EAN-C -IRISTOPHE THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES JEAN-CHRISTOPHE C/Comain C/Collatio 5 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH GILBERT CANNAN I\ HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1910, mil, 1013, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PRINTED IX THE UNITKD STATES OF AMF.RIOA PREFACE " JEAN- CHRISTOPHER is tJie history of the development of a musician of genius. The present volume compiles the first four volumes of the original French,, viz.: " L'Aube," " Le Matin." " L' Adolescent," and "La Revolt?," which are designated in the translation as Part I The Dawn; Part II Morning; Part III Youth; Part IV Revolt. Parts I and II carry Jean-Christophe from the moment of his birth to the day when, after his first encounter with Woman, at the age of fifteen, lie falls back upon a Puritan creed. Parts III and IV describe the succeeding five years of his life, when, at the age of twenty, his sincerity, integrity, and unswerving honesty have made ex- istence impossible for him in the little Rhine town of his birth. An act of open revolt against German militarism compels him to cross the frontier and take refuge in Paris, and the remainder of this vast book is devoted to the adventures of Jean-Christophe in France. His creator has said that he has always conceived and thought of the life of his hero and of the boolc as a rii cr. So far as the book has a plan, that is its plan. It has no literary artifice, no "plot." The words of it hang together in defiance of syntax, just as the thoughts of it follow one on the other in defiance of every system of philosophy. Every phase of the book is pregnant with the next phase. It is as direct and simple as life itself, for life is simple when the truth of it is known, as it was known instinctively by Jean-Christophe. The river is explored as though it were absolutely uncharted. Nothing that has ever been said or thought of life is accepted without being brought to the test of Jean-Christophe' s own life. What is not true for him does not exist; and, as there are vert/ few of the processes of human growth or decay which are no( analyzed, there is disclosed to the reader tlte most comprehensive survey of modern life which has appeared in literature in this century. To leave M. Holland's simile of the river, and to take another, i\\\' "'.I -- v - .~.i..- j; y its truth and its absolute integrity since Tolstoy I know of no writing so crystal clear "Jean-Christophe" is the first great book of the twentieth century, hi a sense it begins the twentieth century. It bridges transition, and shows us where we stand. It reveals the past and the present, and leaves the future open to us. . . . GILBERT CANNAN. CONTEXTS BOOK I PA(JK DAWN 3 MORNING 107 YOUTH '215 REVOLT 357 BOOK II THE MARKET PLACE 3 ANTOINETTE 11*7 THE HOUSE . 301 BOOK III LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP THE BURNING; BUSH !()"> THE NEW DAWN 34!) THE DAWN Dianzi, nell'alba che precede al giorno, Quando 1'anima tua dentro dormia. . . . Purgatorio, ix. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE Come, quanclo i vapori umidi c spessi A diradar cominciariHi, la spera Del sol dubilemento entra por essi. . . . Purgatorio, xvii. FROM behind the house rises the murmuring of the river. All day long the rain has been beating against the window- panes; a stream of water trickles down the window at the corner where it is broken. The yellowish light of the day dies down. The room is dim and dull. The new-born child stirs in his cradle. Although the old man left his sabots at the door when he entered, his foolsteps make the floor creak. The child begins to whine. The mother leans out of her bed to comfort it; and the grandfather gropes to light the lamp, so that the child shall not be frightened by the night when he awakes. The flame of the lamp lights up old Jean Michel's red face, with its rough white beard and morose expression and quick eyes. He goes near the cradle. His cloak smells wet, and as he walks he drags his large bine list slippers. Louisa signs to him not to go too near. She is fair, almost white; her features arc drawn; her gentle, stupid face is marked with red in patches; her lips are pale and swollen, and they are parted in a timid smile; her eyes devour the child and her eyes are blue and vague; the pupils are small, but there is an infinite tenderness in them. The child wakes and cries, and his eves are troubled. Oh! how terrible! The darkness, the sudden flash of the lamp, the hallucinations of a mind as yet hardly delaehed from chaos, the stifling, roaring night in which it is enveloped, the illimita- ble gloom from which, like blinding shafts of light, there emerge acute sensations, sorrows, phantoms those enormous 4 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE faces leaning over him, those eyes that pierce through him, penetrating, are beyond his comprehension! . . . He has not the strength to cry out; terror holds him motionless, with eyes and mouth wide open and he rattles in his throat. His large- head, that seems to have swollen up, is wrinkled with the grotesque and lamentable grimaces that he makes; the skin of his face and hands is brown and purple, and spotted with yellow. . . . "Dear Cod! " said the old man with conviction: "How uglv he is ! " He put the lamp down on the table. Louisa pouted like a scolded child. Jean Michel looked at her out of the corner of his eye and laughed. " You don't want me to say that he is beautiful ? You would not believe it. Come, it is not your fault. They are all like that." The child came out of the stupor and immobility into which he had been thrown by the light of the lamp and the eyes of the old man. He began to cry. Perhaps he instinctively felt in his mother's eyes a caress which made it possible for him to complain. She held out her arms for him and said: " Give him to me." The old man began, as usual, to air his theories: " You ought not to give way to children when they cry. You must just let them cry." But he came and took the child and grumbled : " I never saw one quite so ugly." Louisa took the child feverishly and pressed it to her bosom. She looked at it with a bashful and delighted smile. " Oh, my poor child ! " she said shamefacedly. " How ugly you are how ugly ! and how I love you ! " Jean Michel went hack to the fireside. He began to poke the fire in protest, but a smile gave the lie to the moroseness and solemnity of his expression. "Good girl!" he said. "Don't worry about it, lie has plenty of time to alter. And even so, what does it matter? Only one thing is asked of him: that he should grow into an honest man." The child was comforted bv contact with his mother's warm THE DAWN 5 "body. He could be heard sucking her milk and gurgling and snorting. Jean Michel turned in his chair, and said once more, with some emphasis : " There's nothing finer than an honest man." He was silent for a moment, pondering whether it would not be proper to elaborate this thought; but he found nothing more to say, and after a silence he said irritably: " Why isn't your husband here ? " " I think he is at the theater," said Louisa timidly. " There is a rehearsal." " The theater is closed. I passed it just now. One of his lies." " Xo. Don't be always blaming him. I must have mis- understood. He must have been kept for one of his lessons." " He ought to have come back," said the old man, not satis- fied. He stopped for a moment, and then asked, in a rather lower voice and with some shame : " Has he been . . . again ? " " Xo, father no, father," said Louisa hurriedly. The old man looked at her; she avoided his eyes. " It's not true. You're lying." She wept in silence. "Dear God!" said the old man, kicking at the fire with his foot. The poker fell with a clatter. The mother and the child trembled. "Father, please please!" said Louisa. "You will make him cry." The child hesitated for a second or two whether to cry or to go on with his meal ; but not being able to do both at once, he went on with the meal. Jean Michel continued in a lower tone, though with outbursts of anger : "What have I done to the good God to have this drunkard for my son? What is the use of my having lived as 1 have lived, and of having denied myself everything all my life! But you you can't you do anything to stop it? Heavers! That's what you ought to do. . . . You should keep him at home! . . ." Ixniisa wept still more. 6 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE "Don't scold me! . . .1 am unhappy enough as it is! I have done everything I could. If you knew how terrified I am when I am alone! Always I seem to hear his step on the stairs. Then I wait for the door to open, or I ask myself: '0 God! what will he look like?' ... It makes me 'ill to think of it!" She was shaken by her sobs. The old man grew anxious. He went to her and laid the disheveled bedclothes about her trembling shoulders and caressed her head with his hands. " Come, come, don't be afraid. I am here." She calmed herself for the child's sake, and tried to smile. " I was wrong to tell you that." The old man shook his head as he looked at her. " My poor child, it was not much of a present that I gave you." " It's my own fault," she said. " He ought not to have married me. He is sorry for what he did." "What, do you mean that he regrets? . . ." " You know. You were angry yourself because I became his wife." " We won't talk about that. It is true I was vexed. A young man like that I can say so without hurting you a young man whom I had carefully brought up, a distinguished musician, a real artist might have looked higher than you, who had nothing and were of a lower class, and not even of the same trade. For more than a hundred years no Kratl't has aver married a woman who was not a musician ! But, you know, I bear you no grudge, and am fond of you, and have been ever since i learned to know you. Besides, there's no going back on a choice once it's made; there's nothing left but to do ine's duty honestly." He went and sat down again, thought for a little, and then said, with the solemnity in which he invested all his aphorisms: " The first thing in life is to do one's duty." He waited for contradiction, and spat on the fire. Then, as neither mother nor child raised any objection., he was forgoing on, but relapsed into silence. THE DAWN 7 They said no more. Both Jean Michel, sitting by the fire- side, and Louisa, in her bed, dreamed sadly. The old man, in spite of what he had said, had bitter thoughts about his son's marriage, and Louisa was thinking of it also, and blaming herself, although she had nothing wherewith to reproach herself. She had been a servant when, to everybody's surprise, and her own especially, she married Melchior KrafTt, Jean Michel's son. The Kraffts were without fortune, but were considerable people in the little Uhine town in which the old man had settled down more than fifty years before. Both father and son were musicians, and known to all the musicians of the country from Cologne to Mannheim. Melchior played the violin at the Hof -Theater, and Jean Michel had formerly been director of the grand-ducal concerts. The old man had been profoundly humiliated by his son's marriage, for he had built great hopes upon Melchior; he had wished to make him the distinguished man which he had failed to become himself. This mad freak destroyed all his ambitions, lie had stormed at first, and show- ered curses upon Melchior and Louisa. But, being a good- hearted creature, he forgave his daughter-in-law when he learned to know her better; and he even came by a paternal affection for her, which showed itself for the most part in snubs. Xo one ever understood what it was that drove Melchior to such a marriage least of all Melchior. It was certainly not Louisa's beauty. She had no seductive quality: she was small, rather pale r and delicate, and she was a striking contrast to Melchior and Jean Michel, who were both big and broad, red- faced giants, heavy-handed, hearty eaters and drinkers, laugh- ter-loving and noisy. She seemed to be crushed by them : no one noticed her. and she seemed fo wish to escape even what little notice she attracted. Jf Melchior had been a kind-hearted man, it would have been credible that he should prefer Louisa's simple goodness to every other advantage; but a vainer man never was. It seemed incredible that a young man of his kidney, fairly good-looking, and quite; conscious of it, very foolish, but not without talent, and in a position to look for some well-dowered match, and capable even who knows? of turning the head of one of his pupils among the people of the town, should suddenly have chosen a girl of the people poor, 8 JEAX-ritKISTOPHE uneducated, without beauty, a girl who could in no way advance his career. But Melchior was one of those men who always do the oppo- site of what is expected of them and of what they expect of themselves. It is not that they are not warned a man who is warned is worth two nien, says the proverb. They profess never to be the dupe of anything, and that they steer their ship with unerring hand towards a definite point. But they reckon without themselves, for they do not know themselves. In one of those moments of forgetful ness which are habitual with them they let go the tiller, and, as is natural when tilings are left to themselves, they take a naughty pleasure in rounding on their masters. The ship which is released from its course at once strikes a rock, and Melchior, bent upon intrigue, married a cook. And yet he was neither drunk nor in a stupor on the clay when he bound himself to her for life, and he was not under any passionate impulse; far from it. But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat down beside her in the reeds without knowing why and had given her his hand. Hardly was he married than he was appalled by what he had done, and he did not hide what he felt from poor Louisa, who humbly asked his pardon. He was not a bad fellow, and he willingly granted her that; but immediately remorse would seize him again when he was with his friends or in the houses of his rich pupils, who were disdainful in their treatment of him, and no longer trembled at the touch of his hand when be corrected the position of their fingers on the keyboard. Then he would return gloomy of countenance, and Louisa, with a catch at her heart, would read in it with