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Jean Christophe, Vol. I

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe, Vol. I




"Christophe, we must go home," said Leonard.

"Go to hell!" cried Christophe furiously.

"Oh! Christophe! What have I done?" asked Leonard tremulously. He was
dumfounded.

Christophe came to himself.

"Yes. You are right," he said more gently. "I do not know what I'm saying.
Go to God! Go to God!"

He was alone. He was in bitter distress.

"Ah! my God! my God!" he cried, wringing his hands, passionately raising
his face to the dark sky. "Why do I no longer believe? Why can I believe no
more? What has happened to me?..."

The disproportion between the wreck of his faith and the conversation that
he had just had with Leonard was too great: it was obvious that the
conversation had no more brought it about than that the boisterousness of
Amalia's gabble and the pettiness of the people with whom he lived were not
the cause of the upheaval which for some days had been taking place in his
moral resolutions. These were only pretexts. The uneasiness had not come
from without. It was within himself. He felt stirring in his heart
monstrous and unknown things, and he dared not rely on his thoughts to face
the evil. The evil? Was it evil? A languor, an intoxication, a voluptuous
agony filled all his being. He was no longer master of himself. In vain he
sought to fortify himself with his former stoicism. His whole being crashed
down. He had a sudden consciousness of the vast world, burning, wild, a
world immeasurable.... How it swallows up God!

Only for a moment. But the whole balance of his old life was in that moment
destroyed.

* * * * *

There was only one person in the family to whom Christophe paid no
attention: this was little Rosa. She was not beautiful: and Christophe, who
was far from beautiful himself, was very exacting of beauty in others. He
had that calm, cruelty of youth, for which a woman does not exist if she be
ugly,--unless she has passed the age for inspiring tenderness, and there is
then no need to feel for her anything but grave, peaceful, and
quasi-religious sentiments. Rosa also was not distinguished by any especial
gift, although she was not without intelligence: and she was cursed with a
chattering tongue which drove Christophe from her. And he had never taken
the trouble to know her, thinking that there was in her nothing to know;
and the most he ever did was to glance at her.

But she was of better stuff than most girls: she was certainly better than
Minna, whom he had so loved. She was a good girl, no coquette, not at all
vain, and until Christophe came it had never occurred to her that she was
plain, or if it had, it had not worried her: for none of her family
bothered about it. Whenever her grandfather or her mother told her so out
of a desire to grumble, she only laughed: she did not believe it, or she
attached no importance to it; nor did they. So many others, just as plain,
and more, had found some one to love them! The Germans are very mildly
indulgent to physical imperfections: they cannot see them: they are even
able to embellish them, by virtue of an easy imagination which finds
unexpected qualities in the face of their desire to make them like the most
illustrious examples of human beauty. Old Euler would not have needed much
urging to make him declare that his granddaughter had the nose of the Juno
Ludovisi. Happily he was too grumpy to pay compliments: and Rosa,
unconcerned about the shape of her nose, had no vanity except in the
accomplishment, with all the ritual, of the famous household duties. She
had accepted as Gospel all that she had been taught. She hardly ever went
out, and she had very little standard of comparison; she admired her family
naïvely, and believed what they said. She was of an expansive and confiding
nature, easily satisfied, and tried to fall in with the mournfulness of her
home, and docilely used to repeat the pessimistic ideas which she heard.
She was a creature of devotion--always thinking of others, trying to
please, sharing anxieties, guessing at what others wanted; she had a great
need of loving without demanding anything in return. Naturally her family
took advantage of her, although they were kind and loved her: but there is
always a temptation to take advantage of the love of those who are
absolutely delivered into your hands. Her family were so sure of her
attentions that they were not at all grateful for them: whatever she did,
they expected more. And then, she was clumsy; she was awkward and hasty;
her movements were jerky and boyish; she had outbursts of tenderness which
used to end in disaster: a broken glass, a jug upset, a door slammed to:
things which let loose upon her the wrath of everybody in the house. She
was always being snubbed and would go and weep in a corner. Her tears did
not last long. She would soon smile again, and begin to chatter without a
suspicion of rancor against anybody.

