A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Jean Christophe: In Paris

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




The doctor could do nothing: the disease was too far gone, and Antoinette's
constitution had been wrecked by the years of hardship and unceasing toil.

Antoinette was quite calm. Since she had known that there was no hope her
agony and torment had left her. She lay turning over in her mind all the
trials and tribulations through which she had passed: she saw that her work
was done and her dear Olivier saved: and she was filled with unutterable
joy. She said to herself:

"I have achieved that."

And then she turned in shame from her pride and said:

"I could have done nothing alone. God has given me His aid."

And she thanked God that He had granted her life until she had accomplished
her task. There was a catch at her heart as she thought that now she had to
lay down her life: but she dared not complain: that would have been to feel
ingratitude towards God, who might have called her away sooner. And what
would have happened if she had passed away a year sooner?--She sighed, and
humbled herself in gratitude.

In spite of her weakness and oppression she did not complain,--except when
she was sleeping heavily, when every now and then she moaned like a little
child. She watched things and people with a calm smile of resignation. It
was always a joy to her to see Olivier. She would move her lips to call
him, though she made no sound: she would want to hold his hand in hers: she
would bid him lay his head on the pillow near hers, and then, gazing into
his eyes, she would go on looking at him in silence. At last she would
raise herself up and hold his face in her hands and say:

"Ah! Olivier!... Olivier!..."

She took the medal that she wore round her neck, and hung it on her
brother's. She commended her beloved Olivier to the care of her confessor,
her doctor, everybody. It seemed as though she was to live henceforth in
him, that, on the point of death, she was taking refuge in his life, as
upon some island in uncharted seas. Sometimes she seemed to be uplifted by
a mystic exaltation of tenderness and faith, and she forgot her illness,
and sadness changed to joy in her,--a joy divine indeed that shone upon her
lips and in her eyes. Over and over again she said:

"I am happy...."

Her senses grew dim. In her last moments of consciousness her lips moved
and it seemed that she was repeating something to herself. Olivier went to
her bedside and bent down over her. She recognized him once more and smiled
feebly up at him: her lips went on moving and her eyes were filled with
tears. They could not make out what she was trying to say.... But faintly
Olivier heard her breathe the words of the dear old song they used to love
so much, the song she was always singing:

"_I will come again, my sweet and bonny, I will come again._"

Then she relapsed into unconsciousness. So she passed away.

* * * * *

Unconsciously she had aroused a profound sympathy in many people whom she
did not even know: in the house in which she lived she did not even know
the names of the other tenants. Olivier received expressions of sympathy
from people who were strangers to him. Antoinette was not taken to her
grave unattended as her mother had been. Her body was followed to the
cemetery by friends and schoolfellows of her brother, and members of the
families whose children she had taught, and people whom she had met without
saying a word of her own life or hearing a word from them, though they
admired her secretly, knowing her devotion, and many of the poor, and the
housekeeper who had helped her, and even many of the small tradesmen of the
neighborhood. Madame Nathan had taken Olivier under her wing on the day of
his sister's death, and she had carried him off in spite of himself, and
done her best to turn his thoughts away from his grief.

If it had come later in his life he could never have borne up against such
a catastrophe,--but now it was impossible for him to succumb absolutely to
his despair. He had just begun a new life; he was living in a community,
and had to live the common life whatever he might be feeling. The full busy
life of the _École_, the intellectual pressure, the examinations, the
struggle for life, all kept him from withdrawing into himself: he could not
be alone. He suffered, but it proved his salvation. A year earlier, or a
few years earlier, he must have succumbed.

