Jean Christophe, Vol. I by Romain Rolland

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* * * * *

The Reinharts' little house was _gemuetlich_ like themselves. It was a
rather chattering _Gemuet_, a _Gemuet_ with inscriptions. The furniture, the
utensils, the china all talked, and went on repeating their joy in seeing
their "charming guest," asked after his health, and gave him pleasant and
virtuous advice. On the sofas--which was very hard--was a little cushion
which murmured amiably:

"Only a quarter of an hour!" (_Nur ein Viertelstuendchen_.)

The cup of coffee which was handed to Christophe insisted on his taking
more:

"Just a drop!" (_Noch ein Schlueckchen_.)

The plates seasoned the cooking with morality and otherwise the cooking was
quite excellent. One plate said:

"Think of everything: otherwise no good will come to you!"

Another:

"Affection and gratitude please everybody. Ingratitude pleases nobody."

Although Christophe did not smoke, the ash-tray on the mantelpiece insisted
on introducing itself to him:

"A little resting place for burning cigars." (_Ruheplaetzchen fuer brennende
Cigarren._)

He wanted to wash his hands. The soap on the washstand said:

"For our charming guest." (_Fuer unseren lieben Gast._)

And the sententious towel, like a person who has nothing to say, but thinks
he must say something all the same, gave him this reflection, full of good
sense but not very apposite, that "to enjoy the morning you must rise
early."

"_Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund._"

At length Christophe dared not even turn in his chair for fear of hearing
himself addressed by other voices coming from every part of the room. He
wanted to say:

"Be silent, you little monsters! We don't understand each other."

And he burst out laughing crazily and then tried to explain to his host
and hostess that he was thinking of the gathering at the school. He would
not have hurt them for the world, And he was not very sensible of the
ridiculous. Very soon he grew accustomed to the loquacious cordiality of
these people and their belongings. He could have tolerated anything in
them! They were so kind! They were not tiresome either; if they had no
taste they were not lacking in intelligence.

They were a little lost in the place to which they had come. The
intolerable susceptibilities of the little provincial town did not allow
people to enter it as though it were a mill, without having properly asked
for the honor of becoming part of it. The Reinharts had not sufficiently
attended to the provincial code which regulated the duties of new arrivals
in the town towards those who had settled in it before them. Reinhart would
have submitted to it mechanically. But his wife, to whom such drudgery was
oppressive--she disliked being put out--postponed her duties from day to
day. She had selected those calls which bored her least, to be paid first,
or she had put the others off indefinitely. The distinguished persons who
were comprised in the last category choked with indignation at such a
want of respect. Angelica Reinhart--(her husband called her Lili)--was a
little free in her manners; she could not take on the official tone. She
would address her superiors in the hierarchy familiarly and make than go
red in the face with indignation; and if need be she was not afraid of
contradicting them. She had a quick tongue and always had to say whatever
was in her head; sometimes she made extraordinarily foolish remarks at
which people laughed behind her back; and also she could be malicious
whole-heartedly, and that made her mortal enemies. She would bite her
tongue as she was saying rash things and wish she had not said them, but it
was too late. Her husband, the gentlest and most respectful of men, would
chide her timidly about it. She would kiss him and say that she was a fool
and that he was right. But the next moment she would break out again; and
she would always say things at the least suitable moment; she would have
burst if she had not said them. She was exactly the sort of woman to get on
with Christophe.

Among the many ridiculous things which she ought not to have said, and
consequently was always saying, was her trick of perpetually comparing the
way things were done in Germany and the way they were done in France. She
was a German--(nobody more so)--but she had been brought up in Alsace among
French Alsatians, and she had felt the attraction of Latin civilization
which so many Germans in the annexed countries, even those who seem the
least likely to feel it, cannot resist. Perhaps, to tell the truth, the
attraction had become stronger out of a spirit of contradiction since
Angelica had married a North German and lived with him in purely German
society.

She opened up her usual subject of discussion on her first evening with
Christophe. She loved the pleasant freedom of conversation in France,
Christophe echoed her. France to him was Corinne; bright blue eyes, smiling
lips, frank free manners, a musical voice; he loved to know more about it.

Lili Reinhart clapped her hands on finding herself so thoroughly agreeing
with Christophe.

"It is a pity," she said, "that my little French friend has gone, but she
could not stand it; she has gone."

The image of Corinne was at once blotted out. As a match going out suddenly
makes the gentle glimmer of the stars shine out from the dark sky, another
image and other eyes appeared.

