Jean-Christophe, vol 1 - Romain Rolland (best books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📗

he

would not allow any one to talk to him in such a tone, that Christophe

should hear from him, and he held out his card. Christophe flung it in his

face.

 

“Mischief-maker!—I don’t need your card to know what you are…. You are a

rascal and a forger!… And you think I would fight with you … a

thrashing is all you deserve!…”

 

His voice could be heard in the street. People stopped to listen. Mannheim

closed the windows. The actress tried to escape, but Christophe was

blocking the way. Waldhaus was pale and choking. Mannheim was stuttering

and stammering and trying to reply. Christophe did not let them speak. He

let loose upon them every expression he could think of, and never stopped

until he was out of breath and had come to an end of his insults. Waldhaus

and Mannheim only found their tongues after he had gone. Mannheim quickly

recovered himself: insults slipped from him like water from a duck’s back.

But Waldhaus was still sore: his dignity had been outraged, and what made

the affront more mortifying was that there had been witnesses. He would

never forgive it. His colleagues joined chorus with him. Mannheim only of

the staff of the Review was not angry with Christophe. He had had his fill

of entertainment out of him: it did not seem to him a heavy price to pay

for his pound of flesh, to suffer a few violent words. It had been a good

joke. If he had been the butt of it he would have been the first to laugh.

And so he was quite ready to shake hands with Christophe as though nothing

had happened. But Christophe was more rancorous and rejected all advances.

Mannheim did not care. Christophe was a toy from which he had extracted all

the amusement possible. He was beginning to want a new puppet. From that

very day all was over between them. But that did not prevent Mannheim still

saying, whenever Christophe was mentioned in his presence, that they were

intimate friends. And perhaps he thought they were.

 

Two days after the quarrel the first performance of Iphigenia took place.

It was an utter failure. Waldhaus’ review praised the poem and made no

mention of the music. The other papers and reviews made merry over it. They

laughed and hissed. The piece was withdrawn after the third performance,

but the jokes at its expense did not disappear so quickly. People were

only too glad of the opportunity of having a fling at Christophe, and for

several weeks the Iphigenia remained an unfailing subject for joking.

They knew that Christophe had no weapon of defense, and they took advantage

of it. The only thing which held them back a little was his position at the

Court. Although his relation with the Grand Duke had become quite cold, for

the Prince had several times made remarks to which he had paid no attention

whatever, he still went to the Palace at intervals, and still enjoyed, in

the eye of the public, a sort of official protection, though it was more

visionary than real. He took upon himself to destroy even that last

support.

 

He suffered from the criticisms. They were concerned not only with his

music, but also with his idea of a new form of art, which the writers did

not take the trouble to understand. It was very easy to travesty it and

make fun of it. Christophe was not yet wise enough to know that the best

reply to dishonest critics is to make none and to go on working. For some

months past he had fallen into the bad habit of not letting any unjust

attack go unanswered. He wrote an article in which he did not spare certain

of his adversaries. The two papers to which he took it returned it with

ironically polite excuses for being unable to publish it. Christophe stuck

to his guns. He remembered that the socialist paper in the town had made

advances to him. He knew one of the editors. They used to meet and talk

occasionally. Christophe was glad to find some one who would talk freely

about power, the army and oppression and archaic prejudices. But they could

not go far with each other, for the socialist always came back to Karl

Marx, about whom Christophe cared not a rap. Moreover, Christophe used to

find in his speeches about the free man—besides a materialism which was

not much to his taste—a pedantic severity and a despotism of thought, a

secret cult of force, an inverse militarism, all of which did not sound

very different from what he heard every day in German.

 

However, he thought of this man and his paper when he saw all other doors

in journalism closed to him. He knew that his doing so would cause a

scandal. The paper was violent, malignant, and always being condemned. But

as Christophe never read it, he only thought of the boldness of its ideas,

of which he was not afraid, and not of the baseness of its tone, which

would have repelled him. Besides, he was so angry at seeing the other

papers in alliance to suppress him that perhaps he would have gone on even

if he had been warned. He wanted to show people that he was not so easily

got rid of. So he took his article to the socialist paper, which received

it with open arms. The next day the article appeared, and the paper

announced in large letters that it had engaged the support of the young and

talented maestro, Jean-Christophe Krafft, whose keen sympathy with the

demands of the working classes was well known.

