II

Defeat new-forges the chosen among men: it sorts out the people: it winnows

out those who are purest and strongest, and makes them purer and stronger.

But it hastens the downfall of the rest, or cuts short their flight. In

that way it separates the mass of the people, who slumber or fall by the

way, from the chosen few who go marching on. The chosen few know it and

suffer: even in the most valiant there is a secret melancholy, a feeling of

their own impotence and isolation. Worst of all,--cut off from the great

mass of their people, they are also cut off from each other. Each must

fight for his own hand. The strong among them think only of

self-preservation. _O man, help thyself!_... They never dream that the

sturdy saying means: _O men, help yourselves!_ In all there is a want of

confidence, they lack free-flowing sympathy, and do not feel the need of

common action which makes a race victorious, the feeling of overflowing

strength, of reaching upward to the zenith.

Christophe and Olivier knew something of all this. In Paris, full of men

and women who could have understood them, in the house peopled with unknown

friends, they were as solitary as in a desert of Asia.

* * * * *

They were very poor. Their resources were almost nil. Christophe had only

the copying and transcriptions of music given him by Hecht. Olivier had

very unwisely thrown up his post at the University during the period of

depression following on his sister's death, which had been accentuated by

an unhappy love affair with a young lady he had met at Madame

Nathan's:--(he had never mentioned it to Christophe, for he was modest

about his troubles: part of his charm lay in the little air of mystery

which he always preserved about his private affairs, even with his friend,

from whom, however, he made no attempt to conceal anything).--In his

depressed condition when he had longed for silence his work as a lecturer

became intolerable to him. He had never cared for the profession, which

necessitates a certain amount of showing off, and thinking aloud, while it

gives a man no time to himself. If teaching in a school is to be at all a

noble thing it must be a matter of a sort of apostolic vocation, and that

Olivier did not possess in the slightest degree: and lecturing for any of

the Faculties means being perpetually in contact with the public, which is

a grim fate for a man, like Olivier, with a desire for solitude. On several

occasions he had had to speak in public: it gave him a singular feeling of

humiliation. At first he loathed being exhibited on a platform. He _saw_

the audience, felt it, as with antennæ, and knew that for the most part it

was composed of idle people who were there only for the sake of having

something to do: and the role of official entertainer was not at all to his

liking. Worst of all, speaking from a platform is almost bound to distort

ideas: if the speaker does not take care there is a danger of his passing

gradually from a certain theatricality in gesture, diction, attitude, and

the form in which he presents his ideas--to mental trickery. A lecture is a

thing hovering in the balance between tiresome comedy and polite pedantry.

For an artist who is rather bashful and proud, a lecture, which is a

monologue shouted in the presence of a few hundred unknown, silent people,

a ready-made garment warranted to fit all sizes, though it actually fits no

one, is a thing intolerably false. Olivier, being more and more under the

necessity of withdrawing into himself and saying nothing which was not

wholly the expression of his thought, gave up the profession of teaching,

which he had had so much difficulty in entering: and, as he no longer had

his sister to check him in his tendency to dream, he began to write. He was

naïve enough to believe that his undoubted worth as an artist could not

fail to be recognized without his doing anything to procure recognition.

He was quickly undeceived. He found it impossible to get anything

published. He had a jealous love of liberty, which gave him a horror of

everything that might impinge on it, and made him live apart, like a poor

starved plant, among the solid masses of the political churches whose

baleful associations divided the country and the Press between them. He was

just as much cut off from all the literary coteries and rejected by them.

He had not, nor could he have, a single friend among them. He was repelled

by the hardness, the dryness, the egoism of the intellectuals--(except for

the very few who were following a real vocation, or were absorbed by a

passionate enthusiasm for scientific research). That man is a sorry

creature who has let his heart atrophy for the sake of his mind--when his

mind is small. In such a man there is no kindness, only a brain like a

dagger in a sheath: there is no knowing but it will one day cut your

throat. Against such a man it is necessary to be always armed. Friendship

is only possible with honest men, who love fine things for their own sake,

and not for what they can make out of them,--those who live outside their

art. The majority of men cannot breathe the atmosphere of art. Only the

very great can live in it without loss of love, which is the source of

life.

Olivier could only count on himself. And that was a very precarious

support. Any fresh step was a matter of extreme difficulty to him. He was

not disposed to accept humiliation for the sake of his work. He went hot

with shame at the base and obsequious homage which young authors forced

themselves to pay to a well-known theater manager, who took advantage of

their cowardice, and treated them as he would never dare to treat his

servants. Olivier could never have done that to save his life. He just sent

his manuscripts by post, or left them at the offices of the theaters or the

reviews, where they lay for months unread. However, one day by chance he

met one of his old schoolfellows, an amiable loafer, who had still a sort

of grateful admiration for him for the ease and readiness with which

Olivier had done his exercises: he knew nothing at all about literature:

but he knew several literary men, which was much better: he was rich and in

society, something of a snob, and so he let them, discreetly, exploit him.

He put in a word for Olivier with the editor of an important review in

which he was a shareholder: and at once one of his forgotten manuscripts

was disinterred and read: and, after much temporization,--(for, if the

article seemed to be worth something, the author's name, being unknown, was

valueless),--they decided to accept it. When he heard the good news Olivier

thought his troubles were over. They were only just beginning.

It is comparatively easy to have an article accepted in Paris: but getting

it published is quite a different matter. The unhappy writer has to wait

and wait, for months, if need be for life, if he has not acquired the trick

of flattering people, or bullying them, and showing himself from time to

time at the receptions of these petty monarchs, and reminding them of his

existence, and making it clear that he means to go on being a nuisance to

them as long as they make it necessary. Olivier just stayed at home, and

wore himself out with waiting. At best he would write a letter or two which

were never answered. He would lose heart, and be unable to work. It was

quite absurd, but there was nothing to be done. He would wait for post

after post, sitting at his desk, with his mind blanketed by all sorts of

vague injuries: then he would get up and go downstairs to the porter's

room, and look hopefully in his letter-box, only to meet with

disappointment: he would walk blindly about with no thought in his head but

to go back and look again: and when the last post had gone, when the

silence of his room was broken only by the heavy footsteps of the people in

the room above, he would feel strangled by the cruel indifference of it

all. Only a word of reply, only a word! Could that be refused him if only

in charity? And yet those who refused him that had no idea of the hurt they

were dealing him. Every man sees the world in his own image. Those who have

no life in their hearts see the universe as withered and dry: and they

never dream of the anguish of expectation, hope, and suffering which rends

the hearts of the young: or if they give it a thought, they judge them

coldly, with the weary, ponderous irony of those who are surfeited and

beyond the freshness of life.

At last the article appeared. Olivier had waited so long that it gave him

no pleasure: the thing was dead for him. And yet he hoped desperately that

it would be a living thing for others. There were flashes of poetry and

intelligence in it which could not pass unnoticed. It fell upon absolute

silence.--He made two or three more attempts. Being attached to no clique

he met with silence or hostility everywhere. He could not understand it. He

had thought simply that everybody must be naturally well-disposed towards

the work of a new man, even if it was not very good. It always represents

such an amount of work, and surely people would be grateful to a man who

has tried to give others a little beauty, a little force, a little joy. But

he only met with indifference or disparagement. And yet he knew that he

could not be alone in feeling what he had written, and that it must be in

the minds of other good men. He did not know that such good men did not

read him, and had nothing to do with literary opinion, or with anything, or

with anything. If here and there there were a few men whom his words had

reached, men who sympathized with him, they would never tell him so: they

remained immured in their unnatural silence. Just as they refrained from

voting, so they took no share in art: they did not read books, which

shocked them: they did not go to the theater, which disgusted them: but

they let their enemies vote, elect their enemies, engineer a scandalous

success and a vulgar celebrity for books and plays and ideas which only

represented an impudent minority of the people of France.

Since Olivier could not count on those who were mentally akin to himself,

as they did not read, he was delivered up to the hosts of the enemy, to the

mercy of men of letters, who were for the most part hostile to his ideas,

and the critics who were at their beck and call.

His first bouts with them left him bleeding. He was as sensitive to

criticism as old Bruchner, who could not bear to have his work performed,

because he had suffered so much from the malevolence of the Press. He did

not even win the support of his former colleagues at the University, who,

thanks to their profession, did preserve a certain sense of the

intellectual traditions of France, and might have understood him. But for

the most part these excellent young men, cramped by discipline, absorbed in

their work, often rather embittered by their thankless duties, could not

forgive Olivier for trying to break away and do something else Like good

little officials, many of them were inclined only to admit the superiority

of talent when it was consonant with hierarchic superiority.

In such a position three courses were open to him: to break down resistance

by force: to submit to humiliating compromises: or to make up his mind to

write only for himself. Olivier was incapable of the two first: he

surrendered to the third. To make a living he went through the drudgery of

teaching and went on writing, and as there was no possibility of his work

attaining full growth in publicity, it became more and more involved,

chimerical, and unreal.

Christophe dropped like a thunderbolt into the midst of his dim crepuscular

life. He was furious at the wickedness of people and Olivier's patience.

"Have you no blood in your veins?" he would say. "How can you stand such a

life? You know your own superiority to these swine, and yet you let them

squeeze the life out of you without a murmur!"

"What can I do?" Olivier would say. "I can't defend myself. It revolts me

to fight with people I despise: I know that they can use every weapon

against me: and I can't. Not only should I loathe to stoop to use the means

they employ, but I should be afraid of hurting them. When I was a boy I

used to let my schoolfellows beat me as much as they liked. They used to

think me a coward, and that I was afraid of being hit. I was more afraid of

hitting than of being hit. I remember some one saying to me one day, when

one of my tormentors was bullying me: 'Why don't you stop it once and for

all, and give him a kick in the stomach?' That filled me with horror. I

would much rather be thrashed."

"There's no blood in your veins," said Christophe. "And on top of that, all

sorts of Christian ideas!... Your religious education in France is reduced

to the Catechism: the emasculate Gospel, the tame, boneless New

Testament.... Humanitarian clap-trap, always tearful.... And the

Revolution, Jean-Jacques, Robespierre, '48, and, on top of that, the

Jews!... Take a dose of the full-blooded Old Testament every morning."

Olivier protested. He had a natural antipathy for the Old Testament, a

feeling which dated back to his childhood, when he used secretly to pore

over an illustrated Bible, which had been in the library at home, where it

was never read, and the children were even forbidden to open it. The

prohibition was useless! Olivier could never keep the book open for long.

He used quickly to grow irritated and saddened by it, and then he would

close it: and he would find consolation in plunging into the _Iliad_, or

the _Odyssey_, or the _Arabian Nights_.

