Jean-Christophe, vol 1, Romain Rolland [book club recommendations .txt] 📗

the museums, and to hear

concerts and to make certain acquaintances—he had only one idea in his

head: To go….

 

He went back to the station. As he had been told, his train did not leave

for three hours. And also the train was not express—(for Christophe had to

go by the cheapest class)—stopped on the way. Christophe would have done

better to go by the next train, which went two hours later and caught

up the first. But that meant spending two more hours in the place, and

Christophe could not bear it. He would not even leave the station while he

was waiting.—A gloomy period of waiting in those vast and empty halls,

dark and noisy, where strange shadows were going in and out, always busy,

always hurrying; strange shadows who meant nothing to him, all unknown

to him, not one friendly face. The misty day died down. The electric

lamps, enveloped in fog, flushed the night and made it darker than ever.

Christophe grew more and more depressed as time went on, waiting in agony

for the time to go. Ten times an hour he went to look at the train

indicators to make sure that he had not made a mistake. As he was reading

them once more from end to end to pass the time, the name of a place caught

his eye. He thought he knew it. It was only after a moment that he

remembered that it was where old Schulz lived, who had written him such

kind and enthusiastic letters. In his wretchedness the idea came to him of

going to see his unknown friend. The town was not on the direct line on

his way home, but a few hours away, by a little local line. It meant a

whole night’s journey, with two or three changes and interminable waits.

Christophe never thought about it. He decided suddenly to go. He had an

instinctive need of clinging to sympathy of some sort. He gave himself no

time to think, and telegraphed to Schulz to say that he would arrive next

morning. Hardly had he sent the telegram than he regretted it. He laughed

bitterly at his eternal illusions. Why go to meet a new sorrow?—But it was

done now. It was too late to change his mind.

 

These thoughts filled his last hour of waiting—his train at last was

ready. He was the first to get into it, and he was so childish that he only

began to breathe again when the train shook, and through the carriage

window he could see the outlines of the town fading into the gray sky under

the heavy downpour of the night. He thought he must have died if he had

spent the night in it.

 

At the very hour—about six in the evening—a letter from Hassler came for

Christophe at his hotel. Christophe’s visit stirred many things in him.

The whole afternoon he had been thinking of it bitterly, and not without

sympathy for the poor boy who had come to him with such eager affection

to be received so coldly. He was sorry for that reception and a little

angry with himself. In truth, it had been only one of those fits of sulky

whimsies to which he was subject. He thought to make it good by sending

Christophe a ticket for the opera and a few words appointing a meeting

after the performance—Christophe never knew anything about it. When he did

not see him, Hassler thought:

 

“He is angry. So much the worse for him!”

 

He shrugged his shoulders and did not wait long for him.

 

Next day Christophe was far away—so far that all eternity would not have

been enough to bring them together. And, they were both separated forever.

 

*

 

Peter Schulz was seventy-five. He had always had delicate health, and age

had not spared him. He was fairly tail, but stooping, and his head hung

down to his chest. He had a weak throat and difficulty in breathing.

Asthma, catarrh, bronchitis were always upon him, and the marks of the

struggles he had to make—many a night sitting up in his bed, bending

forward, dripping with sweat in the effort to force a breath of air

into his stifling lungs—were in the sorrowful lines on his long, thin,

clean-shaven face. His nose was long and a little swollen at the top. Deep

lines came from under his eyes and crossed his cheeks, that were hollow

from his toothlessness. Age and infirmity had not been the only sculptors

of that poor wreck of a man: the sorrows of life also had had their share

in its making.—And in spite of all he was not sad. There was kindness and

serenity in his large mouth. But in his eyes especially there was that

which gave a touching softness to the old face. They were light gray,

limpid, and transparent. They looked straight, calmly and frankly. They hid

nothing of the soul. Its depths could be read in them.

 

His life had been uneventful. He had been alone for years. His wife was

dead. She was not very good, or very intelligent, and she was not at all

beautiful. But he preserved a tender memory of her. It was twenty-five

years since he had lost her, and he had never once failed a night to have a

little imaginary conversation, sad and tender, with her before he went to

sleep. He shared all his doings with her.—He had had no children. That was

the great sorrow of his life. He had transferred his need of affection to

his pupils, to whom he was attached as a father to his sons. He had found

very little return. An old heart can feel very near to a young heart and

almost of the same age; knowing how brief are the years that lie between

them. But the young man never has any idea of that. To him an old man is a

man of another age, and besides, he is absorbed by his immediate anxieties

and instinctively turns away from the melancholy end of all his efforts.

