Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

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"I cannot live here any longer; I cannot: I shall die if you leave me here
any longer."

Her father came at once, and though it was very painful to them both to
stand up to her terrible aunt, they screwed up their courage for it by a
desperate effort of will.

Grazia returned to the sleepy old estate. She was glad to get back to
Nature and the creatures that she loved. Every day she gathered comfort
for her sorrow, but in her heart there remained a little of the melancholy
of the North, like a veil of mist, that very slowly melted away before
the sun. Sometimes she thought of Christophe's wretchedness. Lying on the
grass, listening to the familiar frogs and grasshoppers, or sitting at her
piano, which now she played more often than before, she would dream of the
friend her heart had chosen: she would talk to him, in whispers, for hours
together, and it seemed not impossible to her that one day he would open
the door and come in to her. She wrote to him, and, after long hesitation,
she sent the letter, unsigned, which, one day, with beating heart, she went
secretly and dropped into the box in the village two miles away, beyond the
long plowed fields,--a kind, good, touching letter, in which she told him
that he was not alone, that he must not be discouraged, that there was
one who thought of him, and loved him, and prayed to God for him,--a poor
little letter, which was lost in the post, so that he never received it.

Then the serene, monotonous days succeeded each other in the life of his
distant friend. And the Italian peace, the genius of tranquillity, calm
happiness, silent contemplation, once more took possession of that chaste
and silent heart, in whose depths there still burned, like a little
constant flame, the memory of Christophe.

* * * * *

But Christophe never knew of the simple love that watched over him from
afar, and was later to fill so great a room in his life. Nor did he know
that at that same concert, where he had been insulted, there sat the woman
who was to be the beloved, the dear companion, destined to walk by his
side, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.

He was alone. He thought himself alone. But he did not suffer overmuch. He
did not feel that bitter anguish that had given him such great agony in
Germany. He was stronger, riper: he knew that it must be so. His illusions
about Paris were destroyed: men were everywhere the same: he must be a law
unto himself, and not waste strength in a childish struggle with the world:
he must be himself, calmly, tranquilly. As Beethoven had said, "If we
surrender the forces of our lives to life, what, then, will be left for the
noblest and highest?" He had firmly grasped a knowledge of his nature and
the temper of his race, which formerly he had so harshly judged. The more
he was oppressed by the atmosphere of Paris, the more keenly did he feel
the need of taking refuge in his own country, in the arms of the poets and
musicians, in whom the best of Germany is garnered and preserved. As soon
as he opened their books his room was filled with the sound of the sunlit
Rhine and lit by the loving smiles of old friends new found.

How ungrateful he had been to them! How was it he had failed to feel the
treasure of their goodness and honesty? He remembered with shame all the
unjust, outrageous things he had said of them when he was in Germany. Then
he saw only their defects, their awkward ceremonious manners, their tearful
idealism, their little mental hypocrisies, their cowardice. Ah! How small
were all these things compared with their great virtues! How could he have
been so hard upon their weaknesses, which now made them even more moving in
his eyes: for they were more human for them! In his reaction he was the
more attracted to those of them to whom he had been most unjust. What
things he had said about Schubert and Bach! And now he felt so near to
them. Now it was as though these noble souls, whose foibles he had so
scorned, leaned over him, now that he was in exile and far from his own
people, and smiled kindly and said:

"Brother, we are here! Courage! We too have had more than our share of
misery ... Bah! one wins through it...."

He heard the soul of Johann Sebastian Bach roaring like the sea:
hurricanes, winds howling, the clouds of life scudding,--men and women
drunk with joy, sorrow, fury, and the Christ, all meekness, the Prince of
Peace, hovering above them,--towns awakened by the cries of the watchmen,
running with glad shouts, to meet the divine Bridegroom, whose footsteps
shake the earth,--the vast store of thoughts, passions, musical forms,
heroic life, Shakespearean hallucinations, Savonarolaesque prophecies,
pastoral, epic, apocalyptic visions, all contained in the stunted body of
the little Thuringian _cantor_, with his double chin, and little shining
eyes under the wrinkled lids and the raised eyebrows ...--he could see him
so clearly! somber, jovial, a little absurd, with his head stuffed full of
allegories and symbols, Gothic and rococo, choleric, obstinate, serene,
with a passion for life, and a great longing for death ...--he saw him
in his school, a genial pedant, surrounded by his pupils, dirty, coarse,
vagabond, ragged, with hoarse voices, the ragamuffins with whom he
squabbled, and sometimes fought like a navvy, one of whom once gave him
a mighty thrashing ...--he saw him with his family, surrounded by his
twenty-one children, of whom thirteen died before him, and one was an
idiot, and the rest were good musicians who gave little concerts....
Sickness, burial, bitter disputes, want, his genius misunderstood:--and
through and above it all, his music, his faith, deliverance and light, joy
half seen, felt, desired, grasped,--God, the breath of God kindling his
bones, thrilling through his flesh, thundering from his lips.... O Force!
Force! Thrice joyful thunder of Force!...

