Jean-Christophe In Paris — THE HOUSE, II, part 4

* * * * * Olivier knew nothing about it.

Christophe chose as his witnesses the first men of his acquaintance who turned up, the musical critic, Théophile Goujart, and a German, Doctor Barth, an honorary lecturer in a Swiss University, whom he had met one night in a café; he had made friends with him, though they had little in common: but they could talk to each other about Germany.

After conferring with Lucien Lévy-Coeur's witnesses, pistols were chosen.

Christophe was absolutely ignorant about the use of arms, and Goujart told him it would not be a bad thing for him to go and have a few lessons: but Christophe refused, and while he was waiting for the day to come went on with his work.

But his mind was distracted.

He had a fixed idea, of which he was dimly conscious, while it kept buzzing in his head like a bad dream....

"It was unpleasant, yes, very unpleasant....

What was unpleasant?

--Oh!

the duel to-morrow....

Just a joke!

Nobody is ever hurt....

But it was possible....

Well, then, afterwards?...

Afterwards, that was it, afterwards....

A cock of the finger by that swine who hates me may wipe out my life....

So be it!...

--Yes, to-morrow, in a day or two, I may be lying in the loathsome soil of Paris....

--Bah!

Here or anywhere, what does it matter!...

Oh!

Lord: I'm not going to play the coward!

--No, but it would be monstrous to waste the mighty world of ideas that I feel springing to life in me for a moment's folly....

What rot it is, these modern duels in which they try to equalize the chances of the two opponents!

That's a fine sort of equality that sets the same value on the life of a mountebank as on mine!

Why don't they let us go for each other with fists and cudgels?

There'd be some pleasure in that.

But this cold-blooded shooting!...

And, of course, he knows how to shoot, and I have never had a pistol in my hand....

They are right: I must learn....

He'll try to kill me.

I'll kill him."

He went out.

There was a range a few yards away from the house.

Christophe asked for a pistol, and had it explained how he ought to hold it.

With his first shot he almost killed his instructor: he went on with a second and a third, and fared no better: he lost patience, and went from bad to worse.

A

few young men were standing by watching and laughing.

He paid no heed to them.

With his German persistency he went on trying, and was so indifferent to their laughter and so determined to succeed that, as always happens, his blundering patience roused interest, and one of the spectators gave him advice.

In spite of his usual violence he listened to everything with childlike docility; he managed to control his nerves, which were making his hand tremble: he stiffened himself and knit his brows: the sweat was pouring down his cheeks: he said not a word: but every now and then he would give way to a gust of anger, and then go on shooting.

He stayed there for a couple of hours.

At the end of that time he hit the bull's-eye.

Few things could have been more absorbing than the sight of such a power of will mastering an awkward and rebellious body.

It inspired respect.

Some of those who had scoffed at the outset had gone, and the others were silenced one by one, and had not been able to tear themselves away.

They took off their hats to Christophe when he went away.

When he reached home Christophe found his friend Mooch waiting anxiously.

Mooch had heard of the quarrel, and had come at once: he wanted to know how it had originated.

In spite of Christophe's reticence and desire not to attach any blame to Olivier, he guessed the reason.

He was very cool-headed, and knew both the friends, and had no doubt of Olivier's innocence of the treachery ascribed to him.

He looked into the matter, and had no difficulty in finding out that the whole trouble arose from the scandal-mongering of Colette and Lucien Lévy-Coeur.

He rushed back with his evidence to Christophe, thinking that he could in that way prevent the duel.

But the result was exactly the opposite of what he expected: Christophe was only the more rancorous against Lévy-Coeur when he learned that it was through him that he had come to doubt his friend.

To get rid of Mooch, who kept on imploring him not to fight, he promised him everything he asked.

But he had made up his mind.

He was quite happy now: he was going to fight for Olivier, not for himself!

A remark made by one of the seconds as the carriage was going along a road through the woods suddenly caught Christophe's attention.

He tried to find out what they were thinking, and saw how little they really cared about him.

Professor Barth was wondering when the affair would be over, and whether he would be back in time to finish a piece of work he had begun on the manuscripts in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_.

Of Christophe's three companions, he was the most interested in the result of the encounter as a matter of German national pride.

Goujart paid no attention either to Christophe or the other German, but discussed certain scabrous subjects in connection with the coarser branches of physiology with Dr. Jullien, a young physician from Toulouse, who had recently come to live next door to Christophe, and occasionally borrowed his spirit-lamp, or his umbrella, or his coffee-cups, which he invariably returned broken.

