Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

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Sometimes she used to go to the house of some rich Jews, the Nathans, who
took an interest in her because they had met her at the house of some
friends of theirs where she gave lessons: and, in spite of her shyness,
she had not been able to avoid accepting invitations to their parties.
M. Alfred Nathan was a well-known professor in Paris, a distinguished
scientist, and at the same time he was very fond of society, with that
strange mixture of learning and frivolity which is so common among the
Jews. Madame Nathan was a mixture in equal proportions of real kindliness
and excessive worldliness. They were both generous, with loud-voiced,
sincere, but intermittent sympathy for Antoinette.--Generally speaking
Antoinette had found more kindness among the Jews than among the
members of her own sect. They have many faults: but they have one great
quality--perhaps the greatest of all: they are alive, and human: nothing
human is foreign to them and they are interested in every living being.
Even when they lack real, warm sympathy they feel a perpetual curiosity
which makes them seek out men and ideas that are of worth, however
different from themselves they may be. Not that, generally speaking, they
do anything much to help them, for they are interested in too many things
at once and much more a prey to the vanities of the world than other
people, while they pretend to be immune from them. But at least they
do something: and that is saying a great deal in the present apathetic
condition of society. They are an active balm in society, the very leaven
of life.--Antoinette who, among the Catholics, had been brought sharp up
against a wall of icy indifference, was keenly alive to the worth of the
interest, however superficial it might be, which the Nathans took in her.
Madame Nathan had marked Antoinette's life of devoted sacrifice: she was
sensible of her physical and moral charm: and she made a show of taking her
under her protection. She had no children: but she loved young people and
often had gatherings of them in her house: and she insisted on Antoinette's
coming also, and breaking away from her solitude, and having some amusement
in her life. And as she had no difficulty in guessing that Antoinette's
shyness was in part the result of her poverty, she even went so far as to
offer to give her a pretty frock or two, which Antoinette refused proudly:
but her kindly patroness found a way of forcing her to accept a few of
those little presents which are so dear to a woman's innocent vanity.
Antoinette was both grateful and embarrassed. She forced herself to go to
Madame Nathan's parties from time to time: and being young she managed to
enjoy herself in spite of everything.

But in that rather mixed society of all sorts of young people Madame
Nathan's protegee, being poor and pretty, became at once the mark of two or
three young gentlemen, who with perfect confidence in themselves picked her
out for their attentions. They calculated how far her timidity would go:
they even made bets about her.

One day she received certain anonymous letters--or rather letters signed
with a noble pseudonym--which conveyed a declaration of love: at first
they were love-letters, flattering, ardent, appointing a rendezvous: then
they quickly became bolder, threatening, and soon insulting and basely
slanderous: they stripped her, exposed her, besmirched her with their
coarse expressions of desire: they tried to play upon Antoinette's
simplicity by making her fearful of a public insult if she did not go to
the appointed rendezvous. She wept bitterly at the thought of having called
down on herself such base proposals: and these insults scorched her pride.
She did not know what to do. She did not like to speak to her brother about
it: she knew that he would feel it too keenly and that he would make the
affair even more serious than it was. She had no friends. The police? She
would not do that for fear of scandal. But somehow she had to make an end
of it. She felt that her silence would not sufficiently defend her, that
the blackguard who was pursuing her would hold to the chase and that he
would go on until to go farther would be dangerous.

He had just sent her a sort of ultimatum commanding her to meet him next
day at the Luxembourg. She went.--By racking her brains she had come to the
conclusion that her persecutor must have met her at Madame Nathan's. In one
of his letters he had alluded to something which could only have happened
there. She begged Madame Nathan to do her a great favor and to drive her to
the door of the gallery and to wait for her outside. She went in. In front
of the appointed picture her tormentor accosted her triumphantly and began
to talk to her with affected politeness. She stared straight at him without
a word. When he had finished his remark he asked her jokingly why she was
staring at him. She replied:

"You are a coward."

He was not put out by such a trifle as that, and became familiar in his
manner. She said:

"You have tried to threaten me with a scandal. Very well, I have come to
give you your scandal. You have asked for it!"