"The gods of the _Iliad_ are men, beautiful, mighty, vicious: I can

understand them," said Olivier. "I like them or dislike them: even when I

dislike them I still love them: I am in love with them. More than once,

with Patroclus, I have kissed the lovely feet of Achilles as he lay

bleeding. But the God of the Bible is an old Jew, a maniac, a monomaniac, a

raging madman, who spends his time in growling and hurling threats, and

howling like an angry wolf, raving to himself in the confinement of that

cloud of his. I don't understand him. I don't love him; his perpetual

curses make my head ache, and his savagery fills me with horror:

"_The burden of Moab...._

"_The burden of Damascus...._

"_The burden of Babylon...._

"_The burden of Egypt...._

"_The burden of the desert of the sea...._

"_The burden of the valley of vision...._

"He is a lunatic who thinks himself judge, public prosecutor, and

executioner rolled into one, and, even in the courtyard of his prison, he

pronounces sentence of death on the flowers and the pebbles. One is

stupefied by the tenacity of his hatred, which fills the book with bloody

cries ...--'a cry of destruction,... the cry is gone round about the

borders of Moab: the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof

unto Beerelim....'

"Every now and then he takes a rest, and looks round on his massacres, and

the little children done to death, and the women outraged and butchered:

and he laughs like one of the captains of Joshua, feasting after the sack

of a town:

"'_And the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people a feast of fat things;

a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the

lees well refined.... The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is

made fat with fatness, with the fat of the kidneys of rams...._'

"But worst of all is the perfidy with which this God sends his prophet to

make men blind, so that in due course he may have a reason for making them

suffer:

"'_Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy and shut

their eyes: lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and

understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.--Lord, how

long?--Until the cities be wasted without inhabitants, and the houses

without men, and the land be utterly desolate...._' Oh! I have never found

a man so evil as that!...

"I'm not so foolish as to deny the force of the language. But I cannot

separate thought and form: and if I do occasionally admire this Hebrew God,

it is with the same sort of admiration that I feel for a viper, or a

...--(I'm trying in vain to find a Shakespearean monster as an example: I

can't find one: even Shakespeare never begat such a hero of Hatred--saintly

and virtuous Hatred). Such a book is a terrible thing. Madness is always

contagious. And that particular madness is all the more dangerous inasmuch

as it sets up its own murderous pride as an instrument of purification.

England makes me shudder when I think that her people have for centuries

been nourished on no other fare.... I'm glad to think that there is the

dike of the Channel between them and me. I shall never believe that a

nation is altogether civilized as long as the Bible is its staple food."

"In that case," said Christophe, "you will have to be just as much afraid

of me, for I get drunk on it. It is the very marrow of a race of lions.

Stout hearts are those which feed on it. Without the antidote of the Old

Testament the Gospel is tasteless and unwholesome fare. The Bible is the

bone and sinew of nations with the will to live. A man must fight, and he

must hate."

"I hate hatred," said Olivier.

"I only wish you did!" retorted Christophe.

"You're right. I'm too weak even for that. What would you? I can't help

seeing the arguments in favor of my enemies. And I say to myself over and

over again, like Chardin: 'Gentleness! Gentleness!'...."

"What a silly sheep you are!" said Christophe. "But whether you like it or

not, I'm going to make you leap the ditch you're shying at, and I'm going

to drag you on and beat the big drum for you."

* * * * *

In the upshot he took Olivier's affairs in hand and set out to do battle

for him. His first efforts were not very successful. He lost his temper at

the very outset, and did his friend much harm by pleading his cause: he

recognized what he had done very quickly, and was in despair at his own

clumsiness.

Olivier did not stand idly by. He went and fought for Christophe. In spite

of his fear and dislike of fighting, in spite of his lucid and ironical

mind, which scorned any sort of exaggeration in word and deed, when it came

to defending Christophe he was far more violent than anybody else, and even

than Christophe himself. He lost his head. Love makes a man irrational, and

Olivier was no exception to the rule.--However, he was cleverer than

Christophe. Though he was uncompromising and clumsy in handling his own

affairs, when it came to promoting Christophe's success he was politic and

even tricky: he displayed an energy and ingenuity well calculated to win

support: he succeeded in interesting various musical critics and Mæcenases

in Christophe, though he would have been utterly ashamed to approach them

with his own work.

In spite of everything they found it very difficult to better their lot.

Their love for each other made them do many stupid things. Christophe got

into debt over getting a volume of Olivier's poems published secretly, and

not a single copy was sold. Olivier induced Christophe to give a concert,

and hardly anybody came to it. Faced with the empty hall, Christophe

consoled himself bravely with Handel's quip: "Splendid! My music will sound

all the better...." But these bold attempts did not repay the money they

cost: and they would go back to their rooms full of indignation at the

indifference of the world.

* * * * *

In their difficulties the only man who came to their aid was a Jew, a man

of forty, named Taddée Mooch. He kept an art-photograph shop: but although

he was interested in his trade and brought much taste and skill to bear on

it, he was interested in so many things outside it that he was apt to

neglect his business for them. When he did attend to his business he was

chiefly engaged in perfecting technical devices, and he would lose his head

over new reproduction processes, which, in spite of their ingenuity, hardly

ever succeeded, and always cost him a great deal of money. He was a

voracious reader, and was always hard on the heels of every new idea in

philosophy, art, science, and politics: he had an amazing knack of finding

out men of originality and independence of character: it was as though he

answered to their magnetism. He was a sort of connecting-link between

Olivier's friends, who were all as isolated as himself, and all working in

their several directions. He used to go from one to the other, and through

him there was established between them a complete circuit of ideas, though

neither he nor they had any notion of it.

When Olivier first proposed to introduce him to Christophe, Christophe

refused: he was sick of his experiences with the tribe of Israel. Olivier

laughed and insisted on it, saying that he knew no more of the Jews than he

did of France. At last Christophe consented, but when he saw Taddée Mooch

he made a face. In appearance Mooch was extraordinarily Jewish: he was the

Jew as he is drawn by those who dislike the race: short, bald, badly built,

with a greasy nose and heavy eyes goggling behind large spectacles: his

face was hidden by a rough, black, scrubby beard: he had hairy hands, long

arms, and short bandy legs: a little Syrian Baal. But he had such a kindly

expression that Christophe was touched by it. Above all, he was very

simple, and never talked too much. He never paid exaggerated compliments,

but just dropped the right word, pat. He was very eager to be of service,

and before any kindness was asked of him it would be done. He came often,

too often; and he almost always brought good news: work for one or other of

them, a commission for an article or a lecture for Olivier, or

music-lessons for Christophe. He never stayed long. It was a sort of

affectation with him never to intrude. Perhaps he saw Christophe's

irritation, for his first impulse was always towards an ejaculation of

impatience when he saw the bearded face of the Carthaginian idol,--(he used

to call him "Moloch")--appear round the door: but the next moment it would

be gone, and he would feel nothing but gratitude for his perfect kindness.

Kindness is not a rare quality with the Jews: of all the virtues it is the

most readily admitted among them, even when they do not practise it.

Indeed, in most of them it remains negative or neutral: indulgence,

indifference, dislike for hurting anybody, ironic tolerance. With Mooch it

was an active passion. He was always ready to devote himself to some cause

or person: to his poor co-religionists, to the Russian refugees, to the

oppressed of every nation, to unfortunate artists, to the alleviation of

every kind of misfortune, to every generous cause. His purse was always

open: and however thinly lined it might be, he could always manage to

squeeze a mite out of it: when it was empty he would squeeze the mite out

of some one else's purse: if he could do any one a service no pains were

too great for him to take, no distance was too far for him to go. He did it

simply--with exaggerated simplicity. He was a little apt to talk too much

about his simplicity and sincerity: but the great thing was that he was

both simple and sincere.

Christophe was torn between irritation and sympathy with Mooch, and one day

he said an innocently cruel thing, though he said it with the air of a

spoiled child. Mooch's kindness had touched him, and he took his hands

affectionately and said:

"What a pity!... What a pity it is that you are a Jew!"

Olivier started and blushed, as though the shaft had been leveled at

himself. He was most unhappy, and tried to heal the wound his friend had

dealt.

Mooch smiled, with sad irony, and replied calmly:

"It is an even greater misfortune to be a man."

To Christophe the remark was nothing but the whim of a moment. But its

pessimism cut deeper than he imagined: and Olivier, with his subtle

perception, felt it intuitively. Beneath the Mooch of their acquaintance

there was another different Mooch, who was in many ways exactly the

opposite. His apparent nature was the result of a long struggle with his

real nature. Though he was apparently so simple he had a distorted mind:

when he gave way to it he was forced to complicate simple things and to

endow his most genuine feelings with a deliberately ironical character.

Though he was apparently modest and, if anything, too humble, at heart he

was proud, and knew it, and strove desperately to whip it out of himself.

His smiling optimism, his incessant activity, his perpetual business in

helping others, were the mask of a profound nihilism, a deadly despondency

which dared not see itself face to face. Mooch made a show of immense faith

in all sorts of things: in the progress of humanity, in the future of the

pure Jewish spirit, in the destiny of France, the soldier of the new

spirit--(he was apt to identify the three causes). Olivier was not taken in

by it, and used to say to Christophe:

"At heart he believes in nothing."

With all his ironical common sense and calmness Mooch was a neurasthenic

who dared not look upon the void within himself. He had terrible moments

when he felt his nothingness: sometimes he would wake suddenly in the

middle of the night screaming with terror. And he would cast about for

things to do, like a drowning man clinging to a life-buoy.

It is a costly privilege to be a member of a race which is exceeding old.

It means the bearing of a frightful burden of the past, trials and

tribulations, weary experience, disillusion of mind and heart,--all the

ferment of immemorial life, at the bottom of which is a bitter deposit of

irony and boredom.... Boredom, the immense boredom of the Semites, which

has nothing in common with our Aryan boredom, though that, too, makes us

suffer; while it is at least traceable to definite causes, and vanishes

when those causes cease to exist: for in most cases it is only the result

of regret that we cannot have what we want. But in some of the Jews the

very source of joy and life is tainted with a deadly poison. They have no

desire, no interest in anything: no ambition, no love, no pleasure. Only

one thing continues to exist, not intact, but morbid and fine-drawn, in

these men uprooted from the East, worn out by the amount of energy they

have had to give out for centuries, longing for quietude, without having

the power to attain it: thought, endless analysis, which forbids the

possibility of enjoyment, and leaves them no courage for action. The most

energetic among them set themselves parts to play, and play them, rather

than act on their own account. It is a strange thing that in many of

them--and not in the least intelligent or the least seriously minded--this

lack of interest in life prompts the impulse, or the unavowed desire, to

act a part, to play at life,--the only means they know of living!