the first glance the customary reproach; or lie would stay out late at one inn or another, there to seek self-respect or kindliness from others. On such evenings he would return shouting with laughter, and this was more doleful for Louisa than the hidden reproach THE DAWtf 9 and gloomy rancor that prevailed on other days. She felt that she was to a certain extent responsible for the fits of mad- ness in which the small remnant of her husband's sense would disappear, together with the household money. Melchior sank lower and lower. At an age when he should have been engaged in unceasing toil to develop his mediocre talent, he just let things slide, and others took his place. But what did that matter to the unknown force which had thrown him in with the little flaxen-haired servant? He had played his part, and little Jean-Christophe had just set foot on this earth whither his destiny had thrust him. Night was fully come. Louisa's voice roused old Jean Michel from the torpor into which he had sunk by the fireside as he thought of the sorrows of the past and present. " It must be late, father," said the young woman affection- ately. " You ought to go home ; you have far to go." " I am waiting for Melchior," replied the old man. " Please, no. I would rather you did not stay." " Why ? " The old man raised his head and looked fiercely at her. She did not reply. He resumed. " You are afraid. You do not want me to meet him ? " "Yes, yes; it would only make things worse. You would make each other angrv, and I don't want that. Please, please go!" The old man sighed, rose, and said : " Well . . . I'll go." He went to her and brushed her forehead with his stiff beard, He asked if she wanted anything, put out the lamp, and went stumbling against the chairs in the darkness of the room. But lie had no sooner readied the staircase than he thought of his son returning drunk, and lie stopped at each step, imagining a thousand dangers that might arise if Melchior were allowed to return alone. . . . In the bed by his mother's side the child was stirring again. An unknown sorrow had arisen from the depths of his being. He stiffened himself against her. lie twisted his body, clenched 1 JE AX-CHRISTO 1M I K his fists, and knitted his brows. His suffering increased steadily, quietly, certain of its strength. He knew not what it was, nor whence it came. It appeared immense, infinite, and lie began to cry lamentably. His mother caressed him with her gentle hands. Already his suffering was less acute. But he went on weeping, for he felt it still near, still inside himself. A man who suffers can lessen his anguish by knowing whence it comes. By thought he can locate it in a certain portion of his body which can be cured, or, if necessary, torn away, lie fixes the bounds of it, and separates it from himself. A child has no such illusive resource. His first encounter with suffering 5s more tragic and more true. Like his own being, it seems infinite. He feels that it is seated in his bosom, housed in his heart, and is mistress of his flesh. And it is so. it will not leave his body until it has eaten it away. His mother hugs him to her, murmuring: " It is done it is done! Don't cry, my little Jesus, my little goldfish. . . ." But his intermittent outcry continues. It is as though this wretched, unformed, and unconscious mass had a presentiment of a whole life of sorrow awaiting him, and nothing can appease him. . . . The bells of St. Martin rang out in the night. Their voices are solemn and slow. In the damp air they come like footsteps on moss. The child became silent in the middle of a sol). The marvelous music, like a flood of milk, surged sweetly through him. The night was lit up ; the air was moist and tender. His sorrow disappeared, his heart began to laugh, and he slid into his dreams with a sigh of abandonment. The three bells went on softly ringing in the morrow's festi- val. Louisa also dreamed, as she listened to them, of her own past misery and of what woi>ld become in the future of the dear little child sleeping by her side. She had been for hours lying in he]- bed, weary and suffering. Her hands and her body were burning; the heavy eiderdown crushed her: she felt crushed and oppressed by the darkness; but she dared not move. She looked at the child, and the night did not prevent her read- ing his features, that looked so old. Sleep overcame her; fevered images passed through her brain. She thought she heard Melchior open the door, and her heart leaped. Occasion- THE DAWN 11 ally, the murmuring of the stream rose more loudly through the silence, like the roaring of some beast. The window once or twice gave a sound under the beating of the rain. The bells rang out more slowly, and then died down, and Louisa slept by the side of her child. All this time Jean Michel was waiting outside the house, dripping with rain, his beard wet with the mist. He was waiting for the return of his wivtihed son : for his mind, never ceasing, had insisted on telling him ail sorts of tragedies brought about by drunkenness; and although he did not believe them, he could not have sle;>t a wink if he had gone away without having seen his son return. The sound of the bells made him melancholy, for he remembered all his shattered hopes. He thought of what he was doing at such an hour in the street, and for very shame he wept. The vast tide of the days moves slowly. Day and night come up and go down with unfailing regularity, like the ebb and flow of an infinite ocean. Weeks and months go by, and then begin again, and the succession of days is like one day. The day is immense, inscrutable, marking the even beat of light and darkness, and the beat of the life of the torpid crea- ture dreaming in the depths of his cradle his imperious needs, sorrowful or glad so regular that the night and the day which bring them seem by them to be brought about. The pendulum of life moves heavily, ; id in its slow beat the whole creature seems to be absorbed. The rest is no more than dreams, snatches of dreams, formless and swarming, and dust of atoms dancing aimlessly, a dizzy whirl passing, and bringing laughter or horror. Outcry, moving shadows, grin- ning shapes, sorrows, terrors, laughter, dreams, dreams. . . . Ali is a dream, both day and night. . . . And in such chaos the light of friendly eyes that smile upon him, tlie Hood of jry that surges through his body from his mother's body, from her breasts filled with milk the force that is in him. the immense, unconscious force gathering in him. the turbulent ocean roaring in the narrow prison of the child's body. For eyes that could see into it there would be revealed whole worlds half buried 12 JEAtf-CHRISTOPHE in the darkness, nebulas taking shape, a universe in the making. His being is limitless. He is all that there is. ... Months pass. . . . Islands of memory begin to rise above the river of his life. At first they are little uncharted islands, rocks just pepping above the surface of the waters. Round about them and behind in the twilight of the dawn stretches the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands, touched to gold by the sun. So from the abyss of the soul there emerge shapes definite, and scenes of a strange clarity. In the boundless day which dawns once more, ever the same, with its great monotonous beat, there begins to show forth the round of days, hand in hand, and some of their forms arc smiling, others sad. But ever the links of the chain are broken, and memories are linked to- gether above weeks and months. . . . The Eiver . . . the Bells ... as long as he can remember far back in the abysses of time, at every hour of his life always their voices, familiar and resonant, have rung out. . . . Night half asleep a pale light made white the win- dow. . . . The river murmurs. Through the silence its voice rises omnipotent; it reigns over all creatures. Sometimes it caresses their sleep, and seems almost itself to die away in thr roaring of its torrent. Sometimes it grows angry, and howls like a furious beast about to bite. The clamor ceases. Xow there is a murmuring of infinite tenderness, silvery sounds like clear little bells, like the laughter of children, or soft singing voices, or dancing music a great mother voice that never, never goes to sleep ! It rocks the child, as it has rocked through the ages, from birth to death, the generations that were before him; it fills all his thoughts, and lives in all his dreams, wraps him round with the cloak of its fluid harmonies, which still will be about him when he lies in the little cemetery that sleeps by the water's edge, washed by the Ehine. . . . The bells. ... It is dawn! They answer e"ach other's call, sad, melancholy, friendly, gentle. At the sound of their slow voices there rise in him hosts of dreams dreams of the past, desires, hopes, regrets for creatures who are gone, unknown to the child, although lie had his being in them, and they live again in him. Ages of memory ring out in that THE DAWN" 12 music. So much mourning, so many festival? ! And from the depths of the room it is as though, when they are heard, there passed lovely waves of sound through the soft air, free winging birds, and the moist soughing of the wind. Through the window smiles a patch of blue sky; a sunbeam slips through the curtains to the bed. The little world known to the eyes of the child, all that he can see from his bed every morning a* lie awakes, all that with so much effort he is beginning t<> recognize and classify, so that he may be master of it his kingdom is lit up. There is the table where people eat, the cupboard where he hides to play, the tiled floor along which he crawls, and the wall-paper which in its antic shapes holds for him so many humorous or terrifying stories, and the clock which chatters and stammers so many words which he alone can understand. How many things there are in this room ! He does not know them all. Every day he sets out on a voyage of exploration in this universe which is his. Everything is his. Nothing is immaterial ; everything has its worth, man or fly. Everything lives the cat, the fire, the table, the grains of dust which dance in a sunbeam. The room is a country, a day is a lifetime. How is a creature to know himself in the midst of these vast spaces? The world is so large! A creature is lost in it. And the faces, the actions, the movement, the noise, which make round about him an unending turmoil! . . . He is weary; his eyes close; he goes to sleep. That sweet deep sleep that overcomes him suddenly at any time, and wherever he may be on his mother's lap, or under the table, where he loves to hide! ... It is good. All is good. . . . These first days come buzzing up in his mind like a field of corn or a wood stirred by the wind, and cast in shadow by the great fleeting clouds. . . . The shadows pass; the sun penetrates the forest. Jean- Christophe begins to find his wav through the labvrinth of the day. It is morning. His parents are asleep. He iV in his little bed, lying on his back. He looks at the rays of light dancing on the ceiling. There is infinite amusement in it. Xow lie laughs out loud with one of thos:> jollv children's laughs \vhich 14 JEAX-CHRISTOPEE stir the hearts of those that hear them. His mother leans out of her bed towards him, and says: "What is it, then, little mad thing?" Then lie laughs again, and perhaps he makes an effort to laugh because he has an audience. His mamma looks severe, and lays a linger on her lips to warn him lest he should wake his father: but, her weary eyes smile in spite of herself. They whisper together. Then there is a furious growl from his father. Both tremble. His mother hastily turns her back on him, like a naughty little girl : she pretends to be asleep. Jean-Christophe buries himself in his bed, and holds his breath. . . . Dead silence. After some time the little face hidden under the clothes comes to the surface again. On the roof the weathercock creaks. The rain-pipe gurgles; the Angelus sounds. When the wind conies from the east, the distant bells of the villages on the other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows foregathered in the ivy-clad wall make a deafening noise, from which three or four voices, always the same, ring out more shrilly than the others, just as in the games of a band of children. A pigeon coos at the top of a chimney. The child abandons himself to the lullaby of these sounds, lie bums to himself softly, then a little more loudly, then quite loudly, then very loudly, until once more his father cries out in exasperation: "That little donkey never will be quiet! Wait a little, and I'll pull your ears! " Then Jean-Christophe buries himself in the bedclothes again, and does not know whether to laugh or cry. Tie is terri- iied and humiliated; and at the same time the idea of the donkey with which his father has compared him makes him burst out laughing. From' the depths of his bed he imitates its braying. This time he is whipped. lie sheds every tear that is in him. What has he done? He wanted so much to laugh and to get up! And he is forbidden to budge. How do people sleep forever? When will they get up? . . . One day he could not contain himself. He heard a cat and a dog and something queer in the street. He slipped out of bed. and, creeping awkwardly with his bare feet on the tiles, he tried to go down the stairs to see what it was: but the door was shut. To open it, he. climbed on to ;i chair; the whole thing collapsed, and he hurt himself and howled. And once more THE DAWN" 15 at the top of the stairs he was whipped. He is always being whipped ! . . . He is in church with his grandfather. He is bored. He is not very comfortable. He is forbidden to stir, and all the people are saying all together words that he does not under- stand. They all look solemn and gloomy. It is not their usual way of looking. He looks at them, half frightened. Old I^ena, their neighbor, who is sitting next to him, looks very cross; there are moments when he does not recognize even his grand- father. He is afraid a little. Then he grows used to it, and tries to find relief from boredom by every means at his disposal. He balances on one leg, twists his neck to look at the ceiling, makes faces, pulls his grandfather's coat, investigates the straws in his chair, tries to make a hole in them with his finger, listens to the singing of birds, and yawns so that he