"Who?" asked Christophe with a start, "the little governess?"

"What?" said Frau Reinhart, "you knew her too?"

He described her; the two portraits were identical.

"You knew her?" repeated Christophe. "Oh! Tell me everything you know about
her!..."

Frau Reinhart began by declaring that they were bosom friends and had no
secrets from each other. But when she had to go into detail her knowledge
was reduced to very little. They had met out calling. Frau Reinhart had
made advances to the girl; and with her usual cordiality had invited her to
come and see her. The girl had come two or three times and they had talked.
But the curious Lili had not so easily succeeded in finding out anything
about the life of the little Frenchwoman; the girl was very reserved; she
had had to worm her story out of her, bit by bit. Frau Reinhart knew that
she was called Antoinette Jeannin; she had no fortune, and no friends,
except a younger brother who lived in Paris and to whom she was devoted.
She used always to talk of him; he was the only subject about which she
could talk freely; and Lili Reinhart had gained her confidence by showing
sympathy and pity for the boy living alone in Paris without relations,
without friends, at a boarding school. It was partly to pay for his
education that Antoinette had accepted a post abroad. But the two children
could not live without each other; they wanted to be with each other every
day, and the least delay in the delivery of their letters used to make them
quite ill with anxiety. Antoinette was always worrying about her brother,
the poor child could not always manage to hide his sadness and loneliness
from her; every one of his complaints used to sound through Antoinette's
heart and seemed like to break it; the thought that he was suffering used
to torture her and she used often to imagine that he was ill and would not
say so. Frau Reinhart in her kindness had often had to rebuke her for her
groundless fears, and she used to succeed in restoring her confidence for
a moment. She had not been able to find out anything about Antoinette's
family or position or her inner self. The girl was wildly shy and used
to draw into herself at the first question. The little she said showed
that she was cultured and intelligent; she seemed to have a precocious
knowledge of life; she seemed to be at once naive and undeceived, pious and
disillusioned. She had not been happy in the town in a tactless and unkind
family. She used not to complain, but it was easy to see that she used to
suffer--Frau Reinhart did not exactly know why she had gone. It had been
said that she had behaved badly. Angelica did not believe it; she was ready
to swear that it was all a disgusting calumny, worthy of the foolish rotten
town. But there had been stories; it did not matter what, did it?

"No," said Christophe, bowing his head.

"And so she has gone."

"And what did she say--anything to you when she went?"

"Ah!" said Lili Reinhart, "I had no chance. I had gone to Cologne for a few
days just then! When I came back--_Zu spaet_" (too late).--She stopped to
scold her maid, who had brought her lemon too late for her tea.

And she added sententiously with the solemnity which the true German brings
naturally to the performance of the familiar duties of daily life:

"Too late, as one so often is in life!"

(It was not clear whether she meant the lemon or her interrupted story.)

She went on:

"When I returned I found a line from her thanking me for all I had done
and telling me that she was going; she was returning to Paris; she gave no
address."

"And she did not write again?"

"Not again."

Once more Christophe saw her sad face disappear into the night; once more
he saw her eyes for a moment just as he had seen them for the last time
looking at him through the carriage window.

The enigma of France was once more set before him more insistently than
ever. Christophe never tired of asking Frau Reinhart about the country
which she pretended to know so well. And Frau Reinhart who had never been
there was not reluctant to tell him about it. Reinhart, a good patriot,
full of prejudices against France, which he knew better than his wife,
sometimes used to qualify her remarks when her enthusiasm went too far; but
she would repeat her assertions only the more vigorously, and Christophe,
knowing nothing at all about it, backed her up confidently.

What was more precious even than Lili Reinhart's memories were her books.
She had a small library of French books: school books, a few novels, a few
volumes bought at random. Christophe, greedy of knowledge and ignorant of
France, thought them a treasure when Reinhart went and got them for him and
put them at his disposal.

He began with volumes of select passages, old school books, which had been
used by Lili Reinhart or her husband in their school days. Reinhart had
assured him that he must begin with them if he wished to find his way about
French literature, which was absolutely unknown to him. Christophe was full
of respect for those who knew more than himself, and obeyed religiously:
and that very evening he began to read. He tried first of all to take stock
of the riches in his possession.

