strove desperately to bring to life again the soul that had been his,
lonely and resigned. But it was gone. Passion itself is not so dangerous as
the ruins that it heaps up and leaves behind. In vain did Christophe not
love, in vain--for a moment--did he despise love: he bore the marks of its
talons: his whole being was steeped in it: there was in his heart a void
which must be filled. With that terrible need of tenderness and pleasure
which devours men and women when they have once tasted it, some other
passion was needed, were it only the contrary passion, the passion of
contempt, of proud purity, of faith in virtue.--They were not enough, they
were not enough to stay his hunger: they were only the food of a moment.
His life consisted of a succession of violent reactions--leaps from
one extreme to the other. Sometimes he would bend his passion to rules
inhumanly ascetic: not eating, drinking water, wearing himself out with
walking, heavy tasks, and so not sleeping, denying himself every sort of
pleasure. Sometimes he would persuade himself that strength is the true
morality for people like himself: and he would plunge into the quest of
joy. In either case he was unhappy. He could no longer be alone. He could
no longer not be alone.
The only thing that could have saved him would have been to find a true
friendship,--Rosa's perhaps: he could have taken refuge in that. But the
rupture was complete between the two families. They no longer met. Only
once had Christophe seen Rosa. She was just coming out from Mass. He had
hesitated to bow to her: and when she saw him she had made a movement
towards him: but when he had tried to go to her through the stream of the
devout walking down the steps, she had turned her eyes away: and when he
approached her she bowed coldly and passed on. In the girl's heart he felt
intense, icy contempt. And he did not feel that she still loved him and
would have liked to tell him so: but she had come to think of her love as a
fault and foolishness: she thought Christophe bad and corrupt, and further
from her than ever. So they were lost to each other forever. And perhaps
it was as well for both of them. In spite of her goodness, she was not
near enough to life to be able to understand him. In spite of his need of
affection and respect he would have stifled in a commonplace and confined
existence, without joy, without sorrow, without air. They would both have
suffered. The unfortunate occurrence which cut them apart was, when all was
told, perhaps, fortunate as often happens--as always happens--to those who
are strong and endure.
But at the moment it was a great sorrow and a great misfortune for them.
Especially for Christophe. Such virtuous intolerance, such narrowness of
soul, which sometimes seems to deprive those who have the most of them of
all intelligence, and those who are most good of kindness, irritated him,
hurt him, and flung him back in protest into a freer life.
During his loafing with Ada in the beer gardens of the neighborhood he had
made acquaintance with several good fellows--Bohemians, whose carelessness
and freedom of manners had not been altogether distasteful to him. One
of them, Friedemann, a musician like himself, an organist, a man of
thirty, was not without intelligence, and was good at his work, but he was
incurably lazy and rather than make the slightest effort to be more than
mediocre, he would have died of hunger, though not, perhaps, of thirst.
He comforted himself in his indolence by speaking ill of those who lived
energetically, God knows why; and his sallies, rather heavy for the most
part, generally made people laugh. Having more liberty than his companions,
he was not afraid,--though timidly, and with winks and nods and suggestive
remarks,--to sneer at those who held positions: he was even capable of not
having ready-made opinions about music, and of having a sly fling at the
forged reputations of the great men of the day. He had no mercy upon women
either: when he was making his jokes he loved to repeat the old saying of
some misogynist monk about them, and Christophe enjoyed its bitterness just
then more than anybody:
_"Femina mors animae."_
In his state of upheaval Christophe found some distraction in talking
to Friedemann. He judged him, he could not long take pleasure in this
vulgar bantering wit: his mockery and perpetual denial became irritating
before long and he felt the impotence of it all: but it did soothe his
exasperation with the self-sufficient stupidity of the Philistines. While
he heartily despised his companion, Christophe could not do without him.
They were continually seen together sitting with the unclassed and doubtful
people of Friedemann's acquaintance, who were even more worthless than
himself. They used to play, and harangue, and drink the whole evening.
