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Jean Christophe: In Paris

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe: In Paris




"The revolution?" said she. "Oh, there'll be much water flowing under
bridges before that. I don't believe that stuff. Things will always be the
same."

"When shall we all be equal, then?"

"When we're dead, of course! That's the end of everybody."

He was surprised by her calm materialism. He dared not say to her:

"Isn't it a frightful thing, in that case, if there is only one life, that
it should be the like of yours, while there are so many others who are
happy?"

But she seemed to have guessed his thought: she went on phlegmatically,
resignedly, and a little ironically:

"One has to put up with it. Everybody cannot draw a prize. I've drawn a
blank: so much the worse!"

She never even thought of looking for a more profitable place outside
France. (She had once been offered a situation in America.) The idea of
leaving the country never entered her head. She said:

"Stones are hard everywhere."

There was in her a profound, skeptical, and mocking fatalism. She was
of the stock that has little or no faith, few considered reasons for
living, and yet a tremendous vitality--the stock of the French peasantry,
industrious and apathetic, riotous and submissive, who have no great love
of life, but cling to it, and have no need of artificial stimulants to keep
up their courage.

Christophe, who had not yet come across them, was astonished to find in the
girl an absence of all faith: he marveled at her tenacious hold on life,
without pleasure or purpose, and most of all he admired her sturdy moral
sense that had no need of prop or support. Till then he had only seen
the French people through naturalistic novels, and the theories of the
mannikins of contemporary literature, who, reacting from the art of the
century of pastoral scenes and the Revolution, loved to present natural man
as a vicious brute, in order to sanctify their own vices.... He was amazed
when he discovered Sidonie's uncompromising honesty. It was not a matter of
morality but of instinct and pride. She had her aristocratic pride. For it
is foolish to imagine that everybody belonging to the people is "popular."
The people have their aristocrats just as the upper classes have their
vulgarians. The aristocrats are those creatures whose instincts, and
perhaps whose blood, are purer than those of the others: those who know and
are conscious of what they are, and must be true to themselves. They are in
the minority: but, even when they are forced to live apart, the others know
that they are the salt of the earth: and the fact of their existence is a
check upon the others, who are forced to model themselves upon them, or
to pretend to do so. Every province, every village, every congregation of
men, is, to a certain degree, what its aristocrats are: and public opinion
varies accordingly, and is, in one place, severe, in another, lax. The
present anarchy and upheaval of the majority will not change the unvoiced
power of the minority. It is more dangerous for them to be uprooted from
their native soil and scattered far and wide in the great cities. But
even so, lost amid strange surroundings, living in isolation, yet the
individualities of the good stock persist and never mix with those about
them.--Sidonie knew nothing, wished to know nothing, of all that Christophe
had seen in Paris. She was no more interested in the sentimental and
unclean literature of the newspapers than in the political news. She did
not even know that there were Popular Universities: and, if she had known,
it is probable that she would have put herself out as little to go to them
as she did to hear a sermon. She did her work, and thought for herself: she
was not concerned with what other people thought. Christophe congratulated
her.

"Why is that surprising?" she asked. "I am like everybody else. You haven't
met any French people."

"I've been living among them for a year," said Christophe, "and I haven't
met a single one who thought of anything but amusing himself or of aping
those who amuse him."

"That's true," said Sidonie. "You have only seen rich people. The rich are
the same everywhere. You've seen nothing at all."

"That's true," said Christophe. "I'm beginning."

For the first time he caught a glimpse of the people of France, men and
women who seem to be built for eternity, who are one with the earth, who,
like the earth, have seen so many conquering races, so many masters of a
day, pass away, while they themselves endure and do not pass.

* * * * *

When he was getting better and was allowed to get up for a little, the
first thing he thought of was to pay Sidonie back for the expenses she
had incurred during his illness. It was impossible for him to go about
Paris looking for work, and he had to bring himself to write to Hecht:
he asked him for an advance on account of future work. With his amazing
combination of indifference and kindliness Hecht made him wait a fortnight
for a reply--a fortnight during which Christophe tormented himself and
practically refused to touch any of the food Sidonie brought him, and would
only accept a little bread and milk, which she forced him to take, and then
he grumbled and was angry with himself because he had not earned it: then,
without a word, Hecht sent him the sum he asked: and not once during the
months of Christophe's illness did Hecht make any inquiry after him. He had
a genius for making himself disliked even when he was doing a kindness.
Even in his kindness Hecht could not be generous.

