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Jean Christophe: In Paris

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"You're very polite!" she would answer with a laugh.

Her healthy nature recoiled as much as Christophe's from philandering
friendship, that form of sentimentality dear to equivocal men and women,
who are always juggling with their emotions. They were just comrades one to
another.

He asked her one day what she was doing in the afternoons, when he saw her
sitting in the garden with her work on her knees, never touching it, and
not stirring for hours together. She blushed, and protested that it was not
a matter of hours, but only a matter of a few minutes, perhaps a quarter of
an hour, during which she "went on with her story."

"What story?"

"The story I am always telling myself."

"You tell yourself stories? Oh, tell them to me!"

She told him that he was too curious. She would only go so far as to
intimate that they were stories of which she was not the heroine.

He was surprised at that:

"If you are going to tell yourself stories, it seems to me that it would be
more natural if you told your own story with embellishments, and lived in a
happier dream-life."

"I couldn't," she said. "If I did that, I should become desperate."

She blushed again at having revealed even so much of her inmost thoughts:
and she went on:

"Besides, when I am in the garden and a gust of wind reaches me, I am
happy. Then the garden becomes alive for me. And when the wind blusters and
comes from a great distance, he tells me so many things!"

In spite of her reserve, Christophe could see the hidden depths of
melancholy that lay behind her good-humor, and the restless activity which,
as she knew perfectly well, led nowhere. Why did she not try to break away
from her condition and emancipate herself? She would have been so well
fitted for a useful and active life!--But she alleged her affection for her
father, who would not hear of her leaving him. In vain did Christophe tell
her that the old soldier was perfectly vigorous and energetic, and had no
need of her, and that a man of his stamp could quite well be left alone,
and had no right to make a sacrifice of her. She would begin to defend her
father: by a pious fiction she would pretend that it was not her father
who was forcing her to stay, but she herself who could not bear to leave
him.--And, up to a point, what she said was true. It seemed to have been
accepted from time immemorial by herself, and her fatter, and all their
friends that their life had to be thus and thus, and not otherwise. She
had a married brother, who thought it quite natural that she should devote
her life to their father in his stead. He was entirely wrapped up in his
children. He loved them jealously, and left them no will of their own. His
love for his children was to him, and especially to his wife, a voluntary
bondage which weighed heavily on their life, and cramped all their
movements: his idea seemed to be that as soon as a man has children, his
own life comes to an end, and he has to stop short in his own development:
he was still young, active, and intelligent, and there he was reckoning up
the years he would have still to work before he could retire.--Christophe
saw how these good people were weighed down by the atmosphere of family
affection, which is so deep-rooted in France--deep-rooted, but stifling and
destructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive since
families in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, one
or two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It is
a cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, like a miser clinging
tightly to his hoard of gold.

A fortuitous circumstance gave Christophe a yet greater interest in the
girl, and showed him the full extent of the suppression of the emotions
of the French, their fear of life, of letting themselves go, and claiming
their birthright.

Elsberger, the engineer, had a brother ten years younger than himself,
likewise an engineer. He was a very good fellow, like thousands of others,
of the middle-class, and he had artistic aspirations: he was one of those
people who would like to practise an art, but are afraid of compromising
their reputation and position. As a matter of fact, it is not a very
difficult problem, and most of the artists of to-day have solved it
without any great danger to themselves. But it needs a certain amount of
will-power: and not everybody is capable of even that much expenditure of
energy: such people are not sure enough of wanting what they really want:
and as their position in life grows more assured, they submit and drift
along, without any show of revolt or protest. They cannot be blamed if they
become good citizens instead of bad artists. But their disappointment too
often leaves behind it a secret discontent, a _qualis artifex pereo_, which
as best it can assumes a crust of what is usually called philosophy, and
spoils their lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxieties
have erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of André
Elsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who was
very self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon a
scientific career. André was clever, and quite well equipped for scientific
work--or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough of
being an artist, and he was too sure that he was middle-class: and so,
provisionally at first,--(one knows what that means)--he had bowed to his
brother's wishes: he entered the _Centrale_, high up in the list, and
passed out equally high, and since then he had practised his profession as
an engineer conscientiously, but without being interested in it. Of course,
he had lost the little artistic quality that he had possessed, and he never
spoke of it except ironically.