Christophe would suddenly wake up in the midst of the dreadful smell of
food and tobacco: he would look at the people about him with strange eyes:
he would not recognize them: he would think in agony:
"Where am I? Who are these people? What have I to do with them?"
Their remarks and their laughter would make him sick. But he could not
bring himself to leave them: he was afraid of going home and of being left
alone face to face with his soul, his desires, and remorse. He was going to
the dogs: he knew it: he was doing it deliberately,--with cruel clarity he
saw in Friedemann the degraded image of what he was--of what he would be
one day: and he was passing through a phase of such disheartenedness and
disgust that instead of being brought to himself by such a menace, it
actually brought him low.
He would have gone to the dogs, if he could. Fortunately, like all
creatures of his kind, he had a spring, a succor against destruction which
others do not possess: his strength, his instinct for life, his instinct
against letting himself perish, an instinct more intelligent than his
intelligence, and stronger than his will. And also, unknown to himself,
he had the strange curiosity of the artist, that passionate, impersonal
quality, which is in every creature really endowed with creative power. In
vain did he love, suffer, give himself utterly to all his passions: he saw
them. They were in him but they were not himself. A myriad of little souls
moved obscurely in him towards a fixed point unknown, yet certain, just
like the planetary worlds which are drawn through space into a mysterious
abyss. That perpetual state of unconscious action and reaction was shown
especially in those giddy moments when sleep came over his daily life, and
from the depths of sleep and the night rose the multiform face of Being
with its sphinx-like gaze. For a year Christophe had been obsessed with
dreams in which in a second of time he felt clearly with perfect illusion
that he _was_ at one and the same time several different creatures, often
far removed from each other by countries, worlds, centuries. In his waking
state Christophe was still under his hallucination and uneasiness, though
he could not remember what had caused it. It was like the weariness left by
some fixed idea that is gone, though traces of it are left and there is no
understanding it. But while his soul was so troublously struggling through
the network of the days, another soul, eager and serene, was watching
all his desperate efforts. He did not see it: but it cast over him the
reflection of its hidden light. That soul was joyously greedy to feel
everything, to suffer everything, to observe and understand men, women, the
earth, life, desires, passions, thoughts, even those that were torturing,
even those that were mediocre, even those that were vile: and it was enough
to lend them a little of its light, to save Christophe from destruction. It
made him feel--he did not know how--that he was not altogether alone. That
love of being and of knowing everything, that second soul, raised a rampart
against his destroying passions.
But if it was enough to keep his head above water, it did not allow him
to climb out of it unaided. He could not succeed in seeing clearly into
himself, and mastering himself, and regaining possession of himself. Work
was impossible for him. He was passing through an intellectual crisis: the
most fruitful of his life: all his future life was germinating in it: but
that inner wealth for the time being only showed itself in extravagance:
and the immediate effect of such superabundance was not different from that
of the flattest sterility. Christophe was submerged by his life. All his
powers had shot up and grown too fast, all at once, suddenly. Only his will
had not grown with them: and it was dismayed by such a throng of monsters.
His personality was cracking in every part. Of this earthquake, this inner
cataclysm, others saw nothing. Christophe himself could see only his
impotence to will, to create, to be. Desires, instincts, thoughts issued
one after another like clouds of sulphur from the fissures of a volcano:
and he was forever asking himself: "And now, what will come out? What will
become of me? Will it always be so? or is this the end of all? Shall I be
nothing, always?"
And now there sprang up in him his hereditary fires, the vices of those who
had gone before him.--He got drunk. He would return home smelling of wine,
laughing, in a state of collapse.
Poor Louisa would look at him, sigh, say nothing, and pray.
But one evening when he was coming out of an inn by the gates of the town
he saw, a few yards in front of him on the road, the droll shadow of his
uncle Gottfried, with his pack on his back. The little man had not been
home for months, and his periods of absence were growing longer and longer.
Christophe hailed him gleefully. Gottfried, bending under his load, turned
round: he looked at Christophe, who was making extravagant gestures, and
sat down on a milestone to wait for him. Christophe came up to him with
a beaming face, skipping along, and shook his uncle's hand with great
demonstrations of affection. Gottfried took a long look at him and then he
said:
"Good-day, Melchior."