is like to dislocate his jaw. Suddenly there is a deluge of sound : the organ is played. A thrill goes down his spine. He turns and stands with his chin resting on the back of his chair, and he looks very wise. He does not understand this noise; he does not know the meaning of it; it is dazzling, bewildering, and he can hear nothing clearly. But it is good. It is as- though lie were no longer sitting there on an uncomfortable chair in a tiresome old house. He is suspended in mid-air, like a bird: and when the flood of sound rushes from one end of the church to the other, filling the arc-lies, reverberating from wall to wall, he is carried with it, flying and skimming hither and thither, with nothing to do but to abandon himself to it. He is free: he is happy. The sun shines. . . . He falls asleep. His grandfather is displeased with him. He behaves ill at Mass. He is at home, sitting on the ground, with his feet in his hands. lie has just decided that the door-mat is a boat, and the tiled floor a river. He all but drowned in stepping off the carpet. He is surprised and a little put out that the others pay no attention to the matter as he does when he goes into the vooni. He seizes his mother bv the skirts. " You pee, 30 JEAN-CHKISTOPHE it is water! You must go across by the bridge." (The bridge is a series of holes between the red tiles.) His mother crosses without even listening to him. lie is vexed, as a dramatic author is vexed when he sees his audience talking during his great work. Next moment he thinks no more of it. The tiled floor is no longer the sea. lie is lying down on it, stretched full-length, with his chin on the tiles, humming music of his own com- position, and gravely sucking his thumb and dribbling, lie is lost in contemplation of a crack between the tiles. The lines of the tiles grimace like faces. The imperceptible hole grows larger, and becomes a valley ; there are mountains about it. A centipede moves: it is as large as an elephant. Thunder might crash, the child would not hear it. Xo one bothers about him, and he has no need of any one. He can even do without door-mat boats, and caverns in the tiled floor, with their fantastic fauna. His body is enough. What a source of entertainment! He spends hours in looking at his nails and shouting with laughter. They have all different faces, and are like people that he knows. And the rest of his body ! . . . He goes on with the inspection of all that he has. How many surprising things ! There are so many marvels. He is absorbed in looking at them. But he was very roughly picked up when they caught him at it. Sometimes he takes advantage of his mother's back being turned, to escape from the house. At first thev used to run after him and bring him back. Then they got used to letting him go alone, only so he did not go too far away. The house is at the end of the town; the country begins almost at once. As long as he is within sight of the windows he goes without stopping, very deliberately, and now and then hopping on one foot. But as soon as he has passed the corner of the road, and the brushwood hides him from view, lie changes abruptly. He stops there, with bis finger in his mouth, to find out what story he shall tell himself that dav: for he is full of stones. True, they are all very much like each other, and everv one of them could be told in a few lines. He chooses. Generally THE DAWN 1 17 ho takes up the same story, sometimes from the point where it left off, sometimes from the beginning, with variations. But any trifle a word heard by chance is enough to set his mind off on another direction. Chance was fruitful of resources. It is impossible to imagine what can be made of a simple piece of wood, a broken bough found alongside a hedge. (You break them off when you do not find them.) Jt was a magic wand. If it were long and thin, it became a lance, or perhaps a sword; to brandish it aloft was enough to cause armies to spring from the earth. Jean-Christophe was their general, marching in front of them, setting them an example, and leading them to the assault of a hillock. If the branch were flexible, it changed into a whip. Jean-Christophe mounted on horseback and leaped precipices. Sometimes his mount would slip, and the horseman would find himself at the bottom of the ditch, sorrily looking at his dirty hands and barked knees. If the wand were lithe, then Jean- Christophe would make himself the conductor of an orchestra: he would be both conductor and orchestra ; he conducted and he sang; and then he would salute the bushes, with their little green heads stirring in the wind. He was also a magician. He walked with great strides through the fields, looking at the sky and waving his arms. He commanded the clouds. He wished them to go to the right, but they went to the left. Then he would abuse them, and repeat his command. He would watch them out of the corner of his eye, and his heart would beat as he looked to see if there were not at least a little one which would obey him. But they went on calmly moving to the left. Then he would stamp his foot, and threaten them with his stick, and angrily order them to go to the left; and this time, in truth, they obeyed him. He was happy and proud of his power. He would touch the flowers and bid them change into golden carriages, as he had been told they did in the stories: and, although it never happened, he was quite convinced that it would happen if only lie had patience. He would look for a grasshopper to turn into a hare; he would gently lay his stick on its back, and speak a rune. The insect would escape: he would bar its way. A few moments later he would be lying on his belly near to it, 1R JEAF-CHRISTOPHE looking at it. Then ho would have forgotten that he was a magician, and just amuse himself with turning the poor beast on its back, while ho laughed aloud at its contortions. It occurred to him also to tie a piece of string to his magic wand, and gravely cast it into the river, and wait for a fish to come and bite. He knew perfectly well that fish do not usually bite at a piece of string without bait or hook; but he thought that for once in a way, and for him. they might make an exception to their rule; and in his inexhaustible confidence;, ho carried it so far as to fish in the street with a whip through the grating of a sewer. He, would draw up the whip from time to time excitedly, pretending that the cord of it was more heavv, and that he had caught a treasure, as in a story that his grand- father had told him. . . . And always in the middle of all these games there used to occur to him moments of strange dreaming and complete for- gctfulness. Everything about him would then be blotted out; he would not know what he was doing, and was not even con- scious of himself. These attacks would take him unawares. Sometimes as he walked or went upstairs a void would suddenly open before him. He would seem then to have lost all thought. But when he came 'back to himself, he was shocked and be- wildered to find himself in the same place on the dark staircase. It was as though he had lived through a whole lifetime in the space of a few steps. His grandfather used often to take him with him on his evening walk. The little boy used to trot by his side and give him his hand. They used to go by the roads, across plowed fields, which smelled strong and good. The grasshoppers chirped. Enormous crows poised along the road used to watch them approach from afar, and then fly away heavily as they came up with them. His grandfather would cough. Jean-Christophe knew quite well what that meant. The old man was burning with the, desire to tell a story; but he wanted it to appear that the child had asked him for one. Jean-Christophe did not fail him; they understood each other. The old man had a tremendous affection for his grandson, and it was a great joy to find in him a willing audience. He loved to tell of episodes in his THE DAWN 19 own life, or stories of great men, ancient and modern. His voice would then become emphatic and filled with emotion, and would tremble with a childish joy, which he used to try to stifle. He seemed delighted to hear his own voice. Un- happily, words used to fail him when he opened his mouth to speak. He was used to such disappointment, for it always came upon him with his outbursts of eloquence. And as he used to forget it with each new attempt, he never succeeded in resign- ing himself to it. He used to talk of Kegulus, and Arminius, of the soldiers of Liit/ow, of Ku'rner, and of Frederic Stabs, who tried to kill the Emperor Napoleon. His face would glow as he told of incredible deeds of heroism. He used to pronounce historic words in such a solemn voice that it was impossible to hear them, and he used to try artfully to keep his hearer on tenter- hooks at the thrilling moments. He would stop, pretend to choke, and noisily blow his nose; and his heart would leap when the child asked, in a voice choking with impatience: " And then, grandfather ? " There came a day, when Jean-Christophe was a little older, when he perceived his grandfather's method; and then he wick- edly set himself to assume an air of indiil'erence to the rest of the story, and that hurt the poor old man. But for the moment Jean-Christophe is altogether held by the power of the story-teller. His blood leaped at the dramatic passages. He did not know what it was all about, neither where nor when these deeds were done, or whether his grandfather knew Ar- miuius, or whether Kegulus were not (Jod knows why! some one whom he had seen at church last Sunday. But his heart and the old man's heart swelled with joy and pride in the tale of heroic deeds, as though they themselves had done them ; for the old man and the child were both children. Jean-Christophe was less happy when his grandfather inter- polated in the pathetic passages one of those abstruse discourses so dear to him. There were moral thoughts generally traceable to some idea, honest enough, but a little trite, such as " Gentle- ness is better than violence." or " Honor is the dearest thing in life," or " It is better to be good than to be wicked " only they were much more involved. Jeaii-Christophe's grandfather 20 JEAX-CHEISTOPHE had no fear of the criticism of his youthful audience, and abandoned himself to his habitual emphatic manner; he was not afraid of repeating the same phrases, or of not finishing them, or even, if lie lost himself in his discourse, of saying anything that came into his head, to stop up the gaps in his thoughts; and he used to punctuate his words, in order to give them greater force, with inappropriate gestures. The boy used to listen with profound respect, and he thought his grandfather very eloquent, but a little tiresome. Both of them loved to return again and again to the fabulous legend of the Corsican conqueror who had taken Europe. Jean- Christophe's grandfather had known him. He had almost fought against him. But he was a man to admit the greatness of his adversaries : he had said so twenty times. He would have given one of his arms for such a man to have been born on this side of the Rhine. Fate had decreed otherwise; he admired him, and had fought against him that is, he had been on the point of fighting against him. But when Xapoleon had been no farther than ten leagues away, and they had marched out to meet him, a sudden panic had dispersed the little band in a forest, and every man had fled, crying, " We are betrayed ! " In vain, as the old man used to tell, in vain did he endeavor to rally the fugitives; he threw himself in front of them, threatening them and weeping : he had been swept away in the flood of them, and on the morrow had found himself at an extraordinary distance from the field of battle For so he called the place of the rout. But Jean-Christophe used impatiently to bring him back to the exploits of the hero, and he was delighted by his marvelous progress through the world. He saw him followed by innumerable men, giving vent to great cries of love, and at a wave of his hand hurling themselves in. swarms upon flying enemies they were always in flight. It was a fairy-tale. The old man added a little to it to fill out the story; he conquered Spain, and almost con- quered England, which lie could not abide. Old Krafft used to intersperse his enthusiastic narratives with indignant apostrophes addressed to Iris hero. The patriot awoke in him, more perhaps when he told of the Emperor's defeats than of the Battle of Jena. He would stop to shake his fist THE DAWN 21 at the river, and spit contemptuously, and mouth noble insults he did not stoop to less than that. He would call him " rascal," " wild beast," " immoral." And if such words were intended to restore to the boy's mind a sense of justice, it must be confessed that they failed in their object; for childish logic leaped to this conclusion: "If a great man like that had no morality, morality is not a great thing, and what matters most is to be a great man." But the old man was far from suspecting the thoughts which were running along by his side. They would both be silent, pondering, each after his own fashion, these admirable stories except when the old man used to meet -one of his noble patrons taking a walk. Then he would stop, and bow very low, and breathe lavishly the formulae of obsequious politeness. The child used to blush for it with- out knowing why. But his grandfather at heart had a vast respect for established power and persons who had " arrived " ; and possibly his great love for the heroes of whom he told was only because he saw in them persons who had arrived at a point higher than the others. When it was very hot, old Krafft used to sit under a tree, and was not long in dozing off. Then Jean-Christophe used to sit near him on a heap of loose stones or a milestone, or some high seat, uncomfortable and peculiar; and he used to wag his little legs, and hum to himself, and dream. Or some- times he used to lie on his back and watch the clouds go by ; they looked like oxen, and giants, and hats, and old ladies, and immense landscapes. He used to talk to them in a low voice, or be absorbed in a little cloud which a great one was on the point of devouring. He was afraid of those which were very black, almost blue, and of those which went very fast. It seemed to him that they played an enormous part in life, and he was surprised that neither his grandfather