Mooch was an actor after his fashion. He rushed about to try to deaden his

senses. But whereas most people only bestir themselves for selfish reasons,

he was restlessly active in procuring the happiness of others. His devotion

to Christophe was both touching and a bore. Christophe would snub him and

then immediately be sorry for it. But Mooch never bore him any ill-will.

Nothing abashed him. Not that he had any ardent affection for Christophe.

It was devotion that he loved rather than the men to whom he devoted

himself. They were only an excuse for doing good, for living.

He labored to such effect that he managed to induce Hecht to publish

Christophe's _David_ and some other compositions. Hecht appreciated

Christophe's talent, but he was in no hurry to reveal it to the world. It

was not until he saw that Mooch was on the point of arranging the

publication at his own expense with another firm that he took the

initiative out of vanity.

And on another occasion, when things were very serious and Olivier was ill

and they had no money, Mooch thought of going to Félix Weil, the rich

archeologist, who lived in the same house. Mooch and Weil were acquainted,

but had little sympathy with one another. They were too different: Mooch's

restlessness and mysticism and revolutionary ideas and "vulgar" manners,

which, perhaps, he exaggerated, were an incentive to the irony of Félix

Weil, with his calm, mocking temper, his distinguished manners and

conservative mind. They had only one thing in common: they were both

equally lacking in any profound interest in action: and if they did indulge

in action, it was not from faith, but from their tenacious and mechanical

vitality. But neither was prepared to admit it: they preferred to give

their minds to the parts they were playing, and their different parts had

very little in common. And so Mooch was quite coldly received by Weil: when

he tried to interest him in the artistic projects of Olivier and

Christophe, he was brought up sharp against a mocking skepticism. Mooch's

perpetual embarkations for one Utopia or another were a standing joke in

Jewish society, where he was regarded as a dangerous visionary. But on this

occasion, as on so many others, he was not put out: and he went on speaking

about the friendship of Christophe and Olivier until he roused Weil's

interest. He saw that and went on.

He had touched a responsive chord. The friendless solitary old man

worshiped friendship: the one great love of his life had been a friendship

which he had left behind him: it was his inward treasure: when he thought

of it he felt a better man. He had founded institutions in his friend's

name, and had dedicated his books to his memory. He was touched by what

Mooch told him of the mutual tenderness of Christophe and Olivier. His own

story had been something like it. His lost friend had been a sort of elder

brother to him, a comrade of youth, a guide whom he had idolized. That

friend had been one of those young Jews, burning with intelligence and

generous ardor, who suffer from the hardness of their surroundings, and set

themselves to uplift their race, and, through their race, the world, and

burn hotly into flame, and, like a torch of resin, flare for a few hours

and then die. The flame of his life had kindled the apathy of young Weil.

He had raised him from the earth. While his friend was alive Weil had

marched by his side in the shining light of his stoical faith,--faith in

science, in the power of the spirit, in a future happiness,--the rays of

which were shed upon everything with which that messianic soul came in

contact. When he was left alone, in his weakness and irony, Weil fell from

the heights of that idealism into the sands of that Book of Ecclesiastes,

which exists in the mind of every Jew and saps his spiritual vitality. But

he had never forgotten the hours spent in the light with his friend:

jealously he guarded its clarity, now almost entirely faded. He had never

spoken of him to a soul, not even to his wife, whom he loved: it was a

sacred thing. And the old man, who was considered prosaic and dry of heart,

and nearing the end of his life, used to say to himself the bitter and

tender words of a Brahmin of ancient India:

"_The poisoned tree of the world puts forth two fruits sweeter than the

waters of the fountain of life: one is poetry, the other, friendship._"

From that time on he took an interest in Christophe and Olivier. He knew

how proud they were, and got Mooch, without saying anything, to send him

Olivier's volume of poems, which had just been published: and, without the

two friends having anything to do with it, without their having even the

smallest idea of what he was up to, he managed to get the Academy to award

the book a prize, which came in the nick of time to help them in their

difficulty.

When Christophe discovered that such unlooked-for assistance came from a

man of whom he was inclined to think ill, he regretted all the unkind

things he had said or thought of him: he gulped down his dislike of

calling, and went and thanked him. His good intentions met with no reward.

Old Weil's irony was excited by Christophe's young enthusiasm, although he

tried hard to conceal it from him, and they did not get on at all well.

That very day, when Christophe returned, irritated, though still grateful,

to his attic, after his interview with Weil, he found Mooch there, doing

Olivier some fresh act of service, and also a review containing a

disparaging article on his music by Lucien Lévy-Coeur;--it was not written

in a vein of frank criticism, but took the insultingly kindly line of

chaffing him and banteringly considering him alongside certain third-rate

and fourth-rate musicians whom he loathed.

"You see," said Christophe to Olivier, after Mooch had gone, "we always

have to deal with Jews, nothing but Jews! Perhaps we're Jews ourselves? Do

tell me that we're not. We seem to attract them. We're always knocking up

against them, both friends and foes."

"The reason is," said Olivier, "that they are more intelligent than the

rest. The Jews are almost the only people in France to whom a free man can

talk of new and vital things. The rest are stuck fast in the past among

dead things. Unfortunately the past does not exist for the Jews, or at

least it is not the same for them as for us. With them we can only talk

about the things of to-day: with our fellow-countrymen we can only discuss

the things of yesterday. Look at the activity of the Jews in every kind of

way: commerce, industry, education, science, philanthropy, art...."

"Don't let's talk about art," said Christophe.

"I don't say that I am always in sympathy with what they do: very often I

detest it. But at least they are alive, and can understand men who are

alive. It is all very well for us to criticise and make fun of the Jews,

and speak ill of them. We can't do without them."

"Don't exaggerate," said Christophe jokingly. "I could do without them

perfectly."

"You might go on living perhaps. But what good would that be to you if your

life and your work remained unknown, as they probably would without the

Jews? Would the members of your own religion come to your assistance? The

Catholic Church lets the best of its members perish without raising a hand

to help them. Men who are religious from the very bottom of their hearts,

men who give their lives in the defense of God,--if they have dared to

break away from Catholic dominion and shake off the authority of Rome,--at

once find the unworthy mob who call themselves Catholic not only

indifferent, but hostile: they condemn them to silence, and abandon them to

the mercy of the common enemy. If a man of independent spirit, be he never

so great and Christian at heart, is not a Christian as a matter of

obedience, it is nothing to the Catholics that in him is incarnate all that

is most pure and most truly divine in their faith. He is not of the pack,

the blind and deaf sect which refuses to think for itself. He is cast out,

and the rest rejoice to see him suffering alone, torn to pieces by the

enemy, and crying for help to those who are his brothers, for whose faith

he is done to death. In the Catholicism of to-day there is a horrible,

death-dealing power of inertia. It would find it far easier to forgive its

enemies than those who wish to awake it and restore it to life.... My dear

Christophe, where should we be, and what should we do--we, who are

Catholics by birth, we, who have shaken free, without the little band of

free Protestants and Jews? The Jews in Europe of to-day are the most active

and living agents of good and evil. They carry hither and thither the

pollen of thought. Have not your worst enemies and your friends from the

very beginning been Jews?"

"That's true," said Christophe. "They have given me encouragement and help,

and said things to me which have given me new life for the struggle, by

showing me that I was understood. No doubt very few of my friends have

remained faithful to me: their friendship was but a fire of straw. No

matter! That fleeting light is a great thing in darkness. You are right: we

mustn't be ungrateful."

"We must not be stupid, either," replied Olivier. "We must not mutilate our

already diseased civilization by lopping off some of its most living

branches. If we were so unfortunate as to have the Jews driven from Europe,

we should be left so poor in intelligence and power for action that we

should be in danger of utter bankruptcy. In France especially, in the

present condition of French vitality, their expulsion would mean a more

deadly drain on the blood of the nation than the expulsion of the

Protestants in the seventeenth century.--No doubt, for the time being, they

do occupy a position out of all proportion to their true merit. They do

take advantage of the present moral and political anarchy, which in no

small degree they help to aggravate, because it suits them, and because it

is natural to them to do so. The best of them, like our friend Mooch, make

the mistake, in all sincerity, of identifying the destiny of France with

their Jewish dreams, which are often more dangerous than useful. But you

can't blame them for wanting to build France in their own image: it means

that they love the country. If their love becomes a public danger, all we

have to do is to defend ourselves and keep them in their place, which, in

France, is the second. Not that I think their race inferior to ours:--(all

these questions of the supremacy of races are idiotic and disgusting).--But

we cannot admit that a foreign race which has not yet been fused into our

own, can possibly know better than we do what suits us. The Jews are well

off in France: I am glad of it: but they must not think of turning France

into Judea! An intelligent and strong Government which was able to keep the

Jews in their place would make them one of the most useful instruments for

the building of the greatness of France: and it would be doing both them

and us a great service. These hypernervous, restless, and unsettled

creatures need the restraint of law and the firm hand of a just master, in

whom there is no weakness, to curb them. The Jews are like women: admirable

when they are reined in; but, with the Jews as with women, their use of

mastery is an abomination, and those who submit to it present a pitiful and

absurd spectacle."

* * * * *

In spite of their love for each other, and the intuitive knowledge that

came with it, there were many things which Christophe and Olivier could not

understand in each other, things, too, which shocked them. In the beginning

of their friendship, when each tried instinctively only to suffer the

existence of those qualities in himself which were most like the qualities

of his friend, they never remarked them. It was only gradually that the

different aspects of their two nationalities appeared on the surface again,

more sharply defined than before: for being in contrast, each showed the

other up. There were moments of difficulty, moments when they clashed,

which, with all their fond indulgence, they could not altogether avoid.

Sometimes they misunderstood each other. Olivier's mind was a mixture of

faith, liberty, passion, irony, and universal doubt, for which Christophe

could not find any working formula.

Olivier, on his part, was distressed by Christophe's lack of psychology:

being of an old intellectual stock, and therefore aristocratic, he was

moved to smile at the awkwardness of such, a vigorous, though lumbering and

single mind, which had no power of self-analysis, and was always being

taken in by others and by itself. Christophe's sentimentality, his noisy

outbursts, his facile emotions, used sometimes to exasperate Olivier, to

whom they seemed absurd. Not to speak of a certain worship of force, the

German conviction of the excellence of fist-morality, _Faustrecht_, to

which Olivier and his countrymen had good reason for not subscribing.

