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Jean Christophe, Vol. I

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




And they despised him for letting them do so: for they knew very well that
it served his turn. A fair exchange, Waldhaus lent them his name and
fortune: and they brought him their talents, their eye for business and
subscribers. They were much more intelligent than he. Not that they had
more personality. They had perhaps even less. But in the little town they
were, as the Jews are everywhere and always,--by the mere fact of their
difference of race which for centuries has isolated them and sharpened
their faculty for making observation--they were the most advanced in mind,
the most sensible of the absurdity of its moldy institutions and decrepit
thought. Only, as their character was less free than their intelligence,
it did not help them, while they mocked, from trying rather to turn those
institutions and ideas to account than to reform them. In spite of their
independent professions of faith, they were like the noble Adalbert, little
provincial snobs, rich, idle young men of family, who dabbled and flirted
with letters for the fun of it. They were very glad to swagger about as
giant-killers: but they were kindly enough and never slew anybody but a few
inoffensive people or those whom they thought could never harm them. They
cared nothing for setting by the ears a society to which they knew very
well they would one day return and embrace all the prejudices which they
had combated. And when they did venture to make a stir on a little scandal,
or loudly to declare war on some idol of the day,--who was beginning to
totter,--they took care never to burn their boats: in case of danger they
re-embarked. Whatever then might be the issue of the campaign,--when it
was finished it was a long time before war would break out again: the
Philistines could sleep in peace. All that these new _Davidsbündler_ wanted
to do was to make it appear that they could have been terrible if they had
so desired: but they did not desire. They preferred to be on friendly terms
with artists and to give suppers to actresses.

Christophe was not happy in such a set. They were always talking of women
and horses: and their talk was not refined. They were stiff and formal.
Adalbert spoke in a mincing, slow voice, with exaggerated, bored, and
boring politeness. Adolf Mai, the secretary of the Review, a heavy,
thick-set, bull-necked, brutal-looking young man, always pretended to be
in the right: he laid down the law, never listened to what anybody said,
seemed to despise the opinion of the person he was talking to, and also
that person. Goldenring, the art critic, who had a twitch, and eyes
perpetually winking behind his large spectacles,--no doubt in imitation
of the painters whose society he cultivated, wore long hair, smoked in
silence, mumbled scraps of sentences which he never finished, and made
vague gestures in the air with his thumb. Ehrenfeld was little, bald, and
smiling, had a fair beard and a sensitive, weary-looking face, a hooked
nose, and he wrote the fashions and the society notes in the Review. In a
silky voice he used to talk obscurely: he had a wit, though of a malignant
and often ignoble kind.--All these young millionaires were anarchists, of
course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to
deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities. So might a
robber, who has just fleeced a traveler, say to him: "What are you staying
for? Get along! I have no more use for you."

Of the whole bunch Christophe was only in sympathy with Mannheim: he was
certainly the most lively of the five: he was amused by everything that
he said and everything that was said to him: stuttering, stammering,
blundering, sniggering, talking nonsense, he was incapable of following an
argument, or of knowing exactly what he thought himself: but he was quite
kindly, bearing no malice, having not a spark of ambition. In truth, he was
not very frank: he was always playing a part: but quite innocently, and he
never did anybody any harm.

