brotherly pity. He tried not to show it: but no doubt his eyes betrayed
his feeling. Emmanuel's pride, which ever kept an open wound in his
side, made him think he read commiseration in Christophe's eyes, and
that was more odious to him than hatred. The fire in him suddenly died
down. He stopped talking. Christophe tried in vain to win back his
confidence. His soul had closed up. Christophe saw that he was wounded.
The hostile silence dragged on. Christophe got up. Emmanuel took him to
the door without a word. His step declared his infirmity: he knew it: it
was a point of pride with him to appear indifferent: but he thought
Christophe was watching him, and his rancor grew.
Just as he was coldly shaking hands with his guest, and saying good-by,
an elegant young lady rang at the door. She was escorted by a
pretentious nincompoop whom Christophe recognized as a man he had seen
at theatrical first-nights, smiling, chattering, waving his hand,
kissing the hands of the ladies, and from his stall shedding smiles all
over the theater: not knowing his name, he had called him "the
buck."--The buck and his companion, on seeing Emmanuel, flung themselves
on the _"cher maître"_ with obsequious and familiar effusiveness.
As Christophe walked away he heard Emmanuel in his dry voice saying that
he was too busy to see any one. He admired the man's gift of being
disagreeable. He did not know Emmanuel's reasons for scowling at the
rich snobs who came to gratify him with their indiscreet visits; they
were prodigal of fine phrases and eulogy; but they no more thought of
helping him in his poverty than the famous friends of César Franck ever
dreamed of releasing him from the piano-lessons which he had to give up
to the last to make a living.
Christophe went several times again to see Emmanuel. He never succeeded
in restoring the intimacy of his first visit. Emmanuel showed no
pleasure in seeing him, and maintained a suspicious reserve. Every now
and then he would be carried away by the generous need of expansion of
his genius: a remark of Christophe's would shake him to the very roots
of his being: then he would abandon himself to a fit of enthusiastic
confidence: and over his secret soul his idealism would cast the glowing
light of a flashing poetry. Then, suddenly, he would fall back: he would
shrivel up into sulky silence: and Christophe would find him hostile
once more.
They were divided by too many things. Not the least was the difference
in their ages. Christophe was on the way to full consciousness and
mastery of himself. Emmanuel was still in process of formation and more
chaotic than Christophe had ever been. The originality of his face came
from the contradictory elements that were at grips in him; a mighty
stoicism, struggling to tame a nature consumed by atavistic
desires,--(he was the son of a drunkard and a prostitute);--a frantic
imagination which tugged against the bit of a will of steel; an immense
egoism, and an immense love for others, and of the two it were
impossible to tell which would be the conqueror; an heroic idealism and
a morbid thirst for glory which made him impatient of other
superiorities. If Olivier's ideas, and his independence, and his
disinterestedness were in him, if Emmanuel was superior to his master by
his plebeian vitality which knew not disgust in the face of action, by
his poetic genius and his thicker skin, which protected him from disgust
of all kinds, yet he was very far from reaching the serenity of
Antoinette's brother: his character was vain and uneasy: and the
restlessness of other people only augmented his own.
He lived in a stormy alliance with a young woman who was his neighbor,
the woman who had received Christophe on his first visit. She loved
Emmanuel, and was jealously busy over him, looked after his house,
copied out his work, and wrote to his dictation. She was not beautiful,
and she bore the burden of a passionate soul. She came of the people,
and for a long time worked in a bookbinding workshop, then in the
post-office. Her childhood had been spent in the stifling atmosphere
common to all the poor workpeople of Paris: souls and bodies all huddled
together, harassing work, perpetual promiscuity, no air, no silence,
never any solitude, no opportunity for recuperation or of defending the
inner sanctuary of the heart. She was proud in spirit, with her mind
ever seething with a religious fervor for a confused ideal of truth. Her
eyes were worn out with copying out at night, sometimes without a lamp,
by moonlight, _Les Misérables_ of Hugo. She had met Emmanuel at a
time when he was more unhappy than she, ill and without resources; and
she had devoted herself to him. This passion was the first, the only
living love of her life. So she attached herself to him with a hungry
tenacity. Her affection was a terrible trial to Emmanuel, who rather
submitted to than shared it. He was touched by her devotion: he knew
that she was his best friend, the only creature to whom he was
everything, who could not do without him. But this very feeling
overwhelmed him. He needed liberty and isolation; her eyes always
greedily beseeching a look obsessed him: he used to speak harshly to
her, and longed to say: "Go!" He was irritated by her ugliness and her
clumsy manners. Though he had seen but little of fashionable society,
and though he heartily despised it,--(for he suffered at appearing even
uglier and more ridiculous there),--he was sensitive to elegance, and
alive to the attraction of women who felt towards him (he had no doubt
of it) exactly as he felt towards his friend. He tried to show her an
affection which he did not possess or, at least, which was continually
obscured by gusts of involuntary hatred. He could not do it: he had a
great generous heart in his bosom, hungering to do good, and also a
demon of violence, capable of much evil. This inward struggle and his
consciousness of his inability to end it to his advantage plunged him
into a state of acute irritation, which he vented on Christophe.
