to have a friend, one friend who would understand him and share his soul!
But although he was still young he had enough experience of the world to
know that his desire was one of those which are most difficult to realize
in life, and that he could not hope to be happier than the majority of the
true artists who had gone before him. He had learned the histories of some
of them. Certain books, borrowed from the Reinharts, had told him about
the terrible trials through which the German musicians of the seventeenth
century had passed, and the calmness and resolution with which one of
these great souls--the greatest of all, the heroic Schutz--had striven,
as unshakably he went on his way in the midst of wars and burning towns,
and provinces ravaged by the plague, with his country invaded, trampled
underfoot by the hordes of all Europe, and--worst of all--broken, worn out,
degraded by misfortune, making no fight, indifferent to everything, longing
only for rest. He thought: "With such as example, what right has any man
to complain? They had no audience, they had no future; they wrote for
themselves and God. What they wrote one day would perhaps be destroyed by
the next. And yet they went on writing and they were not sad. Nothing made
them lose their intrepidity, their joviality. They were satisfied with
their song; they asked nothing of life but to live, to earn their daily
bread, to express their ideas, and to find a few honest men, simple, true,
not artists, who no doubt did not understand them, but had confidence in
them and won their confidence in return. How dared he have demanded more
than they? There is a minimum of happiness which it is permitted to demand.
But no man has the right to more; it rests with a man's self to gain the
surplus of happiness, not with others."
Such thoughts brought him new serenity, and he loved his good friends the
Reinharts the more for them. He had no idea that even this affection was to
be denied him.
* * * * *
He reckoned without the malevolence of small towns. They are tenacious
in their spite--all the more tenacious because their spite is aimless. A
healthy hatred which knows what it wants is appeased when it has achieved
its end. But men who are mischievous from boredom never lay down their
arms, for they are always bored. Christophe was a natural prey for their
want of occupation. He was beaten without a doubt; but he was bold enough
not to seem crushed. He did not bother anybody, but then he did not bother
about anybody. He asked nothing. They were impotent against him. He was
happy with his new friends and indifferent to anything that was said or
thought of him. That was intolerable.--Frau Reinhart roused even more
irritation. Her open friendship with Christophe in the face of the whole
town seemed, like his attitude, to be a defiance of public opinion. But the
good Lili Reinhart defied nothing and nobody. She had no thought to provoke
others; she did what she thought fit without asking anybody else's advice.
That was the worst provocation.
All their doings were watched. They had no idea of it. He was extravagant,
she scatter-brained, and both even wanting in prudence when they went out
together, or even at home in the evening, when they leaned over the balcony
talking and laughing. They drifted innocently into a familiarity of speech
and manner which could easily supply food for calumny.
One morning Christophe received an anonymous letter. He was accused in
basely insulting terms of being Frau Reinhart's lover. His arms fell by his
sides. He had never had the least thought of love or even of flirtation
with her. He was too honest. He had a Puritanical horror of adultery. The
very idea of such a dirty sharing gave him a physical and moral feeling of
nausea. To take the wife of a friend would have been a crime in his eyes,
and Lili Reinhart would have been the last person in the world with whom he
could have been tempted to commit such an offense. The poor woman was not
beautiful, and he would not have had even the excuse of passion.
He went to his friends ashamed and embarrassed. They also were embarrassed.
Each of them had received a similar letter, but they had not dared to tell
each other, and all three of them were on their guard and watched each
other and dared not move or speak, and they just talked nonsense. If Lili
Reinhart's natural carelessness took the ascendant for a moment, or if
she began to laugh and talk wildly, suddenly a look from her husband or
Christophe would stop her dead; the letter would cross her mind; she would
stop in the middle of a familiar gesture and grow uneasy. Christophe and
Reinhart were in the same plight. And each of them was thinking: "Do the
others know?"
However, they said nothing to each other and tried to go on as though
nothing had happened.
But the anonymous letters went on, growing more and mores insulting and
dirty. They were plunged into a condition of depression and intolerable
shame. They hid themselves when they received the letters, and had not the
strength to burn them unopened. They opened them with trembling hands, and
as they unfolded the letters their hearts would sink; and when they read
what they feared to read, with some new variation on the same theme--the
injurious and ignoble inventions of a mind bent on causing a hurt--they
wept in silence. They racked their brains to discover who the wretch might
be who so persistently persecuted them..