Christophe took great draughts of that force. He felt the blessing of that
power of music which issues from the depths of the German soul. Often
mediocre, and even coarse, what does it matter? The great thing is that
it is so, and that it flows plenteously. In France music is gathered
carefully, drop by drop, and passed through Pasteur filters into bottles,
and then corked. And the drinkers of stale water are disgusted by the
rivers of German music! They examine minutely the defects of the German men
of genius!

"Poor little things!"--thought Christophe, forgetting that he himself had
once been just as absurd--"they find fault with Wagner and Beethoven! They
must have faultless men of genius!... As though, when the tempest rages, it
would take care not to upset the existing order of things!..."

He strode about Paris rejoicing in his strength. If he were misunderstood,
so much the better! He would be all the freer. To create, as genius must, a
whole world, organically constituted according to his own inward laws, the
artist must live in it altogether. An artist can never be too much alone.
What is terrible is to see his ideas reflected in a mirror which deforms
and stunts them. He must say nothing to others of what he is doing until he
has done it: otherwise he would never have the courage to go on to the end:
for it would no longer be his idea, but the miserable idea of others that
would live in him.

Now that there was nothing to disturb his dreams, they bubbled forth like
springs from all the corners of his soul, and from every stone of the roads
by which he walked. He was living in a visionary state. Everything he saw
and heard called forth in him creatures and things different from those he
saw and heard. He had only to live to find everywhere about him the life
of his heroes. Their sensations came to him of their own accord. The eyes
of the passers-by, the sound of a voice borne by the wind, the light on
a lawn, the birds singing in the trees of the Luxembourg, a convent-bell
ringing so far away, the pale sky, the little patch of sky seen from his
room, the sounds and shades of sound of the different hours of the day, all
these were not in himself, but in the creatures of his dreams.--Christophe
was happy.

But his material position was worse than ever. He had lost his few pupils,
his only resource. It was September, and rich people were out of town, and
it was difficult to find new pupils. The only one he had was an engineer, a
crazy, clever fellow, who had taken it into his head, at forty, to become a
great violinist. Christophe did not play the violin very well: but he knew
more about it than his pupil: and for some time he gave him three hours a
week at two francs an hour. But at the end of six weeks the engineer got
tired of it, and suddenly discovered that painting was his vocation.--When
he imparted his discovery to Christophe, Christophe laughed heartily: but,
when he had done laughing, he reckoned up his finances, and found that he
had in hand the twelve francs which his pupil had just paid him for his
last lessons. That did not worry him: he only said to himself that he must
certainly set about finding some other means of living, and start once more
going from publisher to publisher. That was not very pleasant.... Pff!...
It was useless to torment himself in advance. It was a jolly day. He went
to Meudon.

He had a sudden longing for a walk. As he walked there rose in him scraps
of music. He was as full of it as a hive of honey: and he laughed aloud at
the golden buzzing of his bees. For the most part it was changing music.
And lively leaping rhythms, insistent, haunting.... Much good it is to
create and fashion music buried within four walls! There you can only make
combinations of subtle, hard, unyielding harmonies, like the Parisians!

