men from Olivier. In their way of judging others they were entirely
Italian, incapable of the effort necessary to see beyond themselves,
rooted in the ideas of their race. At bottom, in all good faith, in
foreign literature they only sought what their national instinct was
willing to find in it; often they only took out of it what they
themselves had unconsciously read into it. Mediocre as critics, and as
psychologists contemptible, they were too single-minded, too full of
themselves and their passions, even when they were the most enamored of
truth. Italian idealism cannot forget itself: it is not interested in
the impersonal dreams of the North; it leads everything back to itself,
its desires, its pride of race, and transfigures them. Consciously or
unconsciously, it is always toiling for the _terza Roma_. It must
be said that for many centuries it has not taken much trouble to realize
it. These splendid Italians, who are cut out for action, only act
through passion, and soon weary of it: but when the breath of passion
rushes in their veins it raises them higher than all other nations; as
has been seen, for example, in their _Risorgimento_.--Some such
great wind as that had begun to pass over the young men of Italy of all
parties: nationalists, socialists, neo-Catholics, free idealists, all the
unyielding Italians, all, in hope and will, citizens of Imperial Rome,
Queen of the universe.
At first Christophe saw only their generous ardor and the common
antipathies which united him and them. They could not but join with him
in their contempt for the fashionable society, against which Christophe
raged on account of Grazia's preferences. More than he they hated the
spirit of prudence, the apathy, the compromise, and buffoonery, the
things half said, the amphibious thoughts, the subtle dawdling of the
mind between all possibilities, without deciding on any one, the fine
phrases, the sweetness of it all. They were all self-taught men who had
pieced themselves together with everything they could lay their hands
on, but had had neither means nor leisure to put the finishing touch to
their work, and they were prone to exaggerate their natural coarseness
and their rather bitter tone fitting to rough _contadini._ They
wished to provoke active hostility. Anything rather than indifference.
In order to rouse the energy of their race they would gladly have
consented to be among the first victims to it.
Meanwhile they were not liked, and they did nothing to gain liking.
Christophe met with but small success when he tried to talk to Grazia of
his new friends. They were repugnant to her order-loving, peace-loving
nature. He had to recognize when he was with her that they had a way of
upholding the best of causes which sometimes provoked a desire in the
best of people to declare themselves hostile to it. They were ironical
and aggressive, in criticism harsh to the point of insult, even with
people whom they had no desire to hurt. Having reached the sphere of
publication before they had come to maturity, they passed with equal
intolerance from one infatuation to another. Passionately sincere,
giving themselves unreservedly, without stint or thought of economy,
they were consumed by their excessive intellectuality, their precocious
and blindly obstinate endeavors. It is not well for young ideas, hardly
out of the pod, to be exposed to the raw sunlight. The soul is scorched
by it. Nothing is made fruitful save with time and silence. Time and
silence these men had not allowed themselves. It is the misfortune of
only too many Italian talents. Violent, hasty action is an intoxicant.
The mind that has once tasted it is hard put to it to break the habit;
and its normal growth is then in great peril of being forced and forever
twisted.
Christophe appreciated the acid freshness of such green frankness in
contrast with the insipidity of the people who frequented the middle
way, the _via di mezzo,_ who are in perpetual fear of being
compromised, and have a subtle talent for saying neither "Yes" nor "No."
But very soon he came to see that such people also, with their calm,
courteous minds, have their worth. The perpetual state of conflict in
which his new friends lived was very tiring. Christophe began by
thinking it his duty to go to Grazia's house to defend them. Sometimes
he went there to forget them. No doubt he was like them, too much like
them. They were now what he had been twenty years ago. And life never
goes back. At heart Christophe well knew that, for his own part, he had
forever said good-by to such violence, and that he was going towards
peace, whose secret seemed to lie for him in Grazia's eyes. Why, then,
was he in revolt against her?... Ah! In the egoism of his love he longed
to be the only one to enjoy her peace. He could not bear Grazia to
dispense its benefits without marking how to all comers she extended the
same prodigally gracious welcome.
* * * * *
She read his thoughts, and, with her charming frankness, she said to him
one day:
"You are angry with me for being what I am? You must not idealize me, my
dear. I am a woman, and no better than another. I don't go out of my way
for society; but I admit that I like it, just as I like going sometimes
to an indifferent play, or reading foolish books, which you despise,
though I find them soothing and amusing. I cannot refuse anything."
