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Jean Christophe: In Paris

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Madame Jeannin saw that they were on the eve of a catastrophe: but she had
never taken any part in her husband's affairs, and did not understand them.
She questioned him: he repulsed her brutally: and, hurt in her pride, she
did not persist. But she trembled, without knowing why.

The children could have no suspicion of the impending disaster. Antoinette,
no doubt, was too intelligent not, like her mother, to have a presentiment
of some misfortune: but she was absorbed in the delight of her budding
love: she refused to think of unpleasant things: she persuaded herself that
the clouds would pass--or that it would be time enough to see them when it
was impossible to disregard them.

Of the three, the boy Olivier was perhaps the nearest to understanding
what was going on in his unhappy father's soul. He felt that his father
was suffering, and he suffered with him in secret. But he dared not say
anything: naturally he could do nothing, and he was helpless. And then he,
too, thrust back the thought of sad things, the nature of which he could
not grasp: like his mother and sister, he was superstitiously inclined to
believe that perhaps misfortune, the approach of which he did not wish to
see, would not come. Those poor wretches who feel the imminence of danger
do readily play the ostrich: they hide their heads behind a stone, and
pretend that Misfortune will not see them.

* * * * *

Disturbing rumors began to fly. It was said that the bank's credit was
impaired. In vain did the banker assure his clients that it was perfectly
all right, on one pretext or another the more suspicious of them demanded
their money. M. Jeannin felt that he was lost: he defended himself
desperately, assuming a tone of indignation, and complaining loftily and
bitterly of their suspicions of himself: he even went so far as to be
violent and angry with some of his old clients, but that only let him down
finally. Demands for payment came in a rush. On his beam-ends, at bay, he
completely lost his head. He went away for a few days to gamble with his
last few banknotes at a neighboring watering-place, was cleaned out in a
quarter of an hour, and returned home. His sudden departure set the little
town by the ears, and it was said that he had cleared out: and Madame
Jeannin had had great difficulty in coping with the wild, anxious inquiries
of the people: she begged them to be patient, and swore that her husband
would return. They did not believe her, although they would have been only
too glad to do so. And so, when it was known that he had returned, there
was a general sigh of relief: there were many who almost believed that
their fears had been baseless, and that the Jeannins were much too shrewd
not to get out of a hole by admitting that they had fallen into it. The
banker's attitude confirmed that impression. Now that he no longer had any
doubt as to what he must do, he seemed to be weary, but quite calm. He
chatted quietly to a few friends whom he met in the station road on his way
home, talking about the drought and the country not having had any water
for weeks, and the superb condition of the vines, and the fall of the
Ministry, announced in the evening papers.

When he reached home he pretended not to notice his wife's excitement, who
had run to meet him when she heard him come in, and told him volubly and
confusedly what had happened during his absence. She scanned his features
to try and see whether he had succeeded in averting the unknown danger:
but, from pride, she did not ask him anything: she was waiting for him to
speak first. But he did not say a word about the thing that was tormenting
them both. He silently disregarded her desire to confide in him, and to get
him to confide in her. He spoke of the heat, and of how tired he was, and
complained of a racking headache: and they sat down to dinner as usual.

He talked little, and was dull, lost in thought, and his brows were knit:
he drummed with his fingers on the table: he forced himself to eat, knowing
that they were watching him, and looked with vague, unseeing eyes at his
children, who were intimidated by the silence, and at his wife, who sat
stiffly nursing her injured vanity, and, without looking at him, marking
his every movement. Towards the end of dinner he seemed to wake up: he
tried to talk to Antoinette and Olivier, and asked them what they had been
doing during his absence: but he did not listen to their replies, and
heard only the sound of their voices: and although he was staring at them,
his gaze was elsewhere. Olivier felt it: he stopped in the middle of his
prattle, and had no desire to go on. But, after a moment's embarrassment,
Antoinette recovered her gaiety: she chattered merrily, like a magpie, laid
her head on her father's shoulder, or tugged his sleeve to make him listen
to what she was saying. M. Jeannin said nothing: his eyes wandered from
Antoinette to Olivier, and the crease in his forehead grew deeper and
deeper. In the middle of one of his daughter's stories he could bear it no
longer, and got up and went and looked out of the window to conceal his
emotion. The children folded their napkins, and got up too. Madame Jeannin
told them to go and play in the garden: in a moment or two they could be
heard chasing each other down the paths and screaming. Madame Jeannin
looked at her husband, whose back was turned towards her, and she walked
round the table as though to arrange something. Suddenly she went up to
him, and, in a voice hushed by her fear of being overheard by the servants
and by the agony that was in her, she said:

"Tell me, Antoine, what is the matter? There is something the matter ...
You are hiding something ... Has something dreadful happened? Are you ill?"

