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Jean Christophe: In Paris

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"The gods of the _Iliad_ are men, beautiful, mighty, vicious: I can
understand them," said Olivier. "I like them or dislike them: even when I
dislike them I still love them: I am in love with them. More than once,
with Patroclus, I have kissed the lovely feet of Achilles as he lay
bleeding. But the God of the Bible is an old Jew, a maniac, a monomaniac, a
raging madman, who spends his time in growling and hurling threats, and
howling like an angry wolf, raving to himself in the confinement of that
cloud of his. I don't understand him. I don't love him; his perpetual
curses make my head ache, and his savagery fills me with horror:

"_The burden of Moab...._

"_The burden of Damascus...._

"_The burden of Babylon...._

"_The burden of Egypt...._

"_The burden of the desert of the sea...._

"_The burden of the valley of vision...._

"He is a lunatic who thinks himself judge, public prosecutor, and
executioner rolled into one, and, even in the courtyard of his prison, he
pronounces sentence of death on the flowers and the pebbles. One is
stupefied by the tenacity of his hatred, which fills the book with bloody
cries ...--'a cry of destruction,... the cry is gone round about the
borders of Moab: the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof
unto Beerelim....'

"Every now and then he takes a rest, and looks round on his massacres, and
the little children done to death, and the women outraged and butchered:
and he laughs like one of the captains of Joshua, feasting after the sack
of a town:

"'_And the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people a feast of fat things;
a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the
lees well refined.... The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is
made fat with fatness, with the fat of the kidneys of rams...._'

"But worst of all is the perfidy with which this God sends his prophet to
make men blind, so that in due course he may have a reason for making them
suffer:

"'_Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy and shut
their eyes: lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and
understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.--Lord, how
long?--Until the cities be wasted without inhabitants, and the houses
without men, and the land be utterly desolate...._' Oh! I have never found
a man so evil as that!...

"I'm not so foolish as to deny the force of the language. But I cannot
separate thought and form: and if I do occasionally admire this Hebrew God,
it is with the same sort of admiration that I feel for a viper, or a
...--(I'm trying in vain to find a Shakespearean monster as an example: I
can't find one: even Shakespeare never begat such a hero of Hatred--saintly
and virtuous Hatred). Such a book is a terrible thing. Madness is always
contagious. And that particular madness is all the more dangerous inasmuch
as it sets up its own murderous pride as an instrument of purification.
England makes me shudder when I think that her people have for centuries
been nourished on no other fare.... I'm glad to think that there is the
dike of the Channel between them and me. I shall never believe that a
nation is altogether civilized as long as the Bible is its staple food."

"In that case," said Christophe, "you will have to be just as much afraid
of me, for I get drunk on it. It is the very marrow of a race of lions.
Stout hearts are those which feed on it. Without the antidote of the Old
Testament the Gospel is tasteless and unwholesome fare. The Bible is the
bone and sinew of nations with the will to live. A man must fight, and he
must hate."

"I hate hatred," said Olivier.

"I only wish you did!" retorted Christophe.

"You're right. I'm too weak even for that. What would you? I can't help
seeing the arguments in favor of my enemies. And I say to myself over and
over again, like Chardin: 'Gentleness! Gentleness!'...."

"What a silly sheep you are!" said Christophe. "But whether you like it or
not, I'm going to make you leap the ditch you're shying at, and I'm going
to drag you on and beat the big drum for you."

* * * * *

In the upshot he took Olivier's affairs in hand and set out to do battle
for him. His first efforts were not very successful. He lost his temper at
the very outset, and did his friend much harm by pleading his cause: he
recognized what he had done very quickly, and was in despair at his own
clumsiness.

Olivier did not stand idly by. He went and fought for Christophe. In spite
of his fear and dislike of fighting, in spite of his lucid and ironical
mind, which scorned any sort of exaggeration in word and deed, when it came
to defending Christophe he was far more violent than anybody else, and even
than Christophe himself. He lost his head. Love makes a man irrational, and
Olivier was no exception to the rule.--However, he was cleverer than
Christophe. Though he was uncompromising and clumsy in handling his own
affairs, when it came to promoting Christophe's success he was politic and
even tricky: he displayed an energy and ingenuity well calculated to win
support: he succeeded in interesting various musical critics and Mæcenases
in Christophe, though he would have been utterly ashamed to approach them
with his own work.

