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

a large way of living and had great needs to satisfy.

Sometimes even his ordinary sacrifices were not sufficient, and to meet

some urgent debt Jean Michel would have secretly to sell a piece of

furniture or books, or some relic that he set store by. Melchior knew that

his father made presents to Louisa that were concealed from himself, and

very often he would lay hands on them, in spite of protest. But when this

came to the old man’s ears—not from Louisa, who said nothing of her

troubles to him, but from one of his grandchildren—he would fly into a

terrible passion, and there were frightful scenes between the two men. They

were both extraordinarily violent, and they would come to round oaths and

threats—almost it seemed as though they would come to blows. But even in

his most angry passion respect would hold Melchior in check, and, however

drunk he might be, in the end he would bow his head to the torrent of

insults and humiliating reproach which his father poured out upon him. But

for that he did not cease to watch for the first opportunity of breaking

out again, and with his thoughts on the future, Jean Michel would be filled

with melancholy and anxious fears.

 

“My poor children,” he used to say to Louisa, “what will become, of you

when I am no longer here?… Fortunately,” he would add, fondling

Jean-Christophe, “I can go on until this fellow pulls you out of the mire.”

But he was out in his reckoning; he was at the end of his road. No one

would have suspected it. He was surprisingly strong. He was past eighty; he

had a full head of hair, a white mane, still gray in patches, and in his

thick beard were still black hairs. He had only about ten teeth left, but

with these he could chew lustily. It was a pleasure to see him at table. He

had a hearty appetite, and though, he reproached Melchior for drinking, he

always emptied his bottle himself. He had a preference for white Moselle.

For the rest—wine, beer, cider—he could do justice to all the good things

that the Lord hath made. He was not so foolish as to lose his reason in his

cups, and he kept to his allowance. It is true that it was a plentiful

allowance, and that a feebler intelligence must have been made drunk by it.

He was strong of foot and eye, and indefatigably active. He got up at six,

and performed his ablutions scrupulously, for he cared for his appearance

and respected his person. He lived alone in his house, of which he was sole

occupant, and never let his daughter-in-law meddle with his affairs. He

cleaned out his room, made his own coffee, sewed on his buttons, nailed,

and glued, and altered; and going to and fro and up and down stairs in his

shirt-sleeves, he never stopped singing in a sounding bass which he loved

to let ring out as he accompanied himself with operatic gestures. And then

he used to go out in all weathers. He went about his business, omitting

none, but he was not often punctual. He was to be seen at every street

corner arguing with some acquaintance or joking with some woman whose face

he had remembered, for he loved pretty women and old friends. And so he was

always late, and never knew the time. But he never let the dinner-hour slip

by. He dined wherever he might be, inviting himself, and he would not go

home until late—after nightfall, after a visit to his grandchildren. Then

he would go to bed, and before he went to sleep read a page of his old

Bible, and during the night—for he never slept for more than an hour or

two together—he would get up to take down one of his old books, bought

second-hand—history, theology, belles-lettres, or science. He used to read

at random a few pages, which interested and bored him, and he did not

rightly understand them, though he did not skip a word, until sleep came to

him again. On Sunday he would go to church, walk with the children, and

play bowls. He had never been ill, except for a little gout in his toes,

which used to make him swear at night while he was reading his Bible. It

seemed as though he might live to be a hundred, and he himself could see no

reason why he should not live longer. When people said that he would die a

centenarian, he used to think, like another illustrious old man, that no

limit can be appointed to the goodness of Providence, The only sign that he

was growing old was that he was more easily brought to tears, and was

becoming every day more irritable. The smallest impatience with him could

throw him into a violent fury. His red face and short neck would grow

redder than ever. He would stutter angrily, and have to stop, choking. The

family doctor, an old friend, had warned him to take care and to moderate

both his anger and his appetite. But with an old man’s obstinacy he plunged

into acts of still greater recklessness out of bravado, and he laughed at

medicine and doctors. He pretended to despise death, and did not mince his

language when he declared that he was not afraid of it.

 

One summer day, when it was very hot, and he had drunk copiously, and

argued in the market-place, he went home and began to work quietly in his

garden. He loved digging. Bareheaded under the sun, still irritated by his

argument, he dug angrily. Jean-Christophe was sitting in the arbor with a

book in his hand, but he was not reading. He was dreaming and listening to

the cheeping of the crickets, and mechanically following his grandfather’s

movements. The old man’s back was towards him; he was bending and plucking

out weeds. Suddenly Jean-Christophe saw him rise, beat against the air with

his arms, and fall heavily with his face to the ground. For a moment he

wanted to laugh; then he saw that the old man did not stir. He called to

him, ran to him, and shook him with all his strength. Fear seized him. He

knelt, and with his two hands tried to raise the great head from the

ground. It was so heavy and he trembled so that he could hardly move it.

