Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 31

The world's misery lies in this, that a man hardly ever has a companion.

Women perhaps, and chance friends.h.i.+ps. We are reckless in our use of the lovely word, friend. In reality we hardly have a single friend all through our lives. Rare, very rare, are those men who have real friends.

But the happiness of it is so great that it is impossible to live when they are gone. The friend filled the life of his friend, unbeknown to him, unmarked. The friend goes: and life is empty. Not only the beloved is lost, but every reason for loving, every reason for having loved. Why had he lived? Why had either lived?

The blow of Olivier's death was the more terrible to Christophe in that it fell just at a time when his whole nature was in a state of upheaval.

There are in life certain ages when there takes place a silently working organic change in a man: then body and soul are more susceptible to attack from without; the mind is weakened, its power is sapped by a vague sadness, a feeling of satiety, a sort of detachment from what it is doing, an incapacity for seeing any other course of action. At such periods of their lives when these crises occur, the majority of men are bound by domestic ties, forming a safeguard for them, which, it is true, deprives them of the freedom of mind necessary for self-judgment, for discovering where they stand, and for beginning to build up a healthy new life. For them so many sorrows, so much bitterness and disgust remain concealed!... Onward! Onward! A man must ever be pressing on....

The common round, anxiety and care for the family for which he is responsible, keep a man like a jaded horse, sleeping between the shafts, and trotting on and on.--But a free man has nothing to support him in his hours of negation, nothing to force him to go on. He goes on as a matter of habit: he knows not whither he is going. His powers are scattered, his consciousness is obscured. It is an awful thing for him if, just at the moment when he is most asleep, there comes a thunderclap to break in upon his somnambulism! Then he comes very nigh to destruction.

A few letters from Paris, which at last reached him, plucked Christophe for a moment out of his despairing apathy. They were from Cecile and Madame Arnaud. They brought him messages of comfort. Cold comfort.

Futile condolence. Those who talk about suffering know it not. The letters only brought him an echo of the voice that was gone.... He had not the heart to reply: and the letters ceased. In his despondency he tried to blot out his tracks. To disappear.... Suffering is unjust: all those who had loved him dropped out of his existence. Only one creature still existed: the man who was dead. For many weeks he strove to bring him to life again: he used to talk to him, write to him:

"My dear, I had no letter from you to-day. Where are you? Come back, come back, speak to me, write to me!..."

But at night, hard though he tried, he could never succeed in seeing him in his dreams. We rarely dream of those we have lost, while their loss is still a pain. They come back to us later on when we are beginning to forget.

However, the outside world began gradually to penetrate to the sepulcher of Christophe's soul. At first he became dimly conscious of the different noises in the house and to take an unwitting interest in them.

He marked the time of day when the front door opened and shut, and how often during the day, and the different ways in which it was opened for the various visitors. He knew Braun's step: he used to visualize the doctor coming back from his rounds, stopping in the hall, hanging up his hat and cloak, always with the same meticulous fussy way. And when the accustomed noises came up to him out of the order in which he had come to look for them, he could not help trying to discover the reason for the change. At meals he began mechanically to listen to the conversation. He saw that Braun almost always talked single-handed. His wife used only to give him a curt reply. Braun was never put out by the want of anybody to talk to: he used to chat pleasantly and verbosely about the houses he had visited and the gossip he had picked up. At last, one day, Christophe looked at Braun while he was speaking: Braun was delighted, and laid himself out to keep him interested.

Christophe tried to pick up the threads of life again.... It was utterly exhausting! He felt old, as old as the world!... In the morning when he got up and saw himself in the mirror he was disgusted with his body, his gestures, his idiotic figure. Get up, dress, to what end?... He tried desperately to work: it made him sick. What was the good of creation, when everything ends in nothing? Music had become impossible for Mm.

Art--(and everything else)--can only be rightly judged in unhappiness.

Unhappiness is the touchstone. Only then do we know those who can stride across the ages, those who are stronger than death. Very few bear the test. In unhappiness we are struck by the mediocrity of certain souls upon whom we had counted--(and of the artists we had loved, who had been like friends to our lives).--Who survives? How hollow does the beauty of the world ring under the touch of sorrow!