In spite of everything they found it very difficult to better their lot.
Their love for each other made them do many stupid things. Christophe got
into debt over getting a volume of Olivier's poems published secretly, and
not a single copy was sold. Olivier induced Christophe to give a concert,
and hardly anybody came to it. Faced with the empty hall, Christophe
consoled himself bravely with Handel's quip: "Splendid! My music will sound
all the better...." But these bold attempts did not repay the money they
cost: and they would go back to their rooms full of indignation at the
indifference of the world.

* * * * *

In their difficulties the only man who came to their aid was a Jew, a man
of forty, named Taddée Mooch. He kept an art-photograph shop: but although
he was interested in his trade and brought much taste and skill to bear on
it, he was interested in so many things outside it that he was apt to
neglect his business for them. When he did attend to his business he was
chiefly engaged in perfecting technical devices, and he would lose his head
over new reproduction processes, which, in spite of their ingenuity, hardly
ever succeeded, and always cost him a great deal of money. He was a
voracious reader, and was always hard on the heels of every new idea in
philosophy, art, science, and politics: he had an amazing knack of finding
out men of originality and independence of character: it was as though he
answered to their magnetism. He was a sort of connecting-link between
Olivier's friends, who were all as isolated as himself, and all working in
their several directions. He used to go from one to the other, and through
him there was established between them a complete circuit of ideas, though
neither he nor they had any notion of it.

When Olivier first proposed to introduce him to Christophe, Christophe
refused: he was sick of his experiences with the tribe of Israel. Olivier
laughed and insisted on it, saying that he knew no more of the Jews than he
did of France. At last Christophe consented, but when he saw Taddée Mooch
he made a face. In appearance Mooch was extraordinarily Jewish: he was the
Jew as he is drawn by those who dislike the race: short, bald, badly built,
with a greasy nose and heavy eyes goggling behind large spectacles: his
face was hidden by a rough, black, scrubby beard: he had hairy hands, long
arms, and short bandy legs: a little Syrian Baal. But he had such a kindly
expression that Christophe was touched by it. Above all, he was very
simple, and never talked too much. He never paid exaggerated compliments,
but just dropped the right word, pat. He was very eager to be of service,
and before any kindness was asked of him it would be done. He came often,
too often; and he almost always brought good news: work for one or other of
them, a commission for an article or a lecture for Olivier, or
music-lessons for Christophe. He never stayed long. It was a sort of
affectation with him never to intrude. Perhaps he saw Christophe's
irritation, for his first impulse was always towards an ejaculation of
impatience when he saw the bearded face of the Carthaginian idol,--(he used
to call him "Moloch")--appear round the door: but the next moment it would
be gone, and he would feel nothing but gratitude for his perfect kindness.

Kindness is not a rare quality with the Jews: of all the virtues it is the
most readily admitted among them, even when they do not practise it.
Indeed, in most of them it remains negative or neutral: indulgence,
indifference, dislike for hurting anybody, ironic tolerance. With Mooch it
was an active passion. He was always ready to devote himself to some cause
or person: to his poor co-religionists, to the Russian refugees, to the
oppressed of every nation, to unfortunate artists, to the alleviation of
every kind of misfortune, to every generous cause. His purse was always
open: and however thinly lined it might be, he could always manage to
squeeze a mite out of it: when it was empty he would squeeze the mite out
of some one else's purse: if he could do any one a service no pains were
too great for him to take, no distance was too far for him to go. He did it
simply--with exaggerated simplicity. He was a little apt to talk too much
about his simplicity and sincerity: but the great thing was that he was
both simple and sincere.

Christophe was torn between irritation and sympathy with Mooch, and one day
he said an innocently cruel thing, though he said it with the air of a
spoiled child. Mooch's kindness had touched him, and he took his hands
affectionately and said:

"What a pity!... What a pity it is that you are a Jew!"

Olivier started and blushed, as though the shaft had been leveled at
himself. He was most unhappy, and tried to heal the wound his friend had
dealt.