He made the acquaintance of certain French writers, namely: Thedore-Henri
Barrau, Francois Petis de la Croix, Frederic Baudry, Emile Delerot,
Charles-Auguste-Desire Filon, Samuel Descombaz, and Prosper Baur. He read
the poetry of Abbe Joseph Reyre, Pierre Lachambaudie, the Duc de Nivernois,
Andre van Hasselt, Andrieux, Madame Colet, Constance-Marie Princesse de
Salm-Dyck, Henrietta Hollard, Gabriel-Jean-Baptiste-Ernest-Wilfrid Legouve,
Hippolyte Violeau, Jean Reboul, Jean Racine, Jean de Beranger, Frederic
Bechard, Gustave Nadaud, Edouard Plouvier, Eugene Manuel, Hugo, Millevoye,
Chenedolle, James Lacour Delatre, Felix Chavannes, Francis-Edouard-Joachim,
known as Francois Coppee, and Louis Belmontet. Christophe was lost,
drowned, submerged under such a deluge of poetry and turned to prose. He
found Gustave de Molinari, Flechier, Ferdinand-Edouard Buisson, Merimee,
Malte-Brun, Voltaire, Lame-Fleury, Dumas pere, J.J. Bousseau, Mezieres,
Mirabeau, de Mazade, Claretie, Cortambert, Frederic II, and M. de Voguee.
The most often quoted of French historians was Maximilien Samson-Frederic
Schoell. In the French anthology Christophe found the Proclamation of
the new German Empire; and he read a description of the Germans by
Frederic-Constant de Rougemont, in which he learned that "_the German was
born to live in the region of the soul. He has not the light noisy gaiety
of the Frenchman. His is a great soul; his affections are tender and
profound. He is indefatigable in toil, and persevering in enterprise. There
is no more moral or long-lived people. Germany has an extraordinary number
of writers. She has the genius of art. While the inhabitants of other
countries pride themselves on being French, English, Spanish, the German on
the other hand embraces all humanity in his love. And though its position
is the very center of Europe the German nation seems to be at once the
heart and the higher reason of humanity_."

Christophe closed the book. He was astonished and tired. He thought:

"The French are good fellows; but they are not strong."

He took another volume. It was on a higher plane; it was meant for high
schools. Musset occupied three pages, and Victor Duray thirty, Lamartine
seven pages and Thiers almost forty. The whole of the _Cid_ was
included--or almost the whole:---(ten monologues of Don Diegue and Rodrigue
had been suppressed because they were too long.)--Lanfrey exalted Prussia
against Napoleon I and so he had not been cut down; he alone occupied more
space than all the great classics of the eighteenth century. Copious
narrations of the French defeats of 1870 had been extracted from _La
Debacle_ of Zola. Neither Montaigne, nor La Rochefoucauld, nor La Bruyere,
nor Diderot, nor Stendhal, nor Balzac, nor Flaubert appeared. On the other
hand, Pascal, who did not appear in the other book, found a place in this
as a curiosity; and Christophe learned by the way that the convulsionary
"_was one of the fathers of Port-Royal, a girls' school, near Paris_..."
[Footnote: The anthologies of French literature which Jean-Christophe
borrowed from his friends the Reinharts were:

I. _Selected French passages for the use of secondary schools_, by Hubert
H. Wingerath, Ph.D., director of the real-school of Saint John at
Strasburg. Part II: Middle forms.--7th Edition, 1902, Dumont-Schauberg.

II. L. Herrig and G.F. Burguy: _Literary France_, arranged by F. Tendering,
director of the real-gymnasium of the Johanneum, Hamburg.--1904,
Brunswick.]

Christophe was on the point of throwing the book away; his head was
swimming; he could not see. He said to himself: "I shall never get through
with it." He could not formulate any opinion. He turned over the leaves
idly for hours without knowing what he was reading. He did not read French
easily, and when he had labored to make out a passage, it was almost always
something meaningless and highfalutin.