She was trembling all over, and she spoke in a loud voice to show him that
she was quite equal to attracting attention to themselves. People had
already begun to watch them. He felt that she would stick at nothing. He
lowered his voice. She said once more, for the last time:

"You are a coward," and turned her back on him.

Not wishing to seem to have given in he followed her. She left the gallery
with the fellow following hard on her heels. She walked straight to the
carriage waiting there, wrenched the door open, and her pursuer found
himself face to face with Madame Nathan, who recognized him and greeted him
by name. His face fell and he bolted.

Antoinette had to tell the whole story to her companion. She was unwilling
to do so, and only hinted roughly at the facts. It was painful to her to
reveal to a stranger the intimate secrets of her life, and the sufferings
of her injured modesty. Madame Nathan scolded her for not having told her
before. Antoinette begged her not to tell anybody. That was the end of it:
and Madame Nathan did not even need to strike the fellow off her visiting
list: for he was careful not to appear again.

About the same time another sorrow of a very different kind came to
Antoinette.

At the Nathans' she met a man of forty, a very good fellow, who was in
the Consular service in the Far East, and had come home on a few months'
leave. He fell in love with her. The meeting had been planned unknown to
Antoinette, by Madame Nathan, who had taken it into her head that she must
find a husband for her little friend. He was a Jew. He was not good-looking
and he was no longer young. He was rather bald, and round-shouldered: but
he had kind eyes, an affectionate way with him, and he could feel for and
understand suffering, for he had suffered himself. Antoinette was no longer
the romantic girl, the spoiled child, dreaming of life as a lovely day's
walk on her lover's arm: now she saw the hard struggle of life, which began
again, every day, allowing no time for rest, or, if rest were taken, it
might be to lose in one moment all the ground that had been gained, inch
by inch, through years of striving: and she thought it would be very sweet
to be able to lean on the arm of a friend, and share his sorrows with him,
and be able to close her eyes for a little, while he watched over her. She
knew that it was a dream: but she had not had the courage to renounce her
dream altogether. In her heart she knew quite well that a dowerless girl
had nothing to hope for in the world in which she lived. The old French
middle-classes are known throughout the world for the spirit of sordid
interest in which they conduct their marriages. The Jews are far less
grasping with money. Among the Jews it is no uncommon thing for a rich
young man to choose a poor girl, or a young woman of fortune to set herself
passionately to win a man of intellect. But in the French middle-classes,
Catholic and provincial in their outlook, almost always money woos money.
And to what end? Poor wretches, they have none but dull commonplace
desires: they can do nothing but eat, yawn, sleep--save. Antoinette knew
them. She had observed their ways from her childhood on. She had seen them
with the eyes of wealth and the eyes of poverty. She had no illusions left
about them, nor about the treatment she had to expect from them. And so the
attentions of this man who had asked her to marry him came as an unhoped
for treasure in her life. At first she did not think of him as a lover, but
gradually she was filled with gratitude and tenderness towards him. She
would have accepted his proposal if it had not meant following him to the
colonies and consequently leaving her brother. She refused: and though her
lover understood the magnanimity of her reason for doing so, he could not
forgive her: love is so selfish, that the lover will not hear of being
sacrificed even to those virtues which are dearest to him in the beloved.
He gave up seeing her: when he went away he never wrote: she had no news
of him at all until, five or six months later, she received a printed
intimation, addressed in his hand, that he had married another woman.

Antoinette felt it deeply. She was broken-hearted, and she offered up her
suffering to God: she tried to persuade herself that she was justly
punished for having for one moment lost sight of her one duty, to devote
herself to her brother: and she grew more and more wrapped up in it.

She withdrew from the world altogether. She even dropped going to the
Nathans', for they were a little cold towards her after she refused
the marriage which they had arranged for her: they too refused to see
any justification for her. Madame Nathan had decided that the marriage
should take place, and her vanity was hurt at its missing fire through
Antoinette's fault. She thought her scruples certainly quite praiseworthy,
but exaggerated and sentimental: and thereafter she lost interest in the
silly little goose. It was necessary for her always to be helping people,
with or without their consent, and she quickly found another protegee to
absorb, for the time being, all the interest and devotion which she had to
expend.