Mooch smiled, with sad irony, and replied calmly:

"It is an even greater misfortune to be a man."

To Christophe the remark was nothing but the whim of a moment. But its
pessimism cut deeper than he imagined: and Olivier, with his subtle
perception, felt it intuitively. Beneath the Mooch of their acquaintance
there was another different Mooch, who was in many ways exactly the
opposite. His apparent nature was the result of a long struggle with his
real nature. Though he was apparently so simple he had a distorted mind:
when he gave way to it he was forced to complicate simple things and to
endow his most genuine feelings with a deliberately ironical character.
Though he was apparently modest and, if anything, too humble, at heart he
was proud, and knew it, and strove desperately to whip it out of himself.
His smiling optimism, his incessant activity, his perpetual business in
helping others, were the mask of a profound nihilism, a deadly despondency
which dared not see itself face to face. Mooch made a show of immense faith
in all sorts of things: in the progress of humanity, in the future of the
pure Jewish spirit, in the destiny of France, the soldier of the new
spirit--(he was apt to identify the three causes). Olivier was not taken in
by it, and used to say to Christophe:

"At heart he believes in nothing."

With all his ironical common sense and calmness Mooch was a neurasthenic
who dared not look upon the void within himself. He had terrible moments
when he felt his nothingness: sometimes he would wake suddenly in the
middle of the night screaming with terror. And he would cast about for
things to do, like a drowning man clinging to a life-buoy.

It is a costly privilege to be a member of a race which is exceeding old.
It means the bearing of a frightful burden of the past, trials and
tribulations, weary experience, disillusion of mind and heart,--all the
ferment of immemorial life, at the bottom of which is a bitter deposit of
irony and boredom.... Boredom, the immense boredom of the Semites, which
has nothing in common with our Aryan boredom, though that, too, makes us
suffer; while it is at least traceable to definite causes, and vanishes
when those causes cease to exist: for in most cases it is only the result
of regret that we cannot have what we want. But in some of the Jews the
very source of joy and life is tainted with a deadly poison. They have no
desire, no interest in anything: no ambition, no love, no pleasure. Only
one thing continues to exist, not intact, but morbid and fine-drawn, in
these men uprooted from the East, worn out by the amount of energy they
have had to give out for centuries, longing for quietude, without having
the power to attain it: thought, endless analysis, which forbids the
possibility of enjoyment, and leaves them no courage for action. The most
energetic among them set themselves parts to play, and play them, rather
than act on their own account. It is a strange thing that in many of
them--and not in the least intelligent or the least seriously minded--this
lack of interest in life prompts the impulse, or the unavowed desire, to
act a part, to play at life,--the only means they know of living!

Mooch was an actor after his fashion. He rushed about to try to deaden his
senses. But whereas most people only bestir themselves for selfish reasons,
he was restlessly active in procuring the happiness of others. His devotion
to Christophe was both touching and a bore. Christophe would snub him and
then immediately be sorry for it. But Mooch never bore him any ill-will.
Nothing abashed him. Not that he had any ardent affection for Christophe.
It was devotion that he loved rather than the men to whom he devoted
himself. They were only an excuse for doing good, for living.

He labored to such effect that he managed to induce Hecht to publish
Christophe's _David_ and some other compositions. Hecht appreciated
Christophe's talent, but he was in no hurry to reveal it to the world. It
was not until he saw that Mooch was on the point of arranging the
publication at his own expense with another firm that he took the
initiative out of vanity.

And on another occasion, when things were very serious and Olivier was ill
and they had no money, Mooch thought of going to Félix Weil, the rich
archeologist, who lived in the same house. Mooch and Weil were acquainted,
but had little sympathy with one another. They were too different: Mooch's
restlessness and mysticism and revolutionary ideas and "vulgar" manners,
which, perhaps, he exaggerated, were an incentive to the irony of Félix
Weil, with his calm, mocking temper, his distinguished manners and
conservative mind. They had only one thing in common: they were both
equally lacking in any profound interest in action: and if they did indulge
in action, it was not from faith, but from their tenacious and mechanical
vitality. But neither was prepared to admit it: they preferred to give
their minds to the parts they were playing, and their different parts had
very little in common. And so Mooch was quite coldly received by Weil: when
he tried to interest him in the artistic projects of Olivier and
Christophe, he was brought up sharp against a mocking skepticism. Mooch's
perpetual embarkations for one Utopia or another were a standing joke in
Jewish society, where he was regarded as a dangerous visionary. But on this
occasion, as on so many others, he was not put out: and he went on speaking
about the friendship of Christophe and Olivier until he roused Weil's
interest. He saw that and went on.

