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

said. “You have condescended to come at last? Do

you think you can go on making fun of me any longer? You’re a blackguard,

sir!”

 

Christophe was so staggered by this brutal attack that it was some time

before he could utter a word. He was thinking that he was only late, and

that that could not have provoked such violence. He murmured:

 

“What have I done, Your Highness?”

 

His Highness did not listen and went on angrily:

 

“Be silent! I will not be insulted by a blackguard!” Christophe turned

pale, and gulped so as to try to speak, for he was choking. He made an

effort, and said:

 

“Your Highness, you have no right—you have no right to insult me without

telling me what I have done.”

 

The Grand Duke turned to his secretary, who produced a paper from his

pocket and held it out to him. He was in such a state of exasperation as

could not be explained only by his anger: the fumes of good wine had their

share in it, too. He came and stood in front of Christophe, and like a

toreador with his cape, furiously waved the crumpled newspaper in his face

and shouted:

 

“Your muck, sir!… You deserve to have your nose rubbed in it!”

 

Christophe recognized the socialist paper.

 

“I don’t see what harm there is in it,” he said.

 

“What! What!” screamed the Grand Duke. “You are impudent!… This rascally

paper, which insults me from day to day, and spews out filthy insults upon

me!…”

 

“Sire,” said Christophe, “I have not read it.”

 

“You lie!” shouted the Grand Duke.

 

“You shall not call me a liar,” said Christophe. “I have not read it. I am

only concerned with reviews, and besides, I have the right to write in

whatever paper I like.”

 

“You have no right but to hold your tongue. I have been too kind to you. I

have heaped kindness upon you, you and yours, in spite of your misconduct

and your father’s, which would have justified me in cutting you off. I

forbid you to go on writing in a paper which is hostile to me. And further:

I forbid you altogether to write anything in future without my authority.

I have had enough of your musical polemics. I will not allow any one who

enjoys my patronage to spend his time in attacking everything which is dear

to people of taste and feeling, to all true Germans. You would do better to

write better music, or if that is impossible, to practise your scales and

exercises. I don’t want to have anything to do with a musical Bebel who

amuses himself by decrying all our national glories and upsetting the minds

of the people. We know what is good, thank God. We do not need to wait for

you to tell us. Go to your piano, sir, or leave us in peace!”

 

Standing face to face with Christophe the fat man glared at him

insultingly. Christophe was livid, and tried to speak. His lips moved; he

stammered:

 

“I am not your slave. I shall say what I like and write what I like …”

 

He choked. He was almost weeping with shame and rage. His legs were

trembling. He jerked his elbow and upset an ornament on a table by his

side. He felt that he was in a ridiculous position. He heard people

laughing. He looked down the room, and as through a mist saw the princess

watching the scene and exchanging ironically commiserating remarks with her

neighbors. He lost count of what exactly happened. The Grand Duke shouted.

Christophe shouted louder than he without knowing what he said. The

Prince’s secretary and another official came towards him and tried to stop

him. He pushed them away, and while he talked he waved an ash-tray which he

had mechanically picked up from the table against which he was leaning. He

heard the secretary say:

 

“Put it down! Put it down!”

 

And he heard himself shouting inarticulately and knocking on the edge of

the table with the ash-tray.

 

“Go!” roared the Grand Duke, beside himself with rage. “Go! Go! I’ll have

you thrown out!”

 

The officers had come up to the Prince and were trying to calm him. The

Grand Duke looked apoplectic. His eyes were starting from his head, he

shouted to them to throw the rascal out. Christophe saw red. He longed to

thrust his fist in the Grand Duke’s face; but he was crushed under a weight

of conflicting feelings: shame, fury, a remnant of shyness, of German

loyalty, traditional respect, habits of humility in the Prince’s presence.

He tried to speak; he could not. He tried to move; he could not. He could

not see or hear. He suffered them to push him along and left the room.

 

He passed through the impassive servants who had come up to the door, and

had missed nothing of the quarrel. He had to go thirty yards to cross the

ante-chamber, and it seemed a lifetime. The corridor grew longer and longer

as he walked up it. He would never get out!… The light of day which

he saw shining downstairs through the glass door was his haven. He went

stumbling down the stairs. He forgot that he was bareheaded. The old usher

reminded him to take his hat. He had to gather all his forces to leave the

castle, cross the court, reach his home. His teeth were chattering when he

opened the door. His mother was terrified by his face and his trembling. He

avoided her and refused to answer her questions. He went up to his room,

shut himself in, and lay down. He was shaking so that he could not undress.