But sorrow grows weary, the force goes from its grip. Christophe's nerves were relaxed. He slept, slept unceasingly. It seemed that he would never succeed in satisfying his hunger for sleep.

At last one night he slept so profoundly that he did not wake up until well on into the afternoon of the next day. The house was empty. Braun and his wife had gone out. The window was open, and the smiling air was quivering with light. Christophe felt that a crus.h.i.+ng weight had been lifted from him. He got up and went down into the garden. It was a narrow rectangle, inclosed within high walls, like those of a convent.

There were gravel paths between gra.s.s-plots and humble flowers; and an arbor of grape-vines and climbing roses. A tiny fountain trickled from a grotto built of stones: an acacia against the wall hung its sweet-scented branches over the next garden. Above stood the old tower of the church, of red sandstone. It was four o'clock in the evening. The garden was already in shadow. The sun was still s.h.i.+ning on the top of the tree and the red belfry. Christophe sat in the arbor, with his back to the wall, and his head thrown back, looking at the limpid sky through the interlacing tendrils of the vine and the roses. It was like waking from a nightmare. Everywhere was stillness and silence. Above his head nodded a cl.u.s.ter of roses languorously. Suddenly the most lovely rose of all shed its petals and died: the snow of the rose-leaves was scattered on the air. It was like the pa.s.sing of a lovely innocent life. So simply!... In Christophe's mind it took on a significance of a rending sweetness. He choked: he hid his face in his hands, and sobbed....

The bells in the church tower rang out. From one church to another called answering voices.... Christophe lost all consciousness of the pa.s.sage of time. When he raised his head, the bells were silent and the sun had disappeared. Christophe was comforted by his tears: they had washed away the stains from his mind. Within himself he heard a little stream of music well forth and he saw the little crescent moon glide into the evening sky. He was called to himself by the sound of footsteps entering the house. He went up to his room, locked the door, and let the fountain of music gush forth. Braun summoned him to dinner, knocked at the door, and tried to open it: Christophe made no reply. Anxiously Braun looked through the keyhole and was rea.s.sured when he saw Christophe lying half over the table surrounded with paper which he was blackening with ink.

A few hours later, worn out, Christophe went downstairs and found the doctor reading, impatiently waiting for him in the drawing-room. He embraced the little man, asked him to forgive him for his strange conduct since his arrival, and, without waiting to be asked, he began to tell Braun about the dramatic events of the past weeks. It was the only time he ever talked to him about it: he was never sure that Braun had understood him, for he talked disconnectedly, and it was very late, and, in spite of his eager interest, Braun was nearly dead with sleep. At last--(the clock struck two)--Christophe saw it and they said good-night.

From that time on Christophe's existence was reconst.i.tuted. He did not maintain his condition of transitory excitement: he came back to his sorrow, but it was normal sorrow which did not interfere with his life.

He could not help returning to life! Though he had just lost his dearest friend in the world, though his grief had undermined him and Death had been his most intimate companion, there was in him such an abundant, such a tyrannical force of life, that it burst forth even in his elegies, s.h.i.+ning forth from his eyes, his lips, his gestures. But a gnawing canker had crept into the heart of his force. Christophe had fits of despair, transports rather. He would be quite calm, trying to read, or walking: suddenly he would see Olivier's smile, his tired, gentle face.... It would tug at his heart.... He would falter, lay his hand on his breast, and moan. One day he was at the piano playing a pa.s.sage from Beethoven with his old zest.... Suddenly he stopped, flung himself on the ground, buried his face in the cus.h.i.+ons of a chair, and cried:

"My boy...."

Worst of all was the sensation of having "already lived" that was constantly with him. He was continually coming across familiar gestures, familiar words, the perpetual recurrence of the same experiences. He knew everything, had foreseen everything. One face would remind him of a face he had known and the lips would say--(as he was quite sure they would)--exactly the same things as he had heard from the original: beings similar to each other would pa.s.s through similar phases, knock up against the same obstacles, suffer from them in exactly the same way. If it is true that "nothing so much brings weariness of life as the new beginning of love," how much more then the new beginning of everything!

