Jean-Christophe In Paris — THE HOUSE, II, part 7

* * * * * Thus it was that the breath of life passed into all these people.

In the attic on the fifth floor was a great and mighty flame of humanity, the warmth and light of which were slowly filtered through the house.

But Christophe saw it not.

To him the process was very slow.

"Ah!"

he would sigh, "if one could only bring these good people together, all these people of all classes and every kind of belief, who refuse to know each other!

Can't it be done?"

"What do you want?"

said Olivier.

"You would need to have mutual tolerance and a power of sympathy which can only come from inward joy,--the joy of a healthy, normal, harmonious existence,--the joy of having a useful outlet for one's activity, of feeling that one's efforts are not wasted, and that one is serving some great purpose.

You would need to have a prosperous country, a nation at the height of greatness, or--(better still)--on the road to greatness.

And you must also have--(the two things go together)--a power which could employ all the nation's energies, an intelligent and strong power, which would be above party.

Now, there is no power above party save that which finds its strength in itself--not in the multitude, that power which seeks not the support of anarchical majorities,--as it does nowadays when it is no more than a well-trained dog in the hands of second-rate men, and bends all to its will by service rendered: the victorious general, the dictatorship of Public Safety, the supremacy of the intelligence...

what you will.

It does not depend on us.

You must have the opportunity and the men capable of seizing it: you must have happiness and genius.

Let us wait and hope!

The forces are there: the forces of faith, knowledge, work, old France and new France, and the greater France....

What an upheaval it would be, if the word were spoken, the magic word which should let loose these forces all together!

Of course, neither you nor I can say the word.

Who will say it?

Victory?

Glory?...

Patience!

The chief thing is for the strength of the nation to be gathered together, and not to rust away, and not to lose heart before the time comes.

Happiness and genius only come to those peoples who have earned them by ages of stoic patience, and labor, and faith."

"Who knows?"

said Christophe.

"They often come sooner than we think--just when we expect them least.

You are counting too much on the work of ages.

Make ready.

Gird your loins.

Always be prepared with your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand....

For you do not know that the Lord will not pass your doors this very night."

* * * * * The Lord came very near that night.

His shadow fell upon the threshold of the house.

* * * * * Following on a sequence of apparently insignificant events, relations between France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in a few days, the usual neighborly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocative mood which precedes war.

There was nothing surprising in this, except to those who were living under the illusion that the world is governed by reason.

But there were many such in France: and numbers of people were amazed from day to day to see the vehement Gallophobia of the German Press becoming rampant with the usual quasi-unanimity.

Certain of those newspapers which, in the two countries, arrogate to themselves a monopoly of patriotism, and speak in the nation's name, and dictate to the State, sometimes with the secret complicity of the State, the policy it should follow, launched forth insulting ultimatums to France.

There was a dispute between Germany and England; and Germany did not admit the right of France not to interfere: the insolent newspapers called upon her to declare for Germany, or else threatened to make her pay the chief expenses of the war: they presumed that they could wrest alliance from her fears, and already regarded her as a conquered and contented vassal,--to be frank, like Austria.

It only showed the insane vanity of German Imperialism, drunk with victory, and the absolute incapacity of German statesmen to understand other races, so that they were always applying the simple common measure which was law for themselves: Force, the supreme reason.

Naturally, such a brutal demand, made of an ancient nation, rich in its past ages of a glory and a supremacy in Europe, such as Germany had never known, had had exactly the opposite effect to that which Germany expected.

It had provoked their slumbering pride; France was shaken from top to base; and even the most diffident of the French roared with anger.

The great mass of the German people had nothing at all to do with the provocation: they were shocked by it: the honest men of every country ask only to be allowed to live in peace: and the people of Germany are particularly peaceful, affectionate, anxious to be on good terms with everybody, and much more inclined to admire and emulate other nations than to go to war with them.

But the honest men of a nation are not asked for their opinion: and they are not bold enough to give it.

Those who are not virile enough to take public action are inevitably condemned to be its pawns.

They are the magnificent and unthinking echo which casts back the snarling cries of the Press and the defiance of their leaders, and swells them into the _Marseillaise_, or the _Wacht am Rhein_.

It was a terrible blow to Christophe and Olivier.

They were so used to living in mutual love that they could not understand why their countries did not do the same.

Neither of them could grasp the reasons for the persistent hostility, which was now so suddenly brought to the surface, especially Christophe, who, being a German, had no sort of ground for ill-feeling against the people whom his own people had conquered.