And yet he did as far as possible retire into isolation in the memory of
his sister. It was a great sorrow to him that he could not keep the rooms
where they had lived together: but he had no money. He hoped that the
people who seemed to be interested in him would understand his distress at
not being able to keep the things that had been hers. But nobody seemed
to understand. He borrowed some money and made a little more by private
tuition and took an attic in which he stored all that he could preserve
of his sister's furniture: her bed, her table, and her armchair. He made
it the sanctuary of her memory. He took refuge there whenever he was
depressed. His friends thought he was carrying on an intrigue. He would
stay there for hours dreaming of her with his face buried in his hands:
unhappily he had no portrait of her except a little photograph, taken when
she was a child, of the two of them together. He would talk to her and
weep ... Where was she? Ah! if she had been at the other end of the world,
wherever she might be and however inaccessible the spot,--with what great
joy and invincible ardor he would have rushed forth in search of her,
though a thousand sufferings lay in wait for him, though he had to go
barefoot, though he had to wander for hundreds of years, if only it might
be that every step would bring him nearer to her!... Yes, even though there
were only one chance in a thousand of his ever finding her ... But there
was nothing ... Nowhere to go ... No way of ever finding her again ... How
utterly lonely he was now! Now that she was no longer there to love and
counsel and console him, inexperienced and childish as he was, he was
flung into the waters of life, to sink or swim!... He who has once had the
happiness of perfect intimacy and boundless friendship with another human
being has known the divinest of all joys,--a joy that will make him
miserable for the remainder of his life....

_Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria_....

For a weak and tender soul it is the greatest of misfortunes ever to have
known the greatest happiness.

But though it is sad indeed to lose the beloved at the beginning of life,
it is even more terrible later on when the springs of life are running dry.
Olivier was young: and, in spite of his inborn pessimism, in spite of his
misfortune, he had to live his life. As often seems to happen after the
loss of those dear to us, it was as though when Antoinette passed away she
had breathed part of her soul into her brother's life. And he believed it
was so. Though he had not such faith as hers, yet he did arrive at a vague
conviction that his sister was not dead, but lived on in him, as she had
promised. There is a Breton superstition that those who die young are not
dead, but stay and hover over the places where they lived until they have
fulfilled the normal span of their existence.--So Antoinette lived out her
life in Olivier.

He read through the papers he had found in her room. Unhappily she had
burned most of them. Besides, she was not the sort of woman to keep notes
and tallies of her inner life. She was too modest to uncloak her inmost
thoughts in morbid babbling indiscretion. She only kept a little notebook
which was almost unintelligible to anybody else--a bare record in which she
had written down without remark certain dates, and certain small events in
her daily life, which had given her joys and emotions, which she had no
need to write down in detail to keep alive. Almost all these dates were
connected with some event in Olivier's life. She had kept every letter
he had ever written to her, without exception.--Alas! He had not been so
careful: he had lost almost all the letters she had written to him. What
need had he of letters? He thought he would have his sister always with
him: that dear fount of tenderness seemed inexhaustible: he thought that he
would always be able to quench his thirst of lips and heart at it: he had
most prodigally squandered the love he had received, and now he was eager
to gather up the smallest drops.... What was his emotion when, as he
skimmed through one of Antoinette's books, he found these words written in
pencil on a scrap of paper:

"Olivier, my dear Olivier!..."

He almost swooned. He sobbed and kissed the invisible lips that so spoke
to him from the grave.--Thereafter he took down all her books and hunted
through them page by page to see if she had not left some other words of
him. He found the fragment of the letter to Christophe, and discovered the
unspoken romance which had sprung to life in her: so for the first time he
happed upon her emotional life, that he had never known in her and never
tried to know: he lived through the last passionate days, when, deserted
by himself, she had held out her arms to the unknown friend. She had
never told him that she had seen Christophe before. Certain words in her
letter revealed the fact that they had met in Germany. He understood that
Christophe had been kind to Antoinette, in circumstances the details of
which were unknown to him, and that Antoinette's feeling for the musician
dated from that day, though she had kept her secret to the end.

Christophe, whom he loved already for the beauty of his art, now became
unutterably dear to him. She had loved him: it seemed to Olivier that it
was she whom he loved in Christophe. He moved heaven and earth to meet him.
It was not an easy matter to trace him. After his rebuff Christophe had
been lost in the wilderness of Paris: he had shunned all society and no
one gave a thought to him.--After many months it chanced that Olivier met
Christophe in the street: he was pale and sunken from the illness from
which he had only just recovered. But Olivier had not the courage to stop
him. He followed him home at a distance. He wanted to write to him, but
could not screw himself up to it. What was there to say? Olivier was not
alone: Antoinette was with him: her love, her modesty had become a part of
him: the thought that his sister had loved Christophe made him as bashful
in Christophe's presence as though he had been Antoinette. And yet how he
longed to talk to him of her!--But he could not. Her secret was a seal upon
his lips.

