Christophe followed him, wondering how anybody could be interested in

anything he might think about French artillery. The old man showed him in

triumph a number of musical canons, amazing productions, compositions that

might just as well be read upside down, or played as duets, one person

playing the right-hand page, and the other the left. The Commandant was an

old pupil of the Polytechnic, and had always had a taste for music: but

what he loved most of all in it was the mathematical problem: it seemed

to him--(as up to a point it is)--a magnificent mental gymnastic: and

he racked his brains in the invention and solution of puzzles in the

construction of music, each more useless and extravagant than the last. Of

course, his military career had not left him much time for the development

of his mania: but since his retirement he had thrown himself into it with

enthusiasm: he expended on it all the energy and ingenuity which he had

previously employed in pursuing the hordes of negro kings through the

deserts of Africa, or avoiding their traps. Christophe found his puzzles

quite amusing, and set him a more complicated one to solve. The old soldier

was delighted: they vied with one another: they produced a perfect shower

of musical riddles. After they had been playing the game for some time,

Christophe went upstairs to his own room. But the very next morning his

neighbor sent him a new problem, a regular teaser, at which the Commandant

had been working half the night: he replied with another: and the duel went

on until Christophe, who was getting tired of it, declared himself beaten:

at which the old soldier was perfectly delighted. He regarded his success

as a retaliation on Germany. He invited Christophe to lunch. Christophe's

frankness in telling the old soldier that he detested his musical

compositions, and shouting in protest when Chabran began to murder an

_andante_ of Haydn on his harmonium, completed the conquest. From that time

on they often met to talk. But not about music. Christophe could not summon

up any great interest in his neighbor's crotchety notions about it, and

much preferred getting him to talk about military subjects. The Commandant

asked nothing better: music was only a forced amusement for the unhappy

man: in reality, he was fretting his life out.

He was easily led on to yarn about his African campaigns. Gigantic

adventures worthy of the tales of a Pizarro and a Cortez! Christophe was

delighted with the vivid narrative of that marvelous and barbaric epic, of

which he knew nothing, and almost every Frenchman is ignorant: the tale of

the twenty years during which the heroism, and courage, and inventiveness,

and superhuman energy of a conquering handful of Frenchmen were spent far

away in the depths of the Black Continent, where they were surrounded

by armies of negroes, where they were deprived of the most rudimentary

arms of war, and yet, in the face of public opinion and a panic-stricken

Government, in spite of France, conquered for France an empire greater than

France itself. There was the flavor of a mighty joy, a flavor of blood in

the tale, from which, in Christophe's mind's eye, there sprang the figures

of modern _condottieri_, heroic adventurers, unlooked for in the France of

to-day, whom the France of to-day is ashamed to own, so that she modestly

draws a veil over them. The Commandant's voice would ring out bravely

as he recalled it all: and he would jovially recount, with learned

descriptions--(oddly interpolated in his epic narrative)--of the geological

structure of the country, in cold, precise terms, the story of the

tremendous marches, and the charges at full gallop, and the man-hunts, in

which he had been hunter and quarry, turn and turn about, in a struggle to

the death.--Christophe would listen and watch his face, and feel a great

pity for such a splendid human animal, condemned to inaction, and forced to

spend his time in playing ridiculous games. He wondered how he could ever

have become resigned to such a lot. He asked the old man how he had done

it. The Commandant was at first not at all inclined to let a stranger

into his confidence as to his grievances. But the French are naturally

loquacious, especially when they have a chance of pitching into each other:

"What on earth should I do," he said, "in the army as it is to-day? The

marines write books. The infantry study sociology. They do everything but

make war. They don't even prepare for it: they prepare never to go to war

again: they study the philosophy of war.... The philosophy of war! That's

a game for beasts of burden wondering how much thrashing they are going to

get!... Discussing, philosophizing, no, that's not my work. Much better

stay at home and go on with my canons!"

He was too much ashamed to air the most serious of his grievances: the

suspicion created among the officers by the appeal to informers, the

humiliation of having to submit to the insolent orders of certain crass and

mischievous politicians, the army's disgust at being put to base police

duty, taking inventories of the churches, putting down industrial strikes,

at the bidding of capital and the spite of the party in power--the petty

burgess radicals and anti-clericals--against the rest of the country. Not

to speak of the old African's disgust with the new Colonial Army, which was

for the most part recruited from the lowest elements of the nation, by way

of pandering to the egoism and cowardice of the rest, who refuse to share

in the honor and the risks of securing the defense of "greater

France"--France beyond the seas.

Christophe was not concerned with these French quarrels: they were no

affair of his: but he sympathized with the old soldier. Whatever he might

think of war, it seemed to him that an army was meant to produce soldiers,

as an apple-tree to produce apples, and that it was a strange perversion to

graft on to it politicians, esthetes, and sociologists. And yet he could

not understand how a man of such vigor could give way to his adversaries.

It is to be his own worst enemy for a man not to fight his enemies. In

all French people of any worth at all there was a spirit of surrender, a

strange temper of renunciation.--To Christophe it was even more profound,

and even more touching as it existed in the old soldier's daughter.

Her name was Céline. She had beautiful hair, plaited and braided so as

to set off her high, round forehead and her rather pointed ears, her

thin cheeks, and her pretty chin: she was like a country girl, with fine

intelligent dark eyes, very trustful, very soft, rather short-sighted: her

nose was a little too large, and she had a tiny mole on her upper lip by

the corner of her mouth, and she had a quiet smile which made her pout

prettily and thrust out her lower lip, which was a little protruding. She

was kind, active, clever, but she had no curiosity of mind. She read very

little, and never any of the newest books, never went to the theater, never

traveled,--(for traveling bored her father, who had had too much of it

in the old days),--never had anything to do with any polite charitable

work,--(her father used to condemn all such things),--made no attempt to

study,--(he used to make fun of blue stockings),--hardly ever left her

little patch of garden inclosed by its four high walls, so that it was like

being at the bottom of a deep well. And yet she was not really bored. She

occupied her time as best she could, and was good-tempered and resigned.

About her and about the setting which every woman unconsciously creates

for herself wherever she may be, there was a Chardinesque atmosphere: the

same soft silence, the same tranquil expression, the same attitude of

absorption--(a little drowsy and languid)--in the common task: the poetry

of the daily round, of the accustomed way of life, with its fixed thoughts

and actions, falling into exactly the same place at exactly the same

time--thoughts and actions which are cherished none the less with an

all-pervading tranquil gentleness: the serene mediocrity of the fine-souled

women of the middle-class: honest, conscientious, truthful, calm--calm in

their pleasures, unruffled in their labors, and yet poetic in all their

qualities. They are healthy and neat and tidy, clean in body and mind: all

their lives are sweetened with the scent of good bread, and lavender, and

integrity, and kindness. There is peace in all that they are and do, the

peace of old houses and smiling souls....

Christophe, whose affectionate trustfulness invited trust, had become very

friendly with her: they used to talk quite frankly: and he even went so far

as to ask her certain questions, which she was surprised to find herself

answering: she would tell him things which she had not told anybody, even

her most intimate friends.

"You see," Christophe would say, "you're not afraid of me. There's no

danger of our falling in love with each other: we're too good friends for

that."

"You're very polite!" she would answer with a laugh.

Her healthy nature recoiled as much as Christophe's from philandering

friendship, that form of sentimentality dear to equivocal men and women,

who are always juggling with their emotions. They were just comrades one to

another.

He asked her one day what she was doing in the afternoons, when he saw her

sitting in the garden with her work on her knees, never touching it, and

not stirring for hours together. She blushed, and protested that it was not

a matter of hours, but only a matter of a few minutes, perhaps a quarter of

an hour, during which she "went on with her story."

"What story?"

"The story I am always telling myself."

"You tell yourself stories? Oh, tell them to me!"

She told him that he was too curious. She would only go so far as to

intimate that they were stories of which she was not the heroine.

He was surprised at that:

"If you are going to tell yourself stories, it seems to me that it would be

more natural if you told your own story with embellishments, and lived in a

happier dream-life."

"I couldn't," she said. "If I did that, I should become desperate."

She blushed again at having revealed even so much of her inmost thoughts:

and she went on:

"Besides, when I am in the garden and a gust of wind reaches me, I am

happy. Then the garden becomes alive for me. And when the wind blusters and

comes from a great distance, he tells me so many things!"

In spite of her reserve, Christophe could see the hidden depths of

melancholy that lay behind her good-humor, and the restless activity which,

as she knew perfectly well, led nowhere. Why did she not try to break away

from her condition and emancipate herself? She would have been so well

fitted for a useful and active life!--But she alleged her affection for her

father, who would not hear of her leaving him. In vain did Christophe tell

her that the old soldier was perfectly vigorous and energetic, and had no

need of her, and that a man of his stamp could quite well be left alone,

and had no right to make a sacrifice of her. She would begin to defend her

father: by a pious fiction she would pretend that it was not her father

who was forcing her to stay, but she herself who could not bear to leave

him.--And, up to a point, what she said was true. It seemed to have been

accepted from time immemorial by herself, and her fatter, and all their

friends that their life had to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. She

had a married brother, who thought it quite natural that she should devote

her life to their father in his stead. He was entirely wrapped up in his

children. He loved them jealously, and left them no will of their own. His

love for his children was to him, and especially to his wife, a voluntary

bondage which weighed heavily on their life, and cramped all their

movements: his idea seemed to be that as soon as a man has children, his

own life comes to an end, and he has to stop short in his own development:

he was still young, active, and intelligent, and there he was reckoning up

the years he would have still to work before he could retire.--Christophe

saw how these good people were weighed down by the atmosphere of family

affection, which is so deep-rooted in France--deep-rooted, but stifling and

destructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive since

families in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, one

or two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It is

a cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, like a miser clinging

tightly to his hoard of gold.