Emmanuel could not help feeling a double antipathy towards Christophe;
firstly because of his old jealousy (one of those childish passions
which still subsist, though we may forget the cause of them): secondly,
because of his fierce nationalism. In France he had embodied all the
dreams of justice, pity, and human brotherhood conceived by the best men
of the preceding age. He did not set France against the rest of Europe
as an enemy whose fortune is swelled by the ruin of the other nations,
but placed her at their head, as the legitimate sovereign who reigns for
the good of all--the sword of the ideal, the guide of the human race.
Rather than see her commit an injustice he would have preferred to see
her dead. But he had no doubt of her. He was exclusively French in
culture and in heart, nourished wholly by the French tradition, the
profound reasons of which he found in his own instinct. Quite sincerely
he ignored foreign thought, for which he had a sort of disdainful
condescension,--and was exasperated if a foreigner did not accept his
lowly position.
Christophe saw all that, but, being older and better versed in life, he
did not worry about it. If such pride of race could not but be
injurious, Christophe was not touched by it: he could appreciate the
illusions of filial love, and never dreamed of criticising the
exaggerations of a sacred feeling. Besides, humanity is profited by the
vain belief of the nations in their mission. Of all the reasons at hand
for feeling himself estranged from Emmanuel only one hurt him:
Emmanuel's voice, which at times rose to a shrill, piercing scream.
Christophe's ears suffered cruelly. He could not help making a face when
it happened. He tried to prevent Emmanuel's seeing it. He endeavored to
hear the music and not the instrument. There was such a beauty of
heroism shining forth from the crippled poet when he evoked the
victories of the mind, the forerunners of other victories, the conquest
of the air, the "flying God" who should upraise the peoples, and, like
the star of Bethlehem, lead them in his train, in ecstasies, towards far
distant spaces or near revenge. The splendor of these visions of energy
did not prevent Christophe's seeing their danger, and foreknowing
whither this change and the growing clamor of the new Marseillaise would
lead. He thought, with a little irony, (with no regret for past or fear
of the future), that the song would find an echo that the singer could
not foresee, and that a day would come when men would sigh for the
vanished days of the Market-Place.--How free they were then! The golden
age of liberty! Never would its like be known again. The world was
moving on to the age of strength, of health, of virile action, and
perhaps of glory, but also of harsh authority and narrow order. We shall
have called it enough with our prayers, the age of iron, the classic
age! The great classic ages--Louis XIV. or Napoleon--seem now at a
distance the peaks of humanity. And perhaps the nation therein most
victoriously realized its ideal State. But go and ask the heroes of
those times what they thought of them! Your Nicolas Poussin went to live
and die in Rome; he was stifled in your midst. Your Pascal, your Racine,
said farewell to the world. And among the greatest, how many others
lived apart in disgrace, and oppressed! Even the soul of a man like
Molière hid much bitterness.--For your Napoleon, whom you so greatly
regret, your fathers do not seem to have had any doubt as to their
happiness, and the master himself was under no illusion; he knew that
when he disappeared the world would say: "Ouf!"... What a wilderness of
thought surrounds the _Imperator!_ Over the immensity of the sands,
the African sun....