Sidonie came every day in the afternoon and again in the evening. She
cooked Christophe's dinner for him. She made no noise, but went quietly
about her business: and when she saw the dilapidated condition of his
clothes she took them away to mend them. Insensibly there had crept an
element of affection into their relation. Christophe talked at length about
his mother: and that touched Sidonie: she would put herself in Louisa's
place, alone in Germany: and she had a maternal feeling for Christophe, and
when he talked to her he tried to trick his need of mothering and love,
from which a man suffers most when he is weak and ill. He felt nearer
Louisa with Sidonie than with anybody else. Sometimes he would confide his
artistic troubles to her. She would pity him gently, though she seemed to
regard such sorrows of the intellect ironically. That, too, reminded him of
his mother and comforted him.

He tried to get her to confide in him: but she was much less open than he.
He asked her jokingly why she did not get married. And she would reply in
her usual tone of mocking resignation that "it was not allowed for servants
to marry: it complicates things too much. Besides, she was sure to make a
bad choice, and that is not pleasant. Men are sordid creatures. They come
courting when a woman has money, squeeze it out of her, and then leave her
in the lurch. She had seen too many cases of that and was not inclined to
do the same."--She did not tell him of her own unfortunate experience:
her future husband had left her when he found that she was giving all
her earnings to her family.--Christophe used to see her in the courtyard
mothering the children of a family living in the house. When she met
them alone on the stairs she would sometimes embrace them passionately.
Christophe would fancy her occupying the place of a lady of his
acquaintance: she was not a fool, and she was no plainer than many another
woman: he declared that in the lady's place she would have been the better
woman of the two. There are so many splendid lives hidden in the world,
unknown and unsuspected! And, on the other hand, the hosts of the living
dead, who encumber the earth, and take up the room and the happiness of
others in the light of the sun!...

Christophe had no ulterior thought. He was fond, too fond of her: he let
her coddle him like a child.

Some days Sidonie would be queer and depressed: but he attributed that to
her work. Once when they were talking she got up suddenly and left him,
making some excuse about her work. Finally, after a day when Christophe had
been more confidential than usual, she broke off her visits for a time: and
when she came back she would only talk to him constrainedly. He wondered
what he could have done to offend her. He asked her. She replied quickly
that he had not offended her: but she stayed away again. A few days later
she told him that she was going away: she had given up her situation and
was leaving the house. Coldly and reservedly she thanked him for all
his kindness, told him she hoped he would soon recover, and that his
mother would remain in good health, and then she said good-by. He was so
astonished at her abrupt departure that he did not know what to say: he
tried to discover her reasons: she replied evasively. He asked her where
she was going: she did not reply, and, to cut short his questions, she got
up to go. As she reached the door he held out his hand: she grasped it
warmly: but her face did not betray her, and to the end she maintained her
stiff, cold manner. She went away.

He never understood why.

* * * * *

He dragged through the winter--a wet, misty, muddy winter. Weeks on end
without sun. Although Christophe was better he was by no means recovered.
He still had a little pain in his lungs, a lesion which healed slowly, and
fits of coughing which kept him from sleeping at night. The doctor had
forbidden him to go out. He might just as well have ordered him to go to
the Riviera or the Canary Islands. He had to go out! If he did not go out
to look for his dinner, his dinner would certainly not come to look for
him.--And he was ordered medicines which he could not afford. And so he
gave up consulting doctors: it was a waste of money: and besides he was
always ill at ease with them: they could not understand each other: they
lived in separate worlds. They had an ironical and rather contemptuous pity
for the poor devil of an artist who claimed to be a world to himself, and
was swept along like a straw by the river of life. He was humiliated by
being examined, and prodded, and handled by these men. He was ashamed of
his sick body, and thought:

"How glad I shall be when _it_ is dead!"

In spite of loneliness, illness, poverty, and so many other causes of
suffering, Christophe bore his lot patiently. He had never been so patient.
He was surprised at himself. Illness is often a blessing. By ravaging the
body it frees the soul and purifies it: during the nights and days of
forced inaction thoughts arise which are fearful of the raw light of day,
and are scorched by the sun of health. No man who has never been ill can
have a thorough knowledge of himself.

