Chapter 42

"Fine athlete you are!... Well, don't look, if your head is not strong enough. There is nothing to make you, after all. Go ahead, my boy. But do you need a master to brand your shoulder, like a sheep? What is the word of command you are waiting for? The signal was given long ago. The signal to saddle has sounded, and the cavalry is on the march. Don't worry about anything but your horse. Take your place! And gallop!"

"But where to?" asked Georges.

"With your regiment to the conquest of the world. Conquer the air, master the elements, dig the last entrenchment of Nature, set back space, drive back death....

"_Expertus vacuum Dadalus aera_...."

"... Do you know that, you champion of Latin? Can you even tell me what it means?

"_Perrupit Acheronta_...."

"That is your lot, you happy _conquistadores_!"

So clearly did he show the duty of heroic action that had devolved upon the new generation, that Georges was amazed, and said:

"But if you feel that, why don't you come with us?"

"Because I have a different task. Go, my boy, do your work. Surpass me, if you can. But I stay here and watch.... Have you read the Arabian Night in which a genii, as tall as a mountain, is imprisoned in a bottle sealed with the seal of Solomon?... The genii is here, in the depths of our soul, the soul into which you are afraid to look down. I and the men of my time spent our lives in struggling with him: we did not conquer him: he conquered us. At present we are both recovering our breath, and, with no rancor nor fear, we are looking at each other, satisfied with the struggles in which we have been engaged, waiting for the agreed armistice to expire. You are profiting by the armistice to gather your strength and cull the world's beauty. Be happy. Enjoy the lull. But remember that one day, you or your children, on your return from your conquests, will have to come back to the place where I stand and resume the combat, with new forces, against the genii by whose side I watch and wait. And the combat will endure with intervals of armistice until one of the two (perhaps both) will be laid low. It is your duty to be stronger and happier than we!...--Meanwhile, indulge in your sport if you like: stiffen your muscles and strengthen your heart: and do not be so foolish as to waste your impatient vigor upon silly trifles: you belong to an age that, if you are patient, will find a use for it."

* * * * *

Georges did not remember much of what Christophe said to him. He was open-minded enough to grasp Christophe's ideas, but they escaped him at once. He forgot everything before he reached the bottom of the stairs. But all the same, he had a feeling of well-being, which endured when the memory of the words that had produced it had long been wiped out. He had a real veneration for Christophe. He believed in nothing that Christophe believed in (at heart he laughed at everything and had no belief). But he would have broken the head of any man who took upon himself to speak ill of his old friend.

Fortunately, no one did speak ill of him in his presence, otherwise he would have been kept busy.

* * * * *

Christophe had accurately forecast the next change of the wind. The new ideal of the new French music was very different from his own; but while that was a reason the more for Christophe to sympathize with it, its exponents had no sympathy with him. His vogue with the public was not likely to reconcile the most hungry for recognition of these young men to him; they were meagerly fed, and their teeth were long, and they bit. Christophe was not put out by their spite.

"How thoroughly they do it!" he would say. "These boys are cutting their teeth...."

He was inclined to prefer them to the other puppies who fawned on him because of his success--those people of whom D'Aubigné writes, who "_when a mastiff plunges his nose into a butter-pot, come and lick his whiskers by way of congratulation._"

He had a piece accepted at the Opéra. Almost at once it was put into rehearsal. Through a newspaper attack Christophe learned that a certain young composer's piece had been postponed for it. The writer of the article waxed indignant over such abuse of power, and made Christophe responsible for it.

Christophe went to see the manager, and said:

"Why didn't you tell me? You must not do it. You must put on the opera you accepted before mine."

The manager protested, began to laugh, refused, covered Christophe's character, work, genius, with flattery, and said that the other man's work was beneath contempt, and assured him that it was worthless and would not make a sou.

"Why did you accept it then?"

"One can't always do as one likes. Every now and then one has to throw a sop to public opinion. Formerly these young men could shout as much as they pleased. And no one listened to them. But now they are able to let loose on us the nationalist Press, which roars 'Treason' and calls you a disloyal Frenchman because you happen to have the misfortune to be unable to go into ecstasies over the younger school. The younger school! Let's look at it!... Shall I tell you what I think of it? I'm sick of it! So is the public. They bore us with their _Oremus!_... There's no blood in their veins; they're like sacristans chanting Mass: their love duets are like the _De Profundis_.... If I were fool enough to put on the pieces I am compelled to accept, I should ruin my theater. I accept them: that is all they can ask.--Let us talk of something serious. Your work means a full house...."

And he went on with his compliments.

Christophe cut him short, and said angrily:

"I am not taken in. Now that I am old and have 'arrived,' you are using me to suppress the young men. When I was a young man you would have suppressed me in just the same way. You must play this boy's piece, or I shall withdraw my own."