In return he gave him free consultations, tried medicines on him, and laughed at his simplicity.

Under his impassive manner, that would have well become a Castilian hidalgo, there was a perpetual love of teasing.

He was highly delighted with the adventure of the duel, which struck him as sheer burlesque: and he was amusing himself with fancying the mess that Christophe would make of it.

He thought it a great joke to be driving through the woods at the expense of good old Krafft.

--That, clearly, was what was in the minds of the trio: they regarded it as a jolly excursion which cost them nothing.

Not one of them attached the least importance to the duel.

But, on the other hand, they were just as calmly prepared for anything that might come of it.

They reached the appointed spot before the others.

It was a little inn in the heart of the forest.

It was a pleasure-resort, more or less unclean, to which Parisians used to resort to cleanse their honor when the dirt on it became too apparent.

The hedges were bright with the pure flowers of the eglantine.

In the shade of the bronze-leaved oak-trees there were rows of little tables.

At one of these tables were seated three bicyclists: a painted woman, in knickerbockers, with black socks: and two men in flannels, who were stupefied by the heat, and every now and then gave out growls and grunts as though they had forgotten how to speak.

The arrival of the carriage produced a little buzz of excitement in the inn.

Goujart, who knew the house and the people of old, declared that he would look after everything.

Barth dragged Christophe into an arbor and ordered beer.

The air was deliciously warm and soft, and resounding with the buzzing of bees.

Christophe forgot why he had come.

Barth emptied the bottle, and said, after a short silence: "I know what I'll do."

He drank and went on: "I shall have plenty of time: I'll go on to Versailles when it's all over."

Goujart was heard haggling with the landlady over the price of the dueling-ground.

Jullien had not been wasting his time: as he passed near the bicyclists he broke into noisy and ecstatic comment on the woman's bare legs: and there was exchanged a perfect deluge of filthy epithets in which Jullien did not come off worst.

Barth said in a whisper: "The French are a low-minded lot.

Brother, I drink to your victory."

He clinked his glass against Christophe's. Christophe was dreaming: scraps of music were floating in his mind, mingled with the harmonious humming of insects.

He was very sleepy.

The wheels of another carriage crunched over the gravel of the drive.

Christophe saw Lucien Lévy-Coeur's pale face, with its inevitable smile: and his anger leaped up in him.

He got up, and Barth followed him.

Lévy-Coeur, with his neck swathed in a high stock, was dressed with a scrupulous care which was strikingly in contrast with his adversary's untidiness.

He was followed by Count Bloch, a sportsman well known for his mistresses, his collection of old pyxes, and his ultra-Royalist opinions,--Léon Mouey, another man of fashion, who had reached his position as Deputy through literature, and was a writer from political ambition: he was young, bald, clean-shaven, with a lean bilious face: he had a long nose, round eyes, and a head like a bird's,--and Dr. Emmanuel, a fine type of Semite, well-meaning and cold, a member of the Academy of Medicine, a chief-surgeon in a hospital, famous for a number of scientific books, and the medical skepticism which made him listen with ironic pity to the plaints of his patients without making the least attempt to cure them.

The newcomers saluted the other three courteously.

Christophe barely responded, but was annoyed by the eagerness and the exaggerated politeness with which they treated Lévy-Coeur's seconds.

Jullien knew Emmanuel, and Goujart knew Mouey, and they approached them obsequiously smiling.

Mouey greeted them with cold politeness and Emmanuel jocularly and without ceremony.

As for Count Bloch, he stayed by Lévy-Coeur, and with a rapid glance he took in the condition of the clothes and linen of the three men of the opposing camp, and, hardly opening his lips, passed abrupt humorous comment on them with, his friend,--and both of them stood calm and correct.

Lucien Lévy-Coeur stood at his ease waiting for Count Bloch, who had the ordering of the duel, to give the signal.

He regarded the affair as a mere formality.

He was an excellent shot, and was fully aware of his adversary's want of skill.

He would not be foolish enough to make use of his advantage and hit him, always supposing, as was not very probable, that the seconds did not take good care that no harm came of the encounter: for he knew that nothing is so stupid as to let an enemy appear to be a victim, when a much surer and better method is to wipe him out of existence without any fuss being made.

But Christophe stood waiting, stripped to his shirt, which was open to reveal his thick neck, while his sleeves were rolled up to show his strong wrists, head down, with his eyes glaring at Lévy-Coeur: he stood taut, with murder written implacably on every feature: and Count Bloch, who watched him carefully, thought what a good thing it was that civilization had as far as possible suppressed the risks of fighting.