A fortuitous circumstance gave Christophe a yet greater interest in the

girl, and showed him the full extent of the suppression of the emotions

of the French, their fear of life, of letting themselves go, and claiming

their birthright.

Elsberger, the engineer, had a brother ten years younger than himself,

likewise an engineer. He was a very good fellow, like thousands of others,

of the middle-class, and he had artistic aspirations: he was one of those

people who would like to practise an art, but are afraid of compromising

their reputation and position. As a matter of fact, it is not a very

difficult problem, and most of the artists of to-day have solved it

without any great danger to themselves. But it needs a certain amount of

will-power: and not everybody is capable of even that much expenditure of

energy: such people are not sure enough of wanting what they really want:

and as their position in life grows more assured, they submit and drift

along, without any show of revolt or protest. They cannot be blamed if they

become good citizens instead of bad artists. But their disappointment too

often leaves behind it a secret discontent, a _qualis artifex pereo_, which

as best it can assumes a crust of what is usually called philosophy, and

spoils their lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxieties

have erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of André

Elsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who was

very self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon a

scientific career. André was clever, and quite well equipped for scientific

work--or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough of

being an artist, and he was too sure that he was middle-class: and so,

provisionally at first,--(one knows what that means)--he had bowed to his

brother's wishes: he entered the _Centrale_, high up in the list, and

passed out equally high, and since then he had practised his profession as

an engineer conscientiously, but without being interested in it. Of course,

he had lost the little artistic quality that he had possessed, and he never

spoke of it except ironically.

"And then," he used to say--(Christophe recognized Olivier's pessimistic

tendency in his arguments)--"life is not good enough to make one worry

about a spoiled career. What does a bad poet more or less matter!..."

The brothers were fond of one another: they were of the same stamp morally:

but they did not get on well together. They had both been Dreyfus-mad. But

André was attracted by syndicalism, and was an anti-militarist: and Elie

was a patriot.

From time to time André would visit Christophe without going to see his

brother: and that astonished Christophe: for there was no great sympathy

between himself and André, who used hardly ever to open his mouth except

to gird at something or somebody,--which was very tiresome: and when

Christophe said anything, André would not listen. Christophe made no effort

to conceal the fact that he found his visits a nuisance: but André did not

mind, and seemed not to notice it. At last Christophe found the key to the

riddle one day when he found his visitor leaning out of the window, and

paying much more attention to what was happening in the garden below than

to what he was saying. He remarked upon it, and André was not reluctant to

admit that he knew Mademoiselle Chabran, and that she had something to do

with his visits to Christophe. And, his tongue being, loosed, he confessed

that he had long been attached to the girl, and perhaps something more than

that: the Elsbergers had long ago been in close touch with the Chabrans:

but, though they had been very intimate, politics and recent events

had separated them: and thereafter they saw very little of each other.

Christophe did not disguise his opinion that it was an idiotic state of

things. Was it impossible for people to think differently, and yet to

retain their mutual esteem? André said he thought it was, and protested

that he was very broad-minded: but he would not admit the possibility of

tolerance in certain questions, concerning which, he said, he could not

admit any opinion different from his own: and he instanced the famous

Affair. On that, as usual, he became wild. Christophe knew the sort of

thing that happened in that connection, and made no attempt to argue: but

he; asked whether the Affair was never going to come to an end, or whether

its curse was to go on and on to the end of time, descending even unto the

third and fourth generation. André began to laugh: and without answering

Christophe, he fell to tender praise of Céline Chabran, and protested

against her father's selfishness, who thought it quite natural that she

should be sacrificed to him.

"Why don't you marry her," asked Christophe, "if you love her and she loves

you?"

André said mournfully that Céline was clerical. Christophe asked what he

meant by that. André replied that he meant that she was religious, and had

vowed a sort of feudal service to God and His bonzes.

"But how does that affect you?"

"I don't want to share my wife with any one."

"What! You are jealous even of your wife's ideas? Why, you're more selfish

even than the Commandant!"

"It's all very well for you to talk: would you take a woman who did not

love music?"

"I have done so."

"How can a man and a woman live together if they don't think the same?"

"Don't you worry about what you think! Ah! my dear fellow, ideas count for

so little when one loves. What does it matter to me whether the woman I

love cares for music as much as I do? She herself is music to me! When a

man has the luck, as you have, to find a dear girl whom he loves, and she

loves him, she must believe what she likes, and he must believe what he

likes! When all is said and done, what do your ideas amount to? There is

only one truth in the world, there is only one God: love."

"You speak like a poet. You don't see life as it is. I know only too many

marriages which have suffered from such a want of union in thought."

"Those husbands and wives did not love each other enough. You have to know

what you want."

"Wanting does not do everything in life. Even if I wanted to marry

Mademoiselle Chabran, I couldn't."

"I'd like to know why."

André spoke of his scruples: his position was not assured: he had no

fortune and no great health. He was wondering whether he had the right to

marry in such circumstances. It was a great responsibility. Was there not a

great risk of bringing unhappiness on the woman he loved, and himself,--not

to mention any children there might be?... It was better to wait--or give

up the idea.

Christophe shrugged his shoulders.

"That's a fine sort of love! If she loves you, she will be happy in her

devotion to you. And as for the children, you French people are absurd. You

would like only to bring them into the world when you are sure of turning

them out with comfortable private means, so that they will have nothing to

suffer and nothing to fear.... Good Lord! That's nothing to do with you:

your business is only to give them life, love of life, and courage to

defend it. The rest ... whether they live or die ... is the common lot. Is

it better to give up living than to take the risks of life?"

The sturdy confidence which emanated from Christophe affected André, but

did not change his mind. He said:

"Yes, perhaps, that is true...."

But he stopped at that. Like all the rest, his will and power of action

seemed to be paralyzed.

* * * * *

Christophe had set himself to fight the inertia which he found In most

of his French friends, oddly coupled with laborious and often feverish

activity. Almost all the people he met in the various middle-class houses

which he visited were discontented. They had almost all the same disgust

with the demagogues and their corrupt ideas. In almost all there was the

same sorrowful and proud consciousness of the betrayal of the genius of

their race. And it was by no means the result of any personal rancor nor

the bitterness of men and classes beaten and thrust out of power and active

life, or discharged officials, or unemployed energy, nor that of an old

aristocracy which has returned to its estates, there to die in hiding like

a wounded lion. It was a feeling of moral revolt, mute, profound, general:

it was to be found everywhere, in a greater or less degree, in the army, in

the magistracy, in the University, in the officers, and in every vital

branch of the machinery of government. But they took no active measures.

They were discouraged in advance: they kept on saying:

"There is nothing to be done:"

or

"Let us try not to think of it."

Fearfully they dodged anything sad in their thoughts and conversation: and

they took refuge in their home life.

If they had been content to refrain only from political action! But even

in their daily lives these good people had no interest in doing anything

definite. They put up with the degrading, haphazard contact with horrible

people whom they despised, because they could not take the trouble to fight

against them, thinking that any such revolt must of necessity be useless.

Why, for instance, should artists, and, in particular, the musicians

with whom Christophe was most in touch, unprotestingly put up with the

effrontery of the scaramouches of the Press, who laid down the law for

them? There were absolute idiots among them, whose ignorance _in omni re

scibili_ was proverbial, though they were none the less invested with

a sovereign authority _in omni re scibili_. They did not even take the

trouble to write their articles and books: they had secretaries, poor

starving creatures, who would have sold their souls, if they had had such

things, for bread or women. There was no secret about it in Paris. And

yet they went on riding their high horse and patronizing the artists.

Christophe used to roar with anger sometimes when he read their articles.

"They have no heart!" he would say. "Oh! the cowards!"

"Who are you screaming at?" Olivier would ask. "The idiots of the

market-place?"

"No. The honest men. These rascals are plying their trade: they lie, they

steal, they rob and murder. But it is the others--those who despise them

and yet let them go on--that I despise a thousand times more. If their

colleagues on the Press, if honest, cultured critics, and the artists on

whose backs these harlequins strut and poise themselves, did not put up

with it, in silence, from shyness or fear of compromising themselves, or

from some shameful anticipation of mutual service, a sort of secret pact

made with the enemy so that they may be immune from their attacks,--if they

did not let them preen themselves in their patronage and friendship, their

upstart power would soon be killed by ridicule. There's the same weakness

in everything, everywhere. I've met twenty honest men who have said to me

of so-and-so: 'He is a scoundrel.' But there is not one of them who would

not refer to him as his 'dear colleague,' and, if he met him, shake hands

with him.--'There are too many of them!' they say.--Too many cowards. Too

many flabby honest men."

"Eh! What do you want them to do?"

"Be every man his own policeman! What are you waiting for? For Heaven to

take your affairs in hand? Look you, at this very moment. It is three days

now since the snow fell. Your streets are thick with it, and your Paris is

like a sewer of mud. What do you do? You protest against your Municipal

Council for leaving you in such a state of filth. But do you yourselves do

anything to clear it away? Not a bit of it! You sit with your arms folded.

Not one of you has energy enough even to clean the pavement in front of

his house. Nobody does his duty, neither the State nor the members of the

State: each man thinks he has done as much as is expected of him by laying

the blame on some one else. You have become so used, through centuries of

monarchical training, to doing nothing for yourselves that you all seem to

spend your time in star-gazing and waiting for a miracle to happen. The

only miracle that could happen would be if you all suddenly made up your

minds to do something. My dear Olivier, you French people have plenty of

brains and plenty of good qualities: but you lack blood. You most of all.

There's nothing the matter with your mind or your heart. It's your life

that's all wrong. You're sputtering out."

"What can we do? We can only wait for life to return to us."

"You must want life to return to you. You must want to be cured. You must

_want_, use your will! And if you are to do that you must first let in some

pure air into your houses. If you won't go out of doors, then at least

you must keep your houses healthy. You have let the air be poisoned by

the unwholesome vapors of the market-place. Your art and your ideas are

two-thirds adulterated. And you are so dispirited that it hardly occasions

you any surprise, and rouses you to no sort of indignation. Some of these

good people--(it is pitiful to see)--are so cowed that they actually

persuade themselves that they are wrong and the charlatans are right.