The manager threw up his hands, and said:

"But don't you see that if we did what you want, it would look as if we were giving in to these newspaper attacks?"

"What do I care?" said Christophe.

"As you please! You will be their first victim."

They put the young musician's piece into rehearsal without interrupting the preparation of Christophe's. One was in three acts, the other in two: it was arranged to include them both in one program. Christophe went to see the young man, for he wanted to be the first to give him the news. The musician was loud in his promises of eternal gratitude.

Naturally Christophe could not make the manager not devote all his attention to his piece. The interpretation and the scenery of the other were rather scamped. Christophe knew nothing about it. He asked to be allowed to be present at a few rehearsals of the young man's opera: he thought it very mediocre, as he had been told: he ventured to give a little advice which was ill-received: he gave it up then, and did not interfere again. On the other hand, the manager had made the young man admit the necessity for a little cutting to have his piece produced in time. Though the sacrifice was easily consented to at first, it was not long before the author regretted it.

On the evening of the performance the beginner's piece had no success, and Christophe's caused a sensation. Some of the papers attacked Christophe: they spoke of a trick, a plot to suppress a great young French artist: they said that his work had been mutilated to please the German master, whom they represented to be basely jealous of the coming fame of all the new men. Christophe shrugged his shoulders and thought:

"He will reply."

"He" did not reply. Christophe sent him one of the paragraphs with these words:

"Have you read this?"

The other replied:

"How sorry I am! The writer of it has always been so well disposed towards me! Really, I am very sorry. The best thing is to pay no attention to it."

Christophe laughed and thought: "He is right! The little sneak."

And he decided to forget all about it.

But chance would have it that Georges, who seldom read the papers, and that hastily, except for the sporting articles, should light on the most violent attacks on Christophe. He knew the writer. He went to the café where he knew he would meet him, found him, struck him, fought a duel with him, and gave him a nasty scratch on the shoulder with his rapier. Next day, at breakfast, Christophe had a letter from a friend telling him of the affair. He was overcome. He left his breakfast and hurried to see Georges. Georges himself opened the door. Christophe rushed in like a whirlwind, seized him by the arms, and shook him angrily, and began to overwhelm him with a storm of furious reproaches.

"You little wretch!" he cried. "You have fought a duel for me! Who gave you leave! A boy, a fly-by-night, to meddle in my affairs! Do you think I can't look after myself? What good have you done? You have done this rascal the honor of fighting him. He asked no more. You have made him a hero. Idiot! And if it had chanced ... (I am sure you rushed at it like a madman as usual) ... if you had been wounded, killed perhaps!... You wretch! I should never have forgiven you as long as you lived!..."

Georges laughed uproariously at this last threat, and was so overcome with merriment, that he cried:

"My dear old friend, how funny you are! Ah! You're unique! Here are you insulting me for having defended you! Next time I shall attack you. Perhaps you'll embrace me then."

Christophe stopped and hugged Georges, and kissed him on both cheeks, and then once more he said:

"My boy!... Forgive me. I am an old idiot.... But my blood boiled when I heard the news. What made you think of fighting? You don't fight with such people. Promise me at once that you will never do it again."

"I'll promise nothing of the kind," said Georges. "I shall do as I like."

"I forbid it. Do you hear? If you do it again, I'll never see you again. I shall publicly disown you in the newspapers I shall...."

"You will disinherit me, you mean."

"Come, Georges. Please. What's the good of it?"

"My dear old friend, you are a thousand times a better man than I am, and you know infinitely more: but I know these people better than you do. Make yourself easy. It will do some good. They will think a little now before they let loose their poisonous insults upon you."

"But what can these idiots do to me? I laugh at anything they may say."

"But I don't. And you must mind your own business."

Thereafter Christophe lived on tenterhooks lest some fresh article might rouse Georges's susceptibilities. It was quite comic to see him during the next few days going to a café and devouring the newspapers, which he never read as a rule, ready to go to all lengths (even to trickery) if he found an insulting article, to prevent it reaching Georges. After a week he recovered his equanimity. The boy was right. His action had given the yelping curs food for a moment's reflection.--And, though Christophe went on grumbling at the young lunatic who had made him waste eight working days, he said to himself that, after all, he had no right to lecture him. He remembered a certain day, not so very long ago, when he himself had fought a duel for Olivier's sake. And he thought he heard Olivier's voice saying:

"Let be, Christophe. I am giving you back what you lent me!"

* * * * *

Though Christophe took the attacks on himself lightly, there was one other man who was very far from such disinterestedness. This was Emmanuel.