And yet from the chaos there darted flashes of light, like rapier thrusts,
words that looked and stabbed, heroic laughter. Gradually an impression
emerged from his first reading, perhaps through the biased scheme of the
selections. Voluntarily or involuntarily the German editors had selected
those pieces of French which could seem to establish by the testimony of
the French themselves the failings of the French and the superiority of the
Germans. But they had no notion that what they most exposed to the eyes of
an independent mind like Christophe's was the surprising liberty of these
Frenchmen who criticised everything in their own country and praised
their adversaries. Michelet praised Frederick II, Lanfrey the English of
Trafalgar, Charras the Prussia of 1813. No enemy of Napoleon had ever dared
to speak of him so harshly. Nothing was too greatly respected to escape
their disparagement. Even under the great King the previous poets had had
their freedom of speech. Moliere spared nothing, La Fontaine laughed at
everything. Even Boileau gibed at the nobles. Voltaire derided war, flogged
religion, scoffed at his country. Moralists, satirists, pamphleteers, comic
writers, they all vied one with another in gay or somber audacity. Want
of respect was universal. The honest German editors were sometimes scared
by it, they had to throw a rope to their consciences by trying to excuse
Pascal, who lumped together cooks, porters, soldiers, and camp followers;
they protested in a note that Pascal would not have written thus if he had
been acquainted with the noble armies of modern times. They did not fail
to remind the reader how happily Lessing had corrected the Fables of La
Fontaine by following, for instance, the advice of the Genevese Rousseau
and changing the piece of cheese of Master Crow to a piece of poisoned meat
of which the vile fox dies.

"_May you never gain anything but poison. You cursed flatterers!_"

They blinked at naked truth; but Christophe was pleased with it; he loved
this light. Here and there he was even a little shocked; he was not used to
such unbridled independence which looks like anarchy to the eyes even of
the freest of Germans, who in spite of everything is accustomed to order
and discipline. And he was led astray by the way of the French; he took
certain things too seriously; and other things which were implacable
denials seemed to him to be amusing paradoxes. No matter! Surprised or
shocked he was drawn on little by little. He gave up trying to classify his
impressions; he passed from one feeling to another; he lived. The gaiety
of the French stories--Chamfort, Segur, Dumas pere, Merimee all lumped
together--delighted him; and every now and then in gusts there would creep
forth from the printed page the wild intoxicating scent of the Revolutions.

It was nearly dawn when Louisa, who slept in the next room, woke up and saw
the light through the chinks of Christophe's door. She knocked on the wall
and asked if he were ill. A chair creaked on the floor: the door opened and
Christophe appeared, pale, in his nightgown, with a candle and a book in
his hand, making strange, solemn, and grotesque gestures. Louisa was in
terror and got up in her bed, thinking that he was mad. He began to laugh,
and, waving his candle, he declaimed a scene from Moliere. In the middle of
a sentence he gurgled with laughter; he sat at the foot of his mother's bed
to take breath; the candle shook in his hand. Louisa was reassured, and
scolded him forcibly:

"What is the matter with you? What is it? Go to bed.... My poor boy, are
you going out of your senses?"

But he began again:

"You must listen to this!"

And he sat by her bedside and read the play, going back to the beginning
again. He seemed to see Corinne; he heard her mocking tones, cutting and
sonorous. Louisa protested:

"Go away! Go away! You will catch cold. How tiresome you are. Let me go to
sleep!"

He went on relentlessly. He raised his voice, waved his arms, choked with
laughter; and he asked his mother if she did not think it wonderful. Louisa
turned her back on him, buried herself in the bedclothes, stopped her ears,
and said:

"Do leave me alone!..."

But she laughed inwardly at hearing his laugh. At last she gave up
protesting. And when Christophe had finished the act, and asked her,
without eliciting any reply, if she did not think what he had read
interesting, he bent over her and saw that she was asleep. Then he smiled,
gently kissed her hair, and stole back to his own room.

* * * * *

He borrowed more and more books from the Reinharts' library. There were all
sorts of books in it. Christophe devoured them all. He wanted so much to
love the country of Corinne and the unknown young woman. He had so much
enthusiasm to get rid of that he found a use for it in his reading. Even
in second-rate works there were sentences and pages which had the effect
on him of a gust of fresh air. He exaggerated the effect, especially when
he was talking to Frau Reinhart, who always went a little better than he.
Although she was as ignorant as a fish, she delighted to contrast French
and German culture and to decry the German to the advantage of the French,
just to annoy her husband and to avenge herself for the boredom she had to
suffer in the little town.

