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

no more the music of the words; he perceived under every word

the falseness of that elegant soul. He could not answer a word. He went.

Everything about him was going round and round.

 

When he regained his room he flung himself on his bed, and gave way to a

fit of anger and injured pride, just as he used to do when he was a little

boy. He bit his pillow; he crammed his handkerchief into his mouth, so that

no one should hear him crying. He hated Frau von Kerich. He hated Minna. He

despised them mightily. It seemed to him that he had been insulted, and he

trembled with shame and rage. He had to reply, to take immediate action. If

he could not avenge himself he would die.

 

He got up, and wrote an idiotically violent letter:

 

“MADAM,—

 

“I do not know if, as you say, you have been deceived in me. But I do know

that I have been cruelly deceived in you. I thought that you were my

friends. You said so. You pretended to be so, and I loved you more than my

life. I see now that it was all a lie, that your affection for me was only

a sham; you made use of me. I amused you, provided you with entertainment,

made music for you. I was your servant. Your servant: that I am not! I am

no man’s servant!

 

“You have made me feel cruelly that I had no right to love your daughter.

Nothing in the world can prevent my heart from loving where it loves, and

if I am not your equal in rank, I am as noble as you. It is the heart that

ennobles a man. If I am not a Count, I have perhaps more honor than many

Counts. Lackey or Count, when a man insults me, I despise him. I despise as

much any one who pretends to be noble, and is not noble of soul.

 

“Farewell! You have mistaken me. You have deceived me. I detest you!

 

“He who, in spite of you, loves, and will love till death, Fräulein Minna,

because she is his, and nothing can take her from him.”

 

Hardly had he thrown his letter into the box than he was filled with terror

at what he had done. He tried not to think of it, but certain phrases

cropped up in his memory; he was in a cold sweat as he thought of Frau von

Kerich reading those enormities. At first he was upheld by his very

despair, but next day he saw that his letter could only bring about a final

separation from Minna, and that seemed to him the direst of misfortunes. He

still hoped that Frau von Kerich, who knew his violent fits, would not take

it seriously, that she would only reprimand him severely, and—who

knows?—that she would be touched perhaps by the sincerity of his passion.

One word, and he would have thrown himself at her feet. He waited for five

days. Then came, a letter. She said:

 

“DEAR SIR,—

 

“Since, as you say, there has been a misunderstanding between us, it would

be wise not any further to prolong it. I should be very sorry to force upon

you a relationship which has become painful to you. You will think it

natural, therefore, that we should break it off. I hope that you will in

time to come have no lack of other friends who will be able to appreciate

you as you wish to be appreciated. I have no doubt as to your future, and

from a distance shall, with sympathy, follow your progress in your musical

career. Kind regards.

 

“JOSEPHA VON KERICH.”

 

The most bitter reproaches would have been less cruel. Jean-Christophe saw

that he was lost. It is possible to reply to an unjust accusation. But what

is to be done against the negativeness of such polite indifference? He

raged against it. He thought that he would never see Minna again, and he

could not bear it. He felt how little all the pride in the world weighs

against a little love. He forgot his dignity; he became cowardly; he wrote

more letters, in which he implored forgiveness. They were no less stupid

than the letter in which he had railed against her. They evoked no

response. And everything was said.

 

*

 

He nearly died of it. He thought of killing himself. He thought of murder.

At least, he imagined that he thought of it. He was possessed by incendiary

and murderous desires. People have little idea of the paroxysm of love or

hate which sometimes devours the hearts of children. It was the most

terrible crisis of his childhood. It ended his childhood. It stiffened his

will. But it came near to breaking it forever.

 

He found life impossible. He would sit for hours with his elbows on the

window-sill looking down into the courtyard, and dreaming, as he used to

when he was a little boy, of some means of escaping from the torture of

life when it became too great. The remedy was there, under his eyes.

Immediate … immediate? How could one know?… Perhaps after

hours—centuries—horrible sufferings!… But so utter was his childish

despair that he let himself be carried away by the giddy round of such

thoughts.

 

Louisa saw that he was suffering. She could not gauge exactly what was

happening to him, but her instinct gave her a dim warning of danger. She

tried to approach her son, to discover his sorrow, so as to console him.

