Chapter 44

So thought Christophe. He felt the mutual completion which the two races could give each other, and how lame and halting were the spirit, the art, the action of each without the help of the other. For his own part, born in the Rhine-lands where the two civilizations mingle in one stream, from his childhood he had instinctively felt their inevitable union; all through his life the unconscious effort of his genius had been to maintain the balance and equilibrium of the two mighty wings. The greater was his wealth of Germanic dreams, the more he needed the Latin clarity of mind and order. It was for this reason that France was so dear to him. In France he had the joy of better knowledge and mastery of himself. Only in France was he wholly himself.

He turned to account all the elements that were or might be noxious to him. He assimilated foreign energy in his own. A vigorous healthy mind absorbs every kind of force, even that which is hostile to it, and makes it bone and flesh of its bone and flesh. There even comes a time when a man is most attracted by what least resembles him, for therein he finds his most plentiful nourishment.

Christophe did in fact find more pleasure in the work of artists who were set up as his rivals than in the work of his imitators:--for he had imitators who called themselves his disciples, to his great despair. They were honest, laborious, estimable, and altogether virtuous people who were full of respect and veneration for him. Christophe would have given much if he could have liked their music; but--(it was just his luck!)--he could not do it: he found it meaningless. He was a thousand times more pleased with the talent of musicians who were personally antipathetic to him, and in art represented tendencies hostile to his own.... Well! What did it matter? These men were at least alive! Life is, in itself, such a virtue, that, if a man be deprived of it, though he possess all the other virtues, he will never be a really good man, for he cannot really be a man. Christophe used jokingly to say that the only disciples he recognized were the men who attacked him. And when a young artist came and talked to him about his musical vocation, and tried to win his sympathy by flattering him, Christophe would say:

"So. My music satisfies you? That is how you would express your love, or your hatred?"

"Yes, master."

"Well. Don't. You have nothing to say."

His horror of the submissive temper of mind, of men born to obey, his need of absorbing other ideas than his own, attracted him to circles whose ideas were diametrically opposed to his own. He had friends among men to whom his art, his idealistic faith, his moral conceptions, were a dead letter: they had absolutely different ways of envisaging life, love, marriage, the family, every social relationship:--but they were good fellows, though they seemed to belong to another stage of moral evolution: the anguish and the scruples that had consumed a part of Christophe's life were incomprehensible to them. No doubt that was all the better for them! Christophe had no desire to make them understand. He did not ask others to confirm his ideas by thinking as he did: he was sure of his own thoughts. He asked them to let him know their thoughts, and to love their souls. He asked always to know and to love more, to see and to learn how to see. He had reached the point not only of admitting in others tendencies of mind that he had once combated, but also of rejoicing in them, for they seemed to him to contribute to the fecundity of the universe. He loved Georges the more because he did not take life tragically, as he did. Humanity would be too poor and too gray in color if it were to be uniformly clad in the moral seriousness, and the heroic restraint with which Christophe was armed. Humanity needed joy, carelessness, irreverent audacity in face of its idols, all its idols, even the most holy. Long live "the Gallic salt which revives the world"! Skepticism and faith are no less necessary. Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of to-morrow.... How clear everything becomes to the man who stands away from life, and, as in a fine picture, sees the contrasting colors merge into a magical harmony, where, when they were closely seen, they clashed.

Christophe's eyes had been opened to the infinite variety of the material, as of the moral, world. It had been one of his greatest conquests since his first visit to Italy. In Paris he especially sought the company of painters and sculptors; it seemed to him that the best of the French genius was in them. The triumphant audacity with which they pursued and captured movement, vibrant color, and tore away the veils that cover life, made his heart leap with delight. The inexhaustible riches that he who has eyes to see can find in a drop of light, a second of life! Against such sovereign delights of the mind what matters the vain tumult of dispute and war?... But dispute and war also are a part of the marvelous spectacle. We must embrace everything, and, valiantly, joyously, fling into the crucible of our burning hearts both the forces of denial and the forces of affirmation, enemies and friends, the whole metal of life. The end of it all is the statue which takes shape in us, the divine fruit of our minds; and all is good that helps to make it more beautiful even at the cost of the sacrifice of ourselves. What does the creator matter? Only that which is created is real.... You cannot hurt us, ye enemies who seek to reach us with your hostility. We are beyond the reach of your attacks.... You are rending the empty cloak. I have been gone this many a day.

His music had found a more serene form. No longer did it show the storms of spring, which gathered, burst, and disappeared in the old days, but, instead, the white clouds of summer, mountains of snow and gold, great birds of light, slowly soaring, and filling the sky.... Creation. Ripening crops in the calm August sunlight....

