Jean-Christophe. IV. Revolt. 3. Deliverance

III THE DELIVERANCE

He had no one left. All his friends had vanished. Dear Gottfried, who had come to his aid in difficult hours and whose help he needed so badly now, had gone away months before --- and this time, for good. One evening the previous summer, a letter written in a large, clumsy hand and bearing the address of a distant village had told Louisa that her brother had died on one of those wandering circuits that the little peddler obstinately kept making, despite his failing health. He had been buried there, in the village cemetery. The last manly and serene friendship, the one that might have sustained Christophe, had been swallowed up in the abyss. He was left alone with his mother --- grown old, indifferent to his inner life --- who could only love him, who did not understand him. Around him spread the immense German plain, a gray and cheerless ocean. Every effort he made to escape it drove him deeper in. The hostile city watched him drown.

And as he struggled, a flash of light broke through his darkness: the image of Hassler, the great musician he had loved so intensely as a child, whose glory now shone across all of Germany. He remembered the promises Hassler had once made him. And he seized upon this piece of wreckage with desperate strength. Hassler could save him! Hassler must save him! What was he asking of him, after all? Neither help nor money nor any material assistance. Nothing more than to be understood. Hassler had been persecuted as he was. Hassler was a free man. He would understand a free man whom German mediocrity was hounding with its resentments and trying to crush. They were fighting the same battle.

No sooner did the idea take hold than he acted on it. He told his mother he would be away for a week, and that same evening he boarded a train for the large city in northern Germany where Hassler held the post of Kapellmeister. He could not wait any longer. It was his last effort to breathe.

Hassler was famous. His enemies had not laid down their arms, but his friends proclaimed him the greatest musician past, present, and future. He was surrounded by partisans and detractors equally absurd. Since he was not made of particularly strong stuff, the detractors had embittered him while the partisans had softened him. He poured all his energy into doing whatever annoyed his critics and could make them howl; he was like a schoolboy playing pranks. These pranks were often in the most abominable taste: not only did he deploy his prodigious talent in musical eccentricities that made the hair stand on end of every high priest of the art, but he showed a taunting partiality for baroque texts, bizarre subjects, and often for equivocal and risqué situations --- in a word, for everything that could offend common sense and ordinary decency. He was pleased when the bourgeois howled, and the bourgeois never failed to oblige. Even the Emperor, who meddled in art --- as everyone knows, with the insolent presumption of upstarts and princes --- considered Hassler’s reputation a public scandal and never missed an opportunity to display a contemptuous indifference toward his impudent works. Hassler, infuriated and delighted by this august opposition (which among the progressive factions of German art had become almost a consecration), went on smashing windows with redoubled energy. With each new outrage, his friends went into raptures and cried genius.

Hassler’s circle was made up chiefly of writers, painters, and decadent critics who certainly had the merit of representing the party of revolt against the reaction --- eternally threatening in northern Germany --- of the pietist spirit and state morality; but their independence had been pushed, by the struggle, to the point of absurdity, of which they were entirely unaware. For while many of them possessed a talent of some sharpness, they had little intelligence and even less taste. They could no longer escape the artificial atmosphere they had created for themselves; and, like all coteries, they had ended by losing all sense of real life entirely. They were law unto themselves and unto the hundreds of simpletons who read their journals and swallowed open-mouthed whatever they chose to decree. Their adulation had been ruinous to Hassler, making him far too indulgent with himself. He accepted without scrutiny every musical idea that crossed his mind, and he was privately convinced that whatever he might write that was below his best was still superior to anything other musicians could produce. That this conviction was unfortunately all too true in most cases did not mean it was particularly healthy, or likely to give birth to great works. Hassler felt, in the depths of himself, a perfect contempt for everyone --- friends and enemies alike --- and this bitter, mocking contempt extended to himself and to all of life. He sank ever deeper into his ironic skepticism precisely because he had once believed in a great many generous and naive things. Having lacked the strength to defend those beliefs against the slow destruction of the days, and the hypocrisy to persuade himself that he still held what he no longer held, he set himself savagely to sneering at their memory. He had besides the nature of a southern German --- indolent and soft, ill-suited to resist the extremes of fortune or misfortune, of heat or cold, requiring a moderate temperature to maintain its balance. He had let himself drift, almost without noticing, into a lazy enjoyment of life: he loved good food, heavy drink, idle wandering, and languid thought. All his art showed it, though he was too gifted for sparks of genius not to flash now and then through his loosened music, which had given itself over to the taste of fashion. No one felt his decline more keenly than he did. In truth, he was the only one who felt it --- at rare moments that, naturally, he took pains to avoid. At those moments he turned misanthropic, absorbed by black moods, self-centered anxieties, worries about his health --- indifferent to everything that had once fired his enthusiasm or his hatred.

Such was the man to whom Christophe had come for comfort. With what joy and hope he arrived, on a cold and rainy morning, in the city where the man who embodied for him the spirit of independence in art was living! He expected from him the word of friendship and courage that he needed to continue the thankless and necessary battle that every true artist must wage against the world until his last breath, without laying down arms a single day --- for, as Schiller said, “the only relation with the public one never repents --- is war.”

Christophe was so impatient that he barely took time to drop his bag at the first hotel he came across near the station before rushing to the theater to ask Hassler’s address. Hassler lived some distance from the center, in a suburb of the city. Christophe took an electric tram, chewing hungrily on a roll. His heart was beating fast as he drew near his destination.

The neighborhood where Hassler had chosen to live was built almost entirely in that strange new architecture in which young Germany pours out a studied and deliberate barbarism, exhausting itself in laborious efforts to achieve genius. In the midst of the commonplace city, with its straight and characterless streets, there rose abruptly Egyptian hypogea, Norwegian chalets, cloisters, bastions, World’s Fair pavilions, squat bloated houses sunk into the ground, with a blank face, a single enormous eye, dungeon gratings, submarine crush-doors, iron hoops, golden cryptograms in the bars of grilled windows, vomiting monsters above the entrance doors, blue faience tiles plastered here and there wherever one least expected them, gaudy mosaics depicting Adam and Eve, roofs tiled in mismatched colors; castle-houses with a crenellated top floor and misshapen animals on the ridge, no windows on one side and then, suddenly, side by side, gaping holes --- square, rectangular, triangular --- a kind of wound; great empty stretches of wall from which a massive single-windowed balcony erupted without warning, a balcony propped on Nibelungian caryatids, with two pointed heads of bearded and long-haired old men --- Böcklin’s fish-men --- piercing the stone railing. On the pediment of one of these prisons --- a pharaonic house, low-ceilinged, with two naked colossi at the entrance --- the architect had written:

“Let the artist show his universe, Which never was and never shall be.”

“Seine Welt zeige der Künstler Die niemals war noch jemals sein wird.”

Christophe, wholly absorbed in thoughts of Hassler, stared at all this with bewildered eyes and made no attempt to understand. He arrived at the house he was looking for --- one of the simpler ones, in a Carolingian style. Inside: a heavy, conventional luxury; in the stairwell, a thick atmosphere of overheated radiators; a narrow lift, which Christophe chose not to use, wanting time to compose himself for the visit by climbing the four flights slowly, with faltering legs and a heart trembling with emotion. During that brief ascent, his old encounter with Hassler came back to him --- his childhood rapture, the image of his grandfather --- as though it were yesterday.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when he rang the bell. He was received by a pert little maid with the manner of a serva padrona, who looked him over with impertinence and began by declaring that “Monsieur was unable to receive visitors, as Monsieur was tired.” Then the naive disappointment written across Christophe’s face apparently amused her, for after completing her shameless inspection of his person she softened abruptly, showed Christophe into Hassler’s study, and said she would see to it that Monsieur received him. With that, she shot him a quick glance and closed the door.

On the walls hung a few Impressionist paintings and some gallant engravings from eighteenth-century France, for Hassler claimed expertise in all the arts and combined Manet and Watteau in his taste according to the guidance he had received from his circle. The same mixture of styles appeared in the furnishings, where a very fine Louis XV desk was flanked by “art nouveau” armchairs and an Oriental divan heaped with a mountain of multicolored cushions. The doors were fitted with mirrors, and Japanese knickknacks covered the shelves and the mantelpiece, where a bust of Hassler held court. In a bowl on a side table lay a profusion of photographs of singers, admirers, and friends, with witty inscriptions and enthusiastic exclamations. An incredible disorder reigned over the desk; the piano stood open; dust lay on the shelves; half-smoked cigars were scattered in every corner.

Christophe heard, from the adjoining room, a sullen voice grumbling; the little maid’s sharp tongue snapped back at it. It was plain that Hassler was showing little enthusiasm for making an appearance. It was equally plain that the girl had made up her mind that he would appear; and she did not hesitate to answer him with the most extreme familiarity --- her shrill voice pierced the walls. Christophe felt uncomfortable hearing some of the remarks she made to her employer. But the man seemed entirely untroubled by them. On the contrary, one would have said the impertinences amused him; for even as he went on grumbling, he was teasing the girl and seemed to enjoy provoking her. At last Christophe heard a door open, and --- still grumbling and still joking --- Hassler shuffled in.

He entered. Christophe felt a pang in his chest. He recognized him. Would to God he had not. It was Hassler, and it was not. He still had that broad forehead without a wrinkle, that face as unlined as a child’s --- but he was bald, bloated, yellow-complexioned, half-asleep-looking, his lower lip slightly drooping, his mouth bored and sulky. His shoulders were hunched, both hands shoved into the pockets of his rumpled jacket; he wore slippers on his feet; his shirt billowed out over his trousers, which he had not even finished buttoning. He looked at Christophe with drowsy eyes that did not brighten when the young man stammered out his name. He gave an automatic nod without speaking, indicated a chair to Christophe with a tilt of his head, and sank with a sigh onto the divan, piling its cushions around him. Christophe repeated:

--- I have already had the honor… You were kind enough… I am Christophe Krafft…

Hassler, sunk in the divan, his long legs crossed, his thin hands clasped over his right knee raised to chin-height, replied:

--- Don’t know you.

Christophe, his throat tight, undertook to remind him of their earlier meeting. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult for him to speak of those intimate memories; here, it was torture: he tangled himself in his sentences, could not find his words, said absurd things that made him blush. Hassler let him flounder, continuing to fix him with his vague and indifferent gaze. When Christophe reached the end of his account, Hassler went on swaying his knee in silence for a moment, as though waiting for him to continue. Then he said:

--- Yes… That doesn’t make either of us any younger…

and stretched.

After yawning, he added:

--- …Beg pardon… Didn’t sleep… Supped at the theater last night…

and yawned again.

Christophe hoped that Hassler would say something about what he had just told him; but Hassler, to whom the whole story had been of no interest whatsoever, dropped it entirely and asked Christophe nothing about his life. When he had finished yawning, he asked:

--- Have you been in Berlin long?

--- I arrived this morning, said Christophe.

--- Ah! said Hassler, without particular surprise. --- Which hotel?

Without appearing to listen to the answer, he lazily raised himself up, reached for an electric button, and rang.

--- If you’ll excuse me, he said.

The little maid appeared with her impertinent air.

--- Kitty, he said, do you have any intention of giving me lunch today?

--- You don’t seriously expect, she said, that I’m going to bring you your food in here while you have a visitor?

--- And why not? --- said he, indicating Christophe with a mocking wink. --- He feeds the mind; I’ll feed the body.

--- Aren’t you ashamed to make someone watch you eat, like an animal in a menagerie?

Hassler, instead of taking offense, began to laugh, and corrected her:

--- Like an animal in the house…

--- Bring it anyway, he went on, I’ll eat the shame along with it.

She withdrew, shrugging her shoulders.

Christophe, seeing that Hassler still made no effort to ask what he was doing, tried to revive the conversation. He spoke of the difficulty of life in the provinces, of the mediocrity of the people, their narrowness of mind, the isolation one lived in. He strained to engage Hassler in his moral distress. But Hassler, sprawled on the divan, his head thrown back against a cushion and his eyes half-closed, let him talk without seeming to listen; or he would lift his eyelids for a moment and toss out a few words of cold irony, some farcical remark about provincial people, that cut short Christophe’s attempts to speak more intimately. --- Kitty had come back with the breakfast tray: coffee, butter, ham, and the rest. She set it down, sulking, on the desk amid the disordered papers. Christophe waited until she had gone out again before resuming his painful account, which cost him such effort to sustain.

Hassler had drawn the tray toward him; he poured himself some coffee and touched it with his lips; then, easy and good-natured, slightly contemptuous, he interrupted Christophe in the middle of a sentence to offer:

--- A cup?

Christophe declined. He was straining to pick up the thread of his sentence; but, more and more thrown off, he no longer knew what he was saying. He was distracted by the sight of Hassler, who, his plate tucked under his chin, was stuffing himself, like a child, with buttered slices of bread and pieces of ham held in his fingers. He managed, all the same, to mention that he was composing, that he had had an overture performed for Hebbel’s Judith. Hassler was listening distractedly:

--- Was? (What?) he asked.

Christophe repeated the title.

--- Ach! so, so! (Ah! right, right!), said Hassler, dipping his bread and his fingers into his cup.

That was all.

Christophe, discouraged, was on the verge of getting up and leaving; but he thought of that long journey made for nothing; and, gathering his courage, he proposed to Hassler, haltingly, to play some of his works for him. At the first words, Hassler stopped him:

--- No, no, I know nothing about it, --- he said with his mocking, faintly insulting irony. --- Besides, I don’t have time.

Christophe’s eyes filled with tears. But he had sworn to himself that he would not leave without having Hassler’s opinion on his compositions. He said, with a mixture of embarrassment and anger:

--- I beg your pardon; but you promised me once that you would hear me; I have come from the far end of Germany for that sole purpose: you will hear me.

Hassler, who was not accustomed to such directness, looked at the young man --- clumsy, furious, flushing, close to tears --- and found it amusing; and, shrugging his shoulders with a weary air, he pointed to the piano with his finger and said, with an expression of comic resignation:

--- Very well!… Let’s get to it!…

With that, he sank back into his divan like a man settling in for a nap, pummeled the cushions with his fists, arranged them under his outstretched arms, half-closed his eyes, opened them for a moment to gauge the thickness of the roll of music Christophe had pulled from one of his pockets, gave a small sigh, and prepared himself to listen with boredom.

Christophe, intimidated and mortified, began to play. It was not long before Hassler reopened eye and ear with the professional interest of an artist who is recaptured, despite himself, by something beautiful. At first he said nothing and remained still; but his eyes grew less vague, and his sullen lips began to move. Then he came fully awake, muttering his surprise and approval. These were inarticulate interjections; but the tone left no doubt as to his feelings, and Christophe felt an inexpressible warmth. Hassler no longer thought to count the pages that had been played and those that remained. When Christophe finished a piece, he would say:

--- More!… More!…

He was beginning to make use of human language.

--- Good, that! Good!… (he exclaimed.) Remarkable!… Remarkably remarkable! (Schrecklich famos!)… But what the devil! (he muttered, astonished,) what on earth is this?

He had sat up, leaned his head forward, cupped his hand to his ear, was talking to himself, laughing with delight, and at certain harmonic surprises he put his tongue out slightly, as if licking his lips. An unexpected modulation had such an effect on him that he suddenly got up with an exclamation and came to sit at the piano beside Christophe. He seemed not to notice that Christophe was there. He gave his attention entirely to the music; and when the piece ended, he seized the notebook, began to reread the page, then read the pages that followed, continuing to murmur his admiration and surprise as if he were alone in the room:

--- What the devil!… (he said.) Where did this animal find all this?…

Nudging Christophe aside with his shoulder, he played certain passages himself. He had charming fingers at the piano, very soft, caressing, and light. Christophe noticed his hands --- fine, long, well-kept, with a slightly morbid aristocratic quality that did not match the rest of him. Hassler would pause at certain chords, repeat them, winking and clicking his tongue; he hummed with his lips, imitating the sound of instruments, and kept weaving into this music his apostrophes, in which pleasure and vexation were mingled: he could not help a secret irritation, an unacknowledged jealousy; and at the same time he was savoring it all greedily.

Although he persisted in speaking only to himself, as if Christophe did not exist, Christophe, flushed with pleasure, could not help taking Hassler’s exclamations as addressed to him; and he began explaining what he had intended. Hassler at first seemed to pay no attention to what the young man was saying, and continued his reflections aloud; then certain words of Christophe caught him, and he fell silent, his eyes still fixed on the music notebook he was leafing through, listening without wishing to appear to be listening. Christophe, for his part, grew gradually more animated; and he ended by opening himself entirely: he spoke with naive excitement of his plans and his life.

Hassler, silent, found his irony returning as he listened. He had let the notebook be taken from his hands; his elbow on the piano’s music shelf and his forehead resting in his hand, he watched Christophe explaining his work with a youthful ardor and agitation. And he smiled bitterly, thinking of his own beginnings, of his hopes, of Christophe’s hopes, and of the disappointments that awaited him.

Christophe spoke with his eyes lowered, for fear of losing the thread of what he had to say. Hassler’s silence encouraged him. He felt that Hassler was watching him, not missing a word; it seemed to him that he had broken through the ice that separated them, and his heart was radiant. When he had finished, he raised his head with shyness --- and with confidence too --- and looked at Hassler. All his newfound joy froze at once, like buds too early out, when he saw the dull, mocking, unkind eyes fixed upon him. He fell silent.

After an icy pause, Hassler spoke in a dry voice. He had changed again: he affected a kind of harshness toward the young man; he cruelly mocked his plans, his hopes of success, as though he wished to mock himself, finding himself reflected in him. He set about coldly destroying his faith in life, his faith in art, his faith in himself. He held himself up as an example, with bitterness, speaking of his current works in an insulting way.

--- Filth! he said. That’s what it takes for these swine. Do you think there are ten people in the world who love music? Is there even one?

--- There is me! said Christophe, passionately.

Hassler looked at him, shrugged his shoulders, and said in a weary voice:

--- You’ll be like the rest. You’ll do as the rest. You’ll think about getting ahead, amusing yourself, like the rest… And you’ll be right to do so…

Christophe tried to protest; but Hassler cut him off and, picking up the notebook again, began to criticize sharply the very works he had been praising a moment before. Not only did he point out with wounding severity the genuine lapses, the writing incorrectnesses, the faults of taste or expression that the young man had let slip; he also leveled absurd criticisms, the kind that only the narrowest and most backward of musicians might make --- the very kind that he himself, Hassler, had suffered all his life. He demanded to know what was the point of all this. He was no longer even criticizing; he was denying: one would have thought he was straining hatefully to blot out the impression these works had made on him in spite of himself.

Christophe, dismayed, made no attempt to respond. How does one respond to absurdities that one blushes to hear from the mouth of someone one had esteemed and loved? Besides, Hassler was not listening to anything. He sat there, stubborn, the notebook closed in his hands, his eyes expressionless, his mouth bitter. At last he said, as if he had again forgotten Christophe’s presence:

--- Ah! the worst misery is that there is not a man, not a single one, capable of understanding you!

Christophe felt himself pierced with emotion; he turned sharply, laid his hand on Hassler’s hand, and, his heart full of love, repeated:

--- There is me!

But Hassler’s hand did not move; and if something in his heart stirred, for a second, at that youthful cry, no light appeared in his extinguished eyes as they looked at Christophe. Irony and egoism gained the upper hand. He sketched a slight bow of the torso, ceremonious and comic:

--- Most honored! he said.

He was thinking:

--- Much I care! Do you imagine it’s for your sake that I’ve wasted my life?

He got up, tossed the notebook onto the piano, and on his long wobbling legs made his way back to his place on the divan. Christophe, who had grasped his thought and felt its insulting sting, tried with a show of pride to answer that one does not need to be understood by everyone: certain souls are worth an entire people on their own; they think for it; and what they have thought, it will be compelled to think in time. --- But Hassler was no longer listening. He had sunk back into that apathy born of the weakening of a life that was falling asleep within him. Christophe, too healthy to understand this sudden reversal, sensed vaguely that the game was lost; but he could not resign himself to it, having come so close to believing it won. He made desperate efforts to rekindle Hassler’s attention; he had taken up his music notebook again and was trying to explain the reasons behind the irregularities Hassler had noted. Hassler, buried in the sofa, kept a bleak silence; he neither agreed nor contradicted: he was waiting for it to be over.