One day Frau Reinhart, at the end of her letter, confessed the persecution
of which she was the victim to her husband, and with tears in his eyes he
confessed that he was suffering in the same way. Should they mention it
to Christophe? They dared not. But they had to warn him to make him be
cautious.--At the first words that Frau Reinhart said to him, with a blush,
she saw to her horror that Christophe had also received letters. Such utter
malignance appalled them. Frau Reinhart had no doubt that the whole town
was in the secret. Instead of helping each other, they only undermined
each other's fortitude. They did not know what to do. Christophe talked of
breaking somebody's head. But whose? And besides, that would be to justify
the calumny!... Inform the police of the letters?--That would make their
insinuations public...--Pretend to ignore them? It was no longer possible.
Their friendly relations were now disturbed. It was useless for Reinhart to
have absolute faith in the honesty of his wife and Christophe. He suspected
them in spite of himself. He felt that his suspicions were shameful and
absurd, and tried hard not to pay any heed to them, and to leave Christophe
and his wife alone together. But he suffered, and his wife saw that he was
suffering.
It was even worse for her. She had never thought of flirting with
Christophe, any more than he had thought of it with her. The calumnious
letters brought her imperceptibly to the ridiculous idea that after
all Christophe was perhaps in love with her; and although he was never
anywhere near showing any such feeling for her, she thought she must defend
herself, not by referring directly to it, but by clumsy precautions, which
Christophe did not understand at first, though, when he did understand, he
was beside himself. It was so stupid that it made him laugh and cry at the
same time! He in love with the honest little woman, kind enough as she was,
but plain and common!... And to think that she should believe it!... And
that he could not deny it, and tell her and her husband:
"Come! There is no danger! Be calm!..." But no; he could not offend these
good people. And besides, he was beginning to think that if she held out
against being loved by him it was because she was secretly on the point of
loving him. The anonymous letters had had the fine result of having given
him so foolish and fantastic an idea.
The situation had become at once so painful and so silly that it was
impossible for this to go on. Besides, Lili Reinhart, who, in spite of her
brave words, had no strength of character, lost her head in the face of the
dumb hostility of the little town. They made shamefaced excuses for not
meeting:
"Frau Reinhart was unwell.... Reinhart was busy.... They were going away
for a few days...."
Clumsy lies which were always unmasked by chance, which seemed to take a
malicious pleasure in doing so.
Christophe was more frank, and said:
"Let us part, my friends. We are not strong enough."
The Reinharts wept.--But they were happier when the breach was made.
The town had its triumph. This time Christophe was quite alone. It had
robbed him of his last breath of air:--the affection, however humble,
without which no heart can live.
III
DELIVERANCE
He had no one. All his friends had disappeared. His dear Gottfried, who had
come to his aid in times of difficulty, and whom now he so sorely needed,
had gone some months before. This time forever. One evening in the summer
of the last year a letter in large handwriting, bearing the address of a
distant village, had informed Louisa that her brother had died upon one of
his vagabond journeys which the little peddler had insisted on making, in
spite of his ill health. He was buried there in the cemetery of the place.
The last manly and serene friendship which could have supported Christophe
had been swallowed up. He was left alone with his old mother, who cared
nothing for his ideas--could only love him and not understand him. About
him was the immense plain of Germany, the green ocean. At every attempt to
climb out of it he only slipped back deeper than ever. The hostile town
watched him drown....
And as he was struggling a light flashed upon him in the middle of the
night, the image of Hassler, the great musician whom he had loved so much
when he was a child. His fame shone over all Germany now. He remembered
the promises that Hassler had made him then. And he clung to this piece of
wreckage in desperation. Hassler could save him! Hassler must save him!
What was he asking? Not help, nor money, nor material assistance of any
kind. Nothing but understanding. Hassler had been persecuted like him.
Hassler was a free man. He would understand a free man, whom German
mediocrity was pursuing with its spite and trying to crush. They were
fighting the same battle.
He carried the idea into execution as soon as it occurred to him. He told
his mother that he would be away for a week, and that very evening he took
the train for the great town in the north of Germany where Hassler was
_Kapellmeister_, He could not wait. It was a last effort to breathe.