"And then," he used to say--(Christophe recognized Olivier's pessimistic
tendency in his arguments)--"life is not good enough to make one worry
about a spoiled career. What does a bad poet more or less matter!..."

The brothers were fond of one another: they were of the same stamp morally:
but they did not get on well together. They had both been Dreyfus-mad. But
André was attracted by syndicalism, and was an anti-militarist: and Elie
was a patriot.

From time to time André would visit Christophe without going to see his
brother: and that astonished Christophe: for there was no great sympathy
between himself and André, who used hardly ever to open his mouth except
to gird at something or somebody,--which was very tiresome: and when
Christophe said anything, André would not listen. Christophe made no effort
to conceal the fact that he found his visits a nuisance: but André did not
mind, and seemed not to notice it. At last Christophe found the key to the
riddle one day when he found his visitor leaning out of the window, and
paying much more attention to what was happening in the garden below than
to what he was saying. He remarked upon it, and André was not reluctant to
admit that he knew Mademoiselle Chabran, and that she had something to do
with his visits to Christophe. And, his tongue being, loosed, he confessed
that he had long been attached to the girl, and perhaps something more than
that: the Elsbergers had long ago been in close touch with the Chabrans:
but, though they had been very intimate, politics and recent events
had separated them: and thereafter they saw very little of each other.
Christophe did not disguise his opinion that it was an idiotic state of
things. Was it impossible for people to think differently, and yet to
retain their mutual esteem? André said he thought it was, and protested
that he was very broad-minded: but he would not admit the possibility of
tolerance in certain questions, concerning which, he said, he could not
admit any opinion different from his own: and he instanced the famous
Affair. On that, as usual, he became wild. Christophe knew the sort of
thing that happened in that connection, and made no attempt to argue: but
he; asked whether the Affair was never going to come to an end, or whether
its curse was to go on and on to the end of time, descending even unto the
third and fourth generation. André began to laugh: and without answering
Christophe, he fell to tender praise of Céline Chabran, and protested
against her father's selfishness, who thought it quite natural that she
should be sacrificed to him.

"Why don't you marry her," asked Christophe, "if you love her and she loves
you?"

André said mournfully that Céline was clerical. Christophe asked what he
meant by that. André replied that he meant that she was religious, and had
vowed a sort of feudal service to God and His bonzes.

"But how does that affect you?"

"I don't want to share my wife with any one."

"What! You are jealous even of your wife's ideas? Why, you're more selfish
even than the Commandant!"

"It's all very well for you to talk: would you take a woman who did not
love music?"

"I have done so."

"How can a man and a woman live together if they don't think the same?"

"Don't you worry about what you think! Ah! my dear fellow, ideas count for
so little when one loves. What does it matter to me whether the woman I
love cares for music as much as I do? She herself is music to me! When a
man has the luck, as you have, to find a dear girl whom he loves, and she
loves him, she must believe what she likes, and he must believe what he
likes! When all is said and done, what do your ideas amount to? There is
only one truth in the world, there is only one God: love."

"You speak like a poet. You don't see life as it is. I know only too many
marriages which have suffered from such a want of union in thought."

"Those husbands and wives did not love each other enough. You have to know
what you want."

"Wanting does not do everything in life. Even if I wanted to marry
Mademoiselle Chabran, I couldn't."

"I'd like to know why."

André spoke of his scruples: his position was not assured: he had no
fortune and no great health. He was wondering whether he had the right to
marry in such circumstances. It was a great responsibility. Was there not a
great risk of bringing unhappiness on the woman he loved, and himself,--not
to mention any children there might be?... It was better to wait--or give
up the idea.

Christophe shrugged his shoulders.