Christophe saw that he had nothing more to do here. In the middle of a sentence, he stopped. He rolled up his notebook and rose. Hassler rose too. Christophe, ashamed and self-conscious, was stammering apologies. Hassler, bowing slightly, with a certain haughty and bored distinction, extended his hand coldly, politely, and walked him to the front door without a single word to hold him back or invite him to return.

Christophe found himself back in the street, crushed. He walked without direction, not knowing where to go. After mechanically following two or three streets, he came upon the tram stop where he had arrived. He boarded it again without thinking about what he was doing. He collapsed onto the bench, arms and legs broken. Impossible to think, to gather his thoughts: he thought of nothing; he wanted to think of nothing. He was afraid to look inward. There was emptiness. It seemed to him that this emptiness was all around him, in this city; he could no longer breathe in it: the fog, the massive houses were suffocating him. He had only one idea left: to flee, to flee as quickly as possible --- as if, by escaping this city, he could leave behind the bitter disillusionment he had found here.

He went back to his hotel. It was not yet half past noon. Two hours ago he had entered it --- with what light in his heart! --- Now everything was extinguished.

He did not eat lunch. He did not go up to his room. To the astonishment of the staff, he asked for his bill, paid as if he had spent the night, and said he wanted to leave. They explained in vain that there was no rush, that the train he wanted to take did not leave for several hours, that he would do better to wait at the hotel. He insisted on going to the station at once: he was like a child, he wanted to take the first train, any train, to stay not one more hour in this place. After that long journey and all the expense he had gone to in order to come --- though he had looked forward not only to seeing Hassler but to visiting museums, hearing concerts, making certain acquaintances --- he now had only one idea in his head: to leave…

He went back to the station. As he had been told, his train did not leave until three o’clock. And even that train was not an express --- (since Christophe was forced to travel third class) --- and it made stops along the way; Christophe would have done better to take the next train, which left two hours later and caught up with the first. But that meant two more hours to spend here, and Christophe could not bear it. He would not even leave the station while he waited. --- Dismal waiting, in those vast and empty halls, tumultuous and funereal, where unfamiliar shadows came and went, always busy, always rushing, all strangers, all indifferent, not one he knew, not a single friendly face. The pallid daylight was fading. The electric lamps, wrapped in fog, spotted the night and seemed to make it darker. Christophe, growing more and more oppressed with each passing hour, waited with anguish for the moment of departure. Ten times an hour he went back to check the train schedules to make sure he had not made a mistake. As he read them through from end to end one more time, just to pass the time, a place name caught his eye: he thought he recognized it; only after a moment did he recall that it was the home of old Schulz, who had written him such warm and enthusiastic letters. The thought came to him at once, in the disarray he was in, to go and visit this unknown friend. The city was not on his direct route home, but an hour or two away by a local railway; it meant traveling through the whole night, with two or three train changes and interminable waits: Christophe did not calculate anything. On the spot, he decided to go --- it was an instinctive need in him to cling to some form of sympathy. Without giving himself time to think, he drafted a telegram and wired Schulz that he would arrive the following morning. He had not even sent the message before he was already regretting it. He mocked himself bitterly for his eternal illusions. Why go to meet another disappointment? --- But it was done now. It was too late to change course.

These thoughts occupied his last hour of waiting. --- His train was finally made up. He boarded it, the first to do so; and his childishness was such that he did not begin to breathe until the train moved, and he saw, through the carriage window, the city’s silhouette fading behind him in the grey sky, beneath the dreary showers, as night fell over it. He felt that he would have died if he had spent the night there.

At that very hour --- around six in the evening --- a letter from Hassler arrived for Christophe at his hotel. Christophe’s visit had stirred up a great deal in him. All afternoon he had brooded on it with bitterness, and not without sympathy for the poor fellow who had come to him with such ardor of affection, and whom he had received so coldly. He reproached himself for his welcome. In truth, it had been nothing more than one of those fits of sulky caprice that were habitual with him. He thought to make amends by sending Christophe an opera ticket, along with a note proposing to meet after the performance. --- Christophe never knew anything of it. When he did not appear, Hassler thought:

--- He’s upset. Too bad for him!

He shrugged his shoulders and looked no further into the matter. By the next day, he had stopped thinking about him altogether.

The next day, Christophe was far away from him --- so far that all eternity would not have been enough to bring them close to one another again. And each of them was alone forever.

Peter Schulz was seventy-five years old. He had always had delicate health, and age had not spared him. Quite tall, but stooped, his head bent over his chest, his bronchial tubes were weak and he breathed with difficulty. Asthma, catarrh, bronchitis dogged him relentlessly: and the mark of the struggles he had to endure --- many a night seated upright in his bed, his body bent forward and drenched in sweat, trying to draw a breath of air into his suffocating chest --- was carved into the painful furrows of his long, thin, clean-shaven face. His nose was long and slightly swollen at the bridge. Deep wrinkles, running from beneath his eyes, cut transversely across cheeks hollowed by the gaps of his jaw. Age and infirmity had not been the only sculptors of that poor, worn face; the sorrows of life had played their part as well. --- And despite all this, he was not sad. His wide, tranquil mouth had a serene goodness about it. But it was above all his eyes that gave this old face its touching gentleness: they were a clear, limpid, transparent grey; they looked straight ahead, with calm and candor; they hid nothing of the soul --- you could have read all the way to the bottom.

His life had been poor in events. He had been alone for years. His wife had died. She had not been very kind, not very intelligent, not at all beautiful. But he kept a tender memory of her. It was twenty-five years since he had lost her: and not one evening since had he fallen asleep without holding a brief, sad and tender mental conversation with her; he associated her with each day of his life. --- He had had no children: that was the great sorrow of his life. He had redirected his need for affection onto his students, to whom he was attached as a father to his sons. He had found little in return. An old heart can feel very close to a young heart, and almost of the same age: it knows how brief are the years that separate them. But the young man has no inkling of this: the old man is for him a person from another era; and besides, he is absorbed by too many immediate concerns, and instinctively turns his eyes away from the melancholy destination of his efforts. Old Schulz had sometimes encountered a measure of gratitude in students who were moved by the keen, fresh interest he took in everything that happened to them, good or ill: they would come to see him from time to time; they wrote to him to thank him when they left the university; some wrote again, once or twice, in the years that followed. Then old Schulz would hear nothing more from them, except through the newspapers, which let him know of this one’s or that one’s advancement: and he rejoiced in their successes as if they were his own. He bore them no resentment for their silence: he found a thousand excuses for it; he did not doubt their affection, and attributed to even the most selfish of them the feelings he himself had for them.

But his books were for him the best of refuges: they were not forgetful, nor deceitful. The souls he cherished within them had now passed out of the stream of time: they were immutable, fixed for eternity in the love they inspired and seemed to feel, which they in turn radiated upon those who loved them. A professor of aesthetics and music history, he was like an old wood ringing with birdsong. Some of those songs echoed very far --- they came from the depths of centuries: they were not the least sweet or the least mysterious. --- There were others that were familiar and intimate to him: they were dear companions; each of their phrases recalled to him joys and sorrows from his past life, conscious or unconscious --- (for beneath each day that the sunlight illumines, other days unfold, lit by an unknown light.) --- And there were finally those that had never yet been heard, that said things long awaited, things one had need of: the heart opened to receive them as the earth opens under rain. So old Schulz listened, in the silence of his solitary life, to the forest full of birds; and, like the monk of the legend who falls asleep in the ecstasy of the magical bird’s song, the years passed by him, and the evening of life had come; but he still had the soul of a twenty-year-old.

He was not rich in music alone. He loved the poets --- the ancient and the modern. He had a particular fondness for those of his own country, above all for Goethe; but he loved those of other countries as well. He was learned and read several languages. In spirit, he was a contemporary of Herder and the great Weltbürger --- the “citizens of the world” of the late eighteenth century. He had lived through the years of bitter struggle that preceded and followed 1870, enveloped in their vast thought. And though he adored Germany, he was not “glorious” on account of it. He thought, with Herder, that “among all the proud, the man proud of his nationality is a thoroughgoing fool,” and with Schiller, that “it is a very poor ideal to write only for a single nation.” His mind was sometimes timid; but his heart was of an admirable breadth, and ready to welcome with love everything that was beautiful in the world. Perhaps he was too indulgent toward mediocrity; but his instinct had no doubt about what was best; and if he lacked the strength to condemn the false artists that public opinion admired, he always had the strength to defend the original and powerful artists that public opinion failed to recognize. His kindness often misled him: he trembled at the thought of committing an injustice; and when he did not love what others loved, he had no doubt that it was he who was wrong; and he would end up loving it. It was so sweet to him to love! Love and admiration were even more necessary to his moral life than air was to his wretched chest. What gratitude he felt, therefore, toward those who offered him a new occasion for them! --- Christophe could not have imagined what his Lieder had been to him. He was far from having felt them himself with equal vividness when he created them. For those songs were to him merely a few sparks struck from the inner forge: others had flown from it, others would fly still. But for old Schulz, it was an entire world revealed to him all at once --- an entire world to love. His life had been illuminated by it.

For a year now, he had been compelled to resign his university post: his increasingly precarious health no longer permitted him to teach. He was ill and in bed when the bookseller Wolf had sent him, as was his custom, a packet of the latest musical publications he had received, among which, this time, were Christophe’s Lieder. He was alone. No family member near him; what little family he had was long dead. He was left to the care of an old housekeeper who took advantage of his weakness to impose her will on him in everything. Two or three friends, hardly younger than himself, came to see him from time to time; but they too were not in very good health; and when the weather was bad, they also stayed shut in and stretched out their visits. It happened to be winter, the streets were covered with melting snow: Schulz had seen no one all day. The room was dark: a yellow fog pressed against the windowpanes like a screen and walled in the gaze; the heat from the stove was heavy and fatiguing. From the neighboring church, a seventeenth-century carillon chimed every quarter-hour, in a halting and horribly out-of-tune voice, snatches of monotonous chorales whose jollity seemed a little forced when one was not feeling very cheerful oneself. Old Schulz was coughing, his back propped against a pile of pillows. He was trying to reread Montaigne, whom he loved; but the reading did not give him as much pleasure today as usual; he had let the book fall, he was breathing with difficulty, and he was daydreaming. The packet of music was there on his bed: he had not the heart to open it; he felt sad at heart. At last he sighed, and, after carefully undoing the string, he put his glasses back on and began to read through the pieces of music. His mind was elsewhere: it kept returning to memories he wanted to push away.

The score he was holding was Christophe’s. His eyes fell on an old hymn whose words Christophe had taken from a naïve and pious seventeenth-century poet, renewing their expression: the Christliches Wanderlied (the Christian wanderer’s song) by Paul Gerhardt.

Hoff, o du arme Seele, Hoff und sei unverzagt ! … Erwarte nur der Zeit, So wirst du schon erblicken Die Sonn der schönsten Freud.

“Hope, O you, poor soul, hope, and be undaunted! … Wait only, wait: and behold, you will see the sun of the beautiful Joy.”

Old Schulz knew these candid words well; but never had they spoken to him like this, like this… It was no longer the quiet piety that calms and lulls the soul with its monotony. It was a soul like his own, it was his very soul, but younger and stronger, that suffered, that wanted to hope, that wanted to see Joy, that saw it. His hands trembled; large tears ran down his cheeks. He read on:

Auf, auf ! gieb deinem Schmerze Und Sorgen gute Nacht ! Lass fahren, was das Herze Betrübt und traurig macht ! …

“Rise up, rise up! bid your pain and your sorrows good night! Let go of what troubles the heart and makes it sad!” …

Christophe lent to these thoughts a young, undaunted ardor, whose heroic laughter blossomed in these final confident and guileless verses:

Bist du doch nicht Regente, Der alles führen soll, Gott sitzt im Regimente, Und führet alles wohl.

“It is not you, after all, who reigns and who must guide all things. It is God. God is the king, and leads all things as he will!”

And when there came that stanza of superb defiance --- which Christophe, with the insolence of a young barbarian, had calmly lifted from its original place within the poem to make it the conclusion of his Lied:

Und ob gleich alle Teufel Hier wollten widerstehn, So wird doch ohne Zweifel Gott nicht zurücke gehn :

Was er ihm vorgenommen, Und was er haben will, Das muss doch endlich kommen Zu seinem Zweck und Ziel.

“And even if all the devils should wish to stand against it, be still, do not doubt! God will not retreat.

What he has set out to do, what he means to accomplish, it will come in the end to its aim and its fulfillment!”

… then it was a transport of jubilation, the intoxication of battle, the triumph of a Roman Imperator.

The old man was trembling in every limb. He followed the impetuous music, breathless, like a child swept along in a companion’s run, held by the hand. His heart hammered. His tears streamed. He stammered:

--- Ah! my God!… Ah! my God!…

He began to sob, and he laughed: he was happy. He could not breathe. A terrible fit of coughing seized him. Salomé, the old servant, came running, and she thought the old man was going to die on the spot. He went on weeping, coughing, and repeating:

--- Ah! my God!… my God!…

and, in the brief lulls between coughing fits, he laughed a thin, high, gentle laugh.

Salomé thought he was going mad. When she finally understood the cause of all this agitation, she scolded him sharply:

--- Is it possible to get yourself into such a state over a piece of nonsense!… Give me that! I’ll take it away. You won’t see it again.

But the old man held firm, still coughing; and he shouted at Salomé to leave him in peace. When she insisted, he flew into a rage, he swore, and choked on his own oaths. She had never seen him lose his temper or dare stand up to her. She was thunderstruck, and let go; but she did not spare him her harshest words: she called him a crazy old fool, she said she had believed until now that she was dealing with a well-bred man, but that she saw now she had been mistaken, that he was blaspheming enough to make a carter blush, that his eyes were popping out of his head, and that if they had been pistols they would have killed her… She might have gone on in that vein for a long while, had he not heaved himself upright on his pillows in fury and shouted at her:

--- Get out!

in so peremptory a tone that she went off slamming the door behind her, declaring that he could call for her now as much as he liked, she would not stir, she would let him drop dead all by himself.

Then silence fell again in the room where night was spreading. Once more the chimes scattered through the peaceful evening their placid, grotesque peal. A little ashamed of his outburst, old Schulz lay still on his back, waiting breathlessly for the tumult in his heart to quiet: he clutched the precious Lieder to his chest, and laughed like a child.

He spent the solitary days that followed in a kind of ecstasy. He no longer thought of his illness, of the winter, of the bleak light, of his loneliness. Everything around him was luminous and full of warmth. Close as he was to death, he felt himself come alive again in the young soul of an unknown friend.

He tried to picture Christophe to himself. He imagined him nothing like what he really was. He saw him somewhat in his own idealized image, as he himself would have wished to be: fair-haired, slender, blue-eyed, speaking in a slightly weak and veiled voice, gentle, shy, and tender. But whatever he was in reality, Schulz was always ready to idealize him. He idealized everything around him: his pupils, his neighbors, his friends, his old housekeeper. His affectionate mildness and his want of critical judgment --- partly deliberate, to ward off all troubling thoughts --- wove around him serene and pure images, like his own. It was a kindly falsehood he needed in order to live. He was not entirely deceived by it; and often, lying in bed at night, he would sigh as he recalled a thousand small things that had happened during the day, things that contradicted his idealism. He knew perfectly well that old Salomé mocked him behind his back with the gossips of the neighborhood, and that she cheated him regularly in her weekly accounts. He knew perfectly well that his pupils were obsequious with him as long as they needed him, and then, once they had drawn from him every service they could expect, they set him aside. He knew that his former colleagues at the University had entirely forgotten him since his retirement, and that his successor was pillaging his articles without naming him, or naming him in a treacherous way --- to cite some worthless phrase of his, or to point out his errors: --- (a practice common enough in the world of criticism). --- He knew that his old friend Kunz had told him yet another outright lie that very afternoon, and that he would never again see the books his other friend Pottpetschmidt had borrowed from him “for a few days” --- which was painful for someone who, like him, was attached to his books as to living persons. Many other sad things, old and recent, came back to him; he did not want to think of them; but they were in him all the same: he felt them. The memory of them passed through him sometimes like a stabbing pain.

--- Ah! my God! my God!

he would moan in the silence of the night. --- Then he would push away the unwelcome thoughts: he denied them; he wanted to be trusting, optimistic, to believe in people: and he did believe in them. How many times had his illusions been brutally shattered! --- But others were always born again, always, always… He could not do without them.

The unknown Christophe became a luminous center in his life. The first cold and sullen letter he received from him ought to have caused him pain; --- (perhaps it did) ; --- but he had not wished to admit it, and he took from it a child’s joy. He was so modest, and asked so little of people, that the little he received from them was enough to nourish his need to love them and be grateful to them. To see Christophe was a happiness he would never have dared hope for: he was now too old to make the journey to the banks of the Rhine; and as for soliciting a visit, the thought did not even occur to him.

Christophe’s telegram reached him in the evening, just as he was sitting down to dinner. He did not understand it at first: the signature seemed unfamiliar, he thought there had been a mistake, that the telegram was not for him; he read it three times; in his agitation his glasses refused to stay on, the lamp gave poor light, the letters danced before his eyes. When he had understood, he was so overwhelmed that he forgot to eat. Salomé called to him in vain: it was impossible to swallow a mouthful. He threw his napkin on the table without folding it, as he never failed to do; he rose stumbling, went to fetch his hat and cane, and went out. The first impulse of good Schulz, upon receiving such happiness, had been to share it with others, and to inform his friends of Christophe’s arrival.

He had two friends, fellow music lovers like himself, to whom he had managed to communicate his enthusiasm for Christophe: the judge Samuel Kunz, and the dentist Oscar Pottpetschmidt, who was an excellent singer. The three old companions had often talked of Christophe together; and they had played all the music of his they could find. Pottpetschmidt sang, Schulz accompanied, and Kunz listened. And afterward they would rhapsodize for hours. How many times, in the middle of making music, had they said:

--- Ah! if only Krafft were here!

Schulz laughed to himself as he walked along the street, at the joy he felt and the joy he was about to give. Night was falling; and Kunz lived in a little village half an hour from town. But the sky was clear: it was a very mild April evening; nightingales were singing. Old Schulz’s heart was flooded with happiness; he breathed without difficulty, and his legs felt twenty years younger. He walked briskly, heedless of the stones he stumbled against in the dark. He stepped lightly to the side of the road at the approach of carriages, and exchanged a cheerful greeting with the drivers, who looked at him with puzzlement when the lantern lit up in passing the old man perched on the bank at the edge of the path.

Night had fully fallen when he arrived at Kunz’s house, slightly outside the village, in a small garden. He hammered at the door and called out at the top of his voice. A window opened and Kunz appeared, startled. He tried to see into the darkness, and asked:

--- Who’s there? What do you want?

Schulz, breathless and joyful, shouted:

--- Krafft… Krafft is coming tomorrow…

Kunz could make nothing of it; but he recognized the voice:

--- Schulz!… What! At this hour? What is it?

Schulz repeated:

--- He’s coming tomorrow, tomorrow morning!…

--- What? Kunz kept asking, bewildered.

--- Krafft! shouted Schulz.

Kunz stood for a moment pondering the meaning of this word; then a resounding exclamation showed that he had understood.

--- I’m coming down! he cried.

The window closed. He appeared on the front steps, a lamp in hand, and came down into the garden. He was a small, pot-bellied old man with a large gray head, a red beard, freckles on his face and hands. He came forward in short steps, smoking his porcelain pipe. This good-natured, somewhat drowsy man had never given himself great cause for worry in his life. The news Schulz brought him was nonetheless capable of rousing him from his calm; and he waved his short arms and his lamp, asking:

--- What? It’s true? He’s coming?

--- Tomorrow morning! repeated Schulz, triumphant, waving the telegram.

