Jean-Christophe. II. Le matin
TENTH CAHIER OF THE FIFTH SERIES
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
II. THE MORNING
CAHIERS DE LA QUINZAINE published twenty times per year PARIS 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor
By the same author: Jean-Christophe. — I. — The Dawn, — ninth cahier of the fifth series, a cahier of 180 pages.
A few years have passed. Christophe is going to be eleven. He continues his musical education. He studies harmony with Florian Holzer, the organist of Saint-Martin, a friend of grandfather, who is a very learned man and who teaches him that the chords, the successions of chords he loves best — harmonies that softly caress his ear and his heart, which he cannot hear without a little shiver running down his spine — are bad and forbidden. When he asks why, there is no other answer except that it is so: the rule forbids them. Since he is naturally undisciplined, he only loves them all the more. His joy is to find examples of them among the great musicians who are admired, and to bring them triumphantly to grandfather or to his teacher. To which grandfather replies that in the great musicians it is admirable, and that Beethoven or Bach could permit themselves anything. The teacher, less conciliatory, gets angry and says sharply that it is not their finest work.
Christophe has free access to concerts and the theater; he is learning to play a little of every instrument. He is already rather accomplished on the violin; and his father has had the idea of getting him a desk in the orchestra. He holds his part so well that after a few months of probation he has been officially appointed second violin of the Hof Musik Verein. Thus he begins to earn his living; and it is none too soon, for things are going from bad to worse at home. Melchior’s intemperance has worsened, and grandfather is growing old.
Christophe is aware of the sorrows of the situation; he already has the serious, worried look of a little man. He acquits himself valiantly of his task, though it hardly interests him, and he falls asleep in the evening at the orchestra, because it is late and he is bored. The theater no longer causes him the emotion of earlier days, when he was small. When he was small — four years ago — his supreme ambition would have been to occupy the very place where he sits today. Today he does not like most of the music he is made to play; he does not yet dare to formulate his judgment about it: at bottom, he thinks it stupid; and when by chance they play beautiful things, he is displeased with the good-natured way they are played: the works he loves best end up resembling his neighbors, his colleagues of the orchestra, who, the curtain fallen, when they have finished blowing or scraping, mop their brows smiling and calmly tell their little stories, as if they had just done an hour of gymnastics. He has also seen close up his former passion, the blonde singer with the bare feet; he meets her often during the intermission at the refreshment counter. Since she knows he was once in love with her, she kisses him willingly; he feels no pleasure in it: he is disgusted by her paint, her smell, her enormous arms, and her voracity; he hates her now.
The Grand Duke did not forget his regular pianist: not that the modest pension he granted for this title was regularly paid — one always had to claim it — but from time to time Christophe received the order to present himself at the castle, when there were guests of distinction, or simply when Their Highnesses took the fancy to hear him. It was almost always in the evening, at hours when Christophe would have liked to be alone. He had to drop everything and come in great haste. Sometimes he was made to wait in an antechamber because dinner was not over. The servants, used to seeing him, spoke to him familiarly. Then he was ushered into a salon full of mirrors and lights, where stiff persons stared at him with an offensive curiosity. He had to cross the over-waxed room to go and kiss Their Highnesses’ hands; and the bigger he grew, the more awkward he became; for he found himself ridiculous, and his pride suffered.
Then he sat down at the piano and had to play for these imbeciles — he judged them so. There were moments when the surrounding indifference oppressed him so, while he was playing, that he was on the verge of stopping short in the middle of the piece. The air was lacking around him; he was as though asphyxiated; he was falling into the void. He was overwhelmed with congratulations when he had finished; he was showered with compliments; he was presented from one person to another. He thought people looked at him as a curious animal, part of the prince’s menagerie, and that the praise was directed more at his master than at himself. He thought himself degraded, and he became morbidly touchy — suffering all the more because he did not dare show it. He saw an offense in the simplest behavior: if someone laughed in a corner of the salon, he told himself it was at him; and he did not know whether it was his manners, or his clothing, or his person — his feet, his hands — that was being mocked. Everything humiliated him: he was humiliated if no one spoke to him, humiliated if they did; humiliated if they gave him sweets, as to a child; humiliated above all when the Grand Duke, as sometimes happened with a princely casualness, dismissed him by putting a gold coin in his hand. He was miserable at being poor, at being treated as poor. One evening, going home, the money he had received weighed so heavily on him that he threw it, as he passed, through the grating of a cellar. And then, immediately after, he would have done anything vile to get it back; for at home they owed the butcher several months.
His parents had no idea of these sufferings of pride. They were delighted by his favor with the prince. Good Louisa could imagine nothing finer for her boy than these evenings at the castle, in magnificent company. For Melchior, it was a subject of continual boasting with his friends. But the happiest was grandfather. He affected independence, a faultfinding temper, contempt for grandeur; but he had a naive admiration for money, power, honors, all social distinctions; and it was a pride beyond compare for him to see his grandson approach those who partook of them: he reveled in it as if the glory reflected upon himself; and despite all his efforts to remain impassive, his face beamed. On the evenings when Christophe went to the castle, old Jean-Michel always arranged to stay at Louisa’s, under one pretext or another. He waited for his grandson’s return with the impatience of a child; and when Christophe came home, he would begin by putting to him, with a detached air, some indifferent questions, such as:
“Well? Did it go well tonight?”
Or some affectionate insinuations, like:
“Here’s our little Christophe, who is going to tell us something new.”
Or some ingenious compliment, to soften him up:
“Greetings to our young gentleman!”
But Christophe, morose and irritated, scarcely answered beyond a very dry “Good evening!” and went off to sulk in a corner. The old man would insist, ask more precise questions, to which the child answered only yes or no. Others would join in, ask for details: Christophe grew more sullen with every word; they had to drag words from his mouth — until Jean-Michel, furious, would lose his temper and say wounding things to him. Christophe would answer back very disrespectfully; and it would end in a great quarrel. The old man would storm off, slamming the door. And so Christophe spoiled all the joy of these poor folk, who understood nothing of his bad humor. It was not their fault if they were servants in their souls, and did not suspect that one might be otherwise.
Christophe therefore withdrew into himself; and without judging his family, he felt a gulf between them and him. He exaggerated no doubt what separated them; and despite their differences of thought, it is very probable that he would have made himself understood, had he succeeded in speaking to them intimately. But everyone knows that there is nothing more difficult than absolute intimacy between children and parents, even when there is the tenderest affection between them; for on the one hand, respect discourages confidences; on the other, the often erroneous belief in the superiority of age and experience prevents one from attaching enough seriousness to the child’s feelings — feelings sometimes as interesting as those of grown-ups, and nearly always more sincere.
The company that Christophe saw at home, and the conversations he overheard, estranged him still further from his family.
Melchior’s friends came — mostly musicians from the orchestra, drinkers and bachelors; they were not bad people, but vulgar; they made the house tremble with their laughter and their voices.