Christophe did not say all that was in his mind. A few hints were enough
to set Emmanuel in a fury, and he did not try the experiment again. But
it was in vain that he kept his thoughts to himself: Emmanuel knew what
he was thinking. More than that, he was obscurely conscious that
Christophe saw farther than he. And he was only irritated by it. Young
people never forgive their elders for forcing them to see what they will
see in twenty years' time.
Christophe read his heart, and said to himself:
"He is right. Every man his own faith. A man must believe what he
believes. God keep me from disturbing his confidence in the future!"
But his mere presence upset Emmanuel. When two personalities are
together, however hard they try to efface themselves, one always crushes
the other, and the other always feels rancor and humiliation. Emmanuel's
pride was hurt by Christophe's superiority in experience and character.
And perhaps also he was keeping back the love which he felt growing in
himself for him.
He became more and more shy. He locked his door, and did not answer
letters.--Christophe had to give up seeing him.
* * * * *
During the first days of July Christophe reckoned up what he had gained
by his few months' stay in Paris: many new ideas, but few friends.
Brilliant and derisory successes, in which he saw his own image and the
image of his work weakened or caricatured in mediocre minds; and there
is but scant pleasure in that. And he failed to win the sympathy of
those by whom he would have loved to be understood; they had not
welcomed his advances; he could not throw in his lot with them, however
much he desired to share their hopes and to be their ally; it was as
though their uneasy vanity shunned his friendship and found more
satisfaction in having him for an enemy. In short, he had let the tide
of his own generation pass without passing with it, and the tide of the
next generation would have nothing to do with him. He was isolated, and
was not surprised, for all his life he had been accustomed to it. But
now he thought he had won the right, after this fresh attempt, to return
to his Swiss hermitage, until he had realized a project which for some
time past had been taking shape. As he grew older he was tormented with
the desire to return and settle down in his own country. He knew nobody
there, and would find even less intellectual kinship than in this
foreign city: but none the less it was his country: you do not ask those
of your blood to think your thoughts: between them and you there are a
thousand secret ties; the senses learned to read in the same book of sky
and earth, and the heart speaks the same language.
He gaily narrated his disappointments to Grazia, and told her of his
intention of returning to Switzerland: jokingly he asked her permission
to leave Paris, and assured her that he was going during the following
week. But at the end of the letter there was a postscript saying:
"I have changed my mind. My departure is postponed."
Christophe had entire confidence in Grazia: he gave into her hands the
secret of his inmost thoughts. And yet there was a room in his heart of
which he kept the key: it contained the memories which did not belong
only to himself, but to those whom he had loved. He kept back everything
concerning Olivier. His reserve was not deliberate. The words would not
come from his lips whenever he tried to talk to Grazia about Olivier.
She had never known him....
Now, on the morning when he was writing to his friend, there came a
knock on the door. He went to open it, cursing at being interrupted. A
boy of fourteen or fifteen asked for M. Krafft. Christophe gruffly bade
him come in. He was fair, with blue eyes, fine features, not very tall,
with a slender, erect figure. He stood in front of Christophe, rather
shyly, and said not a word. Quickly he pulled himself together, and
raised his limpid eyes, and looked at him with keen interest. Christophe
smiled as he scanned the boy's charming face, and the boy smiled too.
"Well?" said Christophe. "What do you want?"
"I came," said the boy....
(And once more he became confused, blushed, and was silent.)
"I can see that you have come," said Christophe, laughing. "But why have
you come? Look at me. Are you afraid of me?"
The boy smiled once more, shook his head, and said:
"No."
"Bravo! Then tell me who you are."
"I am...." said the boy.
He stopped once more. His eyes wandered curiously round the room, and
lighted on a photograph of Olivier on the mantelpiece.
"Come!" said Christophe. "Courage!"
The boy said:
"I am his son."
Christophe started: he got up from his chair, took hold of the boy's
arm, and drew him to him; he sank back into his chair and held him in a
close embrace: their faces almost touched; and he gazed and gazed at
him, saying:
"My boy.... My poor boy...."