"How can you endure these idiots?"
"Life has taught me not to be too nice. One must not ask too much. It is
a good deal, I assure you, when one finds honest people, with no harm in
them, kindly people.... (naturally, of course, supposing one expects
nothing of them; I know perfectly well that if I had need of them, I
should not find many to help me...). And yet they are fond of me, and
when I find a little real affection, I hold the rest cheap. You are
angry with me? Forgive me for being an ordinary person. I can at least
see the difference between what is best and what is not so good in
myself. And what you have is the best."
"I want everything," he said gloweringly.
However, he felt that what she said was true. He was so sure of her
affection that, after long hesitation, over many weeks, he asked her one
day:
"Will you ever...?"
"What is it?"
"Be mine."
He went on:
"... and I yours."
She smiled:
"But you are mine, my dear."
"You know what I mean."
She was a little unhappy: but she took his hands and looked at him
frankly:
"No, my dear," she said tenderly.
He could not speak. She saw that he was hurt.
"Forgive me. I have hurt you. I knew that you would say that to me. We
must speak out frankly and in all truth, like good friends."
"Friends," he said sadly. "Nothing more?"
"You are ungrateful. What more do you want? To marry me?... Do you
remember the old days when you had eyes only for my pretty cousin? I was
sad then because you would not understand what I felt for you. Our whole
lives might have been changed. Now I think it was better as it has been;
it is better that we should never expose our friendship to the test of
common life, the daily life, in which even the purest must be
debased...."
"You say that because you love me less."
"Oh no! I love you just the same."
"Ah! That is the first time you have told me."
"There must be nothing hidden from us now. You see, I have not much
faith in marriage left. Mine, I know, was not a very good example. But I
have thought and looked about me. Happy marriages are very rare. It is a
little against nature. You cannot bind together the wills of two people
without mutilating one of them, if not both, and it does not even bring
the suffering through which it is well and profitable for the soul
to pass."
"Ah!" he said. "But I can see in it a fine thing--the union of two
sacrifices, two souls merged into one."
"A fine thing, in your dreams. In reality you would suffer more than any
one."
"What! You think I could never have a wife, a family, children?... Don't
say that! I should love them so! You think it impossible for me to have
that happiness?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Perhaps with a good woman, not very
intelligent, not very beautiful, who would be devoted to you, and would
not understand you."
"How unkind of you!... But you are wrong to make fun of it. A good woman
is a fine thing, even if she has no mind."
"I agree. Shall I find you one?"
"Please! No. You are hurting me. How can you talk like that?"
"What have I said?"
"You don't love me at all, not at all. You can't if you can think of my
marrying another woman."
"On the contrary, it is because I love you that I should be happy to do
anything which could make you happy."
"Then, if that is true...."
"No, no. Don't go back to that. I tell you, it would make you
miserable."
"Don't worry about me. I swear to you that I shall be happy! Speak the
truth: do you think that you would be unhappy with me?"
"Oh! Unhappy? No, my dear. I respect and admire you too much ever to be
unhappy with you.... But, I will tell you: I don't think anything could
make me very unhappy now. I have seen too much. I have become
philosophical.... But, frankly--(You want me to? You won't be
angry?)--well. I know my own weakness. I should, perhaps, be foolish
enough, after a few months, not to be perfectly happy with you; and I
will not have that, just because my affection for you is the most holy
thing in the world, and I will not have it tarnished."
Sadly, he said:
"Yes, you say that, to sweeten the pill. You don't like me. There are
things in me which are odious to you."
"No, no. I assure you. Don't look so hang-dog. You are the dearest,
kindest man...."
"Then I don't understand. Why couldn't we agree?"
"Because we are too different--both too decided, too individual."
"That is why I love you."
"I too. But that is why we should find ourselves conflicting."
"No." "Yes. Or, rather, as I know that you are bigger than I, I should
reproach myself with embarrassing you with my smaller personality, and
then I should be stifled. I should say nothing, and I should suffer."
Tears came to Christophe's eyes.
"Oh! I won't have that. Never! I would rather be utterly miserable than
have you suffering through my fault, for my sake."
"My dear, you mustn't feel it like that.... You know, I say all that,
but I may be flattering myself.... Perhaps I should not be so good as to
sacrifice myself for you."
"All the better."