The evolution of European thought was progressing swiftly. It was as though it had been accelerated by mechanical inventions and the new motors. The stock of prejudices and hopes which in old days were enough to feed humanity for twenty years was now exhausted in five years. The generations of the mind were galloping ahead, one behind the other, often one trampling the other down, with Time sounding the charge.--Emmanuel had been left behind.

The singer of French energy had never denied the idealism of his master, Olivier. Passionate as was his national feeling, he identified himself with his worship of moral greatness. If in his poetry he loudly proclaimed the triumph of France, it was because in her, by an act of faith, he adored the loftiest ideas of modern Europe, the Athena Nike, the victorious Law which takes its revenge on Force.--And now Force had awakened in the very heart of Law, and it was springing up in all its savage nakedness. The new generation, robust and disciplined, was longing for combat, and, before its victory was won, had the attitude of mind of the conqueror. This generation was proud of its strength, its thews, its mighty chest, its vigorous senses so thirsting for delight, its wings like the wings of a bird of prey hovering over the plains, waiting to swoop down and try its talons. The prowess of the race, the mad flights over the Alps and the sea, the new crusades, not much less mystic, not much less interested than those of Philip Augustus and Villehardouin, had turned the nation's head. The children of the nation who had never seen war except in books had no difficulty in endowing it with beauty. They became aggressive. Weary of peace and ideas, they hymned the anvil of battle, on which, with bloody fists, action would one day new-forge the power of France. In reaction against the disgusting abuse of systems of ideas, they raised contempt of the idea to the level of a profession of faith. Blusteringly they exalted narrow common sense, violent realism, immodest national egoism, trampling underfoot the rights of others and other nations, when it served the turn of their country's greatness. They were xenophobes, anti-democrats, and--even the most skeptical of them--set up the return to Catholicism, in the practical necessity for "digging channels for the absolute," and shutting up the infinite under the surveillance of order and authority. They were not content to despise--they regarded the gentle dotards of the preceding generation, the visionary idealists, the humanitarian thinkers of the preceding generation, as public malefactors. Emmanuel was among them in the eyes of the young men. He suffered cruelly and was very angry.

The knowledge that Christophe was, like himself,--more than himself--the victim of their injustice, made him sympathetic. His ungraciousness had discouraged Christophe's visits. He was too proud to show his regret by seeking him out. But he contrived to meet him, as if by chance, and forced Christophe to make the first advances. Thereafter his umbrageous susceptibilities were at rest, and he did not conceal the pleasure he had in Christophe's company. Thereafter they often met in each other's rooms.

Emmanuel confided his bitterness to Christophe. He was exasperated by certain criticisms, and, thinking that Christophe was not sufficiently moved by them, he made him read some of the newspaper appreciations of himself. Christophe was accused of not knowing the grammar of his work, of being ignorant of harmony, of having stolen from other musicians, and, generally, of dishonoring music. He was called: "This old toss-brain...." They said: "We have had enough of these convulsionaries. We are order, reason, classic balance...."

Christophe was vastly entertained.

"It is the law," he said. "The young bury the old.... In my day, it is true, we waited until a man was sixty before we called him an old man. They are going faster, nowadays.... Wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes.... A generation is more quickly exploded.... Poor devils! They won't last long! Let them despise us and strut about in the sun!"

But Emmanuel had not his sanity. Though he was fearless in thought, he was a prey to his diseased nerves; with his ardent soul in his rickety body, he was driven on to the fight and was unfitted for it. The animosity of certain opinions of his work drew blood.

"Ah!" he would say. "If the critics knew the harm they do artists by the unjust words they throw out so recklessly, they would be ashamed of their trade."

"But they do know, my friend. That is the justification of their existence. Everybody must live."

"They are butchers. One is drenched with the blood of life, worn out by the struggle we have to wage with art. Instead of holding out their hands to us, and compassionately telling us of our faults, and brotherly helping us to mend them, they stand there with their hands in their pockets and watch you dragging your burden up the slope, and say: 'You can't do it!' And when you reach the top, some of them say: 'Yes, but that is not the way to climb up.' While the others go on blandly saying: 'You couldn't do it!...' You're lucky if they don't send great stones rolling down on you to send you flying!"

"Bah! There are plenty of good men among them, and think of the good they can do! There are bad men everywhere. They're not peculiar to criticism. Do you know anything worse than an ungenerous, vain, and embittered artist, to whom the world is only loot, that he is furious because he cannot grab? You must don patience for your protection. There is no evil but it may be of good service. The worst of the critics is useful to us; he is a trainer: he does not let us loiter by the way. Whenever we think we have reached the goal, the pack hound us on. Get on! Onward! Upward! They are more likely to weary of running after me than I am of marching ahead of them. Remember the Arabian proverb: _'It is no use flogging sterile trees. Only those are stoned whose front is crowned with golden fruit....'_ Let us pity the artists who are spared. They will stay half-way, lazily sitting down. When they try to get up their legs will be so stiff that they will be unable to walk. Long live my friend the enemy! They do me more good in my life than the enemy, my friend!"