* * * * *
Hassler was famous. His enemies had not disarmed, but his friends cried
that he was the greatest musician, present, past and future. He was
surrounded by partisans and detractors who were equally absurd. As he was
not of a very firm character, he had been embittered by the last, and
mollified by the first. He devoted his energy to writing things to annoy
his critics and make them cry out. He was like an urchin playing pranks.
These pranks were often in the most detestable taste. Not only did he
devote his prodigious talent to musical eccentricities which made the
hair of the pontiffs stand on end, but he showed a perverse predilection
for queer themes, bizarre subjects, and often for equivocal and scabrous
situations; in a word, for everything which could offend ordinary good
sense and decency. He was quite happy when the people howled, and the
people did not fail him. Even the Emperor, who dabbled in art, as every
one knows, with the insolent presumption of upstarts and princes, regarded
Hassler's fame as a public scandal, and let no opportunity slip of showing
his contemptuous indifference to his impudent works. Hassler was enraged
and delighted by such august opposition, which had almost become a
consecration for the advanced paths in German art, and went on smashing
windows. At every new folly his friends went into ecstasies and cried that
he was a genius.
Hassler's coterie was chiefly composed of writers, painters, and decadent
critics who certainly had the merit of representing the party of revolt
against the reaction--always a menace in North Germany--of the pietistic
spirit and State morality; but in the struggle the independence had been
carried to a pitch of absurdity of which they were unconscious. For, if
many of them were not lacking in a rude sort of talent, they had little
intelligence and less taste. They could not rise above the fastidious
atmosphere which they had created, and like all cliques, they had ended by
losing all sense of real life. They legislated for themselves and hundreds
of fools who read their reviews and gulped down everything they were
pleased to promulgate. Their adulation had been fatal to Hassler, for it
had made him too pleased with himself. He accepted without examination
every musical idea that came into his head, and he had a private
conviction, however he might fall below his own level, he was still
superior to that of all other musicians. And though that idea was only too
true in the majority of cases, it did not follow that it was a very fit
state of mind for the creation of great works. At heart Hassler had a
supreme contempt for everybody, friends and enemies alike; and this bitter
jeering contempt was extended to himself and life in general. He was
all the more driven back into his ironic skepticism because he had once
believed in a number of generous and simple things. As he had not been
strong enough to ward off the slow destruction of the passing of the days,
nor hypocritical enough to pretend to believe in the faith he had lost, he
was forever gibing at the memory of it. He was of a Southern German nature,
soft and indolent, not made to resist excess of fortune or misfortune, of
heat or cold, needing a moderate temperature to preserve its balance. He
had drifted insensibly into a lazy enjoyment of life. He loved good food,
heavy drinking, idle lounging, and sensuous thoughts. His whole art smacked
of these things, although he was too gifted for the flashes of his genius
not still to shine forth from his lax music which drifted with the fashion.
No one was more conscious than himself of his decay. In truth, he was
the only one to be conscious of it--at rare moments which, naturally, he
avoided. Besides, he was misanthropic, absorbed by his fearful moods, his
egoistic preoccupations, his concern about his health--he was indifferent
to everything which had formerly excited his enthusiasm or hatred.
* * * * *
Such was the man to whom Christophe came for assistance, With what joy and
hope he arrived, one cold, wet morning, in the town wherein then lived
the man who symbolized for him the spirit of independence in his art! He
expected words of friendship and encouragement from him--words that he
needed to help him to go on with the ungrateful, inevitable battle which
every true artist has to wage against the world until he breathes his last,
without even for one day laying down his arms; for, as Schiller has said,
"_the only relation with the public of which a man never repents--is war_."
Christophe was so impatient that he just left his bag at the first hotel he
came to near the station, and then ran to the theater to find out Hassler's
address. Hassler lived some way from the center of the town, in one of the
suburbs. Christophe took an electric train, and hungrily ate a roll. His
heart thumped as he approached his goal.
The district in which Hassler had chosen his house was almost entirely
built in that strange new architecture into which young Germany has thrown
an erudite and deliberate barbarism struggling laboriously to have genius.