But once more M. Jeannin put her off, and shrugged his shoulders, and said
harshly:

"No! No, I tell you! Let me be!"

She was angry, and went away: in her fury, she declared that, no matter
what happened to her husband, she would not bother about it any more.

M. Jeannin went down into the garden. Antoinette was still larking about,
and tugging at her brother to make him run. But the boy declared suddenly
that he was not going to play any more: and he leaned against the wall of
the terrace a few yards away from his father. Antoinette tried to go on
teasing him: but he drove her away and sulked: then she called him names:
and when she found she could get no more fun out of him, she went in and
began to play the piano.

M. Jeannin and Olivier were left alone.

"What's the matter with you, boy? Why won't you play?" asked the father
gently.

"I'm tired, father."

"Well, let us sit here on this seat for a little."

They sat down. It was a lovely September night. A dark, clear sky.
The sweet scent of the petunias was mingled with the stale and rather
unwholesome smell of the canal sleeping darkly below the terrace wall.
Great moths, pale and sphinx-like, fluttered about the flowers, with a
little whirring sound. The even voices of the neighbors sitting at their
doors on the other side of the canal rang through the silent air. In the
house Antoinette was playing a florid Italian cavatina. M. Jeannin held
Olivier's hand in his. He was smoking. Through the darkness behind which
his father's face was slowly disappearing the boy could see the red glow of
the pipe, which gleamed, died away, gleamed again, and finally went out.
Neither spoke. Then Olivier asked the names of the stars. M. Jeannin, like
almost all men of his class, knew nothing of the things of Nature, and
could not tell him the names of any save the great constellations, which
are known to everyone: but he pretended that the boy was asking their
names, and told him. Olivier made no objection: it always pleased him to
hear their beautiful mysterious names, and to repeat them in a whisper.
Besides, he was not so much wanting to know their names as instinctively to
come closer to his father. They said nothing more. Olivier looked at the
stars, with his head thrown back and his mouth open: he was lost in drowsy
thoughts: he could feel through all his veins the warmth of his father's
hand. Suddenly the hand began to tremble. That seemed funny to Olivier, and
he laughed and said sleepily:

"Oh, how your hand is trembling, father!"

M. Jeannin removed his hand.

After a moment Olivier, still busy with his own thoughts, said:

"Are you tired, too, father?"

"Yes, my boy."

The boy replied affectionately:

"You must not tire yourself out so much, father."

M. Jeannin drew Olivier towards him, and held him to his breast and
murmured:

"My poor boy!..."

But already Olivier's thoughts had flown off on another tack. The church
clock chimed eight o'clock. He broke away, and said:

"I'm going to read."

On Thursdays he was allowed to read for an hour after dinner, until
bedtime: it was his greatest joy: and nothing in the world could induce him
to sacrifice a minute of it.

M. Jeannin let him go. He walked up and down the terrace for a little in
the dark. Then he, too, went in.

In the room his wife and the two children were sitting round the lamp.
Antoinette was sewing a ribbon on to a blouse, talking and humming the
while, to Olivier's obvious discomfort, for he was stopping his ears with
his fists so as not to hear, while he pored over his book with knitted
brows, and his elbows on the table. Madame Jeannin was mending stockings
and talking to the old nurse, who was standing by her side and giving an
account of her day's expenditure, and seizing the opportunity for a little
gossip: she always had some amusing tale to tell in her extraordinary
lingo, which used to make them roar with laughter, while Antoinette would
try to imitate her. M. Jeannin watched them silently. No one noticed him.
He wavered for a moment, sat down, took up a book, opened it at random,
shut it again, got up: he could not sit still. He lit a candle and said
good-night. He went up to the children and kissed them fondly: they
returned his kiss absently without looking up at him,--Antoinette being
absorbed in her work, and Olivier in his book. Olivier did not even
take his hands from his ears, and grunted "Good-night," and went on
reading:--(when he was reading even if one of his family had fallen into
the fire, he would not have looked up).--M. Jeannin left the room. He
lingered in the next room, for a moment. His wife came out soon, the old
nurse having gone to arrange the linen-cupboard. She pretended not to see
him. He hesitated, then came up to her, and said:

"I beg your pardon. I was rather rude just now."

