Jean-Christophe In Paris — ANTOINETTE, I, part 2

* * * * * The two children were very religious, especially Olivier.

Their father used to scandalize them with his anti-clerical professions of faith, but he did not interfere with them: and, at heart, like so many men of his class who are unbelievers, he was not sorry that his family should believe for him: for it is always good to have allies in the opposing camp, and one is never sure which way Fortune will turn.

He was a Deist, and he reserved the right to summon a priest when the time came, as his father had done: even if it did no good, it could do no harm: one insures against fire, even if one has no reason to believe that the house will be burned down.

Olivier was morbidly inclined towards mysticism.

There were times when he doubted whether he existed.

He was credulous and soft-hearted, and needed a prop: he took a sorrowful delight in confession, in the comfort of confiding in the invisible Friend, whose arms are always open to you, to whom you can tell everything, who understands and forgives everything: he tasted the sweetness of the waters of humility and love, from which the soul issues pure, cleansed, and comforted.

It was so natural to him to believe, that he could not understand how any one could doubt: he thought people did so from wickedness, and that God would punish them.

He used to pray secretly that his father might find grace: and he was delighted when, one day, as they went into a little country church, he saw his father mechanically make the sign of the cross.

The stories of the Gospel were mixed up in his mind with the marvelous tales of Rübezahl, and Gracieuse and Percinet, and the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid.

When he was a little boy he no more doubted the truth of the one than the other.

And just as he was not sure that he did not know Shacabac of the cleft lips, and the loquacious barber, and the little hunchback of Casgar, just as when he was out walking he used to look about for the black woodpecker which bears in its beak the magic root of the treasure-seeker, so Canaan and the Promised Land became in his childish imagination certain regions in Burgundy or Berrichon.

A

round hill in the country, with a little tree, like a shabby old feather, at the summit, seemed to him to be like the mountain where Abraham had built his pyre.

A large dead bush by the edge of a field was the Burning Bush, which the ages had put out.

Even when he was older, and his critical faculty had been awakened, he loved to feed on the popular legends which enshrined his faith: and they gave him so much pleasure, though he no longer accepted them implicitly, that he would amuse himself by pretending to do so.

So for a long time on Easter Saturday he would look out for the return of the Easter bells, which went away to Rome on the Thursday before, and would come floating through the air with little streamers.

He did finally admit that it was not true: but he did not give up looking skywards when he heard them ringing: and once--though he knew perfectly well that it could not be--he fancied he saw one of them disappearing over the house with blue ribbons.

It was vitally necessary for him to steep himself in the world of legend and faith.

He avoided life.

He avoided himself.

Thin, pale, puny, he suffered from being so, and could not bear its being talked about.

He was naturally pessimistic, no doubt inheriting it from his mother, and his pessimism was fed by his morbidity.

He did not know it: thought everybody must be like himself: and the queer little boy of ten, instead of romping in the gardens during his play-time, used to shut himself up in his room, and, carefully picking his words, wrote his will.

He used to write a great deal.

Every evening he used laboriously and secretly to write his diary--he did not know why, for he had nothing to say, and he said nothing worth saying.

Writing was an inherited mania with him, the age-old itch of the French provincial--the old indestructible stock--who every day, until the day of his death, with an idiotic patience which is almost heroic, writes down in detail what he has seen, said, done, heard, eaten, and drunk.

For his own pleasure, entirely.

It is not for other eyes.

No one will ever read it: he knows that: he never reads it again himself.

* * * * * Music, like religion, was for Olivier a shelter from the too vivid light of day.

Both brother and sister were born musicians,--especially Olivier, who had inherited the gift from his mother.

Their taste, as it needed to be, was excellent.

There was no one capable of forming it in the province, where no music was ever heard but that of the local band, which played nothing but marches, or--on its good days--selections from Adolphe Adam, and the church organist who played romanzas, and the exercises of the young ladies of the town who strummed a few valses and polkas, the overture to the _Caliph of Bagdad_, _la Chasse du Jeune Henri_, and two or three sonatas of Mozart, always the same, and always with the same mistakes, on instruments that were sadly out of tune.

These things were invariably included in the evening's program at parties.

After dinner, those who had talent were asked to display it: at first they would blush and refuse, but then they would yield to the entreaties of the assembled company: and they would play their stock pieces without their music.

