estheticism, her sport, and her practical sense (for she has inherited
from her mother her sense of business and her domestic despotism). All
these things ought to make an incredible mixture, but she is quite at
her ease with them all: her most foolish eccentricities leave her mind
quite clear, just as she keeps her eyes and hands sure when she goes
whirling along in her motor. She is a masterful woman: her husband, her
guests, her servants, she leads them all, with drums beating and colors
flying. She is also busy with politics: she is for 'Monseigneur'; not
that I believe her to be a royalist, but it is another excuse for
bestirring herself. And although she is incapable of reading more than
ten pages of a book, she arranges the elections to the Academies.--She
set about extending her patronage to me. You may guess that that was not
at all to my liking. What is most exasperating is that the fact of my
having visited her in obedience to you has absolutely convinced her of
her power over me. I take my revenge in thrusting home truths at her.
She only laughs, and is never at a loss for a reply. 'She is a good
creature at heart....' Yes, provided she is occupied. She admits that
herself: if the machine has nothing to grind she is capable of anything
and everything to keep it going.--I have been to her house twice. I
shall not go again. Twice is enough to prove my obedience to you. You
don't want me to die? I leave her house broken, crushed, cramped. Last
time I saw her I had a frightful nightmare after it: I dreamed I was her
husband, all my life tied to that living whirlwind.... A foolish dream,
and it need not trouble her real husband, for of all who go to the house
he is the last to be seen with her, and when they are together they only
talk of sport. They get on very well.
"How could these people make my music a success? I try not to understand.
I suppose it shocked them in a new way. They liked it for
brutalizing them. For the time being they like art with a body to it.
But they have not the faintest conception of the soul in the body: they
will pass from the infatuation of to-day to the indifference of
to-morrow, from the indifference of to-morrow to the abuse of the day
after, without ever having known it. That is the history of all artists.
I am under no illusion as to my success, and have not been for a long
time: and they will make me pay for it.--Meanwhile I see the most
curious things going on. The most enthusiastic of my admirers is ... (I
give him you among a thousand) ... our friend Lévy-Coeur. You remember
the gentleman with whom I fought a ridiculous duel? Now he instructs
those who used not to understand me. He does it very well too. He is the
most intelligent of all the men talking about me. You may judge what the
others are worth. There is nothing to be proud of, I assure you.
"I don't want to be proud of it. I am too humiliated when I hear the
work for which I am belauded. I see myself in it, and what I see is not
beautiful. What a merciless mirror is a piece of music to those who can
see into it! Happily they are blind and deaf. I have put so much of my
troubles and weaknesses into my work that sometimes it seems to me
wicked to let loose upon the world such hordes of demons. I am comforted
when I see the tranquillity of the audience: they are trebly armored:
nothing can reach them: were it not so, I should be damned.... You
reproach me with being too hard on myself. You do not know me as I know
myself. They see what we are: they do not see what we might have been,
and we are honored for what is not so much the effect of our qualities
as of the events that bear us along, and the forces which control us.
Let me tell you a story....
"The other evening I was in one of the cafés where they play fairly good
music, though in a queer way: with five or six instruments, filled out
with a piano, they play all the symphonies, the masses, the oratorios.
It is just like the stonecutters in Rome, where they sell the Medici
chapel as an ornament for the mantelpiece. Apparently this is useful to
art, which, if it is to circulate among men, must be turned into base
coin. For the rest there is no deception in these concerts. The programs
are copious, the musicians conscientious. I found a violoncellist there
and entered into conversation with him: his eyes reminded me strangely
of my father's; he told me the story of his life. He was the grandson of
a peasant, the son of a small official, a clerk in a _mairie_ in a
village in the North. They wanted to make him a gentleman, a lawyer, and
he was sent to school in the neighboring town. He was a sturdy country
boy, not at all fitted for being cooped up over the small work of a
notary's office, and he could not stay caged in: he used to jump over
the wall, and wander through the fields, and run after the girls, and
spend his strength in brawling: the rest of the time he lounged and
dreamed of things he would never do. Only one thing had any attraction
for him: music. God knows why! There was not a single musician in his
family, except a rather cracked great-uncle, one of those odd,
provincial characters, whose often remarkable intelligence and gifts are
spent, in their proud isolation, on whims, and cranks, and trivialities.
