Jean Christophe Journey\'s End by Romain Rolland

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JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
JOURNEY'S END

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
THE BURNING BUSH
THE NEW DAWN

BY
ROMAIN ROLLAND

Translated by
GILBERT CANNAN

WITH PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

THE BURNING BUSH

THE NEW DAWN

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

I

In spite of the success which was beginning to materialize outside
France, the two friends found their financial position very slow in
mending. Every now and then there recurred moments of penury when they
were obliged to go without food. They made up for it by eating twice as
much as they needed when they had money. But, on the whole, it was a
trying existence.

For the time being they were in the period of the lean kine. Christophe
had stayed up half the night to finish a dull piece of musical
transcription for Hecht: he did not get to bed until dawn, and slept
like a log to make up for lost time. Olivier had gone out early: he had
a lecture to give at the other end of Paris. About eight o'clock the
porter came with the letters, and rang the bell. As a rule he did not
wait for them to come, but just slipped the letters under the door. This
morning he went on knocking. Only half awake, Christophe went to the
door growling: he paid no attention to what the smiling, loquacious
porter was saying about an article in the paper, but just took the
letters without looking at them, pushed the door to without closing it,
went to bed, and was soon fast asleep once more.

An hour later he woke up with a start on hearing some one in his room:
and he was amazed to see a strange face at the foot of his bed, a
complete stranger bowing gravely to him. It was a journalist, who,
finding the door open, had entered without ceremony. Christophe was
furious, and jumped out of bed:

"What the devil are you doing here?" he shouted.

He grabbed his pillow to hurl it at the intruder, who skipped back. He
explained himself. A reporter of the Nation wished to interview M.
Krafft about the article which had appeared in the _Grand Journal_.

"What article?"

"Haven't you read it?"

The reporter began to tell him what it was about.

Christophe went to bed again. If he had not been so sleepy he would have
kicked the fellow out: but it was less trouble to let him talk. He
curled himself up in the bed, closed his eyes, and pretended to be
asleep. And very soon he would really have been off, but the reporter
stuck to his guns, and in a loud voice read the beginning of the
article. At the very first words Christophe pricked up his ears. M.
Krafft was referred to as the greatest musical genius of the age.
Christophe forgot that he was pretending to be asleep, swore in
astonishment, sat up in bed, and said:

"They are mad! Who has been pulling their legs?"

The reporter seized the opportunity, and stopped reading to ply
Christophe with a series of questions, which he answered unthinkingly.
He had picked up the paper, and was gazing in utter amazement at his own
portrait, which was printed as large as life on the front page: but he
had no time to read the article, for another journalist entered the
room. This time Christophe was really angry. He told them to get out:
but they did not comply until they had made hurried notes of the
furniture in the room, and the photographs on the wall, and the features
of the strange being who, between laughter and anger, thrust them out of
the room, and, in his nightgown, took them to the door and bolted it
after them.

But it was ordained that he should not be left in peace that day. He had
not finished dressing when there came another knock at the door, a
prearranged knock which was only known to a few of their friends.
Christophe opened the door, and found himself face to face with yet
another stranger, whom he was just about to dismiss in a summary
fashion, when the man protested that he was the author of the
article.... How are you to get rid of a man who regards you as a genius!
Christophe had grumpily to submit to his admirer's effusions. He was
amazed at the sudden notoriety which had come like a bolt from the blue,
and he wondered if, without knowing it, he had had a masterpiece
produced the evening before. But he had no time to find out. The
journalist had come to drag him, whether he liked it or not, there and
then, to the offices of the paper where the editor, the great Arsene
Gamache himself, wished to see him: the car was waiting downstairs.
Christophe tried to get out of it: but, in spite of himself, he was so
naively responsive to the journalist's friendly protestations that in
the end he gave way.

Ten minutes later he was introduced to a potentate in whose presence all
men trembled. He was a sturdy little man, about fifty, short and stout,
with a big round head, gray hair brushed up, a red face, a masterful way
of speaking, a thick, affected accent, and every now and then he would
break out into a choppy sort of volubility. He had forced himself on
Paris by his enormous self-confidence. A business man, with a knowledge
of men, naive and deep, passionate, full of himself, he identified his
business with the business of France, and even with the affairs of
humanity. His own interests, the prosperity of his paper, and the
_salus publica_, all seemed to him to be of equal importance and to
be narrowly associated. He had no doubt that any man who wronged him,
wronged France also: and to crush an adversary, he would in perfectly
good faith have overthrown the Government. However, he was by no means
incapable of generosity. He was an idealist of the after-dinner order,
and loved to be a sort of God Almighty, and to lift some poor devil or
other out of the mire, by way of demonstrating the greatness of his
power, whereby he could make something out of nothing, make and unmake
Ministers, and, if he had cared to, make and unmake Kings. His sphere
was the universe. He would make men of genius, too, if it so pleased
him.