The two old friends went and sat on a bench under the arbor. Schulz took the lamp. Kunz carefully unfolded the telegram, read slowly, in a low voice: Schulz read it aloud again over his shoulder. Kunz looked once more at the paper, at the details framing the telegram, the time it had been sent, the time it had arrived, the number of words. Then he handed the precious paper back to Schulz, who laughed with pleasure, looked at him shaking his head, and repeating:

--- Well, now!… well, now!…

After reflecting for a moment, inhaling and exhaling a great puff of tobacco, he laid his hand on Schulz’s knee, and said:

--- We must let Pottpetschmidt know.

--- I was going there, said Schulz.

--- I’ll come with you, said Kunz.

He went back inside to put down the lamp, and returned at once. The two old men set off arm in arm. Pottpetschmidt lived at the other end of the village. Schulz and Kunz exchanged distracted words, turning the news over in their minds. Suddenly Kunz stopped and struck the ground with his cane:

--- Good Lord! he said… He’s not here!…

He remembered now that Pottpetschmidt had had to leave that afternoon for a procedure in a neighboring town, where he was to spend the night and stay a day or two. Schulz was dismayed. Kunz no less so. They were proud of Pottpetschmidt; they had wanted to show him off. They stood in the middle of the road, uncertain what to do.

--- What can we do? What can we do? asked Kunz.

--- Krafft absolutely must hear Pottpetschmidt, said Schulz.

He thought for a moment, and said:

--- We must send him a telegram.

They went to the telegraph office and composed together a long and emotional telegram which was difficult to make any sense of. Then they came back. Schulz calculated:

--- He could still be here tomorrow morning if he takes the first train.

But Kunz pointed out that it was too late, and that the telegram would most likely not be delivered until the next day. Schulz shook his head; and they kept repeating to each other:

--- What a shame!

They parted at Kunz’s door; for, whatever Kunz’s affection for Schulz, it did not go so far as to make him commit the imprudence of walking Schulz out of the village, even for a short stretch, which he would have had to retrace alone in the dark. It was agreed that Kunz would come to dinner at Schulz’s the next day. Schulz looked up at the sky with anxiety:

--- Let us hope it will be fine tomorrow!

And a weight lifted from his heart when Kunz, who was reputed to have a remarkable knowledge of meteorology, said, after gravely examining the sky --- (for he was no less concerned than Schulz that Christophe should see their small country in all its beauty):

--- It will be fine tomorrow.

Schulz made his way back to town, arriving there not without stumbling more than once in the ruts or against the piles of stones heaped along the road. Before going home, he stopped at the pastry shop to order a certain tart that was the glory of the town. Then he returned to his house; but just as he was about to go in, he turned back to go ask at the station the exact time of the trains’ arrival. At last he went in, called Salomé, and had a long discussion with her about the next day’s dinner. Only then did he go to bed, exhausted; but he was as overwrought as a child on Christmas Eve, and he tossed all night in his sheets without finding a moment’s sleep. Around one in the morning, he had the idea of getting up to tell Salomé to make, for dinner, a braised carp instead; for she made that dish wonderfully. He did not tell her: and he was right not to, no doubt. He got up all the same to arrange various things in the room he had set aside for Christophe; he took a thousand precautions so that Salomé would not hear him, for he was afraid of being scolded. All night long he dreaded missing the time of the train, even though Christophe was not supposed to arrive until eight o’clock. He was up at the crack of dawn. His first glance was at the sky: Kunz had not been wrong, it was magnificent weather. On tiptoe, Schulz went down to his cellar, where he had not ventured for a long time out of fear of the cold and the steep stairs; he made a selection of his best bottles, struck his head sharply against the vault on the way back up, and thought he would suffocate when he reached the top of the staircase with his laden basket. Then he went into the garden armed with his pruning shears; he cut without mercy his finest roses and the first branches of his flowering lilacs. Then he went back up to his room, feverishly shaved, cutting himself once or twice, dressed carefully, and set off for the station. It was seven o’clock. Salomé could not get him to take a drop of milk; for he maintained that Christophe would surely not have had breakfast either when he arrived, and that they would eat together on the way back from the station.

He turned up at the railway three quarters of an hour early. He froze waiting for Christophe, and in the end missed him. Instead of having the patience to stay at the exit, he went onto the platform and lost his head in the whirl of arrivals and departures. Despite the precise details in the telegram, he had imagined, God knows why, that Christophe would arrive on a different train from the one that actually brought him; and besides, it would never have occurred to him that Christophe might step off a fourth-class carriage. He waited more than another half hour at the station, while Christophe, having arrived long since, had gone straight to knock at his door. To make matters worse, Salomé had just gone out to the market: Christophe found the door shut. The neighbor, whom Salomé had simply asked to say, in case anyone rang, that she would be back soon, delivered this message and nothing more. Christophe, who had not come to see Salomé and did not even know who she was, found the joke a poor one; he asked whether Herr Universitätsmusikdirektor Schulz was not in the area. He was told that yes, he was; but no one could say where. Furious, he walked away.

When old Schulz came home, his face as long as a fiddle, and learned from Salomé, who had also just returned, what had happened, he was in despair: he very nearly wept. He flew into a rage at the stupidity of the servant girl who had gone out during his absence and had not even managed to leave instructions for someone to keep Christophe waiting. Salomé replied in the same tone that she could hardly have imagined he would be fool enough to miss the very man he had been waiting for. But the old man did not linger to argue with her; without wasting a moment, he went clattering back down his staircase and set off again in search of Christophe, following the very vague lead the neighbors gave him.

Christophe had been hurt to find no one at home, not even a word of apology. Not knowing what to do before the next train, he had gone to wander through the town and the fields that struck him as pretty. It was a quiet, restful little town, sheltered among gentle hills; gardens around the houses, cherry trees in bloom, green lawns, beautiful shade, pseudo-antique ruins, white busts of long-ago princesses on marble columns amid the greenery, soft and kindly faces. All around the town, meadows and hills. In the flowering bushes, blackbirds whistled to their hearts’ content, making small concerts of laughing, resonant flutes. Christophe’s ill humor was not long in fading: he forgot Peter Schulz.

The old man was walking the streets in vain, questioning people; he went up to the old castle on the hill above the town and was coming back, downcast, when with his keen eyes, which could see very far, he caught sight at some distance of a man lying in a meadow, in the shade of a bush. He did not know Christophe: he could not tell whether it was him. Besides, the man had his back turned, his head half buried in the grass. Schulz prowled along the road, circling the meadow, his heart beating:

--- It’s him… No, it’s not him…

He did not dare call out. An idea came to him: he began to sing the opening phrase of Christophe’s Lied:

“Auf! Auf!…” (Up! Up!…)

Christophe leapt up like a fish out of water and shouted the continuation at the top of his voice. He turned around, full of joy. His face was flushed and there was grass in his hair. They called each other’s names and ran toward one another. Schulz clambered over the ditch at the road’s edge, Christophe jumped over the fence. They shook hands warmly and walked back to the house together, laughing and talking loudly. The old man recounted his misadventure. Christophe, who a moment before had been firmly resolved to continue on his way without making another attempt to see Schulz, immediately felt the guileless goodness of that soul and found himself loving him. Before they had even arrived, they had already confided a multitude of things to one another.

When they came in they found Kunz, who, having learned that Schulz had gone out in search of Christophe, was waiting calmly. Coffee with milk was served. But Christophe said he had had breakfast at an inn in town. The old man was grieved: it was a real sorrow for him that the first meal Christophe had taken in the area had not been in his house; such small things carried enormous weight for his affectionate heart. Christophe, who understood this, was secretly amused by it and loved him all the more for it. In order to console him, he swore that he had appetite enough to eat breakfast twice over: and he proved it.

All his troubles had gone out of his head: he felt himself among true friends, he was coming back to life. He recounted his journey, his setbacks, in a humorous way: he had the look of a schoolboy on holiday. Schulz beamed, watching him with fond eyes and laughing with his whole heart.

The conversation soon turned to what bound all three of them with a secret tie: Christophe’s music. Schulz was dying to hear Christophe play some of his works; but he did not dare ask. While they were talking, Christophe was pacing the room. Schulz watched his steps whenever he passed near the open piano, silently hoping he would stop there. Kunz had the same thought. Their hearts gave a little leap when they saw him sit down absently on the piano stool without stopping his conversation, then, without looking at the instrument, let his hands wander idly over the keys. Just as Schulz had expected, the moment Christophe played a few arpeggios the sound took hold of him: he went on chaining chords while still talking; then whole phrases came; and then he fell silent and began to play. The old men exchanged a glance, knowing, mischievous, and happy.

--- Do you know this one? Christophe asked, playing one of his Lieder.

--- Do I know it! said Schulz, delighted.

Christophe, without stopping, said with his head half turned:

--- Your piano is not very good, you know!

The old man was very contrite. He apologized:

--- It is old, he said humbly, it is like me.

Christophe turned around completely, looked at the old man who seemed to be asking pardon for his age, and took both his hands, laughing. He gazed into his candid eyes:

--- Oh! you, he said, you are younger than I am.

Schulz laughed his warm laugh and spoke of his old body, his infirmities.

--- Ta ta ta! said Christophe, that’s beside the point; I know what I’m saying. Isn’t that true, Kunz?

(He had already dropped the “Monsieur.”)

Kunz agreed with all his might.

Schulz tried to make common cause between himself and his old piano.

--- It still has some very pretty notes, he said timidly.

And he touched them: four or five fairly fresh notes, a half-octave, in the middle register of the instrument. Christophe understood that it was an old friend of his host, and said gently --- thinking of Schulz’s eyes:

--- Yes, it still has pretty eyes.

Schulz’s face lit up. He launched into a rambling eulogy of his old piano, but fell silent at once: for Christophe had begun to play again. Lied followed Lied; Christophe sang in a low voice. Schulz, eyes moist, followed his every movement. Kunz, hands folded across his belly, closed his eyes the better to enjoy. From time to time, Christophe turned toward the two old people, radiant --- they were in raptures --- and said, with a naïve enthusiasm they had no thought of laughing at:

--- Well! Isn’t that beautiful!… And this one! What do you say?… And that one!… That one is the most beautiful of all… --- Now I’m going to play you something that will make your hair stand on end…

As he was finishing a dreamy piece, the cuckoo of the clock began to strike. Christophe sprang up and cried out in rage. Kunz, woken with a start, rolled his eyes in alarm. Schulz himself did not understand at first. Then, when he saw Christophe shaking his fist at the bird as it called out, and shouting that in the name of heaven someone should take away that idiot, that ventriloquist ghost, he found at once, for the first time in his life, that the noise was indeed intolerable; and, taking a chair, he tried to climb up on it to unhook the troublemaker. But he nearly fell, and Kunz stopped him from trying again; he called Salomé. She arrived unhurriedly, as was her custom, and was astonished to find herself handed the clock, which the impatient Christophe had unhooked himself.

--- What do you want me to do with it? she asked.

--- Whatever you like. Take it away! Let it never be seen here again! said Schulz, no less impatient than Christophe.

(He was asking himself how he had managed to endure that horror so long.)

Salomé decided they were all quite mad.

The music resumed. The hours passed. Salomé came to announce that dinner was served. Schulz silenced her. She came back ten minutes later, then again ten minutes after that: this time she was beside herself, and, seething with anger while trying to appear impassive, she planted herself in the middle of the room and, despite Schulz’s desperate gestures, asked in a trumpet-like voice:

--- “Whether these gentlemen would prefer their dinner cold or burned; that, for her part, it was all the same; that she awaited their orders.”

Schulz, embarrassed by the outburst, tried to make a scene of it with his servant; but Christophe burst out laughing, Kunz followed suit, and Schulz ended by doing the same. Salomé, satisfied with the effect she had produced, turned on her heel with the air of a queen graciously pardoning her repentant subjects.

--- There’s a spirited one! said Christophe, rising from the piano. She’s right. There is nothing more insufferable than an audience that arrives in the middle of a concert.

They sat down to table. It was an enormous and succulent meal. Schulz had stirred up Salomé’s pride, and she needed no more than a pretext to display her art. Besides, she had no lack of occasions to show it off. The old friends were prodigiously fond of good eating. Kunz was a different man at table; he bloomed like a sunflower: he could have served as a sign for a restaurant. Schulz was no less sensitive to fine food; but his poor health compelled him to greater restraint. It is true that he rarely heeded this constraint, and paid for it accordingly. In such cases he did not complain: if he was ill, at least he knew why. He himself, like Kunz, had culinary recipes inherited from father to son over generations. Salomé was therefore accustomed to cooking for connoisseurs. But this time she had contrived to assemble in a single program all her masterpieces at once: it was like an exhibition of that unforgettable German cuisine, honest and unadulterated, with all its scents of every herb, its thick sauces, its hearty soups, its model pot-au-feu, its monumental carp, its sauerkrauts, its geese, its homemade cakes, its breads with anise and cumin. Christophe marveled, his mouth full, and ate like an ogre; he had the formidable capacity of his father and grandfather, who could have swallowed a whole goose. Besides, he was equally capable of living for a week on bread and cheese, or of eating until he burst, when the occasion presented itself. Schulz, cordial and ceremonious, watched him with tender eyes, and plied him with all the wines of the Rhine. Kunz, ruddy and glowing, recognized in him a brother. Salomé’s broad face smiled with contentment. --- At first, she had been disappointed when Christophe entered. Schulz had talked of him so much in advance that she had pictured him as some Excellency laden with titles and honors. On seeing him, she had exclaimed:

--- What! Is that all there is to it?

But at table, Christophe won her over completely; she had never seen anyone render justice to her talents with such brilliance. Instead of returning to her kitchen, she remained in the doorway watching Christophe, who was saying outrageous things without missing a single bite; and with her fists on her hips, she burst out laughing. Everyone was in high spirits. There was only one dark spot in their happiness: Pottpetschmidt was not there. They kept returning to this:

--- Ah! If only he were here! He was the one who could eat! He was the one who could drink! He was the one who could sing!

Their praise was inexhaustible.

--- “If only Christophe could hear him!… But perhaps he might. Perhaps Pottpetschmidt would be back this evening, tonight at the latest…”

--- Oh! Tonight I shall be far away, said Christophe.

Schulz’s radiant face clouded over.

--- What, far away! he said, in a trembling voice. But you are not leaving?

--- Indeed I am! said Christophe cheerfully; I am taking the train this evening.

Schulz was devastated. He had counted on Christophe spending the night, perhaps several nights, in his house. He stammered:

--- No, no, that is not possible!…

Kunz repeated:

--- And Pottpetschmidt!…

Christophe looked at them both: the disappointment written on their kind, friendly faces touched him; he said:

--- How good you are!… I will leave tomorrow morning. Will that do?

Schulz seized his hand.

--- Ah! he said, what happiness! Thank you! Thank you!

He was like a child, for whom tomorrow seems so far, so far away that there is no need to think of it. Christophe was not leaving today; the whole day belonged to them; they would spend all evening together; he would sleep under his roof: that was all Schulz could see; he did not want to look any further.

Their gaiety returned. Schulz rose suddenly, assumed a solemn air, and proposed a moving and emphatic toast to his guest, who had given him the immense joy and honor of visiting his small town and his humble home; he drank to his happy return, to his successes, to his glory, to all the happiness on earth, which he wished him with all his soul. Then he proposed another toast to “noble music,” --- another to his old friend Kunz, --- another to the spring; --- and he did not forget Pottpetschmidt either. Kunz in turn drank to Schulz and to several others; and Christophe, to put an end to the toasting, drank to dame Salomé, who turned crimson. After which, without giving the orators time to respond, he struck up a familiar song, which the two old men took up with him, then after that another, and yet another in three voices, in which there was talk of friendship, music, and wine: all of this accompanied by resounding laughter and the constant clinking of glasses.

It was half past three when they rose from the table. They were somewhat heavy. Kunz sank into an armchair; he would have gladly taken a nap. Schulz’s legs were broken by the emotions of the morning, no less than by his toasts. Both of them hoped that Christophe would sit down at the piano again and play for hours. But the terrible young man, perfectly fresh and lively, after striking three or four chords on the piano, shut it abruptly, looked out the window, and asked whether they could not take a walk before supper. The countryside was calling to him. Kunz showed little enthusiasm; but Schulz immediately decided that the idea was excellent, and that they ought to show their guest the walk through the Schönbuchwälder. Kunz pulled a slight face; but he did not protest, and rose with the others: he was just as eager as Schulz to show Christophe the beauties of the region.

They set out. Christophe had taken Schulz’s arm, and was making him walk a little faster than the old man would have liked. Kunz followed, mopping himself. They chatted gaily. People standing on their doorsteps watched them pass, and thought that Herr Professor Schulz looked like a young man. Outside the town, they cut across the meadows. Kunz complained of the heat. Christophe, without pity, declared that the air was exquisite. Fortunately for the two old people, they stopped constantly to argue, and the conversation made them forget the length of the road. They entered the woods. Schulz recited verses from Goethe and Mörike. Christophe loved poetry very much; but he could retain none of it: when listening, he gave himself up to a vague reverie, in which music replaced words and made him forget them. He admired Schulz’s memory. What a difference between the liveliness of mind of this sickly old man, almost crippled, shut up in his room for part of the year, shut up in his provincial town for nearly his entire life, --- and Hassler, who, though young, celebrated, at the very center of the artistic world, and traveling across Europe on his concert tours, took no interest in anything and wanted to know nothing! Not only was Schulz acquainted with all the manifestations of contemporary art that Christophe knew; he also knew a vast number of things about past or foreign musicians of whom Christophe had never heard. His memory was a deep cistern, into which all the beautiful waters of the sky had been gathered. Christophe never tired of drawing from it; and Schulz was happy in Christophe’s interest. He had sometimes encountered willing listeners, or obedient pupils; but he had always lacked someone with whom to share the enthusiasms that sometimes swelled within him to the point of choking.

They were the best of friends when the old man had the misfortune to express his admiration for Brahms. Christophe fell into a cold rage: he dropped Schulz’s arm and said in a sharp tone that whoever loved Brahms could not be his friend. This threw a cold shower over their joy. Schulz, too timid to argue, too honest to lie, stammered, tried to explain himself. But Christophe cut him off with a:

--- Enough!

--- sharp and brooking no reply. A glacial silence fell. They continued walking. The two old men dared not look at each other. Kunz, after clearing his throat, tried to revive the conversation and speak of the woods and the fine weather; but Christophe, sulking, let the talk fall and answered only in monosyllables. Finding no echo in that direction, Kunz tried to break the silence by talking to Schulz; but Schulz had a lump in his throat and could not speak. Christophe watched him out of the corner of his eye, and felt like laughing: he had already forgiven him. He had never really held anything against him; he even felt that he was behaving badly to distress this poor old man; but he was abusing his power, and did not want to appear to be going back on what he had said. They went on like this until they came out of the woods: nothing could be heard but the shuffling steps of the two crestfallen old men; Christophe whistled softly and seemed not to notice them. Suddenly, he could hold out no longer. He burst out laughing, turned toward Schulz, and seized his arms in his strong hands:

--- My dear good old Schulz! he said, looking at him affectionately. How beautiful it is! How beautiful!…

He was speaking of the countryside and the fine day; but his laughing eyes seemed to say:

--- You are kind. I am a brute. Forgive me! I am very fond of you.

The old man’s heart melted. It was as though the sun had returned after an eclipse. He could not, for a moment, manage to say a word. Christophe had taken his arm again and was talking more warmly than ever; in his exuberance, he had quickened his pace, without noticing that he was exhausting his two companions. Schulz did not complain; he did not even feel the fatigue, he was so content. He knew that he would pay for all the imprudences of the day; but he told himself:

--- Never mind tomorrow! When he has gone, I will have plenty of time to rest.

But Kunz, less exalted, followed fifteen paces behind with a pitiful expression. Christophe finally noticed. He apologized, quite embarrassed, and offered to stretch out in a meadow, in the shade of some poplars. Schulz, naturally, agreed, without wondering whether his bronchitis would benefit. Fortunately, Kunz thought of this for him; or at least he gave it as a pretext to avoid exposing himself, soaked in perspiration as he was, to the coolness of the meadows. He suggested going to a nearby station to catch the train back to town. And so it was. Despite their fatigue, they had to hurry so as not to be late, and they arrived at the station just as the train was pulling in.