He had touched a responsive chord. The friendless solitary old man
worshiped friendship: the one great love of his life had been a friendship
which he had left behind him: it was his inward treasure: when he thought
of it he felt a better man. He had founded institutions in his friend's
name, and had dedicated his books to his memory. He was touched by what
Mooch told him of the mutual tenderness of Christophe and Olivier. His own
story had been something like it. His lost friend had been a sort of elder
brother to him, a comrade of youth, a guide whom he had idolized. That
friend had been one of those young Jews, burning with intelligence and
generous ardor, who suffer from the hardness of their surroundings, and set
themselves to uplift their race, and, through their race, the world, and
burn hotly into flame, and, like a torch of resin, flare for a few hours
and then die. The flame of his life had kindled the apathy of young Weil.
He had raised him from the earth. While his friend was alive Weil had
marched by his side in the shining light of his stoical faith,--faith in
science, in the power of the spirit, in a future happiness,--the rays of
which were shed upon everything with which that messianic soul came in
contact. When he was left alone, in his weakness and irony, Weil fell from
the heights of that idealism into the sands of that Book of Ecclesiastes,
which exists in the mind of every Jew and saps his spiritual vitality. But
he had never forgotten the hours spent in the light with his friend:
jealously he guarded its clarity, now almost entirely faded. He had never
spoken of him to a soul, not even to his wife, whom he loved: it was a
sacred thing. And the old man, who was considered prosaic and dry of heart,
and nearing the end of his life, used to say to himself the bitter and
tender words of a Brahmin of ancient India:

"_The poisoned tree of the world puts forth two fruits sweeter than the
waters of the fountain of life: one is poetry, the other, friendship._"

From that time on he took an interest in Christophe and Olivier. He knew
how proud they were, and got Mooch, without saying anything, to send him
Olivier's volume of poems, which had just been published: and, without the
two friends having anything to do with it, without their having even the
smallest idea of what he was up to, he managed to get the Academy to award
the book a prize, which came in the nick of time to help them in their
difficulty.

When Christophe discovered that such unlooked-for assistance came from a
man of whom he was inclined to think ill, he regretted all the unkind
things he had said or thought of him: he gulped down his dislike of
calling, and went and thanked him. His good intentions met with no reward.
Old Weil's irony was excited by Christophe's young enthusiasm, although he
tried hard to conceal it from him, and they did not get on at all well.

That very day, when Christophe returned, irritated, though still grateful,
to his attic, after his interview with Weil, he found Mooch there, doing
Olivier some fresh act of service, and also a review containing a
disparaging article on his music by Lucien Lévy-Coeur;--it was not written
in a vein of frank criticism, but took the insultingly kindly line of
chaffing him and banteringly considering him alongside certain third-rate
and fourth-rate musicians whom he loathed.

"You see," said Christophe to Olivier, after Mooch had gone, "we always
have to deal with Jews, nothing but Jews! Perhaps we're Jews ourselves? Do
tell me that we're not. We seem to attract them. We're always knocking up
against them, both friends and foes."

"The reason is," said Olivier, "that they are more intelligent than the
rest. The Jews are almost the only people in France to whom a free man can
talk of new and vital things. The rest are stuck fast in the past among
dead things. Unfortunately the past does not exist for the Jews, or at
least it is not the same for them as for us. With them we can only talk
about the things of to-day: with our fellow-countrymen we can only discuss
the things of yesterday. Look at the activity of the Jews in every kind of
way: commerce, industry, education, science, philanthropy, art...."

"Don't let's talk about art," said Christophe.

"I don't say that I am always in sympathy with what they do: very often I
detest it. But at least they are alive, and can understand men who are
alive. It is all very well for us to criticise and make fun of the Jews,
and speak ill of them. We can't do without them."