That day he had just "made" Christophe.

* * * * *

It was Olivier who in all innocence had belled the cat.

Olivier, who could do nothing to advance his own interests, and had a
horror of notoriety, and avoided journalists like the plague, took quite
another view of these things where his friend was in question. He was
like those loving mothers, the right-living women of the middle-class,
those irreproachable wives, who would sell themselves to procure any
advantage for their rascally young sons.

Writing for the reviews, and finding himself in touch with a number of
critics and dilettanti, Olivier never let slip an opportunity of talking
about Christophe: and for some time past he had been surprised to find
that they listened to him. He could feel a sort of current of curiosity,
a mysterious rumor flying about literary and polite circles. What was
its origin? Were there echoes of newspaper opinion, following on the
recent performances of Christophe's work in England and Germany? It
seemed impossible to trace it to any definite source. It was one of
those frequent phenomena of those men who sniff the air of Paris, and
can tell the day before, more exactly than the meteorological
observatory of the tower of Saint-Jacques, what wind is blowing up for
the morrow, and what it will bring with it. In that great city of
nerves, through which electric vibrations pass, there are invisible
currents of fame, a latent celebrity which precedes the actuality, the
vague gossip of the drawing-rooms, the _nescio quid majus nascitur
Iliade_, which, at a given moment, bursts out in a puffing article,
the blare of the trumpet which drives the name of the new idol into the
thickest heads. Sometimes that trumpet-blast alienates the first and
best friends of the man whose glory it proclaims. And yet they are
responsible for it.

So Olivier had a share in the article in the _Grand Journal_. He
had taken advantage of the interest displayed in Christophe, and had
carefully stoked it up with adroitly worded information. He had been
careful not to bring Christophe directly into touch with the
journalists, for he was afraid of an outburst. But at the request of the
_Grand Journal_ he had slyly introduced Christophe to a reporter in
a cafe without his having any suspicion. All these precautions only
pricked curiosity, and made Christophe more interesting. Olivier had
never had anything to do with publicity before: he had not stopped to
consider that he was setting in motion a machine which, once it got
going, it was impossible to direct or control.

He was in despair when, on his way to his lecture, he read the article
in the _Grand Journal_. He had not foreseen such a calamity. Above
all, he had not expected it to come so soon. He had reckoned on the
paper waiting to make sure and verify its facts before it published
anything. He was too naive. If a newspaper takes the trouble to discover
a new celebrity, it is, of course, for its own sake, so that its rivals
may not have the honor of the discovery. It must lose no time, even if
it means knowing nothing whatever about the person in question. But an
author very rarely complains: if he is admired, he has quite as much
understanding as he wants.

The _Grand Journal_, after setting out a few ridiculous stories
about Christophe's struggles, representing him as a victim of German
despotism, an apostle of liberty, forced to fly from Imperial Germany
and take refuge in France, the home and shelter of free men,--(a fine
pretext for a Chauvinesque tirade!)--plunged into lumbering praise of
his genius, of which it knew nothing,--nothing except a few tame
melodies, dating from Christophe's early days in Germany, which
Christophe, who was ashamed of them, would have liked to have seen
destroyed. But if the author of the article knew nothing at all about
Christophe's work, he made up for it in his knowledge of his plans--or
rather such plans as he invented for him. A few words let fall by
Christophe or Olivier, or even by Goujart, who pretended to be
well-informed, had been enough for him to construct a fanciful
Jean-Christophe, "a Republican genius,--the great musician of
democracy." He seized the opportunity to decry various contemporary
French musicians, especially the most original and independent among
them, who set very little store by democracy. He only excepted one or
two composers, whose electoral opinions were excellent in his eyes. It
was annoying that their music was not better. But that was a detail. And
besides, his eulogy of these men, and even his praise of Christophe, was
of not nearly so much account as his criticism of the rest. In Paris,
when you read an article eulogizing a man's work, it is always as well
to ask yourself:

"Whom is he decrying?"

Olivier went hot with shame as he read the paper, and said to himself:

"A fine thing I've done!"