His illness had, in a queer way, soothed Christophe. It had purged him of
the coarser elements of his nature. Through his most subtle nerves he felt
the world of mysterious forces which dwell in each of us, though the tumult
of life prevents our hearing them. Since his visit to the Louvre, in his
hours of fever, the smallest memories of which were graven upon his mind,
he had lived in an atmosphere like that of the Rembrandt picture, warm,
soft, profound. He too felt in his heart the magic beams of an invisible
sun. And although he did not believe, he knew that he was not alone: a God
was holding him by the hand, and leading him to the predestined goal of his
endeavors. He trusted in Him like a little child.

For the first time for years he felt that he must rest. The lassitude of
his convalescence was in itself a rest for him after the extraordinary
tension of mind that had gone before his illness and had left him still
exhausted. Christophe, who for many months had been continually on the
alert and strained upon his guard, felt the fixity of his gaze slowly
relax. He was not less strong for it: he was more human. The great though
rather monstrous quality of life of the man of genius had passed into the
background: he found himself a man like the rest, purged of the fanaticism
of his mind, and all the hardness and mercilessness of his actions. He
hated nothing: he gave no thought to things that exasperated him, or, if
he did, he shrugged them off: he thought less of his own troubles and more
of the troubles of others. Since Sidonie had reminded him of the silent
suffering of the lowly, fighting on without complaint, all over the world,
he forgot himself in them. He who was not usually sentimental now had
periods of that mystic tenderness which is the flower of weakness and
sickness. In the evening, as he sat with his elbows on the window-sill,
gazing down into the courtyard and listening to all the mysterious noises
of the night,... a voice singing in a house near by, made moving by the
distance, or a little girl artlessly strumming Mozart,... he thought:

"All you whom I love though I know you not! You whom life has not sullied;
you, who dream of great things, that you know to be impossible, while you
fight for them against the envious world,--may you be happy--it is so good
to be happy!... Oh, my friends, I know that you are there, and I hold
my arms out to you.... There is a wall between us. Stone by stone I am
breaking it down, but I am myself broken in the labor of it. Shall we ever
be together? Shall I reach you before another wall is raised up between us:
the wall of death?... No matter! Though all my life I am alone, so only I
may work for you, do you good, and you may love me a little, later on, when
I am dead!..."

* * * * *

So the convalescent Christophe was nursed by those two good foster-mothers
"_Liebe und Noth_" (Love and Poverty).

* * * * *

While his will was thus in abeyance Christophe felt a longing to be with
people. And, although he was still very weak, and it was a very foolish
thing to do, he used to go out early in the morning when the stream of
people poured out of the residential streets on their way to their work,
or in the evening, when they were returning. His desire was to plunge into
the refreshing bath of human sympathy. Not that he spoke to a soul. He did
not even try to do so. It was enough for him to watch the people pass, and
guess what they were, and love them. With fond pity he used to watch the
workers hurrying along, all, as it were, already worn out by the business
of the day,--young men and girls, with pale faces, worn expressions, and
strange smiles,--thin, eager faces beneath which there passed desires and
anxieties, all with a changing irony,--all so intelligent, too intelligent,
a little morbid, the dwellers in a great city. They all hurried along, the
men reading the papers, the women nibbling and munching. Christophe would
have given a month of his life to let one poor girl, whose eyes were
swollen with sleep, who passed near him with a little nervous, mincing
walk, sleep on for a few hours more. Oh! how she would have jumped at it,
if she had been offered the chance! He would have loved to pluck all the
idle rich people out of their rooms, hermetically sealed at that hour,
where they were so ungratefully lying at their ease, and replace them in
their beds, in their comfortable existence, with all these eager, weary
bodies, these fresh souls, not abounding with life, but alive and greedy
of life. In that hour he was full of kindness towards them: and he smiled
at their alert, thin little faces, in which there were cunning and
ingenuousness, a bold and simple desire for pleasure, and, behind all,
honest little souls, true and industrious. And he was not hurt when some
of the girls laughed in his face, or nudged each other to point out the
strange young man staring at them so hard.