Christophe's advent was an important event in her life. She had often heard
of him. Christophe had some place in the gossip of the town: he was a sort
of little local celebrity: his name used often to recur in the family
conversation, especially when old Jean Michel was alive, who, proud of his
grandson, used to sing his praises to all of his acquaintance. Rosa had
seen the young musician once or twice at concerts. When she heard that he
was coming to live with them, she clapped her hands. She was sternly
rebuked for her breach of manners and became confused. She saw no harm in
it. In a life so monotonous as hers, a new lodger was a great distraction.
She spent the last few days before his arrival in a fever of expectancy.
She was fearful lest he should not like the house, and she tried hard to
make every room as attractive as possible. On the morning of his arrival,
she even put a little bunch of flowers on the mantelpiece to bid him
welcome. As to herself, she took no care at all to look her best; and one
glance was enough to make Christophe decide that she was plain, and
slovenly dressed. She did not think the same of him, though she had good
reason to do so: for Christophe, busy, exhausted, ill-kempt, was even more
ugly than usual. But Rosa, who was incapable of thinking the least ill of
anybody, Rosa, who thought her grandfather, her father, and her mother, all
perfectly beautiful, saw Christophe exactly as she had expected to see him,
and admired him with all her heart. She was frightened at sitting next to
him at table; and unfortunately her shyness took the shape of a flood of
words, which at once alienated Christophe's sympathies. She did not see
this, and that first evening remained a shining memory in her life. When
she was alone in her room, after, they had all gone upstairs, she heard the
tread of the new lodgers as they walked over her head; and the sound of it
ran joyously through her; the house seemed to her to taken new life.

The next morning for the first time in her life she looked at herself in
the mirror carefully and: uneasily, and without exactly knowing the extent
of her misfortune she began to be conscious of it. She tried to decide
about her features, one by one; but she could not. She was filled with
sadness and apprehension. She sighed deeply, and thought of introducing
certain changes in her toilet, but she only made herself look still more
plain. She conceived the unlucky idea of overwhelming Christophe with her
kindness. In her naïve desire to be always seeing her new friends, and
doing them service, she was forever going up and down the stairs, bringing
them some utterly useless thing, insisting on helping them, and always
laughing and talking and shouting. Her zeal and her stream of talk could
only be interrupted by her mother's impatient voice calling her. Christophe
looked grim; but for his good resolutions he must have lost his temper
quite twenty times. He restrained himself for two days; on the third, he
locked his door. Rosa knocked, called, understood, went downstairs in
dismay, and did not try again. When he saw her he explained that he was
very busy and could not be disturbed. She humbly begged his pardon. She
could not deceive herself as to the failure of her innocent advances: they
had accomplished the opposite of her intention: they had alienated
Christophe. He no longer took the trouble to conceal his ill-humor; he did
not listen when she talked, and did not disguise his impatience. She felt
that her chatter irritated him, and by force of will she succeeded in
keeping silent for a part of the evening: but the thing was stronger than
herself: suddenly she would break out again and her words would tumble over
each other more tumultuously than ever. Christophe would leave her in the
middle of a sentence. She was not angry with him. She was angry with
herself. She thought herself stupid, tiresome, ridiculous: all her faults
assumed enormous proportions and she tried to wrestle with them: but she
was discouraged by the check upon her first attempts, and said to herself
that she could not do it, that she was not strong enough. But she would try
again.

But there were other faults against which she was powerless: what could she
do against her plainness? There was no doubt about it. The certainty of her
misfortune had suddenly been revealed to her one day when she was looking
at herself in the mirror; it came like a thunderclap. Of course she
exaggerated the evil, and saw her nose as ten times larger than it was; it
seemed to her to fill all her face; she dared not show herself; she wished
to die. But there is in youth such a power of hope that these fits of
discouragement never lasted long: she would end by pretending that she had
been mistaken; she would try to believe it, and for a moment or two would
actually succeed in thinking her nose quite ordinary and almost shapely.
Her instinct made her attempt, though very clumsily, certain childish
tricks, a way of doing her hair so as not so much to show her forehead and
so accentuate the disproportion of her face. And yet, there was no coquetry
in her; no thought of love had crossed her mind, or she was unconscious of
it. She asked little: nothing but a little friendship: but Christophe did
not show any inclination to give her that little. It seemed to Rosa that
she would have been perfectly happy had he only condescended to say
good-day when they met. A friendly good-evening with a little kindness. But
Christophe usually looked so hard and so cold! It chilled her. He never
said anything disagreeable to her, but she would rather have had cruel
reproaches than such cruel silence.

