, that was good enough

for them: and Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, whom they stammered out, were as

friends to them: they knew their lives in detail, and their sufferings

filled them with love and pity. Books, too, beautiful, fine books, which

they read together, gave them happiness. But there are few such books in

the literature of to-day: authors do not worry about those people who can

bring them neither reputation, nor pleasure, nor money, such humble readers

who are never seen in society, and do not write in any journal, and can

only love and say nothing. The silent light of art, which in their upright

and religious hearts assumed almost a supernatural character, and their

mutual affection, were enough to make them live in peace, happy enough,

though a little sad--(there is no gainsaying that),--very lonely, a little

bruised in spirit. They were both much superior to their position in life.

M. Arnaud was full of ideas: but he had neither the time nor enough courage

left to write them down. It meant such a lot of trouble to get articles and

books published: it was not worth it: futile vanity! Anything he could do

was so small in comparison with the thinkers he loved! He had too true a

love for the great works of art to want to produce art himself: it would

have seemed to him pretentious, impertinent, and ridiculous. It seemed to

be his lot to spread their influence. He gave his pupils the benefit of his

ideas: they would turn them into books later on,--without mentioning his

name of course.--Nobody spent more money than he in subscribing to various

publications. The poor are always the most generous: they do buy their

books: the rich would take it as a slur upon themselves if they did not

somehow manage to get them for nothing. Arnaud ruined himself in buying

books: it was his weakness--his vice. He was ashamed of it, and concealed

it from his wife. But she did not blame him for it: she would have spent

just as much.--And with it all they were always making fine plans for

saving, with a view to going to Italy some day--though, as they knew quite

well, they never would go: and they were the first to laugh at their

incapacity for keeping money. Arnaud would console himself. His dear wife

was enough for him, and his life of work and inward joys. Was it not also

enough for her?--She said it was. She dared not say how dear it would have

been to her if her husband could have some reputation, which would in some

sort be reflected upon herself, and brighten her life, and give her ease

and comfort: inward joys are beautiful: but a little ray of light from

without shining in from time to time is sweet, and does so much good!...

But she never said anything, because she was timid: and besides, she knew

that even if he wished to make a reputation it was by no means certain that

he would succeed: it was too late!... Their greatest sorrow was that they

had no children. Each hid that sorrow from the other: and they were only

the more tender with each other: it was as though the poor creatures were

striving to win one another's forgiveness. Madame Arnaud was kind and

affectionate: she would gladly have been friends with Madame Elsberger. But

she dared not: she was never approached. As for Christophe, husband and

wife would have asked nothing better than to know him: they were fascinated

by the music that they could hear faintly when he was playing. But nothing

in the world could have induced them to make the first move: they would

have thought it indiscreet.

* * * * *

The whole of the first floor was occupied by M. and Madame Félix Weil. They

were rich Jews, and had no children, and they spent six months of the year

in the country near Paris. Although they had lived in the house for twenty

years--(they stayed there as a matter of habit, although they could easily

have found a flat more in keeping with their fortune)--they were always

like passing strangers. They had never spoken a word to any of their

neighbors, and no one knew any more about them than on the day of their

arrival. But that was no reason why the other tenants should not pass

judgment on them: on the contrary. They were not liked. And no doubt they

did nothing to win popularity. And yet they were worthy of more

acquaintance: they were both excellent people and remarkably intelligent.