Christophe thought his uncle had made a mistake, and burst out laughing.
"The poor man is breaking up," he thought; "he is losing his memory."
Indeed, Gottfried did look old, shriveled, shrunken, and dried: his
breathing came short and painfully. Christophe went on talking. Gottfried
took his pack on his shoulders again and went on in silence. They went home
together, Christophe gesticulating and talking at the top of his voice,
Gottfried coughing and saying nothing. And when Christophe questioned him,
Gottfried still called him Melchior. And then Christophe asked him:
"What do you mean by calling me Melchior? My name is Christophe, you know.
Have you forgotten my name?"
Gottfried did not stop. He raised his eyes toward Christophe and looked at
him, shook his head, and said coldly:
"No. You are Melchior: I know you."
Christophe stopped dumfounded. Gottfried trotted along: Christophe followed
him without a word. He was sobered. As they passed the door of a café he
went up to the dark panes of glass, in which the gas-jets of the entrance
and the empty streets were reflected, and he looked at himself: he
recognized Melchior. He went home crushed.
He spent the night--a night of anguish--in examining himself, in
soul-searching. He understood now. Yes: he recognized the instincts and
vices that had come to light in him: they horrified him. He thought of that
dark watching by the body of Melchior, of all that he had sworn to do, and,
surveying his life since then, he knew that he had failed to keep his vows.
What had he done in the year? What had he done for his God, for his art,
for his soul? What had he done for eternity? There was not a day that had
not been wasted, botched, besmirched. Not a single piece of work, not a
thought, not an effort of enduring quality. A chaos of desires destructive
of each other. Wind, dust, nothing.... What did his intentions avail him?
He had fulfilled none of them. He had done exactly the opposite of what
he had intended. He had become what he had no wish to be: that was the
balance-sheet of his life.
He did not go to bed. About six in the morning it was still dark,--he heard
Gottfried getting ready to depart.--For Gottfried had had no intentions of
staying on. As he was passing the town he had come as usual to embrace his
sister and nephew: but he had announced that he would go on next morning.
Christophe went downstairs. Gottfried saw his pale face and his eyes hollow
with a night of torment. He smiled fondly at him and asked him to go a
little of the way with him. They set out together before dawn. They had
no need to talk: they understood each other. As they passed the cemetery
Gottfried said:
"Shall we go in?"
When he came to the place he never failed to pay a visit to Jean Michel and
Melchior. Christophe had not been there for a year. Gottfried knelt by
Melchior's grave and said:
"Let us pray that they may sleep well and not come to torment us."
His thought was a mixture of strange superstitions and sound sense:
sometimes it surprised Christophe: but now it was only too dear to him.
They said no more until they left the cemetery.
When they had closed the creaking gate, and were walking along the wall
through the cold fields, waking from slumber, by the little path which led
them under the cypress trees from which the snow was dropping, Christophe
began to weep.
"Oh! uncle," he said, "how wretched I am!"
He dared not speak of his experience in love, from an odd fear of
embarrassing or hurting Gottfried: but he spoke of his shame, his
mediocrity, his cowardice, his broken vows.
"What am I to do, uncle? I have tried, I have struggled: and after a year
I am no further on than before. Worse: I have gone back. I am good for
nothing. I am good for nothing! I have ruined my life. I am perjured!..."
They were walking up the hill above the town. Gottfried said kindly:
"Not for the last time, my boy. We do not do what we will to do. We will
and we live: two things. You must be comforted. The great thing is, you
see, never to give up willing and living. The rest does not depend on us."
Christophe repeated desperately:
"I have perjured myself."
"Do you hear?" said Gottfried.
(The cocks were crowing in all the countryside.)
"They, too, are crowing for another who is perjured. They crow for every
one of us, every morning."
"A day will come," said Christophe bitterly, "when, they will no longer
crow for me ... A day to which there is no to-morrow. And what shall I have
made of my life?"
"There is always a to-morrow," said Gottfried.
"But what can one do, if willing is no use?"
