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

stuffs she was wearing. She cast a suspicious look about

her. She was no longer young, and yet she was wearing a light dress with

wide sleeves. She caught up her dress in her hand, so as not to brush

against anything. It did not prevent her going to the stove and looking

at the dishes, and even tasting them. When she raised her hand a little,

her sleeve fell back, and her arm was bare to the elbow. Jean-Christophe

thought this ugly and improper. How dryly and abruptly she spoke to Louisa!

And how humbly Louisa replied! Jean-Christophe hated it. He hid away in his

corner, so as not to be observed, but it was no use. The lady asked who the

little boy might be. Louisa fetched him and presented him; she held his

hands to prevent his hiding his face. And, though he wanted to break away

and flee, Jean-Christophe felt instinctively that this time he must not

resist. The lady looked at the boy’s scared face, and at first she gave him

a kindly, motherly smile. But then she resumed her patronizing air, and

asked him about his behavior, and his piety, and put questions to him, to

which he did not reply. She looked to see how his clothes fitted him, and

Louisa eagerly declared that they were magnificent. She pulled down his

waistcoat to remove the creases. Jean-Christophe wanted to cry, it fitted

so tightly. He did not understand why his mother was giving thanks.

 

The lady took him by the hand and said that she would take him to her own

children. Jean-Christophe cast a look of despair at his mother; but she

smiled at the mistress so eagerly that he saw that there was nothing to

hope for from her, and he followed his guide like a sheep that is led to

the slaughter.

 

They came to a garden, where two cross-looking children, a boy and a girl,

about the same age as Jean-Christophe, were apparently sulky with each

other. Jean-Christophe’s advent created a diversion. They came up to

examine the new arrival. Jean-Christophe, left with the children by the

lady, stood stock-still in a pathway, not daring to raise his eyes. The

two others stood motionless a short distance away, and looked him up and

down, nudged each other, and tittered. Finally, they made up their minds.

They asked him who he was, whence he came, and what his father did.

Jean-Christophe, turned to stone, made no reply; he was terrified almost

to the point of tears, especially of the little girl, who had fair hair in

plaits, a short skirt, and bare legs.

 

They began to play. Just as Jean-Christophe was beginning to be a little

happier, the little boy stopped dead in front of him, and touching his

coat, said:

 

“Hullo! That’s mine!”

 

Jean-Christophe did not understand. Furious at this assertion that his coat

belonged to some one else, he shook his head violently in denial.

 

“I know it all right,” said the boy. “It’s my old blue waistcoat. There’s a

spot on it.”

 

And he put his finger on the spot. Then, going on with his inspection, he

examined Jean-Christophe’s feet, and asked what his mended-up shoes were

made of. Jean-Christophe grew crimson. The little girl pouted and whispered

to her brother—Jean-Christophe heard it—that it was a little poor boy.

Jean-Christophe resented the word. He thought he would succeed In combating

the insulting opinions, as he stammered in a choking voice that he was the

son of Melchior Krafft. and that his mother was Louisa the cook. It seemed

to him that this title was as good as any other, and he was right. But the

two children, interested in the news, did not seem to esteem him any the

more for it. On the contrary, they took on a patronizing tone. They asked

him what he was going to be—a cook or a coachman. Jean-Christophe

revolted. He felt an iciness steal into his heart.

 

Encouraged by his silence, the two rich children, who had conceived for

the little poor boy one of those cruel and unreasoning antipathies which

children have, tried various amusing ways of tormenting him, The little

girl especially was implacable. She observed that Jean-Christophe could

hardly run, because his clothes were so tight, and she conceived the

subtle idea of making him jump. They made an obstacle of little seats,

and insisted on Jean-Christophe clearing it. The wretched child dared not

say what it was that prevented his jumping. He gathered himself together,

hurled himself through, the air, and measured his length on the ground.

They roared with laughter at him. He had to try again. Tears in his eyes,

he made a desperate attempt, and this time succeeded in jumping. That did

not satisfy his tormentors, who decided that the obstacle was not high

enough, and they built it up until it became a regular break-neck affair.

Jean-Christophe tried to rebel, and declared that he would not jump.

Then the little girl called him a coward, and said that he was afraid.

Jean-Christophe could not stand that, and, knowing that he must fall, he

jumped, and fell. His feet caught in the obstacle; the whole thing toppled

over with him. He grazed his hands and almost broke his head, and, as a

crowning misfortune, his trousers tore at the knees and elsewhere. He was

sick with shame; he heard the two children dancing with delight round him;

he suffered horribly. He felt that they, despised and hated him. Why? Why?