Reinhart was really amused. Notwithstanding his learning, he had stopped
short at the ideas he had learned at school. To him the French were a
clever people, skilled in practical things, amiable, talkative, but
frivolous, susceptible, and boastful, incapable of being serious,
or sincere, or of feeling strongly--a people without music, without
philosophy, without poetry (except for _l'Art Poetique_, Beranger and
Francois Coppee)--a people of pathos, much gesticulation, exaggerated
speech, and pornography. There were not words strong enough for the
denunciation---of Latin Immorality; and for want of a better he always came
back to _frivolity_, which for him, as for the majority of his compatriots,
had a particularly unpleasant meaning. And he would end with the
usual couplet in praise of the noble German people,--the moral people
("_By that_," Herder has said, "_it is distinguished from all other
nations_.")--the faithful people (_treues Volk ... Treu_ meaning
everything: sincere, faithful, loyal and upright)--_the People par
excellence_, as Fichte says--German Force, the symbol of justice and
truth--German thought--the German _Gemuet_--the German language, the only
original language, the only language that, like the race itself, has
preserved its purity--German women, German wine, German song ... "_Germany,
Germany above everything in the world_!"

Christophe would protest. Frau Reinhart would cry out. They would all
shout. They did not get on the less for it. They knew quite well that they
were all three good Germans.

Christophe used often to go and talk, dine and walk with his new friends.
Lili Reinhart made much of him, and used to cook dainty suppers for him.
She was delighted to have the excuse for satisfying her own greediness. She
paid him all sorts of sentimental and culinary attentions. For Christophe's
birthday she made a cake, on which were twenty candles and in the middle
a little wax figure in Greek costume which was supposed to represent
Iphigenia holding a bouquet. Christophe, who was profoundly German in spite
of himself, was touched by these rather blunt and not very refined marks of
true affection.

The excellent Reinharts found other more subtle ways of showing their real
friendship. On his wife's instigation Reinhart, who could hardly read a
note of music, had bought twenty copies of Christophe's _Lieder_--(the
first to leave the publisher's shop)--he had sent them to different parts
of Germany to university acquaintances. He had also sent a certain number
to the libraries of Leipzig and Berlin, with which he had dealings through
his classbooks. For the moment at least their touching enterprise, of
which Christophe knew nothing, bore no fruit. The _Lieder_ which had been
scattered broadcast seemed to miss fire; nobody talked of them; and the
Reinharts, who were hurt by this indifference, were glad they had not told
Christophe about what they had done, for it would have given him more pain
than consolation. But in truth nothing is lost, as so often appears in
life; no effort is in vain. For years nothing happens. Then one day it
appears that your idea has made its way. It was impossible to be sure
that Christophe's _Lieder_ had not reached the hearts of a few good people
buried in the country, who were too timid or too tired to tell him so.

One person wrote to him. Two or three months after the Reinharts had sent
them, a letter came for Christophe. It was warm, ceremonious, enthusiastic,
old-fashioned in form, and came from a little town in Thuringia, and was
signed "_Universitaets Musikdirektor Professor Dr. Peter Schulz_."

It was a great joy for Christophe, and even greater for the Reinharts, when
at their house he opened the letter, which he had left lying in his pocket
for two days. They read it together. Reinhart made signs to his wife which
Christophe did not notice. He looked radiant, until suddenly Reinhart saw
his face grow gloomy, and he stopped dead in the middle of his reading.

"Well, why do you stop?" he asked.

(They used the familiar _du_.)

Christophe flung the letter on the table angrily.

"No. It is too much!" he said.

"What is?"

"Read!"

He turned away and went and sulked in a corner.

Reinhart and his wife read the letter, and could find in it only fervent
admiration.

"I don't see," he said in astonishment.

"You don't see? You don't see?..." cried Christophe, taking the letter and
thrusting it in his face. "Can't you read? Don't you see that he is a
'_Brahmin_'"?

And then Reinhart noticed that in one sentence the _Universitaets
Musikdirektor_ compared Christophe's _Lieder_ with those of Brahms.
Christophe moaned:

"A friend! I have found a friend at last!... And I have hardly found him
when I have lost him!..."

The comparison revolted him. If they had let him, he would have replied
with a stupid letter, or perhaps, upon reflection, he would have thought
himself very prudent and generous in not replying at all. Fortunately, the
Reinharts were amused by his ill-humor, and kept him from committing any
further absurdity. They succeeded in making him write a letter of thanks.
But the letter, written reluctantly, was cold and constrained. The
enthusiasm of Peter Schulz was not shaken by it. He sent two or three
more letters, brimming, over with affection. Christophe was not a good
correspondent, and although he was a little reconciled to his unknown
friend by the sincerity and real sympathy which he could feel behind his
words, he let the correspondence drop. Schulz wrote no more. Christophe
never thought about him.