Olivier knew nothing of his sister's sad little romance. He was a
sentimental, irresponsible boy, living in his dreams and fancies. It was
impossible to depend on him in spite of his intelligence and charm and
his very real tenderheartedness. Often he would fling away the results of
months of work by his irresponsibility, or in a fit of discouragement, or
by some boyish freak, or some fancied love affair, in which he would waste
all his time and energy. He would fall in love with a pretty face, that
he had seen once, with coquettish little girls, whom perhaps he once met
out somewhere, though they never paid any attention to him. He would be
infatuated with something he had read, a poet, or a musician: he would
steep himself in their works for months together, to the exclusion of
everything else and the detriment of his studies. He had to be watched
always, though great care had to be taken that he did not know it, for he
was easily wounded. There was always a danger of a seizure. He had the
feverish excitement, the want of balance, the uneasy trepidation, that are
often found in those who have a consumptive tendency. The doctor had not
concealed the danger from Antoinette. The sickly plant, transplanted from
the provinces to Paris, needed fresh air and light. Antoinette could not
provide them. They had not enough money to be able to go away from Paris
during the holidays. All the rest of their year every day in the week was
full, and on Sundays they were so tired that they never wanted to go out,
except to a concert.

There were Sundays in the summer when Antoinette would make an effort and
drag Olivier off to the woods outside Paris, near Chaville or Saint-Cloud.
But the woods were full of noisy couples, singing music-hall songs, and
littering the place with greasy bits of paper: they did not find the divine
solitude which purifies and gives rest. And in the evening when they turned
homewards they had to suffer the roar and clatter of the trains, the dirty,
crowded, low, narrow, dark carriages of the suburban lines, the coarseness
of certain things they saw, the noisy, singing, shouting, smelly
people, and the reek of tobacco smoke. Neither Antoinette nor Olivier
could understand the people, and they would return home disgusted and
demoralized. Olivier would beg Antoinette not to go for Sunday walks again;
and for some time Antoinette would not have the heart to go again. And
then she would insist, though it was even more disagreeable to her than to
Olivier: but she thought it necessary for her brother's health. She would
force him to go out once more. But their new experience would be no better
than the last, and Olivier would protest bitterly. So they stayed shut up
in the stifling town, and, in their prison-yard, they sighed for the open
fields.

* * * * *

Olivier had reached the end of his schooldays. The examinations for the
_Ecole Normale_ were over. It was quite time. Antoinette was very tired.
She was counting on his success: her brother had everything in his favor.
At school he was regarded as one of the best pupils: and all his masters
were agreed in praising his industry and intelligence, except for a certain
want of mental discipline which made it difficult for him to bend to any
sort of plan. But the responsibility of it weighed on Olivier so heavily
that he lost his head as the examination came near. He was worn out, and
paralyzed by the fear of failure, and a morbid shyness that crept over him.
He trembled at the thought of appearing before the examiners in public. He
had always suffered from shyness: in class he would blush and choke when he
had to speak: at first he could hardly do more than answer his name. And it
was much more easy for him to reply impromptu than when he knew that he was
going to be questioned: the thought of it made him ill: his mind rushed
ahead picturing every detail of the ordeal as it would happen: and the
longer he had to wait, the more he was obsessed by it. It might be said
that he passed every examination at least twice: for he passed it in his
dreams on the night before and expended all his energy, so that he had none
left for the real examination.

But he did not even reach the _viva voce_, the very thought of which had
sent him into a cold sweat the night before. In the written examination on
a philosophical subject, which at any ordinary time would have sent him
flying off, he could not even manage to squeeze out a couple of pages in
six hours. For the first few hours his brain was empty; he could think of
nothing, nothing. It was like a blank wall against which he hurled himself
in vain. Then, an hour before the end, the wall was rent and a few rays of
light shone through the crevices. He wrote an excellent short essay, but it
was not enough to place him. When Antoinette saw the despair on his face as
he came out, she foresaw the inevitable blow, and she was as despairing as
he: but she did not show it. Even in the most desperate situations she had
always an inexhaustible capacity for hope.