The husband, a man of sixty, was an Assyriologist, well known through his

famous excavations in Central Asia: like most of his race he was

open-minded and curious, and did not confine himself to his special

studies: he was interested in an infinite number of things: the arts,

social questions, every manifestation of contemporary thought. But these

were not enough to occupy his mind: for they all amused him, and none of

them roused passionate interest. He was very intelligent, too intelligent,

too much emancipated from all ties, always ready to destroy with one hand

what he had constructed with the other: for he was constructive, always

producing books and theories: he was a great worker: as a matter of habit

and spiritual health he was always patiently plowing his deep furrow in the

field of knowledge, without having any belief in the utility of what he was

doing. He had always had the misfortune to be rich, so that he had never

had the interest of the struggle for life, and, since his explorations in

the East, of which he had grown tired after a few years, he had not

accepted any official position. Outside his own personal work, however, he

busied himself with clairvoyance, contemporary problems, social reforms of

a practical and pressing nature, the reorganization of public education in

France: he flung out ideas and created lines of thought: he would set great

intellectual machines working, and would immediately grow disgusted with

them. More than once he had scandalized people, who had been converted to a

cause by his arguments, by producing the most incisive and discouraging

criticisms of the cause itself. He did not do it deliberately: it was a

natural necessity for him: he was very nervous and ironical in temper, and

found it hard to bear with the foibles of things and people which he saw

with the most disconcerting clarity. And, as there is no good cause, nor

any good man, who, seen at a certain angle or with a certain distortion,

does not present a ridiculous aspect, there was nothing that, with his

ironic disposition, he could go on respecting for long. All this was not

calculated to make him friends. And yet he was always well-disposed towards

people, and inclined to do good: he did much good: but no one was ever

grateful to him: even those whom he had helped could not in their hearts

forgive him, because they had seen that they were ridiculous in his eyes.

It was necessary for him not to see too much of men if he were to love

them. Not that he was a misanthrope. He was not sure enough of himself to

be that. Face to face with the world at which he mocked, he was timid and

bashful: at heart he was not at all sure that the world was not right and

himself wrong: he endeavored not to appear too different from other people,

and strove to base his manners and apparent opinions on theirs. But he

strove in vain: he could not help judging them: he was keenly sensible of

any sort of exaggeration and anything that was not simple: and he could

never conceal his irritation. He was especially sensible of the foibles of

the Jews, because he knew them best: and as, in spite of his intellectual

freedom, which did not admit of barriers between races, he was often

brought up sharp against those barriers which men of other races raised

against him,--as, in spite of himself, he was out of his element among

Christian ideas, he retired with dignity into his ironic labors and the

profound affection he had for his wife.

Worst of all, his wife was not secure against his irony. She was a kindly,

busy woman, anxious to be useful, and always taken up with various

charitable works. Her nature was much less complex than that of her

husband, and she was cramped by her moral benevolence and the rather

rigidly intellectual, though lofty, idea of duty that she had begotten. Her

whole life, which was sad enough, without children, with no great joy nor

great love, was based on this moral belief of hers, which was more than

anything else the will to believe. Her husband's irony had, of course,

seized on the element of voluntary self-deception in her faith, and--(it

was too strong for him)--he had made much fun at her expense. He was a mass

of contradictions. He had a feeling for duty no less lofty than his wife's,

and, at the same time, a merciless desire to analyze, to criticize, and to

avoid deception, which made him dismember and take to pieces his moral

imperative. He could not see that he was digging away the ground from under

his wife's feet: he used cruelly to discourage her. When he realized that

he had done so, he suffered even more than she: but the harm was done. It

did not keep them from loving each other faithfully, and working and doing

good. But the cold dignity of the wife was not more kindly judged than the

irony of the husband: and as they were too proud to publish abroad the good

they did, or their desire to do good, their reserve was regarded as

indifference, and their isolation as selfishness. And the more conscious

they became of the opinion that was held of them, the more careful were

they to do nothing to dispute it. Reacting against the coarse indiscretion

of so many of their race they were the victims of an excessive reserve

which covered a vast deal of pride.

* * * * *

As for the ground floor, which was a few steps higher than the little

garden, it was occupied by Commandant Chabran, a retired officer of the

Colonial Artillery: he was still young, a man of great vigor, who had

fought brilliantly in the Soudan and Madagascar: then suddenly, he had

thrown the whole thing up, and buried himself there: he did not even want

to hear the army mentioned, and spent his time in digging his flower-beds,

and practising the flute without making any progress, and growling about

politics, and scolding his daughter, whom he adored: she was a young woman

of thirty, not very pretty, but quite charming, who devoted herself to him,

and had not married so as not to leave him. Christophe used often to see

them leaning out of the window: and, naturally, he paid more attention to

the daughter than the father. She used to spend part of the afternoon in

the garden, sewing, dreaming, digging, always in high good humor with her

grumbling old father. Christophe could hear her soft clear voice laughingly

replying to the growling tones of the Commandant, whose footsteps ground

and scrunched on the gravel-paths: then he would go in, and she would stay

sitting on a seat in the garden, and sew for hours together, never

stirring, never speaking, smiling vaguely, while inside the house the bored

old soldier played flourishes on his shrill flute, or, by way of a change,

made a broken-winded old harmonium squeal and groan, much to Christophe's

amusement--or exasperation--(which, depended on the day and his mood).