After both men had fired, of course without result, the seconds hurried forward and congratulated the adversaries.

Honor was satisfied.

--Not so Christophe.

He stayed there, pistol in hand, unable to believe that it was all over.

He was quite ready to repeat his performance at the range the evening before, and go on shooting until one or other of them had hit the target.

When he heard Goujart proposing that he should shake hands with his adversary, who advanced chivalrously towards him with his perpetual smile, he was exasperated by the pretense of the whole thing.

Angrily he hurled his pistol away, pushed Goujart aside, and flung himself upon Lucien Lévy-Coeur.

They were hard put to it to keep him from going on with the fight with his fists.

The seconds intervened while Lévy-Coeur escaped.

Christophe broke away from them, and, without listening to their laughing expostulation, he strode along in the direction of the forest, talking loudly and gesticulating wildly.

He did not even notice that he had left his hat and coat on the dueling-ground.

He plunged into the woods.

He heard his seconds laughing and calling him: then they tired of it, and did not worry about him any more.

Very soon he heard the wheels of the carriages rumbling away and away, and knew that they had gone.

He was left alone among the silent trees.

His fury had subsided.

He flung himself down on the ground and sprawled on the grass.

Shortly afterwards Mooch arrived at the inn.

He had been pursuing Christophe since the early morning.

He was told that his friend was in the woods, and went to look for him.

He beat all the thickets, and awoke all the echoes, and was going away in despair when he heard him singing: he found his way by the voice, and at last came upon him in a little clearing with his arms and legs in the air, rolling about like a young calf.

When Christophe saw him he shouted merrily, called him "dear old Moloch," and told him how he had shot his adversary full of holes until he was like a sieve: he made him tuck in his tuppenny, and then join him in a game of leap-frog: and when he jumped over him he gave him a terrific thump.

Mooch was not very good at it, but he enjoyed the game almost as much as Christophe.

--They returned to the inn arm-in-arm, and caught the train back to Paris at the nearest station.

Olivier knew nothing of what had happened.

He was surprised at Christophe's tenderness: he could not understand his sudden change.

It was not until the next day, when he saw the newspapers, that he knew that Christophe had fought a duel.

It made him almost ill to think of the danger that Christophe had run.

He wanted to know why the duel had been fought.

Christophe refused to tell him anything.

When he was pressed he said with a laugh: "It was for you."

Olivier could not get a word more out of him.

Mooch told him all about it.

Olivier was horrified, quarreled with Colette, and begged Christophe to forgive his imprudence.

Christophe was incorrigible, and quoted for his benefit an old French saying, which he adapted so as to infuriate poor Mooch, who was present to share in the happiness of the friends: "My dear boy, let this teach you to be careful....

"_From an idle chattering girl, From a wheedling, hypocritical Jew, From a painted friend, From a familiar foe, And from flat wine, Libera Nos, Domine!

_" Their friendship was re-established.

The danger of losing it, which had come so near, made it only the more dear.

Their small misunderstandings had vanished: the very differences between them made them more attractive to each other.

In his own soul Christophe embraced the souls of the two countries, harmoniously united.

He felt that his heart was rich and full: and, as usual with him, his abundant happiness expressed itself in a flow of music.

Olivier marveled at it.

Being too critical in mind, he was never far from believing that music, which he adored, had said its last word.

He was haunted by the morbid idea that decadence must inevitably succeed a certain degree of progress: and he trembled lest the lovely art, which made him love life, should stop short, and dry up, and disappear into the ground.

Christophe would scoff at such pusillanimous ideas.

In a spirit of contradiction he would pretend that nothing had been done before he appeared on the scene, and that everything remained to be done.

Olivier would instance French music, which seemed to have reached a point of perfection and ultimate civilization beyond which there could not possibly be anything.

Christophe would shrug his shoulders: "French music?...

There has never been any....

And yet you have such fine things to do in the world!

You can't really be musicians, or you would have discovered that.

Ah!

if only I were a Frenchman!..."

And he would set out all the things that a Frenchman might turn into music: "You involve yourselves in forms which do not suit you, and you do nothing at all with those which are admirably fitted for your use.

You are a people of elegance, polite poetry, beautiful gestures, beautiful walking movements, beautiful attitudes, fashion, clothes, and you never write ballets nowadays, though you ought to be able to create an inimitable art of poetic dancing....