Every one would then admire the artist's memory and her beautiful touch.

The ceremony was repeated at almost every party, and the thought of it would altogether spoil the children's dinner.

When they had to play the _Voyage en Chine_ of Bazin, or their pieces of Weber as a duet, they gave each other confidence, and were not very much afraid.

But it was torture to them to have to play alone.

Antoinette, as usual, was the braver of the two.

Although it bored her dreadfully,--as she knew that there was no way out of it, she would go through with it, sit at the piano with a determined air, and gallop through her _rondo_ at breakneck speed, stumbling over certain passages, make a hash of others, break off, turn her head, and say, with a smile: "Oh!

I can't remember...."

Then she would start off again a few bars farther on, and go on to the end.

And she would make no attempt to conceal her pleasure at having finished: and when she returned to her chair, amid the general chorus of praise, she would laugh and say: "I made such a lot of mistakes."

But Olivier was not so easy to handle.

He could not bear making a show of himself in public, and being "the observed of all observers."

It was bad enough for him to have to speak in company.

But to have to play, especially for people who did not like music--(that was obvious to him)--for people whom music actually bored, people who only asked him to play as a matter of habit, seemed to him to be neither more nor less than tyranny, and he tried vainly to revolt against it.

He would refuse obstinately.

Sometimes he would escape and go and hide in a dark room, in a passage, or even in the barn, in spite of his horror of spiders.

His refusal would make the guests only insist the more, and they would quiz him: and his parents would sternly order him to play, and even slap him when he was too impudently rebellious.

And in the end he always had to play,--of course unwillingly and sulkily.

And then he would suffer agonies all night because he had played so badly, partly from vanity, and partly from his very genuine love for music.

The taste of the little town had not always been so banal.

There had been a time when there were quite good chamber concerts at several houses.

Madame Jeannin used often to speak of her grandfather, who adored the violoncello, and used to sing airs of Gluck, and Dalayrac, and Berton.

There was a large volume of them in the house, and a pile of Italian songs.

For the old gentleman was like M. Andrieux, of whom Berlioz said: "He _loved_ Gluck."

And he added bitterly: "He also _loved_ Piccinni."

--Perhaps of the two he preferred Piccinni.

At all events, the Italian songs were in a large majority in her grandfather's collection.

They had been Olivier's first musical nourishment.

Not a very substantial diet, rather like those sweetmeats with which provincial children are stuffed: they corrupt the palate, destroy the tissues of the stomach, and there is always a danger of their killing the appetite for more solid nutriment.

But Olivier could not be accused of greediness.

He was never offered any more solid food.

Having no bread, he was forced to eat cake.

And so, by force of circumstance, it came about that Cimarosa, Paesiello, and Rossini fed the mystic, melancholy little boy, who was more than a little intoxicated by his draughts of the _Asti spumante_ poured out for him, instead of milk, by these bacchanalian Satyrs, and the two lively, ingenuously, lasciviously smiling Bacchante of Naples and Catania--Pergolesi and Bellini.

He played a great deal to himself, for his own pleasure.

He was saturated with music.

He did not try to understand what he was playing, but gave himself up to it.

Nobody ever thought of teaching him harmony, and it never occurred to him to learn it.

Science and the scientific mind were foreign to the nature of his family, especially on his mother's side.

All the lawyers, wits, and humanists of the De Villiers were baffled by any sort of problem.

It was told of a member of the family--a distant cousin--as a remarkable thing that he had found a post in the _Bureau des Longitudes_.

And it was further told how he had gone mad.

The old provincial middle-classes, robust and positive in temper, but dull and sleepy as a result of their gigantic meals and the monotony of their lives, are very proud of their common sense: they have so much faith in it that they boast that there is no difficulty which cannot be resolved by it: and they are never very far from considering men of science as artists of a sort, more useful than the others, but less exalted, because at least artists serve no useful purpose, and there is a sort of distinction about their lounging existence.

--(Besides, every business man flatters himself that he might have been an artist if he had cared about it.

)--While scientists are not far from being manual laborers,--(which is degrading),--just master-workmen with more education, though they are a little cracked: they are mighty fine on paper: but outside their arithmetic factories they're nobody.

They would not be much use without the guidance of common-sense people who have some experience of life and business.