And he would lounge about the riverside, lost in dreams. That was his
favorite walk. It did a little satisfy his longing for the great river that
had sung the lullaby of his childhood. Ah! it was not _Vater Rhein_! It had
none of his all-puissant might: none of the wide horizons, vast plains over
which the mind soars and is lost. A river with gray eyes, gowned in pale
green, with finely drawn, correct features, a graceful river, with supple
movements, wearing with sparkling nonchalance the sumptuous and sober garb
of her city, the bracelets of its bridges, the necklets of its monuments,
and smiling at her own prettiness, like a lovely woman strolling through
the town.... The delicious light of Paris! That was the first thing that
Christophe had loved in the city: it filled his being sweetly, sweetly: and
imperceptibly, slowly, it changed his heart. It was to him the most lovely
music, the only music in Paris. He would spend hours in the evening walking
by the river, or in the gardens of old France, tasting the harmonies
of the light of day touching the tall trees bathed in purple mist, the
gray statues and ruins, the worn stones of the royal monuments which had
absorbed the light of centuries,--that smooth atmosphere, made of pale
sunshine and milky vapor, in which, on a cloud of silvery dust, there
floats the laughing spirit of the race.

One evening he was leaning over the parapet near the Saint-Michel Bridge,
and looking at the water and absently turning over the books in one of the
little boxes. He chanced upon a battered old volume of Michelet and opened
it at random. He had already read a certain amount of that historian, and
had been put off by his Gallic boasting, his trick of making himself drunk
with words, and his halting style. But that evening he was held from the
very first words: he had lighted on the trial of Joan of Arc. He knew the
Maid of Orleans through Schiller: but hitherto she had only been a romantic
heroine who had been endowed with an imaginary life by a great poet.
Suddenly the reality was presented to him and gripped his attention. He
read on and on, his heart aching for the tragic horror of the glorious
story: and when he came to the moment when Joan learns that she is to die
that evening and faints from fear, his hands began to tremble, tears came
into his eyes, and he had to stop. He was weak from his illness: he had
become absurdly sensitive, and was himself exasperated by it.--When he
turned once more to the book it was late and the bookseller was shutting up
his boxes. He decided to buy the book and hunted through his pockets: he
had exactly six sous. Such scantiness was not rare and did not bother him:
he had paid for his dinner, and counted on getting some money out of Hecht
next day for some copying he had done. But it was hard to have to wait a
day! Why had he spent all he had on his dinner? Ah! if only he could offer
the bookseller the bread and sausages that were in his pockets, in payment!

Next morning, very early, he went to Hecht's to get his money: but as
he was passing the bridge which bears the name of the archangel of
battle--"the brother in Paradise" of Joan of Arc--he could not help
stopping. He found the precious book once more in the bookseller's box, and
read it right through: he stayed reading it for nearly two hours and missed
his appointment with Hecht: and he wasted the whole day waiting to see him.
At last he managed to get his new commission and the money for the old. At
once he rushed back to buy the book, although he had read it. He was afraid
it might have been sold to another purchaser. No doubt that would not have
mattered much: it was quite easy to get another copy: but Christophe did
not know whether the book was rare or not: and besides, he wanted that
particular book and no other. Those who love books easily become fetish
worshipers. The pages from which the well of dreams springs forth are
sacred to them, even when they are dirty and spotted.

In the silence of the night, in his room, Christophe read once more the
Gospel of the Passion of Joan of Arc: and now there was nothing to make
him restrain his emotion. He was filled with tenderness, pity, infinite
sorrow for the poor little shepherdess in her coarse peasant clothes,
tall, shy, soft-voiced, dreaming to the sound of bells--(she loved them as
he did)--with her lovely smile, full of understanding and kindness, and
her tears, that flowed so readily--tears of love, tears of pity, tears of
weakness: for she was at once so manlike and so much a woman, the pure and
valiant girl, who tamed the savage lusts of an army of bandits, and calmly,
with her intrepid sound good sense, her woman's subtlety, and her gentle
persistency, alone, betrayed on all hands, for months together foiled the
threats and hypocritical tricks of a gang of churchmen and lawyers,--wolves
and foxes with bloody eyes and fangs--who closed a ring about her.