At the sight of them, a large man rushed to the door of a carriage and bellowed the names of Schulz and Kunz, accompanying them with a recitation of all their titles and qualities, and waving his arms like a madman. Schulz and Kunz called back, waving their arms in turn; they rushed toward the compartment of the large man, who was running toward them on his side, jostling his fellow passengers. Christophe, bewildered, followed at a run, asking:

--- What is it?

And the others, exulting, cried:

--- It’s Pottpetschmidt!

The name meant little to him. He had forgotten the toasts at dinner. Pottpetschmidt on the platform of the carriage, Schulz and Kunz on the step, made a deafening clamor: they marveled at their luck. They scrambled onto the departing train. Schulz made the introductions. Pottpetschmidt, after bowing with features suddenly frozen and standing as stiff as a post, threw himself, as soon as the formalities were done, on Christophe’s hand, which he shook five or six times as though he meant to pull it off, and resumed his vociferations. Christophe made out from his cries that he was thanking God and his lucky star for this extraordinary encounter. This did not prevent him, a moment later, slapping his thighs, from cursing his ill luck for having made him leave town --- he who never left it --- precisely at the moment of Monsieur le Kapellmeister’s arrival. Schulz’s telegram had not been delivered to him until that morning, an hour after the train had gone; he had been asleep when it arrived, and it had been judged best not to wake him. He had stormed about it all morning long against the hotel staff. He was storming still. He had told his clients and business appointments to go hang, and taken the first train, in his haste to return; but that devil of a train had missed the connection on the main line: Pottpetschmidt had been forced to wait three hours at a junction; there he had exhausted every exclamation in his vocabulary, and had told his misadventure twenty times over to the travelers waiting alongside him and to the station porter. At last they had set off again. He had trembled at the thought of arriving too late… But, God be praised! God be praised!…

He had taken Christophe’s hands again and was kneading them in his vast paws with their hairy fingers. He was fabulously fat, and tall in proportion: a square head, red hair cropped short, a clean-shaven and pockmarked face, large eyes, a large nose, thick lips, a double chin, a short neck, a back of monstrous breadth, a belly like a barrel, arms held out from his body, enormous feet and hands --- a gigantic mass of flesh, deformed by excess of eating and drinking, one of those human-faced barrels one sometimes sees rolling through the streets of Bavarian towns, which preserve the secret of that breed of men produced by a system of force-feeding similar to that used on fattened poultry. With joy and heat, he gleamed like a pat of butter; and with both hands placed on his two splayed knees, or on those of his neighbors, he talked without flagging, rolling his consonants through the air with the force of a catapult. At moments he was seized by a fit of laughter that shook him entirely: he threw his head back, opened his mouth, snoring, rattling, and choking. His laughter spread to Schulz and Kunz, who, when the fit had passed, looked at Christophe while wiping their eyes. They seemed to be asking him:

--- Well!… And what do you make of him?

Christophe said nothing; he thought with alarm:

--- Is that monster the one who sings my music?

They returned to Schulz’s house. Christophe hoped to avoid Pottpetschmidt’s singing and made no overtures toward it, despite Pottpetschmidt’s hints --- for the man was burning to be heard. But Schulz and Kunz were too eager to do their friend honor: there was no escaping it. Christophe sat down at the piano with rather bad grace, thinking to himself:

--- My friend, my friend, you have no idea what’s coming for you: look out! I won’t let a thing slide.

He told himself he was going to hurt Schulz’s feelings, and he was sorry for it; but he was no less resolved to hurt them, rather than allow this Sir John Falstaff to butcher his music. The remorse of distressing his old friend was spared him: the fat man sang with an admirable voice. At the very first bars, Christophe made a movement of surprise. Schulz, who had not taken his eyes off him, trembled: he thought Christophe was displeased; and he was not reassured until he saw his face grow brighter and brighter with each bar he played. He himself was lit by the reflection of that joy; and when the piece was finished and Christophe turned around, crying out that he had never heard one of his Lieder sung that way before, it was for Schulz a rapture sweeter and deeper than that of Christophe satisfied and Pottpetschmidt triumphant --- for each of the two had only his own pleasure, while Schulz had the pleasure of both his friends. The concert continued. Christophe exclaimed aloud: he could not understand how this heavy, common creature managed to convey the spirit of his Lieder. To be sure, not all the precise shadings were there; but the impulse was, the passion, which he had never fully managed to breathe into professional singers. He looked at Pottpetschmidt and wondered:

--- Does he actually feel this?

But he saw in his eyes no flame other than that of satisfied vanity. Some unconscious force was stirring this heavy mass. That blind and passive force was like an army fighting without knowing against whom or why. The spirit of the Lieder took hold of it, and it obeyed rejoicing --- for it needed to act; and left to itself it would never have known how.

Christophe told himself that on the day of Creation the great sculptor had not taken much trouble to set in order the scattered limbs of his half-finished creatures, that he had fitted them together as best he could without worrying whether they were made to go together: so each person turned out assembled from pieces of every origin, and the same man was dispersed across five or six different men --- the brain belonged to one, the heart to another, the body that suited that soul to a third; the instrument was in one place, the instrumentalist in another. Certain beings remained like admirable violins, forever shut up in their cases for want of anyone who knew how to play them. And those who were made to play them were compelled all their lives to make do with wretched screeching fiddles. He had all the more reason to think so because he was furious with himself for never having been able to sing a page of music properly. He was tone-deaf and could not listen to himself without horror.

Meanwhile Pottpetschmidt, drunk with his success, was beginning to “put expression” into Christophe’s Lieder --- that is, to substitute his own expression for Christophe’s. Christophe, naturally, did not feel his music gained anything in the exchange; and he grew increasingly gloomy. Schulz noticed it. His want of critical sense and his admiration for his friends would not have allowed him to perceive, on his own, Pottpetschmidt’s bad taste. But his affection for Christophe made him alive to the most fleeting nuances of the young man’s thoughts: he was no longer inside himself, he was inside Christophe; and he too suffered from Pottpetschmidt’s grandstanding. He did his best to check him on that dangerous slope. It was not easy to silence Pottpetschmidt. When the singer had exhausted Christophe’s repertoire, Schulz had the greatest difficulty in the world preventing him from performing the lucubrations of mediocre composers --- composers whose very names already made Christophe bristle all over, like a porcupine.

Fortunately, the announcement of supper came to muzzle Pottpetschmidt. Another field presented itself in which to display his worth: there he had no rival; and Christophe, somewhat wearied by his exploits of the morning, made no attempt to compete.

The evening wore on. Seated around the table, the three old friends gazed at Christophe and drank in his every word. It seemed very strange to Christophe to find himself at this moment in this small, out-of-the-way town, among these elderly people he had never seen before this day, and to feel more intimate with them than if they had been his own family. He thought what a blessing it would be for an artist if he could know something of the unknown friends his thoughts encounter in the world --- how his heart would be warmed and his strength enlarged by it… But it is not so, most of the time: each one remains alone and dies alone, all the more afraid to say what he feels the more deeply he feels it and the more he needs to say it. Common flatterers have no trouble speaking. Those who love most deeply must force themselves to unclench their teeth and say that they love. And so one must be very grateful to those who dare to speak: they are, without knowing it, the artist’s collaborators. --- Christophe was full of gratitude toward old Schulz. He did not confuse him with his two companions; he felt that he was the soul of this small group of friends: the others were only reflections of that living hearth of goodness and love. The affection that Kunz and Pottpetschmidt had for him was of a very different kind. Kunz was selfish: music gave him a comfortable satisfaction, as it does a fat cat being stroked. Pottpetschmidt found in it a pleasure of vanity and physical exercise. Neither of them cared to understand it. But Schulz forgot himself entirely: he simply loved.

It was late. The two invited friends departed into the night. Christophe remained alone with Schulz. He said to him:

--- Now I am going to play for you alone.

He sat down at the piano and played --- as he knew how to play when someone he cared for was near him. He played from his new works. The old man was in ecstasy. Seated beside Christophe, he did not take his eyes off him and held his breath. In the goodness of his heart, incapable of keeping the smallest happiness to himself, he kept murmuring involuntarily:

--- What a pity Kunz is no longer here!

(which made Christophe a little impatient.)

An hour passed: Christophe was still playing; they had not exchanged a word. When Christophe had finished, neither of them spoke. Everything was silent: the house, the street were asleep. Christophe turned around and saw the old man weeping: he rose and went to embrace him. They talked softly, in the calm of the night. The muffled tick-tock of the clock beat in an adjoining room. Schulz spoke in a low voice, hands clasped, body leaning forward; he told Christophe, who questioned him, of his life, his sorrows; at every moment he had scruples about complaining, feeling the need to say:

--- I am wrong… I have no right to complain… everyone has been very kind to me…

And indeed he was not complaining: it was only an involuntary melancholy that seeped out of the sober account of his solitary life. He wove into it, at its most painful moments, professions of faith in a very vague and sentimental idealism that irritated Christophe but would have been cruel to contradict. At bottom, it was in Schulz far less a firm belief than a passionate desire to believe --- an uncertain hope to which he clung as to a life-buoy. He sought confirmation of it in Christophe’s eyes. Christophe heard the appeal of his friend’s eyes, which fastened on him with touching trust, which implored from him --- which dictated his reply. And so he spoke the words of calm faith and self-assured strength that the old man was waiting for, and that did him good. The old man and the young man had forgotten the years that separated them: they were side by side like two brothers of the same age who love and help each other; the weaker leaned on the stronger, and the old man took refuge in the young man’s soul.

They parted after midnight. Christophe had to be up early to catch the same train that had brought him. So he did not linger over undressing. The old man had prepared his guest’s room as though he were to spend several months there. He had put roses in a vase on the table, and a branch of laurel. He had set out a brand-new blotter on the desk. He had had an upright piano moved in that morning. He had chosen and placed on the little shelf at the head of the bed a few of his most precious and beloved books. There was not a detail he had not thought of with love. But it was all in vain: Christophe noticed none of it. He threw himself on the bed and fell asleep at once, dead to the world.

Schulz did not sleep. He turned over in his mind all the joy he had had and all the grief he already felt at his friend’s departure. He reviewed in his head the words they had exchanged. He thought that dear Christophe was sleeping near him, on the other side of the wall against which his bed rested. He was crushed with fatigue, his body aching and his chest tight; he felt that he had caught a chill during the walk and that he was going to have a relapse; but he had only one thought:

--- Let it hold off until after he leaves!

And he trembled at the thought of a coughing fit that might wake Christophe. He was full of gratitude toward God, and set about composing verses on the old Simeon’s canticle: Nunc dimittis… He got up, drenched in sweat, to write the verses down, and sat at his table until he had copied them out carefully, with an overflowing dedication of affection, and his signature at the bottom, the date and the hour. Then he went back to bed, shivering, and could not get warm for the rest of the night.

Dawn came. Schulz thought with regret of the dawn of the day before. But he blamed himself for spoiling by such thoughts the last minutes of happiness remaining to him; he knew that tomorrow he would regret the hour that was now slipping away; he applied himself to losing none of it. He strained his ears for the slightest sound from the adjoining room. But Christophe did not stir. Where he had lain down he still lay; he had not moved once. Half past six had struck and he was still asleep. Nothing would have been easier than to let him miss the train; and no doubt he would have taken it with a laugh. But the old man was too scrupulous to dispose of a friend’s time in that way without his consent. Much as he kept repeating to himself:

--- It won’t be my fault. I’ll have had nothing to do with it. I need only say nothing. And if he doesn’t wake up in time, I’ll have another whole day with him.

He answered himself:

--- No, I have no right to do that.

And he felt obliged to go and wake him. He knocked at his door. Christophe did not hear at first: he had to insist. It wrung the old man’s heart, and he thought:

--- Ah, how soundly he was sleeping! He would have stayed there till noon!…

At last Christophe’s cheerful voice replied from the other side of the partition. When he learned the hour he exclaimed; and he could be heard stirring in his room, washing noisily, singing snatches of tunes, while calling out amicably to Schulz through the wall and saying funny things that made the old man laugh despite his grief. The door opened: he appeared, fresh, rested, his face happy; he was not thinking at all of the pain he was causing. In truth, nothing forced him to leave; it would have cost him nothing to stay a few more days; and it would have given Schulz such pleasure! But Christophe could not know this exactly. Besides, whatever affection he had for the old man, he was glad to be leaving: he was worn out by this day of endless conversation, by these souls that clung to him with a desperate affection. And besides, he was young, and thought that they would have plenty of time to see each other again: he was not going to the ends of the earth! --- The old man knew that he himself would soon be farther away than the ends of the earth; and he looked at Christophe for all of eternity.

He accompanied him to the station despite his extreme fatigue. A cold, fine rain was falling soundlessly. At the station, Christophe noticed on opening his wallet that he did not have enough money left to buy his return ticket all the way home. He knew that Schulz would lend it to him with joy; but he did not want to ask… Why? Why refuse to the one who loves you the opportunity --- the happiness --- of doing you a service?… He did not want to, out of discretion --- perhaps out of pride. He bought a ticket to an intermediate station, telling himself he would walk the rest of the way.

The hour of departure struck. On the step of the carriage they embraced. Schulz slipped into Christophe’s hand the poem he had written during the night. He remained on the platform at the foot of the compartment. They had nothing more to say to each other, as happens when farewells are prolonged; but Schulz’s eyes continued to speak: they did not leave Christophe’s face until the train departed.

The carriage disappeared around a bend in the track. Schulz found himself alone. He made his way back along the muddy avenue, dragging his feet; he felt all at once the exhaustion, the cold, the sadness of the rainy day. He had great difficulty reaching his house and climbing the stairs. He had barely returned to his room when he was seized by a fit of choking and coughing. Salomé came to his aid. Through his involuntary groans, he kept repeating:

--- What happiness!… What happiness that it waited!…

He felt very unwell. He took to his bed. Salomé went to fetch the doctor. Lying there, his whole body gave way like a limp rag. He could not have made a single movement; only his chest labored, like a forge bellows. His head was heavy and feverish. He spent the entire day reliving, minute by minute, every moment of the day before: he tormented himself in this way, and then reproached himself for complaining after such happiness. His hands clasped together, his heart swelling with love, he gave thanks to God.

Calmed by that day spent with Schulz, made more confident in himself by the affection he had left behind him, Christophe traveled back toward home. When he reached the end of his ticket, he stepped off cheerfully and set out on foot. He had about sixty kilometers to cover. He was in no hurry and wandered like a schoolboy. It was April. The countryside was not yet far along. The leaves were unfolding like small wrinkled hands at the tips of black branches; the apple trees were in bloom, and the delicate wild roses smiled along the hedgerows. Above the half-bare forest, where a fine tender-green down was beginning to appear, a ruined Romanesque castle rose at the crest of a small hill like a trophy at the end of a lance. In the very soft blue sky, very dark clouds sailed. Shadows raced across the spring countryside; showers passed through; then the clear sun was born again, and the birds sang.

Christophe noticed that for some moments he had been thinking of Uncle Gottfried. It had been a very long time since he had thought of the poor man; and he wondered why his memory returned to him now with such insistence; he was haunted by it as he walked along an avenue bordered by poplars beside a shimmering canal; and the image pursued him so persistently that, as he came around a high wall, it seemed to him that he was about to see Gottfried coming toward him.

The sky had darkened. A violent downpour of rain and hail began to fall, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Christophe was near a village, whose pink façades and red roofs he could see among clusters of trees. He quickened his pace and took shelter under the overhanging roof of the first house. The hailstones lashed down hard; they rang against the tiles and bounced in the street like pellets of lead. The ruts ran brimful with water. Through the orchards in bloom, a rainbow stretched its brilliant and barbarous sash across the dark-blue clouds.

On the threshold of the doorway, standing, a young woman was knitting. She said to Christophe in a friendly way to come inside. He accepted the invitation. The room he entered served at once as kitchen, dining room, and bedroom. At the far end, a pot hung over a large fire. A peasant woman who was peeling vegetables wished Christophe good day and told him to come near the fire to dry himself. The young woman went to fetch a bottle and poured him something to drink. Seated on the other side of the table, she went on knitting, while also keeping an eye on two children who were amusing themselves by pressing into each other’s necks those grass-seed heads that people in the country call “voleurs” or “ramonas.” She fell into conversation with Christophe. It was only after a moment that he realized she was blind. She was not beautiful. She was a sturdy girl with red cheeks, white teeth, and strong arms; but her features lacked regularity: she had the smiling and slightly inexpressive look of many blind people, and also their habit of speaking of things and people as though she saw them. At first, Christophe was disconcerted and wondered who was being mocked here when she told him he looked well and that the countryside was very pretty today. But having glanced in turn at the blind girl and at the woman doing the peeling, he saw that no one found it surprising, and that no one had any inclination to joke: --- (there was certainly no cause for it.) --- The two women questioned Christophe in a friendly way, asking where he had come from and what road he had taken. The blind girl took part in the conversation with a slightly exaggerated animation; she agreed with, or commented on, Christophe’s observations about the road and the fields. Naturally, her remarks often missed the mark. She seemed to want to persuade herself that she could see as well as he.

Other members of the family had come in: a robust peasant of about thirty, and his young wife. Christophe talked with one and then another, and, watching the sky clear, waited for the moment to set out again. The blind girl was humming a tune while her knitting needles kept moving. The tune brought back to Christophe all manner of old things.

--- Well now! You know that one, too? he said.

(Gottfried had taught it to him once long ago.)

He hummed the continuation. The young woman began to laugh. She sang the first half of each phrase, and he amused himself by finishing them. He had just risen to go and inspect the state of the weather and was making his way around the room, his eyes wandering mechanically into every corner, when he caught sight, in an angle near the sideboard, of an object that made him start. It was a long curved stick, whose handle, roughly carved, represented a small bowed man bowing in greeting. Christophe knew it well: he had played with it as a little child. He seized the stick and asked in a strangled voice:

--- Where did you get… Where did you get this?

The man looked up and said:

--- A friend left it. An old friend, who is dead.

Christophe cried:

--- Gottfried?

Everyone turned around, asking:

--- How do you know…?

And when Christophe had explained that Gottfried was his uncle, there was a general stir. The blind girl had risen from her seat; her ball of wool had rolled across the room; she was walking over her work, and had taken Christophe’s hands, repeating, quite overcome:

--- You are his nephew?

Everyone spoke at once. Christophe, for his part, kept asking:

--- But you --- how… how did you know him?

The man answered:

--- He died here.