nor his mother paid any attention to them. They were terrible beings if they wished to do harm. Fortunately, they used to go by, kindly enough, a little grotesque, and they did not stop. The boy used in the end to turn giddy with watvhing them too long, and he used to fidget with his legs and arms, as though lie were on the point of falling from the sky. His eyelids then would wink, and sleep would overcome him. Si- 22 JEAtf-CHKISTOPHE lence. . . . The leaves murmur gently and tremble in the, sun; a faint mist passes through the air; the uncertain Hies hover, booming like an organ; the grasshoppers, drunk with the sum- mer, chirp eagerly and hurriedly; all is silent. . . . Under the vault of the trees the cry of the green woodpecker has magic sounds. Isir away on the plain a peasant's voice harangues his oxen; the shoes of a horse ring out on the white road. Jean- Christophe's eyes close. Near him an ant passes along a dead brand) across a furrow. He loses consciousness. . . . Ages have passed. He wakes. The ant has not yet crossed the twig. Sometimes the old man would sleep too long, and his face would grow rigid, and his long nose would grow longer, and his mouth stand open. Jean-Christophe used then to look at him uneasily, and in fear of seeing his head change gradually into some fantastic shape. He used to sing loudly, so as to wake him up, or tumble down noisily from his heap of stones. One day it occurred to him to throw a handful of pine-needles in his grandfather's face, and tell him that they had fallen from the tree. The old man believed him. and that made Jean-Christophe laugh. l>ut, unfortunately, he tried the [rick again, and just when he had raised his hand he saw his grand- father's eyes watching him. It was a terrible all'air. The old man was solemn, and allowed no liberty to be taken with the respect due to himself. They were estranged for more than a week. The worse the road was, the more beautiful it was to Jean- Christophe. Kvery stone had a meaning for him; he knew them all. The shape of a rut seemed to him to be a geographical accident almost of the same kind as the great mass of the Taunus. In his head he had the map of all the ditches and hillocks of the region extending two kilometers round about the house, and when he made any change in the fixed ordering of the furrows, he thought himself no less important than an engineer with a gang of navvies; and when with his heel he crushed the dried top of a clod of earth, and filled up the valley at the foot of it, it seemed to him that his dav had not been wasted. Sometimes they would meet a peasant in his cart on the highroad, and if the peasant knew Jean-Christophe's grand- THE DAWN" 23 father they would climb up by his side. That was a Paradise on earth. The horse went fast, and Jean-Christophe laughed with delight, except when they passed other people walking; then he would look serious and indifferent, like a person accus- tomed to drive in a carriage, but his heart was filled with pride. His grandfather and the man would talk without bothering about him. Hidden and crushed by their legs, hardly sitting, sometimes not sitting at all, he was perfectly happy. He talked aloud, without troubling about any answer to what he said. He watched the horse's ears moving. What strange creatures those ears were! They moved in every direction to right and left; they hitched forward, and fell to one side, and turned backwards in such a ridiculous way that he burst out laughing. He would pinch his grandfather to make him look at them ; but his grandfather was not interested in them. He would repulse Jean-Christophe, and tell him to be quiet. Jcan-Chris- tophe would ponder. He thought that when people grow up they are not surprised by anything, and that when they are strong they know everything; and he would try to be grown up himself, and to hide his curiosity, and appear to be in- different. He was silent then. The rolling of the carriage made him drows}'. The horse's little bells danced ding, ding: (long. ding. Music awoke in the air, and hovered about the silvery bells, like a swarm of bees. It beat gaily with the rhythm of the cart an endless source of song, and one song came on another's heels. To Jean-Christophe they were superb. There was one especially which he thought so beautiful that he tried to draw his grandfathers attention to it. He sang it aloud. They took no heed of him. He began it again in a higher key. then again shrilly, and then old Jean Michel said irritably: "Be quiet; you are deafening me with your trumpet-call!" That took away his breath. He blushed and was silent and mortified. He crushed with his contempt the two stockist! imbeciles who did not understand the sublimity of his song, which opened wide the heavens! He thought them very ugly, with their week-old beards, and they smelled very ill. He found consolation in watcliing the horse's shadow. That was an astonishing sight. The beast ran along with them 24 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE lying on its side. In the evening, when they returned, it covered a part of the Held. They came upon a rick, and the shadow's head would rise up and then return to its place when they had passed. Its snout was flattened out like a burst balloon; its ears were large, and pointed like candles. Was it really a shadow or a creature? Jean-Christophe would not have liked to encounter it alone. Jle would not have run after it as he did alter his grandfather's shadow, so as to walk on its head and trample it under foot. The shadows of the trees when the sun was low were also objects of meditation. They made barriers along the road, and looked like phantoms, melancholy and grotesque, saying, "Go no farther!" and the creaking axles and the horse's shoes repeated, " No farther ! " Jean-Christophe's grandfather and the driver never ceased their endless chatter. Sometimes they would raise their voices, especially when they talked of local affairs or things going wrong. The child would cease to dream, and look at them uneasily. It seemed to him that they were angrv with each other, and he was afraid that they would come to blows. However, on the contrary, they best understood each other in their common dis- likes. For the most part, thev were without hatred or the least passion: they talked of small matters loudly, just for the pleas- ure of talking, as is the joy of the people. P>ut Jean-Christophe, not understanding their conversation, only heard the loud tones of their voices and saw their agitated faces, and thought fear- fully: "How wicked he looks! Surely they hate each other! How he rolls his eyes, and how wide he opens his mouth! lie spat on mv nose in his fury. Lord, he will kill my grand- father ! . . ." The carriage stopped. The peasant said: "Here you are." The two deadly enemies shook hands. Jean-Christophe's grand- father got down first : the peasant handed him the little boy. The whip llicked the horse, the carriage rolled away, and there they were bv the little sunken road near the lihine. The sun dipped down below the fields. The path wound almost to the water's edge. The plentiful soft grass yielded under their feet, crackling. Alder-trees leaned over the river, almost half in the water. A cloud of gnats danced. A boat passed poiselessly, drawn on by the peaceful current, striding along. The water THE DAWN 25 sucked the branches of the willows with a little noise like lips. The light was soft and misty, the air fresh, the river silvery gray. They reached their home, and the crickets chirped, and on the threshold smiled his mother's dear face. . . . Oh, delightful memories, kindly visions, which will hum their melody in their tuneful flight through life! . . . Journeys in later life, great towns and moving seas, dream countries and loved faces, are not so exactly graven in the soul as these childish walks, or the corner of the garden seen every day through the window, through the steam and mist made by the child's mouth glued to it for want of other occupation. . . . Evening now, and the house is shut up. Home . . . the refuge from all terrifying things darkness, night, fear, things unknown. No enemy can pass the threshold. . . . The lire flares. A golden duck turns slowly on the spit; a delicious smell of fat and of crisping flesh scents the room. The joy of eating, incomparable delight, a religious enthusiasm, thrills of joy ! The body is too languid with the soft warmth, and the fatigues of the day, and the familiar voices. The act of digestion plunges it in ecstasy, and faces, shadows, the lamp- shade, the tongues of flame dancing with a shower of stars in the fireplace all take on a magical appearance of delight. Jean-Christophe lays his cheek on his plate, the better to enjoy all this happiness. . . . He is in his soft bed. How did he come there? He is overcome with weariness. The buzzing of the voices in the room and the visions of the day are intermingled in his mind. His father takes his violin; the shrill sweet sounds c-rv out complaining in the night. l>ut the crowning joy is when his mother comes and takes Jcan-Christophe's hands. He is drowsy. and, leaning over him, in a low voice she sings, as lie asks, an old song with words that have! no meaning. His father thinks such music stupid, but Joaii-Christophe never wearies of it. He holds his breath, and is between laughing and crying. His heart is intoxicated. He does not know where he is, and lie is overflowing with tenderness. He throws his little arms round his mother's neck, and hugs her with all his strength. She says, laughing : " You want to strangle me?'' 26 JEAX-CIIRISTOPHE He hugs her close. How he loves her ! How he loves every- thing! Everybody, everything! All is good, all is beauti- ful. . . . He sleeps. The erieket on the hearth cheeps. His grandfather's tales, the great heroes, float by in the happy night. . . . To be a hero like them ! . . . Yes, he will be that . . . he is that. . . . Ah, how good it is to live! What an abundance of strength, joy, pride, is in that little creature! What superfluous energy! His body and mind never cease to move; they are carried round and round breathlessly. Like a little salamander, he dances day and night in the flames. His is an unwearying enthusiasm finding its food in all things. A delicious dream, a bubbling well, a treasure of inexhaustible hope, a laugh, a song, unending drunkenness. Life does not hold him yet; always he escapes it. He swims in the infinite. How happy he is ! He is made to be happy ! There is nothing in him that does not believe in happiness, and does not cling to it with all his little strength and passion! . . . Life will soon see to it that he is brought to reason. II L' alba vinceva 1'ora mattutina C'lie fuggia 'nnan/.i, si die cli lontano Conobbi il Iremolar clella marina. . . . Purgatorio, i. THE Kraffts came originally from Antwerp. Old Jean Michel had left the country as a result of a boyish freak, a violent quarrel, such as he had often had. for he was devilish pug- nacious, and it had had an unfortunate ending. lie settled down, almost fifty years ago, in the little town of the prin- cipality, with its red-pointed roofs and shady gardens, lying on the slope of a gentle hill, mirrored in the pale green eyes of Vater 'llhcln. An excellent musician, he had readily gained appreciation in a country of musicians. He had taken root there by marrying, forty years ago, Clara Sartorius, daughter of the Prince's Kapellmeister, whose duties he took over. Clara, was a placid German with two passions cooking and music. THE DAWN 1 27 She had for her husband a veneration only equaled by that which she had for her father. Jean Michel no less admired his wife. They had lived together in perfect amity for fifteen years, and they had four children. Then Clara died, and Jean Michel bemoaned her loss, and then, five months later, married Ottilia Schiitz, a girl of twenty, with red cheeks, robust and smiling. After eight years of marriage she also died, but in that time she gave him seven children eleven children in all, of whom only one had survived. Although he loved them much, all these bereavements had not shaken his good-humor. The greatest blow had been the death of Ottilia, three years ago, which had come to him at an age when it is difficult to start life again and to make a new home. But after a moment's confusion old Jean Michel regained his equilibrium, which no misfortune seemed able to disturb. He was an affectionate man, but health was the strongest thing in him. He had a physical repugnance from sadness, and a need of gaiety, great gaiety, Flemish fashion an enormous and childish laugh. Whatever might be his grief, he did not drink one drop the less, nor miss one bite at table, and his band never had one day off. T T nder his direction the Court orchestra won a small celebrity in the Rhine country, where Jean Michel had become legendary by reason of his athletic stature and his outbursts of anger. He could not master them, in spite of all his efforts, for the violent man was at bottom timid and afraid of compromising himself, lie loved decorum and feared opinion. But his blood ran away with him. He used to sec red, and he used to be the victim of sudden fits of crazy impatience, not only at rehearsals, but at the concerts, where once in the Prince's presence he had hurled his baton and had stamped about like a man possessed, as he apostrophized one of the musicians in a furious and stuttering voice. The Prince was amused, but the artists in question were rancorous against him. In vain did Jean Michel, ashamed of his out- burst, try to pass it by immediately in exaggerated obsequious- ness. On the next occasion he would break out again, and as this extreme irritability increased with age, in the end it made his position very difficult. He felt it himself, and one day, when his outbursts had all but caused the whole orchestra to 38 JEAtf-CHRISTOPHE strike, he sent in his resignation, lie hoped (hat in considera- tion of his services they would make difficulties about accepting it, and would ask him to stay. There was nothing of the kind, and as he was too proud to go back on his oll'er, lie left, broken- hearted, and crying out upon the ingratitude of mankind. Since iliat time he had not known how to fill his days, lie was more than seventy, hut he was still vigorous, and he went on working and going up and down the town from