At first a vague, mighty torpor, the obscure joy of the full grape, the swollen ear of corn, the pregnant woman brooding over her ripe fruit. A buzzing like the sound of an organ; the hive all alive with the hum of the bees.... Such somber, golden music, like an autumn honeycomb, slowly gives forth the rhythm which shall mark its path: the round of the planets is made plain: it begins to spin....

Then the will appears. It leaps onto the back of the whinnying dream as it passes, and grips it with its knees. The mind recognizes the laws of the rhythm which guides it: it tames the disordered forces and fixes the path they shall take, the goal towards which they shall move. The symphony of reason and instinct is organized. The darkness grows bright. On the long ribbon of the winding road, at intervals, there are brilliant fires, which in their turn shall be in the work of creation the nucleus of little planetary worlds linked up in the girdle of their solar system....

The main lines of the picture are henceforth fixed. Now it looms through the uncertain light of dawn. Everything is becoming definite: the harmony of the colors, the outline of the figures. To bring the work to its close all the resources of his being are brought into requisition. The scent-box of memory is opened and exhales its perfumes. The mind unchains the senses: it lets them wax delirious and is silent: but, crouching there, it watches them and chooses its prey....

All is ready: the team of workmen carries out, with the materials snatched from the senses, the work planned by the mind. A great architect must have good journeymen who know their trade and will not spare themselves.--The cathedral is finished.

"And God looked down on his work. And He saw that _it was not yet good._"

The Master's eyes take in the whole of His creation, and His hand perfects its harmony....

* * * * *

The dream is ended. _Te Deum_....

The white clouds of summer, like great birds of light, slowly soar and hover; and the heavens are filled with their widespread wings.

And yet his life was very far from being one with his art. A man of his kind cannot do without love, not merely that equable love which the spirit of an artist sheds on all things in the world, but a love that knows _preference_: he must always be giving himself to the creatures of his choice. They are the roots of the tree. Through them his heart's blood is renewed.

Christophe's heart's blood was nothing like dried up. He was steeped in a love which was the best part of his joy, a twofold love, for Grazia's daughter and Olivier's son. He united them in thought, and was to unite them in reality.

* * * * *

Georges and Aurora had met at Colette's: Aurora lived in her cousin's house. She spent part of the year in Rome and the rest in Paris. She was eighteen: Georges five years older. She was tall, erect, elegant, with a small head, and an open countenance, fair hair, a dark complexion, a slight down on her lips, bright eyes with a laughing expression behind which lay busy thoughts, a rather plump chin, brown hands, beautiful round strong arms, and a fine bust; and she always looked gay, proud, and worldly. She was not at all intellectual, hardly at all sentimental, and she had inherited her mother's careless indolence. She would sleep eleven hours on end. The rest of the time she spent in lounging and laughing, only half awake. Christophe called her _Dornröschen_--the Sleeping Beauty. She reminded him of his old love, Sabine. She used to sing as she went to bed, and when she got up, and laugh for no reason at all, with merry childish laughter, and then gulp it down with a sort of hiccough. It were impossible to tell how she spent the time. All Colette's efforts to equip her with the brilliant artificiality which is so easily imposed on the mind of a young girl, like a kind of lacquered varnish, had been wasted: the varnish would not hold. She learned nothing: she would take months to read a book, and would like it immensely, though in a week she would forget both its title and its subject: without the least embarrassment she would make mistakes in spelling, and when she spoke of learned matters she would fall into the most comical blunders. She was refreshing in her youth, her gaiety, her lack of intellectuality, even in her faults, her thoughtlessness which sometimes amounted to indifference, and her naïve egoism. She was always so spontaneous. Young as she was, and simple and indolent, she could when she pleased play the coquette, though in all innocence: then she would spread her net for young men and go sketching, or play the nocturnes of Chopin, or carry books of poetry which she had not read, and indulge in conversations and hats that were about equally idealistic.

Christophe would watch her and laugh gently to himself. He had a fatherly tenderness, indulgent and teasing, for Aurora. And he had also a secret feeling of worship for the woman he had loved who had come again with new youth for another love than his. No one knew the depth of his affection. Only Aurora ever suspected it. From her childhood she had almost always been used to having Christophe near her, and she used to regard him as one of her family. In her old sorrow at being less loved than her brother she had instinctively drawn near to Christophe. She divined that he had a similar sorrow; he saw her grief: and though they never exchanged confidences, they shared each other's feelings. Later, when she discovered the feeling that united her mother and Christophe, it seemed to her that she was in the secret, though they had never told her. She knew the meaning of the message with which Grazia had charged her as she lay dying, and of the ring which was now on Christophe's hand. So there existed hidden ties between her and Christophe, ties which she did not need to understand, to feel them in their complexity. She was sincerely attached to her old friend, although she could never have made the effort necessary to play or to read his work. Though she was a fairly good musician, she had never even had the curiosity to cut the pages of a score he had dedicated to her. She loved to come and have an intimate talk with him.--She came more often when she found out that she might meet Georges Jeannin in his rooms.

