Category: Novels

Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House

Disorder in order. Untidy officials offhanded in manner. Travelers protesting against the rules and regulations, to which they submitted all the same. Christophe was in France. After having satisfied the curiosity of the customs, he took his seat again in the train for Paris....

Chapters

26. Chapter 26

Some time afterwards Olivier brought her Christophe's collection of songs, which he had just found at a publisher's. She opened it at random. On the first page on which her eyes...

22. Chapter 22

After dinner, when she had washed up the dishes--(he would offer to help her, but she would never let him),--she would take a motherly interest in her brother's work. She would...

25. Chapter 25

They stopped at Thun. They were to go up into the mountains next day. But that night in the hotel, Antoinette was stricken with a fever, and violent illness, and pains in her he...

2. Chapter 2

Sylvain Kohn was short, thick-set, clean-shaven, like an American; his complexion was too red, his hair too black; he had a heavy, massive face, coarse-featured; little darting,...

16. Chapter 16

Christophe shook off these morbid thoughts, the murderous smile of the siren who lies in wait for the hours of weakness of the soul. He got up, and tried to walk about his room:...

1. Chapter 1

Disorder in order. Untidy officials offhanded in manner. Travelers protesting against the rules and regulations, to which they submitted all the same. Christophe was in France....

14. Chapter 14

She saw him for the first time at a crowded party in her aunt's house. Christophe, who was incapable of adapting himself to his audience, played an interminable _adagio_ which m...

17. Chapter 17

While his will was thus in abeyance Christophe felt a longing to be with people. And, although he was still very weak, and it was a very foolish thing to do, he used to go out e...

32. Chapter 32

"You can," said Olivier. "You are strong. You were born to conquer through your faults--(forgive me!)--as well as through your qualities. You are lucky enough not to belong to a...

13. Chapter 13

Christophe himself helped him. He pleased nobody, for he would not join any party, but was rather against all parties. He did not like the Jews: but he liked the anti-Semites ev...

38. Chapter 38

Christophe had set himself to fight the inertia which he found In most of his French friends, oddly coupled with laborious and often feverish activity. Almost all the people he...

36. Chapter 36

"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...

37. Chapter 37

At first Aubert was abashed by the knowledge and distinguished manners of the priest and M. Watelet, and sat mum, listening intently to what they said. Then, little by little, h...

27. Chapter 27

"I shouldn't worry about that. There are plenty of talkers in your country: one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasionally, even though it be only from shyness an...

21. Chapter 21

After dinner she made her daughter play the piano by way of showing off her talents. The poor girl was embarrassed and unhappy and played execrably. The Poyets were bored and an...

15. Chapter 15

Then they would give them to him for elaboration,--(to be written):--and then they would appear under their own names through some great publishing house. They were quite convin...

33. Chapter 33

His first bouts with them left him bleeding. He was as sensitive to criticism as old Bruchner, who could not bear to have his work performed, because he had suffered so much fro...

40. Chapter 40

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...

20. Chapter 20

They sat down. It was a lovely September night. A dark, clear sky. The sweet scent of the petunias was mingled with the stale and rather unwholesome smell of the canal sleeping...

9. Chapter 9

When, at last he stood in the street once more, very late at night, he was so worn out with the boredom of it all that he could hardly drag himself home: he wanted to lie down j...

28. Chapter 28

Olivier was weak, delicate, incapable of fighting against difficulties. When he came up against an obstacle he drew back, not from fear, but something from timidity, and more fr...

31. Chapter 31

The whole of the first floor was occupied by M. and Madame Félix Weil. They were rich Jews, and had no children, and they spent six months of the year in the country near Paris....

18. Chapter 18

Antoine Jeannin had also some literary pretensions. Like all provincials of his generation, he had been brought up on the Latin Classics, many pages of which he knew by heart, a...

19. Chapter 19

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 spea...

24. Chapter 24

Every day her brother wrote her a twelve-page letter: and she contrived to write to him every day even if it were only a few lines. Olivier tried hard to be brave and not to sho...

23. Chapter 23

Sometimes she used to go to the house of some rich Jews, the Nathans, who took an interest in her because they had met her at the house of some friends of theirs where she gave...

8. Chapter 8

"You are hypocrites," replied Christophe bluntly. "Excuse my saying so. I used to think my own country had a monopoly. In Germany our hypocrisy consists in always talking about...

4. Chapter 4

Théophile Goujart was tall, strong, and muscular: he had a black beard, thick curls on his forehead, which was lined with deep inexpressive wrinkles, short arms, short legs, a b...

10. Chapter 10

He was the less inclined to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely to exasperate Christophe:...

39. Chapter 39

One summer evening when the poor woman was sitting in the dark in the self-hypnotized condition of the utter emptiness of her living death, she heard Christophe playing. It was...

29. Chapter 29

The same _odor di bellezza_ arose from all French art, as the scent of ripe strawberries and raspberries ascends from autumn woods warmed by the sun. French music was like one o...

30. Chapter 30

On the fifth floor Christophe and Olivier's next-door neighbor was the Abbé Corneille, a priest of some forty years old, a learned man, an independent thinker, broad-minded, for...

6. Chapter 6

Was it that proud feeling of melancholy and pity that made him in spite of all sympathize with the opera? It interested him more than he would admit. Although he went on telling...

5. Chapter 5

Théophile Goujart took him to the concerts of a Society dedicated to the national art. There the new glories of French music were elaborated and carefully hatched. It was a club...

35. Chapter 35

Even if Olivier had made him suffer a thousand times more, Christophe would never have done anything to avenge himself, and he would have done hardly anything to defend himself:...

34. Chapter 34

"You might go on living perhaps. But what good would that be to you if your life and your work remained unknown, as they probably would without the Jews? Would the members of yo...

12. Chapter 12

Roussin was not one of the worst. There were many, many others who called themselves Socialists and Radicals, from--it can hardly be called ambition, for their ambition was so s...

7. Chapter 7

Their style was not less mixed than their sentiments. They had invented a composite jargon of expressions from all classes of society and every country under the sun--pedantic,...

3. Chapter 3

They told Christophe that the girl in question was the daughter of a butcher: her parents were trying to make a lady of her; they would perhaps like her to have lessons, if only...

11. Chapter 11

Achille Roussin was a handsome man, with a fair beard, a burring way of talking, a florid complexion, affable manners, a certain polish on his fundamental vulgarity, certain pea...

41. Chapter 41

It was hardly dawn when he reached the little German town. He had to take care not to be recognized, for there was still a warrant of arrest out against him. But nobody at the s...