morning to night, giving lessons, and entering into discussions, pro- nouncing perorations, and entering into everything. He was ingenious, and found all sorts of ways of keeping himself occu- pied. Jle began to repair musical instruments; he invented, experimented, and sometimes discovered improvements. He composed also, arid set store hy his compositions. He had once written a Misxa tfolcnnis, of which he used often to talk, and it was the glory of his family. It had cost him so much trouble that he had all but brought about a congestion of the mind in the writing of it. He tried to persuade himself that it was a work of genius, but he knew perfectly well with what emptiness of thought it had been written, and he dared not look again at the manuscript, because e\ery time he did so he recognized in the phrases that he had thought to be his own, rags taken from other authors, painfully pieced together haphazard. It was a great sorrow to him. He had ideas some- times which he thought admirable. Me would rim tremblingly to his table. Could he k"ep his inspiration this time? But hardly had he taken pen in hand than he found himself alone in silence, and all his efforts to call to lift! again the vanished voices ended only in bringing to his ears familiar melodies of Mendelssohn or Brahms. ''There arc." says George Sand, "unhappy geniuses who lack the power of expression, and carry down to their graves the unknown region of their thoughts, as has said a member of that great 1'amilv of illustrious mutes or stammerers Geoffrey Saint-llilaire." Old Jean Michel belonged to that family. He was no more successful in expressing himself in music than in words, and l,c always deceived himself. Fie would so much have loved to talk, to write, to be a great musician, an eloquent orator! Jt was his secret sore. He told THE DAWN" 29 no one of it, did not admit it to himself, tried not to think of it; but he did think of it, in spite of himself, and so there was the seed of death in his soul. Poor old man ! In nothing did he succeed in being absolutely himself. There were in him so many seeds of beauty and power, but they never put forth fruit; a profound and touching faith in the dignity of Art and the moral value of life, but it was nearly always translated in an emphatic and ridiculous fashion; so much noble pride, and in life an almost servile admiration of his superiors; so lofty a desire for independence, and, in fact, absolute docility; pretensions to strength of mind, and every conceivable superstition; a passion for heroism, real courage, and so much timidity ! a nature to stop by the way- side. Jean Michel had transferred all his ambitions to his son, and at first Melchior had promised to realize them. From childhood he had shown great musical gifts. lie learned with extraordinary facility, and quickly acquired as a violinist a virtuosity which for a long time made him the favorite, almost the idol, of the Court concerts. He played the piano and other instruments pleasantly. He was a fine talker, well, though a little heavily, built, and was of the type which passes in Ger- many for classic beauty; he had a large brow that expressed nothing, large regular features, and a curled beard a Jupiter of the banks of the Rhine. Old Jean Michel enjoyed his son's success; he was ecstatic over the virtuoso's lours de force, he who had never been able properly to play any instrument. In truth, Melchior would have had no difficulty in expressing what he thought. The trouble was that he did not think; and he did not even bother about it. He had the soul of a mediocre comedian who takes pains with the inflexions of his voice without caring about what they express, and, with anxious vanity, watches their effect on his audience. The odd thing was that, in spite of his constant anxiety about his stage pose, there was in him, as in Jean .Michel, in spite of his timid respect for social conventions, a curious, irregular, unexpected and chaotic quality, which made people say that the Kralfts were a bit craxy. It did not harm him 30 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE at first; it seemed as though these very eccentricities were the proof of the genius attributed to him; for it is understoorl among people of common sense that an artist has none. But it was not long before his extravagances were traced to their source usually the bottle. Nietzsche says that Bacchus is the God of Music, and Melchior's instinct was of the same opinion ; but in his case his god was very ungrateful to him ; far from giving him the ideas he lacked, he took away from him the few that he had. After his absurd marriage absurd in the eyes of the world, and therefore also in his own he gave himself up to it more and more. He neglected his playing so secure in his own superiority that very soon he lost it. Other virtuosi came to succeed him in public fa\or. That was bitter to him, but instead of rousing his energy, these rebuffs only dis- couraged him. He avenged himself by crying down his rivals with his pot-fellows. In his absurd conceit he counted on succeeding his father as musical director: another man was appointed. He thought himself persecuted, and took on the airs of a misunderstood genius. Thanks to the esteem in which old Krafft was held, he kept his place as a violin in the orchestra, but gradually he lost all his lessons in the town. And if this blow struck most at his vanity, it touched his purse even more. For several years the resources of his household had grown less and less, following on various reverses of fortune. After having known plenty, want came, and every day increased. Melchior refused to take notice of it; he did not spend one penny the less on his toilet or his pleasures. He was not a bad man, but a half-good man, which is perhaps worse weak, without spring, without moral strength, but for the rest, in his own opinion, a good father, a good son, a good husband, a good man and perhaps he was good, if to be so it is enough to possess an easy kindness, which is quickly touched, and that animal affection by which a man loves his kin as a part of himself. It cannot even be said that he was very egoistic; he had not personality enough for that. lie was nothing. They are a terrible thing in life, these people who are nothing. Like a dead weight thrown into the air, they fall, and must fall; and in their fall they drag with them everything that they have. THE DAWN 31 It was when the situation of his family had reached its most difficult point, that little Jean-Christophe began to understand what was going on about him. He was no longer the only child. Melchior gave his wife a child every year, without troubling to think what was to become of it later. Two had died young; two others were three and four years old. Melchior never bothered about them. Louisa, when she had to go out, left them with Jean-Christophe, now six years old. The charge cost Jean-Christophe something, for he had to sacrifice to his duty his splendid afternoons in the fields. But he was proud of being treated as a man, and gravely fulfilled his task. He amused the children as best he could by showing them his games, and he set himself to talk to them as he had heard his mother talking to the baby. Or he would carry them in his arms, one after another, as he had seen her do; he bent under their weight, and clenched his teeth, and with all his strength clutched his little brother to his breast, so as to prevent his falling. The children always wanted to be carried they were never tired of it ; and when Jean-Christophe could do no more, they wept without ceasing. They made him very un- happy, and he was often troubled about them. They were very dirty, and needed maternal attentions. Jean-Christophe did not know what to do. They took advantage of him. Some- times he wanted to slap them, but he thought, " They are little ; they do not know," and, magnanimously, he let them pinch him, and beat him, and tease him. Ernest used to howl for nothing; he used to stamp his feet and roll about in a passion; he was a nervous child, and Louisa had bidden Jean-Christophe not to oppose his whims. As for Rodolphe, he was as malicious as a monkey; he always took advantage of Jean-Christophe having Ernest in his arms, to play all sorts of silly pranks behind his back; he used to break toys, spill water, dirty his frock, and knock the plates over as he rummaged in the cup- board. And when Louisa returned, instead of praising Jean-Chris- tophe, she used to say to him, without scolding him, but with an injured air, as she saw the havoc: "My poor child, you are not very clever ! " 32 JEAN-CHI? 1STOPHE Jean-Christophe would be mortified, and his heart would grow big within him. Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know nothing about it it touched his vanity hut he was not an- noyed with her for doing it, so long as he did not know. Jean- Christophe had as yet no idea of the difficulties of. life; he knew no other limit to his will than the will of his parents, and that did not stand much in his way, for they let him do pretty much as he pleased. His one idea was to grow up, so as to be able to do as he liked. He had no conception of obstacles standing in the way at every turn, and he had never the least idea but that his parents were completely their own masters. It was a shock to his whole being when, for the first time, he perceived that among men there are those who command, and those who are commanded, and that his own people were not of the first class; it was the first crisis of his life. It happened one afternoon. His mother had dressed him in his cleanest clothes, old clothes given to her which Louisa's ingenuity and patience had turned to account. He went to find her, as they had agreed, at the house in which she was working. He was abashed at the idea of entering alone. A footman was swaggering in the porch ; he stopped the boy, and asked him patronizingly what he wanted. Jean-Christophe blushed, and murmured that he had come to see " Fran Krafft " as he had been told to sav. "Fran Kratft? What do you want witli Fran Krafft?" asked the footman, ironically emphasizing the word Fran. "Your mother? (jo down there. You will find Louisa in the kitchen at the end of the passage." He went, growing redder and redder. Me was ashamed to hear his mother called familiarly Lonixtt. He was humiliated; he would have liked to run away down to his dear river, and the shelter of the brushwood where he used to tell himself stories. In the kitchen he came upon a number of other servants, THE DAWN 33 who greeted him with noisy exclamations. At the hack, near the stove, his mother smiled at him with tender embarrassment. He ran to her, and clung to her skirts. She was wearing a white apron, and holding a wooden spoon. She made him more unhappy by trying to raise his chin so as to look in his face, and to make him hold out his hand to everybody there and say good-day to them. He would not; he turned to the wall and hid his face in his arms. Then gradually he gained courage, and peeped out of his hiding-place with merry bright eyes, which hid again every time any one looked at him. He stole looks at the people there. His mother looked busy and im- portant, and he did not know her like that; she went from one saucepan to another, tasting, giving advice, in a sure voice explaining recipes, and the cook of the house listened respect- fully. The boy's heart swelled with pride as he saw how much his mother was appreciated, and the great part that she played in this splendid room, adorned with magnificent objects of gold and silver. Suddenly conversation ceased. The door opened. A lady entered with a rustling of the stull's she was wearing. She cast a suspicious look about her. She was no longer young. and yet she was wearing a light dress with wide sleeves. She caught up her dress in her hand, so as not to brush against anything. It did not prevent her going to the stove and look- ing at the dishes, and even tasting them. When she raised her hand a little, her sleeve fell back, and her arm was bare to the elbow. Jean-Christophe thought this ugly and improper. How dryly and abruptly she spoke to Louisa! And how humbly Louisa replied! Jean-Christophe hated it. He hid away in his corner, so as not to be observed, but it was no use. The lady asked who the little boy might, be. Louisa fetched him and presented him; she held his hands to prevent his hiding his face. And, though he wanted to break away ami lire. Jean-Christophe felt instinctively that this time he must not resist. The lady looked at the boy's scared face, and at first she gave him a kindly, motherly smile. Hut then she resumed her patronizing air, and asked him about his behavior, and his piety, and put questions to him, to which he did not reply. She looked to see how his clothes fitted him,, and Louisa eagerly 34 JEAX-CIIKJSTOP11E declared that they were magnificent. She pulled down his waistcoat to remove Hie creases. Jean-Christophe wanted to crv, it fitted so tightly. lie did not understand why his mother was giving thanks. The lady took him by the hand and said that she would take him to her own children. Jean-Christophe cast a look of despair at his mother; hut she smiled at the mistress so eagerly that he saw that there was nothing to hope for from her, and he followed his guide like a sheep that is led to the slaughter. They came to a garden, where two cross-looking children, a boy and a girl, about the same age as Jean-Christophe, were apparently sulky with each other. Jean-Christophe's advent created a diversion. They came up to examine the new arrival. Jean-Christophe, left with the children by the lady, stood stock- still in a pathway, not daring to raise his eyes. The two others stood motionless a short distance away, and looked him up and down, nudged each other, and tittered. Finally, they made lip their minds. They asked him who he was, whence he came, and what his father did. Jean-Christophe, turned to stone, made no reply; he was terrified almost to the point of tears, especially of the little girl, who had fair hair in plaits, a short skirt, and bare legs. They began to play. Just as Jean-Christophe was beginning to be a little happier, the little boy stopped dead in front of him, and touching his coat, said: "Hullo! That's mine!" Jean-Christophe did not understand. Furious at this asser- tion that his coat belonged