--You are a people of laughter and comedy, and you never write comic operas, or else you leave it to minor musicians, the confectioners of music.

Ah!

if I were a Frenchman I would set Rabelais to music, I would write comic epics....

--You are a people of story-tellers, and you never write novels in music: (for I don't count the feuilletons of Ghistave Charpentier).

You make no use of your gift of psychological analysis, your insight into character.

Ah!

if I were a Frenchman I would give you portraits in music....

(Would you like me to sketch the girl sitting in the garden under the lilac?

)....

I would write you Stendhal for a string quartet....

--You are the greatest democracy in Europe, and you have no theater for the people, no music for the people.

Ah!

if I were a Frenchman, I would set your Revolution to music: the 14th July, the 10th August, Valmy, the Federation, I would express the people in music!

Not in the false form of Wagnerian declamation.

I want symphonies, choruses, dances.

Not speeches!

I'm sick of them.

There's no reason why people should always be talking in a music drama!

Bother the words!

Paint in bold strokes, in vast symphonies with choruses, immense landscapes in music, Homeric and Biblical epics, fire, earth, water, and sky, all bright and shining, the fever which makes hearts burn, the stirring of the instincts and destinies of a race, the triumph of Rhythm, the emperor of the world, who enslaves thousands of men, and hurls armies down to death....

Music everywhere, music in everything!

If you were musicians you would have music for every one of your public holidays, for your official ceremonies, for the trades unions, for the student associations, for your family festivals....

But, above all, above all, if you were musicians, you would make pure music, music which has no definite meaning, music which has no definite use, save only to give warmth, and air, and life.

Make sunlight for yourselves!

_Sat prata_....

(What is that in Latin?

)....

There has been rain enough.

Your music gives me a cold.

One can't see in it: light your lanterns....

You complain of the Italian _porcherie_, who invade your theaters and conquer the public, and turn you out of your own house?

It is your own fault!

The public are sick of your crepuscular art, your harmonized neurasthenia, your contrapuntal pedantry.

The public goes where it can find life, however coarse and gross.

Why do you run away from life?

Your Debussy is a bad man, however great he may be as an artist.

He aids and abets you in your torpor.

You want roughly waking up."

"What about Strauss?"

"No better.

Strauss would finish you off.

You need the digestion of my fellow-countrymen to be able to bear such immoderate drinking.

And even they cannot bear it....

Strauss's _Salome_!...

A masterpiece....

I should not like to have written it....

I think of my old grandfather and uncle Gottfried, and with what respect and loving tenderness they used to talk to me about the lovely art of sound!...

But to have the handling of such divine powers, and to turn them to such uses!...

A flaming, consuming meteor!

An Isolde, who is a Jewish prostitute.

Bestial and mournful lust.

The frenzy of murder, pillage, incest, and untrammeled instincts which is stirring in the depths of German decadence....

And, on the other hand, the spasm of a voluptuous and melancholy suicide, the death-rattle which sounds through your French decadence....

On the one hand, the beast: on the other, the prey.

Where is man?...

Your Debussy is the genius of good taste: Strauss is the genius of bad taste.

Debussy is rather insipid.

But Strauss is very unpleasant.

One is a silvery thread of stagnant water, losing itself in the reeds, and giving off an unhealthy aroma.

The other is a mighty muddy flood....

Ah!

the musty base Italianism and neo-Meyerbeerism, the filthy masses of sentiment which are borne on by the torrent!...

An odious masterpiece!...

Salome, the daughter of Ysolde....

And whose mother will Salome be in her turn?"

"Yes," said Olivier, "I wish we could jump fifty years.

This headlong gallop towards the precipice must end one way or another: either the horse must stop or fall.

Then we shall breathe again.

Thank Heaven, the earth will not cease to flower, nor the sky to give light, with or without music!

What have we to do with an art so inhuman!...

The West is burning away....

Soon....

Very soon....

I see other stars arising in the furthest depths of the East."

"Bother the East!"

said Christophe.

"The West has not said its last word yet.

Do you think I am going to abdicate?

I have enough to say to keep you going for centuries.

Hurrah for life!

Hurrah for joy!

Hurrah for the courage which drives us on to struggle with our destiny!

Hurrah for love which maketh the heart big!

Hurrah for friendship which rekindles our faith,--friendship, a sweeter thing than love!

Hurrah for the day!

Hurrah for the night!

Glory be to the sun!

_Laus Deo_, the God of joy, the God of dreams and actions, the God who created music!

Hosannah!..."