"Don't exaggerate," said Christophe jokingly. "I could do without them
perfectly."

"You might go on living perhaps. But what good would that be to you if your
life and your work remained unknown, as they probably would without the
Jews? Would the members of your own religion come to your assistance? The
Catholic Church lets the best of its members perish without raising a hand
to help them. Men who are religious from the very bottom of their hearts,
men who give their lives in the defense of God,--if they have dared to
break away from Catholic dominion and shake off the authority of Rome,--at
once find the unworthy mob who call themselves Catholic not only
indifferent, but hostile: they condemn them to silence, and abandon them to
the mercy of the common enemy. If a man of independent spirit, be he never
so great and Christian at heart, is not a Christian as a matter of
obedience, it is nothing to the Catholics that in him is incarnate all that
is most pure and most truly divine in their faith. He is not of the pack,
the blind and deaf sect which refuses to think for itself. He is cast out,
and the rest rejoice to see him suffering alone, torn to pieces by the
enemy, and crying for help to those who are his brothers, for whose faith
he is done to death. In the Catholicism of to-day there is a horrible,
death-dealing power of inertia. It would find it far easier to forgive its
enemies than those who wish to awake it and restore it to life.... My dear
Christophe, where should we be, and what should we do--we, who are
Catholics by birth, we, who have shaken free, without the little band of
free Protestants and Jews? The Jews in Europe of to-day are the most active
and living agents of good and evil. They carry hither and thither the
pollen of thought. Have not your worst enemies and your friends from the
very beginning been Jews?"

"That's true," said Christophe. "They have given me encouragement and help,
and said things to me which have given me new life for the struggle, by
showing me that I was understood. No doubt very few of my friends have
remained faithful to me: their friendship was but a fire of straw. No
matter! That fleeting light is a great thing in darkness. You are right: we
mustn't be ungrateful."

"We must not be stupid, either," replied Olivier. "We must not mutilate our
already diseased civilization by lopping off some of its most living
branches. If we were so unfortunate as to have the Jews driven from Europe,
we should be left so poor in intelligence and power for action that we
should be in danger of utter bankruptcy. In France especially, in the
present condition of French vitality, their expulsion would mean a more
deadly drain on the blood of the nation than the expulsion of the
Protestants in the seventeenth century.--No doubt, for the time being, they
do occupy a position out of all proportion to their true merit. They do
take advantage of the present moral and political anarchy, which in no
small degree they help to aggravate, because it suits them, and because it
is natural to them to do so. The best of them, like our friend Mooch, make
the mistake, in all sincerity, of identifying the destiny of France with
their Jewish dreams, which are often more dangerous than useful. But you
can't blame them for wanting to build France in their own image: it means
that they love the country. If their love becomes a public danger, all we
have to do is to defend ourselves and keep them in their place, which, in
France, is the second. Not that I think their race inferior to ours:--(all
these questions of the supremacy of races are idiotic and disgusting).--But
we cannot admit that a foreign race which has not yet been fused into our
own, can possibly know better than we do what suits us. The Jews are well
off in France: I am glad of it: but they must not think of turning France
into Judea! An intelligent and strong Government which was able to keep the
Jews in their place would make them one of the most useful instruments for
the building of the greatness of France: and it would be doing both them
and us a great service. These hypernervous, restless, and unsettled
creatures need the restraint of law and the firm hand of a just master, in
whom there is no weakness, to curb them. The Jews are like women: admirable
when they are reined in; but, with the Jews as with women, their use of
mastery is an abomination, and those who submit to it present a pitiful and
absurd spectacle."

* * * * *

In spite of their love for each other, and the intuitive knowledge that
came with it, there were many things which Christophe and Olivier could not
understand in each other, things, too, which shocked them. In the beginning
of their friendship, when each tried instinctively only to suffer the
existence of those qualities in himself which were most like the qualities
of his friend, they never remarked them. It was only gradually that the
different aspects of their two nationalities appeared on the surface again,
more sharply defined than before: for being in contrast, each showed the
other up. There were moments of difficulty, moments when they clashed,
which, with all their fond indulgence, they could not altogether avoid.

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