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

which he never finished, and made

vague gestures in the air with his thumb. Ehrenfeld was little, bald, and

smiling, had a fair beard and a sensitive, weary-looking face, a hooked

nose, and he wrote the fashions and the society notes in the Review. In a

silky voice he used to talk obscurely: he had a wit, though of a malignant

and often ignoble kind.—All these young millionaires were anarchists, of

course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to

deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities. So might a

robber, who has just fleeced a traveler, say to him: “What are you staying

for? Get along! I have no more use for you.”

 

Of the whole bunch Christophe was only in sympathy with Mannheim: he was

certainly the most lively of the five: he was amused by everything that

he said and everything that was said to him: stuttering, stammering,

blundering, sniggering, talking nonsense, he was incapable of following an

argument, or of knowing exactly what he thought himself: but he was quite

kindly, bearing no malice, having not a spark of ambition. In truth, he was

not very frank: he was always playing a part: but quite innocently, and he

never did anybody any harm.

 

He espoused all sorts of strange Utopias—most often generous. He was too

subtle and too skeptical to keep his head even in his enthusiasms, and he

never compromised himself by applying his theories. But he had to have

some hobby: it was a game to him, and he was always changing from one to

another. For the time being his craze was for kindness. It was not enough

for him to be kind naturally: he wished to be thought kind: he professed

kindness, and acted it. Out of reaction against the hard, dry activity of

his kinsfolk, and against German austerity, militarism, and Philistinism,

he was a Tolstoyan, a Nirvanian, an evangelist, a Buddhist,—he was not

quite sure what,—an apostle of a new morality that was soft, boneless,

indulgent, placid, easy-living, effusively forgiving every sin, especially

the sins of the flesh, a morality which did not conceal its predilection

for those sins and much less readily forgave the virtues—a morality

which was only a compact of pleasure, a libertine association of mutual

accommodations, which amused itself by donning the halo of sanctity. There

was in it a spice of hypocrisy which was a little offensive to delicate

palates, and would have even been frankly nauseating if it had taken itself

seriously. But it made no pretensions towards that: it merely amused

itself. His blackguardly Christianity was only meant to serve until some

other hobby came along to take its place—no matter what: brute force,

imperialism, “laughing lions.”—Mannheim was always playing a part, playing

with his whole heart: he was trying on all the feelings that he did not

possess before becoming a good Jew like the rest and with all the spirit

of his race. He was very sympathetic, and extremely irritating. For some

time Christophe was one of his hobbies. Mannheim swore by him. He blew his

trumpet everywhere. He dinned his praises into the ears of his family.

According to him Christophe was a genius, an extraordinary man, who made

strange music and talked about it in an astonishing fashion, a witty

man—and a handsome: fine lips, magnificent teeth. He added that Christophe

admired him.—One evening he took him home to dinner. Christophe found

himself talking to his new friend’s father, Lothair Mannheim, the banker,

and Franz’s sister, Judith.

 

It was the first time that he had been in a Jew’s house. Although there

were many Jews in the little town, and although they played an important

part in its life by reason of their wealth, cohesion, and intelligence,

they lived a little apart. There were always rooted prejudices in the minds

of the people and a secret hostility that was credulous and injurious

against them. Christophe’s family shared these prejudices. His grandfather

did not love Jews: but the irony of fate had decreed that his two best

pupils should be of the race—(one had become a composer, the other a

famous virtuoso): for there had been moments when he was fain to embrace

these two good musicians: and then he would remember sadly that they

had crucified the Lord: and he did not know how to reconcile his two

incompatible currents of feeling. But in the end he did embrace them. He

was inclined to think that the Lord would forgive them because of their

love for music.—Christophe’s father, Melchior, who pretended to be

broad-minded, had had fewer scruples about taking money from the Jews: and

he even thought it good to do so: but he ridiculed them, and despised

them.—As for his mother, she was not sure that she was not committing a

sin when she went to cook for them. Those whom she had had to do with were

disdainful enough with her: but she had no grudge against them, she bore

nobody any ill-will: she was filled with pity for these unhappy people whom

God had damned: sometimes she would be filled with compassion when she saw

the daughter of one of them go by or heard the merry laughter of their

children.

 

“So pretty she is!… Such pretty children!… How dreadful!…” she would

think.

 

She dared not say anything to Christophe, when he told her that he was

going to dine with the Mannheims: but her heart sank. She thought that

it was unnecessary to believe everything bad that was said about the

Jews—(people speak ill of everybody)—and that there are honest people

everywhere, but that it was better and more proper to keep themselves to

themselves, the Jews on their side, the Christians on theirs.