One evening Christophe was playing his piano. He had taken up his quarters
in a little attic at the top of the house so as not to be so much disturbed
by the noise. Downstairs Rosa was listening to him, deeply moved. She loved
music though her taste was bad and unformed. While her mother was there,
she stayed in a corner of the room and bent over her sewing, apparently
absorbed in her work; but her heart was with the sounds coming from
upstairs, and she wished to miss nothing. As soon as Amalia went out for a
walk in the neighborhood, Rosa leaped to her feet, threw down her sewing,
and went upstairs with her heart beating until she came to the attic door.
She held her breath and laid her ear against the door. She stayed like that
until Amalia returned. She went on tiptoe, taking care to make no noise,
but as she was not very sure-footed, and was always in a hurry, she was
always tripping upon the stairs; and once while she was listening, leaning
forward with her cheek glued to the keyhole, she lost her balance, and
banged her forehead against the door. She was so alarmed that she lost her
breath. The piano stopped dead: she could not escape. She was getting up
when the door opened. Christophe saw her, glared at her furiously, and then
without a word, brushed her aside, walked angrily downstairs, and went out.
He did not return until dinner time, paid no heed to the despairing looks
with which she asked his pardon, ignored her existence, and for several
weeks he never played at all. Rosa secretly shed many tears; no one noticed
it, no one paid any attention to her. Ardently she prayed to God ... for
what? She did not know. She had to confide her grief in some one. She was
sure that Christophe detested her.

And, in spite of all, she hoped. It was enough for her if Christophe seemed
to show any sign of interest in her, if he appeared to listen to what she
said, if he pressed her hand with a little more friendliness than usual....

A few imprudent words from her relations set her imagination off upon a
false road.

* * * * *

The whole family was filled with sympathy for Christophe. The big boy of
sixteen, serious and solitary, who had such lofty ideas of his duty,
inspired a sort of respect in them all. His fits of ill-temper, his
obstinate silences, his gloomy air, his brusque manner, were not surprising
in such a house as that. Frau Vogel, herself, who regarded every artist as
a loafer, dared not reproach him aggressively, as she would have liked to
do, with the hours that he spent in star-gazing in the evening, leaning,
motionless, out of the attic window overlooking the yard, until night fell;
for she knew that during the rest of the day he was hard at work with his
lessons; and she humored him--like the rest--for an ulterior motive which
no one expressed though everybody knew it.

Rosa had seen her parents exchanging looks and mysterious whisperings when
she was talking to Christophe. At first she took no notice of it. Then she
was puzzled and roused by it; she longed to know what they were saying, but
dared not ask.

One evening when she had climbed on to a garden seat to untie the
clothes-line hung between two trees, she leaned on Christophe's shoulder to
jump down. Just at that moment her eyes met her grandfather's and her
father's; they were sitting smoking their pipes, and leaning against the
wall of the house. The two men winked at each other, and Justus Euler said
to Vogel:

"They will make a fine couple."

Vogel nudged him, seeing that the girl was listening, and he covered his
remark very cleverly--(or so he thought)--with a loud "Hm! hm!" that could
have been heard twenty yards away. Christophe, whose back was turned, saw
nothing, but Rosa was so bowled over by it that she forgot that she was
jumping down, and sprained her foot. She would have fallen had not
Christophe caught her, muttering curses on her clumsiness. She had hurt
herself badly, but she did not show it; she hardly thought of it; she
thought only of what she had just heard. She walked to her room; every step
was agony to her; she stiffened herself against it so as not to let it be
seen. A delicious, vague uneasiness surged through her. She fell into a
chair at the foot of her bed and hid her face in the coverlet. Her cheeks
were burning; there were tears in her eyes, and she laughed. She was
ashamed, she wished to sink into the depths of the earth, she could not fix
her ideas; her blood beat in her temples, there were sharp pains in her
ankle; she was in a feverish stupor. Vaguely she heard sounds outside,
children crying and playing in the street, and her grandfather's words were
ringing in her ears; she was thrilled, she laughed softly, she blushed,
with her face buried in the eiderdown: she prayed, gave thanks, desired,
feared--she loved.