Why--even on your _Ésope_ review, in which you profess not to be taken in

by anything,--I have found unhappy young men persuading themselves that

they love an art and ideas for which they have not a vestige of love. They

get drunk on it, without any sort of pleasure, simply because they are told

to do so: and they are dying of boredom--boredom with the monstrous lie of

the whole thing!"

* * * * *

Christophe passed through these wavering and dispirited creatures like a

wind shaking the slumbering trees. He made no attempt to force them to his

way of thinking: he breathed into them energy enough to make them think for

themselves. He used to say:

"You are too humble. The grand enemy is neurasthenia, doubt. A man can and

must be tolerant and human. But no man may doubt what he believes to be

good and true. A man must believe in what he thinks. And he should maintain

what he believes. Whatever our powers may be, we have no right to forswear

them. The smallest creature in the world, like the greatest, has his duty.

And--(though he is not sufficiently conscious of it)--he has also a power.

Why should you think that your revolt will carry so little weight? A sturdy

upright conscience which dares assert itself is a mighty thing. More than

once during the last few years you have seen the State and public opinion

forced to reckon with the views of an honest man, who had no other weapons

but his own moral force, which, with constant courage and tenacity, he had

dared publicly to assert....

"And if you must go on asking what's the good of taking so much trouble,

what's the good of fighting, _what's the good of it all?_... Then, I will

tell you:--Because France is dying, because Europe is perishing--because,

if we did not fight, our civilization, the edifice so splendidly

constructed, at the cost of centuries of labor, by our humanity, would

crumble away. These are not idle words. The country is in danger, our

European mother-country,--and more than any, yours, your own native

country, France. Your apathy is killing her. Your silence is killing her.

Each of your energies as it dies, each of your ideas as it accepts and

surrenders, each of your good intentions as it ends in sterility, every

drop of your blood as it dries up, unused, in your veins, means death to

her.... Up! up! You must live! Or, if you must die, then you must die

fighting like men!"

* * * * *

But the chief difficulty lay not in getting them to do something, but in

getting them to act together. There they were quite unmanageable. The best

of them were the most obstinate, as Christophe found in dealing with the

tenants in his own house: M. Félix Weil, Elsberger, the engineer, and

Commandant Chabran, lived on terms of polite and silent hostility. And yet,

though Christophe knew very little of them, he could see that, underneath

their party and racial labels, they all wanted the same thing.

There were many reasons particularly why M. Weil and the Commandant should

have understood each other. By one of those contrasts common to thoughtful

men, M. Weil, who never left his books and lived only in the life of the

mind, had a passion for all things military. "_We are all cranks_," said

the half-Jew Montaigne, applying to mankind in general what is perfectly

true of certain types of minds, like the type of which M. Weil was an

example. The old intellectual had the craze for Napoleon. He collected

books and relics which brought to life in him the terrible dream of the

Imperial epic. Like many Frenchmen of that crepuscular epoch, he was

dazzled by the distant rays of that glorious sun. He used to go through the

campaigns, fight the battles all over again, and discuss operations: he

was one of those chamber-strategists who swarm in the Academies and the

Universities, who explain Austerlitz and declare how Waterloo should have

been fought. He was the first to make fun of the "Napoleonite" in himself:

it tickled his irony: but none the less he went on reading the splendid

stories with the wild enthusiasm of a child playing a game: he would weep

over certain episodes: and when he realized that he had been weak enough to

shed tears, he would roar with laughter, and call himself an old fool. As a

matter of fact, he was a Napoleonite not so much from patriotism as from

a romantic interest and a platonic love of action. However, he was a good

patriot, and much more attached to France than many an actual Frenchman.

The French anti-Semites are stupid and actively mischievous in casting

their insulting suspicions on the feeling for France of the Jews who have

settled in the country. Outside the reasons by which any family does of

necessity, after a generation or two, become attached to the land of its

adoption, where the blood of the soil has become its own, the Jews have

especial reason to love the nation which in the West stands for the most

advanced ideas of intellectual and moral liberty. They love it because

for a hundred years they have helped to make it so, and its liberty is in

part their work. How, then, should they not defend it against every menace

of feudal reaction? To try--as a handful of unscrupulous politicians and

a herd of wrong-headed people would like--to break the bonds which bind

these Frenchmen by adoption to France, is to play into the hands of that

reaction.

Commandant Chabran was one of those wrong-headed old Frenchmen who are

roused to fury by the newspapers, which make out that every immigrant

into France is a secret enemy, and, in a human, hospitable spirit, force

themselves to suspect and hate and revile them, and deny the brave destiny

of the race, which is the conflux of all the races. Therefore, he thought

it incumbent on him not to know the tenant of the first floor, although he

would have been glad to have his acquaintance. As for M. Weil, he would

have been very glad to talk to the old soldier: but he knew him for a

nationalist, and regarded him with mild contempt.

Christophe had much less reason than the Commandant for being interested in

M. Weil. But he could not bear to hear ill spoken of anybody unjustly. And

he broke many a lance in defence of M. Weil when he was attacked in his

presence.

One day, when the Commandant, as usual, was railing against the prevailing

state of things, Christophe said to him:

"It is your own fault. You all shut yourselves up inside yourselves. When

things in France are not going well, to your way of thinking, you submit to

it and send in your resignation. One would think it was a point of honor

with you to admit yourselves beaten. I've never seen anybody lose a cause

with such absolute delight. Come, Commandant, you have made war; is that

fighting, or anything like it?"

"It is not a question of fighting," replied the Commandant. "We don't fight

against France. In such struggles as these we have to argue, and vote, and

mix with all sorts of knaves and low blackguards: and I don't like it."

"You seem to be profoundly disgusted! I suppose you had to do with knaves

and low blackguards in Africa!"

"On my honor, that did not disgust me nearly so much. Out there one could

always knock them down! Besides, if it's a question of fighting, you need

soldiers. I had my sharpshooters out there. Here I am all alone."

"It isn't that there is any lack of good men."

"Where are they?"

"Everywhere. All round us."

"Well: what are they doing?"

"Just what you're doing. Nothing. They say there's nothing to be done."

"Give me an instance."

"Three, if you like, in this very house."

Christophe mentioned M. Weil,--(the Commandant gave an exclamation),--and

the Elsbergers,--(he jumped in his seat):

"That Jew? Those Dreyfusards?"

"Dreyfusards?" said Christophe. "Well: what does that matter?"

"It is they who have ruined France."

"They love France as much as you do."

"They're mad, mischievous lunatics."

"Can't you be just to your adversaries?"

"I can get on quite well with loyal adversaries who use the same weapons.

The proof of that is that I am here talking to you, Monsieur German. I can

think well of the Germans, although some day I hope to give them back with

interest the thrashing we got from them. But it is not the same thing with

our enemies at home: they use underhand weapons, sophistry, and unsound

ideas, and a poisonous humanitarianism...."

"Yes. You are in the same state of mind as that of the knights of the

Middle Ages, when, for the first time, they found themselves faced with

gunpowder. What do you want? There is evolution in war too."

"So be it. But then, let us be frank, and say that war is war."

"Suppose a common enemy were to threaten Europe, wouldn't you throw in your

lot with the Germans?"

"We did so, in China."

"Very well, then: look about you. Don't you see that the heroic idealism

of your country and every other country in Europe is actually threatened?

Don't you see that they are all, more or less, a prey to the adventurers of

every class of society? To fight that common enemy, don't you think you

should join with those of your adversaries who are of some worth and moral

vigor? How can a man like you set so little store by the realities of life?

Here are people who uphold an ideal which is different from your own! An

ideal is a force, you cannot deny it: in the struggle in which you were

recently engaged, it was your adversaries' ideal which defeated you.

Instead of wasting your strength in fighting against it, why not make use

of it, side by side with your own, against the enemies of all ideals, the

men who are exploiting your country and your wealth of ideas, the men who

are bringing European civilization to rottenness?"

"For whose sake? One must know where one is. To make our adversaries

triumph?"

"When you were in Africa, you never stopped to think whether you were

fighting for the King or the Republic. I fancy that not many of you ever

gave a thought to the Republic."

"They didn't care a rap."

"Good! And that was well for France. You conquered for her, as well as for

yourselves, and for the honor and the joy of it. Why not do the same here?

Why not widen the scope of the fight? Don't go haggling over differences in

politics and religion. These things are utterly futile. What does it matter

whether your nation is the eldest daughter of the Church or the eldest

daughter of Reason? The only thing that does matter is that it should

live! Everything that exalts life is good. There is only one enemy,

pleasure-seeking egoism, which fouls the sources of life and dries them up.

Exalt force, exalt the light, exalt fruitful love, the joy of sacrifice,

action, and give up expecting other people to act for you. Do, act,

combine! Come!..."

And he laughed and began to bang out the first bars of the march in _B

minor_ from the _Choral Symphony_.

"Do you know," he said, breaking off, "that if I were one of your

musicians, say Charpentier or Bruneau (devil take the two of them!),

I would combine in a choral symphony _Aux armes, citoyens!_,

_l'Internationale_, _Vive Henri IV_, and _Dieu Protège la France!_,--(You

see, something like this.)--I would make you a soup so hot that it would

burn your mouth! It would be unpleasant,--(no worse in any case than what

you are doing now):--but I vow it would warm your vitals, and that you

would have to set out on the march!"

And he roared with laughter.

The Commandant laughed too:

"You're a fine fellow, Monsieur Krafft. What a pity you're not one of us!"

"But I am one of you! The fight is the same everywhere. Let us close up the

ranks!"

The Commandant quite agreed: but there he stayed. Then Christophe pressed

his point and brought the conversation back to M. Weil and the Elsbergers.