Although he himself was shocked by the intolerable vanity of some of his fellow-countrymen, and, up to a certain point, was entirely with the French against such a high-handed Brunswicker demand, he could not understand why France should, after all, be unwilling to enter into an alliance with Germany.

The two countries seemed to him to have so many deep-seated reasons for being united, so many ideas in common, and such great tasks to accomplish together, that it annoyed him to see them persisting in their wasteful, sterile ill-feeling.

Like all Germans, he regarded France as the most to blame for the misunderstanding: for, though he was quite ready to admit that it was painful for her to sit still under the memory of her defeat, yet that was, after all, only a matter of vanity, which should be set aside in the higher interests of civilization and of France herself.

He had never taken the trouble to think out the problem of Alsace and Lorraine.

At school he had been taught to regard the annexation of those countries as an act of justice, by which, after centuries of foreign subjection, a German province had been restored to the German flag.

And so, he was brought down with a run, and he discovered that his friend regarded the annexation as a crime.

He had never even spoken to him about these things, so convinced was he that they were of the same opinion: and now he found Olivier, of whose good faith and broad-mindedness he was certain, telling him, dispassionately, without anger and with profound sadness, that it was possible for a great people to renounce the thought of vengeance for such a crime, but quite impossible for them to subscribe to it without dishonor.

They had great difficulty in understanding each other.

Olivier's historical argument, alleging the right of France to claim Alsace as a Latin country, made no impression on Christophe: there were just as good arguments to the contrary: history can provide politics with every sort of argument in every sort of cause.

Christophe was much more accessible to the human, and not only French, aspect of the problem.

Whether the Alsatians were or were not Germans was not the question.

They did not wish to be Germans: and that was all that mattered.

What nation has the right to say: "These people are mine: for they are my brothers"?

If the brothers in question renounce that nation, though they be a thousand times in the wrong, the consequences of the breach must always be borne by the party who has failed to win the love of the other, and therefore has lost the right to presume to bind the other's fortunes up with his own.

After forty years of strained relations, vexations, patent or disguised, and even of real advantage gained from the exact and intelligent administration of Germany, the Alsatians persist in their refusal to become Germans: and, though they might give in from sheer exhaustion, nothing could ever wipe out the memory of the sufferings of the generations, forced to live in exile from their native land, or, what is even more pitiful, unable to leave it, and compelled to bend under a yoke which was hateful to them, and to submit to the seizure of their country and the slavery of their people.

Christophe naïvely confessed that he had never seen the matter in that light: and he was considerably perturbed by it.

And honest Germans always bring to a discussion an integrity which does not always go with the passionate self-esteem of a Latin, however sincere he may be.

It never occurred to Christophe to support his argument by the citation of similar crimes perpetrated by all nations all through the history of the world.

He was too proud to fall back upon any such humiliating excuse: he knew that, as humanity advances, its crimes become more odious, for they stand in a clearer light.

But he knew also that if France were victorious in her turn she would be no more moderate in the hour of victory than Germany had been, and that yet another link would be added to the chain of the crimes of the nations.

So the tragic conflict would drag on for ever, in which the best elements of European civilization were in danger of being lost.

Though the subject was terribly painful for Christophe, it was even more so for Olivier.

It meant for him, not only the sorrow of a great fratricidal struggle between the two nations best fitted for alliance together.

In France the nation was divided, and one faction was preparing to fight the other.

For years pacific and anti-militarist doctrines had been spread and propagated both by the noblest and the vilest elements of the nation.

The Government had for a long time held aloof, with the weak-kneed dilettantism with which it handled everything which did not concern the immediate interests of the politicians: and it never occurred to it that it might be less dangerous frankly to maintain the most dangerous doctrines than to leave them free to creep into the veins of the people and ruin their capacity for war, while armaments were being prepared.

These doctrines appealed to the Free Thinkers who were dreaming of founding a European brotherhood, working all together to make the world more just and human.

They appealed also to the selfish cowardice of the rabble, who were unwilling to endanger their skins for anything or anybody.

--These ideas had been taken up by Olivier and many of his friends.

Once or twice, in his rooms, Christophe had been present at discussions which had amazed him.

His friend Mooch, who was stuffed full of humanitarian illusions, used to say, with eyes blazing, quite calmly, that war must be abolished, and that the best way of setting about it was to incite the soldiers to mutiny, and, if necessary, to shoot down their leaders: and he would insist that it was bound to succeed.

Elie Elsberger would reply, coldly and vehemently, that, if war were to break out, he and his friends would not set out for the frontier before they had settled their account with the enemy at home.