He espoused all sorts of strange Utopias--most often generous. He was too
subtle and too skeptical to keep his head even in his enthusiasms, and he
never compromised himself by applying his theories. But he had to have
some hobby: it was a game to him, and he was always changing from one to
another. For the time being his craze was for kindness. It was not enough
for him to be kind naturally: he wished to be thought kind: he professed
kindness, and acted it. Out of reaction against the hard, dry activity of
his kinsfolk, and against German austerity, militarism, and Philistinism,
he was a Tolstoyan, a Nirvanian, an evangelist, a Buddhist,--he was not
quite sure what,--an apostle of a new morality that was soft, boneless,
indulgent, placid, easy-living, effusively forgiving every sin, especially
the sins of the flesh, a morality which did not conceal its predilection
for those sins and much less readily forgave the virtues--a morality
which was only a compact of pleasure, a libertine association of mutual
accommodations, which amused itself by donning the halo of sanctity. There
was in it a spice of hypocrisy which was a little offensive to delicate
palates, and would have even been frankly nauseating if it had taken itself
seriously. But it made no pretensions towards that: it merely amused
itself. His blackguardly Christianity was only meant to serve until some
other hobby came along to take its place--no matter what: brute force,
imperialism, "laughing lions."--Mannheim was always playing a part, playing
with his whole heart: he was trying on all the feelings that he did not
possess before becoming a good Jew like the rest and with all the spirit
of his race. He was very sympathetic, and extremely irritating. For some
time Christophe was one of his hobbies. Mannheim swore by him. He blew his
trumpet everywhere. He dinned his praises into the ears of his family.
According to him Christophe was a genius, an extraordinary man, who made
strange music and talked about it in an astonishing fashion, a witty
man--and a handsome: fine lips, magnificent teeth. He added that Christophe
admired him.--One evening he took him home to dinner. Christophe found
himself talking to his new friend's father, Lothair Mannheim, the banker,
and Franz's sister, Judith.

It was the first time that he had been in a Jew's house. Although there
were many Jews in the little town, and although they played an important
part in its life by reason of their wealth, cohesion, and intelligence,
they lived a little apart. There were always rooted prejudices in the minds
of the people and a secret hostility that was credulous and injurious
against them. Christophe's family shared these prejudices. His grandfather
did not love Jews: but the irony of fate had decreed that his two best
pupils should be of the race--(one had become a composer, the other a
famous _virtuoso_): for there had been moments when he was fain to embrace
these two good musicians: and then he would remember sadly that they
had crucified the Lord: and he did not know how to reconcile his two
incompatible currents of feeling. But in the end he did embrace them. He
was inclined to think that the Lord would forgive them because of their
love for music.--Christophe's father, Melchior, who pretended to be
broad-minded, had had fewer scruples about taking money from the Jews: and
he even thought it good to do so: but he ridiculed them, and despised
them.--As for his mother, she was not sure that she was not committing a
sin when she went to cook for them. Those whom she had had to do with were
disdainful enough with her: but she had no grudge against them, she bore
nobody any ill-will: she was filled with pity for these unhappy people whom
God had damned: sometimes she would be filled with compassion when she saw
the daughter of one of them go by or heard the merry laughter of their
children.

"So pretty she is!... Such pretty children!... How dreadful!..." she would
think.

She dared not say anything to Christophe, when he told her that he was
going to dine with the Mannheims: but her heart sank. She thought that
it was unnecessary to believe everything bad that was said about the
Jews--(people speak ill of everybody)--and that there are honest people
everywhere, but that it was better and more proper to keep themselves to
themselves, the Jews on their side, the Christians on theirs.

Christophe shared none of these prejudices. In his perpetual reaction
against his surroundings he was rather attracted towards the different
race. But he hardly knew them. He had only come in contact with the more
vulgar of the Jews: little shopkeepers, the populace swarming in certain
streets between the Rhine and the cathedral, forming, with the gregarious
instinct of all human beings, a sort of little ghetto. He had often
strolled through the neighborhood, catching sight of and feeling a sort of
sympathy with certain types of women with hollow cheeks, and full lips,
and wide cheek-bones, a da Vinci smile, rather depraved, while the coarse
language and shrill laughter destroyed this harmony that was in their faces
when in repose. Even in the dregs of the people, in those large-headed,
beady-eyed creatures with their bestial faces, their thick-set, squat
bodies, those degenerate descendants of the most noble of all peoples, even
in that thick, fetid muddiness there were strange phosphorescent gleams,
like will-o'-the-wisps dancing over a swamp: marvelous glances, minds
subtle and brilliant, a subtle electricity emanating from the ooze which
fascinated and disturbed Christophe. He thought that hidden deep were fine
souls struggling, great hearts striving to break free from the dung: and he
would have liked to meet them, and to aid them: without knowing them, he
loved them, while he was a little fearful of them. And he had never had any
opportunity of meeting the best of the Jews.