Olivier was rejected.

He was crushed by it. Antoinette pretended to smile as though it were
nothing of any importance: but her lips trembled. She consoled her brother,
and told him that it was an easily remedied misfortune, and that he would
be certain to pass next year, and win a better place. She did not tell
him how vital it was to her that he should have passed, that year, or how
utterly worn out she felt in soul and body, or how uneasy she felt about
fighting through another year like that. But she had to go on. If she were
to go away before Olivier had passed he would never have the courage to go
on fighting alone: he would succumb.

She concealed her weariness from him, and even redoubled her efforts.
She wore herself to skin and bone to let him have amusement and change
during the holidays so that he might resume work with greater energy and
confidence. But at the very outset her small savings had to be broken into,
and, to make matters worse, she lost some of her most profitable pupils.

Another year!... Within sight of the final ordeal they were almost at
breaking-point. Above all, they had to live, and discover some other means
of scraping along. Antoinette accepted a situation as a governess in
Germany which had been offered her through the Nathans. It was the very
last thing she would have thought of, but nothing else offered at the time,
and she could not wait. She had never left her brother for a single day
during the last six years: and she could not imagine what life would be
like without seeing and hearing him from day to day. Olivier was terrified
when he thought of it: but he dared not say anything: it was he who had
brought it about: if he had passed Antoinette would not have been reduced
to such an extremity: he had no right to say anything, or to take into
account his own grief at the parting: it was for her to decide.

They spent the last days together in dumb anguish, as though one of them
were about to die: they hid away from each other when their sorrow was too
much for them. Antoinette gazed into Olivier's eyes for counsel. If he had
said to her: "Don't go!" she would have stayed, although she had to go. Up
to the very last moment, in the cab in which they drove to the station,
she was prepared to break her resolution: she felt that she could never go
through with it. At a word from him one word!... But he said nothing. Like
her, he set his teeth and would not budge.--She made him promise to write
to her every day, and to conceal nothing from her, and to send for her if
he were ever in the least danger.

* * * * *

They parted. While Olivier returned with a heavy heart to his school, where
it had been agreed that he should board, the train carried Antoinette,
crushed and sorrowful, towards Germany. Lying awake and staring through the
night they felt the minutes dragging them farther and farther apart, and
they called to each other in whispering voices.

Antoinette was fearful of the new world to which she was going. She had
changed much in six years. She who had once been so bold and afraid of
nothing had grown so used to silence and isolation that it hurt her to
go out into the world again. The laughing, gay, chattering Antoinette of
the old happy times had passed away with them. Unhappiness had made her
sensitive and shy. No doubt living with Olivier had infected her with his
timidity. She had had hardly anybody to talk to except her brother. She was
scared by the least little thing, and was really in a panic when she had to
pay a call. And so it was a nervous torture to her to think that she was
now going to live among strangers, to have to talk to them, to be always
with them. The poor girl had no more real vocation for teaching than her
brother: she did her work conscientiously, but her heart was not in it, and
she had not the support of feeling that there was any use in it. She was
made to love and not to teach. And no one cared for her love.