He would gladly have died! There is no more cruel suffering than that

of a child who discovers for the first time the wickedness of others; he

believes then that he is persecuted by the—whole world, and there is

nothing to support him; there is nothing then—nothing!… Jean-Christophe

tried to get up; the little boy pushed him down again; the little girl

kicked him. He tried again, and they both jumped on him, and sat on his

back and pressed his face down into the ground. Then rage seized him—it

was too much. His hands were bruised, his fine coat was torn—a catastrophe

for him!—shame, pain, revolt against the injustice of it, so many

misfortunes all at once, plunged him in blind fury. He rose to his hands

and knees, shook himself like a dog, and rolled his tormentors over; and

when they returned to the assault he butted at them, head down, bowled over

the little girl, and, with one blow of his fist, knocked the boy into the

middle of a flower-bed.

 

They howled. The children ran into the house with piercing cries. Doors

slammed, and cries of anger were heard. The lady ran out as quickly as

her long dress would let her. Jean-Christophe saw her coming, and made no

attempt to escape. He was terrified at what he had done; it was a thing

unheard of, a crime; but he regretted nothing. He waited. He was lost. So

much the better! He was reduced to despair.

 

The lady pounced on him. He felt her beat him. He heard her talking in a

furious voice, a flood of words; but he could distinguish nothing. His

little enemies had come back to see his shame, and screamed shrilly. There

were servants—a babel of voices. To complete his downfall, Louisa, who

had been summoned, appeared, and, instead of defending him, she began to

scold him—she, too, without knowing anything—and bade him beg pardon. He

refused angrily. She shook him, and dragged him by the hand to the lady and

the children, and bade him go on his knees. But he stamped and roared, and

bit his mother’s hand. Finally, he escaped among the servants, who laughed.

 

He went away, his heart beating furiously, his face burning with anger and

the slaps which he had received. He tried not to think, and he hurried

along because he did not want to cry in the street. He wanted to be at

home, so as to be able to find the comfort of tears. He choked; the blood

beat in his head; he was at bursting-point.

 

Finally, he arrived; he ran up the old black staircase to his usual

nook in the bay of a window above the river; he hurled himself into it

breathlessly, and then there came a flood of tears. He did not know exactly

why he was crying, but he had to cry; and when the first flood of them was

done, he wept again because he wanted, with a sort of rage, to make himself

suffer, as if he could in this way punish the others as well as himself.

Then he thought that his father must be coming home, and that his mother

would tell him everything, and that his own miseries were by no means at an

end. He resolved on flight, no matter whither, never to return.

 

Just as he was going downstairs, he bumped into his father, who was coming

up.

 

“What are you doing, boy? Where are you going?” asked Melchior.

 

He did not reply.

 

“You are up to some folly. What have you done?”

 

Jean-Christophe held his peace.

 

“What have you done?” repeated Melchior. “Will you answer?”

 

The boy began to cry and Melchior to shout, vying with each other until

they heard Louisa hurriedly coming up the stairs. She arrived, still upset.

She began with violent reproach and further chastisement, in which Melchior

joined as soon as he understood—and probably before—with blows that

would have felled an ox. Both shouted; the boy roared. They ended by angry

argument. All the time that he was beating his son, Melchior maintained

that he was right, and that this was the sort of thing that one came by,

by going out to service with people who thought they could do everything

because they had money; and as she beat the child, Louisa shouted that her

husband was a brute, that she would never let him touch the boy, and that

he had really hurt him. Jean-Christophe was, in fact, bleeding a little

from the nose, but he hardly gave a thought to it, and he was not in the

least thankful to his mother for stopping it with a wet cloth, since she

went on scolding him. In the end they pushed him away in a dark closet, and

shut him up without any supper.

 

He heard them shouting at each other, and he did not know which of them he

detested most. He thought it must be his mother, for he had never expected

any such wickedness from her. All the misfortunes of the day overwhelmed

him: all that he had suffered—the injustice of the children, the injustice

of the lady, the injustice of his parents, and—this he felt like an open

wound, without quite knowing why—the degradation of his parents, of whom

he was so proud, before these evil and contemptible people. Such cowardice,

of which for the first time he had become vaguely conscious, seemed ignoble

to him. Everything was upset for him—his admiration for his own people,

the religious respect with which they inspired him, his confidence in life,

the simple need that he had of loving others and of being loved, his moral

faith, blind but absolute. It was a complete cataclysm. He was crushed

by brute force, without any means of defending himself or of ever again

escaping. He choked. He thought himself on the point of death. All his body

stiffened in desperate revolt. He beat with fists, feet, head, against the

wall, howled, was seized with convulsions, and fell to the floor, hurting

himself against the furniture.

 

His parents, running up, took him in their arms. They vied with each other

now as to who should be the more tender with him. His mother undressed

him, carried