"But, then, I should sacrifice you, and that would be misery for me....
You see, there is no solving the difficulty either way. Let us stay as
we are. Could there be anything better than our friendship?"
He nodded his head and smiled a little bitterly.
"Yes. That is all very well. But at bottom you don't love me enough."
She smiled too, gently, with a little melancholy, and said, with a sigh:
"Perhaps. You are right. I am no longer young. I am tired. Life wears
one out unless one is very strong, like you.... Oh! you, there are times
when I look at you and you seem to be a boy of eighteen."
"Alas! With my old face, my wrinkles, my dull skin!"
"I know that you have suffered as much as I--perhaps more. I can see
that. But sometimes you look at me with the eyes of a boy, and I feel
you giving out a fresh stream of life. I am worn out. When I think of my
old eagerness, then--alas! As one said, 'Those were great days. I was
very unhappy!' I hold to life only by a thread. I should never be bold
enough to try marriage again. Ah! Then! Then!... If you had only given a
sign!..."
"Well, then, well, tell me...."
"No. It is not worth the trouble."
"Then, if in the old days, if I had...."
"Yes. If you had...? I said nothing."
"I understood. You are cruel."
"Take it, then, that in the old days I was a fool."
"You are making it worse and worse."
"Poor Christophe! I can't say a word but it hurts you. I shan't say any
more."
"You must.... Tell me.... Tell me something."
"Something?"
"Something kind."
She laughed.
"Don't laugh."
"Then you must not be sad."
"How can I be anything else?"
"You have no reason to be sad, I assure you."
"Why?"
"Because you have a friend who loves you."
"Truly?"
"If I tell you so, won't you believe me?"
"Tell me, then."
"You won't be sad any longer? You won't be insatiable? You will be
content with our dear friendship?"
"I must."
"Oh! Ungrateful! And you say you love me? Really, I think I love you
better than you love me."
"Ah! If it were possible."
He said that with such an outburst of lover's egoism that she laughed.
He too. He insisted:
"Tell me!..."
For a moment she was silent, looking at him, then suddenly she brought
her face close to Christophe's and kissed him. It was so unexpected! His
heart leaped within him. He tried to take her in his arms. But she had
escaped. At the door of the little room she laid her finger on her
lips.--"Hush!"--and disappeared.
* * * * *
From that moment on he did not again speak to her of his love, and he
was less awkward in his relation with her. Their alternations of
strained silence and ill-suppressed violence were succeeded by a simple
restful intimacy. That is the advantage of frankness in friendship. No
more hidden meanings, no more illusions, no more fears. Each knew the
other's innermost thoughts. Now when Christophe was with Grazia in the
company of strangers who irritated him and he lost patience at hearing
her exchange with them the empty remarks usual in polite society, she
would notice it and look at him and smile. It was enough to let him know
that they were together, and he would find his peace restored.
The presence of the beloved robs the imagination of its poisoned dart:
the fever of desire is cooled: the soul becomes absorbed in the chaste
possession of the loved presence.--Besides, Grazia shed on all about her
the silent charm of her harmonious nature. Any exaggeration of voice or
gesture, even if it were involuntary, wounded her, as a thing that was
not simple and beautiful. In this way she influenced Christophe little
by little. Though at first he tugged at the bridle put upon his
eagerness, he slowly gained the mastery of himself, and he was all the
stronger since his force was not wasted in useless violence.
Their souls met and mingled. Grazia, who had smilingly surrendered to
the sweetness of living, was awaked from her slumber by contact with
Christophe's moral energy. She took a more direct and less passive
interest in the things of the mind. She used to read very little,
preferring to browse indolently over the same old books, but now she
began to be curious about new ideas, and soon came to feel their
attraction. The wealth of the world of modern ideas, which was not
unknown to her though she had never cared to adventure in it alone, no
longer frightened her now that she had a companion and guide. Insensibly
she suffered herself, while she protested against it, to be drawn on to
an understanding of the young Italians, whose ardent iconoclasm had
always been distasteful to her.
But Christophe profited the more by this mutual perception. It has often
been observed in love that the weaker of the two gives the most: it is
not that the other loves less, but, being stronger, must take more. So
Christophe had already been enriched by Olivier's mind. But this new
mystic marriage was far more fruitful; for Grazia brought him for her
dowry the rarest treasure, that Olivier had never possessed--joy. The
joy of the soul and of the eyes. Light. The smile of the Latin sky, that
loves the ugliness of the humblest things, and sets the stones of the
old walls flowering, and endows even sadness with its calm radiance.