His dinner at the Mannheims' had for him the attraction of novelty and
something of that of forbidden fruit. The Eve who gave him the fruit
sweetened its flavor. From the first moment Christophe had eyes only for
Judith Mannheim. She was utterly different from all the women he had known.
Tall and slender, rather thin, though solidly built, with her face framed
in her black hair, not long, but thick and curled low on her head, covering
her temples and her broad, golden brow; rather short-sighted, with large
pupils, and slightly prominent eyes: with a largish nose and wide nostrils,
thin cheeks, a heavy chin, strong coloring, she had a fine profile showing
much energy and alertness: full face, her expression was more changing,
uncertain, complex: her eyes and her cheeks were irregular. She seemed to
give revelation of a strong race, and in the mold of that race, roughly
thrown together, were manifold incongruous elements, of doubtful and
unequal quality, beautiful and vulgar at the same time. Her beauty lay
especially in her silent lips, and in her eyes, in which there seemed to be
greater depth by reason of their short-sightedness, and darker by reason of
the bluish markings round them.

It needed to be more used than Christophe was to those eyes, which are
more those of a race than of an individual, to be able to read through the
limpidity that unveiled them with such vivid quality, the real soul of the
woman whom he thus encountered. It was the soul of the people of Israel
that he saw in her sad and burning eyes, the soul that, unknown to them,
shone forth from them. He lost himself as he gazed into them. It was only
after some time that he was able, after losing his way again and again, to
strike the track again on that oriental sea.

She looked at him: and nothing could disturb the clearness of her gaze:
nothing in his Christian soul seemed to escape her. He felt that. Under the
seduction of the woman's eyes upon him he was conscious of a virile desire,
clear and cold, Which stirred in him brutally, indiscreetly. There was
no evil in the brutality of it. She took possession of him: not like a
coquette, whose desire is to seduce without caring whom she seduces. Had
she been a coquette she would have gone to greatest lengths: but she knew
her power, and she left it to her natural instinct to make use of it in
its own way,--especially when she had so easy a prey as Christophe.--What
interested her more was to know her adversary--(any man, any stranger, was
an adversary for her,--an adversary with whom later on, if occasion served,
she could sign a compact of alliance).--She wished to know his quality.
Life being a game, in which the cleverest wins, it was a matter of reading
her opponent's cards and of not showing her own. When she succeeded she
tasted the sweets of victory. It mattered little whether she could turn
it to any account. It was purely for her pleasure. She had a passion for
intelligence: not abstract intelligence, although she had brains enough,
if she had liked, to have succeeded in any, branch of knowledge and would
have made a much better successor to Lothair Mannheim, the banker, than
her brother. But she preferred intelligence in the quick, the sort of
intelligence which studies men. She loved to pierce through to the soul and
to weigh its value--(she gave as scrupulous an attention to it as the
Jewess of Matsys to the weighing of her gold)--with marvelous divination
she could find the weak spot in the armor, the imperfections and foibles
which are the key to the soul,--she could lay her hands on its secrets: it
was her way of feeling her sway over it. But she never dallied with her
victory: she never did anything with her prize. Once her curiosity and
her vanity were satisfied she lost her interest and passed on to another
specimen. All her power was sterile. There was something of death in her
living soul. She had the genius of curiosity and boredom.

* * * * *

And so she looked at Christophe and he looked at her. She hardly spoke. An
imperceptible smile was enough, a little movement of the corners of her
mouth: Christophe was hypnotized by her. Every now and then her smile would
fade away, her face would become cold, her eyes indifferent: she would
attend to the meal or speak coldly to the servants: it was as though she
were no longer listening. Then her eyes would light up again: and a few
words coming pat would show that she had heard and understood everything.

