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

smelled strong and good. The

grasshoppers chirped. Enormous crows poised along the road used to watch

them approach from afar, and then fly away heavily as they came up with

them.

 

His grandfather would cough. Jean-Christophe knew quite well what that

meant. The old man was burning with the desire to tell a story; but he

wanted it to appear that the child had asked him for one. Jean-Christophe

did not fail him; they understood each other. The old man had a tremendous

affection for his grandson, and it was a great joy to find in him a willing

audience. He loved to tell of episodes in his own life, or stories of great

men, ancient and modern. His voice would then become emphatic and filled

with emotion, and would tremble with a childish joy, which he used to

try to stifle. He seemed delighted to hear his own voice. Unhappily,

words used to fail him when he opened his mouth to speak. He was used to

such disappointment, for it always came upon him with his outbursts of

eloquence. And as he used to forget it with each new attempt, he never

succeeded in resigning himself to it.

 

He used to talk of Regulus, and Arminius, of the soldiers of Lützow, of

Koerner, and of Frédéric Stabs, who tried to kill the Emperor Napoleon.

His face would glow as he told of incredible deeds of heroism. He used to

pronounce historic words in such a solemn voice that it was impossible to

hear them, and he used to try artfully to keep his hearer on tenterhooks at

the thrilling moments. He would stop, pretend to choke, and noisily blow

his nose; and his heart would leap when the child asked, in a voice choking

with impatience: “And then, grandfather?”

 

There came a day, when Jean-Christophe was a little older, when he

perceived his grandfather’s method; and then he wickedly set himself to

assume an air of indifference to the rest of the story, and that hurt the

poor old man. But for the moment Jean-Christophe is altogether held by the

power of the story-teller. His blood leaped at the dramatic passages. He

did not know what it was all about, neither where nor when these deeds were

done, or whether his grandfather knew Arminius, or whether Regulus were

not—God knows why!—some one whom he had seen at church last Sunday. But

his heart and the old man’s heart swelled with joy and pride in the tale of

heroic deeds, as though they themselves had done them; for the old man and

the child were both children.

 

Jean-Christophe was less happy when his grandfather interpolated in the

pathetic passages one of those abstruse discourses so dear to him. There

were moral thoughts generally traceable to some idea, honest enough, but

a little trite, such as “Gentleness is better than violence,” or “Honor

is the dearest thing in life,” or “It is better to be good than to be

wicked”—only they were much more involved. Jean-Christophe’s grandfather

had no fear of the criticism of his youthful audience, and abandoned

himself to his habitual emphatic manner; he was not afraid of repeating the

same phrases, or of not finishing them, or even, if he lost himself in his

discourse, of saying anything that came into his head, to stop up the gaps

in his thoughts; and he used to punctuate his words, in order to give them

greater force, with inappropriate gestures. The boy used to listen with

profound respect, and he thought his grandfather very eloquent, but a

little tiresome.

 

Both of them loved to return again and again to the fabulous legend of the

Corsican conqueror who had taken Europe. Jean-Christophe’s grandfather had

known him. He had almost fought against him. But he was a man to admit the

greatness of his adversaries: he had said so twenty times. He would have

given one of his arms for such a man to have been born on this side of the

Rhine. Fate had decreed otherwise; he admired him, and had fought against

him—that is, he had been on the point of fighting against him. But when

Napoleon had been no farther than ten leagues away, and they had marched

out to meet him, a sudden panic had dispersed the little band in a forest,

and every man had fled, crying, “We are betrayed!” In vain, as the old man

used to tell, in vain did he endeavor to rally the fugitives; he threw

himself in front of them, threatening them and weeping: he had been swept

away in the flood of them, and on the morrow had found himself at an

extraordinary distance from the field of battle—For so he called the place

of the rout. But Jean-Christophe used impatiently to bring him back to

the exploits of the hero, and he was delighted by his marvelous progress

through the world. He saw him followed by innumerable men, giving vent to

great cries of love, and at a wave of his hand hurling themselves in swarms

upon flying enemies—they were always in flight. It was a fairy-tale. The

old man added a little to it to fill out the story; he conquered Spain, and

almost conquered England, which he could not abide.

 

Old Krafft used to intersperse his enthusiastic narratives with indignant

apostrophes addressed to his hero. The patriot awoke in him, more perhaps

when he told of the Emperor’s defeats than of the Battle of Jena. He would

stop to shake his fist at the river, and spit contemptuously, and mouth

noble insults—he did not stoop to less than that. He would call him

“rascal,” “wild beast,” “immoral.” And if such words were intended to

restore to the boy’s mind a sense of justice, it must be confessed that

they failed in their object; for childish logic leaped to this conclusion:

“If a great man like that had no morality, morality is not a great thing,

and what matters most is to be a great man.” But the old man was far from

suspecting the thoughts which were running along by his side.