They sat down again; and when the commotion had subsided a little, the mother began to tell, taking up her work again, how Gottfried had been coming to the house for years; he always stopped there, going and coming, on each of his rounds. The last time he had come --- (it was the previous July) --- he seemed very tired; and, having put down his pack, he had gone a good while before he could get out a word; but no one had paid much attention, because they were used to seeing him that way when he arrived, and they knew he was short of breath. He never complained, in any case. He never complained: he always found something to be content about in disagreeable things. When he was doing exhausting work, he would cheer himself by thinking how good it would be to lie in his bed that evening; and when he was suffering, he would say how good it would be when he was no longer suffering…

--- And it’s a mistake, monsieur, to always be content, added the good woman; for when you don’t complain, others don’t take pity on you. I always complain…

So no one had paid him any attention. They had even teased him about how well he looked, and Modesta --- (that was the name of the blind girl) --- who had come to take his pack from him, had asked whether he would never grow tired of running around like that, like a young man. He only smiled in reply, for he could not speak. He sat down on the bench in front of the door. Everyone went off to their work: the men to the fields, the mother to her kitchen. Modesta came near the bench: standing, leaning against the doorframe, her knitting in hand, she chatted with Gottfried. He did not answer her: she did not ask him to answer; she told him everything that had happened since his last visit. He was breathing with difficulty; and she heard him struggling to speak. Instead of being alarmed by it, she said:

--- Don’t talk. Rest. You can talk later… Anyone could tire themselves out like that!…

Then he no longer spoke, nor tried to speak. She resumed her account, believing he was listening. He sighed, and was silent. When the mother came out a little later, she found Modesta still talking, and on the bench, Gottfried, motionless, his head thrown back and turned toward the sky: for several minutes, Modesta had been talking to a dead man. It was then understood that the poor man had tried to say a few words before dying, but had not been able to; and so he had resigned himself, with his sad smile, and had closed his eyes in the peace of the summer evening…

The rain had stopped. The daughter-in-law went to the barn; the son took his pickaxe and cleared the drain in front of the door that the mud had blocked. Modesta had disappeared at the beginning of the story. Christophe was left alone in the room with the mother, and sat in silence, moved. The old woman, a little garrulous, could not bear a prolonged silence; and she began to tell him the whole story of her acquaintance with Gottfried. It went back a very long way. When she was quite young, Gottfried had loved her. He did not dare tell her so; but it was a source of teasing; she mocked him, everyone mocked him: --- (it was the same everywhere he went.) --- Gottfried returned nonetheless, faithfully, every year. He found it natural that people mocked him, natural that she did not love him, natural that she had married and was happy with another. She had been too happy, had boasted of her happiness too much: misfortune came. Her husband died suddenly. Then her daughter --- a fine healthy vigorous girl whom everyone admired and who was about to marry the son of the richest farmer in the district --- lost her sight following an accident. One day when she had climbed up into the great pear tree behind the house to gather fruit, the ladder had slipped: as she fell, a broken branch struck her hard near the eye. At first they thought she would get off with nothing but a scar; but afterward she never ceased to suffer shooting pains in her brow: one eye grew dark, then the other; and all the medical care had been useless. The engagement had of course been broken off; the fiancé had vanished without further explanation; and of all the young men who, a month before, would have knocked each other senseless for a turn of the waltz with her, not one had had the courage --- (which is entirely understandable) --- to take a disabled woman on his hands. And so Modesta, who had until then been carefree and merry, fell into such despair that she wanted to die. She refused to eat, she did nothing but weep from morning to night; and at night one could still hear her lamenting in her bed. No one knew what to do anymore; all that could be done was to grieve along with her; and she only wept the harder for it. In the end everyone grew weary of her complaints; then they would scold her, and she would talk of throwing herself into the canal. The pastor came from time to time: he spoke to her of God, of eternal things, and of the merit she was storing up for the next world by bearing her suffering; but that did not console her at all. One day, Gottfried came back. Modesta had never been particularly kind to him. Not that she was naturally unkind; but she was disdainful; and besides, she did not think much about things, she liked to laugh: there was no end to the tricks and cutting things she had said to him, or done to him. When he learned of her misfortune, he was shattered, like a member of the family. Yet he showed none of this the first time he saw her. He went and sat beside her, made no allusion to her accident, and began to talk quietly, as he had always done before. He had not a word of pity for her; he appeared not even to notice that she was blind. Only, he never spoke to her of what she could not see; he spoke to her of everything she could hear, or take note of, in her condition; and he did this quite naturally, as the most obvious thing in the world: one might have said he was blind himself. At first she did not listen, and went on weeping. But the next day she listened more carefully, and even spoke to him a little…

--- And, the mother continued, I don’t know what he could have said to her. There were the hay fields to get in, and I had no time to look after her. But in the evening, when we came back from the fields, we found her chatting calmly. And from then on, she was always better. She seemed to forget her trouble. Yet from time to time it would come over her again: she would weep alone, or try to speak to Gottfried about sad things; but he didn’t seem to hear, or else he wouldn’t respond in that vein; he went on talking quietly, almost cheerfully, about things that calmed her and caught her interest. He finally persuaded her to go out walking, which she had refused to do since her accident. He had her take a few steps around the garden at first, then longer walks in the fields. And now she has learned to find her way everywhere and to make out everything, as if she could see. She even notices things we pay no attention to; and she takes an interest in everything --- she who, before, hardly interested herself in much beyond herself. That time, Gottfried stayed with us longer than usual. We didn’t dare ask him to put off his departure; but he stayed on of his own accord, until he saw her more at peace. And one day --- she was there in the courtyard --- I heard her laugh. I cannot tell you what that did to me. Gottfried looked very pleased as well. He was sitting near me. We looked at each other, and I’m not ashamed to tell you, Monsieur, that I kissed him, and with all my heart. Then he said to me:

--- Now, I think I can go. I’m no longer needed here.

I tried to keep him. But he said:

--- No. Now I must go. I can’t stay any longer.

Everyone knew he was like the Wandering Jew: he couldn’t stay in one place; no one pressed him. So he left; but he arranged to pass through more often; and each time, it was a great joy for Modesta: after each of his visits, she was always a little better. She went back to the housework; her brother married; she looks after the children; and now she never complains, she always seems happy. I sometimes wonder whether she would be as happy if she had both her eyes. Yes, upon my word, Monsieur, there are many a day when you tell yourself it would be better to be like her, and not see certain ugly people and certain wicked things. The world grows very ugly; it gets worse from day to day… And yet, I’d be terribly afraid if the good Lord took me at my word; and for myself, to tell the truth, I still prefer to go on seeing the world, ugly as it is…

Modesta reappeared, and the conversation changed. Christophe wanted to set off again now that the weather had cleared; but they would not hear of it. He was obliged to accept their invitation to stay for supper and spend the night. Modesta sat down beside Christophe and did not leave him the whole evening. He would have liked to speak intimately with the young woman, whose fate filled him with compassion. But she gave him no opportunity. She sought only to question him about Gottfried. When Christophe told her certain things about him that she didn’t know, she was pleased and a little jealous. She herself spoke of Gottfried only reluctantly: one sensed she was not saying everything; or, when she did say something, she regretted it afterward: her memories were her own property, and she did not like to share them with anyone else; she brought to this affection the fierce possessiveness of a peasant attached to her land --- it was disagreeable to her to think that someone else loved Gottfried as much as she did. It is true that she refused to believe it; and Christophe, who read her clearly, left her that satisfaction. Listening to her talk, he perceived that, although she had known Gottfried in the past, and had even seen him with unsparing eyes, she had built for herself, since losing her sight, an image of him entirely different from reality; and she had transferred onto this phantom all the need for love that was in her. Nothing had come to disturb this work of illusion. With the intrepid certainty of the blind, who invent quite calmly what they do not know, she said to Christophe:

--- You look like him.

He understood that for years she had grown accustomed to living in her house with shuttered windows, where truth no longer entered. And now that she had learned to see in the darkness surrounding her, and even to forget the darkness, perhaps she would have been frightened by a ray of light filtering into those shadows. She evoked with Christophe a host of small nothings, rather simple, in a rambling and smiling conversation that Christophe found unrewarding. He was irritated by this chatter; he could not understand that a person who had suffered so much should not have grown more serious in her suffering, and could take pleasure in such trivialities; he made an effort now and then to speak of more serious things; but they found no echo: Modesta could not --- or would not --- follow him there.

They went to bed. Christophe lay awake for a long time. He was thinking of Gottfried, and trying to disentangle his image from Modesta’s childish memories. It was not easy, and he was irritated by it. His heart was heavy as he thought that Gottfried had died here, that in this very bed, no doubt, his body had rested. He tried to relive the anguish of his last moments, when, unable to speak and make himself understood by the blind woman, he had closed his eyes to die. How he would have liked to lift those eyelids and read the thoughts hidden beneath them, the mystery of that soul which had gone away without making itself known, without perhaps knowing itself! It did not seek to know itself; and all its wisdom lay in not wanting wisdom, in not wanting to impose its will on things, but in abandoning itself to their course, accepting it and loving it. Thus it had assimilated their mysterious essence without even thinking about it; and if it had done so much good to the blind woman, to Christophe, to so many others no doubt whom no one would ever know of, it was because instead of bringing the usual words of human revolt against nature, it brought a little of nature’s own indifferent peace, and reconciled the yielding soul to it. It was beneficent, in the way of those fields, those woods, that very nature of which it was so thoroughly imbued. --- Christophe called up the memory of evenings spent with Gottfried in the countryside, of his childhood walks, of the stories and songs in the night. He remembered too the last walk he had taken with his uncle, on the hill above the town, on a desperate winter morning; and tears rose to his eyes. He did not want to sleep, so as to remain with his memories; he wanted to lose nothing of this sacred vigil, in this little place so full of Gottfried’s spirit, to which his steps had led him as if driven by some unknown force. But as he listened to the sound of the fountain flowing in uneven bursts, and the sharp cries of the bats, the robust fatigue of youth overcame his will; and sleep took him.

When he woke, the sun was shining; everyone at the farm was already at work. He found no one in the downstairs room but the old woman and the small children. The young couple was in the fields, and Modesta had gone to do the milking; they looked for her in vain and found her nowhere. Christophe would not agree to wait for her return: truth be told, he had little desire to see her again, and he told himself he was in a hurry. He set off again, having asked the good woman to pass on his farewells to the others.

He was leaving the village when, at a bend in the road, on a bank at the foot of a hawthorn hedge, he saw the blind woman sitting. She rose at the sound of his footsteps, came toward him, smiling, took his hand, and said:

--- Come!

They climbed up through the meadows to a small shaded and flower-strewn field dotted all over with crosses, that overlooked the village. She led him to a grave, and said to him:

--- It’s here.

They knelt, both of them. Christophe remembered another grave, beside which he had knelt with Gottfried; and he thought:

--- Soon it will be my turn.

But that thought, in that moment, held nothing of sadness. A great peace rose from the earth. Christophe, bending over the grave, called out softly to Gottfried:

--- Enter into me!…

Modesta, fingers clasped, was praying, her lips moving in silence. Then she went around the grave on her knees, feeling the earth, the grass, and the flowers with her hands; she seemed to caress them; her intelligent fingers saw: they gently pulled away the dead strands of ivy and the faded violets. To rise, she pressed her hand against the headstone; Christophe saw her fingers pass furtively over Gottfried’s name, brushing each letter. She said:

--- The earth is soft this morning.

She held out her hand to him; he gave her his. She had him feel the damp and warm earth. He did not let go of her hand; their intertwined fingers pressed into the soil. He kissed Modesta. She kissed him too.

They both rose. She held out to him some fresh violets she had picked, and kept the faded ones at her breast. After brushing the earth from their knees, they left the cemetery without exchanging a word. In the fields, the larks were singing. White butterflies danced around their heads. They sat down in a meadow, a few steps apart from each other. The smoke of the village rose in straight columns into the sky washed clean by the rain. The still canal mirrored itself between the poplars. A haze of blue light wrapped the meadows and woods in a soft down.

After a silence, it was Modesta who spoke. She spoke in a low voice about the beauty of the day, as if she could see it. Her lips parted, she drank in the air; she listened intently to the sounds of living things and of the world. Christophe too knew the value of that music. He said the words she was thinking, but could not have said. He named certain of the cries and imperceptible stirrings that one heard beneath the grass or in the depths of the air. She said to him:

--- Ah! You notice that too?

He replied that Gottfried had taught him to distinguish them.

--- You too? she said, with a touch of pique.

He felt like saying:

--- Don’t be jealous.

But he saw the divine light that smiled all around them, he looked at her dead eyes, and he was filled with pity.

--- So, he asked, it was Gottfried who taught you?

She said yes, that she enjoyed it all more now than before… --- (She did not say “before what”; she avoided saying the word “eyes,” or “blind.”)

They were silent for a moment. Christophe looked at her with compassion. She felt herself being looked at. He would have liked to tell her how much he pitied her; he would have liked her to grieve, to confide in him. He asked, gently:

--- Have you been very unhappy?

She sat rigid and mute. She was pulling blades of grass and chewing them in silence. After a few moments --- (the lark’s song drove deeper into the sky) --- Christophe told her that he too had been unhappy, and that Gottfried had helped him. He spoke of all his sorrows and trials, as if thinking aloud, or speaking to a sister. The blind woman’s face brightened as she listened attentively to this account. Christophe, watching her, saw that she was about to speak: she made a move to draw closer and hold out her hand. He moved toward her too; --- but already she had retreated into her impassivity; and when he had finished, she answered his account with only a few commonplace words. Behind her smooth, unfurrowed brow, one felt a peasant’s obstinacy, hard as flint. She said she had to go back to the house to look after her brother’s children: she spoke of them with a calm, easy smile.

He asked her:

--- Are you happy?

She seemed happier for hearing him say it. She said yes, she pressed upon the reasons she had for being happy, she tried to persuade him of it, to persuade herself; she spoke of the children, the house, all she had to do…

--- Oh! yes, she said, I am very happy!

Christophe said nothing. She got up to leave; he rose too. They said goodbye in an indifferent and cheerful tone. Modesta’s hand trembled slightly in Christophe’s. She said to him:

--- You’ll have fine weather today for walking.

And she gave him directions about a bend in the road where he must not go wrong. It seemed as though, of the two, Christophe were the blind one.

They parted. He went down the hill. When he reached the bottom, he turned back. She was at the top, standing in the same spot: she was waving her handkerchief and signaling to him, as if she could see him.

There was in this stubborn refusal to acknowledge her affliction something at once heroic and absurd that moved Christophe, and troubled him. He felt how deeply Modesta deserved pity, and even admiration; and he could not have lived two days with her. --- As he continued on his way between the flowering hedges, he also thought of dear old Schulz, of those old man’s eyes, clear and tender, before which so many sorrows had passed and which refused to see them, which did not see the wounding reality.

--- How does he see me? he wondered. I am so different from the idea he has of me! For him I am what he wishes me to be. Everything is in his image --- pure and noble like himself. He could not bear life if he saw it as it is.

And he thought of that girl wrapped in darkness, who denied her darkness and wanted to persuade herself that what was, was not, and that what was not, was.

Then he saw the greatness of the German idealism he had so often hated, because in mediocre souls it is a source of hypocrisy and foolishness. He saw the beauty of that faith which creates its own world within the world, a world different from the world, like an island in the ocean. --- But he could not sustain that faith for himself; he refused to take refuge in that Island of the Dead. Life! Truth! He did not want to be a hero who lies. Perhaps that optimistic lie, which a German emperor claimed to make a law for his entire people, was indeed necessary for weak beings in order to live; and Christophe would have considered it a crime to tear away from these wretched souls the illusion that sustained them. But for himself, he could not have resorted to such subterfuges: he would rather die than live on illusions. --- Was art not an illusion as well? --- No, it must not be. Truth! Truth! Eyes wide open, drawing in through every pore the all-powerful breath of life, seeing things as they are, his misfortune full in the face, --- and laughing!

Several months passed. Christophe had lost all hope of escaping his city. The one man who could have saved him, Hassler, had refused to help. And old Schulz’s friendship had been given to him only to be taken away again almost at once.

He had written to Schulz once, upon his return, and received two affectionate letters in reply; but out of a sense of weariness, and above all because of the difficulty he had expressing himself by letter, he put off thanking him for those dear words, delaying his reply from day to day. And just as he was finally making up his mind to write, he received a note from Kunz announcing the death of his old companion. Schulz had had, so Kunz said, a relapse of bronchitis that had turned into pneumonia; he had forbidden anyone to trouble Christophe, of whom he spoke constantly. Despite his extreme weakness and so many years of illness, he had not been spared a long and painful end. He had entrusted Kunz with the task of telling Christophe the news, asking him to say that until the very last hour he had thought of him, that he thanked him for all the happiness he owed him, and that his blessing would follow Christophe as long as he lived. --- What Kunz did not say was that the day spent with Christophe had in all likelihood been the origin of the relapse and the cause of his death.

Christophe wept in silence, and in that moment felt the full worth of the friend he had lost, and how much he had loved him; he suffered, as always, from not having told him so more clearly. Now it was too late. And what was left to him? Good Schulz had only appeared long enough to make the emptiness seem emptier, and the night darker, once he was gone. --- As for Kunz and Pottpetschmidt, they held no value for him except through the friendship they had had for Schulz, and that Schulz had had for them. Christophe measured them at their true worth. He wrote to them once; and their relations stopped there. --- He also tried to write to Modesta; but she had a banal letter sent back to him, speaking of nothing but indifferent things. He gave up trying to sustain the correspondence. He wrote to no one anymore, and no one wrote to him.

Silence. Silence. Day by day, the heavy mantle of silence fell over Christophe. It was like a rain of ashes falling upon him. Evening seemed to be coming already; and Christophe had barely begun to live: he did not want to resign himself so soon. --- The hour for sleep had not yet come. He had to live.

And he could no longer live in Germany. The suffering of his genius, compressed by the narrowness of the little town, exasperated him to the point of injustice. His nerves were raw: everything wounded him to the quick. He was like one of those wretched wild animals dying of boredom in the pits and cages where they had been locked away, in the Stadtgarten (the city park). Christophe often went to see them, out of sympathy; he gazed at their magnificent eyes, where fierce and desperate flames burned --- and went out, day by day. Ah! How they would have welcomed the brutal gunshot that delivers, or the blade plunging into bleeding entrails! Anything, rather than the savage indifference of those men who prevented them from either living or dying!

What oppressed Christophe most of all was not people’s hostility: it was their inconsistent nature, shapeless and bottomless. There was nothing to get hold of. Better even the stubborn opposition of one of those races with narrow, hard skulls, which refuse to comprehend any new thought. Against force, one has force, the pickaxe and the mine that cut and blast through rock. But what can one do against an amorphous mass that yields like jelly, sinks under the least pressure, and retains no impression? All thoughts, all energies, everything vanished into the quagmire: barely a ripple stirred the surface of the abyss when a stone fell in; the mouth opened, closed again; and of what had been, no trace remained.

These were not enemies. Would to God they had been enemies! They were people who had the strength neither to love, nor to hate, nor to believe, nor to disbelieve --- in religion, in art, in politics, in daily life --- and all their vigor was spent in trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Above all since the German victories, they had been straining to make a compromise, a nauseating muddle of the new force and the old principles. The old idealism had not been renounced: that would have required a candor of which they were incapable; they had simply falsified it, to make it serve German interest. Following the example of Hegel, the Swabian, serene and two-faced, who had waited until after Leipzig and Waterloo to align the cause of his philosophy with the Prussian state --- as interest had shifted, so had principles. When they were being beaten, they said that Germany had humanity as its ideal. Now that they were beating others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity. When other nations were the most powerful, they said, with Lessing, that “love of country was a heroic weakness one could manage perfectly well without,” and they called themselves “citizens of the world.” Now that they had the upper hand, they had nothing but contempt for “French-style” utopias: universal peace, fraternity, peaceful progress, the rights of man, natural equality; they said that the strongest people had an absolute right over the others, and that the others, being weaker, had no right against it. It was the living God and the Idea made flesh, whose progress was accomplished through war, violence, oppression. Force had become holy, now that they possessed it. Force had become all idealism and all intelligence.

To be fair, Germany had suffered for so many centuries from having idealism and not having force, that it was quite understandable that, after so many trials, it should make the sad admission that above all, Force was necessary, whatever form it took. But what bitter sorrow lay hidden in that confession from the people of Herder and Goethe! And how thoroughly that German victory was an abdication, a degradation of the German ideal! --- Alas! There were only too many facilitating factors for that abdication in the deplorable tendency of the best Germans to submit.

--- “What characterizes the German,” Moser had said more than a century earlier, “is obedience.”

And Madame de Staël:

--- “They are vigorously submissive. They use philosophical arguments to explain what is least philosophical in the world: respect for force, and the tenderness of fear, which turns that respect into admiration.”