 

Christophe read neither the note nor the article, for he had gone out

before dawn for a walk in the country, it being Sunday. He was in fine

fettle. As he saw the sun rise he shouted, laughed, yodeled, leaped, and

danced. No more review, no more criticisms to do! It was spring and there

was once more the music of the heavens and the earth, the most beautiful

of all. No more dark concert rooms, stuffy and smelly, unpleasant people,

dull performers. Now the marvelous song of the murmuring forests was to be

heard, and over the fields like waves there passed the intoxicating scents

of life, breaking through the crust of the earth and issuing from the

grave.

 

He went home with his head buzzing with light and music, and his mother

gave him a letter which had been brought from the Palace while he was away.

The letter was in an impersonal form, and told Herr Krafft that he was to

go to the Palace that morning. The morning was past, it was nearly one

o’clock. Christophe was not put about.

 

“It is too late now,” he said. “It will do to-morrow.”

 

But his mother said anxiously:

 

“No, no. You cannot put off an appointment with His Highness like that: you

must go at once. Perhaps it is a matter of importance.”

 

Christophe shrugged his shoulders.

 

“Important! As if those people could have anything important to say!…

He wants to tell me his ideas about music. That will be funny!… If only

he has not taken it into his head to rival Siegfried Meyer [Footnote: A

nickname given by German pamphleteers to H.M. (His Majesty) the Emperor.]

and wants to show me a Hymn to Aegis! I vow that I will not spare him.

I shall say: ‘Stick to politics. You are master there. You will always

be right. But beware of art! In art you are seen without your plumes,

your helmet, your uniform, your money, your titles, your ancestors, your

policemen—and just think for a moment what will be left of you then!’”

 

Poor Louisa took him quite seriously and raised her hands in horror.

 

“You won’t say that!… You are mad! Mad!”

 

It amused him to make her uneasy by playing upon her credulity until he

became so extravagant that Louisa began to see that he was making fun of

her.

 

“You are stupid, my boy!”

 

He laughed and kissed her. He was in a wonderfully good humor. On his walk

he had found a beautiful musical theme, and he felt it frolicking in him

like a fish in water. He refused to go to the Palace until he had had

something to eat. He was as hungry as an ape. Louisa then supervised his

dressing, for he was beginning to tease her again, pretending that he

was quite all right as he was with his old clothes and dusty boots. But

he changed them all the same, and cleaned his boots, whistling like a

blackbird and imitating all the instruments in an orchestra. When he

had finished his mother inspected him and gravely tied his tie for him

again. For once in a way he was very patient, because he was pleased with

himself—which was not very usual. He went off saying that he was going to

elope with Princess Adelaide—the Grand Duke’s daughter, quite a pretty

woman, who was married to a German princeling and had come to stay with her

parents for a few weeks. She had shown sympathy for Christophe when he was

a child, and he had a soft side for her. Louisa used to declare that he was

in love with her, and he would pretend to be so in fun.

 

He did not hurry; he dawdled and looked into the shops, and stopped to

pat some dog that he knew as it lay on its side and yawned in the sun.

He jumped over the harmless railings which inclosed the Palace square—a

great empty square, surrounded with houses, with two little fountains, two

symmetrical bare flower-beds, divided, as by a parting, by a gravel path,

carefully raked and bordered by orange trees in tubs. In the middle was

the bronze statue of some unknown Grand Duke in the costume of Louis

Philippe, on a pediment adorned at the four corners by allegorical figures

representing the Virtues. On a seat one solitary man was dozing over his

paper. Behind the silly moat of the earthworks of the Palace two sleepy

cannon yawned upon the sleepy town. Christophe laughed at the whole thing.

 

He entered the Palace without troubling to take on a more official manner.

At most he stopped humming, but his thoughts went dancing on inside him. He

threw his hat on the table in the hall and familiarly greeted the old

usher, whom he had known since he was a child. (The old man had been there

on the day when Christophe had first entered the Palace, on the evening

when he had seen Hassler.) But to-day the old man, who always used to reply

good-humoredly to Christophe’s disrespectful sallies, now seemed a little

haughty. Christophe paid no heed to it. A little farther on, in the

ante-chamber, he met a clerk of the chancery, who was usually full of

conversation and very friendly. He was surprised to see him hurry past him

to avoid having to talk. However, he did not attach any significance to it,

and went on and asked to be shown in.

 

He went in. They had just finished dinner. His Highness was in one of the

drawing-rooms. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, smoking, and talking

to his guests, among whom Christophe saw his princess, who was also

smoking. She was lying back in an armchair and talking in a loud voice to

some officers who made a circle about her. The gathering was lively. They

were all very merry, and when Christophe entered he heard the Grand Duke’s

thick laugh. But he stopped dead when he saw Christophe. He growled and

pounced on him.

 

“Ah! There you are!” he