This great-uncle had invented a new system of notation--(yet
another!)--which was to revolutionize music; he even claimed to have
found a system of stenography by which words, tune, and accompaniment
could be written simultaneously; but he never managed to transcribe it
correctly himself. They just laughed at the old man in the family, but
all the same, they were proud of him. They thought: 'He is an old
madman. Who knows? Perhaps he is a genius.'--It was no doubt from him
that the grandnephew had his mania for music. What music could he hear
in the little town?... But bad music can inspire a love as pure as good
music.
"The unhappy part of it was that there seemed no possibility of
confessing to such a passion in such surroundings: and the boy had not
his great-uncle's cracked brains. He hid away to read the old lunatic's
lucubrations which formed the basis of his queer musical education. Vain
and fearful of his father and of public opinion, he would say nothing of
his ambitions until he had succeeded. He was crushed by his family, and
did as so many French people of the middle-class have to do when, out of
weakness or kindness, they dare not oppose the will of their relations:
they submit to all appearance, and live their true life in perpetual
secrecy. Instead of following his bent, he struggled on, against his
inclination, in the work they had marked out for him. He was as
incapable of succeeding in it as he was of coming to grief. Somehow or
other he managed to pass the necessary examinations. The main advantage
to him was that he escaped from the spying of his father and the
neighbors. The law crushed him: he was determined not to spend his life
in it. But while his father was alive he dared not declare his desire.
Perhaps it was not altogether distasteful to him to have to wait a
little before he took the decisive step. He was one of those men who all
their lives long dazzle themselves with what they will do later on, with
the things they could do. For the moment he did nothing. He lost his
bearings, and, intoxicated by his new life in Paris, gave himself up
with all his young peasant brutality to his two passions, woman and
music; he was crazed with the concerts he went to, no less than with
pleasure. He wasted years doing this without even turning to account the
means at hand of completing his musical education. His umbrageous pride,
his unfortunate independent and susceptible character kept him from
taking any course of lessons or asking anybody's advice.
"When his father died he sent Themis and Justinian packing. He began to
compose without having had the courage to acquire the necessary
technique. His inveterate habit of idle lounging and his taste for
pleasure had made him incapable of any serious effort. He felt keenly:
but his idea, and its form, would at once slip away: when all was told
he expressed nothing but the commonplace. The worst of all was that
there was really something great in this mediocrity. I read two of his
old compositions. Here and there were striking ideas, left in the rough
and then deformed. They were like fireflies over a bog.... And what a
strange mind he had! He tried to explain Beethoven's sonatas to me. He
saw them as absurd, childish stories. But such passion as there was in
him, such profound seriousness! Tears would come to his eyes as he
talked. He would die for the thing he loves. He is, touching and
grotesque. Just as I was on the point of laughing in his face, I wanted
to take him to my arms.... He is fundamentally honest, and has a healthy
contempt for the charlatanry of the Parisian groups and their sham
reputations,--(though at the same time he cannot help having the
bourgeois admiration for successful men)....
"He had a small legacy. In a few months it was all gone, and, finding
himself without resources, he had, like so many others of his kind, the
criminal honesty to marry a girl, also without resources, whom he had
seduced; she had a fine voice, and played music without any love for it.
He had to live on her voice and her mediocre talent until he had learned
how to play the 'cello. Naturally it was not long before they saw their
mediocrity, and could not bear each other. They had a little girl. The
father transferred his power of illusion to the child, and thought that
she would be what he had failed to be. The little girl took after her
mother: she was made to play the piano, though she had not a shadow of
talent; she adored her father, and applied herself to her work to please
him. For several years they plied the hotels in the watering-places,
picking up more insults than money. The child was ailing and overworked,
and died. The wife grew desperate, and became more shrewish every day.
So his life became one of endless misery, with no hope of escape,
brightened only by an ideal which he knew himself to be incapable of
attaining....