Christophe found this feeling everywhere in Germany, from the greatest to the least --- from Schiller’s William Tell, that stiff little bourgeois with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says, “to reconcile honor and fear, passes before the post of ‘dear Monsieur’ Gessler with downcast eyes, so he can claim he did not see the hat, did not disobey” --- to the old and respectable Professor Weisse, seventy years old, one of the most honored scholars in the city, who, whenever he saw a Herr Lieutenant approaching, hastened to yield him the inner edge of the pavement and step down into the roadway. Christophe’s blood boiled whenever he witnessed one of these small daily acts of servility. He suffered from them as if it were himself who had submitted. The haughty manners of the officers he passed in the street, their insolent stiffness, filled him with a smoldering anger: he made a point of not giving way to make room for them; he returned, in passing, the arrogance of their stares. More than once he came close to provoking a confrontation; one might have thought he was looking for one. Yet he was the first to understand the dangerous futility of such bravado; but he had moments of aberration: the perpetual restraint he imposed on himself, and his robust energies accumulated and unspent, drove him to fury. Then he was ready to commit every sort of foolishness; and he had the feeling that if he remained here another year, he was lost. He harbored a hatred for the brutal militarism he felt pressing down on him, for those sabers ringing on the pavement, those stacked arms and those cannons stationed in front of the barracks, their muzzles trained on the city, ready to fire. Sensational novels, causing great uproar at the time, denounced the corruption of garrisons large and small; the officers were portrayed as malevolent creatures who, outside their trade as automatons, knew only how to be idle, drink, gamble, run into debt, sponge off their families, backbite one another, and, from top to bottom of the hierarchy, abuse their authority over those beneath them. The thought that he would one day be forced to obey them clutched Christophe by the throat. He could not, no, he could never endure it, could never dishonor himself in his own eyes by submitting to their humiliations and injustices… He did not know what moral greatness was to be found among certain of them, nor all that they themselves might suffer: their lost illusions, so much strength, youth, honor, faith, passionate desire for sacrifice, ill-used and wasted --- the absurdity of a career which, if it is merely a career, if sacrifice is not its purpose, is nothing but a gloomy agitation, an inept parade, a ritual recited by those who no longer believe in what they say…

His homeland was no longer enough for Christophe. He felt within him that unknown force which awakens, sudden and irresistible, in certain species of birds, at precise seasons, like the ebb and flow of the sea: --- the instinct for great migrations. Reading the volumes of Herder and Fichte that old Schulz had bequeathed to him, he found there souls like his own --- not “sons of the earth,” slavishly bound to the soil, but “spirits, sons of the sun,” who turn irresistibly toward the light, from whatever direction it may come.

Where would he go? He did not know. But his eyes, by instinct, looked toward the Latin south. And first of all, toward France. France, the eternal refuge of Germany in disarray. How many times had German thought made use of France, without ceasing to speak ill of it! Even since 1870, what an attraction emanated from the city that had been held, smoking and crushed, beneath the German guns! The most revolutionary and the most reactionary forms of thought and art had found there in turn, and sometimes simultaneously, examples or inspiration. Christophe, like so many other great German musicians in distress, turned his eyes toward Paris as well… What did he know of the French? --- Two women’s faces, and a few random readings. That was enough for him to imagine a country of light, gaiety, and courage, touched even with a hint of Gallic swagger, which sits well on the bold youth of the heart. He believed in it because he needed to believe in it, because with his whole soul he would have wanted it to be so.

He resolved to leave. --- But he could not leave, because of his mother.

Louisa was growing old. She adored her son, who was her only joy; and she was all that he loved most on earth. Yet they caused each other suffering. She barely understood Christophe, and did not trouble herself to understand him: she troubled herself only to love him. She had a limited, timid, dim mind, and an admirable heart, an immense need to love and to be loved, that had something both touching and oppressive about it. She respected her son, because he seemed to her very learned; but she did all she could to stifle his genius. She thought he would remain all his life at her side, in their little town. For years they had lived together, and she could no longer imagine that it might ever be otherwise. She was happy this way: how could he not be? All her dreams for him went no further than to see him marry the daughter of some well-off bourgeois in the city, to hear him play the organ in her church on Sundays, and never to leave her. She saw her boy as if he were always twelve years old; she would have wished he might never be any older. She innocently tortured the poor man, who was suffocating within that narrow horizon.

And yet, there was much that was true --- a moral grandeur --- in this unconscious philosophy of the mother, who could not comprehend ambition and placed all of life’s happiness in family affections and humble duty faithfully done. She was a soul that wanted to love, that wanted only to love. Better to renounce life itself, reason, logic, the real world, everything --- rather than love! And this love was infinite, imploring, exacting; it gave everything, and it demanded that everything be given in return; it renounced living for the sake of loving, and it required this same renunciation from others, from those it loved. Such is the power of love in a simple soul! It leads her, in an instant, to what the groping reasonings of an uncertain genius like Tolstoy, or the overrefined art of a dying civilization, can only conclude after a lifetime --- centuries --- of frenzied struggle and exhausting effort! --- But the imperious world that raged within Christophe obeyed very different laws and demanded a different wisdom.

For a long time, he had been meaning to tell his mother of his decision. But he trembled at the thought of the grief he would cause her: and each time he was about to speak, his courage failed him, and he put it off. Two or three times he ventured timid allusions to his departure; but Louisa did not take them seriously --- perhaps she pretended not to, in order to persuade him, too, that he spoke in jest. Then he dared not press on; but he remained somber and preoccupied; and one could sense that he carried a secret weighing on his heart. And the poor woman, who had an intuition of what that secret might be, made fearful efforts to delay its telling. At moments of silence in the evening, when they sat together by the lamplight, she would suddenly feel that he was about to speak; and then, seized with terror, she would begin to talk herself, very quickly, and at random, about anything at all --- she barely knew what she was saying; but at all costs, she had to keep him from speaking. Her instinct usually led her to find the best argument to force his silence: she would gently complain of her health, of her swollen hands and feet, of her stiffening legs; she exaggerated her ailments, called herself a helpless old woman no longer good for anything. He was not deceived by her naïve ruses; he watched her sadly, with a mute reproach; and after a moment he would rise, claiming fatigue, saying he was going to bed.

But all these stratagems could only spare Louisa for so long. One evening when she had resorted to them again, Christophe gathered his courage, and, laying his hand on the old woman’s, he said:

--- No, Mother, I have something to tell you.

Louisa was startled; but she tried to put on a cheerful expression and said --- her throat tightening:

--- And what might that be, my boy?

Christophe announced, stumbling over his words, his intention to leave. She attempted to treat it as a joke and to turn the conversation as she usually did; but he would not relent, and this time he continued with such a firm and serious air that there was no longer any way to doubt him. She fell silent; all the blood drained from her; she sat mute and frozen, staring at him with terrified eyes. Such pain rose in those eyes as he spoke that words failed him too; and they remained together without a voice. When she was at last able to breathe, she said --- her lips trembling:

--- That can’t be… That can’t be…

Two large tears rolled down her cheeks. He turned away in despair and hid his face in his hands. They wept. After some time, he went to his room and locked himself in until the next day. They made no further allusion to what had passed; and because he said nothing more about it, she tried to convince herself he had given up his plan. But she lived in dread.

Yet there came a moment when he could no longer stay silent. He had to speak, even if it tore her heart --- he was suffering too much. The selfishness of his own pain overrode any thought of hers. He spoke. He went all the way through it, taking care not to look at his mother, for fear of letting himself be shaken. He even named the day of his departure, so as not to have to endure a second discussion --- (he was not sure he would find, a second time, the bleak courage he had today.) --- Louisa cried out:

--- No, no, stop!…

He steeled himself and went on with pitiless resolve. When he had finished --- (she was sobbing) --- he took her hands and tried to make her understand how utterly necessary it was, for his art, for his life, that he leave for a time. She refused to listen; she wept and kept repeating:

--- No, no!… I won’t have it…

After vainly trying to reason with her, he left her alone, thinking that the night would alter the course of her thoughts. But when they met again the next day at table, he resumed without mercy speaking of his plan. She let fall the piece of bread she was raising to her lips and said, in a tone of grievous reproach:

--- So you want to torture me?

He was moved, but he said:

--- Dear Mama, it has to be.

--- But it doesn’t, it doesn’t! she repeated. It doesn’t have to be… You’re doing it to hurt me… It’s madness…

Each tried to convince the other; but neither was listening. He understood that arguing was useless --- it only made them suffer more --- and he began, openly, his preparations to leave.

When she saw that none of her pleas could stop him, Louisa sank into a state of grim sorrow. She spent her days shut in her room, sitting in the dark when evening came; she no longer spoke, no longer ate; at night he could hear her weeping. It was agony for him. He could have cried out in pain in his bed, where he tossed all night long without sleeping, tormented by remorse. He loved her so! Why must he cause her this suffering?… Alas! She would not be the only one --- he could see that clearly… Why had fate put in him the desire and the force of a mission that was bound to cause suffering to those he loved?

--- Ah! he thought, if I were free, if I were not compelled by this cruel force to be what I must be, or else die in shame and self-disgust, how happy I would make you, you whom I love! Let me first live, act, struggle, suffer; and then I will come back to you, more loving. How I would like to do nothing but love, love, love!…

He could never have held out against the perpetual reproach of this desolate soul, if that reproach had had the strength to remain silent. But Louisa, weak and somewhat given to talk, could not keep to herself the grief that was suffocating her. She spoke of it to her neighbors. She spoke of it to her two other sons. They could not miss such a fine opportunity to put Christophe in the wrong. Above all Rodolphe --- who had never ceased to envy his elder brother, though he had little reason to at that moment --- Rodolphe, whom the slightest praise of Christophe stung to the quick, and who secretly dreaded, without daring to admit to himself how base the thought was, his future successes --- (for he was intelligent enough to sense his brother’s strength, and to fear that others might sense it as he did) --- Rodolphe was only too glad to crush Christophe under the weight of his own superiority. He had never troubled himself much about his mother, knowing her straitened circumstances; although he was quite capable of helping her, he left all of that to Christophe. But when he learned of Christophe’s plan, he instantly discovered within himself untold reserves of devotion. He was outraged at what he called abandoning his mother, and labeled it monstrous selfishness. He had the audacity to go and say as much to Christophe himself. He lectured him, from a great height, as one lectures a child who deserves the whip; he reminded him, with a haughty air, of his duty toward his mother and all the sacrifices she had made for him. Christophe nearly choked with rage. He threw Rodolphe out the door with kicks to the backside, calling him a scoundrel and a damned hypocrite. Rodolphe took his revenge by stirring up their mother. Louisa, inflamed by him, began to convince herself that Christophe was behaving as a bad son. She heard it repeated that he had no right to leave, and she was only too willing to believe it. Instead of keeping to her tears, which were her most powerful weapon, she made bitter and unjust reproaches to Christophe that drove him to revolt. They said painful things to each other; and the result was that Christophe, who until then had still been hesitating, thought of nothing now but hastening his preparations to leave. He learned that charitable neighbors were pitying his mother, and that in the neighborhood’s opinion she was the victim and he the tormentor. He clenched his teeth and did not waver from his resolution.

The days passed. Christophe and Louisa barely spoke. Instead of savoring, down to the last drop, these final days spent together, these two beings who loved each other wasted the time that remained --- as is all too often the case --- in one of those sterile sulks in which so many affections are swallowed up. They saw each other only at table, where they sat across from one another, not looking at each other, not speaking, forcing themselves to take a few bites --- less to eat than to have something to do with themselves. With great effort Christophe managed to wrench a few words from his throat; but Louisa would not answer; and when, in turn, she tried to speak, it was he who fell silent. This state of affairs was intolerable for both of them; and the longer it went on, the harder it became to escape. Were they to part like this? Louisa now understood that she had been unjust and clumsy; but she was suffering too much to know how to win back her son’s heart --- which she thought she had lost --- and to prevent at all costs this departure whose possibility she refused to face. Christophe stole glances at his mother’s pale and swollen face and was racked with remorse; but resolved to go, and knowing his life depended on it, he cowardly wished he were already gone, so as to flee from his remorse.

His departure was set for the day after next. One of their sad evenings alone together had just ended. After the supper at which they had not exchanged a word, Christophe had withdrawn to his room; and sitting at his table, his head in his hands, incapable of any work, he was eating himself alive with thought. Night wore on; it was nearly one in the morning. Suddenly, he heard a noise, a chair overturned, in the next room. The door opened, and his mother, in her nightgown, barefoot, threw herself at his neck, sobbing. She was burning with fever; she embraced her son and moaned between her heaves of despair:

--- Don’t go! Don’t go! I beg you! I beg you! My darling, don’t go!… I’ll die of it… I can’t, I can’t bear it!…

Shaken and frightened, he held her close, repeating:

--- Dear Mama, calm yourself, calm yourself, I beg you!

But she went on:

--- I can’t bear it… I have no one left but you. If you go, what will become of me? I’ll die if you go. I don’t want to die far from you. I don’t want to die alone. Wait until I am dead!…

Her words tore his heart. He did not know what to say to comfort her. What reasons could hold against this unleashing of love and pain? He took her on his knees and tried to calm her with kisses and words of tenderness. The old woman gradually grew quiet and wept softly. When she was a little soothed, he said to her:

--- Go back to bed: you’ll catch cold.

She repeated:

--- Don’t go!

He said, very quietly:

--- I will not go.

She gave a start and seized his hand:

--- Is that true? she said. Is that true?

He turned his head away in despair:

--- Tomorrow, he said, tomorrow I will tell you… Leave me, I beg you!…

She rose obediently and went back to her room.

The next morning, she was ashamed of that fit of despair which had seized her like a madness in the middle of the night; and she trembled at what her son was going to say. She waited for him, sitting in a corner of her room; she had taken up a piece of knitting to keep herself busy; but her hands refused to hold it: she let it fall. Christophe came in. They said good morning in low voices, without looking each other in the face. He was somber; he went and stood before the window, his back to his mother, and stayed there without speaking. A struggle was taking place within him; he already knew its outcome all too well, and he was trying to delay it. Louisa dared not speak to him, nor provoke the answer she was waiting for and dreading. She forced herself to take up the knitting again; but she could not see what she was doing, and her stitches were going every which way. Outside, it was raining. After a long silence, Christophe came to her side. She did not move; but her heart was beating. Christophe watched her, motionless; then, suddenly, he dropped to his knees, hid his face in his mother’s dress, and, without saying a word, wept. Then she understood that he was staying; and a mortal anguish lifted from her heart --- but remorse entered immediately in its place: for she felt all that her son was sacrificing for her; and she began to suffer everything that Christophe had suffered when it was she he was sacrificing. She leaned over him and covered his forehead and his hair with kisses. In silence, they mingled their tears and their grief. At last he raised his head; and Louisa, taking his face in her hands, looked at him, her eyes into his. She longed to say:

--- Go!

And she could not.

He would have liked to say to her:

--- I am glad to stay.

And he could not.

The situation was inextricable; neither of them could change anything about it. She sighed, in her anguished love:

--- Ah! if only we could have been born together, so as to die together!

That naive wish filled him with tenderness; he wiped away her tears, and, forcing a smile, he said:

--- We’ll all die together.

She persisted:

--- You’re sure? You’re not leaving?

He stood up:

--- It’s settled. Let’s say no more about it. There’s no going back.

Christophe kept his word: he said no more about leaving; but it was not in his power to stop thinking about it. He stayed; but he made his mother pay dearly for his sacrifice, through his sadness and his bad temper. And Louisa, clumsy --- all the more clumsy because she knew it and unfailingly did what she ought not to do --- Louisa, who knew only too well the cause of his grief, kept pressing him to tell her. She harassed him with her dear affection, anxious, vexing, full of reasoning, which reminded him at every moment that they were different from each other --- which was what he was trying to forget. How many times had he wanted to open up to her with trust! But at the moment of speaking, the Great Wall rose up between them again; and he pushed his secrets back down inside himself. She could sense it; but she did not dare to draw out his confidences; or she did not know how to do it. When she tried, she only succeeded in driving those secrets even deeper into him --- secrets that weighed on him so heavily and that he was burning to tell.

A thousand small things, innocent habits, separated her from him as well, and irritated Christophe. The good old woman prattled a little. She had a need to speak of neighborhood matters, or that nurse’s tenderness that stubbornly recalls the follies of early childhood, everything that belongs to the cradle. One has taken such pains to escape it, to become a man! And Juliet’s nurse must always come and spread out the soiled swaddling-clothes, the mediocre thoughts, that whole wretched epoch when a nascent soul struggles against the oppression of vile matter and a suffocating environment!

And in the midst of all this, she had bursts of touching tenderness --- as with a small child --- that seized his heart, and to which he surrendered --- as a small child.

The worst was living, from morning to night, as they did, together, always together, isolated from the rest of the world. When two people suffer and can do nothing to relieve each other’s suffering, it is inevitable that they will exasperate it: each one eventually holds the other responsible for what he suffers; and each one ends by believing it. It would be better to be alone: then one suffers alone.

It was a daily torture for them both. They would never have escaped it, had chance not intervened, as it often does, and cut through --- in a way that appeared unfortunate, but was in the end fortunate --- the cruel indecision in which they were struggling.

It was a Sunday in October. Four o’clock in the afternoon. The weather was glorious. Christophe had stayed all day in his room, turned in upon himself, “sucking at his melancholy.”

He could bear it no longer; he felt a furious need to go out, to walk, to spend his energy, to exhaust himself with fatigue, so as to think no more.

He was on bad terms with his mother since the day before. He was on the verge of leaving without saying goodbye to her. But, already on the landing, he thought of the grief it would cause her, for the whole evening she would spend alone. He went back in, telling himself he had forgotten something in his room. The door to his mother’s room was ajar. He put his head through the opening. He saw his mother for a few seconds… (What a place those few seconds were to hold in the rest of his life!)…

Louisa had just come home from vespers. She was sitting in her favorite spot, in the corner by the window. The wall of the house opposite, dingy white and cracked, blocked the view; but from the corner where she sat, one could see to the right, beyond the two courtyards of the neighboring houses, a little patch of lawn no bigger than a pocket-handkerchief. On the windowsill, a pot of morning glories climbed along strings, spreading its fine network across that aerial ladder, which a ray of sunlight was caressing. Louisa, seated on a low chair, her back rounded, her thick Bible open on her knees, was not reading. Her two hands laid flat upon the book --- her hands with swollen veins, with a worker’s nails, square and slightly curved --- she gazed with loving eyes at the little plant and the scrap of sky visible through it. A reflection of sunlight on the golden-green leaves lit up her tired face, mottled with a touch of redness, her very fine and sparse white hair, and her half-open mouth, which was smiling. She was enjoying this hour of rest. It was her best moment of the week. She was taking advantage of it to sink into that state so sweet to those who toil, where one thinks of nothing, and where, in the torpor of being, nothing speaks anymore but the heart, half asleep.

--- Maman, he said, I feel like going out. I’m going for a walk toward Buir; I’ll be back a little late.

Louisa, who had been dozing, gave a slight start. Then she turned her head toward him and looked at him with her calm, kind eyes.

--- Go on, little one, she said: you’re right, make the most of the fine weather.

She smiled at him. He smiled back. They remained a moment looking at each other; then they exchanged a small, affectionate goodnight, with their heads and their eyes.

He quietly closed the door. She returned slowly to her reverie, into which her son’s smile cast a luminous reflection, like the ray of sunlight on the pale leaves of the morning glory.

And so he left her --- for the rest of his life.

An October evening. A mild, pale sun. The languishing countryside grows drowsy. Small village bells ring unhurriedly in the silence of the fields. In the middle of the plowed earth, columns of smoke rise slowly. A fine mist floats in the distance. White fogs, crouching in the damp earth, wait for the approach of night before rising… A hunting dog, nose riveted to the ground, traced circles through a field of beets. Great flocks of rooks wheeled in the gray sky.

Christophe, deep in reverie and without having fixed upon a destination, was nonetheless moving, by instinct, toward a definite goal. For some weeks, his walks around the town, whether he wished it or not, had been gravitating toward a village where he was sure to encounter a beautiful girl who attracted him. It was only an attraction, but a vivid and somewhat troubled one. Christophe could scarcely do without loving someone; and his heart was rarely empty: it was always furnished with some lovely image that served as its idol. It mattered little to him, most of the time, whether this idol knew that he loved her: what he needed was to love; the fire must not go out, it must never be night in his heart.

