little away from him, began to tell him about her travels. She talked about
the pleasant weeks she had spent--riding on horseback, country-house life,
interesting society; she got excited gradually, and made allusions to
events and people whom Jean-Christophe did not know, and the memory of
them made her mother and herself laugh. Jean-Christophe felt that he was
a stranger during the story; he did not know how to take it, and laughed
awkwardly. He never took his eyes from Minna's face, beseeching her to look
at him, imploring her to throw him a glance for alms. But when she did look
at him--which was not often, for she addressed herself more to her mother
than to him--her eyes, like her voice, were cold and indifferent. Was she
so constrained because of her mother, or was it that he did not understand?
He wished to speak to her alone, but Frau von Kerich never left them
for a moment. He tried to bring the conversation round to some subject
interesting to himself; he spoke of his work and his plans; he was dimly
conscious that Minna was evading him, and instinctively he tried to
interest her in himself. Indeed, she seemed to listen attentively enough;
she broke in upon his narrative with various interjections, which were
never very apt, but always seemed to be full of interest. But just as
he was beginning to hope once more, carried off his feet by one of her
charming smiles, he saw Minna put her little hand to her lips and yawn. He
broke off short. She saw that, and asked his pardon amiably, saying that
she was tired. He got up, thinking that they would persuade him to stay,
but they said nothing. He spun out his "Good-bye," and waited for a word to
ask him to come again next day; there was no suggestion of it. He had to
go. Minna did not take him to the door. She held out her hand to him--an
indifferent hand that drooped limply in his--and he took his leave of them
in the middle of the room.
He went home with terror in his heart. Of the Minna of two months before,
of his beloved Minna, nothing was left. What had happened? What had become
of her? For a poor boy who has never yet experienced the continual change,
the complete disappearance, and the absolute renovation of living souls,
of which the majority are not so much souls as collections of souls in
succession changing and dying away continually, the simple truth was too
cruel for him to be able to believe it. He rejected the idea of it in
terror, and tried to persuade himself that he had not been able to see
properly, and that Minna was just the same. He decided to go again to the
house next morning, and to talk to her at all costs.
He did not sleep. Through the night he counted one after another the chimes
of the clock. From one o'clock on he was rambling round the Kerichs' house;
he entered it as soon as he could. He did not see Minna, but Frau von
Kerich. Always busy and an early riser, she was watering the pots of
flowers on the veranda. She gave a mocking cry when she saw
Jean-Christophe.
"Ah!" she said. "It is you!... I am glad you have come. I have something to
talk to you about. Wait a moment...."
She went in for a moment to put down her watering can and to dry her hands,
and came back with a little smile as she saw Jean-Christophe's
discomfiture; he was conscious of the approach of disaster.
"Come into the garden," she said; "we shall be quieter."
In the garden that was full still of his love he followed Frau von Kerich.
She did not hasten to speak, and enjoyed the boy's uneasiness.
"Let us sit here," she said at last. They were sitting on the seat in the
place where Minna had held up her lips to him on the eve of her departure.
"I think you know what is the matter," said Frau von Kerich, looking
serious so as to complete his confusion. "I should never have thought it of
you, Jean-Christophe. I thought you a serious boy. I had every confidence
in you. I should never have thought that you would abuse it to try and
turn my daughter's head. She was in your keeping. You ought to have shown
respect for her, respect for me, respect for yourself."
There was a light irony in her accents. Frau von Kerich attached not the
least importance to this childish love affair; but Jean-Christophe was not
conscious of it, and her reproaches, which he took, as he took everything,
tragically, went to his heart.
"But, Madam ... but, Madam ..." he stammered, with tears in his eyes, "I
have never abused your confidence.... Please do not think that.... I am not
a bad man, that I swear!... I love Fräulein Minna. I love her with all my
Soul, and I wish to marry her."
Frau von Kerich smiled.
"No, my poor boy," she said, with that kindly smile in which was so much
disdain, as at last he was to understand, "no, it is impossible; it is just
a childish folly."
"Why? Why?" he asked.
He took her hands, not believing that she could be speaking seriously, and
almost reassured by the new softness in her voice. She smiled still, and
said:
"Because...."
He insisted. With ironical deliberation--she did not take him altogether
seriously--she told him that he had no fortune, that Minna had different
tastes. He protested that that made no difference; that he would be rich,
famous; that he would win honors, money, all that Minna could desire. Frau
von Kerich looked skeptical; she was amused by his self-confidence, and
only shook her head by way of saying no. But he stuck to it.