He tried to meet Christophe again. He went everywhere where he thought
Christophe might be. He was longing to shake hands with him. And when he
saw him he tried to hide so that Christophe should not see him.

* * * * *

At last Christophe saw him at the house of some mutual friends where they
both happened to be one evening. Olivier stood far away from him and said
nothing: but he watched him. And no doubt the spirit of Antoinette was
hovering near Olivier that night: for Christophe saw her in Olivier's eyes:
and it was her image, so suddenly evoked, that made him cross the room and
go towards the unknown messenger, who, like a young Hermes, brought him the
melancholy greeting of the blessed dead.




THE HOUSE




I


I have a friend!... Oh! The delight of having found a kindred soul to which
to cling in the midst of torment, a tender and sure refuge in which to
breathe again while the fluttering heart beats slower! No longer to be
alone, no longer never to unarm, no longer to stay on guard with straining,
burning eyes, until from sheer fatigue he should fall into the hands of his
enemies! To have a dear companion into whose hands all his life should be
delivered--the friend whose life was delivered into his! At last to taste
the sweetness of repose, to sleep while the friend watches, watch while the
friend sleeps. To know the joy of protecting a beloved creature who should
trust in him like a little child. To know the greater joy of absolute
surrender to that friend, to feel that he is in possession of all secrets,
and has power over life and death. Aging, worn out, weary of the burden of
life through so many years, to find new birth and fresh youth in the body
of the friend, through his eyes to see the world renewed, through his
senses to catch the fleeting loveliness of all things by the way, through
his heart to enjoy the splendor of living.... Even to suffer in his
suffering.... Ah! Even suffering is joy if it be shared!

I have a friend!... Away from me, near me, in me always. I have my friend,
and I am his. My friend loves me. I am my friend's, the friend of my
friend. Of our two souls love has fashioned one.

* * * * *

Christophe's first thought, when he awoke the day after the Roussins'
party, was for Olivier Jeannin. At once he felt an irresistible longing to
see him again. He got up and went out. It was not yet eight o'clock. It was
a heavy and rather oppressive morning. An April day before its time: stormy
clouds were hovering over Paris.

Olivier lived below the hill of Sainte-Geneviève, in a little street
near the _Jardin des Plantes_. The house stood in the narrowest part of
the street. The staircase led out of a dark yard, and was full of divers
unpleasant smells. The stairs wound steeply up and sloped down towards the
wall, which was disfigured with scribblings in pencil. On the third floor a
woman, with gray hair hanging down, and in petticoat-bodice, gaping at the
neck, opened the door when she heard footsteps on the stairs, and slammed
it to when she saw Christophe. There were several flats on each landing,
and through the ill-fitting doors Christophe could hear children romping
and squalling. The place was a swarming heap of dull base creatures, living
as it were on shelves, one above the other, in that low-storied house,
built round a narrow, evil-smelling yard. Christophe was disgusted, and
wondered what lusts and covetous desires could have drawn so many creatures
to this place, far from the fields, where at least there is air enough for
all, and what it could profit them in the end to be in the city of Paris,
where all their lives they were condemned to live in such a sepulcher.

He reached Olivier's landing. A knotted piece of string was his bell-pull.
Christophe tugged at it so mightily that at the noise several doors on the
staircase were half opened. Olivier came to the door. Christophe was struck
by the careful simplicity of his dress: and the neatness of it, which at
any other time would have been little to his liking, was in that place an
agreeable surprise: in such an atmosphere of foulness there was something
charming and healthy about it. And at once he felt just as he had done the
night before when he gazed into Olivier's clear, honest eyes. He held out
his hand: but Olivier was overcome with shyness, and murmured:

"You.... You here!"

Christophe was engrossed in catching at the lovable quality of the man as
it was revealed to him in that fleeting moment of embarrassment, and he
only smiled in answer. He moved forward and forced Olivier backward, and
entered the one room in which he both slept and worked. An iron bedstead
stood against the wall near the window; Christophe noticed the pillows
heaped up on the bolster. There were three chairs, a black-painted table, a
small piano, bookshelves and books, and that was all. The room was cramped,
low, ill-lighted: and yet there was in it a ray of the pure light that
shone in the eyes of its owner. Everything was clean and tidy, as though
a woman's hands had dealt with it: and a few roses in a vase brought
spring-time into the room, the walls of which were decorated with
photographs of old Florentine pictures.