"Watch and pray."
"I do not believe."
Gottfried smiled.
"You would not be alive if you did not believe. Every one believes. Pray."
"Pray to what?"
Gottfried pointed to the sun appearing on the horizon, red and frozen.
"Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a
year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories,
you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse
life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it,
do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when
it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now.
Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be
good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all
will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well,
you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then,
why _will_? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do
what we can.... _Als ich kann._"
"It is not enough," said Christophe, making a face.
Gottfried laughed pleasantly.
"It is more than anybody does. You are a vain fellow. You want to be a
hero. That is why you do such silly things.... A hero!... I don't quite
know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does
what he can. The others do not do it."
"Oh!" sighed Christophe. "Then what is the good of living? It is not worth
while. And yet there are people who say: 'He who wills can!'"...
Gottfried laughed again softly.
"Yes?... Oh! well, they are liars, my friend. Or they do not will anything
much...."
They had reached the top of the hill. They embraced affectionately. The
little peddler went on, treading wearily. Christophe stayed there, lost in
thought, and watched him go. He repeated his uncle's saying:
"_Als ich kann_ (The best I can)."
And he smiled, thinking:
"Yes.... All the same.... It is enough."
He returned to the town. The frozen snow crackled under his feet. The
bitter winter wind made the bare branches of the stunted trees on the hill
shiver. It reddened his cheeks, and made his skin tingle, and set his blood
racing. The red roofs of the town below were smiling under the brilliant,
cold sun. The air was strong and harsh. The frozen earth seemed to rejoice
in bitter gladness. And Christophe's heart was like that. He thought:
"I, too, shall wake again."
There were still tears in his eyes. He dried them with the back of his
hand, and laughed to see the sun dipping down behind a veil of mist. The
clouds, heavy with snow, were floating over the town, lashed by the squall.
He laughed at them. The wind blew icily....
"Blow, blow!... Do what you will with me. Bear me with you!... I know now
where I am going."
REVOLT
I
SHIFTING SANDS
Free! He felt that he was free!... Free of others and of himself! The
network of passion in which he had been enmeshed for more than a year had
suddenly been burst asunder. How? He did not know. The filaments had given
before the growth of his being. It was one of those crises of growth in
which robust natures tear away the dead casing of the year that is past,
the old soul in which they are cramped and stifled.
Christophe breathed deeply, without understanding what had happened. An icy
whirlwind was rushing through the great gate of the town as he returned
from taking Gottfried on his way. The people were walking with heads
lowered against the storm. Girls going to their work were struggling
against the wind that blew against their skirts: they stopped every now
and then to breathe, with their nose and cheeks red, and they looked
exasperated, and as though they wanted to cry. He thought of that other
torment through which he had passed. He looked at the wintry sky, the town
covered with snow, the people struggling along past him: he looked about
him, into himself: he was no longer bound. He was alone!... Alone! How
happy to be alone, to be his own! What joy to have escaped from his bonds,
from his torturing memories, from the hallucinations of faces that he loved
or detested! What joy at last to live, without being the prey of life, to
have become his own master!...
He went home white with snow. He shook himself gaily like a dog. As he
passed his mother, who was sweeping the passage, he lifted her up, giving
little inarticulate cries of affection such as one makes to a tiny child.
Poor old Louisa struggled in her son's arms: she was wet with the melting
snow: and she called him, with a jolly laugh, a great gaby.
He went up to his room three steps at a time.--He could hardly see himself
in his little mirror it was so dark. But his heart was glad. His room
was low and narrow and it was difficult to move in it, but it was like a
kingdom to him. He locked the door and laughed with pleasure. At last he
was finding himself! How long he had been gone astray! He was eager to
plunge into thought like a bather into water. It was like a great lake afar
off melting into the mists of blue and gold. After a night of fever and
oppressive heat he stood by the edge of it, with his legs bathed in the
freshness of the water, his body kissed by the wind of a summer morning. He
plunged in and swam: he knew not whither he was going, and did not care: it
was joy to swim whithersoever he listed. He was silent, then he laughed,
and listened for the thousand thousand sounds of his soul: it swarmed with
life. He could make out nothing: his head was swimming: he felt only a
bewildering happiness. He was glad to feel in himself such unknown forces:
and indolently postponing putting his powers to the test he sank back into
the intoxication of pride in the inward flowering, which, held back for
months, now burst forth like a sudden spring.