"And, my dear, when I saw that poor broken devil, whose life has been
nothing but a series of disappointments, I thought: 'That is what I
might have been.' There was much in common in our boyhood, and certain
adventures in our two lives are the same; I have even found a certain
kinship in some of our musical ideas: but his have stopped short. What
is it that has kept me from foundering as he has done? My will, no
doubt. But also the chances of life. And even taking my will, is that
due only to my merits? Is it not rather due to my descent, my friends,
and God who has aided me?... Such thoughts make a man humble. With such
thoughts he feels brotherly to all who love his art, and suffer for it.
"Prom lowest to highest the distance is not so great....
"On that I thought of what you said in your letter. You are right: an
artist has no right to hold aloof, so long as he can help others. So I
shall stay: I shall force myself to spend a few months in every year
here, or in Vienna, or Berlin, although it is hard for me to grow
accustomed to these cities again. But I must not abdicate. If I do not
succeed in being of any great service, as I have good reason to think I
shall not, perhaps my sojourn in these cities will be useful to me,
myself. And I shall console myself with the thought that it was your
wish. Besides ... (I will not lie)... I am beginning to find it pleasant.
Adieu, tyrant. You have triumphed. I am beginning not only to do what
you want me to do, but to love doing it.
"CHRISTOPHE."
* * * * *
So he stayed, partly to please her, but also because his artistic
curiosity was reawakened, and was drawn on to contemplation of the
renewal of art. Everything that he saw and did he presented for Grazia's
scrutiny in his letters. He knew that he was deceiving himself as to the
interest she would take in it all; he suspected her of a certain
indifference. But he was grateful to her for not letting him see it too
clearly.
She answered him regularly once a fortnight. Affectionate, composed
letters, like her gestures. When she told him of her life she never
discarded her tender, proud reserve. She knew the violence with which
her words went resounding through Christophe's heart. She preferred that
he should think her cold, rather than to send him flying to heights
whither she did not wish to follow him. But she was too womanly not to
know the secret of not discouraging her friend's love, and of, at once,
by gentle words, soothing the dismay and disappointment caused by her
indifferent words. Christophe soon divined her tactics, and by a
counter-trick tried in his turn to control his warmth and to write more
composedly, so that Grazia's replies should not be so studiously
restrained.
The longer he stayed in Paris the greater grew his interest in the new
activity stirring in that gigantic ant-heap. He was the more interested
in it all as in the young ants he found less sympathy with himself. He
was not deceived: his success was a Pyrrhic victory. After an absence of
ten years his return had created a sensation in Parisian society. But by
an ironic turn of events, such as is by no means rare, he found himself
patronized by his old enemies the snobs, and people of fashion: the
artists were either mutely hostile or distrustful of him. He won his way
by his name, which already belonged to the past, by his considerable
accomplishment, by his tone of passionate conviction, and the violence
of his sincerity. But if people were forced to reckon with him, to
admire or respect him, they did not understand or love him. He was
outside the art of the time. A monster, a living anachronism. He had
always been that. His ten years of solitude had accentuated the
contrast. During his absence in Europe, and especially in Paris, a
great work of reconstruction had been carried through. A new order was
springing to life. A generation was arising, desirous rather of action
than of understanding, hungry rather for happiness than for truth. It
wished to live, to grasp life, even at the cost of a lie. Lies of
pride--all manner of pride: pride of race, pride of caste, pride of
religion, pride of culture and art--all were food to this generation,
provided that they were armor of steel, provided that they could be
turned to sword and buckler, and that, sheltered by them, they could
march on to victory.
So to this generation it was distasteful to hear the great voice of
torment reminding it of the existence of sorrow and doubt, those
whirlwinds that had troubled the night that was hardly gone, and, in
spite of its denials, went on menacing the universe, the whirlwinds that
it wished to forget. These young people turned away in despite, and they
shouted at the top of their voices to deafen themselves. But the voice
was heard above them all. And they were angry.