to some one else, he shook his head violently in denial. "I know it all right," said the boy. "It's my old blue waistcoat. There's a spot on it." And he put his finger on the spot. Then, going on with his inspection, he examined Jean-Christophe's feet, and asked what his mended-up shoes were made of. Jean-Christophe grew crim- son. The little girl pouted and whispered to her brother Jean-Christophe heard it that it was a little poor bov. Jean- Christophe resented the word. lie thought he would succeed in combating the insulting opinions, as he stammered in a THE DAWX 35 choking voice that he was the son of Melchior KrafFt. and that his mother was Louisa the cook. It seemed to him that this title was as good as any other, and he was right. But the two children, interested in the news, did not seem to esteem him any the more for it. On the contrary, they took on a patronizing tone. They asked him what he was going to be a cook or a coachman. Jean-Christophe revolted. He felt an iciness steal into his heart. Encouraged by his silence, the two rich children, who had conceived for the little poor boy one of those cruel and un- reasoning antipathies which children have, tried various amus- ing ways of tormenting him. The little girl especially was implacable. She .observed that Jean-Christophe could hardly run, because his clothes were so tight, and she conceived the subtle idea of making him jump. They made an obstacle of little seats, and insisted on Jean-Christophe clearing it. The wretched child dared not say what it was that prevented his jumping. He gathered himself together, hurled himself through the air, and measured his length on the ground. They roared with laughter at him. He had to try again. Tears in his eyes, he .made a desperate attempt, and this time succeeded in jumping. That did not satisfy his tormentors, who decided that the obstacle was not high enough, and they built it up until it became a regular break-neck alfair. Jean-Christophe tried to rebel, and declared that he would not jump. Then the little girl called him a coward, and said that he was afraid. Jean-Christophe could not stand that, and, knowing that he must fall, he jumped, and fell. His feet caught in the obstacle; the whole thing toppled over with him. lie grazed his hands and almost broke his head, and, as a crowning misfortune, his trousers tore at the knees and elsewhere. He was sick with shame; he heard the two children dancing with delight round him ; he suffered horribly. He felt that they despised and hated him. Why? Why? He would gladly have died ! There is no more cruel suffering than that of a child who discovers for the first time the wickedness of others: he believes then that he is persecuted by the whole world, and there is nothing to support him; there is nothing then nothing! . . . Jean-Chris- tophe tried to get up; the little boy pushed him down again; 30 JEAK-CHBISTOPHE the little girl kicked him. He tried again, and they both jumped on him, and sat on his hack and pressed his face down into the ground. Then rage seized him it was too much. His hands were bruised, his fine coat was torn a catastrophe for him! shame, pain, revolt against the injustice of it, so many misfortunes all at once, plunged him in blind fury, lie rose to his hands and knees, shook himself like a dog, and rolled his tormentors over ; and when they returned to the assault he hutted at them, head down, bowled over the little girl, and, with one blow of his fist, knocked the boy into the middle of a flower-bed. They howled. The children ran into the house with piercing cries. Doors slammed, and cries of anger were heard. The lady ran out as quickly as her long dress would let her. Jean- Christophe saw her coming, and made no attempt to escape. He was terrified at what he had done; it was a thing unheard of, a crime; but he regretted nothing. He waited. He was lost. So much the better! He was reduced to despair. The lady pounced on him. He felt her beat him. He heard her talking in a furious voice, a flood of words: but he could distinguish nothing. His little enemies had come back to see his shame, and screamed shrilly. There were servants a babel of voices. To complete his downfall, Louisa, who had been sum- moned, appeared, and, instead of defending him, she began to scold him -she, too, without knowing anything and bade him beg pardon. Ho refused angrily. She shook him, and dragged him by the hand to the lady and the children, and bade him go on his knees. But he stamped and roared, and bit his mother's hand. Finally, lie escaped among the servants, who laughed. He went away, his heart beating furiously, his face burning with anger and the slaps which he had received, lie tried not to think, and he hurried along because he did not want to cry in the street. f[e wanted to be at home, so as to he aide to find the comfort of tears. lie choked ; the blood heat in his head; he was at bursting-point. Finally, he arrived; he ran up the old black staircase to his usual nook in the bay of a window above the river; he hurled himself into it breathlessly, and then there came a flood THE DAWX 3? of tears. He did not know exactly why lie was crying, but he had to cry; and when the first Hood of them was done, he wept again because he wanted, with a sort of rage, to make himself suffer, as if he could in this way punish the others as well as himself. Then he thought that his father must be coming home, and that his mother would tell him everything, and that his own miseries were by no means at an end. He resolved on flight, no matter whither, never to return. Just as he was going downstairs, he bumped into his father, who was coming up. "What are you doing, boy? Where are you going?" asked Melchior. He did not reply. "You are up to some folly. What have you done?'' Jean-Christophe held his peace. " What have you done ? " repeated Melchior. " Will you answer ? " The boy began to cry and Melchior to shout, vying with each other until they heard Louisa hurriedly coming up the stairs. She arrived, still upset. She began with violent re- proach and further chastisement, in which Melchior joined as soon as he understood and probably before with blows that would have felled an ox. Both shouted ; the boy roared. They ended by angry argument. All the time that lie was beating his son, Melchior maintained that he was right, and that this was the sort of thing that one came by, by going out to service with people who thought they could do everything because they had money; and as she beat the child, Louisa shouted that her husband was a brute, that she would never let him touch the boy, and that he had really hurt him. Jean-Christophe was, in fact, bleeding a little from, the nose, but he hardly gave a thought to it, and he was not in the least thankful to his mother for stopping it with a wet cloth, since she went on scold- ing him. In the end they pushed him away in a dark closet, and shut him up without any supper. He heard them shouting at each other, and he did not know which of them he detested most. He thought it must be his mother, for he had never expected any such wickedness from her. All the misfortunes of the dav overwhelmed him: all that 38 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE he had suffered the injustice of the children, the injustice of the lady, the injustice of his parents, and this he felt like an open wound, without quite knowing why the degradation of his parents, of whom he was so proud, before these evil and contemptible people. Such cowardice, of which for the first time he had become vaguely conscious, seemed ignoble to him. Everything was upset for him his admiration for his own people, the religious respect with which they inspired him, his confidence in life, the simple need that he had of loving others and of being loved, his moral faith, blind but absolute. It was a complete cataclysm. He was crushed by brute force, without any means of defending himself or of ever again escap- ing. He choked. He thought himself on the point of death. All his body stiffened in desperate revolt. He beat with fists, feet, head, against the wall, howled, was seized with convul- sions, and fell to the floor, hurting himself against the furniture. His parents, running up, took him in their arms. They vied with each other now as to who should be the more tender with him. His mother undressed him, carried him to his bed, and sat by him and remained with him until he was calmer. But he did not yield one inch. He forgave her nothing, and pretended to be asleep to get rid of her. His mother seemed to him bad and cowardly. He had no suspicion of all the suffering that she had to go through in order to live and give a living to her family, and of what she had borne in taking sides against him. After he had exhausted to the last drop the incredible store of tears that is in the eyes of a child, he felt somewhat com- forted. He was tired and worn out, but his nerves were too much on stretch for him to sleep. The visions that had been with him floated before him again in his semi-torpor. Espe- cially he saw again the little girl with her bright eyes and her turned-up, disdainful little nose, her hair hanging down to her shoulders, her bare legs and her childish, affected way of talk- ing. He trembled, as it seemed to him that he could hear her voice. He remembered how stupid he had been with her, and he conceived a savage hatred for her. He did not pardon her for having brought him low, and was consumed with the desire to humiliate her and to make her weep. He sought means of THE DAWtf 39 doing this, but found none. There was no sign of her ever caring about him. But by way of consoling himself he sup- posed that everything was as he wished it to be. He supposed that he had become very powerful and famous, and decided that she was in love with him. Then he began to tell lu'mself one of those absurd stories which in the end he would regard as more real than reality. She was dying of love, but he spurned her. When he passed before her house she watched him pass, hiding behind the curtains, and he knew that she watched him, but he pretended to take no notice, and talked gaily. Even he left the country, and journeyed far to add to her anguish. lie did great things. Here he introduced into his narrative fragments chosen from his grandfather's heroic tales, and all this time she was falling ill of grief. Her mother, that proud dame, came to beg of him : " My poor child is dying. I beg you to come I " He went. She was in her bed. Her face was pale and sunken. She held out her arms to him. She could not speak, but she took his hands and kissed them as she wept. Then he looked at her with marvelous kindness and tenderness. He bade her recover, and consented to let her love him. At this point of the story, when he amused himself by drawing out the coming together by repeating their gestures and words several times, sleep overcame him, and he slept and was consoled. But when he opened his eyes it was day, and it no longer .shone so lightly or so carelessly as its predecessor. There was a great change in the world. Jean-Christophe now knew the meaning of injustice. There were now times of extremely straitened circumstances at home. They became more and more frequent. They lived meagerly then. Xo one was more sensible of it than .Jean- Christophe. His father saw nothing. He was served iirst, and there was always enough for him. He talked noisily, and roared with laughter at his own jokes, and he never noticed his wife's glances as she gave a forced laugh, while she watched him helping himself. When he passed the dish it was more than half empty. Louisa helped the children two potatoes each. When it came to Jean-Christophe's turn there were 40 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE sometimes only three left, and his mother was not helped. He knew that beforehand; he had counted them before they came to him. Then he summoned up courage, and said carelessly: " Only one, mother.'' She was a liitle put out. "Two. like the others.'' " Xo, please; only one." "Aren't you hungry?" " Xo, I'm not very hungry." But she, too. only took one. and they peeled them care- fully, cut them up in little pieces, and tried to eat them as slowly as possible. His mother watched him. When he had finished : " Come, take it ! " " Xo, mother." " But you are ill ? " " I am not ill, but I have eaten enough." Then his father would reproach him with being obstinate, and take the last potato for himself. But Jean-Christophe learned that trick, and he used to keep it on his .plate for Ernest, his little brother, who was always hungry, and watched him out of the corner of his eyes from the beginning of dinner, and ended by asking: "Aren't you going to eat it? Give it me, then, Jeau-Chris- tophe." Oh. how Jean-Christophe detested his father, how he hated him for not thinking of them, or for not even dreaming that he was eating their share! He was so hungry that lie hated him, and would gladlv have told him so; but he thought in his pride that he had no right, since he could not' earn bis own living. His father had earned the bread that he took. He himself was good for nothing: lie was a burden on every- body: he had no right to talk. Later on he would talk if there were any later on. Oh, he would die of hunger first! . . . Ho suffered more than another child would have done from these cruel fasts. His robust stomach was in agonv. Some- times h" trembled because of it; his head ached. There was a hole in his chest a hole, which turned and widened, as if a THE DAWN" 41 gimlet were being twisted in it. But he did not complain. He i'elt his mother's eyes upon him, and assumed an expression of indifference. Louisa, with a clutching at her heart, understood vaguely that her little boy was denying himself so that the others might have more. She rejected the idea, but always returned to it, She dared not investigate it or ask Jean-Chris- tophe if it were true, for, if it were true, what could she do? She had been used to privation since her childhood. What is the use of complaining when there is nothing to be done? She never suspected, indeed she, with her frail health and small needs that the boy might suffer more than herself. She did not say anything, but once or twice, when the others were gone, the children to the street, Melchior about his busi- ness, she asked her eldest son to stay