And Christophe could not bear Olivier's irony, which used sometimes to make

him furious with exasperation: he could not bear his mania for arguing, his

perpetual analysis, and the curious intellectual immorality, which was

surprising in a man who set so much store by moral purity as Olivier, and

arose from the very breadth of his mind, to which every kind of negation

was detestable,--so that he took a delight in the contemplation of ideas

the opposite of his own. Olivier's outlook on things was in some sort

historical and panoramic: it was so necessary for him to understand

everything that he always saw reasons both for and against, and supported

each in turn, according as the opposite thesis was put forward: and so amid

such contradictions he lost his way. He would leave Christophe hopelessly

perplexed. It was not that he had any desire to contradict or any taste for

paradox: it was an imperious need in him for justice and common sense: he

was exasperated by the stupidity of any assumption, and he had to react

against it. The crudeness with which Christophe judged immoral men and

actions, by seeing everything as much coarser and more brutal than it

really was, distressed Olivier, who was just as moral, but was not of the

same unbending steel; he allowed himself to be tempted, colored, and molded

by outside influences. He would protest against Christophe's exaggerations

and fly off into exaggeration in the opposite direction. Almost every day

this perverseness of mind would make him take up the cudgels for his

adversaries against his friends. Christophe would lose his temper. He would

cry out upon Olivier's sophistry and his indulgence of hateful things and

people. Olivier would smile: he knew the utter absence of illusion that lay

behind his indulgence: he knew that Christophe believed in many more things

than he did, and had a greater power of acceptance! But Christophe would

look neither to the right hand nor the left, but went straight ahead. He

was especially angry with Parisian "kindness."

"Their great argument, of which they are so proud, in favor of 'pardoning'

rascals, is," he would say, "that all rascals are sufficiently unhappy in

their wickedness, or that they are irresponsible or diseased.... In the

first place, it is not true that those who do evil are unhappy. That's a

moral idea in action, a silly melodramatic idea, stupid, empty optimism,

such as you find in Scribe and Capus,--(Scribe and Capus, your Parisian

great men, artists of whom your pleasure-seeking, vulgar society is worthy,

childish hypocrites, too cowardly to face their own ugliness).--It is quite

possible for a rascal to be a happy man. He has every chance of being so.

And as for his irresponsibility, that is an idiotic idea. Do have the

courage to face the fact that Nature does not care a rap about good and

evil, and is so far malevolent that a man may easily be a criminal and yet

perfectly sound in mind and body. Virtue is not a natural thing. It is the

work of man. It is his duty to defend it. Human society has been built up

by a few men who were stronger and greater than the rest. It is their duty

to see that the work of so many ages of frightful struggles is not spoiled

by the cowardly rabble."

At bottom there was no great difference between these ideas and Olivier's:

but, by a secret instinct for balance and proportion, he was never so

dilettante as when he heard provocative words thrown out.

"Don't get so excited, my friend," he would say to Christophe. "Let the

world hug its vices. Like the friends in the 'Decameron,' let us breathe in

peace the balmy air of the gardens of thought, while under the cypress-hill

and the tall, shady pines, twined about with roses, Florence is devastated

by the black plague."

He would amuse himself for days together by pulling to pieces art, science,

philosophy, to find their hidden wheels: so he came by a sort of

Pyrrhonism, in which everything that was became only a figment of the mind,

a castle in the air, which had not even the excuse of the geometric

symbols, of being necessary to the mind. Christophe would rage against his

pulling the machine to pieces:

"It was going quite well: you'll probably break it. Then how will you be

better off? What are you trying to prove? That nothing is nothing? Good

Lord! I know that. It is because nothingness creeps in upon us from every

side that we fight. Nothing exists? I exist. There's no reason for doing

anything? I'm doing what I can. If people like death, let them die! For my

part, I'm alive, and I'm going to live. My life is in one scale of the

balance, my mind and thought in the other.... To hell with thought!"

He would fly off with his usual violence, and in their argument he would

say things that hurt. Hardly had he said them than he was sorry. He would

long to withdraw them: but the harm was done. Olivier was very sensitive:

his skin was easily barked: a harsh word, especially if it came from some

one he loved, hurt him terribly. He was too proud to say anything, and

would retire into himself. And he would see in his friend those sudden

flashes of unconscious egoism which appear in every great artist. Sometimes

he would feel that his life was no great thing to Christophe compared with

a beautiful piece of music:--(Christophe hardly troubled to disguise the

fact).--He would understand and see that Christophe was right: but it made

him sad.

And then there were in Christophe's nature all sorts of disordered elements

which eluded Olivier and made him uneasy. He used to have sudden fits of a

freakish and terrible humor. For days together he would not speak: or he

would break out in diabolically malicious moods and try deliberately to

hurt. Sometimes he would disappear altogether and be seen no more for the

rest of the day and part of the night. Once he stayed away for two whole

days. God knows what he was up to! He was not very clear about it

himself.... The truth was that his powerful nature, shut up in that narrow

life, and those small rooms, as in a hen-coop, every now and then reached

bursting-point. His friend's calmness maddened him: then he would long to

hurt him, to hurt some one. He would have to rush away, and wear himself

out. He would go striding through the streets of Paris and the outskirts in

the vague quest of adventure, which sometimes he found: and he would not

have been sorry to meet with some rough encounter which would have given

him the opportunity of expending some of his superfluous energy in a

brawl.... It was hard for Olivier, with his poor health and weakness of

body, to understand. Christophe was not much nearer understanding it. He

would wake up from his aberrations as from an exhausting dream,--a little

uneasy and ashamed of what he had been doing and might yet do. But when the

fit of madness was over he would feel like a great sky washed by the storm,

purged of every taint, serene, and sovereign of his soul. He would be more

tender than ever with Olivier, and bitterly sorry for having hurt him. He

would give up trying to account for their little quarrels. The wrong was

not always on his side: but he would take all the blame upon himself, and

put it down to his unjust passion for being right; and he would think it

better to be wrong with his friend than to be right, if right were not on

his side.

Their misunderstandings were especially grievous when they occurred in the

evening, so that the two friends had to spend the night in disunion, which

meant that both of them were morally upset. Christophe would get up and

scribble a note and slip it under Olivier's door: and next day as soon as

he woke up he would beg his pardon. Sometimes, even, he would knock at his

door in the middle of the night: he could not bear to wait for the day to

come before he humbled himself. As a rule, Olivier would be just as unable

to sleep. He knew that Christophe loved him, and had not wished to hurt

him: but he wanted to hear him say so. Christophe would say so, and then

the whole thing would be forgotten. Then they would be pacified. Delightful

state! How well they would sleep for the rest of the night!

"Ah!" Olivier would sigh. "How difficult it is to understand each other!"

"But is it necessary always to understand each other?" Christophe would

ask. "I give it up. We only need love each other."

All these petty quarrels which, with anxious tenderness, they would at once

find ways of mending, made them almost dearer to each other than before.

When they were hotly arguing Antoinette would appear in Olivier's eyes. The

two friends would pay each other womanish attentions. Christophe never let

Olivier's birthday go by without celebrating it by dedicating a composition

to him, or by the gift of flowers, or a cake, or a little present, bought

Heaven knows how!--(for they often had no money in the house)--Olivier

would tire his eyes out with copying out Christophe's scores at night and

by stealth.

Misunderstandings between friends are never very serious so long as a third

party does not come between them.--But that was bound to happen: there are

too many people in this world ready to meddle in the affairs of others and

make mischief between them.

* * * * *

Olivier knew the Stevens, whom Christophe rarely visited, and he too had

been attracted by Colette. The reason why Christophe had not met him in the

girl's little court was that just at that time Olivier was suffering from

his sister's death, and had shut himself up with his grief and saw no one.

Colette, on her part, did not go out of her way to see him: she liked

Olivier, but she did not like unhappy people: she used to declare that she

was so sensitive that she could not bear the sight of sorrow: she waited

until Olivier's sorrow was over before she remembered his existence. When

she heard that he seemed to be himself again, and that there was no danger

of infection, she made bold to beckon him to her. Olivier did not need much

inducement to go. He was shy but he liked society, and he was easily led:

and he had a weakness for Colette. When he told Christophe of his intention

of going back to her, Christophe, who had too much respect for his friend's

liberty to express any adverse opinion, just shrugged his shoulders and

said jokingly:

"Go, dear boy, if it amuses you."

But nothing would have induced him to follow his example. He had made up

his mind to have nothing more to do with a coquette like Colette or the

world she lived in. Not that he was a misogynist: far from it. He had a

very tender feeling for all the young women who worked for their living,

the factory-hands, and typists, and Government clerks, who are to be seen

every morning, half awake, always a little late, hurrying to their

workshops and offices. It seemed to him that a woman was only in possession

of all her senses when she was working and struggling for her own

individual existence, by earning her daily bread and her independence. And

it seemed to him that only then did she possess all her charm, her alert

suppleness of movement, the awakening of all her senses, her integrity of

life and will. He detested the idle, pleasure-seeking woman, who seemed to

him to be only an overfed animal, perpetually in the act of digestion,

bored, browsing over unwholesome dreams. Olivier, on the contrary, adored

the _far niente_ of women, their charm, like the charm of flowers, living

only to be beautiful and to perfume the air about them. He was more of an

artist: Christophe was more human. Unlike Colette, Christophe loved other

people in proportion as they shared in the suffering of the world. So,

between him and them there was a bond of brotherly compassion.

Colette was particularly anxious to see Olivier again, after she heard of

his friendship with Christophe: for she was curious to hear the details.

She was rather angry with Christophe for the disdainful manner in which he

seemed to have forgotten her: and, though she had no desire for

revenge,--(it was not worth the trouble: and revenge does mean a certain

amount of trouble),--she would have been very glad to pay him out. She was

like a cat that bites the hand that strokes it. She had an ingratiating way

with her, and she had no difficulty in getting Olivier to talk. Nobody

could be more clear-sighted than he, or less easily taken in by people,

when he was away from them: but nobody could be more naïvely confiding than

he when he was with a woman whose eyes smiled kindly at him. Colette

displayed so genuine an interest in his friendship with Christophe that he

went so far as to tell her the whole story, and even about certain of their

amicable misunderstandings, which, at a distance, seemed amusing, and he

took the whole blame for them on himself. He also confided to Colette

Christophe's artistic projects, and also some of his opinions--which were

not altogether flattering--concerning France and the French. Nothing that

he told her was of any great importance in itself, but Colette repeated it

all at once, and adapted it partly to make the story more spicy, and partly

to satisfy her secret feeling of malice against Christophe. And as the

first person to receive her confidence was naturally her inseparable Lucien

Lévy-Coeur, who had no reason for keeping it secret, the story went the

rounds, and was embellished by the way: a note of ironic pity for Olivier,

who was represented as a victim, was introduced, and he cut rather a sorry

figure. It seemed unlikely that the story could be very interesting to

anybody, since the heroes of it were very little known: but a Parisian

takes an interest in everything that does not concern him. So much so, that

one day Christophe heard the story from the lips of Madame Roussin. She met

him one day at a concert, and asked him if it were true that he had

quarreled with that poor Olivier Jeannin: and she asked about his work, and

alluded to things which he believed were known only to himself and Olivier.