In the middle of the commonplace town, with its straight, characterless
streets, there suddenly appeared Egyptian hypogea, Norwegian chalets,
cloisters, bastions, exhibition pavilions, pot-bellied houses, fakirs,
buried in the ground, with expressionless faces, with only one enormous
eye; dungeon gates, ponderous gates, iron hoops, golden cryptograms on
the panes of grated windows, belching monsters over the front door, blue
porcelain tiles plastered on in most unexpected places; variegated mosaics
representing Adam and Eve; roofs covered with tiles of jarring colors;
houses like citadels with castellated walls, deformed animals on the roofs,
no windows on one side, and then suddenly, close to each other, gaping
holes, square, red, angular, triangular, like wounds; great stretches of
empty wall from which suddenly there would spring a massive balcony with
one window--a balcony supported by Nibelungesque Caryatides, balconies from
which there peered through the stone balustrade two pointed heads of old
men, bearded and long-haired, mermen of Boecklin. On the front of one of
these prisons--a Pharaohesque mansion, low and one-storied, with two naked
giants at the gate--the architect had written:
Let the artist show his universe,
Which never was and yet will ever be.
_Seine Welt zeige der Künstler,
Die niemals war noch jemals sein wird._
Christophe was absorbed by the idea of seeing Hassler, and looked with the
eyes of amazement and under no attempt to understand. He reached the house
he sought, one of the simplest--in a Carolingian style. Inside was rich
luxury, commonplace enough. On the staircase was the heavy atmosphere of
hot air. There was a small lift which Christophe did not use, as he wanted
to gain time to prepare himself for his call by going up the four flights
of stairs slowly, with his legs giving and his heart thumping with his
excitement. During that short ascent his former interview with Hassler, his
childish enthusiasm, the image of his grandfather were as clearly in his
mind as though it had all been yesterday.
It was nearly eleven when he rang the bell. He was received by a sharp
maid, with a _serva padrona_ manner, who looked at him impertinently and
began to say that "Herr Hassler could not see him, as Herr Hassler was
tired." Then the naïve disappointment expressed in Christophe's face amused
her; for after making an unabashed scrutiny of him from head to foot, she
softened suddenly and introduced him to Hassler's study, and said she would
go and see if Herr Hassler would receive him. Thereupon she gave him a
little wink and closed the door.
On the walls were a few impressionist paintings and some gallant French
engravings of the eighteenth century: for Hassler pretended to some
knowledge of all the arts, and Manet and Watteau were joined together in
his taste in accordance with the prescription of his coterie. The same
mixture of styles appeared in the furniture, and a very fine Louis XV
bureau was surrounded by new art armchairs and an oriental divan with a
mountain of multi-colored cushions. The doors were ornamented with mirrors,
and Japanese bric-a-brac covered the shelves and the mantelpiece, on which
stood a bust of Hassler. In a bowl on a round table was a profusion of
photographs of singers, female admirers and friends, with witty remarks and
enthusiastic interjections. The bureau was incredibly untidy. The piano was
open. The shelves were dusty, and half-smoked cigars were lying about
everywhere.
In the next room Christophe heard a cross voice grumbling, It was answered
by the shrill tones of the little maid. It was dear that Hassler was not
very pleased at having to appear. It was clear, also, that the young woman
had decided that Hassler should appear; and she answered him with extreme
familiarity and her shrill voice penetrated the walls. Christophe was
rather upset at hearing some of the remarks she made to her master. But
Hassler did not seem to mind. On the contrary, it rather seemed as though
her impertinence amused him; and while he went on growling, he chaffed the
girl and took a delight in exciting her. At last Christophe heard a door
open, and, still growling and chaffing, Hassler came shuffling.
He entered. Christophe's heart sank. He recognized him. Would to God he had
not! It was Hassler, and yet it was not he. He still had his great smooth
brow, his face as unwrinkled as that of a babe; but he was bald, stout,
yellowish, sleepy-looking; his lower lip drooped a little, his mouth looked
bored and sulky. He hunched his shoulders, buried his hands in the pockets
of his open waistcoat; old shoes flopped on his feet; his shirt was bagged
above his trousers, which he had not finished buttoning. He looked at
Christophe with his sleepy eyes, in which there was no light as the young
man murmured his name. He bowed automatically, said nothing, nodded towards
a chair, and with a sigh, sank down on the divan and piled the cushions
about himself. Christophe repeated:
"I have already had the honor.... You were kind enough.... My name is
Christophe Krafft...."