When he was weary he lay down in the woods. The trees were half in leaf,
the sky was periwinkle blue. Christophe dozed off dreamily, and in his
dreams there was the color of the sweet light falling from October clouds.
His blood throbbed. He listened to the rushing flood of his ideas. They
came from all corners of the earth: worlds, young and old, at war, rags and
tatters of dead souls, guests and parasites that once had dwelled within
him, as in a city. The words that Gottfried had spoken by the grave of
Melchior returned to him: he was a living tomb, filled with the dead,
striving in him,--all his unknown forefathers. He listened to those
countless lives, it delighted him to set the organ roaring, the roaring of
that age-old forest, full of monsters, like the forest of Dante. He was
no longer fearful of them as he had been in his youth. For the master was
there: his will. It was a great joy to him to crack his whip and make the
beasts howl, and feel the wealth of living creatures in himself. He was
not alone. There was no danger of his ever being alone. He was a host in
himself. Ages of Kraffts, healthy and rejoicing in their health. Against
hostile Paris, against a hostile people, he could set a whole people: the
fight was equal.

* * * * *

He had left the modest room--it was too expensive--which he occupied and
taken an attic in the Montrouge district. It was well aired, though it
had no other advantage. There was a continual draught. But he wanted to
breathe. From his window he had a wide view over the chimneys of Paris to
Montmartre in the background. It had not taken him long to move: a handcart
was enough: Christophe pushed it himself. Of all his possessions the most
precious to him, after his old bag, was one of those casts, which have
lately become so popular, of the death-mask of Beethoven. He packed it with
as much care as though it were a priceless work of art. He never let it out
of his sight. It was an oasis in the midst of the desert of Paris. And also
it served him as a moral thermometer. The death-mask indicated more clearly
than his own conscience the temperature of his soul, the character of his
most secret thoughts: now a cloudy sky, now the gusty wind of the passions,
now fine calm weather.

He had to be sparing with his food. He only ate once a day, at one in the
afternoon. He bought a large sausage, and hung it up in his window: a thick
slice of it, a hunk of bread, and a cup of coffee that he made himself were
a feast for the gods. He would have preferred two such feasts. He was angry
with himself for having such a good appetite. He called himself to task,
and thought himself a glutton, thinking only of his stomach. He lost flesh:
he was leaner than a famished dog. But he was solidly built, he had an iron
constitution, and his head was clear.

He did not worry about the morrow, though he had good reason for doing so.
As long as he had in hand money enough for the day he never bothered about
it. When he came to the end of his money he made up his mind to go the
round of the publishers once more. He found no work. He was on his way
home, empty, when, happening to pass the music-shop where he had been
introduced to Daniel Hecht by Sylvain Kohn, he went in without remembering
that he had already been there under not very pleasant circumstances. The
first person he saw was Hecht. He was on the point of turning tail: but he
was too late: Hecht had seen him. Christophe did not wish to seem to be
avoiding him: he went up to Hecht, not knowing what to say to him, and
fully prepared to stand up to him as arrogantly as need be: for he was
convinced that Hecht would be unsparingly insolent. But he was nothing
of the kind. Hecht coldly held out his hand, muttered some conventional
inquiry after his health, and, without waiting for any request from
Christophe, he pointed to the door of his office, and stepped aside to let
him pass. He was secretly glad of the visit, which he had foreseen, though
he had given up expecting it. Without seeming to do so, he had carefully
followed Christophe's doings: he had missed no opportunity of hearing his
music: he had been at the famous performance of the _David_: and, despising
the public, he had not been greatly surprised at its hostile reception,
since he himself had felt the beauty of the work. There were probably not
two people in Paris more capable than Hecht of appreciating Christophe's
artistic originality. But he took care not to say anything about it, not
only because his vanity was hurt by Christophe's attitude towards himself,
but because it was impossible for him to be amiable: it was the peculiarly
ungracious quality of his nature. He was sincerely desirous of helping
Christophe: but he would not have stirred a finger to do so: he was waiting
for Christophe to come and ask it of him. And now that Christophe had
come,--instead of generously seizing the opportunity of wiping out the
memory of their previous misunderstanding by sparing his visitor any
humiliation, he gave himself the satisfaction of hearing him make his
request at length: and he even went so far as to offer Christophe, at least
for the time being, the work which he had formerly refused. He gave him
fifty pages of music to transpose for mandoline and guitar by the next
day. After which, being satisfied that he had made him truckle down, he
found him less distasteful work, but always so ungraciously that it was
impossible to be grateful to him for it: Christophe had to be ground
down by necessity before he would ever go to Hecht again. In any case he
preferred to earn his money by such work, however irritating it might
be, than accept it as a gift from Hecht, as it was once more offered to
him:--and, indeed, Hecht meant it kindly: but Christophe had been conscious
of Hecht's original intention to humiliate him: he was forced to accept
his conditions, but nothing would induce him to accept any favor from
him: he was willing to work for him:--by giving and giving he squared the
account:--but he would not be under any obligation to him. Unlike Wagner,
that impudent mendicant where his art was concerned, he did not place his
art above himself: the bread that he had not earned himself would have
choked him.--One day, when he brought some work that he had sat up all
night to finish, he found Hecht at table. Hecht, remarking his pallor and
the hungry glances that involuntarily he cast at the dishes, felt sure that
he had not eaten that day, and invited him to lunch. He meant kindly, but
he made it so apparent that he had noticed Christophe's straits that his
invitation looked like charity: Christophe would have died of hunger rather
than accept. He could not refuse to sit down at the table--(Hecht said he
wanted to talk to him):--but he did not touch a morsel: he pretended that
he had just had lunch. His stomach was aching with hunger.