"So.... You.... You have come to see me?" said Olivier warmly.

"Good Lord, I had to!" said Christophe. "You would never have come to me?"

"You think not?" replied Olivier.

Then, quickly:

"Yes, you are right. But it would not be for want of thinking of it."

"What would have stopped you?"

"Wanting to too much."

"That's a fine reason!"

"Yes. Don't laugh. I was afraid you would not want it as much as I."

"A lot that's worried me! I wanted to see you, and here I am. If it bores
you, I shall know at once."

"You will have to have good eyes."

They smiled at each other.

Olivier went on:

"I was an ass last night. I was afraid I might have offended you. My
shyness is absolutely a disease: I can't get a word out."

"I shouldn't worry about that. There are plenty of talkers in your country:
one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasionally, even though
it be only from shyness and in spite of himself."

Christophe laughed and chuckled over his own gibe.

"Then you have come to see me because I can be silent?"

"Yes. For your silence, the sort of silence that is yours. There are all
sorts: and I like yours, and that's all there is to say."

"But how could you sympathize with me? You hardly saw me."

"That's my affair. It doesn't take me long to make up my mind. When I see a
face that I like in the crowd, I know what to do: I go after it; I simply
have to know the owner of it."

"And don't you ever make mistakes when you go after them?"

"Often."

"Perhaps you have made a mistake this time."

"We shall see."

"Ah! In that case I'm done! You terrify me. If I think you are watching me,
I shall lose what little wits I have."

With fond and eager curiosity Christophe watched the sensitive, mobile
face, which blushed and went pale by turns. Emotion showed fleeting across
it like the shadows of clouds on a lake.

"What a nervous youngster it is!" he thought. "He is like a woman."

He touched his knee.

"Come, come!" he said. "Do you think I should come to you with weapons
concealed about me? I have a horror of people who practise their psychology
on their friends. I only ask that we should both be open and sincere, and
frankly and without shame, and without being afraid of committing ourselves
finally to anything or of any sort of contradiction, be true to what we
feel. I ask only the right to love now, and next minute, if needs must, to
be out of love. There's loyalty and manliness in that, isn't there?"

Olivier gazed at him with serious eyes, and replied:

"No doubt. It is the more manly part, and you are strong enough. But I
don't think I am."

"I'm sure you are," said Christophe; "but in a different way. And then,
I've come just to help you to be strong, if you want to be so. For what I
have just said gives me leave to go on and say, with more frankness than I
should otherwise have had, that--without prejudice for to-morrow--I love
you."

Olivier blushed hotly. He was struck dumb with embarrassment, and could not
speak.

Christophe glanced round the room.

"It's a poor place you live in. Haven't you another room?"

"Only a lumber-room."

"Ugh! I can't breathe. How do you manage to live here?"

"One does it somehow."

"I couldn't--never."

Christophe unbuttoned his waistcoat and took a long breath.

Olivier went and opened the window wide.

"You must be very unhappy in a town, M. Krafft. But there's no danger of
my suffering from too much vitality. I breathe so little that I can live
anywhere. And yet there are nights in summer when even I am hard put to it
to get through. I'm terrified when I see them coming. Then I stay sitting
up in bed, and I'm almost stifled."

Christophe looked at the heap of pillows on the bed, and from them to
Olivier's worn face: and he could see him struggling there in the darkness.

"Leave it," he said. "Why do you stay?"

Olivier shrugged his shoulders and replied carelessly:

"It doesn't matter where I live."

Heavy footsteps padded across the floor above them. In the room below a
shrill argument was toward. And always, without ceasing, the walls were
shaken by the rumbling of the buses in the street.

"And the house!" Christophe went on. "The house reeking of filth, the hot
dirtiness of it all, the shameful poverty--how can you bring yourself to
come back to it night after night? Don't you lose heart with it all? I
couldn't live in it for a moment. I'd rather sleep under an arch."