"No, Jean-Christophe," she said firmly, "no. It is not worth arguing. It is
impossible. It is not only a question of money. So many things! The
position...."
She had no need to finish. That was a needle that pierced to his very
marrow. His eyes were opened. He saw the irony of the friendly smile, he
saw the coldness of the kindly look, he understood suddenly what it was
that separated him from this woman whom he loved as a son, this woman who
seemed to treat him like a mother; he was conscious of all that was
patronizing and disdainful in her affection. He got up. He was pale. Frau
von Kerich went on talking to him in her caressing voice, but it was the
end; he heard no more the music of the words; he perceived under every word
the falseness of that elegant soul. He could not answer a word. He went.
Everything about him was going round and round.
When he regained his room he flung himself on his bed, and gave way to a
fit of anger and injured pride, just as he used to do when he was a little
boy. He bit his pillow; he crammed his handkerchief into his mouth, so that
no one should hear him crying. He hated Frau von Kerich. He hated Minna. He
despised them mightily. It seemed to him that he had been insulted, and he
trembled with shame and rage. He had to reply, to take immediate action. If
he could not avenge himself he would die.
He got up, and wrote an idiotically violent letter:
"MADAM,--
"I do not know if, as you say, you have been deceived in me. But I do know
that I have been cruelly deceived in you. I thought that you were my
friends. You said so. You pretended to be so, and I loved you more than my
life. I see now that it was all a lie, that your affection for me was only
a sham; you made use of me. I amused you, provided you with entertainment,
made music for you. I was your servant. Your servant: that I am not! I am
no man's servant!
"You have made me feel cruelly that I had no right to love your daughter.
Nothing in the world can prevent my heart from loving where it loves, and
if I am not your equal in rank, I am as noble as you. It is the heart that
ennobles a man. If I am not a Count, I have perhaps more honor than many
Counts. Lackey or Count, when a man insults me, I despise him. I despise as
much any one who pretends to be noble, and is not noble of soul.
"Farewell! You have mistaken me. You have deceived me. I detest you!
"He who, in spite of you, loves, and will love till death, Fräulein Minna,
_because she is his_, and nothing can take her from him."
Hardly had he thrown his letter into the box than he was filled with terror
at what he had done. He tried not to think of it, but certain phrases
cropped up in his memory; he was in a cold sweat as he thought of Frau von
Kerich reading those enormities. At first he was upheld by his very
despair, but next day he saw that his letter could only bring about a final
separation from Minna, and that seemed to him the direst of misfortunes. He
still hoped that Frau von Kerich, who knew his violent fits, would not take
it seriously, that she would only reprimand him severely, and--who
knows?--that she would be touched perhaps by the sincerity of his passion.
One word, and he would have thrown himself at her feet. He waited for five
days. Then came, a letter. She said:
"DEAR SIR,--
"Since, as you say, there has been a misunderstanding between us, it would
be wise not any further to prolong it. I should be very sorry to force upon
you a relationship which has become painful to you. You will think it
natural, therefore, that we should break it off. I hope that you will in
time to come have no lack of other friends who will be able to appreciate
you as you wish to be appreciated. I have no doubt as to your future, and
from a distance shall, with sympathy, follow your progress in your musical
career. Kind regards.
"JOSEPHA VON KERICH."
The most bitter reproaches would have been less cruel. Jean-Christophe saw
that he was lost. It is possible to reply to an unjust accusation. But what
is to be done against the negativeness of such polite indifference? He
raged against it. He thought that he would never see Minna again, and he
could not bear it. He felt how little all the pride in the world weighs
against a little love. He forgot his dignity; he became cowardly; he wrote
more letters, in which he implored forgiveness. They were no less stupid
than the letter in which he had railed against her. They evoked no
response. And everything was said.
* * * * *
He nearly died of it. He thought of killing himself. He thought of murder.
At least, he imagined that he thought of it. He was possessed by incendiary
and murderous desires. People have little idea of the paroxysm of love or
hate which sometimes devours the hearts of children. It was the most
terrible crisis of his childhood. It ended his childhood. It stiffened his
will. But it came near to breaking it forever.