It was elusive and delusive.--Christophe tried not to think of it, since it was necessary to do so, if he were to live, and since he wished to live. It is the saddest hypocrisy, such rejection of self-knowledge, in shame or piety, it is the invincible imperative need of living hiding away from itself! Knowing that no consolation is possible, a man invents consolations. Being convinced that life has no reason, he forges reasons for living. He persuades himself that he must live, even when no one outside himself is concerned. If need be he will go so far as to pretend that the dead man encourages him to live. And he knows that he is putting into the dead man's mouth the words that he wishes him to say. O misery!...

Christophe set out on the road once more: his step seemed to have regained its old a.s.surance: the gates of his heart were closed upon his sorrow: he never spoke of it to others: he avoided being left alone with it himself: outwardly he seemed calm.

"_Real sorrows_," says Balzac, "_are apparently at peace in the deep bed that they have made for themselves, where they seem to sleep, though all the while they never cease to fret and eat away the soul_."

Any one knowing Christophe and watching him closely, seeing him coming and going, talking, composing, even laughing--(he could laugh now!)--would have felt that for all his vigor and the radiance of life in his eyes, something had been destroyed in him, in the inmost depths of his life.

As soon as he had regained his hold on life he had to look about him for a means of living. There could be no question of his leaving the town.

Switzerland was the safest shelter for him: and where else could he have found more devoted hospitality?--But his pride could not suffer the idea of his being any further a burden upon his friend. In spite of Braun's protestations, and his refusal to accept any payment, he could not rest until he had found enough pupils to permit of his paying his hosts for his board and lodging. It was not an easy matter. The story of his revolutionary escapade had been widely circulated: and the worthy families of the place were reluctant to admit a man who was regarded as dangerous, or at any rate extraordinary, and, in consequence, not quite "respectable," to their midst. However, his fame as a musician and Braun's good offices gained him access to four or five of the less timorous or more curious families, who were perhaps artistically sn.o.bbish enough to desire to gain particularity. They were none the less careful to keep an eye on him, and to maintain a respectable distance between master and pupils.

The Braun household fell into a methodically ordered existence. In the morning each member of it went about his business: the doctor on his rounds, Christophe to his pupils, Madame Braun to the market and about her charitable works. Christophe used to return about one, a little before Braun, who would not allow them to wait for him; and he used to sit down to dinner alone with the wife. He did not like that at all: for she was not sympathetic to him, and he could never find anything to say to her. She took no trouble to remove his impression, though it was impossible for her not to be aware of it; she never bothered to put herself out in dress or in mind to please him: she never spoke to Christophe first: her notable lack of charm in movement and dress, her awkwardness, her coldness, would have repelled any man who was as sensitive as Christophe to the charm of women. When he remembered the sparkling elegance of the Parisian women, he could not help thinking, as he looked at Anna:

"How ugly she is!"

Yet that was unjust: and he was not slow to notice the beauty of her hair, her hands, her mouth, her eyes,--on the rare occasions when he chanced to meet her gaze, which she always averted at once. But his opinion was never modified. As a matter of politeness he forced himself to speak to her: he labored to find subjects of conversation: she never gave him the smallest a.s.sistance. Several times he tried to ask her about the town, her husband, herself: he could get nothing out of her.

She would make the most trivial answers: she would make an effort to smile: but the effort was painfully evident; her smile was forced, her voice was hollow: she drawled and dragged every word: her every sentence was followed by a painful silence. At last Christophe only spoke to her as little as possible; and she was grateful to him for it. It was a great relief to both of them when the doctor came in. He was always in a good humor, talkative, busy, vulgar, worthy. He ate, drank, talked, laughed, plentifully. Anna used to talk to him a little: but they hardly ever touched on anything but the food in front of them or the price of things. Sometimes Braun would jokingly tease her about her pious works and the minister's sermons. Then she would stiffen herself, and relapse into an offended silence until the end of the meal. More often the doctor would talk about his patients: he would delight in describing repulsive cases, with a pleasant elaboration of detail which used to exasperate Christophe. Then he would throw his napkin on the table and get up, making faces of disgust which simply delighted the teller. Braun would stop at once, and soothe his friend and laugh. At the next meal he would begin again. His hospital pleasantries seemed to have the power to enliven the impa.s.sive Anna. She would break her silence with a sudden nervous laugh, which was something animal in quality. Perhaps she felt no less disgust than Christophe at the things that made her laugh.