She longed to say to him:

"My dear, my dear, that is nothing: but, tell me, what is the matter with
you? Tell me, what is hurting you so?"

But she jumped at the opportunity of taking her revenge, and said:

"Let me be! You have been behaving odiously. You treat me worse than you
would a servant."

And she went on in that strain, setting forth all her grievances volubly,
shrilly, rancorously.

He raised his hands wearily, smiled bitterly, and left her.

* * * * *

No one heard the report of the revolver. Only, next day, when it was known
what had happened, a few of the neighbors remembered that, in the middle of
the night, when the streets were quiet, they had noticed a sharp noise like
the cracking of a whip. They did not pay any attention to it. The silence
of the night fell once more upon the town, wrapping both living and dead
about with its mystery.

Madame Jeannin was asleep, but woke up an hour or two later. Not seeing her
husband by her side she got up and went anxiously through all the rooms,
and downstairs to the offices of the bank, which were in an annex of the
house: and there, sitting in his chair in his office, she found M. Jeannin
huddled forward on his desk in a pool of blood, which was still dripping
down on to the floor. She gave a scream, dropped her candle, and fainted.
She was heard in the house. The servants came running, picked her up, took
care of her, and laid the body of M. Jeannin on a bed. The door of the
children's room was locked. Antoinette was sleeping happily. Olivier heard
the sound of voices and footsteps: he wanted to go and see what it was all
about: but he was afraid of waking his sister, and presently he went to
sleep again.

Next morning the news was all over the town before they knew anything.
Their old nurse came sobbing and told them. Their mother was incapable of
thinking of anything: her condition was critical. The two children were
left alone in the presence of death. At first they were more fearful than
sorrowful. And they were not allowed to weep in peace. The cruel legal
formalities were begun the first thing in the morning. Antoinette hid
away in her room, and with all the force of her youthful egoism clung
to the only idea which could help her to thrust back the horror of the
overwhelming reality: the thought of her lover: all day long she waited for
him to come. Never had he been more ardent than the last time she had seen
him, and she had no doubt that, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe, he
would hasten to share her grief.--But nobody came, or wrote, or gave one
sign of sympathy. As soon as the news of the suicide was out, people who
had intrusted their money to the banker rushed to the Jeannins' house,
forced their way in, and, with merciless cruelty, stormed and screamed at
the widow and the two children.

In a few days they were faced with their utter ruin: the loss of a dear
one, the loss of their fortune, their position, their public esteem, and
the desertion of their friends. A total wreck. Nothing was left to provide
for them. They had all three an uncompromising feeling for moral purity,
which made their suffering all the greater from the dishonor of which they
were innocent. Of the three Antoinette was the most distraught by their
sorrow, because she had never really known suffering. Madame Jeannin
and Olivier, though they were racked by it, were more inured to it.
Instinctively pessimistic, they were overwhelmed but not surprised. The
idea of death had always been a refuge to them, as it was now, more than
ever: they longed for death. It is pitiful to be so resigned, but not so
terrible as the revolt of a young creature, confident and happy, loving
every moment of her life, who suddenly finds herself face to face with such
unfathomable, irremediable sorrow, and death which is horrible to her....

Antoinette discovered the ugliness of the world in a flash. Her eyes were
opened: she saw life and human beings as they are: she judged her father,
her mother, and her brother. While Olivier and Madame Jeannin wept
together, in her grief she drew into herself. Desperately she pondered the
past, the present, and the future: and she saw that there was nothing left
for her, no hope, nothing to support her: she could count on no one.

The funeral took place, grimly, shamefully. The Church refused to receive
the body of the suicide. The widow and orphans were deserted by the
cowardice of their former friends. One or two of them came for a moment:
and their embarrassment was even harder to bear than the absence of the
rest. They seemed to make a favor of it, and their silence was big with
reproach and pitying contempt. It was even worse with their relations:
not only did they receive no single word of sympathy, but they were
visited with bitter reproaches. The banker's suicide, far from removing
ill-feeling, seemed to be hardly less criminal than his failure.
Respectable people cannot forgive those who kill themselves. It seems to
them monstrous that a man should prefer death to life with dishonor: and
they would fain call down all the rigor of the law on him who seems to say:

"There is no misery so great as that of living with you."