The budding spring entered into alliance with her. The dream of new life
was teeming in the warmth of the slumbering air. The young green was
wedding with the silver-gray of the olive-trees. Beneath the dark red
arches of the ruined aqueducts flowered the white almond-trees. In the
awakening Campagna waved the seas of grass and the triumphant flames of
the poppies. Down the lawns of the villas flowed streams of purple
anemones and sheets of violets. The glycine clambered up the
umbrella-shaped pines, and the wind blowing over the city brought the
scent of the roses of the Palatine.
They went for walks together. When she was able to shake off the almost
Oriental torpor, in which for hours together she would muse, she became
another creature: she loved walking; she was tall, with a fine length of
leg, and a strong, supple figure, and she looked like a Diana of
Primatice.--Most often they would go to one of the villas, left like
flotsam from the shipwreck of the Splendid Rome of the _setticento_
under the assault of the flood of the Piedmontese barbarians. They
preferred, above all, the Villa Mattei, that promontory of ancient Rome,
beneath which the last waves of the deserted Campagna sink and die. They
used to go down the avenue of oaks that, with its deep vault, frames the
blue, the pleasant chains of the Alban hills, softly swelling like a
beating heart. Along the path through the leaves they could see the
tombs of Roman husbands and wives, lying sadly there, with hands clasped
in fidelity. They used to sit down at the end of the avenue, under an
arbor of roses against a white sarcophagus. Behind them the desert.
Profound peace. The murmuring of a slow-dropping fountain, trickling
languidly, so languidly that it seemed on the point of dying. They would
talk in whispers. Grazia's eyes would trustfully gaze into the eyes of
her friend. Christophe would tell her of his life, his struggles, his
past sorrows; and there was no more sadness in them. In her presence,
with her eyes upon him, everything was simple, everything seemed
inevitable.... She, in her turn, would tell of her life. He hardly heard
what she said, but none of her thoughts were lost upon him. His soul and
hers were wedded. He saw with her eyes. Everywhere he saw her eyes, her
tranquil eyes, in the depths of which there burned an ardent fire; he
saw them in the fair, mutilated faces of the antique statues and in the
riddle of their silent gaze: he saw them in the sky of Rome, lovely
laughing around the matted crests of the cypress-trees and through the
fingers of the _lecci,_ black, shining, riddled with the sun's arrows.
Through Grazia's eyes the meaning of Latin art reached his heart. Till
then Christophe had been entirely indifferent to the work of the
Italians. The barbarian idealist, the great bear from the German
forests, had not yet learned to taste the delicious savor of the lovely
gilded marbles, golden as honey. The antiques of the Vatican were
frankly repulsive to him. He was disgusted by their stupid faces, their
effeminate or massive proportions, their banal, rounded modeling, all
the Gitons and gladiators. Hardly more than a few portrait-statues found
favor in his sight, and the originals had absolutely no interest for
him. He was no more kindly towards the pale, grimacing Florentines and
their sick Madonnas and pre-Raphaelite Venuses, anaemic, consumptive,
affected, and tormented. And the bestial stupidity of the red, sweating
bullies and athletes let loose upon the world by the example of the
Sistine Chapel made him think of cast-iron. Only for Michael Angelo did
he have a secret feeling of pious sympathy with his tragic sufferings,
his divine contempt, and the loftiness of his chaste passions. With a
pure barbaric love, like that of the master, he loved the religious
nudity of his youths, his shy, wild virgins, like wild creatures caught
in a trap, the sorrowful Aurora, the wild-eyed Madonna, with her Child
biting at her breast, and the lovely Lia, whom he would fain have had to
wife. But in the soul of the tormented hero he found nothing more than
the echo of his own.
Grazia opened the gates of a new world of art for him. He entered into
the sovereign serenity of Raphael and Titian. He saw the imperial
splendor of the classic genius, which, like a lion, reigns over the
universe of form conquered and mastered. The flashing vision of the
great Venetian which goes straight to the heart of life, and with its
lightning cleaves the hovering mists that veil it, the masterful might
of these Latin minds that cannot only conquer, but also conquer
themselves, and in victory impose upon themselves the straitest
discipline, and, on the field of battle, have the art exactly to choose
their rightful booty from among the spoils of the enemy overthrown--the
Olympian portraits and the _stanze_ of Raphael filled Christophe's
heart with music richer than Wagner's, the music of serene lives, noble
architecture, harmonious grouping, the music which shines forth from the
perfect beauty of face, hands, feet, draperies, and gestures.