"That's a fine sort of love! If she loves you, she will be happy in her
devotion to you. And as for the children, you French people are absurd. You
would like only to bring them into the world when you are sure of turning
them out with comfortable private means, so that they will have nothing to
suffer and nothing to fear.... Good Lord! That's nothing to do with you:
your business is only to give them life, love of life, and courage to
defend it. The rest ... whether they live or die ... is the common lot. Is
it better to give up living than to take the risks of life?"

The sturdy confidence which emanated from Christophe affected André, but
did not change his mind. He said:

"Yes, perhaps, that is true...."

But he stopped at that. Like all the rest, his will and power of action
seemed to be paralyzed.

* * * * *

Christophe had set himself to fight the inertia which he found In most
of his French friends, oddly coupled with laborious and often feverish
activity. Almost all the people he met in the various middle-class houses
which he visited were discontented. They had almost all the same disgust
with the demagogues and their corrupt ideas. In almost all there was the
same sorrowful and proud consciousness of the betrayal of the genius of
their race. And it was by no means the result of any personal rancor nor
the bitterness of men and classes beaten and thrust out of power and active
life, or discharged officials, or unemployed energy, nor that of an old
aristocracy which has returned to its estates, there to die in hiding like
a wounded lion. It was a feeling of moral revolt, mute, profound, general:
it was to be found everywhere, in a greater or less degree, in the army, in
the magistracy, in the University, in the officers, and in every vital
branch of the machinery of government. But they took no active measures.
They were discouraged in advance: they kept on saying:

"There is nothing to be done:"

or

"Let us try not to think of it."

Fearfully they dodged anything sad in their thoughts and conversation: and
they took refuge in their home life.

If they had been content to refrain only from political action! But even
in their daily lives these good people had no interest in doing anything
definite. They put up with the degrading, haphazard contact with horrible
people whom they despised, because they could not take the trouble to fight
against them, thinking that any such revolt must of necessity be useless.
Why, for instance, should artists, and, in particular, the musicians
with whom Christophe was most in touch, unprotestingly put up with the
effrontery of the scaramouches of the Press, who laid down the law for
them? There were absolute idiots among them, whose ignorance _in omni re
scibili_ was proverbial, though they were none the less invested with
a sovereign authority _in omni re scibili_. They did not even take the
trouble to write their articles and books: they had secretaries, poor
starving creatures, who would have sold their souls, if they had had such
things, for bread or women. There was no secret about it in Paris. And
yet they went on riding their high horse and patronizing the artists.
Christophe used to roar with anger sometimes when he read their articles.

"They have no heart!" he would say. "Oh! the cowards!"

"Who are you screaming at?" Olivier would ask. "The idiots of the
market-place?"

"No. The honest men. These rascals are plying their trade: they lie, they
steal, they rob and murder. But it is the others--those who despise them
and yet let them go on--that I despise a thousand times more. If their
colleagues on the Press, if honest, cultured critics, and the artists on
whose backs these harlequins strut and poise themselves, did not put up
with it, in silence, from shyness or fear of compromising themselves, or
from some shameful anticipation of mutual service, a sort of secret pact
made with the enemy so that they may be immune from their attacks,--if they
did not let them preen themselves in their patronage and friendship, their
upstart power would soon be killed by ridicule. There's the same weakness
in everything, everywhere. I've met twenty honest men who have said to me
of so-and-so: 'He is a scoundrel.' But there is not one of them who would
not refer to him as his 'dear colleague,' and, if he met him, shake hands
with him.--'There are too many of them!' they say.--Too many cowards. Too
many flabby honest men."

"Eh! What do you want them to do?"

