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Jean Christophe: In Paris

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




* * * * *

The very day when Christophe received the news, which, after years of
struggling, at last opened up a calmer horizon, with victory in the
distance, he had another letter from Germany.

It was in the afternoon. He was washing his face and talking gaily to
Olivier in the next room, when the housekeeper slipped an envelope under
the door. His mother's writing.... He had been just on the point of writing
to her, and was happy at the thought of being able to tell her of his
success, which would give her so much pleasure. He opened the letter. There
were only a few lines. How shaky the writing was!

_"My dear boy, I am not very well. If it were possible, I
should like to see you again. Love.
"MOTHER."_

Christophe gave a groan. Olivier, who was working in the next room, ran to
him in alarm. Christophe could not speak, and pointed to the letter on the
table. He went on groaning, and did not listen to what Olivier said, who
took in the letter at a glance, and tried to comfort him. He rushed to his
bed, where he had laid his coat, dressed hurriedly, and without waiting to
fasten his collar,--(his hands were trembling too much)--went out. Olivier
caught him up on the stairs: what was he going to do? Go by the first
train? There wasn't one until the evening. It was much better to wait there
than at the station. Had he enough money?--They rummaged through their
pockets, and when they counted all that they possessed between them, it
only amounted to thirty francs. It was September. Hecht, the Arnauds, all
their friends, were out of Paris. They had no one to turn to. Christophe
was beside himself, and talked of going part of the way on foot. Olivier
begged him to wait for an hour, and promised to procure the money somehow.
Christophe submitted: he was incapable of a single idea himself. Olivier
ran to the pawnshop: it was the first time he had been there: for his own
sake, he would much rather have been left with nothing than pledge any of
his possessions, which were all associated with some precious memory: but
it was for Christophe, and there was no time to lose. He pawned his watch,
for which he was advanced a sum much smaller than he had expected. He
had to go home again and fetch some of his books, and take them to a
bookseller. It was a great grief to him, but at the time he hardly thought
of it: his mind could grasp nothing but Christophe's trouble. He returned,
and found Christophe just where he had left him, sitting by his desk, in
a state of collapse. With their thirty francs the sum that Olivier had
collected was more than enough. Christophe was too upset to think of asking
his friend how he had come by it, or whether he had kept enough to live
on during his absence. Olivier did not think of it either: he had given
Christophe all he possessed. He had to look after Christophe, just like a
child, until it was time for him to go. He took him to the station, and
never left him until the train began to move.

In the darkness into which he was rushing Christophe sat wide-eyed, staring
straight in front of him and thinking:

"Shall I be in time?"

He knew that his mother must have been unable to wait for her to write to
him. And in his fevered anxiety he was impatient of the jolting speed of
the express. He reproached himself bitterly for having left Louisa. And
at the same time he felt how vain were his reproaches: he had no power to
change the course of events.

However, the monotonous rocking of the wheels and springs of the carriage
soothed him gradually, and took possession of his mind, like tossing waves
of music dammed back by a mighty rhythm. He lived through all his past
life again from the far-distant days of his childhood: loves, hopes,
disillusion, sorrows,--and that exultant force, that intoxication of
suffering, enjoying, and creating, that delight in blotting out the light
of life and its sublime shadows, which was the soul of his soul, the living
breath of the God within him. Now as he looked back on it all was clear.
His tumultuous desires, his uneasy thoughts, his faults, mistakes, and
headlong struggles, now seemed to him to be the eddy and swirl borne on
by the great current of life towards its eternal goal. He discovered the
profound meaning of those years of trial: each test was a barrier which was
burst by the gathering waters of the river, a passage from a narrow to a
wider valley, which the river would soon fill: always he came to a wider
view and a freer air. Between the rising ground of France and the German
plain the river had carved its way, not without many a struggle, flooding
the meadows, eating away the base of the hills, gathering and absorbing
all the waters of the two countries. So it flowed between them, not to
divide, but to unite them: in it they were wedded. And for the first time
Christophe became conscious of his destiny, which was to carry through the
hostile peoples, like an artery, all the forces of life of the two sides of
the river.--A strange serenity, a sudden calm and clarity, came over him,
as sometimes happens in the darkest hours.... Then the vision faded, and he
saw nothing but the tender, sorrowful face of his old mother.