Emmanuel could not help smiling. Then he said:

"All the same, don't you think it hard for a veteran like you to be taken to task by recruits who are just approaching their first battle?"

"They amuse me," said Christophe. "Such arrogance is the mark of young, hot blood tingling to be up and doing. I was like that once. They are like the showers of March falling on the new-born soil.... Let them take us to task! They are right, after all. Old people must learn from the young! They have profited by us, and are ungrateful: that is in the order of things. But, being enriched by our efforts, they will go farther than we, and will realize what we attempted. If we still have some youth left, let us learn in our turn, and try to rejuvenate ourselves. If we cannot, if we are too old, let us rejoice in them. It is fine to see the perpetual new-flowering of the human soul that seemed, exhausted, the vigorous optimism of these young men, their delight in action and adventures, the races springing to new life for the conquest of the world."

"What would they be without us? Their joy is the fruit of our tears. Their proud force is the flower of the sufferings of a whole generation. _Sic vos non nobis_...."

"The old saying is wrong. It is for ourselves that we worked, and our reward lies in the creation of a race of men who shall surpass us. We amassed their treasury, we hoarded it in a wretched hovel open to all the winds of Heaven: we had to strain every nerve to keep the doors closed against death. Our arms carved out the triumphal way along which our sons shall march. Our sufferings have saved the future. We have borne the Ark to the threshold of the Promised Land. It will reach that Land with them, and through us."

"Will they ever remember those who crossed the wilderness, bearing the sacred fire, the gods of our race, and them, those children, who now are men? For our share we have had tribulation and ingratitude."

"Do you regret it?"

"No. There is a sort of intoxication in the tragic grandeur of the sacrifice of a mighty epoch like ours to the epoch that it has brought into being. The men of to-day would not be more capable of tasting the sovereign joy of renunciation."

"We have been the happier. We have scaled Mount Nebo, at whose feet lie stretched the countries that we shall never enter. But we enjoy them more than those who will enter them. When you descend to the plain, you lose sight of the plain's immensity and the far horizon."

* * * * *

The soothing influence that Christophe exercised over Georges and Emmanuel had the source of its power in Grazia's love. It was through this love that he felt himself so near to all young things, and had an inexhaustible fund of sympathy for every new form of life. Whatever the forces might be that rekindled the earth, he was always with them, even when they were against him: he had no fear for the immediate future of the democracies, that future which caused such an outcry against the egoism of a handful of privileged men: he did not cling desperately to the paternosters of an old art: he felt quite sure that from the fabulous visions, the realized dreams of science and action, a new art, more puissant than the old, would spring forth: he hailed the new dawn of the world, even though the beauty of the old world were to die with it.

Grazia knew the good that her love did for Christophe: and this consciousness of her power lifted her out of herself. Through her letters she exercised a controlling power over her friend. She was not so absurdly pretentious as to try to control his art: she had too much tact, and knew her limitations. But her true, pure voice was the diapason to which he attuned his soul. Christophe had only to hear her voice echoing his thought to think nothing that was not just, pure, and worthy of repetition. The sound of a beautiful instrument is to a musician like a beautiful body in which his dream at once becomes incarnate. Mysterious is the fusion of two loving spirits: each takes the best from the other, but only to give it back again enriched with love. Grazia was not afraid to tell Christophe that she loved him. Distance gave her more freedom of speech, and also, the certain knowledge that she would never be his. Her love, the religious fervor of which was communicated to Christophe, was a fountain of force and peace to him.

Grazia gave to others more of such force and peace than she had herself. Her health was shattered, her moral balance seriously affected. Her son's condition did not improve. For the last two years she had lived in a perpetual state of anxiety, aggravated by Lionello's fatal skill in playing on it. He had acquired a consummate mastery of the art of keeping those who loved him on tenterhooks: his idle mind was most fertile in inventing ways of rousing interest in himself and tormenting others: it had become a mania with him. And the tragedy of it was, that, while he aped the ravages of disease, the disease did make real inroads upon him, and death peeped forth. Then the expected happened: Grazia, having been tortured by her son for years with his imaginary illness, ceased to believe in it when the illness really came. The heart has its limitations. She had exhausted her store of pity over his lies. She thought Lionello was still a comedian when he spoke the truth. And when the truth was revealed to her, the rest of her life was poisoned by remorse.