But the poor woman had lost the habit of talking intimately to

Jean-Christophe. For many years he had kept his thoughts to himself, and

she had been too much taken up by the material cares of life to find time

to discover them or divine them. Now that she would so gladly have come to

his aid she knew not what to do. She hovered about him like a soul in

torment; she would gladly have found words to bring him comfort, and she

dared not speak for fear of irritating him. And in spite of all her care

she did irritate him by her every gesture and by her very presence, for she

was not very adroit, and he was not very indulgent. And yet he loved her;

they loved each other. But so little is needed to part two creatures who

are dear to each other, and love each other with all their hearts! A too

violent expression, an awkward gesture, a harmless twitching of an eye or a

nose, a trick of eating, walking, or laughing, a physical constraint which

is beyond analysis…. You say that these things are nothing, and yet they

are all the world. Often they are enough to keep a mother and a son, a

brother and a brother, a friend and a friend, who live in proximity to each

other, forever strangers to each other.

 

Jean-Christophe did not find in his mother’s grief a sufficient prop in the

crisis through which he was passing. Besides, what is the affection of

others to the egoism of passion preoccupied with itself?

 

One night when his family were sleeping, and he was sitting by his desk,

not thinking or moving, he was engulfed in his perilous ideas, when a sound

of footsteps resounded down the little silent street, and a knock on the

door brought him from his stupor. There was a murmuring of thick voices. He

remembered that his father had not come in, and he thought angrily that

they were bringing him back drunk, as they had done a week or two before,

when they had found him lying in the street. For Melchior had abandoned all

restraint, and was more and more the victim of his vice, though his

athletic health seemed not in the least to suffer from an excess and a

recklessness which would have killed any other man. He ate enough for four,

drank until he dropped, passed whole nights out of doors in icy rain, was

knocked down and stunned in brawls, and would get up again next day, with

his rowdy gaiety, wanting everybody about him to be gay too.

 

Louisa, hurrying up, rushed to open the door. Jean-Christophe, who had not

budged, stopped his ears so as not to hear Melchior’s vicious voice and the

tittering comments of the neighbors….

 

… Suddenly a strange terror seized him; for no reason he began to

tremble, with his face hidden in his hands. And on the instant a piercing

cry made him raise his head. He rushed to the door….

 

In the midst of a group of men talking in low voices, in the dark passage,

lit only by the flickering light of a lantern, lying, just as his

grandfather had done, on a stretcher, was a body dripping with water,

motionless. Louisa was clinging to it and sobbing. They had just found

Melchior drowned in the mill-race.

 

Jean-Christophe gave a cry. Everything else vanished; all his other sorrows

were swept aside. He threw himself on his fathers body by Louisa’s side,

and they wept together.

 

Seated by the bedside, watching Melchior’s last sleep, on whose face was

now a severe and solemn expression, he felt the dark peace of death enter

into his soul. His childish passion was gone from him like a fit of fever;

the icy breath of the grave had taken it all away. Minna, his pride, his

love, and himself…. Alas! What misery! How small everything showed by the

side of this reality, the only reality—death! Was it worth while to suffer

so much, to desire so much, to be so much put about to come in the end to

that!…

 

He watched his father’s sleep, and he was filled with an infinite pity. He

remembered the smallest of his acts of kindness and tenderness. For with

all his faults Melchior was not bad; there was much good in him. He loved

his family. He was honest. He had a little of the uncompromising probity of

the Kraffts, which, in all questions of morality and honor, suffered no

discussion, and never would admit the least of those small moral impurities

which so many people in society regard not altogether as faults. He was

brave, and whenever there was any danger faced it with a sort of enjoyment.

If he was extravagant himself, he was so for others too; he could not bear

anybody to be sad, and very gladly gave away all that belonged to him—and

did not belong to him—to the poor devils he met by the wayside. All his

qualities appeared to Jean-Christophe now, and he invented some of them, or

exaggerated them. It seemed to him that he had misunderstood his father. He

reproached himself with not having loved him enough. He saw him as broken

by Life; he thought he heard that unhappy soul, drifting, too weak to

struggle, crying out for the life so uselessly lost. He heard that

lamentable entreaty that had so cut him to the heart one day:

 

“Jean-Christophe! Do not despise me!”

 

And he was overwhelmed by remorse. He threw himself on the bed, and kissed

the dead face and wept. And as he had done that day, he said again:

 

“Dear father, I do not despise you. I love you. Forgive me!”

 

But that piteous entreaty was not appeased, and went on:

 

“De not despise me! Do not despise me!” And suddenly Jean-Christophe saw

himself lying in the place of the dead man; he heard the terrible words

coming from his own lips; he felt weighing on his heart the despair of a

useless life, irreparably lost. And he thought in terror: “Ah!