But when he saw the eyes turned up, white and bloody, he was frozen with

horror and, with a shrill cry, let the head fall. He got up in terror, ran

away and out of the place. He cried and wept. A man passing by stopped the

boy. Jean-Christophe could not speak, but he pointed to the house. The man

went in, and Jean-Christophe followed him. Others had heard his cries, and

they came from the neighboring houses. Soon the garden was full of people.

They trampled the flowers, and bent down over the old man. They cried

aloud. Two or three men lifted him up. Jean-Christophe stayed by the gate,

turned to the wall, and hid his face in his hands. He was afraid to look,

but he could not help himself, and when they passed him he saw through his

fingers the old man’s huge body, limp and flabby. One arm dragged along the

ground, the head, leaning against the knee of one of the men carrying the

body, bobbed at every step, and the face was scarred, covered with mud,

bleeding. The mouth was open and the eyes were fearful. He howled again,

and took to flight. He ran as though something were after him, and never

stopped until he reached home. He burst into the kitchen with frightful

cries. Louisa was cleaning vegetables. He hurled himself at her, and hugged

her desperately, imploring her help. His face was distorted with his sobs;

he could hardly speak. But at the first word she understood. She went

white, let the things fall from her hands, and without a word rushed from

the house.

 

Jean-Christophe was left alone, crouching against a cupboard. He went on

weeping. His brothers were playing. He could not make out quite what had

happened. He did not think of his grandfather; he was thinking only of the

dreadful sights he had just seen, and he was in terror lest he should be

made to return to see them again.

 

And as it turned out in the evening, when the other children, tired of

doing every sort of mischief in the house, were beginning to feel wearied

and hungry, Louisa rushed in again, took them by the hand, and led them to

their grandfather’s house. She walked very fast, and Ernest and Rodolphe

tried to complain, as usual; but Louisa bade them be silent in such a tone

of voice that they held their peace. An instinctive fear seized them, and

when they entered the house they began to weep. It was not yet night. The

last hours of the sunset cast strange lights over the inside of the

house—on the door-handle, on the mirror, on the violin hung on the wall in

the chief room, which was half in darkness. But in the old man’s room a

candle was alight, and the flickering flame, vying with the livid, dying

day, made the heavy darkness of the room more oppressive. Melchior was

sitting near the window, loudly weeping. The doctor, leaning over the bed,

hid from sight what was lying there. Jean-Christophe’s heart beat so that

it was like to break. Louisa made the children kneel at the foot of the

bed. Jean-Christophe stole a glance. He expected something so terrifying

after what he had seen in the afternoon that at the first glimpse he was

almost comforted. His grandfather lay motionless, and seemed to be asleep.

For a moment the child believed that the old man was better, and that all

was at an end. But when he heard his heavy breathing; when, as he looked

closer, he saw the swollen face, on which the wound that he had come by in

the fall had made a broad scar; when he understood that here was a man at

point of death, he began to tremble; and while he repeated Louisa’s prayer

for the restoration of his grandfather, in his heart he prayed that if the

old man could not get well he might be already dead. He was terrified at

the prospect of what was going to happen.

 

The old man had not been conscious since the moment of his fall. He only

returned to consciousness for a moment, enough to learn his condition, and

that was lamentable. The priest was there, and recited the last prayers

over him. They raised the old man on his pillow. He opened his eyes slowly,

and they seemed no longer to obey his will. He breathed noisily, and with

unseeing eyes looked at the faces and the lights, and suddenly he opened

his mouth. A nameless terror showed on his features.

 

“But then …” he gasped—“but I am going to die!”

 

The awful sound of his voice pierced Jean-Christophe’s heart. Never, never

was it to fade from his memory. The old man said no more. He moaned like a

little child. The stupor took him once more, but his breathing became more

and more difficult. He groaned, he fidgeted with his hands, he seemed to

struggle against the mortal sleep. In his semi-consciousness he cried once:

 

“Mother!”

 

Oh, the biting impression that it made, this mumbling of the old man,

calling in anguish on his mother, as Jean-Christophe would himself have

done—his mother, of whom he was never known to talk in life, to whom he

now turned instinctively, the last futile refuge in the last terror!…

Then he seemed to