He could hardly get through his lecture. As soon as he had finished he
hurried home. What was his consternation to find that Christophe had
already gone out with the journalists! He delayed lunch for him.
Christophe did not return. Hours passed, and Olivier grew more and more
anxious and thought:

"What a lot of foolish things they will make him say!"

About three o'clock Christophe came home quite lively. He had had lunch
with Arsene Gamache, and his head was a little muzzy with the champagne
he had drunk. He could not understand Olivier's anxiety, who asked him
in fear and trembling what he had said and done.

"What have I been doing? I've had a splendid lunch. I haven't had such a
good feed for a long time."

He began to recount the menu.

"And wine.... I had wine of every color."

Olivier interrupted him to ask who was there.

"Who was there?... I don't know. There was Gamache, a little round man,
true as gold: Clodomir, the writer of the article, a charming fellow:
three or four journalists whom I didn't know, very jolly, all very nice
and charming to me--the cream of good fellows."

Olivier did not seem to be convinced. Christophe was astonished at his
small enthusiasm.

"Haven't you read the article?"

"Yes. I have. Have you read it?"

"Yes.... That is to say, I just glanced at it. I haven't had time."

"Well: read it."

Christophe took it up. At the first words he spluttered.

"Oh! The idiot!" he said.

He roared with laughter.

"Bah!" he went on. "These critics are all alike. They know nothing at
all about it."

But as he read farther he began to lose his temper: it was too stupid,
it made him look ridiculous. What did they mean by calling him "a
Republican musician"; it did not mean anything.... Well, let the fib
pass.... But when they set his "Republican" art against the "sacristy
art" of the masters who had preceded him,--(he whose soul was nourished
by the souls of those great men),--it was too much....

"The swine! They're trying to make me out an idiot!..."

And then, what was the sense of using him as a cudgel to thwack talented
French musicians, whom he loved more or less,--(though rather less than
more),--though they knew their trade, and honored it? And--worst of
all--with an incredible want of tact he was credited with odious
sentiments about his country!... No, that, that was beyond
endurance....

"I shall write and tell them so," said Christophe.

Olivier intervened.

"No, no," he said, "not now! You are too excited. Tomorrow, when you are
cooler...."

Christophe stuck to it. When he had anything to say he could not wait
until the morrow. He promised Olivier to show him his letter. The
precaution was useful. The letter was duly revised, so as to be confined
practically to the rectification of the opinions about Germany with
which he had been credited, and then Christophe ran and posted it.

"Well," he said, when he returned, "that will save half the harm being
done: the letter will appear to-morrow."

Olivier shook his head doubtfully. He was still thoughtful, and he
looked Christophe straight in the face, and said:

"Christophe, did you say anything imprudent at lunch?"

"Oh no," said Christophe with a laugh.

"Sure?"

"Yes, you coward."

Olivier was somewhat reassured. But Christophe was not. He had just
remembered that he had talked volubly and unguardedly. He had been quite
at his ease at once. It had never for a moment occurred to him to
distrust any of them: they seemed so cordial, so well-disposed towards
him! As, in fact, they were. We are always well-disposed to people when
we have done them a good turn, and Christophe was so frankly delighted
with it all that his joy infected them. His affectionate easy manners,
his jovial sallies, his enormous appetite, and the celerity with which
the various liquors vanished down his throat without making him turn a
hair, were by no means displeasing to Arsene Gamache, who was himself a
sturdy trencherman, coarse, boorish, and sanguine, and very contemptuous
of people who had ill-health, and those who dared not eat and drink, and
all the sickly Parisians. He judged a man by his prowess at table. He
appreciated Christophe. There and then he proposed to produce his
_Gargantua_ as an opera at the Opera.--(The very summit of art was reached
for these bourgeois French people in the production on the stage
of the _Damnation of Faust_, or the _Nine Symphonies_.)--Christophe, who
burst out laughing at the grotesqueness of the idea, had great difficulty
in preventing him from telephoning his orders to the directors of the
Opera, or the Minister of Fine Arts.--(If Gamache were to be believed, all
these important people were apparently at his beck and call.)--And, the
proposal reminding him of the strange transmutation which had taken place
in his symphonic poem, _David_, he went so far as to tell the story of the
performance organized by Deputy Roussin to introduce his mistress to the
public. Gamache, who did not like Roussin, was delighted: and Christophe,
spurred on by the generous wines and the sympathy of his hearers, plunged
into other stories, more or less indiscreet, the point of which was not
lost on those present. Christophe was the only one to forget them when the
party broke up. And now, on Olivier's question, they rushed back to his
memory. He felt a little shiver run down his spine. For he did not deceive
himself: he had enough experience to know what would happen: now that he
was sober again he saw it as clearly as though it had actually happened:
his indiscretions would be twisted and distorted, and scattered broadcast
as malicious blabbing, his artistic sallies would be turned into weapons
of war. As for his letter correcting the article, he knew as well as
Olivier how much that would avail him: it is a waste of ink to answer a
journalist, for he always has the last word.