She coldly examined her brother's judgment of Christophe: she knew Franz's
crazes: her irony had had fine sport when she saw Christophe appear, whose
looks and distinction had been vaunted by her brother--(it seemed to her
that Franz had a special gift for seeing facts as they are not: or perhaps
he only thought it a paradoxical joke).--But when she looked at Christophe
more closely she recognized that what Franz had said was not altogether
false: and as she went on with her scrutiny she discovered in Christophe a
vague, unbalanced, though robust and bold power: that gave her pleasure,
for she knew, better than any, the rarity of power. She was able to
make Christophe talk about whatever she liked, and reveal his thoughts,
and display the limitations and defects of his mind: she made him play
the piano: she did not love music but she understood it: and she saw
Christophe's musical originality, although his music had roused no sort of
emotion in her. Without the least change in the coldness of her manner,
with a few short, apt, and certainly not flattering, remarks she showed her
growing interest in Christophe.

Christophe saw it: and he was proud of it: for he felt the worth of such
judgment and the rarity of her approbation. He made no secret of his desire
to win it: and he set about it so naïvely as to make the three of them
smile: he talked only to Judith and for Judith: he was as unconcerned with
the others as though they did not exist.

Franz watched him as he talked: he followed his every word, with his lips
and eyes, with a mixture of admiration and amusement: and he laughed aloud
as he glanced at his father and his sister, who listened impassively and
pretended not to notice him.

Lothair Mannheim,--a tall old man, heavily built, stooping a little,
red-faced, with gray hair standing straight up on end, very black mustache
and eyebrows, a heavy though energetic and jovial face, which gave the
impression of great vitality--had also studied Christophe during the first
part of the dinner, slyly but good-naturedly: and he too had recognized
at once that there was "something" in the boy. But he was not interested
in music or musicians: it was not in his line: he knew nothing about it
and made no secret of his ignorance: he even boasted of it--(when a man
of that sort confesses his ignorance of anything he does so to feed his
vanity).--As Christophe had clearly shown at once, with a rudeness in which
there was no shade of malice, that, he could without regret dispense with
the society of the banker, and that the society of Fräulein Judith Mannheim
would serve perfectly to fill his evening, old Lothair in some amusement
had taken his seat by the fire: he read his paper, listening vaguely and
ironically to Christophe's crotchets and his queer music, which sometimes
made him laugh inwardly at the idea that there could be people who
understood it and found pleasure in it. He did not trouble to follow the
conversation: he relied on his daughter's cleverness to tell him exactly
what the newcomer was worth. She discharged her duty conscientiously.

When Christophe had gone Lothair asked Judith:

"Well, you probed him enough: what do you think of the artist?"

She laughed, thought for a moment, reckoned up, and said:

"He is a little cracked: but he is not stupid."

"Good," said Lothair. "I thought so too. He will succeed, then?"

"Yes, I think so. He has power,"

"Very good," said Lothair with the magnificent logic of the strong who are
only interested in the strong, "we must help him."

* * * * *

Christophe went away filled with admiration for Judith Mannheim. He was not
in love with her as Judith thought. They were both--she with her subtlety,
he with his instinct which took the place of mind in him,--mistaken
about each other. Christophe was fascinated by the enigma and the
intense activity of her mind: but he did not love her. His eyes and his
intelligence were ensnared: his heart escaped.--Why?--It were difficult to
tell. Because he had caught a glimpse of some doubtful, disturbing quality
in her?--In other circumstances that would have been a reason the more
for loving: love is never stronger than when it goes out to one who will
make it suffer.--If Christophe did not love Judith it was not the fault of
either of them. The real reason, humiliating enough for both, was that he
was still too near his last love. Experience had not made him wiser. But he
had loved Ada so much, he had consumed so much faith, force, and illusion
in that passion that there was not enough left for a new passion. Before
another flame could be kindled he would have to build a new pyre in his
heart: short of that there could only be a few flickerings, remnants of the
conflagration that had escaped by chance, which asked only to be allowed to
burn, cast a brief and brilliant light and then died down for want of food.
Six months later, perhaps, he might have loved Judith blindly. Now he saw
in her only a friend,--a rather disturbing friend in truth--but he tried to
drive his uneasiness back: it reminded him of Ada: there was no attraction
in that memory: he preferred not to think of it. What attracted him in
Judith was everything in her which was different from other women, not that
which she had in common with them. She was the first intelligent woman
he had met. She was intelligent from head to foot. Even her beauty--her
gestures, her movements, her features, the fold of her lips, her eyes, her
hands, her slender elegance--was the reflection of her intelligence: her
body was molded by her intelligence: without her intelligence she would
have passed unnoticed: and no doubt she would even have been thought plain
by most people. Her intelligence delighted Christophe. He thought it larger
and more free than it was: he could not yet know how deceptive it was. He
longed ardently to confide in her and to impart his ideas to her. He had
never found anybody to take an interest in his dreams: he was turned in
upon, himself: what joy then to find a woman to be his friend! That he had
not a sister had been one of the sorrows of his childhood: it seemed to
him that a sister would have understood him more than a brother could have
done. And when he met Judith he felt that childish and illusory hope of
having a brotherly love spring up in him. Not being in love, love seemed to
him a poor thing compared with friendship.