* * * * *

Nowhere was her capacity for love less in demand than in her new situation
in Germany. The Gruenebaums, whose children she was engaged to teach French,
took not the slightest interest in her. They were haughty and familiar,
indifferent and indiscreet: they paid fairly well: and, as a result, they
regarded everybody in their payment as being under an obligation to them,
and thought they could do just as they liked. They treated Antoinette as a
superior sort of servant and allowed her hardly any liberty. She did not
even have a room to herself: she slept in a room adjoining that of the
children and had to leave the door open all night. She was never alone.
They had no respect for her need of taking refuge every now and then
within herself--the sacred right of every human being to preserve an inner
sanctuary of solitude. The only happiness she had lay in correspondence and
communion with her brother: she made use of every moment of liberty she
could snatch. But even that was encroached upon. As soon as she began to
write they would prowl about in her room and ask her what she was writing.
When she was reading a letter they would ask her what was in it: by their
persistent impertinent curiosity they found out about her "little brother."
She had to hide from them. Too shameful sometimes were the expedients to
which she had to resort, and the holes and crannies in which she had to
hide, in order to be able to read Olivier's letters unobserved. If she left
a letter lying in her room she was sure it would be read: and as she had
nothing she could lock except her box, she had to carry any papers she did
not want to have read about with her: they were always prying into her
business and her intimate affairs, and they were always fishing for her
secret thoughts. It was not that the Gruenebaums were really interested in
her, only they thought that, as they paid her, she was their property. They
were not malicious about it: indiscretion was with them an incurable habit:
they were never offended with each other.

Nothing could have been more intolerable to Antoinette than such espionage,
such a lack of moral modesty, which made it impossible for her to escape
even for an hour a day from their curiosity. The Gruenebaums were hurt by
the haughty reserve with which she treated them. Naturally they found
highly moral reasons to justify their vulgar curiosity, and to condemn
Antoinette's desire to be immune from it.

"It was their duty," they thought, "to know the private life of a girl
living under their roof, as a member of their household, to whom they
had intrusted the education of their children: they were responsible for
her."--(That is the sort of thing that so many mistresses say of their
servants, mistresses whose "responsibility" does not go so far as to
spare the unhappy girls any fatigue or work that must revolt them, but
is entirely limited to denying them every sort of pleasure.)--"And that
Antoinette should refuse to acknowledge that duty, imposed on them by
conscience, could only show," they concluded, "that she was conscious
of being not altogether beyond reproach: an honest girl has nothing to
conceal."

So Antoinette lived under a perpetual persecution, against which she was
always on her guard, so that it made her seem even more cold and reserved
than she was.

Every day her brother wrote her a twelve-page letter: and she contrived to
write to him every day even if it were only a few lines. Olivier tried hard
to be brave and not to show his grief too clearly. But he was bored and
dull. His life had always been so bound up with his sister's that, now that
she was torn from him, he seemed to have lost part of himself: he could
not use his arms, or his legs, or his brains, he could not walk, or play
the piano, or work, or do anything, not even dream--except through her. He
slaved away at his books from morning to night: but it was no good: his
thoughts were elsewhere: he would be suffering, or thinking of her, or of
the morrow's letter: he would sit staring at the clock, waiting for the
day's letter: and when it arrived his fingers would tremble with joy--with
fear, too--as he tore open the envelope. Never did lover tremble with more
tenderness and anxiety at a letter from his mistress. He would hide away,
like Antoinette, to read his letters: he would carry them about with him:
and at night he always had the last letter under his pillow, and he would
touch it from time to time to make sure that it was still there, during
the long, sleepless nights when he lay awake dreaming of his dear sister.
How far removed from her he felt! He felt that most dreadfully when
Antoinette's letters were delayed by the post and came a day late. Two
days, two nights, between them!... He exaggerated the time and the distance
because he had never traveled. His imagination would take fire:

"Heavens! If she were to fall ill! There would be time for her to die
before he could see her ... Why had she not written to him, just a line or
two, the day before?... Was she ill?... Yes. She was surely ill ..." He
would choke.--More often still he would be terrified of dying away from
her, dying alone, among people who did not care, in the horrible school,
in grim, gray Paris. He would make himself ill with the thought of it....
"Should he write and tell her to come back?"--But then he would be ashamed
of his cowardice. Besides, as soon as he began to write to her it gave him
such joy to be in communion with her that for a moment he would forget
his suffering. It seemed to him that he could see her, hear her voice: he
would tell her everything: never had he spoken to her so intimately, so
passionately, when they had been together: he would call her "my true,
brave, dear, kind, beloved, little sister," and say, "I love you so."
Indeed they were real love-letters.

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