Intelligence. Love. The stream of love which springs from those youthful
souls and bodies. The might of the spirit and delight. Young tenderness,
ironic wisdom, the warm obsessing odor of amorous bodies, the luminous
smile in which the shadows are blotted out and passion slumbers. The
quivering force of life rearing and reined in, like the horses of the
Sun, by the sturdy hand of the master....
And Christophe wondered:
"Is it impossible to unite, as they have done, the force and the peace
of the Romans? Nowadays the best men aspire only to force or peace, one
to the detriment of the other. Of all men the Italians seem most utterly
to have lost the sense of harmony which Poussin, Lorraine, and Goethe
understood. Must a stranger once more reveal to them its work?... And
what man shall teach it to our musicians? Music has not yet had its
Raphael. Mozart is only a child, a little German bourgeois, with
feverish hands and sentimental soul, who uses too many words, too many
gestures, and chatters and weeps and laughs over nothing. And neither
the Gothic Bach nor the Prometheus of Bonn, struggling with the vulture,
nor his offspring of Titans piling Pelion on Ossa, and hurling
imprecations at the Heavens, have ever seen the smile of God...."
After he had seen it, Christophe was ashamed of his own music; his vain
agitation, his turgid passions, his indiscreet exclamations, his parade
of himself, his lack of moderation, seemed to him both pitiable and
shameful. A flock of sheep without a shepherd, a kingdom without a
king.--A man must be the king of his tumultuous soul....
During these months Christophe seemed to have forgotten music. He hardly
wrote at all, feeling no need for it. His mind, fertilized by Rome, was
in a period of gestation. He spent days together in a dreamy state of
semi-intoxication. Nature, like himself, was in the early spring-time,
when the languor of the awakening is mixed with a voluptuous dizziness.
Nature and he lay dreaming, locked in each other's arms, like lovers
embracing in their sleep. The feverish enigma of the Campagna was no
longer hostile and disturbing to him; he had made himself master of its
tragic beauty; in his arms he held Demeter, sleeping.
* * * * *
During April he received an invitation from Paris to go there and
conduct a series of concerts. Without troubling to think it over, he
decided to refuse, but thought it better to mention it to Grazia. It was
very sweet to him to consult her about his life, for it gave him the
illusion that she shared it.
This time she gave him a shock of disillusion. She made him explain the
whole matter to her, and advised him to accept. He was very hurt, and
saw in her advice the proof of her indifference.
Probably Grazia was sorry to give him such advice. But why did
Christophe ask her for it? The more he turned to her and asked her to
decide for him, the more she thought herself responsible for her
friend's actions. As a result of their interchange of ideas she had
gained from Christophe a little of his will-power: he had revealed to
her duty and the beauty of action. At least she had recognized duty as
far as her friend was concerned, and she would not have him fail in it.
Better than he, she knew the power of languor given off by the Italian
soil, which, like the insidious poison of its warm _scirocco_,
creeps into the veins and sends the will to sleep. How often had she not
felt its maleficent charm, and had no power to resist it! All her
friends were more or less tainted by this malaria of the soul. Stronger
men than they had in old days fallen victim to it: it had rusted away
the brass of the Roman she-wolf. Rome breathes forth death: it is too
full of graves. It is healthier to stay there for a little time than to
live there. Too easily does one slip out of one's own time, a dangerous
taste for the still young forces that have a vast duty to accomplish.
Grazia saw clearly that the society about her had not a life-giving air
for an artist. And although she had more friendship for Christophe than
for any other ... (dared she confess it?) ... she was not, at heart,
sorry for him to go. Alas! He wearied her with the very qualities that
she most loved in him, his overflowing intelligence, his abundance of
vitality, accumulated for years, and now brimming over: her tranquillity
was disturbed by it. And he wearied her, too, perhaps, because she was
always conscious of the menace of his love, beautiful and touching, but
ever-present: so that she had always to be on her guard against it; it
was more prudent to keep him at a distance. She did not admit it to
herself, and thought she had no consideration for anything but
Christophe's interests.