In the afternoon Christophe had very few pupils. Then, as a rule, he would stay at home with Anna, while the doctor went out. They never saw each other. They used to go about their separate business. At first Braun had begged Christophe to give his wife a few lessons on the piano: she was, he said, an excellent musician. Christophe asked Anna to play him something. She did not need to be pressed, although she disliked doing it: but she did it with her usual ungraciousness: she played mechanically, with an incredible lack of sensibility: each note was like another: there was no sort of rhythm or expression: when she had to turn the page she stopped short in the middle of a bar, made no haste about it, and went on with the next note. Christophe was so exasperated by it that he was hard put to it to keep himself from making an insulting remark: he could not help going out of the room before she had finished.

She was not put out, but went on imperturbably to the very last note, and seemed to be neither hurt nor indignant at his rudeness: she hardly seemed to have noticed it. But the matter of music was never again mentioned between them. Sometimes in the afternoons when Christophe was out and returned unexpectedly, he would find Anna practising the piano, with icy, dull tenacity, going over and over one pa.s.sage fifty times, and never by any chance showing the least animation. She never played when she knew that Christophe was at home. She devoted all the time that was not consecrated to her religious duties to her household work. She used to sew, and mend, and darn, and look after the servant: she had a mania for tidiness and cleanliness. Her husband thought her a fine woman, a little odd--"like all women," he used to say--but "like all women," devoted. On that last point Christophe made certain reservations _in petto_: such psychology seemed to him too simple; but he told himself that, after all, it was Braun's affair; and he gave no further thought to the matter.

They used to sit together after dinner in the evening. Braun and Christophe would talk. Anna would sit working. On Braun's entreaty, Christophe had consented to play the piano sometimes: and he would occasionally play on to a very late hour in the big gloomy room looking out on to the garden. Braun would go into ecstasies.... Who is there that does not know the type that has a pa.s.sionate love for things they do not understand, or understand all wrong!--(which is why they love them!)--Christophe did not mind: he had met so many idiots in the course of his life! But when Braun gave vent to certain mawkish expressions of enthusiasm, he would stop playing, and go up to his room without a word.

Braun grasped the truth at last, and put a stopper on his reflections.

Besides, his love for music was quickly sated: he could never listen with any attention for more than a quarter of an hour on end: he would pick up his paper, or doze off, and leave Christophe in peace. Anna would sit back in her chair and say nothing: she would have her work in her lap and seem to be working: but her eyes were always staring and her hands never moved. Sometimes she would go out without a sound in the middle of a piece, and be seen no more.

So the days pa.s.sed. Christophe regained his strength. Braun's heavy but kindly attentions, the tranquillity of the household, the restful regularity of such a domestic life, the extremely nouris.h.i.+ng German food, restored him to his old robustness. His physical health was repaired: but his moral machinery was still out of gear. His new vigor only served to accentuate the disorder of his mind, which could not recover its balance, like a badly ballasted s.h.i.+p which will turn turtle on the smallest shock.

He was profoundly lonely. He could have no intellectual intimacy with Braun. His relations with Anna were reduced, with a few exceptions, to saying good-morning and good-night. His dealings with his pupils were rather hostile than otherwise: for he hardly hid from them his opinion that the best thing for them to do was to give up music altogether. He knew n.o.body. It was not only his fault, though he had hidden himself away since his loss. People held aloof from him.