* * * * *

All these people went on living side by side in that house with its

walled-in garden sheltered from all the buffets of the world, hermetically

sealed even against each other. Only Christophe, with his need of expansion

and his great fullness of life, unknown to them, wrapped them about with

his vast sympathy, blind, yet all-seeing. He could not understand them. He

had no means of understanding them. He lacked Olivier's psychological

insight and quickness. But he loved them. Instinctively he put himself in

their place. Slowly, mysteriously, there crept through him a dim

consciousness of these lives so near him and yet so far removed, the

stupefying sorrow of the mourning woman, the stoic silence of all their

proud thoughts, the priest, the Jew, the engineer, the revolutionary: the

pale and gentle flame of tenderness and faith which burned in silence in

the hearts of the two Arnauds: the naïve aspirations towards the light of

the man of the people: the suppressed revolt and fertile activity which

were stifled in the bosom of the old soldier: and the calm resignation of

the girl dreaming in the shade of the lilac. But only Christophe could

perceive and hear the silent music of their souls: they heard it not: they

were all absorbed in their sorrow and their dreams.

They all worked hard, the skeptical old scientist, the pessimistic

engineer, the priest, the anarchist, and all these proud or dispirited

creatures. And on the roof the mason sang.

* * * * *

In the district round the house among the best of the people Christophe

found the same moral solitude--even when the people were banded together.

Olivier had brought him in touch with a little review for which he wrote.

It was called _Ésope_, and had taken for its motto this quotation from

Montaigne:

"_Æsop was put up for sale with two other staves. The purchaser inquired of

the first what he could do; and he, to put a price upon himself, described

all sorts of marvels; the second said as much for himself, or more. When it

came to Æsop's turn, and he was asked what he could do:--Nothing, he said,

for these two have taken everything: they can do everything._"

Their attitude was that of pure reaction against "the impudence," as

Montaigne says, "of those who profess knowledge and their overweening

presumption!" The self-styled skeptics of the _Ésope_ review were at heart

men of the firmest faith. But their mask of irony and haughty ignorance,

naturally enough, had small attraction for the public: rather it repelled.

The people are only with a writer when he brings them words of simple,

clear, vigorous, and assured life. They prefer a sturdy lie to an anemic

truth. Skepticism is only to their liking when it is the covering of lusty

naturalism or Christian idolatry. The scornful Pyrrhonism in which the

_Ésope_ clothed itself could only be acceptable to a few minds--"_aeme

sdegnose_,"--who knew the solid worth beneath it. It was force absolutely

lost upon action and life.

There was no help for it. The more democratic France became, the more

aristocratic did her ideas, her art, her science seem to grow. Science

securely lodged behind its special languages, in the depths of its

sanctuary, wrapped about with a triple veil, which only the initiate had

the power to draw, was less accessible than at the time of Buffon and the

Encyclopedists. Art,--that art at least which had some respect for itself

and the worship of beauty,--was no less hermetically sealed: it despised

the people. Even among writers who cared less for beauty than for action,

among those who gave moral ideas precedence over esthetic ideas, there was

often a strange dominance of the aristocratic spirit. They seemed to be

more intent upon preserving the purity of their inward flame than to

communicate its warmth to others. It was as though they desired not to make

their ideas prevail but only to affirm them.

And yet among these writers there were some who applied themselves to

popular art. Among the most sincere some hurled into their writings

destructive anarchical ideas, truths of the distant future, which might be

beneficent in a century or so, but, for the time being, corroded and

scorched the soul: others wrote bitter or ironical plays, robbed of all

illusion, sad to the last degree. Christophe was left in a state of

collapse, ham-strung, for a day or two after he read them.