Suddenly he took his face in his hands and kissed his brow, eyes,
cheeks, nose, hair. The boy was frightened and shocked by such a violent
demonstration, and broke away from him. Christophe let him go. He hid
his face in his hand, and leaned his brow against the wall, and sat so
for the space of a few moments. The boy had withdrawn to the other end
of the room. Christophe raised his head. His face was at rest: he looked
at the boy with an affectionate smile.
"I frightened you," he said. "Forgive me.... You see, I loved him."
The boy was still frightened, and said nothing.
"How like you are to him!" said Christophe.... "And yet I should not
have recognized you. What is it that has changed?..."
He asked:
"What is your name?"
"Georges."
"Oh! yes. I remember. Christophe Olivier Georges.... How old are you?"
"Fourteen."
"Fourteen! Is it so long ago?... It is as though it were yesterday--or
far back in the darkness of time.... How like you are to him! The same
features. It is the same, and yet another. The same colored eyes, but
not the same eyes. The same smile, the same lips, but not the same
voice. You are stronger. You hold yourself more erect: your face is
fuller, but you blush just as he used to do. Come, sit down, let us
talk. Who sent you to me?"
"No one."
"You came of your own accord? How do you know about me?"
"People have talked to me about you."
"Who?"
"My mother."
"Ah!" said Christophe. "Does she know that you came to see me?"
"No."
Christophe said nothing for a moment; then he asked:
"Where do you live?"
"Near the Parc Monçeau."
"You walked here? Yes? It is a long way. You must be tired."
"I am never tired."
"Good! Show me your arms."
(He felt them.)
"You are a strong boy.... What put it into your head to come and see
me?"
"My father loved you more than any one."
"Did she tell you so?"
(He corrected himself.)
"Did your mother tell you so?"
"Yes."
Christophe smiled pensively. He thought: "She too!... How they all loved
him! Why did they not let him see it?..."
He went on:
"Why did you wait so long before you came?"
"I wanted to come sooner. But I thought you would not want to see me."
"I!"
"I saw you several weeks ago at the Chevillard concerts: I was with my
mother, sitting a little away from you: I bowed to you: you looked
through me, and frowned, and took no notice."
"I looked at you?... My poor boy, how could you think that?... I did not
see you. My eyes are tired. That is why I frown.... You don't think me
so cruel as that?"
"I think you could be cruel too, if you wanted to be."
"Really?" said Christophe. "In that case, if you thought I did not want
to see you, how did you dare to come?"
"Because I wanted to see you."
"And if I had refused to see you?"
"I shouldn't have let you do that." He said this with a little decided
air, at once shy and provoking.
Christophe burst out laughing, and Georges laughed too.
"You would have sent me packing! Think of that! You rogue!... No,
decidedly, you are not like your father."
A shadow passed over the boy's mobile face.
"You think I am not like him? But you said, just now...? You don't think
he would have loved me? You don't love me?"
"What difference does it make to you whether I love you or not?"
"A great deal of difference."
"Because...?"
"Because I love you."
In a moment his eyes, his lips, all his features, took on a dozen
different expressions, like the shadows of the clouds on an April day
chasing over the fields before the spring winds. Christophe had the most
lovely joy in gazing at him and listening to him; it seemed to him that
all the cares of the past were washed away; his sorrowful experiences,
his trials, his sufferings and Olivier's sufferings, all were wiped out:
he was born again in this young shoot of Olivier's life.
They talked on. Georges knew nothing of Christophe's music until the
last few months, but since Christophe had been in Paris, he had never
missed a concert at which his work was played. He spoke of it with an
eager expression, his eyes shining and laughing, with the tears not far
behind: he was like a lover. He told Christophe that he adored music,
and that he wanted to be a composer. But after a question or two,
Christophe saw that the boy knew not even the elements of music. He
asked about his work. Young Jeannin was at the lycée; he said cheerfully
that he was not a good scholar.
"What are you best at? Literature or science?"
"Very much the same."
"What? What? Are you a dunce?"
The boy laughed frankly and said:
"I think so."
Then he added confidentially:
"But I know that I am not, all the same."
Christophe could not help laughing.
"Then why don't you work? Aren't you interested in anything?"
"No. I'm interested in everything."
"Well, then, why?"
"Everything is so interesting that there is no time...."
"No time? What the devil do you do?"