And Georges, too, found an extraordinary interest in Christophe's company.

However, the two young people were slow to realize their real feelings. They had at first looked at each other mockingly. They were hardly at all alike. He was quicksilver, she was still water. But it was not long before quicksilver tried to appear more at rest, and sleeping water awoke. Georges would criticise Aurora's clothes, and her Italian taste--a slight want of feeling for modulation and a certain preference for crude colors. Aurora used to delight in teasing Georges, and imitating his rather hurried and precious way of speaking. And while they laughed at each other, they both took pleasure ... in laughing, or in entertaining each other? They used to entertain Christophe too, and, far from gainsaying them, he would maliciously transpose these little poisoned darts from one to the other. They pretended not to care: but they soon discovered that they cared only too much; and both, especially Georges, being incapable of concealing their annoyance, as soon as they met they would begin sparring. Their wounds were slight: they were afraid of hurting each other: and the hand which dealt the blow was so dear to the recipient of it that they both found more pleasure in the hurts they received than in those they gave. They used to watch each other curiously, and their eyes, seeking defects, would find only attractions. But they would not admit it. Each, to Christophe, would declare that the other was unbearable, but, for all that, they were not slow to seize every opportunity of meeting that Christophe gave them.

One day when Aurora was with her old friend to tell him that she would come and see him on the following Sunday in the morning, Georges rushed in, like a whirlwind as usual, to tell Christophe that he was coming on Sunday afternoon. On Sunday morning Christophe waited in vain for Aurora. At the hour mentioned by Georges she appeared, and asked him to forgive her because it had been impossible for her to come in the morning: she embroidered her excuses with a circumstantial story. Christophe was amused by her innocent roguery, and said:

"It is a pity. You would have seen Georges: he came and lunched with me; but he would not stay this afternoon."

Aurora was discomfited, and did not listen to anything Christophe said. He went on talking good-humoredly. She replied absently, and was not far from being cross with him. Came a ring at the bell. It was Georges. Aurora was amazed. Christophe looked at her and laughed. She saw that he had been making fun of her, and laughed and blushed. He shook his finger at her waggishly. Suddenly she ran and kissed him warmly. He whispered to her:

_"Biricchina, ladroncella, furbetta...."_

And she laid her hand on his lips to silence him.

Georges could make nothing of their kissing and laughter. His expression of astonishment, almost of vexation, added to their joy.

So Christophe labored to bring the two young people together. And when he had succeeded he was almost sorry. He loved them equally; but he judged Georges more hardly: he knew his weakness: he idolized Aurora, and thought himself responsible for her happiness even more than for Georges's; for it seemed to him that Georges was as a son to him, a part of himself, and he wondered whether it was not wrong to give Aurora in her innocence a companion who was very far from sharing it.

But one day as he passed by an arbor where the two young people were sitting--(a short time after their betrothal)--his heart sank as he heard Aurora laughingly questioning Georges about one of his past adventures, and Georges telling her, nothing loth. Other scraps of conversation, which they made no attempt to disguise, showed him that Aurora was far more at home than himself with Georges's moral ideas. Though they were very much in love with each other it was clear that they did not regard themselves as bound forever; into their discussions of questions relating to love and marriage, they brought a spirit of liberty, which might have a beauty of its own, though it was singularly at variance with the old ideal of mutual devotion _usque ad mortem._ And Christophe would look at them a little sadly.... How far they were from him already! How swiftly does the ship that bears our children speed on!... Patience! A day will come when we shall all meet in harbor.

Meanwhile the ship paid no heed to the way marked out for it: it trimmed its sails to every wind.--It would have seemed natural for the spirit of liberty, which was then tending to modify morality, to take up its stand also in the other domains of thought and action. But it did nothing of the kind: human nature cares little for contradiction. While morality was becoming more free, the mind was becoming less so; it was demanding that religion should restore its yoke. And this twofold movement in opposite directions was, with a magnificent defiance of logic, taking place in the same souls. Georges and Aurora had been caught up by the new current of Catholicism which was conquering many people of fashion and many intellectuals. Nothing could be more curious than the way in which Georges, who was naturally critical and perfectly irreligious, skepticism being to him as easy as breathing, Georges, who had never cared for God or devil--a true Frenchman, laughing at everything--suddenly declared that there lay the truth. He needed truth of some sort, and this sorted well with his need of action, his atavistic French bourgeois characteristics, and his weariness of liberty. The young fool had wandered long enough, and he returned of his own accord to be harnessed to the plow of his race. The example of a number of his friends was enough for him. Georges was hypersensitive to the least atmospheric pressure of the ideas that surrounded him, and he was one of the first to be caught. And Aurora followed him, as she would have followed him anywhere. At once they felt sure of themselves, and despised everybody who did not think as they did. The irony of it! These two frivolous children were sincerely devout, while the moral purity, the serious and ardent efforts of Grazia and Olivier had never helped them to be so, in spite of their desire.