"And you give that sort of thing to the people?" he would ask, feeling

sorry for the poor audiences who had come to forget their troubles for a

few hours, only to be presented with these lugubrious entertainments. "It's

enough to make them all go and drown themselves!"

"You may be quite easy on that score," said Olivier, laughing. "The people

don't go."

"And a jolly good thing too! You're mad. Are you trying to rob them of

every scrap of courage to live?"

"Why? Isn't it right to teach them to see the sadness of things, as we do,

and yet to go on and do their duty without flinching?"

"Without flinching? I doubt that. But it's very certain that they'll do it

without pleasure. And you don't go very far when you've destroyed a man's

pleasure in living."

"What else can one do? One has no right to falsify the truth."

"Nor have you any right to tell the whole truth to everybody."

"_You_ say that? You who are always shouting the truth aloud, you who

pretend to love truth more than anything in the world!"

"Yes: truth for myself and those whose backs are strong enough to bear it

But it is cruel and stupid to tell it to the rest. Yes. I see that now. At

home that would never have occurred to me: in Germany people are not so

morbid about the truth as they are here: they're too much taken up with

living: very wisely they see only what they wish to see. I love you for not

being like that: you are honest and go straight ahead. But you are inhuman.

When you think you have unearthed a truth, you let it loose upon the world,

without stopping to think whether, like the foxes in the Bible with their

burning tails, it will not set fire to the world. I think it is fine of you

to prefer truth to your happiness. But when it comes to the happiness of

other people.... Then I say, 'Stop!' You are taking too much upon

yourselves. Thou shalt love truth, more than thyself, but thy neighbor more

than truth."

"Is one to lie to one's neighbor?"

Christophe replied with the words of Goethe:

"We should only express those of the highest truths which will be to the

good of the world. The rest we must keep to ourselves: like the soft rays

of a hidden sun, they will shed their light upon all our actions."

But they were not moved by these scruples. They never stopped to think

whether the bow in their hands shot "_ideas or death_," or both together.

They were too intellectual. They lacked love. When a Frenchman has ideas he

tries to impose them on others. He tries to do the same thing when he has

none. And when he sees that he cannot do it he loses interest in other

people, he loses interest in action. That was the chief reason why this

particular group took so little interest in politics, save to moan and

groan. Each of them was shut up in his faith, or want of faith.

Many attempts had been made to break down their individualism and to form

groups of these men: but the majority of these groups had immediately

resolved themselves into literary clubs, or split up into absurd factions.

The best of them were mutually destructive. There were among them some

first-rate men of force and faith, men well fitted to rally and guide those

of weaker will. But each man had his following, and would not consent to

merging it with that of other men. So they were split up into a number of

reviews, unions, associations, which had all the moral virtues, save one:

self-denial; for not one of them would give way to the others: and, while

they wrangled over the crumbs that fell from an honest and well-meaning

public, small in numbers and poor in purse, they vegetated for a short

time, starved and languished, and at last collapsed never to rise again,

not under the assault of the enemy, but--(most pitiful!)--under the weight

of their own quarrels.--The various professions,--men of letters, dramatic

authors, poets, prose writers, professors, members of the Institute,

journalists--were divided up into a number of little castes, which they

themselves split up again into smaller castes, each one of which closed its

doors against the rest. There was no sort of mutual interchange. There was

no unanimity on any subject in France, except at those very rare moments

when unanimity assumed an epidemic character, and, as a rule, was in the

wrong: for it was morbid. A crazy individualism predominated in every kind

of French activity: in scientific research as well as in commerce, in which

it prevented business men from combining and organizing working agreements.

This individualism was not that of a rich and bustling vitality, but that

of obstinacy and self-repression. To be alone, to owe nothing to others,

not to mix with others for fear of feeling their inferiority in their

company, not to disturb the tranquillity of their haughty isolation: these

were the secret thoughts of almost all these men who founded "outside"

reviews, "outside" theaters, "outside" groups: reviews, theaters, groups,

all most often had no other reason for existing than the desire not to be

with the general herd, and an incapacity for joining with other people in a

common idea or course of action, distrust of other people, or, at the very

worst, party hostility, setting one against the other the very men who were

most fitted to understand each other.