André Elsberger would take Mooch's part....

One day Christophe came in for a terrible scene between the two brothers.

They threatened to shoot each other.

Although their bloodthirsty words were spoken in a bantering tone, he had a feeling that neither of them had uttered a single threat which he was not prepared to put into action.

Christophe was amazed when he thought of a race of men so absurd as to be always ready to commit suicide for the sake of ideas....

Madmen.

Crazy logicians.

And yet they are good men.

Each man sees only his own ideas, and wishes to follow them through to the end, without turning aside by a hair's breadth.

And it is all quite useless: for they crush each other out of existence.

The humanitarians wage war on the patriots.

The patriots wage war on the humanitarians.

And meanwhile the enemy comes and destroys both country and humanity in one swoop.

"But tell me," Christophe would ask André Elsberger, "are you in touch with the proletarians of the rest of the nations?"

"Some one has to begin.

And we are the people to do it.

We have always been the first.

It is for us to give the signal!"

"And suppose the others won't follow!"

"They will."

"Have you made treaties, and drawn up a plan?"

"What's the good of treaties?

Our force is superior to diplomacy."

"It is not a question of ideas: it's a question of strategy.

If you are going to destroy war, you must borrow the methods of war.

Draw up your plan of campaign in the two countries.

Arrange that on such and such a date in France and Germany your allied troops shall take such and such a step.

But, if you go to work without a plan, how can you expect any good to come of it?

With chance on the one hand, and tremendous organized forces on the other--the result would never be in doubt: you would be crushed out of existence."

André Elsberger did not listen.

He shrugged his shoulders and took refuge in vague threats: a handful of sand, he said, was enough to smash the whole machine, if it were dropped into the right place in the gears.

But it is one thing to discuss at leisure, theoretically, and quite another to have to put one's ideas into practice, especially when one has to make up one's mind quickly....

Those are frightful moments when the great tide surges through the depths of the hearts of men!

They thought they were free and masters of their thoughts!

But now, in spite of themselves, they are conscious of being dragged onwards, onwards....

An obscure power of will is set against their will.

Then they discover that it is not they who exist in reality, not they, but that unknown Force, whose laws govern the whole ocean of humanity....

Men of the firmest intelligence, men the most secure in their faith, now saw it dissolve at the first puff of reality, and stood turning this way and that, not daring to make up their minds, and often, to their immense surprise, deciding upon a course of action entirely different from any that they had foreseen.

Some of the most eager to abolish war suddenly felt a vigorous passionate pride in their country leap into being in their hearts.

Christophe found Socialists, and even revolutionary syndicalists, absolutely bowled over by their passionate pride in a duty utterly foreign to their temper.

At the very beginning of the upheaval, when as yet he hardly believed that the affair could be serious, he said to André Elsberger, with his usual German want of tact, that now was the moment to apply his theories, unless he wanted Germany to take France.

André fumed, and replied angrily: "Just you try!...

Swine, you haven't even guts enough to muzzle your Emperor and shake off the yoke, in spite of your thrice-blessed Socialist Party, with its four hundred thousand members and its three million electors.

We'll do it for you!

Take us?

We'll take you...."

And as they were held on and on in suspense, they grew restless and feverish.

André was in torment.

He knew that his faith was true, and yet he could not defend it!

He felt that he was infected by the moral epidemic which spreads among the people of a nation the collective insanity of their ideas, the terrible spirit of war!

It attacked everybody about Christophe, and even Christophe himself.

They were no longer on speaking terms, and kept themselves to themselves.

But it was impossible to endure such suspense for long.

The wind of action willy-nilly sifted the waverers into one group or another.

And one day, when it seemed that they must be on the eve of the ultimatum,--when, in both countries, the springs of action were taut, ready for slaughter, Christophe saw that everybody, including the people in his own house, had made up their minds.

Every kind of party was instinctively rallied round the detested or despised Government which represented France.

Not only the honest men of the various parties: but the esthetes, the masters of depraved art, took to interpolating professions of patriotic faith in their work.

The Jews were talking of defending the soil of their ancestors.

At the mere mention of the flag tears came to Hamilton's eyes.

And they were all sincere: they were all victims of the contagion.

André Elsberger and his syndicalist friends, just as much as the rest, and even more: for, being crushed by necessity and pledged to a party that they detested, they submitted with a grim fury and a stormy pessimism which made them crazy for action.

Aubert, the artisan, torn between his cultivated humanitarianism and his instinctive chauvinism, was almost beside himself.