And the old soldier no less obstinately went back to his eternal arguments

against Jews and Dreyfusards, and nothing that Christophe had said seemed

to have had the slightest effect on him.

Christophe grew despondent. Olivier said to him:

"Don't you worry about it. One man cannot all of a sudden change the whole

state of mind of a nation. That's too much to expect! But you have done a

good deal without knowing it."

"What have I done?" said Christophe.

"You are Christophe."

"What good is that to other people?"

"A great deal. Just go on being what you are, my dear Christophe. Don't you

worry about us."

But Christophe could not surrender. He went on arguing with Commandant

Chabran, sometimes with great vehemence. It amused Céline. She was

generally present at their discussions, sitting and working in silence. She

took no part in the argument: but it seemed to make her more lively: and

quite a different expression would come into her eyes: it was as though it

gave her more breathing-space. She began to read, and went out a little

more, and found more things to interest her. And one day, when Christophe

was battling with her father about the Elsbergers, the Commandant saw her

smile: he asked her what she was thinking, and she replied calmly:

"I think M. Krafft is right."

The Commandant was taken aback, and said:

"You ... you surprise me!... However, right or wrong, we are what we are.

And there's no reason why we should know these people. Isn't it so, my

dear?"

"No, father," she replied. "I would like to know them."

The Commandant said nothing, and pretended that he had not heard. He

himself was much less insensible of Christophe's influence than he cared to

appear. His vehemence and narrow-mindedness did not prevent his having a

proper sense of justice and very generous feelings. He loved Christophe, he

loved his frankness and his moral soundness, and he used often bitterly to

regret that Christophe was a German. Although he always lost his temper in

these discussions, he was always eager for more, and Christophe's arguments

did produce an effect on him though he would never have been willing to

admit it. But one day Christophe found him absorbed in reading a book which

he would not let him see. And when Céline took Christophe to the door and

found herself alone with him, she said:

"Do you know what he was reading? One of M. Weil's books."

Christophe was delighted.

"What does he say about it?"

"He says: 'Beast!'... But he can't put it down."

Christophe made no allusion to the fact with the Commandant. It was he who

asked:

"Why have you stopped hurling that blessed Jew at my head?"

"Because I don't think there's any need to," said Christophe. "Why?" asked

the Commandant aggressively.

Christophe made no reply, and went away laughing.

* * * * *

Olivier was right. It is not through words that a man can influence other

men: but through his life. There are people who irradiate an atmosphere

of peace from their eyes, and in their gestures, and through the silent

contact with the serenity of their souls. Christophe irradiated life.

Softly, softly, like the moist air of spring, it penetrated the walls and

the closed windows of the somnolent old house: it gave new life to the

hearts of men and women, whom sorrow, weakness, and isolation had for years

been consuming, so that they were withered and like dead creatures. What

a power there is in one soul over another! Those who wield that power and

those who feel it are alike ignorant of its working. And yet the life of

the world is in the ebb and flow controlled by that mysterious power of

attraction.

On the second floor, below Christophe and Olivier's room, there lived,

as we have seen, a young woman of thirty-five, a Madame Germain, a widow

of two years' standing, who, the year before, had lost her little girl,

a child of seven. She lived with her mother-in-law, and they never saw

anybody. Of all the tenants of the house, they had the least to do with

Christophe. They had hardly met, and they had never spoken to each other.

She was a tall woman, thin, but with a good figure; she had fine brown

eyes, dull and rather inexpressive, though every now and then there glowed

in them a hard, mournful light. Her face was sallow and her complexion

waxy: her cheeks were hollow and her lips were tightly compressed. The

elder Madame Germain was a devout lady, and spent all her time at church.

The younger woman lived in jealous isolation in her grief. She took no

interest in anything or anybody. She surrounded herself with portraits and

pictures of her little girl, and by dint of staring at them she had ceased

to see her as she was: the photographs and dead presentments had killed the

living image of the child. She had ceased to see her as she was, but she

clung to it: she was determined to think of nothing but the child: and so,

in the end, she reached a point at which she could not even think of her:

she had completed the work of death. There she stopped, frozen, with her

heart turned to stone, with no tears to shed, with her life withered.

Religion was no aid to her. She went through the formalities, but her heart

was not in them, and therefore she had no living faith: she gave money for

Masses, but she took no active part in any of the work of the Church: her

whole religion was centered in the one thought of seeing her child again.

What did the rest matter? God? What had she to do with God? To see her

child again, only to see her again.... And she was by no means sure that

she would do so. She wished to believe it, willed it hardly, desperately:

but she was in doubt.... She could not bear to see other children, and used

to think:

"Why are they not dead too?"

In the neighborhood there was a little girl who in figure and manner was

like her own. When she saw her from behind, with her little pigtails down

her back, she used to tremble. She would follow her, and, when the child

turned round and she saw that it was not _she_, she would long to strangle

her. She used to complain that the Elsberger children made a noise

below her, though they were very quiet, and even very subdued by their

up-bringing: and when the unhappy children began to play about their

room, she would send her maid to ask her neighbors to make them be quiet.

Christophe met her once as he was coming in with the little girls, and was

hurt and horrified by the hard way in which she looked at them.

One summer evening when the poor woman was sitting in the dark in the

self-hypnotized condition of the utter emptiness of her living death, she

heard Christophe playing. It was his habit to sit at the piano in the

half-light, musing and improvising. His music irritated her, for it

disturbed the empty torpor into which she had sunk. She shut the window

angrily. The music penetrated through to her room. Madame Germain was

filled with a sort of hatred for it. She would have been glad to stop

Christophe, but she had no right to do so. Thereafter, every day at the

same time she sat waiting impatiently and irritably for the music to begin:

and when it was later than usual her irritation was only the more acute. In

spite of herself, she had to follow the music through to the end, and when

it was over she found it hard to sink back into her usual apathy.--And one

evening, when she was curled up in a corner of her dark room, and, through

the walls and the closed window, the distant music reached her, that

light-giving music ... she felt a thrill run through her, and once more

tears came to her eyes. She went and opened the window, and stood there

listening and weeping. The music was like rain drop by drop falling upon

her poor withered heart, and giving it new life. Once more she could see

the sky, the stars, the summer night: within herself she felt the dawning

of a new interest in life, as yet only a poor, pale light, vague and

sorrowful sympathy for others. And that night, for the first time for many

months, the image of her little girl came to her in her dreams.--For the

surest road to bring us near the beloved dead, the best means of seeing

them again, is not to go with them into death, but to live. They live in

our lives, and die with us.

She made no attempt to meet Christophe. Bather she avoided him. But she

used to hear him go by on the stairs with the children: and she would stand

in hiding behind her door to listen to their babyish prattle, which so

moved her heart.

One day, as she was going out, she heard their little padding footsteps

coming down the stairs, rather more noisily than usual, and the voice of

one of the children saying to her sister:

"Don't make so much noise, Lucette. Christophe says you mustn't because of

the sorrowful lady."

And the other child began to walk more quietly and to talk in a whisper.

Then Madame Germain could not restrain herself: she opened the door, and

took the children in her arms, and hugged them fiercely. They were afraid:

one of the children began to cry. She let them go, and went back into her

own room.

After that, whenever she met them, she used to try to smile at them, a poor

withered smile,--(for she had grown unused to smiling);--she would speak to

them awkwardly and affectionately, and the children would reply shyly in

timid, bashful whispers. They were still afraid of the sorrowful lady, more

afraid than ever: and now, whenever they passed the door, they used to run

lest she should come out and catch them. She used to hide to catch sight

of them as they passed. She would have been ashamed to be seen talking to

the children. She was ashamed in her own eyes. It seemed to her that she

was robbing her own dead child of some of the love to which she only was

entitled. She would kneel down and pray for her forgiveness. But now that

the instinct for life and love was newly awakened in her, she could not

resist it: it was stronger than herself.

One evening, as Christophe came in, he saw that there was an unusual

commotion in the house. He met a tradesman, who told him that the tenant

of the third floor, M. Watelet, had just died suddenly of angina pectoris.

Christophe was filled with pity, not so much for his unhappy neighbor as

for the child who was left alone in the world. M. Watelet was not known to

have any relations, and there was every reason to believe that he had left

the girl almost entirely unprovided for. Christophe raced upstairs, and

went into the flat on the third floor, the door of which was open. He

found the Abbé Corneille with the body, and the child in tears, crying

to her father: the housekeeper was making clumsy efforts to console her.

Christophe took the child in his arms and spoke to her tenderly. She clung

to him desperately: he could not think of leaving her: he wanted to take

her away, but she would not let him. He stayed with her. He sat near the

window in the dying light of day, and went on rocking her in his arms and

speaking to her softly. The child gradually grew calmer, and went to sleep,

still sobbing. Christophe laid her on her bed, and tried awkwardly to

undress her and undo the laces of her little shoes. It was nightfall. The

door of the flat had been left open. A shadow entered with a rustling of

skirts. In the fading light Christophe recognized the fevered eyes of the

sorrowful lady. He was amazed. She stood by the door, and said thickly:

"I came.... Will you ... will you let me take her?"

Christophe took her hand and pressed it. Madame Germain was in tears. Then

she sat by the bedside. And, a moment later, she said:

"Let me stay with her...."

Christophe went up to his own room with the Abbé Corneille. The priest was

a little embarrassed, and begged Ms pardon for coming up. He hoped, he

said, humbly, that the dead man would have nothing to reproach him with: he

had gone, not as a priest, but as a friend. Christophe was too much moved

to speak, and left him with an affectionate shake of the hand.

Next morning, when Christophe went down, he found the child with her arms

round Madame Germain's neck, with the naïve confidence which makes children

surrender absolutely to those who have won their affection. She was glad to

go with her new friend.... Alas! she had soon forgotten her adopted father.

She showed just the same affection for her new mother. That was not very

comforting. Did Madame Germain, in the egoism of her love, see it?...