Christophe would gladly have done without Hecht: but the other publishers
were even worse.--There were also wealthy amateurs who had conceived some
scrap of a musical idea, and could not even write it down. They would send
for Christophe, hum over their lucubrations, and say:

"Isn't it fine?"

Then they would give them to him for elaboration,--(to be written):--and
then they would appear under their own names through some great publishing
house. They were quite convinced that they had composed them themselves.
Christophe knew such a one, a distinguished nobleman, a strange, restless
creature, who would suddenly call him "Dear friend," grasp him by the
arm, and burst into a torrent of enthusiastic demonstrations, talking and
giggling, babbling and telling funny stories, interlarded with cries of
ecstatic laughter: Beethoven, Verlaine, Faure, Yvette Guilbert.... He made
him work, and failed to pay. He worked it out in invitations to lunch and
handshakes. Finally he sent Christophe twenty francs, which Christophe gave
himself the foolish luxury of returning. That day he had not twenty sous
in the world: and he had to buy a twenty-five centimes stamp for a letter
to his mother. It was Louisa's birthday, and Christophe would not for the
world have failed her: the poor old creature counted on her son's letter,
and could not have endured disappointment. For some weeks past she had been
writing to him more frequently, in spite of the pain it caused her. She
was suffering from her loneliness. But she could not bring herself to
join Christophe in Paris: she was too timid, too much attached to her own
little town, to her church, her house, and she was afraid of traveling. And
besides, if she had wanted to come, Christophe had not enough money: he had
not always enough for himself.

He had been given a great deal of pleasure once by receiving a letter from
Lorchen, the peasant girl for whose sake he had plunged into the brawl with
the Prussian soldiers:[Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I, "Revolt."] she
wrote to tell him that she was going to be married: she gave him news of
his mother, and sent him a basket of apples and a piece of cake to eat in
her honor. They came in the nick of time. That evening with Christophe was
a fast, Ember Days, Lent: only the butt end of the sausage hanging by the
window was left. Christophe compared himself to the anchorite saints fed by
a crow among the rocks. But no doubt the crow was hard put to it to feed
all the anchorites, for he never came again.

In spite of all his difficulties Christophe kept his end up. He washed his
linen in his basin, and cleaned his boots, whistling like a blackbird. He
consoled himself with the saying of Berlioz: "Let us raise our heads above
the miseries of life, and let us blithely sing the familiar gay refrain,
_Dies irae_...."--He used to sing it sometimes, to the dismay of his
neighbors, who were amazed and shocked to hear him break off in the middle
and shout with laughter.