The object of this new flame was the daughter of a peasant, whom he had encountered, as Eliezer encountered Rebecca, beside a spring; but she had not offered him a drink: she had thrown water in his face. Kneeling at the edge of a stream, in a hollow of the bank, between two willows whose roots formed a kind of nest around her, she was washing linen with vigor; and her tongue was no less active than her arms: she talked and laughed loudly with other girls from the village, who were washing on the other side of the stream, across from her. Christophe had stretched out on the grass a few steps away; and, his chin resting on his hands, he watched them. This did not intimidate them in the least: they went on chatting, in a style that was sometimes not lacking in earthiness. He barely listened: he heard only the sound of their laughing voices, mingled with the noise of the washboards, the distant lowing of cows in the meadows; and he daydreamed, never taking his eyes off the beautiful washerwoman. A cheerful young face filled him with joy for an entire day. --- The girls were not long in identifying the object of his attentions; they made sly allusions to it among themselves; his favorite launched at him some of the sharpest remarks of all. As he still did not move, she stood up, took a bundle of washed and wrung linen, and began spreading it on the bushes, drawing closer to him so as to have a pretext for staring at him. Passing alongside, she arranged things so as to splash him with her wet sheets, and she looked at him boldly, laughing. She was lean and sturdy, with a strong chin, a little jutting, a short nose, well-arched eyebrows, dark blue eyes, bold, bright and hard, a beautiful mouth with full lips, protruding slightly like those of a Greek mask, a mass of blond hair coiled at the nape of her neck, and a tanned complexion. She carried her head very upright, gave a little snicker with every word she said, and even without saying anything, and walked like a man, swinging her sun-browned hands. She went on spreading her linen, watching Christophe with a provocative look --- waiting for him to speak. Christophe stared at her too; but he had no desire whatsoever to talk to her. At last, she burst out laughing in his face and turned back toward her companions. He stayed where he was, stretched out, until evening fell and he saw her leave, her basket on her back and her bare arms crossed, bent under the weight, still chatting and laughing.

He came across her again, two or three days later, at the market in town, in the midst of mountains of carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. He was strolling about, watching the crowd of women vendors, who stood in a row before their baskets like slaves for sale. The police officer went from one to the next with his satchel and his roll of tickets, receiving a small coin, handing over a slip of paper. The coffee seller went from row to row with a basket full of small coffeepots. An old nun, jolly and plump, made the rounds of the market, two large baskets on her arm, and, without humility, begged vegetables, speaking of the good Lord. People shouted; the antique scales, with their green-painted pans, clattered and clinked with a noise of chains; the large dogs, harnessed to small carts, barked joyfully, proud of their importance. In the midst of the crowd, Christophe caught sight of Rebecca. --- Her real name was Lorchen (Eleonore). --- On her blond chignon she had placed a fine cabbage leaf, white and green, which made her a jagged and finely worked helmet. Seated on a basket, before piles of golden onions, small pink turnips, green beans, and ruddy apples, she was crunching through the apples one after another, without bothering to sell anything. She ate without stopping. From time to time, she wiped her chin and neck with her apron, pushed back her hair with her arm, rubbed her cheek against her shoulder or her nose against the back of her hand. Or, hands on her knees, she passed a handful of small peas endlessly from one hand to the other. And she looked to the right and to the left with an idle, dilettantish air. But she missed nothing of what was going on around her; and, without appearing to, she caught every glance directed her way. She saw Christophe perfectly well. She had a way, while talking to customers, of furrowing her brow to observe, over their heads, her admirer. She was dignified and grave as a pope; but inwardly she was mocking Christophe. He deserved it: he stood there planted a few steps away, devouring her with his eyes; and then he left without having spoken to her. He had not the slightest desire to.

He came back more than once to prowl around the market and around the village where she lived. She went back and forth in the farmyard: he would stop on the road to watch her. He would not admit to himself that it was for her sake he came; and in truth it was almost without thinking. When he was absorbed, as often happened, in the composition of a work, he found himself in something of a sleepwalker’s state: while his conscious soul followed its musical thoughts, the rest of his being was given over to that other unconscious soul, which watches for the least distraction of the mind to make off on its own. He was often quite dazed by the humming of his musical ideas when he found himself face to face with her; and he went on dreaming while he looked at her. He could not have said that he loved her; he did not even think about it; he had pleasure in seeing her: nothing more. He did not realize what it was that kept drawing him back to her.

This persistence set tongues wagging. They made fun of it at the farm, where people had eventually found out who Christophe was. They left him alone, however; for he was quite harmless. To tell the truth, he looked rather foolish: but he did not trouble himself about it.

It was the village festival. Boys were exploding snapping peas between two stones, crying: “Long live the Emperor!” (“Kaiser lebe! Hoch!”). One could hear a calf bellowing, locked in its stall, and the singing of drinkers at the tavern. Kite-tails shaped like comet-tails plunged and fluttered in the air above the fields. Hens scratched furiously in the golden straw and dung: the wind rushed into their feathers as into the skirts of an old lady. A pink pig slept voluptuously on its side in the sun.

Christophe made his way toward the red roof of the Trois Rois inn, above which a small flag was flying. Strings of onions hung from the facade, and the windows were bright with red and yellow nasturtiums. He went inside the room, thick with tobacco smoke, where yellowed chromos covered the walls, and, in the place of honor, a hand-colored portrait of the Emperor-King, wreathed in a garland of oak leaves. They were dancing. Christophe was quite certain his lovely acquaintance would be there. And indeed, she was the first face he saw. He settled into a corner of the room where he could watch the dancers’ movements in peace. But however carefully he had taken care not to be noticed, Lorchen found him soon enough in his corner. While spinning through interminable waltzes, she shot rapid glances at him over her partner’s shoulder to make sure he was still watching; and she took pleasure in provoking him: she flirted with the village boys, laughing with her wide, generous mouth. She spoke loudly and said foolish things, differing in this not at all from those young ladies of society who, when they are being watched, feel compelled to laugh, to bustle about, to be silly for the audience rather than for themselves alone. --- In which they are not so silly after all: for they know perfectly well that the audience watches but does not listen. --- Christophe, elbows on the table and chin on his fists, followed the girl’s performance with burning, furious eyes: his mind was clear enough that he wasn’t taken in by her wiles; but not clear enough to keep from falling for them; and in turns he muttered with irritation, or laughed to himself and shrugged his shoulders at being so easily caught in the trap.

Another person besides the young girl was watching him: that was Lorchen’s father. Short and stocky, bald-headed --- a large head with a blunt nose --- his skull bronzed by the sun, with a crown of hair that had once been blond and curled in thick ringlets like a Saint John out of Dürer, clean-shaven, his face impassive, his long pipe in the corner of his mouth, he chatted very slowly with other peasants while following Christophe’s expressions from the corner of his eye; and he wore a silent smile. At one point he gave a little cough; and, with a flash of cunning in his small gray eyes, he came and sat sideways at Christophe’s table. Christophe, displeased, turned toward him with a scowl --- and met the old man’s mocking gaze. Without removing his pipe from his mouth, the old man addressed him in a familiar tone. Christophe knew him: he knew the man was a thoroughgoing rogue; but the weakness he felt for the daughter made him indulgent toward the father, and even inspired in him a strange pleasure in finding himself in the old man’s company --- which the crafty old fellow had sensed. After speaking of this and that weather and making a sly allusion to the pretty girls who were there and to the fact that Christophe wasn’t dancing, he concluded that Christophe was quite right not to put himself to any trouble, and that one was better off at a table with one’s elbows planted before a pot; and he got himself invited, without ceremony, to empty one alongside him. While drinking, the old man talked, taking his time, as always. He spoke of his small affairs, of the difficulty of making a living, of hard times, of the high cost of everything. Christophe barely listened, and responded only with a few grunts: it didn’t interest him; he was watching Lorchen. There were moments of silence: the peasant waited for a word; no answer came: he resumed tranquilly. Christophe wondered what had earned him the honor of the old man’s company and his confidences. He eventually understood. The old man, having exhausted his grievances, moved to another chapter: he praised the excellence of his produce, his vegetables, his poultry, his eggs, his milk; and abruptly asked whether Christophe couldn’t secure him the château’s custom. Christophe startled:

--- How the devil did he know?… So he recognized him?

--- Oh yes, the old man said. Everything gets out…

He didn’t add:

--- … when you take the trouble to do your own little detective work.

But Christophe added it for him. He took a malicious pleasure in letting the old man know that, although “everything got out,” one apparently did not yet know that he had just fallen out with the little court, and that if he had ever flattered himself that he had any influence with the servants’ quarters and kitchens of the château --- (which he greatly doubted) --- that influence was, at the present moment, dead and buried. The old man gave an imperceptible twitch of the lips. He was not discouraged, however; and after a moment, he asked whether Christophe might at least recommend him to such-and-such a family. And he named in fact every family with which Christophe happened to be acquainted; for he had made very exact inquiries on his trips to the market; and there was no danger he would forget any detail that might prove useful to him. Christophe might have been furious at this espionage, had he not been more inclined to laugh, thinking that the old man would be cheated in spite of all his cunning: (for he little suspected the nature of the recommendation he was asking for --- a recommendation more likely to lose him customers than to win him new ones). He therefore let the old man unwind his skein of petty, clumsy tricks to no purpose; and he answered neither yes nor no. But the peasant persisted; and at last, turning his attack on Christophe himself and on Louisa --- whom he had saved for the end --- he tried by all means to sell them his milk, his butter, and his cream. He added that, since Christophe was a musician, nothing did more good for the voice than a fresh egg swallowed raw, morning and evening: and he declared himself ready to supply them still warm from the hen. The idea that the old man took him for a singer made Christophe burst out laughing. The peasant took the opportunity to call for another bottle. After which, having extracted from Christophe all he could extract for the moment, he took his leave without further ceremony.

Night had fallen. The dancing grew livelier and livelier. Lorchen paid no more attention to Christophe: she was too busy turning the head of a young fellow from the village, the son of a wealthy farmer, whom all the girls were competing for. Christophe watched the contest with interest: these young ladies were smiling at one another, and they would have gladly scratched each other to pieces. Christophe, good-natured, forgot himself and found himself rooting for Lorchen’s victory. But when that victory was won, he felt a little sad. He reproached himself for it. He didn’t love Lorchen, he had no need for her love: it was perfectly natural that she should love whom she chose. --- No doubt. But it was not a cheerful thing to find so little warmth for oneself when one had such need to give it and receive it. Here, as in the city, he was alone. All these people took an interest in him only to make use of him, and to mock him afterward. He sighed, smiled as he watched Lorchen, whose joy at driving her rivals to despair made her ten times lovelier, and prepared to leave. It was nearly nine o’clock: he had a good two leagues to walk to get back to town.

He was rising from the table when the door opened; and some ten soldiers burst in. Their entrance cast a chill over the room. People began to whisper. A few dancing couples stopped, casting uneasy glances at the new arrivals. The peasants standing near the door made a show of turning their backs to them and talking among themselves; but, all the while affecting not to notice, they took careful pains to move prudently aside and let them pass. --- For some time now, the whole district had been in quiet conflict with the garrison of forts surrounding the town. The soldiers were dying of boredom and took it out on the peasants. They mocked them coarsely, roughed them up, treated the girls as if they were in conquered territory. The week before, several of them, drunk, had broken up a celebration in a neighboring village and half-beaten a farmer to death. Christophe, who was aware of all this, shared the peasants’ frame of mind; and, sitting back down in his seat, he waited to see what would happen.

The soldiers, without troubling themselves over the hostility that greeted their entrance, went noisily to seat themselves at the crowded tables, pushing people aside to make room for themselves: it was done in a moment. Most people drew back, grumbling. An old man sitting at the end of a bench didn’t move aside fast enough: they upended the bench, and the old man went tumbling to the floor amid bursts of laughter. Christophe felt the blood rush to his head; he rose, indignant; but just as he was about to intervene, he saw the old man picking himself up painfully, and, instead of protesting, falling over himself with apologies. Two of the soldiers came toward Christophe’s table: he watched them approach, fists clenched. But he did not have to defend himself. They were two tall, athletic, good-natured brutes who followed a pair of reckless instigators like sheep and tried to imitate them. They were intimidated by Christophe’s haughty manner; and when he said to them in a dry tone:

--- This seat is taken.

they apologized hastily and retreated to the far end of the bench so as not to bother him. His voice had carried the inflections of command: natural servility had reasserted itself. They could plainly see that Christophe was no peasant.

Christophe, somewhat calmed by this submissive behavior, was able to observe things with greater composure. He had no difficulty seeing that the whole band was led by a non-commissioned officer --- a squat little bulldog, with hard eyes --- the face of a hypocritical, malicious lackey: he was one of the heroes of last Sunday’s brawl. Seated at a table next to Christophe’s, already drunk, he stared people down and hurled insulting sarcasms that they pretended not to hear. He directed himself chiefly at the dancing couples, describing their physical attributes or defects with a filthiness of expression that set his companions roaring. The girls flushed and their eyes filled with tears; the boys clenched their teeth and raged in silence. The tormentor’s gaze made a slow circuit of the room, sparing no one: Christophe saw it coming toward him. He gripped his mug and, fist on the table, he waited, resolved to hurl the glass at his head at the first insult. He said to himself:

--- I’m a fool. I’d do better to leave. I’m going to get my belly opened up; and then, if I survive it, they’ll put me in prison: the game isn’t worth the candle. Let’s go, before he provokes me.

But his pride refused: he would not appear to be fleeing before such people. --- The furtive, brutal gaze settled on him. Christophe, rigid, fixed it with anger. The non-commissioned officer looked him over for a moment: Christophe’s face put him in the mood; he nudged his neighbor, pointed the young man out to him with a sneer; and already he was opening his mouth to insult him. Christophe, coiled tight, was about to fling his glass with full force. --- Once again, chance saved him. Just as the drunk was about to speak, a clumsy dancing couple stumbled into him and knocked over his glass. He spun around furiously and poured a torrent of abuse on them. His attention was diverted: he no longer thought of Christophe. Christophe waited a few more minutes; then, seeing that his enemy was no longer seeking to resume with him, he rose, picked up his hat slowly, and made his way toward the door without hurrying. He kept his eyes on the bench where the other man sat, to make it perfectly clear that he was not giving way before him. But the non-commissioned officer had decidedly forgotten him: no one was paying him any attention.

He was turning the door handle: a few more seconds, and he would have been outside. But it was not to be. A commotion broke out at the far end of the room. The soldiers, having drunk their fill, had decided to dance. And since every girl already had a partner, they shoved the dancers aside, who gave way without a struggle. But Lorchen was having none of it. Those bold eyes and that willful chin that Christophe admired were not for nothing. She was waltzing like mad when the corporal, who had set his sights on her, came and wrenched away her partner. She stamped her foot, cried out, and, pushing the soldier back, declared she would never dance with a boor like him. He came after her. He pounded his fists into anyone she tried to hide behind. Finally she took refuge behind a table; and there, shielded from him for a moment, she caught her breath to heap insults on him; she could see that all her resistance would come to nothing, and she fumed with rage, hunting for the most stinging words she could throw at him, comparing his face to various animals in her farmyard. He leaned toward her from the other side of the table with a nasty smile, his eyes glittering with fury. Suddenly he took a running start and vaulted over the table. He grabbed hold of her. She fought back as only a farmgirl could, with fists and feet. He was not too steady on his legs and nearly lost his balance. Furious, he shoved her against the wall and slapped her. He did not get a chance to do it again: someone had leapt onto his back, was slapping him with both hands, and sent him sprawling with a kick into the middle of the drinkers. It was Christophe, who had hurled himself at the man, knocking over tables and people, without stopping to think. The corporal spun around, wild with rage, drawing his saber. Before he could use it, Christophe knocked him cold with a stool. It had all happened so fast that none of the onlookers had thought to intervene. But when they saw the soldier crash to the floor like a felled ox, a terrible uproar broke out. The other soldiers rushed at Christophe, sabers drawn. The peasants threw themselves on them. The brawl became general. Tankards flew through the air, tables were overturned. The peasants were roused: old grudges were being settled. People rolled on the floor and bit each other in fury. Lorchen’s ousted partner, a sturdy farm hand, had seized the head of a soldier who had insulted him earlier and was hammering it ferociously against the wall. Lorchen, armed with a cudgel, was laying about her with a will. The other girls fled screaming, all except two or three strapping ones who were making the most of it. One of them --- a plump little blonde --- noticing a giant of a soldier --- the same one who had sat at Christophe’s table --- driving his knee into the chest of his fallen opponent, ran to the hearth, came back, and yanking the brute’s head backward, flung a handful of burning embers into his eyes. The man bellowed. The girl crowed with delight, hurling insults at the now helpless enemy, whom the peasants were beating at their leisure. At last the soldiers, hopelessly outnumbered, fell back outside, leaving two of their number on the floor. The fighting continued in the village street. They burst into houses, screaming murder threats and threatening to smash everything. The peasants had followed them with pitchforks; and they were setting their snarling dogs on the enemy. A third soldier went down, his belly gored by a hay fork. The rest were forced to flee, chased out beyond the village; and from a distance, as they ran across the fields, they shouted that they were going for their comrades and would be back directly.

The peasants, left masters of the field, returned to the inn: they were jubilant; it was the revenge, long awaited, for the humiliations they had endured. They did not yet think about the consequences of the brawl. They all talked at once, each boasting of his own exploits. They welcomed Christophe as one of their own, overjoyed to feel close to him. Lorchen came and took his hand, and stood there holding it a moment in her rough little fist, grinning up at him. She no longer found him ridiculous.

They turned their attention to the wounded. Among the villagers there were only broken teeth, a few cracked ribs, lumps and bruises, nothing serious. But it was another matter with the soldiers. Three were badly hurt: the giant with the burned eyes, who had half his shoulder hacked off by an axe blow; the man who had been gored, who was rattling in his throat; and the corporal, struck down by Christophe. They had been laid out on the floor near the hearth. The corporal, the least gravely wounded of the three, had just opened his eyes. He looked for a long moment, with a gaze full of hatred, at the circle of peasants leaning over him. Barely had he recovered his senses before he began hurling insults at them. He swore he would have his revenge, he would settle scores with all of them; he choked with rage; one could feel that if he could, he would exterminate them. They tried to laugh; but their laughter was forced. A young peasant shouted at the injured man:

--- Shut your mouth, or I’ll kill you!

The corporal tried to pull himself upright, and, fixing the one who had spoken with his bloodshot eyes:

--- Filth! he said. Kill me! They’ll cut your heads off.

He went on raving. The gored man was letting out shrill screams, like a pig being bled. The third lay motionless and rigid as a corpse. A crushing terror fell over the peasants. Lorchen and a few of the women carried the wounded into another room. The corporal’s ravings and the dying man’s cries faded in the distance. The peasants fell silent: they stayed where they were, standing in a circle, as though the three bodies were still stretched at their feet; they dared not move, and looked at one another, frightened. At last Lorchen’s father said:

--- You’ve done a fine piece of work!

A tormented murmur ran through them; they swallowed hard. Then they all began to speak at once. At first they whispered, as though afraid of being overheard at the door; but soon their voices rose and grew sharper: they accused one another; they reproached each other for the blows they had struck. The quarrel turned ugly: they seemed on the verge of coming to blows among themselves. Lorchen’s father brought them all to agreement. Arms folded, he turned toward Christophe and jerked his chin at him:

--- And that one, he said, what did he come here for?

The whole crowd’s anger swung around onto Christophe:

--- That’s it! That’s it! they cried. He’s the one who started it! If it weren’t for him, none of this would have happened!

Christophe, dumbfounded, tried to answer:

--- What I did, I didn’t do for myself, I did it for you --- you know that perfectly well.

But they shot back at him, furious:

--- Can’t we defend ourselves without help? Did we need some city gentleman to come and tell us what to do? Who asked your opinion? And who invited you here in the first place? Couldn’t you have stayed home?

Christophe shrugged and walked toward the door. But Lorchen’s father blocked his way, yelping:

--- That’s it! That’s it! he cried. Now he wants to slip away, after he’s put us all in the soup. He’s not going anywhere!

The peasants roared.