Even when men who thought highly of each other were united in some common

task, like Olivier and his colleagues on the _Ésope_ review, they always

seemed to be on their guard with each other: they had nothing of that

open-handed geniality so common in Germany, where it is apt to become a

nuisance. Among these young men there was one especially who attracted

Christophe because he divined him to be a man of exceptional force: he was

a writer of inflexible logic and will, with a passion for moral ideas, in

the service of which he was absolutely uncompromising and ready in their

cause to sacrifice the whole world and himself: he had founded and

conducted almost unaided a review in which to uphold them: he had sworn to

impose on Europe and on France the idea of a pure, heroic, and free France:

he firmly believed that the world would one day recognize that he was

responsible for one of the boldest pages in the history of French

thought:--and he was not mistaken. Christophe would have been only too glad

to know him better and to be his friend. But there was no way of bringing

it about. Although Olivier had a good deal to do with him they saw very

little of each other except on business: they never discussed any intimate

matter, and never got any farther than the exchange of a few abstract

ideas: or rather--(for, to be exact, there was no exchange, and each

adhered to his own ideas)--they soliloquized in each other's company in

turn. However, they were comrades in arms and knew their worth.

There were innumerable reasons for this reservedness, reasons difficult to

discern, even for their own eyes. The first reason was a too great critical

faculty, which saw too clearly the unalterable differences between one mind

and another, backed by an excessive intellectualism which attached too much

importance to those differences: they lacked that puissant and naïve

sympathy whose vital need is of love, the need of giving out its

overflowing love. Then, too, perhaps overwork, the struggle for existence,

the fever of thought, which so taxes strength that by the evening there is

none left for friendly intercourse, had a great deal to do with it. And

there was that terrible feeling, which every Frenchman is afraid to admit,

though too often it is stirring in his heart, the feeling of _not being of

one race_, the feeling that the nation consists of different races

established at different epochs on the soil of France, who, though all

bound together, have few ideas in common, and therefore ought not, in the

common interest, to ponder them too much. But above all the reason was to

seek in the intoxicating and dangerous passion for liberty, to which, when

a man has once tasted it, there is nothing that he will not sacrifice. Such

solitary freedom is all the more precious for having been bought by years

of tribulation. The select few have taken refuge in it to escape the

slavishness of the mediocre. It is a reaction against the tyranny of the

political and religious masses, the terrific crushing weight which

overbears the individual in France: the family, public opinion, the State,

secret societies, parties, coteries, schools. Imagine a prisoner who, to

escape, has to scale twenty great walls hemming him in. If he manages to

clear them all without breaking his neck, and, above all, without losing

heart, he must be strong indeed. A rough schooling for free-will! But those

who have gone through it bear the marks of it all their life in the mania

for independence, and the impossibility of their ever living in the lives

of others.

Side by side with this loneliness of pride, there was the loneliness of

renunciation. There were many, many good men in France whose goodness and

pride and affection came to nothing in withdrawal from life! A thousand

reasons, good and bad, stood in the way of action for them. With some it

was obedience, timidity, force of habit. With others human respect, fear of

ridicule, fear of being conspicuous, of being a mark for the comments of

the gallery, of meddling with things that did not concern them, of having

their disinterested actions attributed to motives of interest. There were

men who would not take part in any political or social struggle, women who

declined to undertake any philanthropic work, because there were too many

people engaged in these things who lacked conscience and even common sense,

and because they were afraid of the taint of these charlatans and fools. In

almost all such people there are disgust, weariness, dread of action,

suffering, ugliness, stupidity, risks, responsibilities: the terrible

"What's the use?" which destroys the good-will of so many of the French of

to-day. They are too intelligent,--(their intelligence has no wide sweep of

the wings),--they are too intent upon reasons for and against. They lack

force. They lack vitality. When a man's life beats strongly he never

wonders why he goes on living: he lives for the sake of living,--because it

is a splendid thing to be alive!