He was living in an old town, full of intelligence and vitality, but also full of patrician pride, self-contained, and self-satisfied. There was a bourgeois aristocracy with a taste for work and the higher culture, but narrow and pietistic, who were calmly convinced of their own superiority and the superiority of their city, and quite content to live in family isolation. There were enormous families with vast ramifications. Each family had its day for a general gathering of the clan. They were hardly at all open to the outside world. All these great houses, with fortunes generations old, felt no need of showing their wealth. They knew each other, and that was enough: the opinion of others was a thing of no consequence. There were millionaires dressed like humble shopkeepers, talking their raucous dialect with its pungent expressions, going conscientiously to their offices, every day of their lives, even at an age when the most industrious of men will grant themselves the right to rest. Their wives prided themselves on their domestic skill. No dowry was given to the daughters. Rich men let their sons in their turn go through the same hard apprentices.h.i.+p that they themselves had served. They practised strict economy in their daily lives. But they made a n.o.ble use of their fortune in collecting works of art, picture galleries, and in social work: they were forever giving enormous sums, nearly always anonymously, to found charities and to enrich the museums. They were a mixture of greatness and absurdity, both of another age. This little world, for which the rest of the world seemed not to exist--(although its members knew it thoroughly through their business, and their distant relations.h.i.+ps, and the long and extended voyages which they forced their sons to take,)--this little world, for which fame and celebrity in another land only were esteemed from the moment when they were welcomed and recognized by itself,--practised the severest discipline upon itself. Every member of it kept a watch upon himself and upon the rest. The result of all this was a collective conscience which masked all individual differences (more marked than elsewhere among the robust personalities of the place) under the veil of religious and moral uniformity. Everybody practised it, everybody believed in it. Not a single soul doubted it or would admit of doubt. It were impossible to know what took place in the depths of souls which were the more hermetically sealed against prying eyes inasmuch as they knew that they were surrounded by a narrow scrutiny, and that every man took upon himself the right to examine into the conscience of other men. It was said that even those who had left the country and thought themselves emanc.i.p.ated--as soon as they set foot in it again were dominated by the traditions, the habits, the atmosphere of the town: even the most skeptical were at once forced to practise and to believe. Not to believe would have seemed to them an offense against Nature. Not to believe was the mark of an inferior caste, a sign of bad breeding. It was never admitted that a man of their world could possibly be absolved of his religious duties. If a man did not practise their religion, he was at once uncla.s.sed, and all doors were closed to him.

Even the weight of such discipline was apparently not enough for them.

The men of this little world were not closely bound enough within their caste. Within the great _Verein_ they had formed a number of smaller _Verein_ by way of binding their fetters fast. There were several hundred of them: and they were increasing every year. There were _Verein_ for everything: for philanthropy, charitable work, commercial work, work that was both charitable and commercial, for the arts, for the sciences, for singing, music, spiritual exercises, physical exercises, merely to provide excuses for meeting and taking their amus.e.m.e.nt collectively: there were _Verein_ for the various districts and the various corporations: there were _Verein_ for men of the same position in the world, the same degree of wealth, men of the same social weight, who wore the same handle to their names. It was even said that an attempt had been made to form a _Verein_ for the _Vereinlosen_ (those who did not belong to any _Verein_): though not twelve such people had been forthcoming.

Within this triple bandage of town, caste, and union, the soul was cramped and bound. Character was suppressed by a secret constraint. The majority were brought up to it from childhood--had been for centuries: and they found it good: they would have thought it improper and unhealthy to go without these bandages. Their satisfied smiles gave no indication of the discomfort they might be feeling. But Nature always took her revenge. Every now and then there would arise some individual in revolt, some vigorous artist or unbridled thinker who would brutally break his bonds and set the city fathers by the ears. They were so clever that, if the rebel had not been stifled in the embryo, and became the stronger, they never troubled to fight him--(a fight might have produced all sorts of scandalous outbreaks):--they bought him up. If he were a painter, they sent him to the museum: if he were a thinker, to the libraries. It was quite useless for him to roar out all sorts of outrageous things: they pretended not to hear him. It was in vain for him to protest his independence: they incorporated him as one of themselves. So the effect of the poison was neutralized: it was the homeopathic treatment.--But such cases were rare, most of the rebellions never reached the light of day. Their peaceful houses concealed unsuspected tragedies. The master of a great house would go quietly and throw himself into the river, and leave no explanation. Sometimes a man would go into retirement for six months, sometimes he would send his wife to an asylum to restore her mind. Such things were spoken of quite openly, as though they were quite natural, with that placidity which is one of the great features of the town, the inhabitants of which are able to maintain it in the face of suffering and death.

