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

>arrogant severity which ends by darkening and poisoning life. Duty, he

said, was exceptional: it should be kept for moments of real sacrifice, and

not used to lend the lover of its name to ill-humor and the desire to be

disagreeable to others. There was no reason, because they were stupid

enough or ungracious enough to be sad, to want everybody else to be so too

and to impose on everybody their decrepit way of living…. The first of

all virtues is joy. Virtue must be happy, free, and unconstrained. He who

does good must give pleasure to himself. But this perpetual upstart Duty,

this pedagogic tyranny, this peevishness, this futile discussion, this

acrid, puerile quibbling, this ungraciousness, this charmless life, without

politeness, without silence, this mean-spirited pessimism, which lets slip

nothing that can make existence poorer than it is, this vainglorious

unintelligence, which finds it easier to despise others than to understand

them, all this middle-class morality, without greatness, without largeness,

without happiness, without beauty, all these things are odious and hurtful:

they make vice appear more human than virtue.

 

So thought Christophe: and in his desire to hurt those who had wounded him,

he did not see that he was being as unjust as those of whom he spoke.

 

No doubt these unfortunate people were, almost as he saw them. But it was

not their fault: it was the fault of their ungracious life, which had made

their faces, their doings, and their thoughts ungracious. They had suffered

the deformation of misery—not that great misery which swoops down and

slays or forges anew—but the misery of ever recurring ill-fortune, that

small misery which trickles down drop by drop from the first day to the

last…. Sad, indeed! For beneath these rough exteriors what treasures in

reserve are there, of uprightness, of kindness, of silent heroism!… The

whole strength of a people, all the sap of the future.

 

Christophe was not wrong in thinking duty exceptional. But love is so no

less. Everything is exceptional. Everything that is of worth has no worse

enemy—not the evil (the vices are of worth)—but the habitual. The mortal

enemy of the soul is the daily wear and tear.

 

Ada was beginning to weary of it. She was not clever enough to find new

food for her love in an abundant nature like that of Christophe. Her senses

and her vanity had extracted from it all the pleasure they could find in

it. There was left her only the pleasure of destroying it. She had that

secret instinct common to so many women, even good women, to so many men,

even clever men, who are not creative either of art, or of children, or of

pure action,—no matter what: of life—and yet have too much life in apathy

and resignation to bear with their uselessness. They desire others to be as

useless as themselves and do their best to make them so. Sometimes they do

so in spite of themselves: and when they become aware of their criminal

desire they hotly thrust it back. But often they hug it to themselves: and

they set themselves according to their strength—some modestly in their own

intimate circle—others largely with vast audiences—to destroy everything

that has life, everything that loves life, everything that deserves life.

The critic who takes upon himself to diminish the stature of great men and

great thoughts—and the girl who amuses herself with dragging down her

lovers, are both mischievous beasts of the same kind.—But the second is

the pleasanter of the two.

 

Ada then would have liked to corrupt Christophe a little, to humiliate him.

In truth, she was not strong enough. More intelligence was needed, even in

corruption. She felt that: and it was not the least of her rankling

feelings against Christophe that her love could do him no harm. She did not

admit the desire that was in her to do him harm: perhaps she would have

done him none if she had been able. But it annoyed her that she could not

do it. It is to fail in love for a woman not to leave her the illusion of

her power for good or evil over her lover: to do that must inevitably be to

impel her irresistibly to the test of it. Christophe paid no attention to

it. When Ada asked him jokingly:

 

“Would you leave your music for me?”

 

(Although she had no wish for him to do so.)

 

He replied frankly:

 

“No, my dear: neither you nor anybody else can do anything against that. I

shall always make music.”

 

“And you say you love?” cried she, put out.

 

She hated his music—the more so because she did not understand it, and it

was impossible for her to find a means of coming to grips with this

invisible enemy and so to wound Christophe in his passion. If she tried to

talk of it contemptuously, or scornfully to judge Christophe’s

compositions, he would shout with laughter; and in spite of her

exasperation Ada would relapse into silence: for she saw that she was being

ridiculous.

 

But if there was nothing to be done in that direction, she had discovered

another weak spot in Christophe, one more easy of access: his moral faith.

In spite of his squabble with the Vogels, and in spite of the intoxication

of his adolescence, Christophe had preserved an instinctive modesty, a need

of purity, of which he was entirely unconscious. At first it struck Ada,

attracted and charmed her, then made her impatient and irritable, and

finally, being the woman she was, she detested it. She did not make a

frontal attack. She would ask insidiously:

 

“Do you love me?”

 

“Of course!”

 

“How much do you love me?”

 

“As much as it is possible to love.”