Unfortunately, it is not proven that their experience of life and business goes so far as these people like to think.

It is only a routine, ringing the changes on a few easy cases.

If any unforeseen position arises, in which they have to decide quickly and vigorously, they are always disgruntled.

Antoine Jeannin was that sort of man.

Everything was so nicely adjusted, and his business jogged along so comfortably in its place in the life of the province, that he had never encountered any serious difficulty.

He had succeeded to his father's position without having any special aptitude for the business: and, as everything had gone well, he attributed it to his own brilliant talents.

He loved to say that it was enough to be honest, methodical, and to have common sense: and he intended handing down his business to his son, without any more regard for the boy's tastes than his father had had for his own.

He did not do anything to prepare him for it.

He let his children grow up as they liked, so long as they were good, and, above all, happy: for he adored them.

And so the two children were as little prepared for the struggle of life as possible: they were like hothouse flowers.

But, surely, they would always live like that?

In the soft provincial atmosphere, in the bosom of their wealthy, influential family, with a kindly, gay, jovial father, surrounded by friends, one of the leading men of the district, life was so easy, so bright and smiling.

* * * * * Antoinette was sixteen.

Olivier was about to be confirmed.

His mind was filled with all kinds of mystic dreams.

In her heart Antoinette heard the sweet song of new-born hope soaring, like the lark in April, in the springtime of her life.

It was a joy to her to feel the flowering of her body and soul, to know that she was pretty, and to be told so.

Her father's immoderate praises were enough to turn her head.

He was in ecstasies over her: he delighted in her little coquetries, to see her eying herself in her mirror, to watch her little innocent tricks.

He would take her on his knees, and tease her about her childish love-affairs, and the conquests she had made, and the suitors that he pretended had come to him a-wooing: he would tell her their names: respectable citizens, each more old and ugly than the last.

And she would cry out in horror, and break into rippling laughter, and put her arms about her father's neck, and press her cheek close to his.

And he would ask which was the happy man of her choice: was it the District Attorney, who, the Jeannins' old maid used to say, was as ugly as the seven deadly sins?

Or was it the fat notary?

And she would slap him playfully to make him cease, or hold her hand over his mouth.

He would kiss her little hands, and jump her up and down on his knees, and sing the old song "What would you, pretty maid?

An ugly husband, eh?"

And she would giggle and tie his whiskers under his chin, and reply with the refrain: "A handsome husband I, No ugly man, madame."

She would declare her intention of choosing for herself.

She knew that she was, or would be, very rich,--(her father used to tell her so at every turn)--she was a "fine catch."

The sons of the distinguished families of the country were already courting her, setting a wide white net of flattery and cunning snares to catch the little silver fish.

But it looked as though the fish would elude them all: for Antoinette saw all their tricks, and laughed at them: she was quite ready to be caught, but not against her will.

She had already made up her mind to marry.

The noble family of the district--(there is generally one noble family to every district, claiming descent from the ancient lords of the province, though generally its origin goes no farther back than some purchaser of the national estates, some commissary of the eighteenth century, or some Napoleonic army-contractor)--the Bonnivets, who lived some few miles away from the town, in a castle with tall towers with gleaming slates, surrounded by vast woods, in which were innumerable fish-ponds, themselves proposed for the hand of Mademoiselle Jeannin.

Young Bonnivet was very assiduous in his courtship of Antoinette.

He was a handsome boy, rather stout and heavy for his age, who did nothing but hunt and eat, and drink and sleep: he could ride, dance, had charming manners, and was not more stupid than other young men.

He would ride into the town, or drive in his buggy and call on the banker, on some business pretext: and sometimes he would bring some game or a bouquet of flowers for the ladies.

He would seize the opportunity to pay court to Antoinette.

They would walk in the garden together.

He would pay her lumbering compliments, and pull his mustache, and make jokes, and make his spurs clatter on the tiles of the terrace.

Antoinette thought him charming.

Her pride and her affections were both tickled.

She would swim in those first sweet hours of young love.

Olivier detested the young squire, because he was strong, heavy, brutal, had a loud laugh, and hands that gripped like a vise, and a disdainful trick of always calling him: "Boy ..."

and pinching his cheeks.

He detested him above all,--without knowing it,--because he dared to love his sister: his sister, his very own, his, and she could not belong to any one else!...