And when he asked her how she had come by her information, she said she had

had it from Lucien Lévy-Coeur, who had had it direct from Olivier.

The blow overwhelmed Christophe. Violent and uncritical as he was, it never

occurred to him to think how utterly fantastic the story was: he only saw

one thing: his secrets which he had confided to Olivier had been

betrayed--betrayed to Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He could not stay to the end of

the concert: he left the hall at once. Around him all was blank and dark.

In the street he narrowly escaped being run over. He said to himself over

and over again: "My friend has betrayed me!..."

Olivier was with Colette. Christophe locked the door of his room, so that

when Olivier came in he could not have his usual talk with him. He heard

him come in a few moments later and try to open the door, and whisper

"Good-night" through the keyhole: he did not stir. He was sitting on his

bed in the dark, holding his head in his hands, and saying over and over

again: "My friend has betrayed me!...": and he stayed like that half

through the night. Then he felt how dearly he loved Olivier: for he was not

angry with him for having betrayed him: he only suffered. Those whom we

love have absolute rights over us, even the right to cease loving us. We

cannot bear them any ill-will; we can only be angry with ourselves for

being so unworthy of love that it must desert us. There is mortal anguish

in such a state of mind--anguish which destroys the will to live.

Next morning, when he saw Olivier, he did not tell him anything: he so

detested the idea of reproaching him,--reproaching him for having abused

his confidence and flung his secrets into the enemy's maw,--that he could

not find a single word to say to him. But his face said what he could not

speak: his expression was icy and hostile. Olivier was struck dumb: he

could not understand it. He tried timidly to discover what Christophe had

against him. Christophe turned away from him brutally, and made no reply.

Olivier was hurt in his turn, and said no more, and gulped down his

distress in silence. They did not see each other again that day.

Even if Olivier had made him suffer a thousand times more, Christophe would

never have done anything to avenge himself, and he would have done hardly

anything to defend himself: Olivier was sacred to him. But it was necessary

that the indignation he felt should be expended upon some one: and since

that some one could not be Olivier, it was Lucien Lévy-Coeur. With his

usual passionate injustice he put upon him the responsibility for the

ill-doing which he attributed to Olivier: and he suffered intolerable pangs

of jealousy in the thought that such a man as that could have robbed him of

his friend's affection, just as he had previously ousted him from his

friendship with Colette Stevens. To bring his exasperation to a head, that

very day he happened to see an article by Lucien Lévy-Coeur on a

performance of _Fidelio_. In it he spoke of Beethoven in a bantering way,

and poked fun at his heroine. Christophe was as alive as anybody to the

absurdities of the opera, and even to certain mistakes in the music. He had

not always displayed an exaggerated respect for the acknowledged master

himself. But he set no store by always agreeing with his own opinions, nor

had he any desire to be Frenchily logical. He was one of those men who are

quite ready to admit the faults of their friends, but cannot bear anybody

else to do so. And, besides, it was one thing to criticise a great artist,

however bitterly, from a passionate faith in art, and even--(one may

say)--from an uncompromising love for his fame and intolerance of anything

mediocre in his work,--and another thing, as Lucien Lévy-Coeur did, only to

use such criticism to flatter the baseness of the public, and to make the

gallery laugh, by an exhibition of wit at the expense of a great man.

Again, free though Christophe was in his judgments, there had always been a

certain sort of music which he had tacitly left alone and shielded: music

which was not to be tampered with: that music, which was higher and better

than music, the music of an absolutely pure soul, a great health-giving

soul, to which a man could turn for consolation, strength, and hope.

Beethoven's music was in the category. To see a puppy like Lévy-Coeur

insulting Beethoven made him blind with anger. It was no longer a question

of art, but a question of honor; everything that makes life rare, love,

heroism, passionate virtue, the good human longing for self-sacrifice, was

at stake. The Godhead itself was imperiled! There was no room for argument

It is as impossible to suffer that to be besmirched as to hear the woman

you respect and love insulted: there is but one thing to do, to hate and

kill.... What is there to say when the insulting blackguard was, of all

men, the one whom Christophe most despised?

And, as luck would have it, that very evening the two men came face to

face.

* * * * *

To avoid being left alone with Olivier, contrary to his habit, Christophe

went to an At Home at the Roussins'. He was asked to play. He consented

unwillingly. However, after a moment or two he became absorbed in the music

he was playing, until, glancing up, he saw Lucien Lévy-Coeur standing in a

little group, watching him with an ironical stare. He stopped short, in the

middle of a bar: he got up and turned away from the piano. There was an

awkward silence. Madame Roussin came up to Christophe in her surprise and

smiled forcedly; and, very cautiously,--for she was not sure whether the

piece was finished or not,--she asked him:

"Won't you go on, Monsieur Krafft?"

"I've finished," he replied curtly.

He had hardly said it than he became conscious of his rudeness; but,

instead of making him more restrained, it only excited him the more. He

paid no heed to the amused attention of his auditors, but went and sat

in a corner of the room from which he could follow Lucien Lévy-Coeur's

movements. His neighbor, an old general, with a pinkish, sleepy face,

light-blue eyes, and a childish expression, thought it incumbent on him to

compliment him on the originality of his music. Christophe bowed irritably,

and growled out a few inarticulate sounds. The general went on talking

with effusive politeness and a gentle, meaningless smile: and he wanted

Christophe to explain how he could play such a long piece of music from

memory. Christophe fidgeted impatiently, and thought wildly of knocking the

old gentleman off the sofa. He wanted to hear what Lucien Lévy-Coeur was

saying: he was waiting for an excuse for attacking him. For some moments

past he had been conscious that he was going to make a fool of himself: but

no power on earth could have kept him from it.--Lucien Lévy-Coeur, in his

high falsetto voice, was explaining the aims and secret thoughts of great

artists to a circle of ladies. During a moment of silence Christophe heard

him talking about the friendship of Wagner and King Ludwig, with all sorts

of nasty innuendoes.

"Stop!" he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table by his side.

Everybody turned in amazement. Lucien Lévy-Coeur met Christophe's eyes and

paled a little, and said:

"Were you speaking to me?"

"You hound!... Yes," said Christophe.

He sprang to his feet.

"You soil and sully everything that is great in the world," he went on

furiously. "There's the door! Get out, you cur, or I'll fling you through

the window!"

He moved towards him. The ladies moved aside screaming. There was a moment

of general confusion. Christophe was surrounded at once. Lucien Lévy-Coeur

had half risen to his feet: then he resumed his careless attitude in his

chair. He called a servant who was passing and gave him a card: and he went

on with his remarks as though nothing had happened: but his eyelids were

twitching nervously, and his eyes blinked as he looked this way and that

to see how people had taken it. Roussin had taken his stand in front of

Christophe, and he took him by the lapel of his coat and urged him in the

direction of the door. Christophe hung his head in his anger and shame,

and his eyes saw nothing but the wide expanse of shirt-front, and kept on

counting the diamond studs: and he could feel the big man's breath on his

cheek.

"Come, come, my dear fellow!" said Roussin. "What's the matter with you?

Where are your manners? Control yourself! Do you know where you are? Come,

come, are you mad?"

"I'm damned if I ever set foot in your house again!" said Christophe,

breaking free: and he reached the door.

The people prudently made way for him. In the cloak-room a servant held

out a salver. It contained Lucien Lévy-Coeur's card. He took it without

understanding what it meant, and read it aloud: then, suddenly, snorting

with rage, he fumbled in his pockets: mixed up with a varied assortment of

things, he pulled out three or four crumpled dirty cards:

"There! There!" he said, flinging them on the salver so violently that one

of them fell to the ground.

He left the house.

* * * * *

Olivier knew nothing about it. Christophe chose as his witnesses the first

men of his acquaintance who turned up, the musical critic, Théophile

Goujart, and a German, Doctor Barth, an honorary lecturer in a Swiss

University, whom he had met one night in a café; he had made friends with

him, though they had little in common: but they could talk to each other

about Germany. After conferring with Lucien Lévy-Coeur's witnesses, pistols

were chosen. Christophe was absolutely ignorant about the use of arms, and

Goujart told him it would not be a bad thing for him to go and have a few

lessons: but Christophe refused, and while he was waiting for the day to

come went on with his work.

But his mind was distracted. He had a fixed idea, of which he was dimly

conscious, while it kept buzzing in his head like a bad dream.... "It was

unpleasant, yes, very unpleasant.... What was unpleasant?--Oh! the duel

to-morrow.... Just a joke! Nobody is ever hurt.... But it was possible....

Well, then, afterwards?... Afterwards, that was it, afterwards.... A cock

of the finger by that swine who hates me may wipe out my life.... So be

it!...--Yes, to-morrow, in a day or two, I may be lying in the loathsome

soil of Paris....--Bah! Here or anywhere, what does it matter!... Oh! Lord:

I'm not going to play the coward!--No, but it would be monstrous to waste

the mighty world of ideas that I feel springing to life in me for a

moment's folly.... What rot it is, these modern duels in which they try to

equalize the chances of the two opponents! That's a fine sort of equality

that sets the same value on the life of a mountebank as on mine! Why don't

they let us go for each other with fists and cudgels? There'd be some

pleasure in that. But this cold-blooded shooting!... And, of course, he

knows how to shoot, and I have never had a pistol in my hand.... They are

right: I must learn.... He'll try to kill me. I'll kill him."

He went out. There was a range a few yards away from the house. Christophe

asked for a pistol, and had it explained how he ought to hold it. With his

first shot he almost killed his instructor: he went on with a second and a

third, and fared no better: he lost patience, and went from bad to worse. A

few young men were standing by watching and laughing. He paid no heed to

them. With his German persistency he went on trying, and was so indifferent

to their laughter and so determined to succeed that, as always happens,

his blundering patience roused interest, and one of the spectators gave

him advice. In spite of his usual violence he listened to everything with

childlike docility; he managed to control his nerves, which were making

his hand tremble: he stiffened himself and knit his brows: the sweat was

pouring down his cheeks: he said not a word: but every now and then he

would give way to a gust of anger, and then go on shooting. He stayed there

for a couple of hours. At the end of that time he hit the bull's-eye. Few

things could have been more absorbing than the sight of such a power of

will mastering an awkward and rebellious body. It inspired respect. Some of

those who had scoffed at the outset had gone, and the others were silenced

one by one, and had not been able to tear themselves away. They took off

their hats to Christophe when he went away.

When he reached home Christophe found his friend Mooch waiting anxiously.