Her mother called her. She tried to get up. At the first step she felt a
pain so unbearable that she almost fainted; her head swam. She thought she
was going to die, she wished to die, and at the same time she wished to
live with all the forces of her being, to live for the promised happiness.
Her mother came at last, and the whole household was soon excited. She was
scolded as usual, her ankle was dressed, she was put to bed, and sank into
the sweet bewilderment of her physical pain and her inward joy. The night
was sweet.... The smallest memory of that dear evening was hallowed for
her. She did not think of Christophe, she knew not what she thought. She
was happy.

The next day, Christophe, who thought himself in some measure responsible
for the accident, came to make inquiries, and for the first time he made
some show of affection for her. She was filled with gratitude, and blessed
her sprained ankle. She would gladly have suffered all her life, if, all
her life, she might have such joy.--She had to lie down for several days
and never move; she spent them in turning over and over her grandfather's
words, and considering them. Had he said:

"They will...."

Or:

"They would ...?"

But it was possible that he had never said anything of this kind?--Yes. He
had said it; she was certain of it.... What! Did they not see that she was
ugly, and that Christophe could not bear her?... But it was so good to
hope! She came to believe that perhaps she had been wrong, that she was not
as ugly as she thought; she would sit up on her sofa to try and see herself
in the mirror on the wall opposite, above the mantelpiece; she did not know
what to think. After all, her father and her grandfather were better judges
than herself; people cannot tell about themselves.... Oh! Heaven, if it
were possible!... If it could be ... if, she never dared think it, if ...
if she were pretty!... Perhaps, also, she had exaggerated Christophe's
antipathy. No doubt he was indifferent, and after the interest he had shown
in her the day after the accident did not bother about her any more; he
forgot to inquire; but Rosa made excuses for him, he was so busy! How
should he think of her? An artist cannot be judged like other men....

And yet, resigned though she was, she could not help expecting with beating
heart a word of sympathy from him when he came near her. A word only, a
look ... her imagination did the rest. In the beginning love needs so
little food! It is enough to see, to touch as you pass; such a power of
dreams flows from the soul in such moments, that almost of itself it can
create its love: a trifle can plunge it into ecstasy that later, when it is
more satisfied, and in proportion more exacting, it will hardly find again
when at last it does possess the object of its desire.--Rosa lived
absolutely, though no one knew it, in a romance of her own fashioning,
pieced together by herself: Christophe loved her secretly, and was too shy
to confess his love, or there was some stupid reason, fantastic or
romantic, delightful to the imagination of the sentimental little ninny.
She fashioned endless stories, and all perfectly absurd; she knew it
herself, but tried not to know it; she lied to herself voluptuously for
days and days as she bent over her sewing. It made her forget to talk: her
flood of words was turned inward, like a river which suddenly disappears
underground. But then the river took its revenge. What a debauch of
speeches, of unuttered conversations which no one heard but herself!
Sometimes her lips would move as they do with people who have to spell out
the syllables to themselves as they read so as to understand them.

When her dreams left her she was happy and sad. She knew that things were
not as she had just told herself: but she was left with a reflected
happiness, and had greater confidence for her life. She did not despair of
winning Christophe.

She did not admit it to herself, but she set about doing it. With the
sureness of instinct that great affection brings, the awkward, ignorant
girl contrived immediately to find the road by which she might reach her
beloved's heart. She did not turn directly to him. But as soon as she was
better and could once more walk about the house she approached Louisa. The
smallest excuse served. She found a thousand little services to render her.
When she went out she never failed to undertake various errands: she spared
her going to the market, arguments with tradespeople, she would fetch water
for her from the pump in the yard; she cleaned the windows and polished the
floors in spite of Louisa's protestations, who was confused when she did
not do her work alone; but she was so weary that she had not the strength
to oppose anybody who came to help her. Christophe was out all day. Louisa
felt that she was deserted, and the companionship of the affectionate,
chattering girl was pleasant to her. Rosa took up her quarters in her room.
She brought her sewing, and talked all the time. By clumsy devices she
tried to bring conversation round to Christophe. Just to hear of him, even
to hear his name, made her happy; her hands would tremble; she would sit
with downcast eyes. Louisa was delighted to talk of her beloved Christophe,
and would tell little tales of his childhood, trivial and just a little
ridiculous; but there was no fear of Rosa thinking them so: she took a
great joy, and there was a dear emotion for her in imagining Christophe as
a child, and doing all the tricks and having all the darling ways of
children: in her the motherly tenderness which lies in the hearts of all
women was mingled deliciously with that other tenderness: she would laugh
heartily and tears would come to her eyes. Louisa was touched by the
interest that Rosa took in her. She guessed dimly what was in the girl's
heart, but she never let it appear that she did so; but she was glad of it;
for of all in the house she only knew the worth of the girl's heart.
Sometimes she would stop talking to look at her. Rosa, surprised by her
silence, would raise her eyes from her work. Louisa would smile at her.
Rosa would throw herself into her arms, suddenly, passionately, and would
hide her face in Louisa's bosom. Then they would go on working and talking,
as if nothing had happened.