With that he sat down at his desk and wrote down everything that was in his head, without another thought for what he had been saying.

* * * * * At that time Christophe was in a condition in which all the elements of his life were perfectly balanced.

He did not bother his head with esthetic discussions as to the value of this or that musical form, nor with reasoned attempts to create a new form: he did not even have to cast about for subjects for translation into music.

One thing was as good as another.

The flood of music welled forth without Christophe knowing exactly what feeling he was expressing.

He was happy: that was all: happy in expanding, happy in having expanded, happy in feeling within himself the pulse of universal life.

His fullness of joy was communicated to those about him.

The house with its closed garden was too small for him.

He had the view out over the garden of the neighboring convent with the solitude of its great avenues and century-old trees: but it was too good to last.

In front of Christophe's windows they were building a six-story house, which shut out the view and completely hemmed him in.

In addition, he had the pleasure of hearing the creaking of pulleys, the chipping of stones, the hammering of nails, all day long from morning to night.

Among the workmen he found his old friend the slater, whose acquaintance he had made on the roof.

They made signs to each other, and once, when he met him in the street, he took the man to a wineshop, and they drank together, much to the surprise of Olivier, who was a little scandalized.

He found the man's drollery and unfailing good-humor very entertaining, but did not curse him any the less, with his troop of workmen and stupid idiots who were raising a barricade in front of the house and robbing him of air and light.

Olivier did not complain much: he could quite easily adapt himself to a limited horizon: he was like the stove of Descartes, from which the suppressed ideas darted upward to the free sky.

But Christophe needed more air.

Shut up in that confined space, he avenged himself by expanding into the lives of those about him.

He drank in their inmost life, and turned it into music.

Olivier used to tell him that he looked like a lover.

"If I were in love," Christophe would reply, "I should see nothing, love nothing, be interested in nothing outside my love."

"What is the matter with you, then?"

"I'm very well.

I'm hungry."

"Lucky Christophe!"

Olivier would sigh.

"I wish you could hand a little of your appetite over to us."

Health, like sickness, is contagious.

The first to feel the benefit of Christophe's vitality was naturally Olivier.

Vitality was what he most lacked.

He retired from the world because its vulgarity revolted him.

Brilliantly clever though he was, and in spite of his exceptional artistic gifts, he was too delicate to be a great artist.

Great artists do not feel disgust: the first law for every healthy being is to live: and that law is even more imperative for a man of genius: for such a man lives more.

Olivier fled from life: he drifted along in a world of poetic fictions that had no body, no flesh and blood, no relation to reality.

He was one of those literary men who, in quest of beauty, have to go outside time, into the days that are no more, or the days that have never been.

As though the wine of life were not as intoxicating, and its vintages as rich nowadays as ever they were!

But men who are weary in soul recoil from direct contact with life: they can only bear to see it through the veil of visions spun by the backward movement of time, and hear it in the echo which sends back and distorts the dead words of those who were once alive.

--Christophe's friendship gradually dragged Olivier out of this Limbo of art.

The sun's rays pierced through to the innermost recesses of his soul in which he was languishing.

* * * * * Elsberger, the engineer, also succumbed to Christophe's contagious optimism.

It was not shown in any change in his habits: they were too inveterate: and it was too much to expect him to become enterprising enough to leave France and go and seek his fortune elsewhere.

But he was shaken out of his apathy: he recovered his taste for research, and reading, and the scientific work which he had long neglected.

He would have been much astonished had he been told that Christophe had something to do with his new interest in his work: and certainly no one would have been more surprised than Christophe.

* * * * * But of all the inhabitants of the house, Christophe was the soonest intimate with the little couple on the second floor.

More than once as he passed their door he had stopped to listen to the sound of the piano which Madame Arnaud used to play quite well when she was alone.

Then he gave them tickets for his concert, for which they thanked him effusively.

And after that he used to go and sit with them occasionally in the evening.

He had never heard Madame Arnaud playing again: she was too shy to play in company: and even when she was alone, now that she knew she could be heard on the stairs, she kept the soft pedal down.

But Christophe used to play to them, and they would talk about it for hours together.

The Arnauds used to speak of music with such eagerness and freshness of feeling that he was enchanted with them.

He had not thought it possible for French people to care so much for music.

"That," Olivier would say, "is because you have only come across musicians."

"I'm perfectly aware," Christophe would reply, "that professed musicians are the very people who care least for music: but you can't make me believe that there are many people like you in France."

"A few thousands at any rate."