Mooch had heard of the quarrel, and had come at once: he wanted to know

how it had originated. In spite of Christophe's reticence and desire

not to attach any blame to Olivier, he guessed the reason. He was very

cool-headed, and knew both the friends, and had no doubt of Olivier's

innocence of the treachery ascribed to him. He looked into the matter, and

had no difficulty in finding out that the whole trouble arose from the

scandal-mongering of Colette and Lucien Lévy-Coeur. He rushed back with

his evidence to Christophe, thinking that he could in that way prevent

the duel. But the result was exactly the opposite of what he expected:

Christophe was only the more rancorous against Lévy-Coeur when he learned

that it was through him that he had come to doubt his friend. To get rid of

Mooch, who kept on imploring him not to fight, he promised him everything

he asked. But he had made up his mind. He was quite happy now: he was going

to fight for Olivier, not for himself!

A remark made by one of the seconds as the carriage was going along a road

through the woods suddenly caught Christophe's attention. He tried to find

out what they were thinking, and saw how little they really cared about

him. Professor Barth was wondering when the affair would be over, and

whether he would be back in time to finish a piece of work he had begun

on the manuscripts in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. Of Christophe's three

companions, he was the most interested in the result of the encounter as

a matter of German national pride. Goujart paid no attention either to

Christophe or the other German, but discussed certain scabrous subjects

in connection with the coarser branches of physiology with Dr. Jullien, a

young physician from Toulouse, who had recently come to live next door to

Christophe, and occasionally borrowed his spirit-lamp, or his umbrella, or

his coffee-cups, which he invariably returned broken. In return he gave him

free consultations, tried medicines on him, and laughed at his simplicity.

Under his impassive manner, that would have well become a Castilian

hidalgo, there was a perpetual love of teasing. He was highly delighted

with the adventure of the duel, which struck him as sheer burlesque: and

he was amusing himself with fancying the mess that Christophe would make

of it. He thought it a great joke to be driving through the woods at the

expense of good old Krafft.--That, clearly, was what was in the minds of

the trio: they regarded it as a jolly excursion which cost them nothing.

Not one of them attached the least importance to the duel. But, on the

other hand, they were just as calmly prepared for anything that might come

of it.

They reached the appointed spot before the others. It was a little inn in

the heart of the forest. It was a pleasure-resort, more or less unclean, to

which Parisians used to resort to cleanse their honor when the dirt on it

became too apparent. The hedges were bright with the pure flowers of the

eglantine. In the shade of the bronze-leaved oak-trees there were rows

of little tables. At one of these tables were seated three bicyclists:

a painted woman, in knickerbockers, with black socks: and two men in

flannels, who were stupefied by the heat, and every now and then gave out

growls and grunts as though they had forgotten how to speak.

The arrival of the carriage produced a little buzz of excitement in the

inn. Goujart, who knew the house and the people of old, declared that he

would look after everything. Barth dragged Christophe into an arbor and

ordered beer. The air was deliciously warm and soft, and resounding with

the buzzing of bees. Christophe forgot why he had come. Barth emptied the

bottle, and said, after a short silence:

"I know what I'll do."

He drank and went on:

"I shall have plenty of time: I'll go on to Versailles when it's all over."

Goujart was heard haggling with the landlady over the price of the

dueling-ground. Jullien had not been wasting his time: as he passed near

the bicyclists he broke into noisy and ecstatic comment on the woman's bare

legs: and there was exchanged a perfect deluge of filthy epithets in which

Jullien did not come off worst. Barth said in a whisper:

"The French are a low-minded lot. Brother, I drink to your victory."

He clinked his glass against Christophe's. Christophe was dreaming: scraps

of music were floating in his mind, mingled with the harmonious humming of

insects. He was very sleepy.

The wheels of another carriage crunched over the gravel of the drive.

Christophe saw Lucien Lévy-Coeur's pale face, with its inevitable smile:

and his anger leaped up in him. He got up, and Barth followed him.

Lévy-Coeur, with his neck swathed in a high stock, was dressed with a

scrupulous care which was strikingly in contrast with his adversary's

untidiness. He was followed by Count Bloch, a sportsman well known for

his mistresses, his collection of old pyxes, and his ultra-Royalist

opinions,--Léon Mouey, another man of fashion, who had reached his position

as Deputy through literature, and was a writer from political ambition: he

was young, bald, clean-shaven, with a lean bilious face: he had a long

nose, round eyes, and a head like a bird's,--and Dr. Emmanuel, a fine type

of Semite, well-meaning and cold, a member of the Academy of Medicine, a

chief-surgeon in a hospital, famous for a number of scientific books, and

the medical skepticism which made him listen with ironic pity to the

plaints of his patients without making the least attempt to cure them.

The newcomers saluted the other three courteously. Christophe barely

responded, but was annoyed by the eagerness and the exaggerated politeness

with which they treated Lévy-Coeur's seconds. Jullien knew Emmanuel, and

Goujart knew Mouey, and they approached them obsequiously smiling. Mouey

greeted them with cold politeness and Emmanuel jocularly and without

ceremony. As for Count Bloch, he stayed by Lévy-Coeur, and with a rapid

glance he took in the condition of the clothes and linen of the three men

of the opposing camp, and, hardly opening his lips, passed abrupt humorous

comment on them with, his friend,--and both of them stood calm and correct.

Lucien Lévy-Coeur stood at his ease waiting for Count Bloch, who had the

ordering of the duel, to give the signal. He regarded the affair as a mere

formality. He was an excellent shot, and was fully aware of his adversary's

want of skill. He would not be foolish enough to make use of his advantage

and hit him, always supposing, as was not very probable, that the seconds

did not take good care that no harm came of the encounter: for he knew that

nothing is so stupid as to let an enemy appear to be a victim, when a much

surer and better method is to wipe him out of existence without any fuss

being made. But Christophe stood waiting, stripped to his shirt, which was

open to reveal his thick neck, while his sleeves were rolled up to show his

strong wrists, head down, with his eyes glaring at Lévy-Coeur: he stood

taut, with murder written implacably on every feature: and Count Bloch, who

watched him carefully, thought what a good thing it was that civilization

had as far as possible suppressed the risks of fighting.

After both men had fired, of course without result, the seconds hurried

forward and congratulated the adversaries. Honor was satisfied.--Not so

Christophe. He stayed there, pistol in hand, unable to believe that it was

all over. He was quite ready to repeat his performance at the range the

evening before, and go on shooting until one or other of them had hit the

target. When he heard Goujart proposing that he should shake hands with his

adversary, who advanced chivalrously towards him with his perpetual smile,

he was exasperated by the pretense of the whole thing. Angrily he hurled

his pistol away, pushed Goujart aside, and flung himself upon Lucien

Lévy-Coeur. They were hard put to it to keep him from going on with the

fight with his fists.

The seconds intervened while Lévy-Coeur escaped. Christophe broke away from

them, and, without listening to their laughing expostulation, he strode

along in the direction of the forest, talking loudly and gesticulating

wildly. He did not even notice that he had left his hat and coat on the

dueling-ground. He plunged into the woods. He heard his seconds laughing

and calling him: then they tired of it, and did not worry about him any

more. Very soon he heard the wheels of the carriages rumbling away and

away, and knew that they had gone. He was left alone among the silent

trees. His fury had subsided. He flung himself down on the ground and

sprawled on the grass.

Shortly afterwards Mooch arrived at the inn. He had been pursuing

Christophe since the early morning. He was told that his friend was in the

woods, and went to look for him. He beat all the thickets, and awoke all

the echoes, and was going away in despair when he heard him singing: he

found his way by the voice, and at last came upon him in a little clearing

with his arms and legs in the air, rolling about like a young calf. When

Christophe saw him he shouted merrily, called him "dear old Moloch," and

told him how he had shot his adversary full of holes until he was like a

sieve: he made him tuck in his tuppenny, and then join him in a game of

leap-frog: and when he jumped over him he gave him a terrific thump.

Mooch was not very good at it, but he enjoyed the game almost as much as

Christophe.--They returned to the inn arm-in-arm, and caught the train

back to Paris at the nearest station.

Olivier knew nothing of what had happened. He was surprised at Christophe's

tenderness: he could not understand his sudden change. It was not until

the next day, when he saw the newspapers, that he knew that Christophe

had fought a duel. It made him almost ill to think of the danger that

Christophe had run. He wanted to know why the duel had been fought.

Christophe refused to tell him anything. When he was pressed he said with

a laugh:

"It was for you."

Olivier could not get a word more out of him. Mooch told him all about it.

Olivier was horrified, quarreled with Colette, and begged Christophe to

forgive his imprudence. Christophe was incorrigible, and quoted for his

benefit an old French saying, which he adapted so as to infuriate poor

Mooch, who was present to share in the happiness of the friends:

"My dear boy, let this teach you to be careful....

"_From an idle chattering girl,

From a wheedling, hypocritical Jew,

From a painted friend,

From a familiar foe,

And from flat wine,

Libera Nos, Domine!_"

Their friendship was re-established. The danger of losing it, which had

come so near, made it only the more dear. Their small misunderstandings

had vanished: the very differences between them made them more attractive

to each other. In his own soul Christophe embraced the souls of the two

countries, harmoniously united. He felt that his heart was rich and full:

and, as usual with him, his abundant happiness expressed itself in a flow

of music.

Olivier marveled at it. Being too critical in mind, he was never far from

believing that music, which he adored, had said its last word. He was

haunted by the morbid idea that decadence must inevitably succeed a certain

degree of progress: and he trembled lest the lovely art, which made him

love life, should stop short, and dry up, and disappear into the ground.

Christophe would scoff at such pusillanimous ideas. In a spirit of

contradiction he would pretend that nothing had been done before he

appeared on the scene, and that everything remained to be done. Olivier

would instance French music, which seemed to have reached a point of

perfection and ultimate civilization beyond which there could not possibly

be anything. Christophe would shrug his shoulders:

"French music?... There has never been any.... And yet you have such fine

things to do in the world! You can't really be musicians, or you would have

discovered that. Ah! if only I were a Frenchman!..."