What touched Christophe most nearly was her kindness, her tenderness of
heart,--weeping after her victories, weeping over her dead enemies, over
those who had insulted her, giving them consolation when they were wounded,
aiding them in death, knowing no bitterness against those who sold her,
and even at the stake, when the flames roared about her, thinking not of
herself, thinking only of the monk who exorcised her, and compelling him
to depart. She was "gentle in the most bitter fight, good even amongst
the most evil, peaceful even in war. Into war, the triumph of Satan, she
brought the very Spirit of God."

And Christophe, thinking of himself, said:

"And into my fight I have not brought enough of the Spirit of God."

He read the fine words of the evangelist of Joan of Arc:

"Be kind, and seek always to be kinder, amid all the injustice of men and
the hardships of Fate.... Be gentle and of a good countenance even in
bitter quarrels, win through experience, and never let it harm that inward
treasure...."

And he said within himself:

"I have sinned. I have not been kind. I have not shown good-will towards
men. I have been too hard.--Forgive me. Do not think me your enemy, you
against whom I wage war! For you too I seek to do good.... But you must be
kept from doing evil...."

And, as he was no saint, the thought of them was enough to kindle his anger
again. What he could least forgive them was that when he saw them, and saw
France, through them, he found it impossible to conceive such a flower of
purity and poetic heroism ever springing from such a soil. And yet it was
so. Who could say that such a flower would not spring from it a second
time? The France of to-day could not be worse than that of Charles VII, the
debauched and prostituted nation from which the Maid sprang. The temple was
empty, fouled, half in ruins. No matter! God had spoken in it.

Christophe was seeking a Frenchman whom he could love for the love of
France.

It was about the end of March. For months Christophe had not spoken to a
soul nor had a single letter, except every now and then a few lines from
his mother, who did not know that he was ill and did not tell him that she
herself was ill. His relation with the outside world was confined to his
journeys to the music shop to take or bring away his work. He arranged to
go there at times when he knew that Hecht would be out--to avoid having
to talk to him. The precaution was superfluous, for the only time he met
Hecht, he hardly did more than ask him a few indifferent questions about
his health.

He was immured in a prison of silence when, one morning, he received an
invitation from Madame Roussin to a musical _soirée_: a famous quartet was
to play. The letter was very friendly in tone, and Roussin had added a few
cordial lines. He was not very proud of his quarrel with Christophe: the
less so as he had since quarreled with the singer and now condemned her in
no sparing terms. He was a good fellow: he never bore those whom he had
wronged any grudge. And he would have thought it preposterous for any of
his victims to be more thin-skinned than himself. And so, when he had the
pleasure of seeing them again, he never hesitated about holding out his
hand.

Christophe's first impulse was to shrug his shoulders and vow that he
would not go. But he wavered as the day of the concert came nearer. He was
stifling from never hearing a human voice or a note of music. But he vowed
again that he would never set foot inside the Roussins' house. But when the
day came he went, raging against his own cowardice.

He was ill rewarded. Hardly did he find himself once more in the gathering
of politicians and snobs than he was filled with an aversion for them more
violent than ever: for during his months of solitude he had lost the trick
of such people. It was impossible to hear the music: it was a profanation;
Christophe made up his mind to go as soon as the first piece was over.

He glanced round among the faces of those people who were even physically
so antipathetic to him. At the other end of the room he saw a face, the
face of a young man, looking at him, and then he turned away at once.
There was in the face a strange quality of candor which among such bored,
indifferent people was most striking. The eyes were timid, but dear and
direct. French eyes, which, once they marked a man, went on looking at
him with absolute truth, hiding nothing of the soul behind them, missing
nothing of the soul of the man at whom they gazed. They were familiar to
Christophe. And yet he did not know the face. It was that of a young man
between twenty and twenty-five, short, slightly stooping, delicate-looking,
beardless, and melancholy, with chestnut hair, irregular features, though
fine, a certain crookedness which gave it an expression not so much of
uneasiness as of bashfulness, which was not without charm, and seemed to
contradict the tranquillity of the eyes. He was standing in an open door:
and nobody was paying any attention to him. Once more Christophe looked
at him: and once more he met his eyes, which turned away timidly with a
delightful awkwardness: once more he "recognized" them: it seemed to him
that he had seen them in another face.

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