He made a vague gesture:
"Many things. I play music, and games, and I go to exhibitions. I
read...."
"You would do better to read your school-books."
"We never read anything interesting in school.... Besides, we travel.
Last month I went to England to see the Oxford and Cambridge match."
"That must help your work a great deal!"
"Bah! You learn much more that way than by staying at the lycée."
"And what does your mother say to that?"
"Mother is very reasonable. She does whatever I want."
"You bad boy!... You can thank your stars I am not your father...."
"You wouldn't have had a chance...."
It was impossible to resist his banter.
"Tell me, you traveler," said Christophe. "Do you know my country?"
"Yes."
"I bet you don't know a word of German."
"Yes, I do. I know it quite well."
"Let us see."
They began to talk German. The boy jabbered on quite ungrammatically
with the most droll coolness; he was very intelligent and wide awake,
and guessed more than he understood: often he guessed wrong; but he was
the first to laugh at his mistakes. He talked eagerly about his travels
and his reading. He had read a great deal, hastily, superficially,
skipping half the pages, and inventing what he had left unread, but he
was always urged on by a keen curiosity, forever seeking reasons for
enthusiasm. He jumped from one subject to another, and his face grew
animated as he talked of plays or books that had moved him. There was no
sort of order in his knowledge. It was impossible to tell how he could
read right through a tenth-rate book, and yet know nothing of the
greatest masterpieces.
"That is all very well," said Christophe. "But you will never do
anything if you do not work."
"Oh! I don't need to. We are rich."
"The devil! Then it is a very serious state of things. Do you want to be
a man who does nothing and is good for nothing?"
"No. I should like to do everything. It is stupid to shut yourself up
all your life in a profession."
"But it is the only means yet discovered of doing any good."
"So they say!"
"What do you mean? 'So they say!'... I say so. I've been working at my
profession for forty years, and I am just beginning to get a glimmer of
it."
"Forty years, to learn a profession! When can you begin to practise it?"
Christophe began to laugh.
"You little disputatious Frenchman!"
"I want to be a musician," said Georges.
"Well, it is not too early for you to begin. Shall I teach you?"
"Oh! I should be so glad!"
"Come to-morrow. I'll see what you are worth. If you are worth nothing,
I shall forbid you ever to lay hands on a piano. If you have a real
inclination for it, we'll try and make something of you.... But, I warn
you, I shall make you work."
"I will work," said Georges delightedly.
They said good-by until the morrow. As he was going, Georges remembered
that he had other engagements on the morrow, and also for the day after.
Yes, he was not free until the end of the week. They arranged day and
hour.
But when the day and hour came, Christophe waited in vain. He was
disappointed. He had been looking forward with childlike glee to seeing
Georges again. His unexpected visit had brightened his life. It had made
him so happy, and moved him so much that he had not slept the night
after it. With tender gratitude he thought of the young friend who had
sought him out for his friend's sake. His natural grace, his malicious
and ingenuous frankness had delighted him: he sank back into the mute
intoxication, the buzzing of happiness, which had filled his ears and
his heart during the first days of his friendship with Olivier. It was
allied now with a graver and almost religious feeling which, through the
living, saw the smile of the past.--He waited all the next day and the
day after. Nobody came. Not even a letter of excuse. Christophe was very
mournful, and cast about for excuses for the boy. He did not know where
to write to him, and he did not know his address. Had he had it he would
not have dared to write. When the heart of an older man is filled with
love for a young creature, he feels a certain modesty about letting him
see the need he has of him: he knows that the young man has not the same
need: they are not evenly matched: and nothing is so much dreaded as to
seem to be imposing oneself on a person who cares not a jot.
The silence dragged on. Although Christophe suffered under it, he forced
himself to take no step to hunt up the Jeannins. But every day he
expected the boy, who never came. He did not go to Switzerland, but
stayed through the summer in Paris. He thought himself absurd, but he
had no taste for traveling. Only when September came did he decide to
spend a few days at Fontainebleau.
About the end of October Georges Jeannin came and knocked at his door.
He excused himself calmly, without being in the least put out by his
long silence.
"I could not come," he said. "And then we went away to stay in
Brittany."
"You might have written to me," said Christophe.