And he would set out all the things that a Frenchman might turn into music:

"You involve yourselves in forms which do not suit you, and you do nothing

at all with those which are admirably fitted for your use. You are a

people of elegance, polite poetry, beautiful gestures, beautiful walking

movements, beautiful attitudes, fashion, clothes, and you never write

ballets nowadays, though you ought to be able to create an inimitable art

of poetic dancing....--You are a people of laughter and comedy, and you

never write comic operas, or else you leave it to minor musicians, the

confectioners of music. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would set Rabelais to

music, I would write comic epics....--You are a people of story-tellers,

and you never write novels in music: (for I don't count the feuilletons

of Ghistave Charpentier). You make no use of your gift of psychological

analysis, your insight into character. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would

give you portraits in music.... (Would you like me to sketch the girl

sitting in the garden under the lilac?).... I would write you Stendhal for

a string quartet....--You are the greatest democracy in Europe, and you

have no theater for the people, no music for the people. Ah! if I were a

Frenchman, I would set your Revolution to music: the 14th July, the 10th

August, Valmy, the Federation, I would express the people in music! Not

in the false form of Wagnerian declamation. I want symphonies, choruses,

dances. Not speeches! I'm sick of them. There's no reason why people

should always be talking in a music drama! Bother the words! Paint in bold

strokes, in vast symphonies with choruses, immense landscapes in music,

Homeric and Biblical epics, fire, earth, water, and sky, all bright and

shining, the fever which makes hearts burn, the stirring of the instincts

and destinies of a race, the triumph of Rhythm, the emperor of the world,

who enslaves thousands of men, and hurls armies down to death.... Music

everywhere, music in everything! If you were musicians you would have

music for every one of your public holidays, for your official ceremonies,

for the trades unions, for the student associations, for your family

festivals.... But, above all, above all, if you were musicians, you would

make pure music, music which has no definite meaning, music which has no

definite use, save only to give warmth, and air, and life. Make sunlight

for yourselves! _Sat prata_.... (What is that in Latin?).... There has been

rain enough. Your music gives me a cold. One can't see in it: light your

lanterns.... You complain of the Italian _porcherie_, who invade your

theaters and conquer the public, and turn you out of your own house?

It is your own fault! The public are sick of your crepuscular art, your

harmonized neurasthenia, your contrapuntal pedantry. The public goes where

it can find life, however coarse and gross. Why do you run away from life?

Your Debussy is a bad man, however great he may be as an artist. He aids

and abets you in your torpor. You want roughly waking up."

"What about Strauss?"

"No better. Strauss would finish you off. You need the digestion of my

fellow-countrymen to be able to bear such immoderate drinking. And even

they cannot bear it.... Strauss's _Salome_!... A masterpiece.... I should

not like to have written it.... I think of my old grandfather and uncle

Gottfried, and with what respect and loving tenderness they used to talk

to me about the lovely art of sound!... But to have the handling of such

divine powers, and to turn them to such uses!... A flaming, consuming

meteor! An Isolde, who is a Jewish prostitute. Bestial and mournful lust.

The frenzy of murder, pillage, incest, and untrammeled instincts which is

stirring in the depths of German decadence.... And, on the other hand,

the spasm of a voluptuous and melancholy suicide, the death-rattle which

sounds through your French decadence.... On the one hand, the beast: on the

other, the prey. Where is man?... Your Debussy is the genius of good taste:

Strauss is the genius of bad taste. Debussy is rather insipid. But Strauss

is very unpleasant. One is a silvery thread of stagnant water, losing

itself in the reeds, and giving off an unhealthy aroma. The other is a

mighty muddy flood.... Ah! the musty base Italianism and neo-Meyerbeerism,

the filthy masses of sentiment which are borne on by the torrent!... An

odious masterpiece!... Salome, the daughter of Ysolde.... And whose mother

will Salome be in her turn?"

"Yes," said Olivier, "I wish we could jump fifty years. This headlong

gallop towards the precipice must end one way or another: either the horse

must stop or fall. Then we shall breathe again. Thank Heaven, the earth

will not cease to flower, nor the sky to give light, with or without music!

What have we to do with an art so inhuman!... The West is burning away....

Soon.... Very soon.... I see other stars arising in the furthest depths of

the East."

"Bother the East!" said Christophe. "The West has not said its last word

yet. Do you think I am going to abdicate? I have enough to say to keep

you going for centuries. Hurrah for life! Hurrah for joy! Hurrah for the

courage which drives us on to struggle with our destiny! Hurrah for love

which maketh the heart big! Hurrah for friendship which rekindles our

faith,--friendship, a sweeter thing than love! Hurrah for the day! Hurrah

for the night! Glory be to the sun! _Laus Deo_, the God of joy, the God of

dreams and actions, the God who created music! Hosannah!..."

With that he sat down at his desk and wrote down everything that was in his

head, without another thought for what he had been saying.

* * * * *

At that time Christophe was in a condition in which all the elements of his

life were perfectly balanced. He did not bother his head with esthetic

discussions as to the value of this or that musical form, nor with reasoned

attempts to create a new form: he did not even have to cast about for

subjects for translation into music. One thing was as good as another. The

flood of music welled forth without Christophe knowing exactly what feeling

he was expressing. He was happy: that was all: happy in expanding, happy in

having expanded, happy in feeling within himself the pulse of universal

life.

His fullness of joy was communicated to those about him.

The house with its closed garden was too small for him. He had the view out

over the garden of the neighboring convent with the solitude of its great

avenues and century-old trees: but it was too good to last. In front of

Christophe's windows they were building a six-story house, which shut out

the view and completely hemmed him in. In addition, he had the pleasure of

hearing the creaking of pulleys, the chipping of stones, the hammering of

nails, all day long from morning to night. Among the workmen he found his

old friend the slater, whose acquaintance he had made on the roof. They

made signs to each other, and once, when he met him in the street, he took

the man to a wineshop, and they drank together, much to the surprise of

Olivier, who was a little scandalized. He found the man's drollery and

unfailing good-humor very entertaining, but did not curse him any the less,

with his troop of workmen and stupid idiots who were raising a barricade

in front of the house and robbing him of air and light. Olivier did not

complain much: he could quite easily adapt himself to a limited horizon:

he was like the stove of Descartes, from which the suppressed ideas darted

upward to the free sky. But Christophe needed more air. Shut up in that

confined space, he avenged himself by expanding into the lives of those

about him. He drank in their inmost life, and turned it into music. Olivier

used to tell him that he looked like a lover.

"If I were in love," Christophe would reply, "I should see nothing, love

nothing, be interested in nothing outside my love."

"What is the matter with you, then?"

"I'm very well. I'm hungry."

"Lucky Christophe!" Olivier would sigh. "I wish you could hand a little of

your appetite over to us."

Health, like sickness, is contagious. The first to feel the benefit of

Christophe's vitality was naturally Olivier. Vitality was what he most

lacked. He retired from the world because its vulgarity revolted him.

Brilliantly clever though he was, and in spite of his exceptional artistic

gifts, he was too delicate to be a great artist. Great artists do not feel

disgust: the first law for every healthy being is to live: and that law

is even more imperative for a man of genius: for such a man lives more.

Olivier fled from life: he drifted along in a world of poetic fictions that

had no body, no flesh and blood, no relation to reality. He was one of

those literary men who, in quest of beauty, have to go outside time, into

the days that are no more, or the days that have never been. As though the

wine of life were not as intoxicating, and its vintages as rich nowadays as

ever they were! But men who are weary in soul recoil from direct contact

with life: they can only bear to see it through the veil of visions spun

by the backward movement of time, and hear it in the echo which sends back

and distorts the dead words of those who were once alive.--Christophe's

friendship gradually dragged Olivier out of this Limbo of art. The sun's

rays pierced through to the innermost recesses of his soul in which he was

languishing.

* * * * *

Elsberger, the engineer, also succumbed to Christophe's contagious

optimism. It was not shown in any change in his habits: they were too

inveterate: and it was too much to expect him to become enterprising enough

to leave France and go and seek his fortune elsewhere. But he was shaken

out of his apathy: he recovered his taste for research, and reading, and

the scientific work which he had long neglected. He would have been much

astonished had he been told that Christophe had something to do with

his new interest in his work: and certainly no one would have been more

surprised than Christophe.

* * * * *

But of all the inhabitants of the house, Christophe was the soonest

intimate with the little couple on the second floor. More than once as he

passed their door he had stopped to listen to the sound of the piano which

Madame Arnaud used to play quite well when she was alone. Then he gave them

tickets for his concert, for which they thanked him effusively. And after

that he used to go and sit with them occasionally in the evening. He

had never heard Madame Arnaud playing again: she was too shy to play in

company: and even when she was alone, now that she knew she could be heard

on the stairs, she kept the soft pedal down. But Christophe used to play to

them, and they would talk about it for hours together. The Arnauds used to

speak of music with such eagerness and freshness of feeling that he was

enchanted with them. He had not thought it possible for French people to

care so much for music.

"That," Olivier would say, "is because you have only come across

musicians."

"I'm perfectly aware," Christophe would reply, "that professed musicians

are the very people who care least for music: but you can't make me believe

that there are many people like you in France."

"A few thousands at any rate."

"I suppose it's an epidemic, the latest fashion."

"It is not a matter of fashion," said Arnaud. "_He who does not rejoice to

hear a sweet accord of instruments, or the sweetness of the natural voice,

and is not moved by it, and does not tremble from head to foot with its

sweet ravishment, and is not taken completely out of himself, does thereby

show himself to have a twisted, vicious, and depraved soul, and of such an

one we should beware as of a man ill-born...._"

"I know that," said Christophe. "It is my friend Shakespeare."

"No," said Arnaud gently. "It is a Frenchman who lived before him, Ronsard.

That will show you that, if it is the fashion in France to care for music,

it is no new thing."

But what astonished Christophe was not so much that people in France should

care for music, as that almost without exception they cared for the same

music as the people in Germany. In the world of Parisian snobs and artists,

in which he had moved at first, it had been the mode to treat the German

masters as distinguished foreigners, by all means to be admired, but to be

kept at a distance: they were always ready to poke fun at the dullness of a

Gluck, and the barbarity of a Wagner: against them they set up the subtlety

of the French composers. And in the end Christophe had begun to wonder

whether a Frenchman could have the least understanding of German music, to

judge by the way it was rendered in France. Only a short time before he had

come away perfectly scandalized from a performance of an opera of Gluck's:

the ingenious Parisians had taken it into their heads to deck the old

fellow up, and cover him with ribbons, and pad out his rhythms, and bedizen

his music with, impressionistic settings, and charming little dancing

girls, forward and wanton.... Poor Gluck! There was nothing left of his

eloquent and sublime feeling, his moral purity, his naked sorrow. Was it

that the French could not understand these things?--And now Christophe

could see how deeply and tenderly his new friends loved the very inmost

quality of the Germanic spirit, and the old German _lieder_, and the German

classics. And he asked them if it was not the fact that the great Germans

were as foreigners to them, and that a Frenchman could only really love the

artists of his own nationality.

"Not at all!" they protested. "It is only the critics who take upon

themselves to speak for us. They always follow the fashion, and they want

us to follow it too. But we don't worry about them any more than they worry

about us. They're funny little people, trying to teach us what is and is

not French--us, who are French of the old stock of France!... They come and

tell us that our France is in Rameau,--or Racine,--and nowhere else. As

though we did not know,--(and thousands like us in the provinces, and in

Paris). How often Beethoven, Mozart, and Gluck, have sat with us by the

fireside, and watched with us by the bedside of those we love, and shared

our troubles, and revived our hopes, and been one of ourselves! If we

dared say exactly what we thought, it is much more likely that the French

artists, who are set up on a pedestal by our Parisian critics, are

strangers among us."