After many sleepless nights he had at last found a formula which could accommodate everything: that France was synonymous with Humanity.

Thereafter he never spoke to Christophe.

Almost all the people in the house had closed their doors to him.

Even the good Arnauds never invited him.

They went on playing music and surrounding themselves with art; they tried to forget the general obsession.

But they could not help thinking of it.

When either of them alone happened to meet Christophe alone, he or she would shake hands warmly, but hurriedly and furtively.

And if, the very same day, Christophe met them together, they would pass him by with a frigid bow.

On the other hand, people who had not spoken to each other for years now rushed together.

One evening Olivier beckoned to Christophe to go near the window, and, without a word, he pointed to the Elsbergers talking to Commandant Chabran in the garden below.

Christophe had no time to be surprised at such a revolution in the minds of his friends.

He was too much occupied with his own mind, in which there had been an upheaval, the consequences of which he could not master.

Olivier was much calmer than he, though he had much more reason to be upset.

Of all Christophe's acquaintance, he seemed to be the only one to escape the contagion.

Though he was oppressed by the anxious waiting for the outbreak of war, and the dread of schism at home, which he saw must happen in spite of everything, he knew the greatness of the two hostile faiths which sooner or later would come to grips: he knew also that it is the part of France to be the experimental ground in human progress, and that all new ideas need to be watered with her blood before they can come to flower.

For his own part, he refused to take part in the skirmish.

While the civilized nations were cutting each other's throats he was fain to repeat the device of Antigone: "_I am made for love, and not for hate_."

--For love and for understanding, which is another form of love.

His fondness for Christophe was enough to make his duty plain to him.

At a time when millions of human beings were on the brink of hatred, he felt that the duty and happiness of friends like himself and Christophe was to love each other, and to keep their reason uncontaminated by the general upheaval.

He remembered how Goethe had refused to associate himself with the liberation movement of 1813, when hatred sent Germany to march out against France.

Christophe felt the same: and yet he was not easy in his mind.

He who in a way had deserted Germany, and could not return thither, he who had been fed with the European ideas of the great Germans of the eighteenth century, so dear to his old friend Schulz, and detested the militarist and commercial spirit of New Germany, now found himself the prey of gusty passions: and he did not know whither they would lead him.

He did not tell Olivier, but he spent his days in agony, longing for news.

Secretly he put his affairs in order and packed his trunk.

He did not reason the thing out.

It was too strong for him.

Olivier watched him anxiously, and guessed the struggle which was going on in his friend's mind: and he dared not question him.

They felt that they were impelled to draw closer to each other than ever, and they loved each other more: but they were afraid to speak: they trembled lest they should discover some difference of thought which might come between them and divide them, as their old misunderstanding had done.

Often their eyes would meet with an expression of tender anxiety, as though they were on the eve of parting for ever.

And they were silent and oppressed.

* * * * * But still on the roof of the house that was being built on the other side of the yard, all through those days of gloom, with the rain beating down on them, the workmen were putting the finishing touches: and Christophe's friend, the loquacious slater, laughed and shouted across: "There!

The house is finished!"

* * * * * Happily, the storm passed as quickly as it had come.

The chancelleries published bulletins announcing the return of fair weather, barometrically as it were.

The howling dogs of the Press were despatched to their kennels.

In a few hours the tension was relieved.

It was a summer evening, and Christophe had rushed in breathless to convey the good news to Olivier.

He was happy, and could breathe again.

Olivier looked at him with a little sad smile.

And he dared not ask him the question that lay next his heart.

He said: "Well: you have seen them all united, all these people who could not understand each other."

"Yes," said Christophe good-humoredly, "I have seen them united.

You're such humbugs!

You all cry out upon each other, but at bottom you're all of the same mind."

"You seem to be glad of it," remarked Olivier.

"Why not?

Because they were united at my expense?...

Bah!

I'm strong enough for that ...

Besides, it's a fine thing to feel the mighty torrent rushing you along, and the demons that were let loose in your hearts...."

"They terrify me," said Olivier.

"I would rather have eternal solitude than have my people united at such a cost."

They relapsed into silence: and neither of them dared approach the subject which was troubling them.

At last Olivier pulled himself together, and, in a choking voice, said: "Tell me frankly, Christophe: you were going away?"

Christophe replied: "Yes."

Olivier was sure that he would say it.

And yet his heart ached for it.

He said: "Tell me, Christophe: could you ...

could you ...?"

Christophe drew his hand over his forehead and said: "Don't let's talk of it.