"Be every man his own policeman! What are you waiting for? For Heaven to
take your affairs in hand? Look you, at this very moment. It is three days
now since the snow fell. Your streets are thick with it, and your Paris is
like a sewer of mud. What do you do? You protest against your Municipal
Council for leaving you in such a state of filth. But do you yourselves do
anything to clear it away? Not a bit of it! You sit with your arms folded.
Not one of you has energy enough even to clean the pavement in front of
his house. Nobody does his duty, neither the State nor the members of the
State: each man thinks he has done as much as is expected of him by laying
the blame on some one else. You have become so used, through centuries of
monarchical training, to doing nothing for yourselves that you all seem to
spend your time in star-gazing and waiting for a miracle to happen. The
only miracle that could happen would be if you all suddenly made up your
minds to do something. My dear Olivier, you French people have plenty of
brains and plenty of good qualities: but you lack blood. You most of all.
There's nothing the matter with your mind or your heart. It's your life
that's all wrong. You're sputtering out."

"What can we do? We can only wait for life to return to us."

"You must want life to return to you. You must want to be cured. You must
_want_, use your will! And if you are to do that you must first let in some
pure air into your houses. If you won't go out of doors, then at least
you must keep your houses healthy. You have let the air be poisoned by
the unwholesome vapors of the market-place. Your art and your ideas are
two-thirds adulterated. And you are so dispirited that it hardly occasions
you any surprise, and rouses you to no sort of indignation. Some of these
good people--(it is pitiful to see)--are so cowed that they actually
persuade themselves that they are wrong and the charlatans are right.
Why--even on your _Ésope_ review, in which you profess not to be taken in
by anything,--I have found unhappy young men persuading themselves that
they love an art and ideas for which they have not a vestige of love. They
get drunk on it, without any sort of pleasure, simply because they are told
to do so: and they are dying of boredom--boredom with the monstrous lie of
the whole thing!"

* * * * *

Christophe passed through these wavering and dispirited creatures like a
wind shaking the slumbering trees. He made no attempt to force them to his
way of thinking: he breathed into them energy enough to make them think for
themselves. He used to say:

"You are too humble. The grand enemy is neurasthenia, doubt. A man can and
must be tolerant and human. But no man may doubt what he believes to be
good and true. A man must believe in what he thinks. And he should maintain
what he believes. Whatever our powers may be, we have no right to forswear
them. The smallest creature in the world, like the greatest, has his duty.
And--(though he is not sufficiently conscious of it)--he has also a power.
Why should you think that your revolt will carry so little weight? A sturdy
upright conscience which dares assert itself is a mighty thing. More than
once during the last few years you have seen the State and public opinion
forced to reckon with the views of an honest man, who had no other weapons
but his own moral force, which, with constant courage and tenacity, he had
dared publicly to assert....

"And if you must go on asking what's the good of taking so much trouble,
what's the good of fighting, _what's the good of it all?_... Then, I will
tell you:--Because France is dying, because Europe is perishing--because,
if we did not fight, our civilization, the edifice so splendidly
constructed, at the cost of centuries of labor, by our humanity, would
crumble away. These are not idle words. The country is in danger, our
European mother-country,--and more than any, yours, your own native
country, France. Your apathy is killing her. Your silence is killing her.
Each of your energies as it dies, each of your ideas as it accepts and
surrenders, each of your good intentions as it ends in sterility, every
drop of your blood as it dries up, unused, in your veins, means death to
her.... Up! up! You must live! Or, if you must die, then you must die
fighting like men!"

* * * * *

But the chief difficulty lay not in getting them to do something, but in
getting them to act together. There they were quite unmanageable. The best
of them were the most obstinate, as Christophe found in dealing with the
tenants in his own house: M. Félix Weil, Elsberger, the engineer, and
Commandant Chabran, lived on terms of polite and silent hostility. And yet,
though Christophe knew very little of them, he could see that, underneath
their party and racial labels, they all wanted the same thing.