Everything happened exactly to the letter as Christophe had foreseen it
would. His indiscretions were published, his letter was not. Gamache
only went so far as to write to him that he recognized the generosity of
his feelings, and that his scruples were an honor to him: but he kept
his scruples dark: and the falsified opinions attributed to Christophe
went on being circulated, provoking biting criticism in the Parisian
papers, and later in Germany, where much indignation was felt that a
German artist should express himself with so little dignity about his
country.

Christophe thought he would be clever, and take advantage of an
interview by the reporter of another paper to protest his love for the
_Deutsches Reich_, where, he said, people were at least as free as
in the French Republic.--He was speaking to the representative of a
Conservative paper, who at once credited him with anti-Republican views.

"Better and better!" said Christophe. "But what on earth has my music to
do with politics?"

"It is usual with us," said Olivier. "Look at the battles that have
taken place over Beethoven. Some people will have it that he was a
Jacobin, others a mountebank, others still a Pere Duchesne, and others a
prince's lackey."

"He'd knock their heads together."

"Well, do the same."

Christophe only wished he could. But he was too amiable with people who
were friendly towards him. Olivier never felt happy when he left him
alone. For they were always coming to interview him: and it was no use
Christophe promising to be guarded: he could not help being confidential
and unreserved. He said everything that came into his head. Women
journalists would come and make a fuss of him, and get him to talk about
his sentimental adventures. Others would make use of him to speak ill of
such-an-one, or so-and-so. When Olivier came in he would find Christophe
utterly downcast.

"Another howler?" he would ask.

"Of course," Christophe would reply in despair.

"You are incorrigible!"

"I ought to be locked up.... But I swear that it is the last time."

"Yes, I know. Until the next...."

"No. This really is the last."

Next day Christophe said triumphantly to Olivier:

"Another one came to-day. I shut the door in his face."

"Don't go too far," said Olivier. "Be careful with them. 'This animal is
dangerous.' He will attack you if you defend yourself.... It is so easy
for them to avenge themselves! They can twist the least little thing you
may have said to their uses."

Christophe drew his hand across his forehead:

"Oh! Good Lord!"

"What's the matter?"

"When I shut the door in his face I told...."

"What?"

"The Emperor's joke."

"The Emperor's?"

"Yes. His or one of his people's...."

"How awful! You'll see it to-morrow on the front page!"

Christophe shuddered. But, next day, what he saw was a description of
his room, which the journalist had not seen, and a report of a
conversation which he had not had with him.

The facts were more and more embellished the farther they spread. In the
foreign papers they were garnished out of all recognition. Certain
French articles having told how in his poverty he had transposed music
for the guitar, Christophe learned from an English newspaper that he had
played the guitar in the streets. He did not only read eulogies. Far
from it. It was enough for Christophe to have been taken up by the
_Grand Journal_, for him to be taken to task by the other papers.
They could not as a matter of dignity allow the possibility of a rival's
discovering a genius whom they had ignored. Some of them were rabid
about it. Others commiserated Christophe on his ill-luck. Goujart,
annoyed at having the ground cut away from under his feet, wrote an
article, as he said, to set people right on certain points. He wrote
familiarly of his old friend Christophe, to whom, when he first came to
Paris, he had been guide and comforter: he was certainly a highly gifted
musician, but--(he was at liberty to say so, since they were
friends)--very deficient in many ways, ill-educated, unoriginal, and
inordinately vain; so absurdly to flatter his vanity, as had been done,
was to serve him but ill at a time when he stood in need of a mentor who
should be wise, learned, judicious, benevolent, and severe, etc.--(a
fancy portrait of Goujart).--The musicians made bitter fun of it all.
They affected a lofty contempt for an artist who had the newspapers at
his back: and, pretending to be disgusted with the _vulgum pecus_,
they refused the presents of Artaxerxes, which were not offered them.
Some of them abused Christophe: others overwhelmed him with their
commiseration. Some of them--(his colleagues)--laid the blame on
Olivier.--They were only too glad to pay him out for his intolerance and
his way of holding aloof from them,--rather, if the truth were known,
from a desire for solitude than from scorn of any of them. But men are
least apt to pardon those who show that they can do without them.--Some
of them almost went so far as to hint that he had made money by the
articles in the _Grand Journal_. There were others who took upon
themselves to defend Christophe against him: they appeared to be
broken-hearted at Olivier's callousness in dragging a sensitive artist,
a dreamer, ill-equipped for the battle of life,--Christophe,--into the
turmoil of the market-place, where he could not but be ruined: for they
regarded Christophe as a little boy not strong enough in the head to be
allowed to go out alone. The future of this man, they said, was being
ruined, for, even if he were not a genius, such good intentions and such
tremendous industry deserved a better fate, and he was being intoxicated
with incense of an inferior brand. It was a great pity. Why could they
not leave him in his obscurity to go on working patiently for years?