He led a life of stern chastity. As Berlioz remarked: "The lover's life is
a life for the idle and the rich." Christophe's poverty, his daily hunt
for bread, his excessive sobriety, and his creative fever left him neither
the time nor the taste for any thought of pleasure. He was more than
indifferent about it: in his reaction against Paris he had plunged into a
sort of moral asceticism. He had a passionate need of purity, a horror of
any sort of dirtiness. It was not that he was rid of his passions. At other
times he had been swept headlong by them. But his passions remained chaste
even when he yielded to them: for he never sought pleasure through them but
the absolute giving of himself and fulness of being. And when he saw that
he had been deceived he flung them furiously from him. Lust was not to
him a sin like any other. It was the great Sin, that which poisons the
very springs of life. All those in whom the old Christian belief has not
been crusted over with strange conceptions, all those who still feel in
themselves the vigor and life of the races, which through the strengthening
of an heroic discipline have built up Western civilization, will have
no difficulty in understanding him. Christophe despised cosmopolitan
society, whose only aim and creed was pleasure.--In truth it is good to
seek pleasure, to desire pleasure for all men, to combat the cramping
pessimistic beliefs, that have come to weigh upon humanity through twenty
centuries of Gothic Christianity. But that can only be upon condition
that it is a generous faith, earnestly desirous of the good of others.
But instead of that, what happens? The most pitiful egoism. A handful of
loose-living men and women trying to give their senses the maximum of
pleasure with the minimum of risk, while they take good care that the rest
shall drudge for it.--Yes, no doubt, they have their parlor Socialism!...
But they know perfectly well that their doctrine of pleasure is only
practicable for "well-fed" people, for a select pampered few, that it is
poison to the poor....

"The life of pleasure is a rich man's life."

* * * * *

Christophe was neither rich nor likely to become so. When he made a little
money he spent it at once on music: he went without food to go to concerts.
He would take cheap seats in the gallery of the _Theatre du Chatelet_: and
he would steep himself in music: he found both food and love in it. He had
such a hunger for happiness and so great a power of enjoying it that the
imperfections of the orchestra never worried him: he would stay for two or
three hours, drowsy and beatific, and wrong notes or defective taste never
provoked in him more than an indulgent smile: he left his critical faculty
outside: he was there to love, not to judge. Around him the audience sat
motionless, with eyes half closed, letting itself be borne on by the great
torrent of dreams. Christophe fancied them as a mass of people curled up
in the shade, like an enormous cat, weaving fantastic dreams of lust and
carnage. In the deep golden shadows certain faces stood out, and their
strange charm and silent ecstasy drew Christophe's eyes and heart: he loved
them: he listened through them: he became them, body and soul. One woman in
the audience became aware of it, and between her and Christophe during the
concert there was woven one of those obscure sympathies, which touch the
very depths, though never by one word are they translated into the region
of consciousness, while, when the concert is over and the thread that binds
soul to soul is snapped, nothing is left of it. It is a state familiar
to lovers of music, especially when they are young and do most wholly
surrender: the essence of music is so completely love, that the full savor
of it is not won unless it be enjoyed through another, and so it is that,
at a concert, we instinctively seek among the throng for friendly eyes, for
a friend with whom to share a joy too great for ourselves alone.

Among such friends, the friends of one brief hour, whom Christophe marked
out for choice of love, the better to taste the sweetness of the music, he
was attracted by one face which he saw again and again, at every concert.
It was the face of a little grisette who seemed to adore music without
understanding it at all. She had an odd little profile, a short, straight
nose, almost in line with her slightly pouting lips and delicately molded
chin, fine arched eyebrows, and clear eyes: one of those pretty little
faces behind the veil of which one feels joy and laughter concealed by calm
indifference. It is perhaps in such light-hearted girls, little creatures
working for their living, that one finds most the old serenity that is no
more, the serenity of the antique statues and the faces of Raphael. There
is but one moment in their lives, the first awakening of pleasure: all too
soon their lives are sullied. But at least they have lived for one lovely
hour.

It gave Christophe an exquisite pleasure to look at her: a pretty face
would always warm his heart: he could enjoy without desire: he found joy in
it, force, comfort,--almost virtue. It goes without saying that she quickly
became aware that he was watching her: and, unconsciously, there was set up
between them a magnetic current. And as they met at almost every concert,
almost always in the same places, they quickly learned each other's likes
and dislikes. At certain passages they would exchange meaning glances: when
she particularly liked some melody she would just put out her tongue as
though to lick her lips: or, to show that she did not think much of it, she
would disdainfully wrinkle up her pretty nose. In these little tricks of
hers there was a little of that innocent posing of which hardly any one
can be free when he knows that he is being watched. During serious music
she would sometimes try to look grave and serious: and she would turn her
profile towards him, and look absorbed, and smile to herself, and look
out of the corner of her eye to see if he were watching. They had become
very good friends, without exchanging a word, and even without having
attempted--at least Christophe did not--to meet outside.

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