It was hardly dawn when he reached the little German town. He had to take
care not to be recognized, for there was still a warrant of arrest out
against him. But nobody at the station took any notice of him: the town was
asleep: the houses were shut up and the streets deserted: it was the gray
hour when the lights of the night are put out and the light of day is not
yet come,--the hour when sleep is sweetest and dreams are lit with the pale
light of the east. A little servant-girl was taking down the shutters of
a shop and singing an old German folk-song. Christophe almost choked with
emotion. O Fatherland! Beloved!... He was fain to kiss the earth as he
heard the humble song that set his heart aching in his breast; he felt how
unhappy he had been away from his country, and how much he loved it.... He
walked on, holding his breath. When he saw his old house he was obliged
to stop and put his hand to his lips to keep himself from crying out. How
would he find his mother, his mother whom he had deserted?... He took a
long breath and almost ran to the door. It was ajar. He pushed it open. No
one there ... The old wooden staircase creaked under his footsteps. He went
up to the top floor. The house seemed to be empty. The door of his mother's
room was shut.

Christophe's heart thumped as he laid his hand on the doorknob. And he had
not the strength to open it....

* * * * *

Louisa was alone, in bed, feeling that the end was near. Of her two other
sons, Rodolphe, the business man, had settled in Hamburg, the other,
Ernest, had emigrated to America, and no one knew what had become of him.
There was no one to attend to her except a woman in the house, who came
twice a day to see if Louisa wanted anything, stayed for a few minutes, and
then went about her business: she was not very punctual, and was often late
in coming. To Louisa it seemed quite natural that she should be forgotten,
as it seemed to her quite natural to be ill. She was used to suffering, and
was as patient as an angel. She had heart disease and palpitations, during
which she would think she was going to die: she would lie with her eyes
wide open, and her hands clutching the bedclothes, and the sweat dripping
down her face. She never complained. She knew that it must be so. She was
ready: she had already received the sacrament. She had only one anxiety:
lest God should find her unworthy to enter into Paradise. She endured
everything else in patience.

In a dark corner of her little room, near her pillow, on the wall of the
recess, she had made a little shrine for her relics and trophies: she had
collected the portraits of those who were dear to her: her three children,
her husband, for whose memory she had always preserved her love in its
first freshness, the old grandfather, and her brother, Gottfried: she was
touchingly devoted to all those who had been kind to her, though it were
never so little. On her coverlet, close to her eyes, she had pinned the
last photograph of himself that Christophe had sent her: and his last
letters were under her pillow. She had a love of neatness and scrupulous
tidiness, and it hurt her to know that everything was not perfectly in
order in her room. She listened for the little noises outside which marked
the different moments of the day for her. It was so long since she had
first heard them! All her life had been spent in that narrow space.... She
thought of her dear Christophe. How she longed for him to be there, near
her, just then! And yet she was resigned even to his absence. She was sure
that she would see him again on high. She had only to close her eyes to see
him. She spent days and days, half-unconscious, living in the past....