--- He’s not going anywhere! He’s the cause of all of it. He’s the one who should pay for all of it!

They closed around him, shaking their fists. Christophe watched the ring of threatening faces tighten: fear had made them savage. He did not say a word, gave a grimace of disgust, and, tossing his hat onto a table, went and sat down at the back of the room with his back to them.

But Lorchen, outraged, threw herself into the middle of the peasants. Her pretty face was flushed and creased with fury. She shoved aside those who were surrounding Christophe:

--- Pack of cowards! Brute beasts! she cried. Aren’t you ashamed? You’d have people think it was him who did it all! As if we hadn’t seen you! As if there was a single one of you who hadn’t hit as hard as he could!… If there was even one who stood by with his arms folded while the others were fighting, I’d spit in his face and call him: Coward! Coward!…

The peasants, caught off guard by this unexpected outburst, fell silent for a moment; then they started shouting again:

--- He’s the one who started it! If it weren’t for him, nothing would have happened.

Lorchen’s father tried in vain to signal his daughter. She went on:

--- Of course he’s the one who started it! Nothing to brag about there. Without him, you would have stood there and taken the insults, you would have stood there and taken the insults, you cowards! you spineless cowards!

She turned on her young man:

--- And you, you kept your mouth shut, you put on a sweet little smile, you held out your backside for their boots; you’d have thanked them if they’d asked! Aren’t you ashamed?… Aren’t you all ashamed? You’re not men! Courage of sheep, always nose to the ground! It took him to set you an example! --- And now you want to dump it all on his back?… Well, that’s not going to happen, I’m telling you! He fought for us. Either you’ll save him, or you’ll go down with him: I give you my word on that!

Lorchen’s father tugged at her arm; he was beside himself, shouting:

--- Be quiet! Be quiet!… Will you shut your mouth, you damned hellhound!

But she pushed him off and kept on, louder than before. The peasants were bellowing. She cried over them all in a shrill voice that pierced the eardrums:

--- As for you, what have you got to say? Do you think I didn’t see you just now stamping your heels into that one who’s as good as dead in the next room? And you, show me your hands!… There’s still blood on them. Do you think I didn’t see you with your knife? I’ll say everything I saw, everything, if you do the least thing against him. I’ll have you all condemned.

The peasants, beside themselves, thrust their furious faces close to Lorchen’s and bawled into it. One of them made as if to slap her; but Lorchen’s young man seized him by the collar and the two shook each other, ready to come to blows. An old man said to Lorchen:

--- If we’re condemned, so will you be.

--- So I will, she said. I’m less of a coward than you.

And she took up her song again.

They no longer knew what to do. They appealed to the father:

--- Can’t you make her keep quiet?

The old man had understood that it was not wise to push Lorchen too far. He motioned to the others to calm down. Silence fell. Lorchen alone kept talking; then, finding no more to answer, like a fire without fuel, she stopped. After a moment her father coughed and said:

--- Well, then, what do you want? You can’t mean to ruin us all?

She said:

--- I want him saved.

They began to think it over. Christophe had not moved from his place: stiffened by his pride, he seemed not to hear that it was his own fate being discussed; but he was moved by Lorchen’s intervention. Lorchen in turn seemed unaware that he was there: leaning back against the table where he sat, she fixed the peasants with a defiant look as they smoked and stared at the floor. At last her father, after chewing on his pipe, said:

--- Whether anyone says anything or not, --- if he stays, his case is clear. The sergeant recognized him: he won’t spare him. There’s only one course for him: he has to clear out immediately, across the border.

He had reflected that it would be to their advantage, all in all, if Christophe made his escape: he would in effect be denouncing himself; and once he was gone and could no longer defend himself, it would not be hard to lay the bulk of the matter on him. The others agreed. They understood each other perfectly. --- Now that they had decided, they were all eager to see Christophe gone as quickly as possible. With no sign of embarrassment about what they had said a moment earlier, they crowded around him, affecting a keen interest in his safety.

--- Not a minute to lose, monsieur, said Lorchen’s father. They’ll be back. Half an hour to the fort. Half an hour to return… There’s just time to get away.

Christophe had risen. He had been thinking too. He knew that if he stayed, he was finished. But to leave, to leave without seeing his mother again?… No, that was impossible. He said he would go back into town first, that he would still have time to set off again in the night and cross the border. But they threw up their hands. A moment ago they had blocked the door to keep him from fleeing: now they opposed him taking flight on his own terms. Going back into town meant being caught for certain: before he even arrived, word would be sent ahead; they would arrest him at home. --- He persisted. Lorchen had understood:

--- It’s your mother you want to see?… I’ll go in your place.

--- When?

--- Tonight.

--- Is that true? You would do that?

--- I’m going.

She took her shawl and wrapped it around herself.

--- Write something, I’ll bring it to her. Come this way, I’ll get you some ink.

She drew him into the back room. On the threshold, she turned; and, addressing her young man:

--- And you, get yourself ready, she said, you’re the one who’ll take him. You won’t leave him until you’ve seen him across the border.

--- All right, all right, the other said.

He was as eager as anyone to see Christophe safely in France, or farther still, if that were possible.

Lorchen went with Christophe into the other room. Christophe still hesitated. He was torn with grief at the thought that he would not embrace his mother again. When would he see her? She was so old, so worn, so alone! This new blow would finish her. What would become of her without him?… But what would become of her if he stayed, if he let himself be convicted and imprisoned for years? Would that not be, for her, an even more certain abandonment, a more certain destitution? Free at least, however far away, he could come to her aid; she could come to him. --- He had no time to think it through clearly. Lorchen had taken his hands; standing close beside him, she was looking at him; their faces nearly touching; she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth:

--- Quickly! Quickly! she said in a low voice, pointing to the table.

He tried no longer to reflect. He sat down. She tore a sheet of graph paper, with red lines, from an account book.

He wrote:

“My dear Mama. Forgive me! I am going to cause you great pain. I could not have done otherwise. I have done nothing unjust. But now I must flee, and leave the country. The one who brings you this note will tell you everything. I wanted to say goodbye to you. They won’t allow it. They say I would be arrested before I could. I am so unhappy that I have no will left. I am going to cross the border, but I will stay very close, until you have written to me; the one who delivers my letter will bring me back your reply. Tell me what I should do. Whatever you tell me, I will do it. Do you want me to come back? Tell me to come back! I cannot bear the thought of leaving you alone. How will you manage? Forgive me! Forgive me! I love you and I embrace you…”

--- Let us hurry, monsieur; otherwise it will be too late, said Lorchen’s good friend, pushing the door ajar.

Christophe signed hastily and gave the letter to Lorchen:

--- You will deliver it yourself?

--- I’m going now, she said.

She was already ready to leave.

--- Tomorrow, she continued, I will bring you the reply: you will wait for me at Leiden --- (the first station past the German border) --- on the station platform.

(The curious girl had read Christophe’s letter over his shoulder as he wrote.)

--- You will tell me everything, won’t you --- how she took the blow, and everything she said? You won’t hide anything from me? said Christophe, pleading.

--- I will tell you everything.

They were no longer as free to speak: in the doorway, the man was watching them.

--- And then, monsieur Christophe, said Lorchen, I will go and see her sometimes, and send you news of her: have no worry.

She gave him a firm handshake, like a man.

--- Let’s go! said the peasant.

--- Let’s go! said Christophe.

The three of them went out. On the road they parted ways. Lorchen went in one direction, and Christophe with his guide in the other. They did not speak. The crescent moon, wrapped in mist, was disappearing behind the woods. A very pale light floated over the fields. In the hollows, fog had risen, thick and white as milk. The shivering trees bathed in the damp air. --- Barely a few minutes after leaving the village, the peasant suddenly drew back and signaled Christophe to stop. They listened. On the road ahead of them came the measured tread of a troop of soldiers. The peasant climbed over the hedge and crossed into the fields. Christophe did the same. They moved away across the ploughed earth. They heard the soldiers pass along the road. In the darkness the peasant shook his fist at them. Christophe felt his heart constrict, like a hunted animal hearing the pack go by. They set off again, avoiding villages and isolated farms where the barking of dogs would have announced them to the whole countryside. On the far side of a wooded hill, they glimpsed in the distance the red lights of the railway line. Using these beacons to orient themselves, they decided to make for the nearest station. It was not easy. As they descended into the valley, they sank deeper into the fog. They had to jump across two or three small streams. They then found themselves in vast fields of beets and ploughed earth; they thought they would never get out. The plain was uneven: a succession of swells and hollows where one risked falling at every step. Finally, after wandering at random, swallowed by the fog, they suddenly spotted, a few yards away, the signal lamps of the railway line on the crest of an embankment. They climbed the slope. At the risk of being caught, they followed along the rails until they were about a hundred meters from the station, where they rejoined the road. They arrived at the station twenty minutes before the train was due. Despite Lorchen’s instructions, the peasant left Christophe: he was anxious to get back and see what had been done with the others and with his property.

Christophe bought a ticket to Leiden and waited alone in the deserted third-class waiting room. A railway employee who was dozing on a bench came to look at Christophe’s ticket and open the door for him when the train arrived. No one in the carriage. Through the train, everything slept. Everything slept in the fields. Christophe alone could not sleep, despite his exhaustion. As the heavy iron wheels brought him closer to the border, he felt a trembling, desperate desire to be beyond reach. In an hour he would be free. But until then, a single word was enough for him to be arrested… Arrested! At the thought, his whole being recoiled. To be smothered by that hateful force!… He could barely breathe. His mother, his country that he was leaving, had vanished from his mind. In the selfishness of his threatened freedom, he thought only of that freedom, of his life that he wanted to save. At whatever cost! Yes, even at the cost of a crime… He reproached himself bitterly for having taken this train instead of continuing on foot to the border. He had wanted to gain a few hours. Fine gain! He was walking straight into the wolf’s mouth. They were surely waiting for him at the border station; orders must have been given; he would be arrested… He thought for a moment of jumping from the moving train before the station; he even opened the carriage door; but it was already too late: they were pulling in. The train stopped. Five minutes. An eternity. Christophe, pressed back into the corner of his compartment, shielded behind the curtain, anxiously watched the platform, where a gendarme stood motionless. The stationmaster came out of his office, a telegram in hand, and walked rapidly toward the gendarme. Christophe did not doubt for a moment that it concerned him. He searched for a weapon. Nothing but a sturdy two-bladed penknife. He opened it in his pocket. A railway employee with a lantern attached to his chest had crossed paths with the stationmaster and was running along the length of the train. Christophe watched him coming. His fist clenched in his pocket around the knife handle, he thought:

--- I am lost!

He was in such a state of agitation that he would have been capable of plunging his knife into the man’s chest had the man had the ill-fated idea of coming straight to him and opening his compartment. But the employee stopped at the next carriage to check the ticket of a passenger who had just boarded. The train started moving again. Christophe suppressed the pounding of his heart. He did not stir. He barely dared tell himself he was saved. He would not tell himself so until the border was crossed… Day was beginning to break. The silhouettes of trees emerged from the night. A carriage passed on the road like a ghostly shadow, with a jingling of bells and one blinking eye… His face pressed against the glass, Christophe strained to see the post bearing the imperial coat of arms that marked the limits of his servitude. He was still looking for it in the growing light when the train whistled to announce its arrival at the first Belgian station.

He rose, he flung open the carriage door wide, he drank in the icy air. Free! All his life before him! Joy of living!… --- And at once there fell upon him, all at once, all the sadness of what he was leaving behind, all the sadness of what he was going to find; and the exhaustion of that night of emotions struck him down. He sank onto the bench. Barely a minute separated him from the station. When, a minute later, a railway employee opened the carriage door, he found Christophe asleep. Shaken by the arm, Christophe woke, dazed, thinking he had slept an hour; he climbed heavily down, dragged himself to the customs office; and, definitively admitted onto foreign soil, with nothing left to defend against, he lay full length on a bench in the waiting room and let himself fall into sleep like a deadweight.

He woke around noon. Lorchen could hardly come before two or three o’clock. While waiting for the trains to arrive, he walked back and forth on the platform of the little station. He went straight on into the meadows. It was a grey and joyless day that smelled of approaching winter. The light was drowsy. Only the plaintive whistle of a train maneuvering broke the dismal silence. Christophe stopped a few steps from the border, in the deserted countryside. Before him a tiny pond, a puddle of very clear water, in which the melancholy sky was reflected. It was enclosed by a fence and bordered by two trees. On the right, a poplar with a bare crown, trembling. Behind it, a large walnut tree with black and naked branches, like a monstrous sea creature. Clusters of crows swayed heavily upon it. The last bloodless leaves detached themselves of their own accord and fell one by one onto the still water…

It seemed to him that he had already seen this: these two trees, this pond… --- And suddenly he had one of those moments of vertigo that open up here and there in the flat plain of life. A breach in Time. One no longer knows where one is, who one is, in what century one lives, for how many centuries one has been like this. Christophe had the feeling that all this had already been, that what was, now, was not now, but in some other time. He was no longer himself. He saw himself from outside, from very far away, like another who had already stood here, in this place. He heard within himself a hive of unknown memories and beings; his arteries hummed:

Thus… Thus… Thus…

The rumbling of the centuries passed through him…

Many other Kraffts before him had undergone the trials he was undergoing today and had tasted the distress of that final hour on native soil. A race forever wandering, banished from everywhere by its independence and its restlessness. A race forever in the grip of an inner demon that would not allow it to settle anywhere. A race bound nonetheless to the soil from which it was being torn, unable to stop loving it.

Christophe was passing in his turn through the same painful stages; and his steps were finding on the road the traces left by those who had gone before him. He looked, eyes full of tears, as the land of his homeland disappeared into the mist --- the land to which he must say farewell. --- Had he not ardently desired to leave it? --- Yes; but now that he was truly leaving, he felt gripped by anguish. Only an animal heart can part without emotion from the maternal earth. Happy or unhappy, one has lived with it; it was mother and companion: one has slept in it, one has slept upon it, one is soaked through with it; it holds in its breast the treasury of our dreams, all our past life, and the sacred dust of those we have loved. Christophe saw again the sequence of his days, and the dear images he was leaving behind on this earth, or beneath it. His sufferings were no less dear to him than his joys. Minna, Sabine, Ada, his grandfather, Uncle Gottfried, old Schulz --- all reappeared before his eyes in the space of a few minutes. He could not tear himself from his dead --- (for he counted Ada among the dead as well). --- The thought of his mother, whom he was leaving, the only living person of all those he loved, amid those phantoms, was intolerable to him. He came close to crossing back over the border, so cowardly did he find himself for having sought to flee. He was resolved, if the reply that Lorchen was to bring him from his mother betrayed too great a suffering, to return whatever the cost. But if he received nothing? If Lorchen had been unable to reach Louisa, or to bring back a reply? Well then, he would return.

He went back to the station. After a bleak wait, the train finally appeared. Christophe was watching at a window for Lorchen’s bold face: for he was certain she would keep her promise; but she did not appear. He ran, anxious, from one compartment to the next, telling himself that if she had been on the train she would have been among the first to get off. As he ran into the stream of passengers coming in the opposite direction, he noticed a face that did not seem entirely unknown. It was a girl of thirteen or fourteen, chubby, stout, and red as an apple, with a broad little upturned nose, a wide mouth, and a thick braid wound around her head. Looking at her more closely, he saw that she held in her hand an old suitcase that looked like his. She was watching him too, sideways, like a sparrow; and when she saw that he was looking at her, she took a few steps toward him; but she stopped in front of Christophe and stared at him with her little mouse eyes, without saying a word. Christophe recognized her: she was a little cowherd from Lorchen’s farm. Pointing to the suitcase, he said:

--- That’s mine, isn’t it?

The girl didn’t move, and replied with a vacant look:

--- Depends. Where do you come from, first?

--- From Buir.

--- And who’s sending it to you?

--- Lorchen. Come on, give it here.

The girl held out the suitcase:

--- Here it is!

And she added:

--- Oh! I recognized you right away!

--- So, what were you waiting for?

--- I was waiting for you to tell me it was you.

--- And Lorchen? asked Christophe. Why didn’t she come?

The little girl didn’t answer. Christophe understood that she didn’t want to say anything in the middle of the crowd. They had to go first to have their luggage inspected. When that was done, Christophe led the child to the far end of the platform:

--- The police came, the girl began, now very talkative. They arrived almost immediately after you left. They went into the houses, they questioned everyone, they arrested big Sami, and Christian, and old Kaspar. And also Mélanie and Gertrude, even though they were screaming that they hadn’t done anything; and they were crying; and Gertrude scratched the gendarmes. People kept telling them it was you who had done everything.

--- What do you mean, me! exclaimed Christophe.

--- Well, yes, said the little girl calmly, that didn’t matter, did it, since you’d already gone? So they looked for you everywhere, and they sent people after you in every direction.

--- And Lorchen?

--- Lorchen wasn’t there. She came back later, after she’d been into town.

--- Did she see my mother?

--- Yes. Here’s the letter. She wanted to come herself; but they arrested her too.

--- Then how were you able to?

--- Here’s what happened: she came back to the village without the police seeing her, and she was about to leave again. But Irmina, Gertrude’s sister, denounced her. They came to take her. So when she saw the gendarmes coming, she went up to her room and called down to them that she’d be right down, that she was getting dressed. I was in the vineyard behind the house; she called to me softly through the window: “Lydia! Lydia!” I came over; she handed me your bag and the letter that your mother had given her; and she told me where I’d find you; she told me to run and not let myself be caught. I ran, and here I am.

--- Did she say anything else?

--- Yes. She told me to give you this kerchief as well, to show you I came from her.

Christophe recognized the white kerchief with red polka dots and embroidered flowers that Lorchen had tied around her head when she left him the evening before. The naïve implausibility of the pretext she had used to send him this token of her love did not make him smile.

--- Now, said the little girl, there’s the other train heading back. I have to get home. Good night.

--- Wait a moment, said Christophe. And the money to get here --- how did you manage?

--- Lorchen gave it to me.

--- Take this anyway, said Christophe, pressing a few coins into her hand.

He held back the little girl’s arm as she tried to run off.

--- And also,… he said.

He leaned down and kissed her on both cheeks. The child made a show of protesting.

--- Don’t fight it, said Christophe, laughing. It isn’t for you.

--- Oh, I know, said the girl with a smirk, it’s for Lorchen.

It was not only Lorchen that Christophe kissed on the plump cheeks of the little cowherd: it was all of his Germany.

The child slipped away and ran toward the departing train. She stood at the door and waved her handkerchief to him until she could no longer see him. He watched with his eyes the rustic messenger who had just brought him, for the last time, the breath of his country and of those he loved.

When she had disappeared, he found himself entirely alone, now truly a stranger on a foreign land. He held in his hand his mother’s letter and the love-token kerchief. He pressed the kerchief to his chest, then tried to open the letter; but his hand was trembling. What was he going to read? What grief would he find there? --- No, he could not bear the sorrowful reproach he already believed he could hear: he would turn back.

He finally unfolded the letter, and read:

“My poor child, don’t worry about me. I will be sensible. The good Lord has punished me. I should not have been selfish and kept you here. Go to Paris. Perhaps it will be better for you. Don’t trouble yourself about me. I know how to manage. The most important thing is that you be happy. I kiss you.

“Maman.

“Write to me, when you can.”

Christophe sat down on his bag and wept.

The station porter was calling passengers for Paris. The heavy train arrived with a great roar. Christophe wiped his tears, stood up, and said to himself:

--- It must be done.

He looked at the sky in the direction where Paris must lie. The sky, dark everywhere, was darkest there. It was like a gulf of shadow. Christophe felt his heart contract; but he repeated:

--- It must be done.

He got onto the train and, leaning from the window, kept his eyes on the threatening horizon:

--- O Paris! he thought, Paris! Come to my aid! Save me! Save my thoughts!

The murky fog thickened. Behind Christophe, above the country he was leaving, a small patch of sky, pale blue, no wider than two eyes --- like Sabine’s eyes --- smiled sadly amid the heavy folds of cloud, and went out. The train departed. The rain fell. Night fell.