to do her some small service. Jean-Christophe would hold her skein while she un- wound it. Suddenly she would throw everything away, and draw him passionately to her. She would take him on her knees, although he was quite heavy, and would hug and hug him. He would fling his arms round her neck, and the two of them would weep desperately, embracing each other. "My poor little boy! . . ." "Mother, mother! . . ." They said no .more., but they understood each other. It was some time before Jean-Christophe realized that his father drank. Melchior's intemperance did not at least, in the beginning exceed tolerable limits. It was not brutish. It showed itself rather by wild outbursts of happiness. Me used to make foolish remarks, and sing loudly for hours together as he drummed on the table, and sometimes he insisted on dancing with Louisa and the children. Jean-Christophe saw thai his mother looked sad. She would shrink back and bend her face over her work; she avoided the drunkard's eyes, and used to try gently to quiet him when he said coarse things thai made her blush. But Jean-Christophe did not understand, and he was in such need of gaiety that these noisy liome-comings of his father were almost a festival to him. The house was melan- choly, and these follies were a relaxation for him. He used to laugh heartily at Melchior's crazy antics and stupid jokes; 42 JEAN-CH.RISTOPHE he sang and danced with him; and he was put out when his mother in an angry voice ordered him to cease. How could it be wrong, since his father did it? Although his ever keen observation, which never forgot anything it had seen, told him that there were in his father's behavior several things which did not accord with his childish and imperious sense of justice, yet he continued to admire him. A child has so much need of an object of admiration ! Doubtless it is one of the eternal forms of self-love. "When a man is, or knows himself to be, too weak to accomplish his desires and satisfy his pride, as a child he transfers them to his parents, or, as a man who has failed, he transfers them to his children. They are, or shall be, all that he dreamed of being his champions, his avengers - and in this proud abdication in their favor, love and egoism are mingled so forcefully and yet so gently as to bring him keen delight. Jean-Christophe forgot all his grudges against his father, and cast about to find reasons for admiring him. He admired his figure, his strong arms, his voice, his laugh, his gaiety, and he shone with pride when he heard praise of his father's talents as a virtuoso, or when Melchior himself recited with some amplification the eulogies lie had received. He believed in his father's boasts, and looked upon him as a genius, as one of his grandfather's heroes. One evening about seven o'clock he was alone in the house. His little brothers had gone out wiili Jean Michel. Louisa was washing the linen in the river. The door opened, and Melchior plunged in. He was hatless and disheveled. He cut a sort of caper to cross the threshold, and then plumped down in a chair by the table. Jean-Christophe began to laugh, thinking it was a part of one of the usual buffooneries, and he approached him. But as soon as he looked more cloely at him the desire to laugh loft him. Melchior sat there with his arms hanging, and looking straight in front of him, seeing nothing, with his eyes blinking. His face was crimson, his mouth was open, and from it there gurgled every now and then a silly laugh. Jean-Christophe stood stock-still. He thought at first that his father was joking, but when he saw that he did not budge he was panic-stricken. " Papa, papa ! " he cried. THE DAWN" 43 Melchior went on gobbling like a fowl. Jean-Christophe took him by the arm in despair, and shook him with all his strength. " Papa, dear papa, answer me, please, please ! " Melchior's body shook like a boneless thing, and all but fell. His head flopped towards Jean-Christophe; he looked at him and babbled incoherently and irritably. When Jean-Chris- tophe's eyes met those clouded eyes he was seized with panic- terror. He ran away to the other end of the room, and threw himself on his knees by the bed, and buried his face in the clothes. He remained so for some time. Melchior swung heavily on the chair, sniggering. Jean-Christophe stopped his ears, so as not to hear him, and trembled. What was happen- ing within him was inexpressible. It was a terrible upheaval terror, sorrow, as though for some one dead, some one dear and honored. Xo one came; they were left alone. Xight fell, and Jean- Christophe's fear grew as the minutes passed. He could not help listening, and his blood froze as he heard the voice that he did not recognize. The sileace made it all the more terri- fying; the limping clock beat time for the senseless babbling. He could bear it no longer; he wished to fly. But he had to pass his father to get out, and Jean-Christophe shuddered at the idea of seeing those eyes again; it seemed to him that he must die if he did. He tried to creep on hands and knees to the door of the room. lie could not breathe; he would not look; he stopped at the least movement, from Mel- chior, whose feet lie could see under the table. One of the drunken man's legs trembled. Jean-Christophe reached the door. With one trembling hand he pushed the handle, but in his terror he let go. It shut to again. Melchior turned to look. The chair on which lie was balanced toppled over; he fell down with a crash. Jean-Christophe in his terror had no strength left for flight. He remained glued to the wall, looking at his father stretched there at his feet, and he cried for help. His fall sobered Melchior a little. He cursed and swore, and thumped on the chair that had played him such a trick. He tried vainly to get up. and then did manage to sit up with 44 JEAN-CHEIBTOPHE liis back resting against the table, and lie recognixed his surroundings. He saw Jean-Christophe crying; lie called him. Jean-Christophe wanted to run away; lie could not stir. Melchior called him again, and as the child did not come, he swore angrily. Jean-Christophe went near him, trembling in every limb. Melchior drew the boy near him, and made him sit on his knees. He began by pulling his ears, and in a thick, stuttering voice delivered a homily on the respect due from a son to his father. Then he went of!' suddenly on a new train of thought, and made him jump in his arms while he rattled oil' silly jokes. He wriggled with laughter. From that he passed immediately to melancholy ideas. lie commiserated the boy and himself; he hugged him so that ho was like to choke, covered him with kisses and tears, and finally rocked him in his arms, intoning the DC Profumlls. Jean-Christophe made no effort to break loose; he was frozen with horror. Stilled against his father's bosom, feeling his breath hiccoughing and smelling of wine upon his face, wet with his kisses and repulsive tears, he was in an agony of fear and disgust. lie would have screamed, but no sound would come from bis lips. He re- mained in this horrible condition for an age, as it seemed to him. until the door opened, and Louisa came in with a basket of linen on her arm. She gave a cry, let the basket fall, rushed at Jean-Christophe, and with a violence which seemed incredible in her she wrenched Melehior's arm, crying: "Drunken, drunken wretch!" Her eyes flashed with anger. Jean-Christophe thought, his father was going to kill her. But Melchior was so startled by the threatening appearance of his wife that he made no reply, and began to weep. He rolled on the floor; he beat his head against the furniture, and said that she was right, that he was a drunkard, that he brought misery upon his family, and was ruining his poor children, and \\ished he were dead. Louisa bad contemptuously turned her back on him. She carried Jean-Christophe into the next room, and caressed him and tried to comfort him. The boy went on trembling, and did not answer his mother's ques- tions; then he burst out sobbing. Louisa bathed bis face with water. She kissed him, and used tender words, and wept with THE DAWN 45 him. In the end they were both comforted. She knelt, and made him kneel by her side. They prayed to (iod to cure father of his disgusting habit, and make him the kind, good man that he used to be. Louisa put the child to bed. lie wanted her to stay by his bedside and hold his hand. Louisa spent part of the night sitting on Jean-Christophe's bed. He was feverish. The drunken man snored on the floor. Some time after that, one day at school, when Jean-Chris- tophe was spending his time watching the flies on the ceiling, and thumping his neighbors, to make them fall. off the form, the schoolmaster, who had taken a dislike to him, because he was always fidgeting and laughing, and would never learn any- thing, made an unhappy allusion. Jean-Christophe had fallen down himself, and the schoolmaster said he seemed to be like to follow brilliantly in the footsteps of a certain well-known person. All the boys burst out laughing, and some of them took upon themselves to point the allusion with comment both lucid and vigorous. Jean-Christophe got up, livid with shame, seized his ink-pot, and hurled it with all his strength at the nearest boy whom he saw laughing. The schoolmaster fell on him and beat him. He was thrashed, made to kneel, and set to do an enormous imposition. He went home, pale and storming, though he said never a word. He declared frigidly that he would not go to school again. They paid no attention to what he said. Next morning, when his mother reminded him that it was time to go, he replied quietly that he had said that he was not going any more. In vain Louisa begged and screamed and threatened ; it was no use. He stayed sitting in his corner, obstinate. Melchior thrashed him. He howled, but every time they bade him go after the thrashing was over he replied angrily, " Xo ! " They asked him at least to say why. He clenched his teeth, and would not. Melchior took hold of him, carried him to school. and gave him into the master's charge. Thev set him on his form, and he began methodically to Ineak everything within roach his inkstand, his pen. He tore up his copy-book and lesson-book, all quite openly, with his eve on the schoolmaster, provocative. They shut him up in a dark room. A few mo- ments later the schoolmaster found him with his handkerchief 4G JEAX-CHRISTOPHE tied round his neck, tugging with all his strength at the two ends of it. He was trying to strangle himself. They had to send him back. Jean-Christophe was impervious to sickness. He had in- herited from his father and grandfather their robust constitu- tions. They were not mollycoddles in that family; well or ill, they never worried, and nothing could bring about any change in the habits of the two Kraft'ts, father and son. They went out winter and summer, in all weathers, and stayed for hours together out in rain or sun, sometimes bareheaded and with their coats open, from carelessness or bravado, and walked for miles without being tired, and they looked with pity and disdain upon poor Louisa, who never said anything, but had to stop. She would go pale, and her legs would swell, and her heart would thump. Jean-Christophe was not far from sharing the scorn of his mother; he did not understand people being ill. When he fell, or knocked himself, or cut himself v or burned himself, he did not cry; but he was angry with the thing that had injured him. His father's brutalities and the roughness of his little playmates, the urchins of the street, with whom lie used to fight, hardened him. He was not afraid of blows, and more than once he returned home with bleeding nose and bruised forehead. One day he had to be wrenched away, almost suffocated, from one of these fierce tussles in which he had bowled over his adversary, who was savagely banging his head on the ground. That seemed natural enough to him, for he was prepared to do unto others as they did unto himself. And yet he was afraid of all sorts of things, and although no one knew it for he was very proud nothing brought him so much suffering during a part of his childhood as these same terrors. For two or three years especially they gnawed at him like a disease. He was afraid of the mysterious something that lurks in darkness evil powers that seemed to lie in wait for his life, the roaring of monsters which fearfully haunt the mind of every child and appear in everything that he sees, the relic perhaps of a form long dead, hallucinations of the first days THE DAWN 47 after emerging from chaos, from the fearful slumber in his mother's womb, from the awakening of the larva from the depths of matter. He was afraid of the garret door. It opened on to the stairs, and was almost always ajar. When he had to pass it lie felt his heart beating; he would spring forward and jump by it without looking. It seemed to him that there was some one or something behind it. When it was closed he heard distinctly something moving behind it. That was not surprising, for there were large rats; but he imagined a monster, with rattling bones, and flesh hanging in rags, a horse's head, horrible and terrifying eyes, shapeless. He did not want to think of it, but did so in spite of himself. With trembling hand he would make sure that the door was locked; but that did not keep him from turning round ten times as he went downstairs. He was afraid of the night outside. Sometimes he used to stay late with his grandfather, or was sent out in the even- ing on some errand. Old KrafTt lived a little outside the town in the last house on the Cologne road. Between the house and the first lighted windows of the town there was a distance of two or three hundred yards, which seemed three times as long to Jean-Christophe. There were places where the road twisted and it was impossible to see anything. The country was deserted in the evening, the earth grew black, and the sky was awfully pale. When he came out from the hedges that lined the road, and climbed up the slope, he could still see a yellowish gleam on the horizon, but it gave no light, and was more oppressive than the night;, it made the darkness only darker; it was a deathly light. The clouds came down almost to earth. The hedges grew enormous and moved. The gaunt trees were like grotesque old men. The sides of the wood were stark white. The darkness moved. There were