Hassler lay back on the divan, with his legs crossed, his lands clasped
together on his right knee, which he held up to his chin as he replied:
"I don't remember."
Christophe's throat went dry, and he tried to remind him of their former
meeting. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult for him to
talk of memories so intimate; now it was torture for him. He bungled his
sentences, could not find words, said absurd things which made him blush.
Hassler let him flounder on and never ceased to look at him with his vague,
indifferent eyes. When Christophe had reached the end of his story, Hassler
went on rocking his knee in silence for a moment, as though he were waiting
for Christophe to go on. Then he said:
"Yes.... That does not make us young again...." and stretched his legs.
After a yawn he added:
"... I beg pardon.... Did not sleep.... Supper at the theater last
night...." and yawned again.
Christophe hoped that Hassler would make some reference to what he had
just told him, but Hassler, whom the story had not interested at all, said
nothing about it, and he did not ask Christophe anything about his life.
When he had done yawning he asked:
"Have you been in Berlin long?"
"I arrived this morning," said Christophe.
"Ah!" said Hassler, without any surprise. "What hotel?"
He did not seem to listen to the reply, but got up lazily and pressed an
electric bell.
"Allow me," he said.
The little maid appeared with her impertinent manner.
"Kitty," said he, "are you trying to make me go without breakfast this
morning?"
"You don't think I am going to bring it here while you have some one with
you?"
"Why not?" he said, with a wink and a nod in Christophe's direction. "He
feeds my mind: I must feed my body."
"Aren't you ashamed to have some one watching you eat--like an animal in a
menagerie?"
Instead of being angry, Hassler began to laugh and corrected her:
"Like a domestic animal," he went on. "But do bring it. I'll eat my shame
with it."
Christophe saw that Hassler was making no attempt to find out what he
was doing, and tried to lead the conversation back. He spoke of the
difficulties of provincial life, of the mediocrity of the people, the
narrow-mindedness, and of his own isolation. He tried to interest him in
his moral distress. But Hassler was sunk deep in the divan, with his head
lying back on a cushion and his eyes half closed, and let him go on talking
without even seeming to listen; or he would raise his eyelids for a moment
and pronounce a few coldly ironical words, some ponderous jest at the
expense of provincial people, which cut short Christophe's attempts to talk
more intimately. Kitty returned with the breakfast tray: coffee, butter,
ham, etc. She put it down crossly on the desk in the middle of the untidy
papers. Christophe waited until she had gone before he went on with his
sad story which he had such difficulty in continuing. Hassler drew the
tray towards himself. He poured himself out some coffee and sipped at it.
Then in a familiar and cordial though rather contemptuous way he stopped
Christophe in the middle of a sentence to ask if he would take a cup.
Christophe refused. He tried to pick up the thread of his sentence, but he
was more and more nonplussed, and did not know what he was saying. He was
distracted by the sight of Hassler with his plate under his chin, like a
child, gorging pieces of bread and butter and slices of ham which he held
in his fingers. However, he did succeed in saying that he composed, that he
had had an overture in the _Judith_ of Hebbel performed. Hassler listened
absently.
"_Was_?" (What?) he asked.
Christophe repeated the title.
"_Ach! So, so!_" (Ah! Good, good!) said Hassler, dipping his bread and his
fingers into his cup. That was all.
Christophe was discouraged and was on the point of getting up and going,
but he thought of his long journey in vain, and summoning up all his
courage he murmured a proposal that he should play some of his works to
Hassler. At the first mention of it Hassler stopped him.
"No, no. I don't know anything about it," he said, with his chaffing and
rather insulting irony. "Besides, I haven't the time."
Tears came to Christophe's eyes. But he had vowed not to leave until he had
Hassler's opinion about his work. He said, with a mixture of confusion and
anger:
"I beg your pardon, but you promised once to hear me. I came to see you for
that from the other end of Germany. You shall hear me."
Hassler, who was not used to such ways, looked at the awkward young man,
who was furious, blushing, and near tears. That amused him, and wearily
shrugging his shoulders, he pointed to the piano, and said with an air of
comic resignation:
"Well, then!... There you are!"