Judith felt this little shade of feeling and was hurt by it. She was not in
love with Christophe, and as she had excited other passions in other young
men of the town, rich young men of better position, she could not feel
any great satisfaction in knowing Christophe to be in love with her. But
it piqued her to know that he was not in love. No doubt she was pleased
with him for confiding his plans: she was not surprised by it: but it
was a little mortifying for her to know that she could only exercise an
intellectual influence over him--(an unreasoning influence is much more
precious to a woman).--She did not even exercise her influence: Christophe
only courted her mind. Judith's intellect was imperious. She was used to
molding to her will the soft thoughts of the young men of her acquaintance.
As she knew their mediocrity she found no pleasure in holding sway over
them. With Christophe the pursuit was more interesting because more
difficult. She was not interested in his projects: but she would have liked
to direct his originality of thought, his ill-grown power, and to make them
good,--in her own way, of course, and not in Christophe's, which she did
not take the trouble to understand. She saw at once that she could not
succeed without a struggle: she had marked down in Christophe all sorts of
notions and ideas which she thought childish and extravagant: they were
weeds to her: she tried hard to eradicate them. She did not get rid of
a single one. She did not gain the least satisfaction for her vanity.
Christophe was intractable. Not being in love he had no reason for
surrendering his ideas to her.

She grew keen on the game and instinctively tried for some time to overcome
him. Christophe was very nearly taken in again in spite of his lucidity of
mind at that time. Men are easily taken in by any flattery of their vanity
or their desires: and an artist is twice as easy to trick as any other man
because he has more imagination. Judith had only to draw Christophe into a
dangerous flirtation to bowl him over once more more thoroughly than ever.
But as usual she soon wearied of the game: she found that such a conquest
was hardly worth while: Christophe was already boring her: she did not
understand him.

She did not understand him beyond a certain point. Up to that she
understood everything. Her admirable intelligence could not take her beyond
it: she needed a heart, or in default of that the thing which could give
the illusion of one for a time: love. She understood Christophe's criticism
of people and things: it amused her and seemed to her true enough: she
had thought much the same herself. But what she did not understand was
that such ideas might have an influence on practical life when it might
be dangerous or awkward to apply them. The attitude of revolt against
everybody and everything which Christophe had taken up led to nothing: he
could not imagine that he was going to reform the world.... And then?... It
was waste of time to knock one's head against a wall. A clever man judges
men, laughs at them in secret, despises them a little: but he does as they
do--only a little better: it is the only way of mastering them. Thought is
one world: action is another. What boots it for a man to be the victim of
his thoughts? Since men are so stupid as not to be able to bear the truth,
why force it on them? To accept their weakness, to seem to bow to it, and
to feel free to despise them in his heart, is there not a secret joy in
that? The joy of a clever slave? Certainly. But all the world is a slave:
there is no getting away from that: it is useless to protest against it:
better to be a slave deliberately of one's own free will and to avoid
ridiculous and futile conflict. Besides, the worst slavery of all is to be
the slave of one's own thoughts and to sacrifice everything to them. There
is no need to deceive one's self.--She saw clearly that if Christophe
went on, as he seemed determined to do, with his aggressive refusal to
compromise with the prejudices of German art and German mind, he would turn
everybody against him, even his patrons: he was courting inevitable ruin.
She did not understand why he so obstinately held out against himself, and
so took pleasure in digging his own ruin.

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