 

Christophe shared none of these prejudices. In his perpetual reaction

against his surroundings he was rather attracted towards the different

race. But he hardly knew them. He had only come in contact with the more

vulgar of the Jews: little shopkeepers, the populace swarming in certain

streets between the Rhine and the cathedral, forming, with the gregarious

instinct of all human beings, a sort of little ghetto. He had often

strolled through the neighborhood, catching sight of and feeling a sort of

sympathy with certain types of women with hollow cheeks, and full lips,

and wide cheek-bones, a da Vinci smile, rather depraved, while the coarse

language and shrill laughter destroyed this harmony that was in their faces

when in repose. Even in the dregs of the people, in those large-headed,

beady-eyed creatures with their bestial faces, their thick-set, squat

bodies, those degenerate descendants of the most noble of all peoples, even

in that thick, fetid muddiness there were strange phosphorescent gleams,

like will-o’-the-wisps dancing over a swamp: marvelous glances, minds

subtle and brilliant, a subtle electricity emanating from the ooze which

fascinated and disturbed Christophe. He thought that hidden deep were fine

souls struggling, great hearts striving to break free from the dung: and he

would have liked to meet them, and to aid them: without knowing them, he

loved them, while he was a little fearful of them. And he had never had any

opportunity of meeting the best of the Jews.

 

His dinner at the Mannheims’ had for him the attraction of novelty and

something of that of forbidden fruit. The Eve who gave him the fruit

sweetened its flavor. From the first moment Christophe had eyes only for

Judith Mannheim. She was utterly different from all the women he had known.

Tall and slender, rather thin, though solidly built, with her face framed

in her black hair, not long, but thick and curled low on her head, covering

her temples and her broad, golden brow; rather short-sighted, with large

pupils, and slightly prominent eyes: with a largish nose and wide nostrils,

thin cheeks, a heavy chin, strong coloring, she had a fine profile showing

much energy and alertness: full face, her expression was more changing,

uncertain, complex: her eyes and her cheeks were irregular. She seemed to

give revelation of a strong race, and in the mold of that race, roughly

thrown together, were manifold incongruous elements, of doubtful and

unequal quality, beautiful and vulgar at the same time. Her beauty lay

especially in her silent lips, and in her eyes, in which there seemed to be

greater depth by reason of their short-sightedness, and darker by reason of

the bluish markings round them.

 

It needed to be more used than Christophe was to those eyes, which are

more those of a race than of an individual, to be able to read through the

limpidity that unveiled them with such vivid quality, the real soul of the

woman whom he thus encountered. It was the soul of the people of Israel

that he saw in her sad and burning eyes, the soul that, unknown to them,

shone forth from them. He lost himself as he gazed into them. It was only

after some time that he was able, after losing his way again and again, to

strike the track again on that oriental sea.

 

She looked at him: and nothing could disturb the clearness of her gaze:

nothing in his Christian soul seemed to escape her. He felt that. Under the

seduction of the woman’s eyes upon him he was conscious of a virile desire,

clear and cold, Which stirred in him brutally, indiscreetly. There was

no evil in the brutality of it. She took possession of him: not like a

coquette, whose desire is to seduce without caring whom she seduces. Had

she been a coquette she would have gone to greatest lengths: but she knew

her power, and she left it to her natural instinct to make use of it in

its own way,—especially when she had so easy a prey as Christophe.—What

interested her more was to know her adversary—(any man, any stranger, was

an adversary for her,—an adversary with whom later on, if occasion served,

she could sign a compact of alliance).—She wished to know his quality.

Life being a game, in which the cleverest wins, it was a matter of reading

her opponent’s cards and of not showing her own. When she succeeded she

tasted the sweets of victory. It mattered little whether she could turn

it to any account. It was purely for her pleasure. She had a passion for

intelligence: not abstract intelligence, although she had brains enough,

if she had liked, to have succeeded in any, branch of knowledge and would

have made a much better successor to Lothair Mannheim, the banker, than

her brother. But she preferred intelligence in the quick, the sort of

intelligence which studies men. She loved to pierce through to the soul and

to weigh its value—(she gave as scrupulous an attention to it as the

Jewess of Matsys to the weighing of her gold)—with marvelous divination

she could find the weak spot in the armor, the imperfections and foibles

which are the key to the soul,—she could lay her hands on its secrets: it

was her way of feeling her sway over it. But she never dallied with her

victory: she never did anything with her prize. Once her curiosity and

her vanity were satisfied she lost her interest and passed on to another

specimen. All her power was sterile. There was something of death in her

living soul. She had the genius of curiosity and boredom.

 

*

 

And so she looked at Christophe and he looked at her. She hardly spoke. An

imperceptible smile was enough, a little movement of the corners of her

mouth: Christophe was hypnotized by her. Every now and then her smile would

fade away, her face would become cold, her eyes indifferent: she would

attend to the meal or speak coldly to the servants: it was as though she