Christophe, on the other hand, regarded them with a friendly eye. He
hailed the upward movement of the world towards happiness. The
deliberate narrowness of its impulse affected him not at all. When a man
wishes to go straight to his goal, he must look straight in front of
him. For his part, sitting at the turning of the world, he was rejoiced
to see behind him the tragic splendor of the night, and, in front of
him, the smile of young hope, the uncertain beauty of the fresh, fevered
dawn. And he was at the stationary point of the axis of the pendulum
while the clock was beginning to go again. Without following its onward
march, he listened joyfully to the beating of the rhythm of life. He
joined in the hope of those who denied his past agonies. What would be,
would be, as he had dreamed. Ten years before, in night and suffering,
Olivier--the little Gallic cock--had with his frail song announced the
distant day. The singer was no more; but his song was coming to pass. In
the garden of Prance the birds were singing. And, above all the singing,
clearer, louder, happier, Christophe suddenly heard the voice of Olivier
come to life again.
* * * * *
He was absently reading a book of poems at a bookstall. The name of the
author was unknown to him. Certain words struck him and he went on
reading. As he read on between the uncut pages he seemed to recognize a
friendly voice, the features of a friend.... He could not define his
feeling, nor could he bring himself to put the book down, and so he
bought it. When he reached his room he resumed his reading. At once the
old obsession descended on him. The impetuous rhythm of the poem evoked,
with a visionary precision, the universe and age-old souls--the gigantic
trees of which we are all the leaves and the fruit--the nations. From
the pages there arose the superhuman figure of the Mother--she who was
before us, she who will be after us. She who reigns, like the Byzantine
Madonnas, lofty as the mountains, at whose feet kneel and pray ant-like
human beings. The poet was hymning the homeric struggle of the great
goddesses, whose lances had clashed together since the beginning of the
ages: the eternal Iliad which is to that of Troy what the Alps are to
the little hills of Greece.
Such an epic of warlike pride and action was far removed from the ideas
of a European soul like Christophe's. And yet, in gleams, in the vision
of the French soul--the graceful virgin, who bears the Aegis, Athena,
with blue eyes shining through the darkness, the goddess of work, the
incomparable artist, sovereign reason, whose glittering lance hurls down
the tumultuously shouting barbarians--Christophe perceived an
expression, a smile that he knew and had loved. But just as he was on
the point of fixing it the vision died away. And while he was
exasperated by this vain pursuit, lo! as he turned a page, he came on a
story which Olivier had told him a few days before his death....
He was struck dumb. He ran to the publishers, and asked for the poet's
address. It was refused, as is the custom. He lost his temper. In vain.
Finally he remembered that he could find what he wanted in a year-book.
He did find it, and went at once to the author's house. When he wanted
anything he found it impossible to wait.
It was in the Batignolles district on the top floor. There were several
doors opening on to a common landing. Christophe knocked at the door
which had been pointed out to him. The next door opened. A young woman,
not at all pretty, very dark, with low-growing hair and a sallow
complexion--a shriveled face with very sharp eyes--asked what he wanted.
She looked suspicious. Christophe told her why he had come, and, in
answer to her next question, gave his name. She came out of her room and
opened the other door with a key which she had in her pocket. But she
did not let Christophe enter immediately. She told him to wait in the
corridor, and went in alone, shutting the door in his face. At last
Christophe reached the well-guarded sanctum. He crossed a half-empty
room which served as a dining-room and contained only a few shabby
pieces of furniture, while near the curtainless window several birds
were twittering in an aviary. In the next room, on a threadbare divan,
lay a man. He sat up to welcome Christophe. At once Christophe
recognized the emaciated face, lit up by the soul, the lovely velvety
black eyes burning with a feverish flame, the long, intelligent hands,
the misshapen body, the shrill, husky voice.... Emmanuel! The little
cripple boy who had been the innocent cause.... And Emmanuel, suddenly
rising to his feet, had also recognized Christophe.
They stood for a moment without speaking. Both of them saw Olivier....
They could not bring themselves to shake hands. Emmanuel had stepped
backward. After ten long years, an unconfessed rancor, the old jealousy
that he had had of Christophe, leaped forth from the obscure depths of
instinct. He stood still, defiant and hostile.--But when he saw
Christophe's emotion, when on his lips he read the name that was in
their thoughts: "Olivier"--it was stronger than he: he flung himself
into the arms held out towards him.