"The truth is," said Olivier, "that if there are frontiers in art, they are

not so much barriers between races as barriers between classes. I'm not so

sure that there is a French art or a German art: but there is certainly

one art for the rich and another for the poor. Gluck was a great man of

the middle-classes: he belongs to our class. A certain French artist,

whose name I won't mention, is not of our class: though he was of the

middle-class by birth, he is ashamed of us, and denies us: and we deny

him."

What Olivier said was true. The better Christophe got to know the French,

the more he was struck by the resemblance between the honest men of France

and the honest men of Germany. The Arnauds reminded him of dear old Schulz

with his pure, disinterested love of art, his forgetfulness of self, his

devotion to beauty. And he loved them in memory of Schulz.

* * * * *

At the same time as he realized the absurdity of moral frontiers between

the honest men of different nationalities, Christophe began to see the

absurdity of the frontiers that lay between the different ideas of honest

men of the same nationality. Thanks to him, though without any deliberate

effort on his part, the Abbé Corneille and M. Watelet, two men who seemed

very far indeed from understanding each other, made friends.

Christophe used to borrow books from both of them and, with a want of

ceremony which shocked Olivier, he used to lend their books in turn to the

other. The Abbé Corneille was not at all scandalized: he had an intuitive

perception of the quality of a man: and, without seeming to do so, he had

marked the generous and even unconsciously religious nature of his young

neighbor. A book by Kropotkin, which had been borrowed from M. Watelet, and

for different reasons had given great pleasure to all three of them, began

the process of bringing them together. It chanced one evening that they met

in Christophe's room. At first Christophe was afraid that they might be

rude to each other: but, on the contrary, they were perfectly polite, They

discussed various sage subjects: their travels, and their experience of

men. And they discovered in each other a fund of gentleness and the spirit

of the Gospels, and chimerical hopes, in spite of the many reasons that

each had for despair, They discovered a mutual sympathy, mingled with a

little irony. Their sympathy was of a very discreet nature. They never

revealed their fundamental beliefs. They rarely met and did not try to

meet: but when they did so they were glad to see each other.

Of the two men the Abbé Corneille was not the least independent of mind,

though Christophe would never have thought it. He gradually came to

perceive the greatness of the religious and yet free ideas, the immense,

serene, and unfevered mysticism which permeated the priest's whole mind,

the every action of his daily life, and his whole outlook on the

world,--leading him to live in Christ, as he believed that Christ had lived

in God.

He denied nothing, no single element of life. To him the whole of

Scripture, ancient and modern, lay and religious, from Moses to Berthelot,

was certain, divine, the very expression of God. Holy Writ was to him only

its richest example, just as the Church was the highest company of men

united in the brotherhood of God: but in neither of them was the spirit

confined in any fixed, unchanging truth. Christianity was the living

Christ. The history of the world was only the history of the perpetual

advance of the idea of God. The fall of the Jewish Temple, the ruin of the

pagan world, the repulse of the Crusades, the humiliation of Boniface VIII,

Galileo flinging the world back into giddy space, the infinitely little

becoming more mighty than the great, the downfall of kingdoms, and the end

of the Concordats, all these for a time threw the minds of men out of their

reckoning. Some clung desperately to the passing order: some caught at a

plank and drifted. The Abbé Corneille only asked: "Where do we stand as

men? Where is that which makes us live?" For he believed: "Where life is,

there is God."--And that was why he was in sympathy with Christophe.

For his part, Christophe was glad once more to hear the splendid music of a

great religious soul. It awoke in him echoes distant and profound. Through

the feeling of perpetual reaction, which is in vigorous natures a vital

instinct, the instinct of self-preservation, the stroke which preserves

the quivering balance of the boat, and gives it a new drive onward,--his

surfeit of doubts and his disgust with Parisian sensuality had for the last

two years been slowly restoring God to his place in Christophe's heart. Not

that he believed in God. He denied God. But he was filled with the spirit

of God. The Abbé Corneille used to tell him with a smile, that like his

namesake, the sainted giant, he bore God on his shoulders without knowing

it.

"How is it that I don't see it then?" Christophe would ask.

"You are like thousands of others: you see God every day, and never know

that it is He. God reveals Himself to all, in every shape,--to some He

appears in their daily life, as He did to Saint Peter in Galilee,--to

others (like your friend M. Watelet), as He did to Saint Thomas, in wounds

and suffering that call for healing,--to you in the dignity of your ideal:

_Noli me tangere_.... Some day you will know it."

"I will never surrender," said Christophe. "I am free. Free I shall

remain."

"Only the more will you live in God," replied the priest calmly.

But Christophe would not submit to being made out a Christian against his

will. He defended himself ardently and simply, as though it mattered in the

least whether one label more than another was plastered on to his ideas.

The Abbé Corneille would listen with a faint ecclesiastical irony, that was

hardly perceptible, while it was altogether kindly. He had an inexhaustible

fund of patience, based on his habit of faith. It had been tempered by the

trials to which the existing Church had exposed him: while it had made him

profoundly melancholy, and had even dragged him through terrible moral

crises, he had not really been touched by it all. It was cruel to suffer

the oppression of his superiors, to have his every action spied upon by

the Bishops, and watched by the free-thinkers, who were endeavoring to

exploit his ideas, to use him as a weapon against his own faith, and to

be misunderstood and attacked both by his co-religionists and the enemies

of his religion. It was impossible for him to offer any resistance: for

submission was enforced upon him. It was impossible for him to submit in

his heart: for he knew that the authorities were wrong. It was agony for

him to hold his peace. It was agony for him to speak and to be wrongly

interpreted. Not to mention the soul for which he was responsible, he had

to think of those, who looked to him for counsel and help, while he had to

stand by and see them suffer.... The Abbé Corneille suffered both for them

and for himself, but he was resigned. He knew how small a thing were the

days of trial in the long history of the Church.--Only, by dint of being

turned in upon himself in his silent resignation, slowly he lost heart, and

became timid and afraid to speak, so that it became more and more difficult

for him to do anything, and little by little the torpor of silence crept

over him. Meeting Christophe had given him new courage. His neighbor's

youthful ardor and the affectionate and simple interest which he took in

his doings, his sometimes indiscreet questions, did him a great deal of

good. Christophe forced him to mix once more with living men and women.

Aubert, the journeyman electrician, once met him in Christophe's room. He

started back when he saw the priest, and found it hard to conceal his

feeling of dislike. Even when he had overcome his first inclination, he was

uncomfortable and oddly embarrassed at finding himself in the company of a

man in a cassock, a creature to whom he could attach no exact definition.

However, his sociable instincts and the pleasure he always found in talking

to educated men were stronger than his anti-clericalism. He was surprised

by the pleasant relations existing between M. Watelet and the Abbé

Corneille: he was no less surprised to find a priest who was a democrat,

and a revolutionary who was an aristocrat: it upset all his preconceived

ideas. He tried vainly to classify them in any social category: for he

always had to classify people before he could begin to understand them. It

was not easy to find a pigeon-hole for the peaceful freedom of mind of a

priest who had read Anatole France and Renan, and was prepared to discuss

them calmly, justly, and with some knowledge. In matters of science the

Abbé Corneille's way was to accept the guidance of those who knew, rather

than of those who laid down the law. He respected authority, but in his

eyes it stood lower than knowledge. The flesh, the spirit, and charity:

the three orders, the three rungs of the divine ladder, the ladder of

Jacob.--Of course, honest Aubert was far, indeed, from understanding, or

even from dreaming, of the possibility of such a state of mind. The Abbé

Corneille used to tell Christophe that Aubert reminded him of certain

French peasants whom he had seen one day. A young Englishwoman had asked

them the way, in English. They listened solemnly, but did not understand.

Then they spoke in French. She did not understand. Then they looked at each

other pityingly, and wagged their heads, and went on with their work, and

said:

"What a pity! What a pity! Such a pretty girl, too!..."

As though they had thought her deaf, or dumb, or soft in the head....

At first Aubert was abashed by the knowledge and distinguished manners of

the priest and M. Watelet, and sat mum, listening intently to what they

said. Then, little by little, he joined in the conversation, giving way to

the naïve pleasure that he found in hearing himself speak. He paraded his

generous store of rather vague ideas. The other two would listen politely,

and smile inwardly. Aubert was delighted, and could not hold himself in:

he took advantage of, and presently abused, the inexhaustible patience of

the Abbé Corneille. He read his literary productions to him. The priest

listened resignedly; and it did not bore him overmuch, for he listened not

so much to the words as to the man. And then he would reply to Christophe's

commiseration:

"Bah! I hear so many of them!"

Aubert was grateful to M. Watelet and the Abbé Corneille: and, without

taking much trouble to understand each other's ideas, or even to find out

what they were, the three of them became very good friends without exactly

knowing why. They were very surprised to find themselves so intimate. They

would never have thought it.--Christophe was the bond between them.

He had other innocent allies in the three children, the two little

Elsbergers and M. Watelet's adopted daughter. He was great friends with

them: they adored him. He told each of them about the other, and gave them

an irresistible longing to know each other. They used to make signs to each

other from the windows, and spoke to each other furtively on the stairs.

Aided and abetted by Christophe, they even managed to get permission

sometimes to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens. Christophe was delighted with

the success of his guile, and went to see them there the first time they

were together: they were shy and embarrassed, and hardly knew what to make

of their new happiness. He broke down their reserve in a moment, and

invented games for them, and races, and played hide-and-seek: he joined in

as keenly as though he were a child of ten: the passers-by cast amused and

quizzical glances at the great big fellow, running and shouting and dodging

round trees, with three little girls after him. And as their parents were

still suspicious of each other, and showed no great readiness to let these

excursions to the Luxembourg Gardens occur very often--(because it kept

them too far out of sight)--Christophe managed to get Commandant Chabran,

who lived on the ground floor, to invite the children to play in the garden

belonging to the house.

Chance had thrown Christophe and the old soldier together:--(chance always

singles out those who can turn it to account).--Christophe's writing-table

was near his window. One day the wind blew a few sheets of music down into

the garden. Christophe rushed down, bareheaded and disheveled, just as he

was, without even taking the trouble to brush his hair. He thought he would

only have to see a servant. However, the daughter opened the door to him.

He was rather taken aback, but told her what he had come for. She smiled

and let him in: they went into the garden. When he had picked up his papers

he was for hurrying away, and she was taking him to the door, when they met

the old soldier. The Commandant gazed at his odd visitor in some surprise.

His daughter laughed, and introduced him.

"Ah! So you are the musician?" said the old soldier. "We are comrades."

They shook hands. They talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concerts

they gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with his

flute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and he

plunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly he stopped short,

and said:

"Come and see my canons."