These solid burgesses, who were hard upon themselves because they knew their own worth, were much less hard on others because they esteemed them less. They were quite liberal towards the foreigners dwelling in the town like Christophe, German professors, and political refugees, because they had no sort of feeling about them. And, besides, they loved intelligence. Advanced ideas had no terrors for them: they knew that their sons were impervious to their influence. They were coldly cordial to their guests, and kept them at a distance.

Christophe did not need to have these things underlined. He was in a state of raw sensitiveness which left his feelings absolutely unprotected: he was only too ready to see egoism and indifference everywhere, and to withdraw into himself.

To make matters worse, Braun's patients, and the very limited circle to which his wife belonged, all moved in a little Protestant society which was particularly strict. Christophe was ill-regarded by them both as a Papist by origin and a heretic in fact. For his part, he found many things which shocked him. Although he no longer believed, yet he bore the marks of his inherited Catholicism, which was more poetic than a matter of reason, more indulgent towards Nature, and never suffered the self-torment of trying to explain and understand what to love and what not to love: and also he had the habits of intellectual and moral freedom which he had unwittingly come by in Paris. It was inevitable that he should come into collision with the little pious groups of people in whom all the defects of the Calvinistic spirit were marked and exaggerated: a rationalistic religion, which clipped the wings of faith and left it dangling over the abyss: for it started with an _a priori_ reason which was open to discussion like all mysticism: it was no longer poetry, nor was it prose, it was poetry translated into prose. They had pride of intellect, an absolute, dangerous faith in reason--in _their_ reason. They could not believe in G.o.d or in immortality: but they believed in reason as a Catholic believes in the Pope, or as a fetish-wors.h.i.+per believes in his idol. They never even dreamed of discussing the matter. In vain did life contradict it; they would rather have denied life. They had no psychology, no understanding of Nature, or of the hidden forces, the roots of humanity, the "Spirit of the Earth." They fas.h.i.+oned a scheme of life and nature that were childish, silly, arbitrary figments. Some of them were cultured and practical people who had seen and read much. But they never saw or read anything as it actually was: they always reduced it to an abstraction.

They were poor-blooded: they had high moral qualities: but they were not human enough: and that is the cardinal sin. Their purity of heart, which was often very real, n.o.ble, and naive, sometimes comic, unfortunately, in certain cases, became tragic: it made them hard in their dealings with others, and produced in them a tranquil inhumanity, self-confident and free from anger, which was quite appalling. How should they hesitate? Had they not truth, right, virtue, on their side? Did they not receive revelation direct from their hallowed reason? Reason is a hard sun: it gives light, but it blinds. In that withering light, without shade or mist, human beings grow pallid, the blood is sucked up from their hearts.

Now, if there was one thing in the world that was utterly meaningless to Christophe at that time it was reason. To his eyes its sun only lit up the walls of the abyss, and neither showed him the means of escape nor even enabled him to sound its depths.

As for the artistic world, Christophe had little opportunity and less desire to mix with it. The musicians were for the most part worthy conservatives of the neo-Schumann period and "Brahmins" of the type against which Christophe had formerly broken many a lance. There were two exceptions: Krebs, the organist, who kept a famous confectioner's shop, an honest man and a good musician, who would have been an even better one if, to adapt the quip of one of his fellow-countrymen, "he had not been seated on a Pegasus which he overfed with hay,"--and a young Jewish composer of an original talent, a man full of a vigorous and turbid sap, who had a business in the Swiss trade: wood carvings, chalets, and Berne bears. They were more independent than the others, no doubt because they did not make a trade of their art, and they would have been very glad to come in touch with Christophe: and at any other time Christophe would have been interested to know them: but at this period of his life, all artistic and human curiosity was blunted in him: he was more conscious of the division between himself and other men than of the bond of union.

