Jean-Christophe Part 63

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 s.p.a.ce than all the great cla.s.sics 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sage, 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 n.o.bles. 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 n.o.ble 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 cla.s.sify his impressions; he pa.s.sed 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 c.h.i.n.ks 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 rea.s.sured, 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 p.o.r.nography. 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 n.o.ble 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 _Gemut_--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 cla.s.sbooks. 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; n.o.body 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 "_Universitats 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 _Universitats 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g, 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.

He now saw the Reinharts every day and frequently several times a day. They spent almost all the evenings together. After spending the day alone in concentration he had a physical need of talking, of saying everything that was in his mind, even if he were not understood, and of laughing with or without reason, of expanding and stretching himself.

He played for them. Having no other means of showing his grat.i.tude, he would sit at the piano and play for hours together. Frau Reinhart was no musician, and she had difficulty in keeping herself from yawning; but she sympathized with Christophe, and pretended to be interested in everything he played. Reinhart was not much more of a musician than his wife, but was sometimes touched quite materially by certain pieces of music, certain pa.s.sages, certain bars, and then he would be violently moved sometimes even to tears, and that seemed silly to him. The rest of the time he felt nothing; it was just music to him. That was the general rule. He was never moved except by the least good pa.s.sages of a composition--absolutely insignificant pa.s.sages. Both of them persuaded themselves that they understood Christophe, and Christophe tried to pretend that it was so.

Every now and then he would be seized by a wicked desire to make fun of them. He would lay traps for them and play things without any meaning, inapt _potpourris_; and he would let them think that he had composed them.

Then, when they had admired it, he would tell them what it was. Then they would grow wary, and when Christophe played them a piece with an air of mystery, they would imagine that he was trying to catch them again, and they would criticise it. Christophe would let them go on and back them up, and argue that such music was worthless, and then he would break out:

"Rascals! You are right!... It is my own!" He would be as happy as a boy at having taken them in. Frau Reinhart would be cross and come and give him a little slap; but he would laugh so good-humoredly that they would laugh with him. They did not pretend to be infallible. And as they had no leg to stand on, Lili Reinhart would criticise everything and her husband would praise everything, and so they were certain that one or other of them would always be in agreement with Christophe.

For the rest, it was not so much the musician that attracted them in Christophe as the crack-brained boy, with his affectionate ways and true reality of life. The ill that they had heard spoken of him had rather disposed them in his favor. Like him, they were rather oppressed by the atmosphere of the little town; like him, they were frank, they judged for themselves, and they regarded him as a great baby, not very clever in the ways of life, and the victim of his own frankness.

Christophe was not under many illusions concerning his new friends, and it made him sad to think that they did not understand the depths of his character, and that they would never understand it. But he was so much deprived of friendship and he stood in such sore need of it, that he was infinitely grateful to them for wanting to like him a little. He had learned wisdom in his experiences of the last year; he no longer thought he had the right to be overwise. Two years earlier he would not have been so patient. He remembered with amus.e.m.e.nt and remorse his severe judgment of the honest and tiresome Eulers! Alas! How wisdom had grown in him! He sighed a little. A secret voice whispered: "Yes, but for how long?"

That made him smile and consoled him a little. What would he not have given to have a friend, one friend who would understand him and share his soul!

But although he was still young he had enough experience of the world to know that his desire was one of those which are most difficult to realize in life, and that he could not hope to be happier than the majority of the true artists who had gone before him. He had learned the histories of some of them. Certain books, borrowed from the Reinharts, had told him about the terrible trials through which the German musicians of the seventeenth century had pa.s.sed, and the calmness and resolution with which one of these great souls--the greatest of all, the heroic Schutz--had striven, as unshakably he went on his way in the midst of wars and burning towns, and provinces ravaged by the plague, with his country invaded, trampled underfoot by the hordes of all Europe, and--worst of all--broken, worn out, degraded by misfortune, making no fight, indifferent to everything, longing only for rest. He thought: "With such as example, what right has any man to complain? They had no audience, they had no future; they wrote for themselves and G.o.d. What they wrote one day would perhaps be destroyed by the next. And yet they went on writing and they were not sad. Nothing made them lose their intrepidity, their joviality. They were satisfied with their song; they asked nothing of life but to live, to earn their daily bread, to express their ideas, and to find a few honest men, simple, true, not artists, who no doubt did not understand them, but had confidence in them and won their confidence in return. How dared he have demanded more than they? There is a minimum of happiness which it is permitted to demand.

But no man has the right to more; it rests with a man's self to gain the surplus of happiness, not with others."

Such thoughts brought him new serenity, and he loved his good friends the Reinharts the more for them. He had no idea that even this affection was to be denied him.