Olivier might have had the answer pat:

"A man must eat to work. Who will give him his bread?"

But that would not have abashed them. They would have replied with their
magnificent serenity:

"That is a detail. An artist must suffer. And what does a little
suffering matter?"

Of course, they were men of the world, quite well off, who professed
these Stoic theories. As the millionaire once said to the simple person
who came and asked him to help a poverty-stricken artist:

"But, sir, Mozart died of poverty."

They would have thought it very bad taste on Olivier's part if he had
told them that Mozart would have asked nothing better than to go on
living, and that Christophe was determined to do so.

* * * * *

Christophe was getting heartily sick of the vulgar tittle-tattle. He
began to wonder if it were going on forever.--But it was all over in a
fortnight. The newspapers gave up talking about him. However, he had
become known. When his name was mentioned, people said, not:

"The author of _David_ or _Gargantua_," but:

"Oh yes! The _Grand Journal_ man!..."

He was famous.

Olivier knew it by the number of letters that came for Christophe, and
even for himself, in his reflected glory: offers from librettists,
proposals from concert-agents, declarations of friendship from men who
had formerly been his enemies, invitations from women. His opinion was
asked, for newspaper inquiries, about anything and everything: the
depopulation of France, idealist art, women's corsets, the nude on the
stage,--and did he believe that Germany was decadent, or that music had
reached its end, etc., etc. They used to laugh at them all. But, though
he laughed, lo and behold! Christophe, that Huron, steadily accepted the
invitations to dinner! Olivier could not believe his eyes.

"You?" he said.

"I! Certainly," replied Christophe jeeringly. "You thought you were the
only man who could go and see the beautiful ladies? Not at all, my boy!
It's my turn now. I want to amuse myself!"

"You? Amuse yourself? My dear old man!"

The truth was that Christophe had for so long lived shut up in his own
room that he felt a sudden longing to get away from it. Besides, he took
a naive delight in tasting his new fame. He was terribly bored at
parties, and thought the people idiotic. But when he came home he used
to take a malicious pleasure in telling Olivier how much he had enjoyed
himself. He would go to people's houses once, but never again: he would
invent the wildest excuses, with a frightful want of tact, to get out of
their renewed invitations. Olivier would be scandalized, and Christophe
would shout with laughter. He did not go to their houses to spread his
fame, but to replenish his store of life, his collection of expressions
and tones of voice--all the material of form, and sound, and color, with
which an artist has periodically to enrich his palette. A musician does
not feed only on music. An inflection of the human voice, the rhythm of
a gesture, the harmony of a smile, contain more suggestion of music for
him that another man's symphony. But it must be said that the music of
faces and human souls is as stale and lacking in variety in polite
society as the music of polite musicians. Each has a manner and becomes
set in it. The smile of a pretty woman is as stereotyped in its studied
grace as a Parisian melody. The men are even more insipid than the
women. Under the debilitating influence of society, their energy is
blunted, their original characters rot away and finally disappear with a
frightful rapidity. Christophe was struck by the number of dead and
dying men he met among the artists: there was one young musician, full
of life and genius, whom success had dulled, stupefied, and wiped out of
existence: he thought of nothing but swallowing down the flattery in
which he was smothered, enjoying himself, and sleeping. What he would be
like twenty years later was shown in another corner of the room, in the
person of an old pomaded _maestro_, who was rich, famous, a member
of all the Academies, at the very height of his career, and, though
apparently he had nothing to fear and no more wires to pull, groveled
before everything and everybody, and was fearful of opinion, power, and
the Press, dared not say what he thought, and thought nothing at all--a
man who had ceased to exist, showing himself off, an ass saddled with
the relics of his own past life.