The greatest cowards are not the least ready to accuse him of cowardice.
And when, in addition, the suicide, by ending his life, touches their
interests and their revenge, they lose all control.--Not for one moment did
they think of all that the wretched Jeannin must have suffered to come to
it. They would have had him suffer a thousand times more. And as he had
escaped them, they transferred their fury to his family. They did not admit
it to themselves: for they knew they were unjust. But they did it all the
same, for they needed a victim.

Madame Jeannin, who seemed to be able to do nothing but weep and moan,
recovered her energy when her husband was attacked. She discovered then how
much she had loved him: and she and her two children, who had no idea what
would become of them in the future, all agreed to renounce their claim to
her dowry, and to their own personal estate, in order, as far as possible,
to meet M. Jeannin's debts. And, since it had become impossible for them to
stay in the little town, they decided to go to Paris.

* * * * *

Their departure was something in the nature of a flight.

On the evening of the day before,--(a melancholy evening towards the end
of September: the fields were disappearing behind the white veil of mist,
out of which, as they walked along the road, on either side the fantastic
shapes of the dripping, shivering bushes started forth, looking like the
plants in an aquarium),--they went together to say farewell to the grave
where he lay. They all three knelt on the narrow curbstone which surrounded
the freshly turned patch of earth. They wept in silence; Olivier sobbed.
Madame Jeannin mopped her eyes mournfully. She augmented her grief and
tortured herself by saying to herself over and over again the words she had
spoken to her husband the last time she had seen him alive. Olivier thought
of that last conversation on the seat on the terrace. Antoinette wondered
dreamily what would become of them. None of them ever dreamed of
reproaching the wretched man who had dragged them down in his own ruin. But
Antoinette thought:

"Ah! dear father, how we shall suffer!"

The mist grew more dense, the cold damp pierced through to their bones. But
Madame Jeannin could not bring herself to go. Antoinette saw that Olivier
was shivering and she said to her mother:

"I am cold."

They got up. Just as they were going, Madame Jeannin turned once more
towards the grave, gazed at it for the last time, and said:

"My dear, my dear!"

They left the cemetery as night was falling. Antoinette held Olivier's icy
hand in hers.

They went back to the old house. It was their last night under the
roof-tree where they had always slept, where their lives and the lives of
their parents had been lived--the walls, the hearth, the little patch of
earth were so indissolubly linked with the family's joys and sorrows, as
almost themselves to be part of the family, part of their life, which they
could only leave to die.

Their boxes were packed. They were to take the first train next day before
the shops were opened: they wanted to escape their neighbors' curiosity and
malicious remarks.--They longed to cling to each other and stay together:
but they went instinctively to their rooms and stayed there: there they
remained standing, never moving, not even taking off their hats and cloaks,
touching the walls, the furniture, all the things they were going to leave,
pressing their faces against the window-panes, trying to take away with
them in memory the contact of the things they loved. At last they made an
effort to shake free from the absorption of their sorrowful thoughts and
met in Madame Jeannin's room,--the family room, with a great recess at the
back, where, in old days, they always used to foregather in the evening,
after dinner, when there were no visitors. In old days!... How far off they
seemed now!--They sat silently round the meager fire: then they all knelt
by the bed and said their prayers: and they went to bed very early, for
they had to be up before dawn. But it was long before they slept.

About four o'clock in the morning Madame Jeannin, who had looked at her
watch every hour or so to see whether it was not time to get ready, lit her
candle and got up. Antoinette, who had hardly slept at all, heard her and
got up too. Olivier was fast asleep. Madame Jeannin gazed at him tenderly
and could not bring herself to wake him. She stole away on tiptoe and said
to Antoinette:

"Don't make any noise: let the poor boy enjoy his last moments here!"

The two women dressed and finished their packing. About the house hovered
the profound silence of the cold night, such a night as makes all living
things, men and beasts, cower away for warmth into the depths of sleep.
Antoinette's teeth were chattering: she was frozen body and soul.

The front door creaked upon the frozen air. The old nurse, who had the key
of the house, came for the last time to serve her employers. She was short
and fat, short-winded, and slow-moving from her portliness, but she was
remarkably active for her age: she appeared with her jolly face muffled
up, and her nose was red, and her eyes were wet with tears. She was
heart-broken when she saw that Madame Jeannin had got up without waiting
for her, and had herself lit the kitchen fire.--Olivier woke up as she came
in. His first impulse was to close his eyes, turn over, and go to sleep
again. Antoinette came and laid her hand gently on her brother's shoulder,
and she said in a low voice:

"Olivier, dear, it is time to get up."