Christophe watched their spiritual evolution with sympathetic curiosity. He did not try to fight against it, as Emmanuel would have done, for Emmanuel's free idealism was up in arms against this return of the ancient foe. It is vain to fight against the passing wind. One can only wait for it to go. The reason of humanity was exhausted. It had just made a gigantic effort. It was overcome with sleep, and, like a child worn out by a long day, before going to sleep, it was saying its prayers. The gate of dreams had reopened; in the train of religion came little puffs of theosophy, mysticism, esoteric faiths, occultism to visit the chambers of the Western mind. Even philosophy was wavering. Their gods of thought, Bergson and William James, were tottering. Even science was attainted, even science was showing the signs of the fatigue of reason. We have a moment's respite. Let us breathe. To-morrow the mind will awake again, more alert, more free.... Sleep is good when a man has worked hard. Christophe, who had had little time for it, was happy that these children of his should enjoy it in his stead, and should have rest for the soul, security of faith, absolute, unshakable confidence in their dreams. He would not nor could he have exchanged his lot for theirs. But he thought that Grazia's melancholy and Olivier's distress of mind had found solace in their children, and that it was well.

"All that we have suffered, I, my friends, and so many others whom I never knew, others who lived before us, all has been, that these two might attain joy.... The joy, Antoinette, for which thou wast made, the joy that was refused thee!... Ah! If only the unhappy could have a foretaste of the happiness that will one day spring forth from the sacrifice of their lives!"

What purpose could be served by his trying to dispute their happiness? We must not try to make others happy in our way, but in their own. At most he only asked Georges and Aurora not to be too contemptuous of those who, like himself, did not share their faith.

They did not even take the trouble to argue with him. They seemed to say to each other:

"He cannot understand...."

In their eyes he belonged to the past. And, to be frank, they did not attach much importance to the past. When they were alone they used often to talk innocently of the things they would do when Christophe "was no longer with them."...--However, they loved him well.... How terrible are the children who grow up over us like creepers! How terrible is the force of Nature, hurrying, hurrying, driving us out....

"Go! Go! Remove thyself! It is my turn now!..."

Christophe, overhearing their thoughts, longed to say to them:

"Don't be in such a hurry! I am quite happy here. Please regard me still as a living being."

He was amused by their naive impertinence.

"You may as well say straight out," he observed one day when they had crushed him with their disdainful manner. "You may as well say that I am a stupid old man."

"No, no, my dear old friend," said Aurora, laughing heartily. "You are the best of men, but there are some things that you do not know."

"And that you do know, my girl? You are very wise!"

"Don't laugh at me. I know nothing much. But Georges knows."

Christophe smiled:

"Yes. You are right, my dear. The man you love always knows."

It was much more difficult for him to tolerate their music than to put up with their intellectual superiority. They used to try his patience severely. The piano was given no rest when they were in his rooms. It seemed that love had roused them to song, like the birds. But they were by a long way not so skilled in singing. Aurora had no illusions as to her talent, but she was quite otherwise about her fiancé: she could see no difference between Georges's playing and Christophe's. Perhaps she preferred Georges's style, and Georges, in spite of his ironic subtlety, was never far from being convinced by his sweetheart's belief in him. Christophe never contradicted them: maliciously he would concur in the girl's opinion (except when, as sometimes happened, he could bear it no longer, and would rush away, banging the doors). With an affectionate, pitying smile he would listen to Georges playing _Tristan_ on the piano. The unhappy young man would conscientiously apply himself to the transcription of the formidable pages with all the amiable sweetness of a young girl, and a young girl's tender feeling. Christophe used to laugh to himself. He would never tell the boy why he laughed. He would kiss him. He loved him as he was. Perhaps he loved him the more for it.... Poor boy!... Oh! the vanity of art!...

He used often to talk about "his children"--(for so he called them)--to Emmanuel. Emmanuel, who was fond of Georges, used jokingly to say that Christophe ought to hand him aver to him. He had Aurora, and it was not fair. He was grabbing everything.