Perhaps. But what did it matter? The thing is to love. That way lies

happiness....

A few weeks after the funeral Madame Germain took the child into the

country, far away from Paris. Christophe and Olivier saw them off. The

woman had an expression of contentment and secret joy which they had never

known in her before. She paid no attention to them. However, just as they

were going, she noticed Christophe, and held out her hand, and said:

"It was you who saved me."

"What's the matter with the woman?" asked Christophe in amazement, as they

were going upstairs after her departure.

A few days later the post brought him a photograph of a little girl whom he

did not know, sitting on a stool, with her little hands sagely folded in

her lap, while she looked up at him with clear, sad eyes. Beneath it were

written these words:

"With thanks from my dear, dead child."

* * * * *

Thus it was that the breath of life passed into all these people. In the

attic on the fifth floor was a great and mighty flame of humanity, the

warmth and light of which were slowly filtered through the house.

But Christophe saw it not. To him the process was very slow.

"Ah!" he would sigh, "if one could only bring these good people together,

all these people of all classes and every kind of belief, who refuse to

know each other! Can't it be done?"

"What do you want?" said Olivier. "You would need to have mutual tolerance

and a power of sympathy which can only come from inward joy,--the joy of a

healthy, normal, harmonious existence,--the joy of having a useful outlet

for one's activity, of feeling that one's efforts are not wasted, and that

one is serving some great purpose. You would need to have a prosperous

country, a nation at the height of greatness, or--(better still)--on the

road to greatness. And you must also have--(the two things go together)--a

power which could employ all the nation's energies, an intelligent and

strong power, which would be above party. Now, there is no power above

party save that which finds its strength in itself--not in the multitude,

that power which seeks not the support of anarchical majorities,--as it

does nowadays when it is no more than a well-trained dog in the hands

of second-rate men, and bends all to its will by service rendered: the

victorious general, the dictatorship of Public Safety, the supremacy of the

intelligence... what you will. It does not depend on us. You must have the

opportunity and the men capable of seizing it: you must have happiness and

genius. Let us wait and hope! The forces are there: the forces of faith,

knowledge, work, old France and new France, and the greater France.... What

an upheaval it would be, if the word were spoken, the magic word which

should let loose these forces all together! Of course, neither you nor I

can say the word. Who will say it? Victory? Glory?... Patience! The chief

thing is for the strength of the nation to be gathered together, and not

to rust away, and not to lose heart before the time comes. Happiness and

genius only come to those peoples who have earned them by ages of stoic

patience, and labor, and faith."

"Who knows?" said Christophe. "They often come sooner than we think--just

when we expect them least. You are counting too much on the work of ages.

Make ready. Gird your loins. Always be prepared with your shoes on your

feet and your staff in your hand.... For you do not know that the Lord will

not pass your doors this very night."

* * * * *

The Lord came very near that night. His shadow fell upon the threshold of

the house.

* * * * *

Following on a sequence of apparently insignificant events, relations

between France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in a few days,

the usual neighborly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocative

mood which precedes war. There was nothing surprising in this, except to

those who were living under the illusion that the world is governed by

reason. But there were many such in France: and numbers of people were

amazed from day to day to see the vehement Gallophobia of the German

Press becoming rampant with the usual quasi-unanimity. Certain of those

newspapers which, in the two countries, arrogate to themselves a monopoly

of patriotism, and speak in the nation's name, and dictate to the State,

sometimes with the secret complicity of the State, the policy it should

follow, launched forth insulting ultimatums to France. There was a dispute

between Germany and England; and Germany did not admit the right of France

not to interfere: the insolent newspapers called upon her to declare for

Germany, or else threatened to make her pay the chief expenses of the war:

they presumed that they could wrest alliance from her fears, and already

regarded her as a conquered and contented vassal,--to be frank, like

Austria. It only showed the insane vanity of German Imperialism, drunk with

victory, and the absolute incapacity of German statesmen to understand

other races, so that they were always applying the simple common measure

which was law for themselves: Force, the supreme reason. Naturally, such a

brutal demand, made of an ancient nation, rich in its past ages of a glory

and a supremacy in Europe, such as Germany had never known, had had exactly

the opposite effect to that which Germany expected. It had provoked their

slumbering pride; France was shaken from top to base; and even the most

diffident of the French roared with anger.

The great mass of the German people had nothing at all to do with the

provocation: they were shocked by it: the honest men of every country

ask only to be allowed to live in peace: and the people of Germany are

particularly peaceful, affectionate, anxious to be on good terms with

everybody, and much more inclined to admire and emulate other nations than

to go to war with them. But the honest men of a nation are not asked for

their opinion: and they are not bold enough to give it. Those who are not

virile enough to take public action are inevitably condemned to be its

pawns. They are the magnificent and unthinking echo which casts back the

snarling cries of the Press and the defiance of their leaders, and swells

them into the _Marseillaise_, or the _Wacht am Rhein_.

It was a terrible blow to Christophe and Olivier. They were so used to

living in mutual love that they could not understand why their countries

did not do the same. Neither of them could grasp the reasons for the

persistent hostility, which was now so suddenly brought to the surface,

especially Christophe, who, being a German, had no sort of ground for

ill-feeling against the people whom his own people had conquered.

Although he himself was shocked by the intolerable vanity of some of his

fellow-countrymen, and, up to a certain point, was entirely with the French

against such a high-handed Brunswicker demand, he could not understand

why France should, after all, be unwilling to enter into an alliance with

Germany. The two countries seemed to him to have so many deep-seated

reasons for being united, so many ideas in common, and such great tasks to

accomplish together, that it annoyed him to see them persisting in their

wasteful, sterile ill-feeling. Like all Germans, he regarded France as the

most to blame for the misunderstanding: for, though he was quite ready to

admit that it was painful for her to sit still under the memory of her

defeat, yet that was, after all, only a matter of vanity, which should be

set aside in the higher interests of civilization and of France herself.

He had never taken the trouble to think out the problem of Alsace and

Lorraine. At school he had been taught to regard the annexation of those

countries as an act of justice, by which, after centuries of foreign

subjection, a German province had been restored to the German flag. And so,

he was brought down with a run, and he discovered that his friend regarded

the annexation as a crime. He had never even spoken to him about these

things, so convinced was he that they were of the same opinion: and now he

found Olivier, of whose good faith and broad-mindedness he was certain,

telling him, dispassionately, without anger and with profound sadness, that

it was possible for a great people to renounce the thought of vengeance for

such a crime, but quite impossible for them to subscribe to it without

dishonor.

They had great difficulty in understanding each other. Olivier's historical

argument, alleging the right of France to claim Alsace as a Latin country,

made no impression on Christophe: there were just as good arguments to the

contrary: history can provide politics with every sort of argument in every

sort of cause. Christophe was much more accessible to the human, and not

only French, aspect of the problem. Whether the Alsatians were or were not

Germans was not the question. They did not wish to be Germans: and that

was all that mattered. What nation has the right to say: "These people are

mine: for they are my brothers"? If the brothers in question renounce that

nation, though they be a thousand times in the wrong, the consequences of

the breach must always be borne by the party who has failed to win the

love of the other, and therefore has lost the right to presume to bind the

other's fortunes up with his own. After forty years of strained relations,

vexations, patent or disguised, and even of real advantage gained from the

exact and intelligent administration of Germany, the Alsatians persist in

their refusal to become Germans: and, though they might give in from sheer

exhaustion, nothing could ever wipe out the memory of the sufferings of the

generations, forced to live in exile from their native land, or, what is

even more pitiful, unable to leave it, and compelled to bend under a yoke

which was hateful to them, and to submit to the seizure of their country

and the slavery of their people.

Christophe naïvely confessed that he had never seen the matter in that

light: and he was considerably perturbed by it. And honest Germans always

bring to a discussion an integrity which does not always go with the

passionate self-esteem of a Latin, however sincere he may be. It never

occurred to Christophe to support his argument by the citation of similar

crimes perpetrated by all nations all through the history of the world. He

was too proud to fall back upon any such humiliating excuse: he knew that,

as humanity advances, its crimes become more odious, for they stand in a

clearer light. But he knew also that if France were victorious in her turn

she would be no more moderate in the hour of victory than Germany had been,

and that yet another link would be added to the chain of the crimes of the

nations. So the tragic conflict would drag on for ever, in which the best

elements of European civilization were in danger of being lost.

Though the subject was terribly painful for Christophe, it was even more so

for Olivier. It meant for him, not only the sorrow of a great fratricidal

struggle between the two nations best fitted for alliance together. In

France the nation was divided, and one faction was preparing to fight the

other. For years pacific and anti-militarist doctrines had been spread and

propagated both by the noblest and the vilest elements of the nation. The

Government had for a long time held aloof, with the weak-kneed dilettantism

with which it handled everything which did not concern the immediate

interests of the politicians: and it never occurred to it that it might

be less dangerous frankly to maintain the most dangerous doctrines than

to leave them free to creep into the veins of the people and ruin their

capacity for war, while armaments were being prepared. These doctrines

appealed to the Free Thinkers who were dreaming of founding a European

brotherhood, working all together to make the world more just and human.

They appealed also to the selfish cowardice of the rabble, who were

unwilling to endanger their skins for anything or anybody.--These ideas had

been taken up by Olivier and many of his friends. Once or twice, in his

rooms, Christophe had been present at discussions which had amazed him. His

friend Mooch, who was stuffed full of humanitarian illusions, used to say,

with eyes blazing, quite calmly, that war must be abolished, and that the

best way of setting about it was to incite the soldiers to mutiny, and, if

necessary, to shoot down their leaders: and he would insist that it was

bound to succeed. Elie Elsberger would reply, coldly and vehemently, that,

if war were to break out, he and his friends would not set out for the

frontier before they had settled their account with the enemy at home.