He found life impossible. He would sit for hours with his elbows on the
window-sill looking down into the courtyard, and dreaming, as he used to
when he was a little boy, of some means of escaping from the torture of
life when it became too great. The remedy was there, under his eyes.
Immediate ... immediate? How could one know?... Perhaps after
hours--centuries--horrible sufferings!... But so utter was his childish
despair that he let himself be carried away by the giddy round of such
thoughts.
Louisa saw that he was suffering. She could not gauge exactly what was
happening to him, but her instinct gave her a dim warning of danger. She
tried to approach her son, to discover his sorrow, so as to console him.
But the poor woman had lost the habit of talking intimately to
Jean-Christophe. For many years he had kept his thoughts to himself, and
she had been too much taken up by the material cares of life to find time
to discover them or divine them. Now that she would so gladly have come to
his aid she knew not what to do. She hovered about him like a soul in
torment; she would gladly have found words to bring him comfort, and she
dared not speak for fear of irritating him. And in spite of all her care
she did irritate him by her every gesture and by her very presence, for she
was not very adroit, and he was not very indulgent. And yet he loved her;
they loved each other. But so little is needed to part two creatures who
are dear to each other, and love each other with all their hearts! A too
violent expression, an awkward gesture, a harmless twitching of an eye or a
nose, a trick of eating, walking, or laughing, a physical constraint which
is beyond analysis.... You say that these things are nothing, and yet they
are all the world. Often they are enough to keep a mother and a son, a
brother and a brother, a friend and a friend, who live in proximity to each
other, forever strangers to each other.
Jean-Christophe did not find in his mother's grief a sufficient prop in the
crisis through which he was passing. Besides, what is the affection of
others to the egoism of passion preoccupied with itself?
One night when his family were sleeping, and he was sitting by his desk,
not thinking or moving, he was engulfed in his perilous ideas, when a sound
of footsteps resounded down the little silent street, and a knock on the
door brought him from his stupor. There was a murmuring of thick voices. He
remembered that his father had not come in, and he thought angrily that
they were bringing him back drunk, as they had done a week or two before,
when they had found him lying in the street. For Melchior had abandoned all
restraint, and was more and more the victim of his vice, though his
athletic health seemed not in the least to suffer from an excess and a
recklessness which would have killed any other man. He ate enough for four,
drank until he dropped, passed whole nights out of doors in icy rain, was
knocked down and stunned in brawls, and would get up again next day, with
his rowdy gaiety, wanting everybody about him to be gay too.
Louisa, hurrying up, rushed to open the door. Jean-Christophe, who had not
budged, stopped his ears so as not to hear Melchior's vicious voice and the
tittering comments of the neighbors....
... Suddenly a strange terror seized him; for no reason he began to
tremble, with his face hidden in his hands. And on the instant a piercing
cry made him raise his head. He rushed to the door....
In the midst of a group of men talking in low voices, in the dark passage,
lit only by the flickering light of a lantern, lying, just as his
grandfather had done, on a stretcher, was a body dripping with water,
motionless. Louisa was clinging to it and sobbing. They had just found
Melchior drowned in the mill-race.
Jean-Christophe gave a cry. Everything else vanished; all his other sorrows
were swept aside. He threw himself on his fathers body by Louisa's side,
and they wept together.
Seated by the bedside, watching Melchior's last sleep, on whose face was
now a severe and solemn expression, he felt the dark peace of death enter
into his soul. His childish passion was gone from him like a fit of fever;
the icy breath of the grave had taken it all away. Minna, his pride, his
love, and himself.... Alas! What misery! How small everything showed by the
side of this reality, the only reality--death! Was it worth while to suffer
so much, to desire so much, to be so much put about to come in the end to
that!...
He watched his father's sleep, and he was filled with an infinite pity. He
remembered the smallest of his acts of kindness and tenderness. For with
all his faults Melchior was not bad; there was much good in him. He loved
his family. He was honest. He had a little of the uncompromising probity of
the Kraffts, which, in all questions of morality and honor, suffered no
discussion, and never would admit the least of those small moral impurities
which so many people in society regard not altogether as faults. He was
brave, and whenever there was any danger faced it with a sort of enjoyment.