"Yes. I felt all that at first, and suffered. I was just as disgusted as
you are. When I went for walks as a boy, the mere sight of some of the
crowded dirty streets made me ill. They gave me all sorts of fantastic
horrors, which I dared not speak of. I used to think: 'If there were an
earthquake now, I should be dead, and stay here for ever and ever'; and
that seemed to me the most appalling thing that could happen. I never
thought that one day I should live in one of them of my own free-will, and
that in all probability I shall die there. And then it became easier to put
up with: it had to. It still revolts me: but I try not to think of it. When
I climb the stairs I close my eyes, and stop my ears, and hold my nose, and
shut off all my senses and withdraw utterly into myself. And then, over the
roof there, I can see the tops of the branches of an acacia. I sit here in
this corner so that I don't see anything else: and in the evening when the
wind rustles through them I fancy that I am far away from Paris: and the
mighty roar of a forest has never seemed so sweet to me as the gentle
murmuring of those few frail leaves at certain moments."

"Yes," said Christophe. "I've no doubt that you are always dreaming; but
it's all wrong to waste your fancy in such a struggle against the sordid
things of life, when you might be using it in the creation of other lives."

"Isn't it the common lot? Don't you yourself waste energy in anger and
bitter struggles?"

"That's not the same thing. It's natural to me: what I was born for. Look
at my arms and hands! Fighting is the breath of life to me. But you haven't
any too much strength: that's obvious."

Olivier looked sadly down at his thin wrists, and said:

"Yes. I am weak: I always have been. But what can I do? One must live?"

"How do you make your living?"

"I teach."

"Teach what?"

"Everything--Latin, Greek, history. I coach for degrees. And I lecture on
Moral Philosophy at the Municipal School."

"Lecture on what?"

"Moral Philosophy."

"What in thunder is that? Do they teach morality in French schools?"

Olivier smiled:

"Of course."

"Is there enough in it to keep you talking for ten minutes?"

"I have to lecture for twelve hours a week."

"Do you teach them to do evil, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"There's no need for so much talk to find out what good is."

"Or to leave it undiscovered either."

"Good gracious, yes! Leave it undiscovered. There are worse ways of doing
good than knowing nothing about it. Good isn't a matter of knowledge: it's
a matter of action. It's only your neurasthenics who go haggling about
morality: and the first of all moral laws is not to be neurasthenic. Rotten
pedants! They are like cripples teaching people how to walk."

"But they don't do their talking for such as you. You _know_: but there are
so many who do not know!"

"Well, let them crawl like children until they learn how to walk by
themselves. But whether they go on two legs or on all fours, the first
thing, the only thing you can ask is that they should walk somehow."

He was prowling round and round and up and down the room, though less than
four strides took him across it. He stopped in front of the piano, opened
it, turned over the pages of some music, touched the keys, and said:

"Play me something."

Olivier started.

"I!" he said. "What an idea!"

"Madame Roussin told me you were a good musician. Come: play me something."

"With you listening? Oh!" he said, "I should die."

The sincerity and simplicity with which he spoke made Christophe laugh:
Olivier, too, though rather bashfully.

"Well," said Christophe, "is that a reason for a Frenchman?"

Olivier still drew back.

"But why? Why do you want me to?"

"I'll tell you presently. Play!"

"What?"

"Anything you like."

Olivier sat down at the piano with a sigh, and, obedient to the imperious
will of the friend who had sought him out, he began to play the beautiful
_Adagio in B Minor_ of Mozart. At first his fingers trembled so that he
could hardly make them press down the keys: but he regained courage little
by little: and, while he thought he was but repeating Mozart's utterance,
he unwittingly revealed his inmost heart. Music is an indiscreet confidant:
it betrays the most secret thoughts of its lovers to those who love it.
Through the godlike scheme of the _Adagio_ of Mozart Christophe could
perceive the invisible lines of the character, not of Mozart, but of his
new friend sitting there by the piano: the serene melancholy, the timid,
tender smile of the boy, so nervous, so pure, so full of love, so ready
to blush. But he had hardly reached the end of the air, the topmost point
where the melody of sorrowful love ascends and snaps, when a sudden
irrepressible feeling of shame and modesty overcame Olivier, so that he
could not go on: his fingers would not move, and his voice failed him. His
hands fell by his side, and he said:

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.