André Elsberger would take Mooch's part.... One day Christophe came in for

a terrible scene between the two brothers. They threatened to shoot each

other. Although their bloodthirsty words were spoken in a bantering tone,

he had a feeling that neither of them had uttered a single threat which he

was not prepared to put into action. Christophe was amazed when he thought

of a race of men so absurd as to be always ready to commit suicide for the

sake of ideas.... Madmen. Crazy logicians. And yet they are good men. Each

man sees only his own ideas, and wishes to follow them through to the end,

without turning aside by a hair's breadth. And it is all quite useless: for

they crush each other out of existence. The humanitarians wage war on the

patriots. The patriots wage war on the humanitarians. And meanwhile the

enemy comes and destroys both country and humanity in one swoop.

"But tell me," Christophe would ask André Elsberger, "are you in touch with

the proletarians of the rest of the nations?"

"Some one has to begin. And we are the people to do it. We have always been

the first. It is for us to give the signal!"

"And suppose the others won't follow!"

"They will."

"Have you made treaties, and drawn up a plan?"

"What's the good of treaties? Our force is superior to diplomacy."

"It is not a question of ideas: it's a question of strategy. If you are

going to destroy war, you must borrow the methods of war. Draw up your plan

of campaign in the two countries. Arrange that on such and such a date in

France and Germany your allied troops shall take such and such a step. But,

if you go to work without a plan, how can you expect any good to come of

it? With chance on the one hand, and tremendous organized forces on the

other--the result would never be in doubt: you would be crushed out of

existence."

André Elsberger did not listen. He shrugged his shoulders and took refuge

in vague threats: a handful of sand, he said, was enough to smash the whole

machine, if it were dropped into the right place in the gears.

But it is one thing to discuss at leisure, theoretically, and quite another

to have to put one's ideas into practice, especially when one has to make

up one's mind quickly.... Those are frightful moments when the great tide

surges through the depths of the hearts of men! They thought they were free

and masters of their thoughts! But now, in spite of themselves, they are

conscious of being dragged onwards, onwards.... An obscure power of will is

set against their will. Then they discover that it is not they who exist

in reality, not they, but that unknown Force, whose laws govern the whole

ocean of humanity....

Men of the firmest intelligence, men the most secure in their faith, now

saw it dissolve at the first puff of reality, and stood turning this way

and that, not daring to make up their minds, and often, to their immense

surprise, deciding upon a course of action entirely different from any

that they had foreseen. Some of the most eager to abolish war suddenly

felt a vigorous passionate pride in their country leap into being in their

hearts. Christophe found Socialists, and even revolutionary syndicalists,

absolutely bowled over by their passionate pride in a duty utterly foreign

to their temper. At the very beginning of the upheaval, when as yet

he hardly believed that the affair could be serious, he said to André

Elsberger, with his usual German want of tact, that now was the moment to

apply his theories, unless he wanted Germany to take France. André fumed,

and replied angrily:

"Just you try!... Swine, you haven't even guts enough to muzzle your

Emperor and shake off the yoke, in spite of your thrice-blessed Socialist

Party, with its four hundred thousand members and its three million

electors. We'll do it for you! Take us? We'll take you...."

And as they were held on and on in suspense, they grew restless and

feverish. André was in torment. He knew that his faith was true, and yet

he could not defend it! He felt that he was infected by the moral epidemic

which spreads among the people of a nation the collective insanity of their

ideas, the terrible spirit of war! It attacked everybody about Christophe,

and even Christophe himself. They were no longer on speaking terms, and

kept themselves to themselves.

But it was impossible to endure such suspense for long. The wind of action

willy-nilly sifted the waverers into one group or another. And one day,

when it seemed that they must be on the eve of the ultimatum,--when, in

both countries, the springs of action were taut, ready for slaughter,

Christophe saw that everybody, including the people in his own house, had

made up their minds. Every kind of party was instinctively rallied round

the detested or despised Government which represented France. Not only

the honest men of the various parties: but the esthetes, the masters of

depraved art, took to interpolating professions of patriotic faith in their

work. The Jews were talking of defending the soil of their ancestors. At

the mere mention of the flag tears came to Hamilton's eyes. And they were

all sincere: they were all victims of the contagion. André Elsberger and

his syndicalist friends, just as much as the rest, and even more: for,

being crushed by necessity and pledged to a party that they detested, they

submitted with a grim fury and a stormy pessimism which made them crazy for

action. Aubert, the artisan, torn between his cultivated humanitarianism

and his instinctive chauvinism, was almost beside himself. After many

sleepless nights he had at last found a formula which could accommodate

everything: that France was synonymous with Humanity. Thereafter he never

spoke to Christophe. Almost all the people in the house had closed their

doors to him. Even the good Arnauds never invited him. They went on playing

music and surrounding themselves with art; they tried to forget the general

obsession. But they could not help thinking of it. When either of them

alone happened to meet Christophe alone, he or she would shake hands

warmly, but hurriedly and furtively. And if, the very same day, Christophe

met them together, they would pass him by with a frigid bow. On the

other hand, people who had not spoken to each other for years now rushed

together. One evening Olivier beckoned to Christophe to go near the window,

and, without a word, he pointed to the Elsbergers talking to Commandant

Chabran in the garden below.

Christophe had no time to be surprised at such a revolution in the minds of

his friends. He was too much occupied with his own mind, in which there had

been an upheaval, the consequences of which he could not master. Olivier

was much calmer than he, though he had much more reason to be upset. Of

all Christophe's acquaintance, he seemed to be the only one to escape the

contagion. Though he was oppressed by the anxious waiting for the outbreak

of war, and the dread of schism at home, which he saw must happen in spite

of everything, he knew the greatness of the two hostile faiths which sooner

or later would come to grips: he knew also that it is the part of France to

be the experimental ground in human progress, and that all new ideas need

to be watered with her blood before they can come to flower. For his own

part, he refused to take part in the skirmish. While the civilized nations

were cutting each other's throats he was fain to repeat the device of

Antigone: "_I am made for love, and not for hate_."--For love and for

understanding, which is another form of love. His fondness for Christophe

was enough to make his duty plain to him. At a time when millions of human

beings were on the brink of hatred, he felt that the duty and happiness of

friends like himself and Christophe was to love each other, and to keep

their reason uncontaminated by the general upheaval. He remembered how

Goethe had refused to associate himself with the liberation movement of

1813, when hatred sent Germany to march out against France.

Christophe felt the same: and yet he was not easy in his mind. He who in a

way had deserted Germany, and could not return thither, he who had been fed

with the European ideas of the great Germans of the eighteenth century, so

dear to his old friend Schulz, and detested the militarist and commercial

spirit of New Germany, now found himself the prey of gusty passions: and he

did not know whither they would lead him. He did not tell Olivier, but he

spent his days in agony, longing for news. Secretly he put his affairs in

order and packed his trunk. He did not reason the thing out. It was too

strong for him. Olivier watched him anxiously, and guessed the struggle

which was going on in his friend's mind: and he dared not question him.

They felt that they were impelled to draw closer to each other than ever,

and they loved each other more: but they were afraid to speak: they

trembled lest they should discover some difference of thought which might

come between them and divide them, as their old misunderstanding had done.

Often their eyes would meet with an expression of tender anxiety, as

though they were on the eve of parting for ever. And they were silent and

oppressed.

* * * * *

But still on the roof of the house that was being built on the other side

of the yard, all through those days of gloom, with the rain beating down on

them, the workmen were putting the finishing touches: and Christophe's

friend, the loquacious slater, laughed and shouted across:

"There! The house is finished!"

* * * * *

Happily, the storm passed as quickly as it had come. The chancelleries

published bulletins announcing the return of fair weather, barometrically

as it were. The howling dogs of the Press were despatched to their kennels.

In a few hours the tension was relieved. It was a summer evening, and

Christophe had rushed in breathless to convey the good news to Olivier. He

was happy, and could breathe again. Olivier looked at him with a little sad

smile. And he dared not ask him the question that lay next his heart. He

said:

"Well: you have seen them all united, all these people who could not

understand each other."

"Yes," said Christophe good-humoredly, "I have seen them united. You're

such humbugs! You all cry out upon each other, but at bottom you're all of

the same mind."

"You seem to be glad of it," remarked Olivier.

"Why not? Because they were united at my expense?... Bah! I'm strong enough

for that ... Besides, it's a fine thing to feel the mighty torrent rushing

you along, and the demons that were let loose in your hearts...."

"They terrify me," said Olivier. "I would rather have eternal solitude than

have my people united at such a cost."

They relapsed into silence: and neither of them dared approach the subject

which was troubling them. At last Olivier pulled himself together, and, in

a choking voice, said:

"Tell me frankly, Christophe: you were going away?"

Christophe replied:

"Yes."

Olivier was sure that he would say it. And yet his heart ached for it. He

said:

"Tell me, Christophe: could you ... could you ...?"

Christophe drew his hand over his forehead and said:

"Don't let's talk of it. I don't like to think of it."

Olivier went on sorrowfully:

"You would have fought against us?"

"I don't know. I never thought about it."

"But, in your heart, you had decided?"

Christophe said:

"Yes."

"Against me?"

"Never against you. You are mine. Where I am, you are too."

"But against my country?"

"For my country."

"It is a terrible thing," said Olivier. "I love my country, as you do. I

love France: but could I slay my soul for her? Could I betray my conscience

for her? That would be to betray her. How could I hate, having no hatred,

or, without being guilty of a lie, assume a hatred that I did not feel? The

modern State was guilty of a monstrous crime--a crime which will prove its

undoing--when it presumed to impose its brazen laws on the free Church of

those spirits the very essence of whose being is to love and understand.

Let Cæsar be Cæsar, but let him not assume the Godhead! Let him take our

money and our lives: over our souls he has no rights: he shall not stain

them with blood. We are in this world to give it light, not to darken it:

let each man fulfil his duty! If Cæsar desires war, then let Cæsar have

armies for that purpose, armies as they were in olden times, armies of

men whose trade is war! I am not so foolish as to waste my time in vainly

moaning and groaning in protest against force. But I am not a soldier in

the army of force. I am a soldier in the army of the spirit: with thousands

of other men who are my brothers-in-arms I represent France in that army.