 

They would both be silent, pondering each after his own fashion, these

admirable stories—except when the old man used to meet one of his noble

patrons taking a walk. Then he would stop, and bow very low, and breathe

lavishly the formulæ of obsequious politeness. The child used to blush for

it without knowing why. But his grandfather at heart had a vast respect for

established power and persons who had “arrived”; and possibly his great

love for the heroes of whom he told was only because he saw in them persons

who had arrived at a point higher than the others.

 

When it was very hot, old Krafft used to sit under a tree, and was not long

in dozing off. Then Jean-Christophe used to sit near him on a heap of loose

stones or a milestone, or some high seat, uncomfortable and peculiar; and

he used to wag his little legs, and hum to himself, and dream. Or sometimes

he used to lie on his back and watch the clouds go by; they looked like

oxen, and giants, and hats, and old ladies, and immense landscapes. He used

to talk to them in a low voice, or be absorbed in a little cloud which a

great one was on the point of devouring. He was afraid of those which were

very black, almost blue, and of those which went very fast. It seemed to

him that they played an enormous part in life, and he was surprised that

neither his grandfather nor his mother paid any attention to them. They

were terrible beings if they wished to do harm. Fortunately, they used to

go by, kindly enough, a little grotesque, and they did not stop. The boy

used in the end to turn giddy with watching them too long, and he used to

fidget with his legs and arms, as though he were on the point of falling

from the sky. His eyelids then would wink, and sleep would overcome him.

Silence…. The leaves murmur gently and tremble in the sun; a faint mist

passes through the air; the uncertain flies hover, booming like an organ;

the grasshoppers, drunk with the summer, chirp eagerly and hurriedly; all

is silent…. Under the vault of the trees the cry of the green woodpecker

has magic sounds. Far away on the plain a peasant’s voice harangues his

oxen; the shoes of a horse ring out on the white road. Jean-Christophe’s

eyes close. Near him an ant passes along a dead branch across a furrow. He

loses consciousness…. Ages have passed. He wakes. The ant has not yet

crossed the twig.

 

Sometimes the old man would sleep too long, and his face would grow rigid,

and his long nose would grow longer, and his mouth stand open.

Jean-Christophe used then to look at him uneasily, and in fear of seeing

his head change gradually into some fantastic shape. He used to sing

loudly, so as to wake him up, or tumble down noisily from his heap of

stones. One day it occurred to him to throw a handful of pine-needles in

his grandfather’s face, and tell him that they had fallen from the tree.

The old man believed him, and that made Jean-Christophe laugh. But,

unfortunately, he tried the trick again, and just when he had raised his

hand he saw his grandfather’s eyes watching him. It was a terrible affair.

The old man was solemn, and allowed no liberty to be taken with the respect

due to himself. They were estranged for more than a week.

 

The worse the road was, the more beautiful it was to Jean-Christophe. Every

stone had a meaning for him; he knew them all. The shape of a rut seemed to

him to be a geographical accident almost of the same kind as the great mass

of the Taunus. In his head he had the map of all the ditches and hillocks

of the region extending two kilometers round about the house, and when he

made any change in the fixed ordering of the furrows, he thought himself no

less important than an engineer with a gang of navvies; and when with his

heel he crushed the dried top of a clod of earth, and filled up the valley

at the foot of it, it seemed to him that his day had not been wasted.

 

Sometimes they would meet a peasant in his cart on the highroad, and,

if the peasant knew Jean-Christophe’s grandfather they would climb up

by his side. That was a Paradise on earth. The horse went fast, and

Jean-Christophe laughed with delight, except when they passed other

people walking; then he would look serious and indifferent, like a person

accustomed to drive in a carriage, but his heart was filled with pride. His

grandfather and the man would talk without bothering about him. Hidden and

crushed by their legs, hardly sitting, sometimes not sitting at all, he was

perfectly happy. He talked aloud, without troubling about any answer to

what he said. He watched the horse’s ears moving. What strange creatures

those ears were! They moved in every direction—to right and left; they

hitched forward, and fell to one side, and turned backwards in such a

ridiculous way that he: burst out laughing. He would pinch his grandfather

to make him look at them; but his grandfather was not interested in them.

He would repulse Jean-Christophe, and tell him to be quiet. Jean-Christophe

would ponder. He thought that when people grow up they are not surprised by

anything, and that when they are strong they know everything; and he would

try to be grown up himself, and to hide his curiosity, and appear to be

indifferent.

 

He was silent them The rolling of the carriage made