Emmanuel asked:
"I knew you were in Paris. But how did you find me?"
Christophe said: "I read your last book: through it I heard _his_
voice."
"Yes," said Emmanuel. "You recognized it? I owe everything that I am now
to him."
(He avoided pronouncing the name.)
After a moment he went on gloomily:
"He loved you more than me."
Christophe smiled:
"If a man loves truly there is neither more nor less: he gives himself
to all those whom he loves."
Emmanuel looked at Christophe: the tragic seriousness of his stubborn
eyes was suddenly lit up with a profound sweetness. He took Christophe's
hand and made him sit on the divan by his side.
Each told the story of his life. From fourteen to twenty-five Emmanuel
had practised many trades: printer, upholsterer, pedlar, bookseller's
assistant, lawyer's clerk, secretary to a politician, journalist.... In
all of them he had found the means of learning feverishly, here and
there finding the support of good people who were struck by the little
man's energy, more often falling into the hands of people who exploited
his poverty and his gifts, turning his worst experiences to profit, and
succeeding in fighting his way through without too much bitterness,
leaving behind him only the remains of his feeble health. His singular
aptitude for the dead languages (not so rare as one is inclined to
believe in a race imbued with humanistic traditions) gained him the
interest and support of an old Hellenizing priest. These studies, which
he had no time to push very far, served him as mental discipline and a
school of style. This man, who had risen from the dregs of the people,
whose whole education had been won by his own efforts, haphazard, so
that there were great gaps in it, had acquired a gift of verbal
expression, a mastery of thought over form, such as ten years of a
university education cannot give to the young bourgeois. He attributed
it all to Olivier. And yet others had helped him more effectively. But
from Olivier came the spark which in the night of this man's soul had
lighted the eternal flame. The rest had but poured oil into the lamp.
He said:
"I only began to understand him from the moment when he passed away. But
everything he ever said had become a part of me. His light never left
me."
He spoke of his work and the task which he declared had been left to him
by Olivier; the awakening of the French, the kindling of that torch of
heroic idealism of which Olivier had been the herald: he wished to make
himself the resounding voice which should hover above the battlefield
and declare the approaching victory: he sang the epic of the new-birth
of his race.
His poems were the product of that strange race that, through the ages,
has so strongly preserved its old Celtic aroma, while it has ever taken
a bizarre pride in clothing its ideas with the cast-off clothes and laws
of the Roman conqueror. There were to be found in it absolutely pure the
Gallic audacity, the spirit of heroic reason, of irony, the mixture of
braggadocio and crazy bravura, which set out to pluck the beards of the
Roman senators, and pillaged the temple of Delphi, and laughingly hurled
its javelins at the sky. But this little Parisian dwarf had had to shape
his passions, as his periwigged grandfathers had done, and as no doubt
his great-grandnephews would do, in the bodies of the heroes and gods of
Greece, two thousand years dead. It is a curious instinct in these
people which accords well with their need of the absolute: as they
impose their ideas on the remains of the ages, they seem to themselves
to be imposing them on the ages. The constraint of his classic form only
gave Emmanuel's passions a more violent impulse. Olivier's calm
confidence in the destinies of France had been transformed in his little
protégé into a burning faith, hungering for action and sure of triumph.
He willed it, he said it, he clamored for it. It was by his exalted
faith and his optimism that he had uplifted the souls of the French
public. His book had been as effective as a battle. He had made a breach
in the ranks of skepticism and fear. The whole younger generation had
thronged to follow him towards the new destiny....
He grew excited as he talked: his eyes burned, his pale face glowed pink
in patches, and his voice rose to a scream. Christophe could not help
noticing the contrast between the devouring fire and the wretched body
that was its pyre. He was only half-conscious of the irony of this
stroke of fate. The singer of energy, the poet who hymned the generation
of intrepid sport, of action, war, could hardly walk without losing his
breath, was extremely temperate, lived on a strict diet, drank water,
could not smoke, lived without women, bore every passion in his body,
and was reduced by his health to asceticism.