If he was extravagant himself, he was so for others too; he could not bear
anybody to be sad, and very gladly gave away all that belonged to him--and
did not belong to him--to the poor devils he met by the wayside. All his
qualities appeared to Jean-Christophe now, and he invented some of them, or
exaggerated them. It seemed to him that he had misunderstood his father. He
reproached himself with not having loved him enough. He saw him as broken
by Life; he thought he heard that unhappy soul, drifting, too weak to
struggle, crying out for the life so uselessly lost. He heard that
lamentable entreaty that had so cut him to the heart one day:
"Jean-Christophe! Do not despise me!"
And he was overwhelmed by remorse. He threw himself on the bed, and kissed
the dead face and wept. And as he had done that day, he said again:
"Dear father, I do not despise you. I love you. Forgive me!"
But that piteous entreaty was not appeased, and went on:
"De not despise me! Do not despise me!" And suddenly Jean-Christophe saw
himself lying in the place of the dead man; he heard the terrible words
coming from his own lips; he felt weighing on his heart the despair of a
useless life, irreparably lost. And he thought in terror: "Ah! everything,
all the suffering, all the misery in the world, rather than come to
that!..." How near he had been to it! Had he not all but yielded to the
temptation to snap off his life himself, cowardly to escape his sorrow? As
if all the sorrows, all betrayals, were not childish griefs beside the
torture and the crime of self-betrayal, denial of faith, of self-contempt
in death!
He saw that life was a battle without armistice, without mercy, in which he
who wishes to be a man worthy of the name of a man must forever fight
against whole armies of invisible enemies; against the murderous forces of
Nature, uneasy desires, dark thoughts, treacherously leading him to
degradation and destruction. He saw that he had been on the point of
falling into the trap. He saw that happiness and love were only the friends
of a moment to lead the heart to disarm and abdicate. And the little
puritan of fifteen heard the voice of his God:
"Go, go, and never rest."
"But whither, Lord, shall I go? Whatsoever I do, whithersoever I go, is not
the end always the same? Is not the end of all things in that?"
"Go on to Death, you who must die! Go and suffer, you who must suffer! You
do not live to be happy. You live to fulfil my Law. Suffer; die. But be
what you must be--a Man."
YOUTH
Christofori faciem die quaeunque tueris, Illa nempe die non morte mala
morieris.
I
THE HOUSE OF EULER
The house was plunged in silence. Since Melchior's death everything seemed
dead. Now that his loud voice was stilled, from morning to night nothing
was heard but the wearisome murmuring of the river.
Christophe hurled himself into his work. He took a fiercely angry pleasure
in self-castigation for having wished to be happy. To expressions of
sympathy and kind words he made no reply, but was proud and stiff. Without
a word he went about his daily task, and gave his lessons with icy
politeness. His pupils who knew of his misfortune were shocked by his
insensibility. But, those who were older and had some experience of sorrow
knew that this apparent coldness might, in a child, be used only to conceal
suffering: and they pitied him. He was not grateful for their sympathy.
Even music could bring him no comfort. He played without pleasure, and as a
duty. It was as though he found a cruel joy in no longer taking pleasure in
anything, or in persuading himself that he did not: in depriving himself of
every reason for living, and yet going on.
His two brothers, terrified by the silence of the house of death, ran away
from it as quickly as possible. Rodolphe went into the office of his uncle
Theodore, and lived with him, and Ernest, after trying two or three trades,
found work on one of the Rhine steamers plying between Mainz and Cologne,
and he used to come back only when he wanted money. Christophe was left
alone with his mother in the house, which was too large for them; and the
meagerness of their resources, and the payment of certain debts which had
been discovered after his father's death, forced them, whatever pain it
might cost, to seek another more lowly and less expensive dwelling.
They found a little flat,--two or three rooms on the second floor of a
house in the Market Street. It was a noisy district in the middle of the
town, far from the river, far from the trees, far from the country and all
the familiar places. But they had to consult reason, not sentiment, and
Christophe found in it a fine opportunity for gratifying his bitter creed
of self-mortification. Besides, the owner of the house, old registrar
Euler, was a friend of his grandfather, and knew the family: that was
enough for Louisa, who was lost in her empty house, and was irresistibly
drawn towards those who had known the creatures whom she had loved.