In fine, the best of them were a mixture of sympathetic and average

qualities: a modicum of philosophy, moderate desires, fond attachment to

the family, the earth, moral custom; discretion, dread of intruding, of

being a nuisance to other people: modesty of feeling, unbending reserve.

All these amiable and charming qualities could, in certain cases, be

brought into line with serenity, courage, and inward joy; but at bottom

there was a certain connection between them and poverty in the blood, the

progressive ebb of French vitality.

The pretty garden, beneath the house in which Christophe and Olivier lived,

tucked away between the four walls, was symbolical of that part of the life

of France. It was a little patch of green earth shut off from the outer

world. Only now and then did the mighty wind of the outer air, whirling

down, bring to the girl dreaming there the breath of the distant fields and

the vast earth.

* * * * *

Now that Christophe was beginning to perceive the hidden resources of

France he was furious that she should suffer the oppression of the rabble.

The half-light, in which the select and silent few were huddled away,

stifled him. Stoicism is a fine thing for those whose teeth are gone. But

he needed the open air, the great public, the sunshine of glory, the love

of thousands of men and women: he needed to hold close to him those whom he

loved, to pulverize his enemies, to fight and to conquer.

"You can," said Olivier. "You are strong. You were born to conquer through

your faults--(forgive me!)--as well as through your qualities. You are

lucky enough not to belong to a race and a nation which are too

aristocratic. Action does not repel you. If need be you could even become a

politician.--Besides, you have the inestimable good fortune to write music.

Nobody understands you, and so you can say anything and everything. If

people had any idea of the contempt for themselves which you put into your

music, and your faith in what they deny, and your perpetual hymn in praise

of what they are always trying to kill, they would never forgive you, and

you would be so fettered, and persecuted, and harassed, that you would

waste most of your strength in fighting them: when you had beaten them back

you would have no breath left for going on with your work: your life would

be finished. The great men who triumph have the good luck to be

misunderstood. They are admired for the very opposite of what they are."

"Pooh!" said Christophe. "You don't understand how cowardly your masters

are. At first I thought you were alone, and I used to find excuses for your

inaction. But, as a matter of fact, there's a whole army of you all of the

same mind. You are a hundred times stronger than your oppressors, you are a

thousand times more worthy, and you let them impose on you with their

effrontery! I don't understand you. You live in a most beautiful country,

you are gifted with the finest intelligence and the most human quality of

mind, and with it all you do nothing: you allow yourselves to be overborne

and outraged and trampled underfoot by a parcel of fools. Good Lord! Be

yourselves! Don't wait for Heaven or a Napoleon to come to your aid! Arise,

band yourselves together! Get to work, all of you! Sweep out your house!"

But Olivier shrugged his shoulders, and said, wearily and ironically:

"Grapple with them? No. That is not our game: we have better things to do.

Violence disgusts me. I know only too well what would happen. All the old

embittered failures, the young Royalist idiots, the odious apostles of

brutality and hatred, would seize on anything I did and bring it to

dishonor. Do you want me to adopt the old device of hate: _Fuori Barbari_,

or: _France for the French_?"

"Why not?" asked Christophe.

"No. Such a device is not for the French. Any attempt to propagate it among

our people under cover of patriotism must fail. It is good enough for

barbarian countries! But our country has no use for hatred. Our genius

never yet asserted itself by denying or destroying the genius of other

countries, but by absorbing them. Let the troublous North and the

loquacious South come to us...."

"And the poisonous East?"

"And the poisonous East: we will absorb it with the rest: we have absorbed

many others! I just laugh at the air of triumph they assume, and the

pusillanimity of some of my fellow-countrymen. They think they have

conquered us, they strut about our boulevards, and in our newspapers and

reviews, and in our theaters and in the political arena. Idiots! It is they

who are conquered! They will be assimilated after having fed us. Gaul has a

strong stomach: in these twenty centuries she has digested more than one

civilization. We are proof against poison.... It is meet that you Germans

should be afraid! You must be pure or impure. But with us it is not a

matter of purity but of universality. You have an Emperor: Great Britain

calls herself an Empire: but, in fact, it is our Latin Genius that is

Imperial. We are the citizens of the City of the Universe. _Urbis, Orbis_."