His mother called him to breakfast. He went down: he was giddy and
light-headed as though he had spent a day in the open air: but there was
such a radiance of joy in him that Louisa asked what was the matter. He
made no reply: he seized her by the waist and forced her to dance with him
round the table on which the tureen was steaming. Out of breath Louisa
cried that he was mad: then she clasped her hands.
"Dear God!" she said anxiously. "Sure, he is in love again!"
Christophe roared with laughter. He hurled his napkin into the air.
"In love?..." he cried. "Oh! Lord!... but no! I've had enough! You can be
easy on that score. That is done, done, forever!... Ouf!"
He drank a glassful of water.
Louisa looked at him, reassured, wagged her head, and smiled.
"That's a drunkard's pledge," she said. "It won't last until to-night."
"Then the day is clear gain," he replied good-humoredly.
"Oh, yes!" she said. "But what has made you so happy?"
"I am happy. That is all."
Sitting opposite her with his elbows on the table he tried to tell her all
that he was going to do. She listened with kindly skepticism and gently
pointed out that his soup was going cold. He knew that she did not hear
what he was saying: but he did not care: he was talking for his own
satisfaction.
They looked at each other smiling: he talking: she hardly listening.
Although she was proud of her son she attached no great importance to
his artistic projects: she was thinking: "He is happy: that matters
most."--While he was growing more and more excited with his discourse he
watched his mother's dear face, with her black shawl tightly tied round her
head, her white hair, her young eyes that devoured him lovingly, her sweet
and tranquil kindliness. He knew exactly what she was thinking. He said to
her jokingly:
"It is all one to you, eh? You don't care about what I'm telling you?"
She protested weakly:
"Oh, no! Oh, no!"
He kissed her.
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes! You need not defend yourself. You are right. Only love
me. There is no need to understand me--either for you or for anybody else.
I do not need anybody or anything now: I have everything in myself...."
"Oh!" said Louisa. "Another maggot in his brain!... But if he must have one
I prefer this to the other."
* * * * *
What sweet happiness to float on the surface of the lake of his
thoughts!... Lying in the bottom of a boat with his body bathed in sun, his
face kissed by the light fresh wind that skims over the face of the waters,
he goes to sleep: he is swung by threads from the sky. Under his body lying
at full length, under the rocking boat he feels the deep, swelling water:
his hand dips into it. He rises: and with his chin on the edge of the boat
he watches the water flowing by as he did when he was a child. He sees the
reflection of strange creatures darting by like lightning.... More, and yet
more.... They are never the same. He laughs at the fantastic spectacle that
is unfolded within him: he laughs at his own thoughts: he has no need to
catch and hold them. Select? Why select among So many thousands of dreams?
There is plenty of time!... Later on!... He has only to throw out a line at
will to draw in the monsters whom he sees gleaming in the water. He lets
them pass.... Later on!...
The boat floats on at the whim of the warm wind and the insentient stream.
All is soft, sun, and silence.
* * * * *
At last languidly he throws out his line. Leaning out over the lapping
water he follows it with his eyes until it disappears. After a few moments
of torpor he draws it in slowly: as he draws it in it becomes heavier: just
as he is about to fish it out of the water he stops to take breath. He
knows that he has his prey: he does not know what it is: he prolongs the
pleasure of expectancy.
At last he makes up his mind: fish with gleaming, many-colored scales
appear from the water: they writhe like a nest of snakes. He looks at them
curiously, he stirs them with his finger: but hardly has he drawn them from
the water than their colors fade and they slip between his fingers. He
throws them back into the water and begins to fish for others. He is more
eager to see one after another all the dreams stirring in him than to catch
at any one of them: they all seem more beautiful to him when they are
freely swimming in the transparent lake....