His only friend, the confidant of his thoughts, was the river that ran through the city--the same mighty fatherly river that washed the walls of his native town up north. In the river Christophe could recover the memory of his childish dreams.... But in his sorrow they took on, like the Rhine itself, a darkling hue. In the dying day he would lean against the parapet of the embankment and look down at the rus.h.i.+ng river, the fused and fusing, heavy, opaque, and hurrying ma.s.s, which was always like a dream of the past, wherein nothing could be clearly seen but great moving veils, thousands of streams, currents, eddies twisting into form, then fading away: it was like the blurred procession of mental images in a fevered mind: forever taking shape, forever melting away.

Over this twilight dream there skimmed phantom ferry-boats, like coffins, with never a human form in them. Darker grew the night. The river became bronze. The lights upon its banks made its armor s.h.i.+ne with an inky blackness, casting dim reflections, the coppery reflections of the gas lamps, the moon-like reflections of the electric lights, the blood-red reflections of the candles in the windows of the houses. The river's murmur filled the darkness with its eternal muttering that was far more sad than the monotony of the sea....

For hours together Christophe would stand drinking in the song of death and weariness of life. Only with difficulty could he tear himself away: then he would climb up to the house again, up the steep alleys with their red steps, which were worn away in the middle: broken in soul and body he would cling to the iron hand-rail fastened to the walls, which gleamed under the light thrown down from the empty square on the hilltop in front of the church that was shrouded in darkness....

He could not understand why men went on living. When he remembered the struggles he had seen, he felt a bitter admiration for the undying faith of humanity. Ideas succeeded the ideas most directly opposed to them, reaction followed action:--democracy, aristocracy: socialism, individualism: romanticism, cla.s.sicism: progress, tradition:--and so on to the end of time. Each new generation, consumed in its own heat in less than ten years, believed steadfastly that it alone had reached the zenith, and hurled its predecessors down and stoned them: each new generation bestirred itself, and shouted, and took to itself the power and the glory, only to be hurled down and stoned in turn by its successors and so to disappear. Whose turn next?...

The composition of music was no longer a refuge for Christophe: it was intermittent, irregular, aimless. Write? For whom? For men? He was pa.s.sing through an acute phase of misanthropy. For himself? He was only too conscious of the vanity of art with its impotence to top the void of death. Only now and then the blind force that was in him would raise him on its mighty beating wing and then fall back, worn out by the effort.

He was like a storm cloud rumbling in the darkness. With Olivier gone, he had nothing left. He hurled himself against everything that had filled his life, against the feelings that he had thought to share with others, against the thoughts which he had in imagination had in common with the rest of humanity. It seemed to him now that he had been the plaything of an illusion: the whole life of society was based upon a colossal misunderstanding originating in speech. We imagine that one man's thought can communicate with the thought of other men. In reality the connection lies only in words. We say and hear words: not one word has the same meaning in the mouths of two different men. Words outrun the reality of life. We speak of love and hatred. There is neither love nor hatred, friends nor enemies, no faith, no pa.s.sion, neither good nor evil. There are only cold reflections of the lights falling from vanished suns, stars that have been dead for ages.... Friends? There is no lack of people to claim that name. But what a stale reality is represented by their friends.h.i.+p! What is friends.h.i.+p in the sense of the everyday world? How many minutes of his life does he who thinks himself a friend give to the pale memory of his friend? What would he sacrifice to him, not of the things that are necessary, but of his superfluity, his leisure, his waste time? What had Christophe sacrificed for Olivier?--(For he made no exception in his own case: he excepted only Olivier from the state of nothingness into which he cast all human beings).--Art is no more true than love. What room does it really occupy in life? With what sort of love do they love it, they who declare their devotion to it?... The poverty of human feeling is inconceivable.

Outside the instincts of species, the cosmic force which is the lever of the world, nothing exists save a scattered dust of emotion. The majority of men have not vitality enough to give themselves wholly to any pa.s.sion. They spare themselves and save their force with cowardly prudence. They are a little of everything and nothing absolutely. A man who gives himself without counting the cost, to everything that he does, everything that he suffers, everything that he loves, everything that he hates, is a prodigy, the greatest that is granted to us here on earth.

Pa.s.sion is like genius: a miracle, which is as much as to say that it does not exist.