Old Schulz had sometimes found gratitude in his pupils who were touched

by the keen and lively interest he took in everything good or ill that

happened to them. They used to come and see him from time to time. They

used to write and thank him when they left the university. Some of them

used to go on writing occasionally during the years following. And then old

Schulz would hear nothing more of them except in the papers which kept him

informed of their advancement, and he would be as glad of their success

as though it was his own. He was never hurt by their silence. He found a

thousand excuses for it. He never doubted their affection and used to

ascribe even to the most selfish the feelings that he had for them.

 

But his books were his greatest refuge. They neither forgot nor deceived

him. The souls which he cherished in them had risen above the flood of

time. They were inscrutable, fixed for eternity in the love they inspired

and seemed to feel, and gave forth once more to those who loved them. He

was Professor of Æsthetics and the History of Music, and he was like an old

wood quivering with the songs of birds. Some of these songs sounded very

far away. They came from the depths of the ages. But they were not the

least sweet and mysterious of all.—Others were familiar and intimate to

him, dear companions; their every phrase reminded him of the joys and

sorrows of his past life, conscious or unconscious:—(for under every day

lit by the light of the sun there are unfolded other days lit by a light

unknown)—And there were some songs that he had never yet heard, songs

which said the things that he had been long awaiting and needing; and his

heart opened to receive them like the earth to receive rain. And so old

Schulz listened, in the silence of his solitary life, to the forest filled

with birds, and, like the monk of the legend, who slept in the ecstasy of

the song of the magic bird, the years passed over him and the evening of

life was come, but still he had the heart of a boy of twenty.

 

He was not only rich in music. He loved the poets—old and new. He had a

predilection for those of his own country, especially for Goethe; but he

also loved those of other countries. He was a learned man and could read

several languages. In mind he was a contemporary of Herder and the great

Weltbürger—the “citizens of the world” of the end of the eighteenth

century. He had lived through the years of bitter struggle which preceded

and followed seventy, and was immersed in their vast idea. And although

he adored Germany, he was not “vainglorious” about it. He thought, with

Herder, that “_among all vainglorious men, he who is vainglorious of his

nationality is the completest fool_,” and, with Schiller, that “_it is a

poor ideal only to write for one nation_.” And he was timid of mind, but

his heart was large, and ready to welcome lovingly everything beautiful in

the world. Perhaps he was too indulgent with mediocrity; but his instinct

never doubted as to what was the best; and if he was not strong enough

to condemn the sham artists admired by public opinion, he was always

strong enough to defend the artists of originality and power whom public

opinion disregarded. His kindness often led him astray. He was fearful of

committing any injustice, and when he did not like what others liked, he

never doubted but that it must be he who was mistaken, and he would manage

to love it. It was so sweet to him to love! Love and admiration were even

more necessary to his moral being than air to his miserable lungs. And so

how grateful he was to those who gave him a new opportunity of showing

them!—Christophe could have no idea of what his Lieder had been to him.

He himself had not felt them nearly so keenly when he had written them. His

songs were to him only a few sparks thrown out from his inner fire. He had

cast them forth and would cast forth others. But to old Schulz they were a

whole world suddenly revealed to him—a whole world to be loved. His life

had been lit up by them.

 

*

 

A year before he had had to resign his position at the university. His

health, growing more and more precarious, prevented his lecturing. He was

ill and in bed when Wolf’s Library had sent him as usual a parcel of the

latest music they had received, and in it were Christophe’s Lieder. He

was alone. He was without relatives. The few that he had had were long

since dead. He was delivered into the hands of an old servant, who profited

by his weakness to make him do whatever she liked. A few friends hardly

younger than himself used to come and see him from time to time, but they

were not in very good health either, and when the weather was bad they too

stayed indoors and missed their visits. It was winter then and the streets

were covered with melting snow. Schulz had not seen anybody all day. It was

dark in the room. A yellow fog was drawn over the windows like a screen,

making it impossible to see out. The heat of the stove was thick and

oppressive. From the church hard by an old peal of bells of the seventeenth

century chimed every quarter of an hour,