His breathing came in jerks and his whole body seemed shattered…. Oh! If

only he could see no more, feel no more, no longer have to bear with his

wretched body, no longer have to struggle against ignoble life, and fall,

fall, breathless, without thought, and no longer be anywhere!… With

frightful difficulty he tore off his clothes and left them on the ground,

and then flung himself into his bed and drew the coverings over him. There

was no sound in the room save that of the little iron bed rattling on the

tiled floor.

 

Louisa listened at the door. She knocked in vain. She called softly. There

was no reply. She waited, anxiously listening through the silence. Then she

went away. Once or twice during the day she came and listened, and again

at night, before she went to bed. Day passed, and the night. The house was

still. Christophe was shaking with fever. Every now and then he wept, and

in the night he got up several times and shook his fist at the wall. About

two o’clock, in an access of madness, he got up from his bed, sweating and

half naked. He wanted to go and kill the Grand Duke, He was devoured by

hate and shame. His body and his heart writhed in the fire of it. Nothing

of all the storm in him could be heard outside; not a word, not a sound.

With clenched teeth he fought it down and forced it back into himself.

 

*

 

Next morning he came down as usual. He was a wreck. He said nothing and his

mother dared not question him. She knew, from the gossip of the

neighborhood. All day he stayed sitting by the fire, silent, feverish, and

with bent head, like a little old man. And when he was alone he wept in

silence.

 

In the evening the editor of the socialist paper came to see him. Naturally

he had heard and wished to have details. Christophe was touched by his

coming, and interpreted it naïvely as a mark of sympathy and a desire for

forgiveness on the part of those who had compromised him. He made a point

of seeming to regret nothing and he let himself go and said everything that

was rankling in him. It was some solace for him to talk freely to a man

who shared his hatred of oppression. The other urged him on. He saw a good

chance for his journal in the event, and an opportunity for a scandalous

article, for which he expected Christophe to provide him with material if

he did not write it himself; for he thought that after such an explosion

the Court musician would put his very considerable political talents and

his no less considerable little tit-bits of secret information about the

Court at the service of “the cause.” As he did not plume himself on his

subtlety he presented the thing rawly in the crudest light. Christophe

started. He declared that he would write nothing and said that any attack

on the Grand Duke that he might make would be interpreted as an act of

personal vengeance, and that he would be more reserved now that he was free

than when, not being free, he ran some risk in saying what he thought. The

journalist could not understand his scruples. He thought Christophe narrow

and clerical at heart, but he also decided that Christophe was afraid. He

said:

 

“Oh, well! Leave it to us. I will write it myself. You need not bother

about it.”

 

Christophe begged him to say nothing, but he had no means of restraining

him. Besides, the journalist declared that the affair was not his concern

only: the insult touched the paper, which had the right to avenge itself.

There was nothing to be said to that. All that Christophe could do was to

ask him on his word of honor not to abuse certain of his confidences which

had been made to his friend and not to the journalist. The other made no

difficulty about that. Christophe was not reassured by it. He knew too well

how imprudent he had been. When he was left alone he turned over everything

that he had said, and shuddered. Without hesitating for a moment, he wrote

to the journalist imploring him once more not to repeat what he had

confided to him. (The poor wretch repeated it in part himself in the

letter.)

 

Next day, as he opened the paper with feverish haste, the first thing he

read was his story at great length on the front page. Everything that he

had said on the evening before was immeasurably enlarged, having suffered

that peculiar deformation which everything has to suffer in its passage

through the mind of a journalist. The article attacked the Grand Duke and

the Court with low invective. Certain details which it gave were too

personal to Christophe, too obviously known only to him, for the article

not to be attributed to him in its entirety.

 

Christophe was crushed by this fresh blow. As he read a cold sweat came out

on his face. When he had finished he was dumfounded. He wanted to rush to

the office of the paper, but his mother withheld him, not unreasonably

being fearful of his violence. He was afraid of it himself. He felt that if

he went there he would do something foolish; and he stayed—and did a very

foolish thing. He wrote an indignant letter to the journalist in which he

reproached him for his conduct in insulting terms, disclaimed the article,

and broke with the party. The disclaimer did not appear.

 

Christophe wrote again to the paper, demanding that his letter should be

published. They sent him a copy of his first letter, written on the night

of the interview and confirming it. They asked if they were to publish

that, too. He felt that he was in their hands. Thereupon he unfortunately

met the indiscreet interviewer