She would see once more the old house on the banks of the Rhine.... A
holiday.... A superb summer day. The window was open: the white road lay
gleaming under the sun. They could hear the birds singing. Melchior and the
old grandfather were sitting by the front-door smoking, and chatting and
laughing uproariously. Louisa could not see them: but she was glad that
her husband was at home that day, and that grandfather was in such a good
temper. She was in the basement, cooking the dinner: an excellent dinner:
she watched over it as the apple of her eye: there was a surprise: a
chestnut cake: already she could hear the boy's shout of delight.... The
boy, where was he? Upstairs: she could hear him practising at the piano.
She could not make out what he was playing, but she was glad to hear the
familiar tinkling sounds, and to know that he was sitting there with his
grave face.... What a lovely day! The merry jingling bells of a carriage
went by on the road.... Oh! good heavens! The joint! Perhaps it had
been burned while she was looking out of the window! She trembled lest
grandfather, of whom she was so fond, though she was afraid of him,
should be dissatisfied, and scold her.... Thank Heaven! there was no harm
done. There, everything was ready, and the table was laid. She called
Melchior and grandfather. They replied eagerly. And the boy?... He had
stopped playing. His music had ceased a moment ago without her noticing
it....--"Christophe!"... What was he doing? There was not a sound to be
heard. He was always forgetting to come down to dinner: father was going
to scold him. She ran upstairs....--"Christophe!"... He made no sound.
She opened the door of the room where he was practising. No one there.
The room was empty, and the piano was closed.... Louisa was seized with
a sudden panic. What had become of him? The window was open. Oh, Heaven!
Perhaps he had fallen out! Louisa's heart stops. She leans out and looks
down....--"Christophe!"... He is nowhere to be found. She rushes all over
the house. Downstairs grandfather shouts to her: "Come along; don't worry;
he'll come back." She will not go down: she knows that he is there: that
he is hiding for fun, to tease her. Oh, naughty, naughty boy!... Yes, she
is sure of it now: she heard the floor creak: he is behind the door. She
tries to open the door. But the key is gone. The key! She rummages through
a drawer, looking for it in a heap of keys. This one, that.... No, not
that....Ah, that's it!... She cannot fit it into the lock, her hand is
trembling so. She is in such haste: she must be quick. Why? She does not
know, but she knows that she must be quick, and that if she doesn't hurry
she will be too late. She hears Christophe breathing on the other side of
the door.... Oh, bother the key!... At last! The door is opened. A cry of
joy. It is he. He flings his arms round her neck.... Oh, naughty, naughty,
good, darling boy!...

She has opened her eyes. He is there, standing by her.

For some time he had been standing looking at her; so changed she was, with
her face both drawn and swollen, and her mute suffering made her smile of
recognition so infinitely touching: and the silence, and her utter
loneliness.... It rent his heart....

She saw him. She was not surprised. She smiled all that she could not say,
a smile of boundless tenderness. She could not hold out her arms to him,
nor utter a single word. He flung his arms round her neck and kissed her,
and she kissed him: great tears were trickling down her cheeks. She said in
a whisper:

"Wait...."

He saw that she could not breathe.

Neither stirred. She stroked his head with her hands, and her tears went on
trickling down her cheeks. He kissed her hands and sobbed, with his face
hidden in the coverlet.

When her attack had passed she tried to speak. But she could not find
words: she floundered, and he could hardly understand her. But what did
it matter? They loved each other, and were together, and could touch each
other: that was the main thing.--He asked indignantly why she was left
alone. She made excuses for her nurse:

"She cannot always be here: she has her work to do...."

In a faint, broken voice,--she could hardly pronounce her words,--she made
a little hurried request about her burial. She told Christophe to give her
love to her two other sons who had forgotten her. And she seat a message
to Olivier, knowing his love for Christophe. She begged Christophe to tell
him that she sent him her blessing--(and then, timidly, she recollected
herself, and made use of a more humble expression),--"her affectionate
respects...."

Once more she choked. He helped her to sit up in her bed. The sweat dripped
down her face. She forced herself to smile. She told herself that she had
nothing more to wish for in the world, now that she had her son's hand
clasped in hers.

And suddenly Christophe felt her hand stiffen in his. Louisa opened her
lips. She looked at her son with infinite tenderness:--so the end came.