"That is all very well," said Christophe, "as long as the nation is healthy

and in the flower of its manhood. But there will come a day when its energy

declines: and then there is a danger of its being submerged by the influx

of foreigners. Between ourselves, does it not seem as though that day had

arrived?"

"People have been saying that for ages. Again and again our history has

given the lie to such fears. We have passed through many different trials

since the days of the Maid of Orleans, when Paris was deserted, and bands

of wolves prowled through the streets. Neither in the prevalent immorality,

nor the pursuit of pleasure, nor the laxness, nor the anarchy of the

present day, do I see any cause for fear. Patience! Those who wish to live

must endure in patience. I am sure that presently there will be a moral

reaction,--which will not be much better, and will probably lead to an

equal degree of folly; those who are now living on the corruptness of

public life will not be the least clamorous in the reaction!... But what

does that matter to us? All these movements do not touch the real people of

France. Rotten fruit does not corrupt the tree. It falls. Besides, all

these people are such a small part of the nation! What does it matter to us

whether they live or die? Why should I bother to organize leagues and

revolutions against them? The existing evil is not the work of any form of

government. It is the leprosy of luxury, a contagion spread by the

parasites of intellectual and material wealth. Such parasites will perish."

"After they have sapped your vitality."

"It is impossible to despair of such a race. There is in it such hidden

virtue, such a power of light and practical idealism, that they creep into

the veins even of those who are exploiting and ruining the nation. Even the

grasping, self-seeking politicians succumb to its fascination. Even the

most mediocre of men when they are in power are gripped by the greatness of

its Destiny: it lifts them out of themselves: the torch is passed on from

hand to hand among them: one after another they resume the holy war against

darkness. They are drawn onward by the genius of the people: willy-nilly

they fulfil the law of the God whom they deny, _Gesta Dei per Francos_....

O my beloved country, I will never lose my faith in thee! And though in thy

trials thou didst perish, yet would I find in that only a reason the more

for my proud belief, even to the bitter end, in our mission in the world. I

will not have my beloved France fearfully shutting herself up in a

sickroom, and closing every inlet to the outer air. I have no mind to

prolong a sickly existence. When a nation has been so great as we have

been, then it were far better to die rather than to sink from greatness.

Therefore let the ideas of the world rush into the channels of our minds! I

am not afraid. The floor will go down of its own accord after it has

enriched the soil of France with its ooze."

"My poor dear fellow," said Christophe, "but it's a grim prospect in the

meanwhile. Where will you be when your France emerges from the Nile? Don't

you think it would be better to fight against it? You wouldn't risk

anything except defeat, and you seem inclined to impose that on yourself as

long as you like."

"I should be risking much more than defeat," said Olivier. "I should be

running the risk of losing my peace of mind, which I prize far more than

victory. I will not be a party to hatred. I will be just to all my enemies.

In the midst of passion I wish to preserve the clarity of my vision, to

understand and love everything."

* * * * *

But Christophe, to whom this love of life, detached from life, seemed to be

very little different from resignation and acceptance of death, felt in his

heart, as in Empedocles of old, the stirring of a hymn to Hatred and to

Love, the brother of Hate, fruitful Love, tilling and sowing good seed in

the earth. He did not share Olivier's calm fatalism: he had no such

confidence in the continuance of a race which did not defend itself, and

his desire was to appeal to all the healthy forces of the nation, to call

forth and band together all the honest men in the whole of France.