Let Cæsar conquer the world if he will! We march to the conquest of truth."

"To conquer," said Christophe, "you must vanquish, you must live. Truth is

no hard dogma, secreted by the brain, like a stalactite by the walls of

a cave. Truth is life. It is not to be found in your own head, but to be

sought for in the hearts of others. Attach yourself to them, be one with

them. Think as much as you like, but do you every day take a bath of

humanity. You must live in the life of others and love and bow to destiny."

"It is our fate to be what we are. It does not depend on us whether we

shall or shall not think certain things, even though they be dangerous. We

have reached such a pitch of civilization that we cannot turn back."

"Yes, you have reached the farthest limit of the plateau of civilization,

that dizzy height to which no nation can climb without feeling an

irresistible desire to fling itself down. Religion and instinct are

weakened in you. You have nothing left but intelligence. You are machines

grinding out philosophy. Death comes rushing in upon you."

"Death comes to every nation: it is a matter of centuries."

"Have done with your centuries! The whole of life is a matter of days and

hours. If you weren't such an infernally metaphysical lot, you'd never

go shuffling over into the absolute, instead of seizing and holding the

passing moment."

"What do you want? The flame burns the torch away. You can't both live and

have lived, my dear Christophe."

"You must live."

"It is a great thing to have been great."

"It is only a great thing when there are still men who are alive enough and

great enough to appreciate it."

"Wouldn't you much rather have been the Greeks, who are dead, than any of

the people who are vegetating nowadays?"

"I'd much rather be myself, Christophe, and very much alive."

Olivier gave up the argument. It was not that he was without an answer.

But it did not interest him. All through the discussion he had only been

thinking of Christophe. He said, with a sigh:

"You love me less than I love you."

Christophe took his hand and pressed it tenderly:

"Dear Olivier," he said, "I love you more than my life. But you must

forgive me if I do not love you more than Life, the sun of our two races. I

have a horror of the night into which your false progress drags me. All

your sentiments of renunciation are only the covering of the same Buddhist

Nirvana. Only action is living, even when it brings death. In this world

we can only choose between the devouring flame and night. In spite of the

sad sweetness of dreams in the hour of twilight, I have no desire for that

peace which is the forerunner of death. The silence of infinite space

terrifies me. Heap more fagots upon the fire! More! And yet more! Myself

too, if needs must. I will not let the fire dwindle. If it dies down, there

is an end of us, an end of everything."

"What you say is old," said Olivier; "it comes from the depths of the

barbarous past."

He took down from his shelves a book of Hindoo poetry, and read the sublime

apostrophe of the God Krishna:

"_Arise, and fight with a resolute heart. Setting no store by pleasure or

pain, or gain or loss, or victory or defeat, fight with all thy might...._"

Christophe snatched the book from his hands and read:

"_... I have nothing in the world to bid me toil: there is nothing that is

not mine: and yet I cease not from my labor. If I did not act, without a

truce and without relief, setting an example for men to follow, all men

would perish. If for a moment I were to cease from my labors, I should

plunge the world in chaos, and I should he the destroyer of life._"

"Life," repeated Olivier,--"what is life?"

"A tragedy," said Christophe. "Hurrah!"

* * * * *

The panic died down. Every one hastened to forget, with a hidden fear in

their hearts. No one seemed to remember what had happened. And yet it was

plain that it was still in their thoughts, from the joy with which they

resumed their lives, the pleasant life from day to day, which is never

truly valued until it is endangered. As usual when danger is past, they

gulped it down with renewed avidity.

Christophe flung himself into creative work with tenfold vigor. He dragged

Olivier after him. In reaction against their recent gloomy thoughts they

had begun to collaborate in a Rabelaisian epic. It was colored by that

broad materialism which follows on periods of moral stress. To the

legendary heroes--Gargantua, Friar John, Panurge--Olivier had added, on

Christophe's inspiration, a new character, a peasant, Jacques Patience,

simple, cunning, sly, resigned, who was the butt of the others, putting up

with it when he was thrashed and robbed,--putting up with it when they made

love to his wife, and laid waste his fields,--tirelessly putting his house

in order and cultivating his land,--forced to follow the others to war,

bearing the burden of the baggage, coming in for all the kicks, and still

putting up with it,--waiting, laughing at the exploits of his masters and

the thrashings they gave him, and saying, "They can't go on for ever,"

foreseeing their ultimate downfall, looking out for it out of the corner of

his eye, and silently laughing at the thought of it, with his great mouth

agape. One fine day it turned out that Gargantua and Friar John were

drowned while they were away on a crusade. Patience honestly regretted

their loss, merrily took heart of grace, saved Panurge, who was drowning

also, and said:

"I know that you will go on playing your tricks on me: you don't take me

in: but I can't do without you: you drive away the spleen, and make me

laugh."

Christophe set the poem to music with great symphonic pictures, with soli

and chorus, mock-heroic battles, riotous country fairs, vocal buffooneries,

madrigals à la Jannequin, with tremendous childlike glee, a storm at sea,

the Island of Bells, and, finally, a pastoral symphony, full of the air

of the fields, and the blithe serenity of the flutes and oboes, and the

clean-souled folk-songs of Old France.--The friends worked away with

boundless delight. The weakly Olivier, with his pale cheeks, found new

health in Christophe's health. Gusts of wind blew through their garret. The

very intoxication of Joy! To be working together, heart to heart with one's

friend! The embrace of two lovers is not sweeter or more ardent than such

a yoking together of two kindred souls. They were so near in sympathy

that often the same ideas would flash upon them at the same moment. Or

Christophe would write the music for a scene for which Olivier would

immediately find words. Christophe impetuously dragged Olivier along in his

wake. His mind swamped that of his friend, and made it fruitful.

The joy of creation was enhanced by that of success. Hecht had just made up

his mind to publish the _David_: and the score, well launched, had had an

instantaneous success abroad. A great Wagnerian _Kapellmeister_, a friend

of Hecht's, who had settled in England, was enthusiastic about it: he had

given it at several of his concerts with considerable success, which,

with the _Kapellmeister's_ enthusiasm, had carried it over to Germany,

where also the _David_ had been played. The _Kapellmeister_ had entered

into correspondence with Christophe, and had asked him for more of his

compositions, offered to do anything he could to help him, and was engaged

in ardent propaganda in his cause. In Germany, the _Iphigenia_, which

had originally been hissed, was unearthed, and it was hailed as a work

of genius. Certain facts in Christophe's life, being of a romantic

nature, contributed not a little to the spurring of public interest. The

_Frankfurter Zeitung_ was the first to publish an enthusiastic article.

Others followed. Then, in France, a few people began to be aware that they

had a great musician in their midst. One of the Parisian conductors asked

Christophe for his Rabelaisian epic before it was finished: and Goujart,

perceiving his approaching fame, began to speak mysteriously of a friend

of his who was a genius, and had been discovered by himself. He wrote a

laudatory article about the admirable _David_,--entirely forgetting that

only the year before he had decried it in a short notice of a few lines.

Nobody else remembered it either or seemed to be in the least astonished

at his sudden change. There are so many people in Paris who are now loud

in their praises of Wagner and César Franck, where formerly they roundly

abused them, and actually use the fame of these men to crush those new

artists whom to-morrow they will be lauding to the skies!

Christophe did not set any great store on his success. He knew that he

would one day win through: but he had not thought that the day could be so

near at hand: and he was distrustful of so rapid a triumph. He shrugged

his shoulders, and said that he wanted to be left alone. He could have

understood people applauding the _David_ the year before, when he wrote it:

but now he was so far beyond it; he had climbed higher. He was inclined to

say to the people who came and talked about his old work:

"Don't worry me with that stuff. It disgusts me. So do you." And he plunged

into his new work again, rather annoyed at having been disturbed. However,

he did feel a certain secret satisfaction. The first rays of the light of

fame are very sweet. It is good, it is healthy, to conquer. It is like

the open window and the first sweet scents of the spring coming into a

house.--Christophe's contempt for his old work was of no avail, especially

with regard to the _Iphigenia_: there was a certain amount of atonement for

him in seeing that unhappy production, which had originally brought him

only humiliation, belauded by the German critics, and in great request

with the theaters, as he learned from a letter from Dresden, in which the

directors stated that they would be glad to produce the piece during their

next season.

* * * * *

The very day when Christophe received the news, which, after years of

struggling, at last opened up a calmer horizon, with victory in the

distance, he had another letter from Germany.

It was in the afternoon. He was washing his face and talking gaily to

Olivier in the next room, when the housekeeper slipped an envelope under

the door. His mother's writing.... He had been just on the point of writing

to her, and was happy at the thought of being able to tell her of his

success, which would give her so much pleasure. He opened the letter. There

were only a few lines. How shaky the writing was!

_"My dear boy, I am not very well. If it were possible, I

should like to see you again. Love.

"MOTHER."_

Christophe gave a groan. Olivier, who was working in the next room, ran to

him in alarm. Christophe could not speak, and pointed to the letter on the

table. He went on groaning, and did not listen to what Olivier said, who

took in the letter at a glance, and tried to comfort him. He rushed to his

bed, where he had laid his coat, dressed hurriedly, and without waiting to

fasten his collar,--(his hands were trembling too much)--went out. Olivier

caught him up on the stairs: what was he going to do? Go by the first

train? There wasn't one until the evening. It was much better to wait there

than at the station. Had he enough money?--They rummaged through their

pockets, and when they counted all that they possessed between them, it

only amounted to thirty francs. It was September. Hecht, the Arnauds, all

their friends, were out of Paris. They had no one to turn to. Christophe

was beside himself, and talked of going part of the way on foot. Olivier

begged him to wait for an hour, and promised to procure the money somehow.