There were many reasons particularly why M. Weil and the Commandant should
have understood each other. By one of those contrasts common to thoughtful
men, M. Weil, who never left his books and lived only in the life of the
mind, had a passion for all things military. "_We are all cranks_," said
the half-Jew Montaigne, applying to mankind in general what is perfectly
true of certain types of minds, like the type of which M. Weil was an
example. The old intellectual had the craze for Napoleon. He collected
books and relics which brought to life in him the terrible dream of the
Imperial epic. Like many Frenchmen of that crepuscular epoch, he was
dazzled by the distant rays of that glorious sun. He used to go through the
campaigns, fight the battles all over again, and discuss operations: he
was one of those chamber-strategists who swarm in the Academies and the
Universities, who explain Austerlitz and declare how Waterloo should have
been fought. He was the first to make fun of the "Napoleonite" in himself:
it tickled his irony: but none the less he went on reading the splendid
stories with the wild enthusiasm of a child playing a game: he would weep
over certain episodes: and when he realized that he had been weak enough to
shed tears, he would roar with laughter, and call himself an old fool. As a
matter of fact, he was a Napoleonite not so much from patriotism as from
a romantic interest and a platonic love of action. However, he was a good
patriot, and much more attached to France than many an actual Frenchman.
The French anti-Semites are stupid and actively mischievous in casting
their insulting suspicions on the feeling for France of the Jews who have
settled in the country. Outside the reasons by which any family does of
necessity, after a generation or two, become attached to the land of its
adoption, where the blood of the soil has become its own, the Jews have
especial reason to love the nation which in the West stands for the most
advanced ideas of intellectual and moral liberty. They love it because
for a hundred years they have helped to make it so, and its liberty is in
part their work. How, then, should they not defend it against every menace
of feudal reaction? To try--as a handful of unscrupulous politicians and
a herd of wrong-headed people would like--to break the bonds which bind
these Frenchmen by adoption to France, is to play into the hands of that
reaction.

Commandant Chabran was one of those wrong-headed old Frenchmen who are
roused to fury by the newspapers, which make out that every immigrant
into France is a secret enemy, and, in a human, hospitable spirit, force
themselves to suspect and hate and revile them, and deny the brave destiny
of the race, which is the conflux of all the races. Therefore, he thought
it incumbent on him not to know the tenant of the first floor, although he
would have been glad to have his acquaintance. As for M. Weil, he would
have been very glad to talk to the old soldier: but he knew him for a
nationalist, and regarded him with mild contempt.

Christophe had much less reason than the Commandant for being interested in
M. Weil. But he could not bear to hear ill spoken of anybody unjustly. And
he broke many a lance in defence of M. Weil when he was attacked in his
presence.

One day, when the Commandant, as usual, was railing against the prevailing
state of things, Christophe said to him:

"It is your own fault. You all shut yourselves up inside yourselves. When
things in France are not going well, to your way of thinking, you submit to
it and send in your resignation. One would think it was a point of honor
with you to admit yourselves beaten. I've never seen anybody lose a cause
with such absolute delight. Come, Commandant, you have made war; is that
fighting, or anything like it?"

"It is not a question of fighting," replied the Commandant. "We don't fight
against France. In such struggles as these we have to argue, and vote, and
mix with all sorts of knaves and low blackguards: and I don't like it."

"You seem to be profoundly disgusted! I suppose you had to do with knaves
and low blackguards in Africa!"

"On my honor, that did not disgust me nearly so much. Out there one could
always knock them down! Besides, if it's a question of fighting, you need
soldiers. I had my sharpshooters out there. Here I am all alone."

"It isn't that there is any lack of good men."

"Where are they?"

"Everywhere. All round us."

"Well: what are they doing?"

"Just what you're doing. Nothing. They say there's nothing to be done."

"Give me an instance."

"Three, if you like, in this very house."

Christophe mentioned M. Weil,--(the Commandant gave an exclamation),--and
the Elsbergers,--(he jumped in his seat):

"That Jew? Those Dreyfusards?"

"Dreyfusards?" said Christophe. "Well: what does that matter?"

"It is they who have ruined France."

"They love France as much as you do."

"They're mad, mischievous lunatics."

"Can't you be just to your adversaries?"

"I can get on quite well with loyal adversaries who use the same weapons.
The proof of that is that I am here talking to you, Monsieur German. I can
think well of the Germans, although some day I hope to give them back with
interest the thrashing we got from them. But it is not the same thing with
our enemies at home: they use underhand weapons, sophistry, and unsound
ideas, and a poisonous humanitarianism...."

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