 

“That is not much … after all!… What would you do for me?”

 

“Whatever you like.”

 

“Would you do something dishonest.”

 

“That would be a queer way of loving.”

 

“That is not what I asked. Would you?”

 

“It is not necessary.”

 

“But if I wished it?”

 

“You would be wrong.”

 

“Perhaps…. Would you do it?”

 

He tried to kiss her. But she thrust him away.

 

“Would you do it? Yes or no?”

 

“No, my dear.”

 

She turned her back on him and was furious.

 

“You do not love me. You do not know what love is.”

 

“That is quite possible,” he said good-humoredly. He knew that, like

anybody else, he was capable in a moment of passion of committing some

folly, perhaps something dishonest, and—who knows?—even more: but he

would have thought shame of himself if he had boasted of it in cold blood,

and certainly it would be dangerous to confess it to Ada. Some instinct

warmed him that the beloved foe was lying in ambush, and taking stock of

his smallest remark; he would not give her any weapon against him.

 

She would return to the charge again, and ask him:

 

“Do you love me because you love me, or because I love you?”

 

“Because I love you.”

 

“Then if I did not love you, you would still love me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And if I loved some one else you would still love me?”

 

“Ah! I don’t know about that…. I don’t think so…. In any case you would

be the last person to whom I should say so.”

 

“How would it be changed?”

 

“Many things would be changed. Myself, perhaps. You, certainly.”

 

“And if I changed, what would it matter?”

 

“All the difference in the world. I love you as you are. If you become

another creature I can’t promise to love you.”

 

“You do not love, you do not love! What is the use of all this quibbling?

You love or you do not love. If you love me you ought to love me just as I

am, whatever I do, always.”

 

“That would be to love you like an animal.”

 

“I want to be loved like that.”

 

“Then you have made a mistake,” said he jokingly. “I am not the sort of man

you want. I would like to be, but I cannot. And I will not.”

 

“You are very proud of your intelligence! You love your intelligence more

than you do me.”

 

“But I love you, you wretch, more than you love yourself. The more

beautiful and the more good you are, the more I love you.”

 

“You are a schoolmaster,” she said with asperity.

 

“What would you? I love what is beautiful. Anything ugly disgusts me.”

 

“Even in me?”

 

“Especially in you.”

 

She drummed angrily with her foot.

 

“I will not be judged.”

 

“Then complain of what I judge you to be, and of what I love in you,” said

he tenderly to appease her.

 

She let him take her in his arms, and deigned to smile, and let him kiss

her. But in a moment when he thought she had forgotten she asked uneasily:

 

“What do you think ugly in me?”

 

He would not tell her: he replied cowardly:

 

“I don’t think anything ugly in you.”

 

She thought for a moment, smiled, and said:

 

“Just a moment, Christli: you say that you do not like lying?”

 

“I despise it.”

 

“You are right,” she said. “I despise it too. I am of a good conscience. I

never lie.”

 

He stared at her: she was sincere. Her unconsciousness disarmed him.

 

“Then,” she went on, putting her arms about his neck, “why would you be

cross with me if I loved some one else and told you so?”

 

“Don’t tease me.”

 

“I’m not teasing: I am not saying that I do love some one else: I am saying

that I do not…. But if I did love some one later on….”

 

“Well, don’t let us think of it.”

 

“But I want to think of it…. You would not be angry, with me? You could

not be angry with me?”

 

“I should not be angry with you. I should leave you. That is all.”

 

“Leave me? Why? If I still loved you …?”

 

“While you loved some one else?”

 

“Of course. It happens sometimes.”

 

“Well, it will not happen with us.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because as soon as you love some one else, I shall love you no longer, my

dear, never, never again.”

 

“But just now you said perhaps…. Ah! you see you do not love me!”

 

“Well then: all the better for you.”

 

“Because …?”

 

“Because if I loved you when you loved some one else it might turn out

badly for you, me, and him.”

 

“Then!… Now you are mad. Then I am condemned to stay with you all my

life?”

 

“Be calm. You are free. You shall leave me when you like. Only it will not

be au revoir: it will be good-bye.”

 

“But if I still love you?”

 

“When people love, they sacrifice themselves to each other.”

 

“Well, then … sacrifice yourself!”

 

He could not help laughing at her egoism: and she laughed too.

 

“The sacrifice of one only,” he said, “means the love of one only.”

 

“Not at all. It means the love of both. I shall not love you much longer if

you do not sacrifice yourself for me. And think, Christli, how much you

will love me, when you have sacrificed yourself, and how happy you will

be.”

 

They laughed and were glad to have a change from the seriousness of the

disagreement.

 

He laughed and looked at her. At heart, as she