He sighed, opened his eyes, saw his sister's face leaning over him: she
smiled sadly and caressed his face with her hand. She said:

"Come!"

He got up.

They crept out of the house, noiselessly, like thieves. They all had
parcels in their hands. The old nurse went in front of them trundling their
boxes in a wheelbarrow. They left behind almost all their possessions, and
took away, so to speak, only what they had on their backs and a change
of clothes. A few things for remembrance were to be sent after them by
goods-train: a few books, portraits, the old grandfather's clock, whose
tick-tock seemed to them to be the beating of their hearts.--The air was
keen. No one was stirring in the town: the shutters were closed and the
streets empty. They said nothing: only the old servant spoke. Madame
Jeannin was striving to fix in her memory all the images which told her of
all her past life.

At the station, out of vanity, Madame Jeannin took second-class tickets,
although she had vowed to travel third: but she had not the courage to face
the humiliation in the presence of the railway clerks who knew her. She
hurried into an empty compartment with her two children and shut the door.
Hiding behind the curtains they trembled lest they should see any one they
knew. But no one appeared: the town was hardly awake by the time they
left: the train was empty: there were only a few peasants traveling by
it, and some oxen, who hung their heads out of their trucks and bellowed
mournfully. After a long wait the engine gave a slow whistle, and the train
moved on through the mist. The fugitives drew the curtains and pressed
their faces against the windows to take a last long look at the little
town, with its Gothic tower just appearing through the mist, and the hill
covered with stubby fields, and the meadows white and steaming with the
frost; already it was a distant dream-landscape, fading out of existence.
And when the train turned a bend and passed into a cutting, and they could
no longer see it, and were sure there was no one to see them, they gave way
to their emotion. With her handkerchief pressed to her lips Madame Jeannin
sobbed. Olivier flung himself into her arms and with his head on her knees
he covered her hands with tears and kisses. Antoinette sat at the other end
of the compartment and looked out of the window and wept in silence. They
did not all weep for the same reason. Madame Jeannin and Olivier were
thinking only of what they had left behind them. Antoinette was thinking
rather of what they were going to meet: she was angry with herself: she,
too, would gladly have been absorbed in her memories....--She was right to
think of the future: she had a truer vision of the world than her mother
and brother. They were weaving dreams about Paris. Antoinette herself had
little notion of what awaited them there. They had never been there. Madame
Jeannin imagined that, though their position would be sad enough, there
would be no reason for anxiety. She had a sister in Paris, the wife of a
wealthy magistrate: and she counted on her assistance. She was convinced
also that with the education her children had received and their natural
gifts, which, like all mothers, she overestimated, they would have no
difficulty in earning an honest living.

* * * * *

Their first impressions were gloomy enough. As they left the station they
were bewildered by the jostling crowd of people in the luggage-room and the
confused uproar of the carriages outside. It was raining. They could not
find a cab, and had to walk a long way with their arms aching with their
heavy parcels, so that they had to stop every now and then in the middle
of the street at the risk of being run over or splashed by the carriages.
They could not make a single driver pay any attention to them. At last
they managed to stop a man who was driving an old and disgustingly dirty
barouche. As they were handing in the parcels they let a bundle of rugs
fall into the mud. The porter who carried the trunk and the cabman
traded on their ignorance, and made them pay double. Madame Jeannin gave
the address of one of those second-rate expensive hotels patronized by
provincials who go on going to them, in spite of their discomfort, because
their grandfathers went to them thirty years ago. They were fleeced there.
They were told that the hotel was full, and they were accommodated with one
small room for which they were charged the price of three. For dinner they
tried to economize by avoiding the table d'hôte: they ordered a modest
meal, which cost them just as much and left them famishing. Their illusions
concerning Paris had come toppling down as soon as they arrived. And,
during that first night in the hotel, when they were squeezed into one
little, ill-ventilated room, they could not sleep: they were hot and cold
by turns, and could not breathe, and started at every footstep in the
corridor, and the banging of the doors, and the furious ringing of the
electric bells: and their heads throbbed with the incessant roar of the
carriages and heavy drays: and altogether they felt terrified of the
monstrous city into which they had plunged to their utter bewilderment.

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