I don't like to think of it."

Olivier went on sorrowfully: "You would have fought against us?"

"I don't know.

I never thought about it."

"But, in your heart, you had decided?"

Christophe said: "Yes."

"Against me?"

"Never against you.

You are mine.

Where I am, you are too."

"But against my country?"

"For my country."

"It is a terrible thing," said Olivier.

"I love my country, as you do.

I

love France: but could I slay my soul for her?

Could I betray my conscience for her?

That would be to betray her.

How could I hate, having no hatred, or, without being guilty of a lie, assume a hatred that I did not feel?

The modern State was guilty of a monstrous crime--a crime which will prove its undoing--when it presumed to impose its brazen laws on the free Church of those spirits the very essence of whose being is to love and understand.

Let Cæsar be Cæsar, but let him not assume the Godhead!

Let him take our money and our lives: over our souls he has no rights: he shall not stain them with blood.

We are in this world to give it light, not to darken it: let each man fulfil his duty!

If Cæsar desires war, then let Cæsar have armies for that purpose, armies as they were in olden times, armies of men whose trade is war!

I am not so foolish as to waste my time in vainly moaning and groaning in protest against force.

But I am not a soldier in the army of force.

I am a soldier in the army of the spirit: with thousands of other men who are my brothers-in-arms I represent France in that army.

Let Cæsar conquer the world if he will!

We march to the conquest of truth."

"To conquer," said Christophe, "you must vanquish, you must live.

Truth is no hard dogma, secreted by the brain, like a stalactite by the walls of a cave.

Truth is life.

It is not to be found in your own head, but to be sought for in the hearts of others.

Attach yourself to them, be one with them.

Think as much as you like, but do you every day take a bath of humanity.

You must live in the life of others and love and bow to destiny."

"It is our fate to be what we are.

It does not depend on us whether we shall or shall not think certain things, even though they be dangerous.

We have reached such a pitch of civilization that we cannot turn back."

"Yes, you have reached the farthest limit of the plateau of civilization, that dizzy height to which no nation can climb without feeling an irresistible desire to fling itself down.

Religion and instinct are weakened in you.

You have nothing left but intelligence.

You are machines grinding out philosophy.

Death comes rushing in upon you."

"Death comes to every nation: it is a matter of centuries."

"Have done with your centuries!

The whole of life is a matter of days and hours.

If you weren't such an infernally metaphysical lot, you'd never go shuffling over into the absolute, instead of seizing and holding the passing moment."

"What do you want?

The flame burns the torch away.

You can't both live and have lived, my dear Christophe."

"You must live."

"It is a great thing to have been great."

"It is only a great thing when there are still men who are alive enough and great enough to appreciate it."

"Wouldn't you much rather have been the Greeks, who are dead, than any of the people who are vegetating nowadays?"

"I'd much rather be myself, Christophe, and very much alive."

Olivier gave up the argument.

It was not that he was without an answer.

But it did not interest him.

All through the discussion he had only been thinking of Christophe.

He said, with a sigh: "You love me less than I love you."

Christophe took his hand and pressed it tenderly: "Dear Olivier," he said, "I love you more than my life.

But you must forgive me if I do not love you more than Life, the sun of our two races.

I

have a horror of the night into which your false progress drags me.

All your sentiments of renunciation are only the covering of the same Buddhist Nirvana.

Only action is living, even when it brings death.

In this world we can only choose between the devouring flame and night.

In spite of the sad sweetness of dreams in the hour of twilight, I have no desire for that peace which is the forerunner of death.

The silence of infinite space terrifies me.

Heap more fagots upon the fire!

More!

And yet more!

Myself too, if needs must.

I will not let the fire dwindle.

If it dies down, there is an end of us, an end of everything."

"What you say is old," said Olivier; "it comes from the depths of the barbarous past."

He took down from his shelves a book of Hindoo poetry, and read the sublime apostrophe of the God Krishna: "_Arise, and fight with a resolute heart.

Setting no store by pleasure or pain, or gain or loss, or victory or defeat, fight with all thy might....

_" Christophe snatched the book from his hands and read: "_...

I have nothing in the world to bid me toil: there is nothing that is not mine: and yet I cease not from my labor.

If I did not act, without a truce and without relief, setting an example for men to follow, all men would perish.

If for a moment I were to cease from my labors, I should plunge the world in chaos, and I should he the destroyer of life.

_" "Life," repeated Olivier,--"what is life?"

"A tragedy," said Christophe.

"Hurrah!"