They got ready to leave. They took long draughts of the bitter melancholy
of the last days passed by the sad, beloved fireside that was to be left
forever. They dared hardly tell their sorrow: they were ashamed of it, or
afraid. Each thought that they ought not to show their weakness to the
other. At table, sitting alone in a dark room with half-closed shutters,
they dared not raise their voices: they ate hurriedly and did not look at
each other for fear of not being able to conceal their trouble. They parted
as soon as they had finished. Christophe went back to his work; but as soon
as he was free for a moment, he would come back, go stealthily home, and
creep on tiptoe to his room or to the attic. Then he would shut the door,
sit down in a corner on an old trunk or on the window-ledge, or stay there
without thinking, letting the indefinable buzzing and humming of the old
house, which trembled with the lightest tread, thrill through him. His
heart would tremble with it. He would listen anxiously for the faintest
breath in or out of doors, for the creaking of floors, for all the
imperceptible familiar noises: he knew them all. He would lose
consciousness, his thoughts would be filled with the images of the past,
and he would issue from his stupor only at the sound of St. Martin's clock,
reminding him that it was time to go.
In the room below him he could hear Louisa's footsteps passing softly to
and fro, then for hours she could not be heard; she made no noise.
Christophe would listen intently. He would go down, a little uneasy, as one
is for a long time after a great misfortune. He would push the door ajar;
Louisa would turn her back on him; she would be sitting in front of a
cupboard in the midst of a heap of things--rags, old belongings, odd
garments, treasures, which she had brought out intending to sort them. But
she had no strength for it; everything reminded her of something; she would
turn and turn it in her hands and begin to dream; it would drop from her
hands; she would stay for hours together with her arms hanging down, lying
back exhausted in a chair, given up to a stupor of sorrow.
Poor Louisa was now spending most of her life in the past--that sad past,
which had been very niggardly of joy for her; but she was so used to
suffering that she was still grateful for the least tenderness shown to
her, and the pale lights which had shone here and there in the drab days of
her life, were still enough to make them bright. All the evil that Melchior
had done her was forgotten; she remembered only the good. Her marriage had
been the great romance of her life. If Melchior had been drawn into it by a
caprice, of which he had quickly repented, she had given herself with her
whole heart; she thought that she was loved as much as she had loved; and
to Melchior she was ever most tenderly grateful. She did not try to
understand what he had become in the sequel. Incapable of seeing reality as
it is, she only knew how to bear it as it is, humbly and honestly, as a
woman who has no need of understanding life in order to be able to live.
What she could not explain, she left to God for explanation. In her
singular piety, she put upon God the responsibility for all the injustice
that she had suffered at the hands of Melchior and the others, and only
visited them with the good that they had given her. And so her life of
misery had left her with no bitter memory. She only felt worn out--weak as
she was--by those years of privation and fatigue. And now that Melchior was
no longer there, now that two of her sons were gone from their home, and
the third seemed to be able to do without her, she had lost all heart for
action; she was tired, sleepy; her will was stupefied. She was going
through one of those crises of neurasthenia which often come upon active
and industrious people in the decline of life, when some unforeseen event
deprives them of every reason for living. She had not the heart even to
finish the stocking she was knitting, to tidy the drawer in which she was
looking, to get up to shut the window; she would sit there, without a
thought, without strength--save for recollection. She was conscious of her
collapse, and was ashamed of it or blushed for it; she tried to hide it
from her son; and Christophe, wrapped up in the egoism of his own grief,
never noticed it. No doubt he was often secretly impatient with his
mother's slowness in speaking, and acting, and doing the smallest thing;
but different though her ways were from her usual activity, he never gave a
thought to the matter until then.
Suddenly on that day it came home to him for the first time when he
surprised her in the midst of her rags, turned out on the floor, heaped up
at her feet, in her arms, and in her lap. Her neck was drawn out, her head
was bowed, her face was stiff and rigid. When she heard him come in she
started; her white cheeks were suffused with red; with an instinctive
movement she tried to hide the things she was holding, and muttered with an
awkward smile:
"You see, I was sorting...."
The sight of the poor soul stranded among the relics of the past cut to his
heart, and he was filled with pity. But he spoke with a bitter asperity and
seemed to scold, to drag her from her apathy:
"Come, come, mother; you must not stay there, in the middle of all that
dust, with the room all shut up! It is not good for you. You must pull
yourself together, and have done with all this."
"Yes," said she meekly.
She tried to get up to put the things back in the drawer. But she sat down
again at once and listlessly let them fall from her hands.
"Oh! I can't ... I can't," she moaned. "I shall never finish!"
He was frightened. He leaned over her. He caressed her forehead with his
hands.