* * * * *

Just as it is possible to learn more of a human being in one minute of love

than in months of observation, so Christophe had learned more about France

in a week of intimacy with Olivier, hardly ever leaving the house, than

during a whole year of blind wandering through Paris, and standing at

attention at various intellectual and political gatherings. Amid the

universal anarchy in which he had been floundering, a soul like that of his

friend seemed to him veritably to be the "_Île de France_"--the island of

reason and serenity in the midst of the ocean. The inward peace which was

in Olivier was all the more striking, inasmuch as it had no intellectual

support,--as it existed amid unhappy circumstances,--(in poverty and

solitude, while the country of its birth was decadent),--and as its body

was weak, sickly, and nerve-ridden. That serenity was apparently not the

fruit of any effort of will striving to realize it,--(Olivier had little

will);--it came from the depths of his being and his race. In many of the

men of Olivier's acquaintance Christophe perceived the distant light of

that [Greek: sophrosynae],--"the silent calm of the motionless sea";--and

he, who knew, none better, the stormy, troublous depths of his own soul,

and how he had to stretch his will-power to the utmost to maintain the

balance in his lusty nature, marveled at its veiled harmony.

What he had seen of the inner France had upset all his preconceived ideas

about the character of the French. Instead of a gay, sociable, careless,

brilliant people, he saw men of a headstrong and close temper, living in

isolation, wrapped about with a seeming optimism, like a gleaming mist,

while they were in fact steeped in a deep-rooted and serene pessimism,

possessed by fixed ideas, intellectual passions, indomitable souls, which

it would have been easier to destroy than to alter. No doubt these men were

only the select few among the French: but Christophe wondered where they

could have come by their stoicism and their faith. Olivier told him:

"In defeat. It is you, my dear Christophe, who have forged us anew. Ah! But

we suffered for it, too. You can have no idea of the darkness in which we

grew up in a France humiliated and sore, which had come face to face with

death, and still felt the heavy weight of the murderous menace of force.

Our life, our genius, our French civilization, the greatness of a thousand

years,--we were conscious that France was in the hands of a brutal

conqueror who did not understand her, and hated her in his heart, and at

any moment might crush the life out of her for ever. And we had to live for

that and no other destiny! Have you ever thought of the French children

born in houses of death in the shadow of defeat, fed with ideas of

discouragement, trained to strike for a bloody, fatal, and perhaps futile

revenge: for even as babies, the first thing they learned was that there

was no justice, there was no justice in the world: might prevailed against

right! For a child to open its eyes upon such things is for its soul to be

degraded or uplifted for ever. Many succumbed: they said: 'Since it is so,

why struggle against it? Why do anything? Everything is nothing. We'll not

think of it. Let us enjoy ourselves.'--But those who stood out against it

are proof against fire: no disillusion can touch their faith: for from

their earliest childhood they have known that their road could never lead

them near the road to happiness, and that they had no choice but to follow

it, else they would suffocate. Such assurance is not come by all at once.

It is not to be expected of boys of fifteen. There is bitter agony before

it is attained, and many tears are shed. But it is well that it should be

so. It must be so....

"_O Faith, virgin of steel...._

"Dig deep with thy lance into the downtrodden hearts of the peoples!

peoples!..."

In silence Christophe pressed Olivier's hand.

"Dear Christophe," said Olivier, "your Germany has made us suffer indeed."

And Christophe begged for forgiveness almost as though he had been

responsible for it.

"There's nothing for you to worry about," said Olivier, smiling. "The good

it has unintentionally done us far outweighs the ill. You have rekindled

our idealism, you have revived in us the keen desire for knowledge and

faith, you have filled our France with schools, you have raised to the

highest pitch the creative powers of a Pasteur, whose discoveries are alone

worth more than your indemnity of two hundred million; you have given new

life to our poetry, our painting, our music: to you we owe the new

awakening of the consciousness of our race. We have reward enough for the

effort needed to learn to set our faith before our happiness: for, in doing

so, we have come by a feeling of such moral force, that, amid the apathy of

the world, we have no doubt, even of victory in the end. Though we are few

in number, my dear Christophe, though we seem so weak,--a drop of water in

the ocean of German power--we believe that the drop of water will in the

end color the whole ocean. The Macedonian phalanx will destroy the mighty

armies of the plebs of Europe."

Christophe looked down at the puny Olivier, in whose eyes there shone the

light of faith, and he said:

"Poor weakly little Frenchmen! You are stronger than we are."

"O beneficent defeat," Olivier went on. "Blessed be that disaster! We will

no more deny it! We are its children."