III


In the evening of the same day Olivier arrived. He had been unable to bear
the thought of leaving Christophe alone in those tragic hours of which he
had had only too much experience. He was fearful also of the risks his
friend was running in returning to Germany. He wanted to be with him, to
look after him. But he had no money for the journey. When he returned from
seeing Christophe off he made up his mind to sell the few family jewels
that he had left: and as the pawnshop was closed at that hour, and he
wanted to go by the next train, he was just going out to look for a
broker's shop in the neighborhood when he met Mooch on the stairs. When the
little Jew heard what he was about he was genuinely sorry that Olivier had
not come to him: he would not let Olivier go to the broker's, and made him
accept the necessary money from himself. He was really hurt to think that
Olivier had pawned his watch and sold his books to pay Christophe's fare,
when he would have been only too glad to help them. In his zeal for doing
them a service he even proposed to accompany Olivier to Christophe's home,
and Olivier had great difficulty in dissuading him.

Olivier's arrival was a great boon to Christophe. He had spent the day,
prostrated with grief, alone by his mother's body. The nurse had come,
performed certain offices, and then had gone away and had never come back.
The hours had passed in the stillness of death. Christophe sat there,
as still as the body: he never took his eyes from his mother's face: he
did not weep, he did not think, he was himself as one dead.--Olivier's
wonderful act of friendship brought him back to tears and life.

"_Getrost! Es ist der Schmerzen werth dies haben,
So lang ... mit uns ein treues Auge weint._"

("Courage! Life; is worth all its suffering as long as there are faithful
friends to weep with us.")

* * * * *

They clasped each other in a long embrace, and then sat by the dead woman's
side and talked in whispers. Night had fallen. Christophe, with his arms on
the foot of the bed, told random tales of his childhood's memories, in
which his mother's image ever recurred. He would pause every now and then
for a few minutes, and then go on again, until there came a pause when he
stopped altogether, and his face dropped into his hands: he was utterly
worn out: and when Olivier went up to him, he saw that he was asleep. Then
he kept watch alone. And presently he, too, was overcome by sleep, with his
head leaning against the back of the bed. There was a soft smile on
Louisa's face, and she seemed happy to be watching over her two children.

* * * * *

In the early hours of the morning they were awakened by a knocking at the
door. Christophe opened it. It was a neighbor, a joiner, who had come to
warn Christophe that his presence in the town had been denounced, and
that he must go, if he did not wish to be arrested. Christophe refused to
fly: he would not leave his mother before he had taken her to her last
resting-place. But Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he would
faithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house:
and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him to
the station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sight
of the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echo
of which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Though
it was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet for his whim he
disregarded it. They walked along the steep bank of the Rhine, which
was rushing along in its mighty peace, between its low banks, on to its
mysterious death in the sands of the North. A great iron bridge, looming
in the mist, plunged its two arches, like the halves of the wheels of a
colossal chariot, into the gray waters. In the distance, fading into the
mist, were ships sailing through the meadows along the river's windings. It
was like a dream, and Christophe was lost in it. Olivier brought him back
to his senses, and, taking his arm, led him back to the station. Christophe
submitted: he was like a man walking in his sleep. Olivier put him into the
train as it was just starting, and they arranged to meet next day at the
first French station, so that Christophe should not have to go back to
Paris alone.

The train went, and Olivier returned to the house, where he found two
policemen stationed at the door, waiting for Christophe to come back. They
took Olivier for him, and Olivier did not hurry to explain a mistake so
favorable to Christophe's chances of escape. On the other hand, the police
were not in the least discomfited by their blunder, and showed no great
zest in pursuing the fugitive, and Olivier had an inkling that at bottom
they were not at all sorry that Christophe had gone.

Olivier stayed until the next morning, when Louisa was buried. Christophe's
brother, Rodolphe, the business man, came by one train and left by the
next. That important personage followed the funeral very correctly, and
went immediately it was over, without addressing a single word to Olivier,
either to ask him for news of his brother or to thank him for what he had
done for their mother. Olivier spent a few hours more in the town, where he
did not know a soul, though it was peopled for him with so many familiar
shadows: the boy Christophe, those whom he had loved, and those who had
made him suffer;--and dear Antoinette.... What was there left of all those
human beings, who had lived in the town, the family of the Kraffts, that
now had ceased to be? Only the love for them that lived in the heart of a
stranger.