In the evening when Christophe came home, Louisa, grateful for Rosa's
attentions, and in pursuance of the little plan she had made, always
praised the girl to the skies. Christophe was touched by Rosa's kindness.
He saw how much good she was doing his mother, in whose face there was more
serenity: and he would thank her effusively. Rosa would murmur, and escape
to conceal her embarrassment: so she appeared a thousand times more
intelligent and sympathetic to Christophe than if she had spoken. He looked
at her less with a prejudiced eye, and did not conceal his surprise at
finding unsuspected qualities in her. Rosa saw that; she marked the
progress that she made in his sympathy and thought that his sympathy would
lead to love. She gave herself up more than ever to her dreams. She came
near to believing with the beautiful presumption of youth that what you
desire with all your being is always accomplished in the end. Besides, how
was her desire unreasonable? Should not Christophe have been more sensible
than any other of her goodness and her affectionate need of self-devotion?

But Christophe gave no thought to her. He esteemed her; but she filled no
room in his thoughts. He was busied with far other things at the moment.
Christophe was no longer Christophe. He did not know himself. He was in a
mighty travail that was like to sweep everything away, a complete upheaval.

* * * * *

Christophe was conscious of extreme weariness and great uneasiness. He was
for no reason worn out; his head was heavy, his eyes, his ears, all his
senses were dumb and throbbing. He could not give his attention to
anything. His mind leaped from one subject to another, and was in a fever
that sucked him dry. The perpetual fluttering of images in his mind made
him giddy. At first he attributed it to fatigue and the enervation of the
first days of spring. But spring passed and his sickness only grew worse.

It was what the poets who only touch lightly on things call the unease of
adolescence, the trouble of the cherubim, the waking of the desire of love
in the young body and soul. As if the fearful crisis of all a man's being,
breaking up, dying, and coming to full rebirth, as if the cataclysm in
which everything, faith, thought, action, all life, seems like to be
blotted out, and then to be new-forged in the convulsions of sorrow and
joy, can be reduced to terms of a child's folly!

All his body and soul were in a ferment. He watched them, having no
strength to struggle, with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. He did not
understand what was happening in himself. His whole being was
disintegrated. He spent days together in absolute torpor. Work was torture
to him. At night he slept heavily and in snatches, dreaming monstrously,
with gusts of desire; the soul of a beast was racing madly in him. Burning,
bathed in sweat, he watched himself in horror; he tried to break free of
the crazy and unclean thoughts that possessed him, and he wondered if he
were going mad.

The day gave him no shelter from his brutish thoughts. In the depths of his
soul he felt that he was slipping down and down; there was no stay to
clutch at; no barrier to keep back chaos. All his defenses, all his
citadels, with the quadruple rampart that hemmed him in so proudly--his
God, his art, his pride, his moral faith, all was crumbling away, falling
piece by piece from him. He saw himself naked, bound, lying unable to move,
like a corpse on which vermin swarm. He had spasms of revolt: where was his
will, of which he was so proud? He called to it in vain: it was like the
efforts that one makes in sleep, knowing that one is dreaming, and trying
to awake. Then one succeeds only in falling from one dream to another like
a lump of lead, and in being more and more choked by the suffocation of the
soul in bondage. At last he found that it was less painful not to struggle.
He decided not to do so, with, fatalistic apathy and despair.

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