Christophe submitted: he was incapable of a single idea himself. Olivier

ran to the pawnshop: it was the first time he had been there: for his own

sake, he would much rather have been left with nothing than pledge any of

his possessions, which were all associated with some precious memory: but

it was for Christophe, and there was no time to lose. He pawned his watch,

for which he was advanced a sum much smaller than he had expected. He

had to go home again and fetch some of his books, and take them to a

bookseller. It was a great grief to him, but at the time he hardly thought

of it: his mind could grasp nothing but Christophe's trouble. He returned,

and found Christophe just where he had left him, sitting by his desk, in

a state of collapse. With their thirty francs the sum that Olivier had

collected was more than enough. Christophe was too upset to think of asking

his friend how he had come by it, or whether he had kept enough to live

on during his absence. Olivier did not think of it either: he had given

Christophe all he possessed. He had to look after Christophe, just like a

child, until it was time for him to go. He took him to the station, and

never left him until the train began to move.

In the darkness into which he was rushing Christophe sat wide-eyed, staring

straight in front of him and thinking:

"Shall I be in time?"

He knew that his mother must have been unable to wait for her to write to

him. And in his fevered anxiety he was impatient of the jolting speed of

the express. He reproached himself bitterly for having left Louisa. And

at the same time he felt how vain were his reproaches: he had no power to

change the course of events.

However, the monotonous rocking of the wheels and springs of the carriage

soothed him gradually, and took possession of his mind, like tossing waves

of music dammed back by a mighty rhythm. He lived through all his past

life again from the far-distant days of his childhood: loves, hopes,

disillusion, sorrows,--and that exultant force, that intoxication of

suffering, enjoying, and creating, that delight in blotting out the light

of life and its sublime shadows, which was the soul of his soul, the living

breath of the God within him. Now as he looked back on it all was clear.

His tumultuous desires, his uneasy thoughts, his faults, mistakes, and

headlong struggles, now seemed to him to be the eddy and swirl borne on

by the great current of life towards its eternal goal. He discovered the

profound meaning of those years of trial: each test was a barrier which was

burst by the gathering waters of the river, a passage from a narrow to a

wider valley, which the river would soon fill: always he came to a wider

view and a freer air. Between the rising ground of France and the German

plain the river had carved its way, not without many a struggle, flooding

the meadows, eating away the base of the hills, gathering and absorbing

all the waters of the two countries. So it flowed between them, not to

divide, but to unite them: in it they were wedded. And for the first time

Christophe became conscious of his destiny, which was to carry through the

hostile peoples, like an artery, all the forces of life of the two sides of

the river.--A strange serenity, a sudden calm and clarity, came over him,

as sometimes happens in the darkest hours.... Then the vision faded, and he

saw nothing but the tender, sorrowful face of his old mother.

It was hardly dawn when he reached the little German town. He had to take

care not to be recognized, for there was still a warrant of arrest out

against him. But nobody at the station took any notice of him: the town was

asleep: the houses were shut up and the streets deserted: it was the gray

hour when the lights of the night are put out and the light of day is not

yet come,--the hour when sleep is sweetest and dreams are lit with the pale

light of the east. A little servant-girl was taking down the shutters of

a shop and singing an old German folk-song. Christophe almost choked with

emotion. O Fatherland! Beloved!... He was fain to kiss the earth as he

heard the humble song that set his heart aching in his breast; he felt how

unhappy he had been away from his country, and how much he loved it.... He

walked on, holding his breath. When he saw his old house he was obliged

to stop and put his hand to his lips to keep himself from crying out. How

would he find his mother, his mother whom he had deserted?... He took a

long breath and almost ran to the door. It was ajar. He pushed it open. No

one there ... The old wooden staircase creaked under his footsteps. He went

up to the top floor. The house seemed to be empty. The door of his mother's

room was shut.

Christophe's heart thumped as he laid his hand on the doorknob. And he had

not the strength to open it....

* * * * *

Louisa was alone, in bed, feeling that the end was near. Of her two other

sons, Rodolphe, the business man, had settled in Hamburg, the other,

Ernest, had emigrated to America, and no one knew what had become of him.

There was no one to attend to her except a woman in the house, who came

twice a day to see if Louisa wanted anything, stayed for a few minutes, and

then went about her business: she was not very punctual, and was often late

in coming. To Louisa it seemed quite natural that she should be forgotten,

as it seemed to her quite natural to be ill. She was used to suffering, and

was as patient as an angel. She had heart disease and palpitations, during

which she would think she was going to die: she would lie with her eyes

wide open, and her hands clutching the bedclothes, and the sweat dripping

down her face. She never complained. She knew that it must be so. She was

ready: she had already received the sacrament. She had only one anxiety:

lest God should find her unworthy to enter into Paradise. She endured

everything else in patience.

In a dark corner of her little room, near her pillow, on the wall of the

recess, she had made a little shrine for her relics and trophies: she had

collected the portraits of those who were dear to her: her three children,

her husband, for whose memory she had always preserved her love in its

first freshness, the old grandfather, and her brother, Gottfried: she was

touchingly devoted to all those who had been kind to her, though it were

never so little. On her coverlet, close to her eyes, she had pinned the

last photograph of himself that Christophe had sent her: and his last

letters were under her pillow. She had a love of neatness and scrupulous

tidiness, and it hurt her to know that everything was not perfectly in

order in her room. She listened for the little noises outside which marked

the different moments of the day for her. It was so long since she had

first heard them! All her life had been spent in that narrow space.... She

thought of her dear Christophe. How she longed for him to be there, near

her, just then! And yet she was resigned even to his absence. She was sure

that she would see him again on high. She had only to close her eyes to see

him. She spent days and days, half-unconscious, living in the past....

She would see once more the old house on the banks of the Rhine.... A

holiday.... A superb summer day. The window was open: the white road lay

gleaming under the sun. They could hear the birds singing. Melchior and the

old grandfather were sitting by the front-door smoking, and chatting and

laughing uproariously. Louisa could not see them: but she was glad that

her husband was at home that day, and that grandfather was in such a good

temper. She was in the basement, cooking the dinner: an excellent dinner:

she watched over it as the apple of her eye: there was a surprise: a

chestnut cake: already she could hear the boy's shout of delight.... The

boy, where was he? Upstairs: she could hear him practising at the piano.

She could not make out what he was playing, but she was glad to hear the

familiar tinkling sounds, and to know that he was sitting there with his

grave face.... What a lovely day! The merry jingling bells of a carriage

went by on the road.... Oh! good heavens! The joint! Perhaps it had

been burned while she was looking out of the window! She trembled lest

grandfather, of whom she was so fond, though she was afraid of him,

should be dissatisfied, and scold her.... Thank Heaven! there was no harm

done. There, everything was ready, and the table was laid. She called

Melchior and grandfather. They replied eagerly. And the boy?... He had

stopped playing. His music had ceased a moment ago without her noticing

it....--"Christophe!"... What was he doing? There was not a sound to be

heard. He was always forgetting to come down to dinner: father was going

to scold him. She ran upstairs....--"Christophe!"... He made no sound.

She opened the door of the room where he was practising. No one there.

The room was empty, and the piano was closed.... Louisa was seized with

a sudden panic. What had become of him? The window was open. Oh, Heaven!

Perhaps he had fallen out! Louisa's heart stops. She leans out and looks

down....--"Christophe!"... He is nowhere to be found. She rushes all over

the house. Downstairs grandfather shouts to her: "Come along; don't worry;

he'll come back." She will not go down: she knows that he is there: that

he is hiding for fun, to tease her. Oh, naughty, naughty boy!... Yes, she

is sure of it now: she heard the floor creak: he is behind the door. She

tries to open the door. But the key is gone. The key! She rummages through

a drawer, looking for it in a heap of keys. This one, that.... No, not

that....Ah, that's it!... She cannot fit it into the lock, her hand is

trembling so. She is in such haste: she must be quick. Why? She does not

know, but she knows that she must be quick, and that if she doesn't hurry

she will be too late. She hears Christophe breathing on the other side of

the door.... Oh, bother the key!... At last! The door is opened. A cry of

joy. It is he. He flings his arms round her neck.... Oh, naughty, naughty,

good, darling boy!...

She has opened her eyes. He is there, standing by her.

For some time he had been standing looking at her; so changed she was, with

her face both drawn and swollen, and her mute suffering made her smile of

recognition so infinitely touching: and the silence, and her utter

loneliness.... It rent his heart....

She saw him. She was not surprised. She smiled all that she could not say,

a smile of boundless tenderness. She could not hold out her arms to him,

nor utter a single word. He flung his arms round her neck and kissed her,

and she kissed him: great tears were trickling down her cheeks. She said in

a whisper:

"Wait...."

He saw that she could not breathe.

Neither stirred. She stroked his head with her hands, and her tears went on

trickling down her cheeks. He kissed her hands and sobbed, with his face

hidden in the coverlet.

When her attack had passed she tried to speak. But she could not find

words: she floundered, and he could hardly understand her. But what did

it matter? They loved each other, and were together, and could touch each

other: that was the main thing.--He asked indignantly why she was left

alone. She made excuses for her nurse:

"She cannot always be here: she has her work to do...."

In a faint, broken voice,--she could hardly pronounce her words,--she made

a little hurried request about her burial. She told Christophe to give her

love to her two other sons who had forgotten her. And she seat a message

to Olivier, knowing his love for Christophe. She begged Christophe to tell

him that she sent him her blessing--(and then, timidly, she recollected

herself, and made use of a more humble expression),--"her affectionate

respects...."

Once more she choked. He helped her to sit up in her bed. The sweat dripped

down her face. She forced herself to smile. She told herself that she had

nothing more to wish for in the world, now that she had her son's hand

clasped in hers.

And suddenly Christophe felt her hand stiffen in his. Louisa opened her

lips. She looked at her son with infinite tenderness:--so the end came.