* * * * *

In the afternoon Olivier met Christophe at the frontier station as they had
arranged. It was a village nestling among wooded hills. Instead of waiting
for the next train to Paris, they decided to go part of the way on foot, as
far as the nearest town. They wanted to be alone. They set out through the
silent woods, through which from a distance there resounded the dull thud
of an ax. They reached a clearing at the top of a hill. Below them, in a
narrow valley, in German territory, there lay the red roof of a forester's
house, and a little meadow like a green lake amid the trees. All around
there stretched the dark-blue sea of the forest wrapped in cloud. Mists
hovered and drifted among the branches of the pines. A transparent veil
softened the lines and blurred the colors of the trees. All was still.
Neither footsteps nor voices were to be heard. A few drops of rain rang
out on the golden copper leaves of the beeches, which had turned to autumn
tints. A little stream ran tinkling over the stones. Christophe and Olivier
stood still and did not stir. Each was dreaming of those whom he had lost.
Olivier was thinking:

"Antoinette, where are you?"

And Christophe:

"What is success to me, now that she is dead?"

But each heard the comforting words of the dead:

"Beloved, weep not for us. Think, not of us. Think of Him...."

They looked at each other, and each ceased to feel his own sorrow, and was
conscious only of that of his friend. They clasped their hands. In both
there was sad serenity. Gently, while no wind stirred, the misty veil was
raised: the blue sky shone forth again. The melting sweetness of the earth
after rain.... So near to us, so tender!... The earth takes us in her arms,
clasps us to her bosom with a lovely loving smile, and says to us:

"Rest. All is well...."

The ache in Christophe's heart was gone. He was like a little child.
For two days he had been living wholly in the memory of his mother, the
atmosphere of her soul: he had lived over again her humble life, with its
days one like unto another, solitary, all spent in the silence of the
childless house, in the thought of the children who had left her: the poor
old woman, infirm but valiant in her tranquil faith, her sweetness of
temper, her smiling resignation, her complete lack of selfishness.... And
Christophe thought also of all the humble creatures he had known. How near
to them he felt in that moment! After all the years of exhausting struggle
in the burning heat of Paris, where ideas and men jostle in the whirl
of confusion, after those tragic days when there had passed over them
the wind of the madness which hurls the nations, cozened by their own
hallucinations, murderously against each other, Christophe felt utterly
weary of the fevered, sterile world, the conflict between egoisms and
ideas, the little groups of human beings deeming themselves above humanity,
the ambitious, the thinkers, the artists who think themselves the brain of
the world, and are no more than a haunting evil dream. And all his love
went out to those thousands of simple souls, of every nation, whose lives
burn away in silence, pure flames of kindness, faith, and sacrifice,--the
heart of the world.

"Yes," he thought, "I know you; once more I have come to you; you are blood
of my blood; you are mine. Like the prodigal son, I left you to pursue the
shadows that passed by the wayside. But I have come back to you; give me
welcome. We are one; one life is ours, both the living and the dead; where
I am there are you also. Now I bear you in my soul, O mother, who bore me.
You, too, Gottfried, and you Schulz, and Sabine, and Antoinette, you are
all in me, part of me, mine. You are my riches, my joy. We will take the
road together. I will never more leave you. I will be your voice. We will
join forces: so we shall attain the goal."

A ray of sunlight shot through the dripping branches of the trees. From the
little field down below there came up the voices of children singing an Old
German folk-song, frank and moving: the singers were three little girls
dancing round the house: and from afar the west wind brought the chiming of
the bells of France, like a perfume of roses....

"O peace, Divine harmony, serene music of the soul set free, wherein are
mingled joy and sorrow, death and life, the nations at war, and the nations
in brotherhood. I love you, I long for you, I shall win you...."

* * * * *

"The night drew down her veil. Starting from his dream, Christophe saw the
faithful face of his friend by his side. He smiled at him and embraced him.
Then they walked on through the forest in silence: and Christophe showed
Olivier the way.

"_Taciti, soli e senza compagnia,
N'andavan I' un dinnanzi, e I' altro dopo,
Come i frati minor vanno per via...._"

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