dwarfs sitting in the ditches, lights in the grass, fearful flying things in the air, shrill cries of insects coming from nowhere. Jean-Christophe was always in anguish, expecting some fear- some or strange putting forth of Nature, lie would run, with his heart leaping in his bosom. When he saw the light in his grandfather's room he would gain confidence. But worst of all was when old Krail't was 48 JEAX-CHHISTOPHK not at homo. That was most terrifying. The old house, lost in the country, frightened the hoy even in daylight, lie forgot ]iis fears when his grandfather was there, but sometimes the old man would leave him alone, and go out without warning him. Jean-Christophe did not mind that. The room' was quiet. Everything in it was familiar and kindly. There was a. great white wooden bedstead, by the bedside was a great Bible on a shelf, artificial ilowers were on the mantelpiece, with photographs of the old man's two wives and eleven chil- dren and at the bottom of each photograph he had written the date of birth and death on the walls were framed texts and vile chromolithographs of Mozart and Beethoven. A little piano stood in one corner, a great violoncello in another; rows of books higgledy-piggledy, pipes, and in the window pots of geraniums. It was like being surrounded with friends. The old man could be heard moving about in the next room, and planing or hammering, and talking to himself, calling himself an idiot, or singing in a loud voice, improvising a potpourri of scraps of chants and sentimental Liedcr. warlike marches. and drinking songs. Here was shelter and refuge. Jean- Christophe would sit in the great armchair by the window, with a book on his knees, bending over the pictures and losing him- self in them. The day would die down, his eyes would grow weary, and then he would look no more, and fall into vague dreaming. The wheels of a cart would rumble by along the road, a cow would moo in the fields; the bells of the town, wearv and sleepv, would ring the evening Angel us. Vague desires, happy presentiments, would awake in the heart of the dreaming child. Suddenly Jean-Christopho would awake, filled with dull un- easiness. He would raise his eyes night! IFe would listen silence! His grandfather had just gone out. He shuddered. He leaned out of the window to try to see him. The road was deserted; things began to take on a threatening aspect. Oh (iod ! If Ilial should be coming! Whaty Tie could not tell. The fearful thing. The doors were not properly shut. The wooden stairs creaked as under a footstep. Tin' boy leaped up, dragged the armchair, the two chairs and the table, to the most remote corner of the room: he made a barrier of THE DAWN 49 them; the armchair against the wall, a chair to the right, a chair to the left, and the table in front of him. hi the middle he planted a pair of steps, and, perched on top with his book and other books, like provisions against a siege, he breathed again, having decided in his childish imagination that the enemy could not pass the barrier that was not to be allowed. But the enemy would creep forth, even from his book. Among the old books which the old man had picked up were some with pictures which made a profound impression on the child: they attracted and yet terriiied him. There were fantastic visions temptations of St. Anthony in which skeletons of birds hung in bottles, and thousands of eggs writhe like worms in disemboweled frogs, and heads walk on feet, and asses play trumpets, and household utensils and corpses of animals walk gravely, wrapped in great cloths, bowing like old ladies. Jean- Christophe was horriiied by them, but always returned to them, drawn on by disgust. He would look at them for a long time, and every now and then look furtively about him to see what was stirring in the folds of the curtains. A picture of a flayed man in an anatomy book was still more horrible to him. He trembled as he turned the page when he came to the place where it was in the hook. This shapeless medley was grimly etched for him. The creative power inherent in every child's mind filled out the meagerness of the setting of them. He saw no difference between the daubs and the reality. At night they had an even more powerful influence over his dreams than the living things that he saw during the day. He was afraid to sleep. For several years nightmares poisoned his rest. He wandered in cellars, and through the manhole saw the grinning flayed man entering. He was alone in a room, and he heard a stealthy footstep in the corridor: he hurled himself against the door to close it, and was just in time to hold the handle; but it was turned from the outside; he could not turn the key, his strength left him. and he cried for help. He was with his family, and suddenly their faces changed; they did crazy things, lie was reading quietly, and he felt that an invisible being was all roiunl him. He tried to fly, but felt himself bound. He tried to cry out, but he was gagged. A loathsome grip was about his neck. He awoke, SO JEAN-CHRISTOPHE suffocating, and with his tooth chattering; and lie wont on trembling long after he was awake; he could not be rid of his agony. The room in which he slept was a hole without door or windows; an old curtain hung up by a curtain-rod over the entrance was .ill that separated it from the room of his father and mother. The thick air stifled him. His brother, who slept in the same bed, used to kick him. His head burned, and he was a prey to a sort of hallucination in which all the little troubles of the day reappeared infinitely magnified. In this state of nervous tension, bordering on delirium, the least shock was an agony to him. The creaking of a plank terrified him. His father's breathing took on fantastic proportions. It seemed to be no longer a human breathing, and the monstrous sound was horrible to him; it scorned to him that there must be a beast sleeping there. The night crushed him; it would never end; it must always be so; he was lying there for months and months. He gasped for breath; he half raised himself on his bed, sat up, dried his sweating face with his shirt-sleeve. Sometimes he nudged his brother Rodolpho to wake him up; but Rodolphe moaned, drew away from him the rest of the bedclothes, and went on sleeping. So he stayed in feverish agony until a pale beam of light appeared on the floor below the curtain. This timorous pale- ness of the distant dawn suddenly brought him peace. He felt the light gliding into the room, when it was still impossible to distinguish it from darkness. Then his fever would die down, his blood would grow calm, like a flooded river returning to its bed; an even warmth would flow through all his body, and his eyes, burning from sleeplessness, would close in spite of himself. In the evening it was terrible to him to see the approach of the hour of sleep. He vowed that he would not give way to it, to watch the whole night through, fearing his nightmares. But in the end weariness always overcame him, and it was always when he was least on his guard that the monsters returned. Fearful night! So sweet to most children, so terrible to some! . . . He was afraid to sleep. He was afraid of not THE DAWN 51 sleeping. Waking or sleeping, he was surrounded by monstrous shapes, the phantoms of his own brain, the larvae floating in the half-day and twilight of childhood, as in the dark chiaros- curo of sickness. But these fancied terrors were soon to be blotted out in the great Fear that which is in the hearts of all men; that Fear which Wisdom does in vain preen itself on forgetting or denying Death. One day when he was rummaging in a cupboard, he came upon several things that he did not know a child's frock and a striped bonnet. He took them in triumph to his mother, who, instead of smiling at him, looked vexed, and bade him take them back to the place where he had found them. When he hesitated to obey, and asked her why, she snatched them from him without reply, and put them on a shelf where he could not reach them. Roused to curiosity, he plied her with questions. At last she told him that there had been a little brother who had died before Jean-Christophe came into the world. He was taken aback he had never heard tell of him. He was silent for a moment, and then tried to find out more. His mother seemed to be lost in thought ; but she told him that the little brother was called Jean-Christophe like himself, but was more sensible. He put more questions to her, but she would not reply readily. She told him only that his brother was in Heaven, and was praying for them all. Jean-Christophe could get no more out of her; she bade him be quiet, and to let her go on with her work. She seemed to be absorbed in her sewing ; she looked anxious, and did not raise her eyes. But after some time she looked at him where he was in the corner, whither he had retired to sulk, began to smile, and told him to go and play outside. These scraps of conversation profoundly agitated Jean-Chris- tophe. There had been a child, a little boy, belonging to his mother, like himself, bearing the same name, almost exactly the same, and he was dead ! Dead ! He did not exactly know what that was, but it was something terrible. And they never talked of this other Jean-Christophe; he was quite forgotten. It would be the same with him if he were to die? This thought 53 JEAX-CHH1 STOP] IE was with him still in the evening at table with his family, when ho saw them all laughing and talking of triiles. So. then, it was possible that they would be gay after he was dead! Oh! he never would have believed that his mother could be, sellish enough to laugh after the death of her little boy! lie hated them all. lie wanted to weep for himself, for his own death, in advance. At the same time he wanted to ask a whole heap of questions, but he dared not: he remembered the voice in which his mother had bid him be quiet. At last ho could contain himself no longer, and one night when he had gone to bed, and Louisa came to kiss him, he asked: "Mother, did he sleep in my bed?" The poor woman trembled, and, trying to take on an ni- di ll'e rent tone of voice, she asked : " Who ? " " The little boy who is dead." said Jean-Christophe in a whisper. His mother clutched him with her hands. "Be quiet quiet/' she said. Her voice trembled. Jean-Christophe, whose head was lean- ing against her bosom, beard her heart beating. There was a moment of silence, then she said: "You must never talk of that, my dear. ... Go to sleep. . . . No, it was not his bed." She kissed him. He thought he felt her cheek wet against his. Ife wished he could have been sure of it. He was a little comforted. There was grief in her then! Then lie doubted it again the next moment, when he heard her in the next room talking in a quiet, ordinary voice. Which was true that: or what had just been? He turned about for long in his bed with- out finding any answer. He wanted his mother to sull'er; not that he also did not sull'er in the knowledge that she was sad. but it would have done him so much good, in spite of every- thing! He would have felt himself less alone. He slept, and next dav thought, no more of it. Some weeks afterwards one of the urchins with whom he played iii the street did not come at the usual time. One of them >aid that he was ill, and they got used to not seeing him in their games. It was explained, it was quite simple. One THE DAWN 53 evening Jean-Christoplie had gone to bed; it was early, and from the recess in which his bed was, he saw the light in the room. There was a knock at the door. A neighbor had come to have a chut. He listened absently, telling himself stories as usual. The words of their talk did not reach him. Suddenly he heard the neighbor say: " He is dead." His blood stopped, for he had understood who was dead. He listened and held his breath. His parents cried out. Melchiors booming voice said: " Jean-Christophe, do you hear? Poor Fritz is dead." Jean-Christophe made an effort, and replied quiet 1}': " Yes, papa." His bosom was drawn tight as in a vise. Melchior went on : "'Yes, papa.' Is that all you say? You are not grieved by it." Louisa, who understood the child, said: "'Ssh! Let him sleep!" And they talked in whispers. But Jean-Christophe, pricking his ears, gathered all the details of illness typhoid fever, cold baths, delirium, the parents' grief. He could not breathe, a lump in his throat choked him. He shuddered. All these horrible things took shape in his mind. Above all, he gleaned that the disease was contagious that is, that he also might die in the same way and terror froze him, for he remembered that he had shaken hands with Fritz the last time he had seen him. and that very day had gone past the house. But he made no sound, so as to avoid having to talk, and when his father, after the neighbor had gone, asked him: "Jean-Christophe, are you asleep?" he did not reply. He heard Melchior saying to Louisa : " The boy has no heart." Louisa did not reply, but a moment later she came and gently raised the curtain and looked at the little bed. Jean- Christophe only just had time to close his eyes ami imitate the regular breathing which his brothers made when they were asleep. Louisa went away on tip-toe. And yet how he wanted to keep her! How he wanted to tell her that hi' was afraid, and to ask her to save him. or at least to comfort him! But 54 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE he was afraid of their laughing at him, and treating him as a coward; and besides, he knew only too well that nothing that they might say would be any good. And for hours he lay there in agony, thinking that he felt the disease creeping over him, and pains in his head, a stricture of the heart, and thinking in terror: " It is the end. I am ill. I am going to die. I am going to die ! " . . . Once he sat up in his bed and called to his mother in a low voice; but they were asleep, and he dared not wake them. From that time on his childhood was poisoned by the idea of death. His nerves delivered him up to all sorts of little baseless sicknesses, to depression, to sudden transports, and fits of choking. His imagination ran riot with these troubles, and thought it saw in all of them the murderous beast which was to rob him of his life. How many times he suffered agonies, with his mother sitting only a few yards away from him, and she guessing nothing! For in his cowardice he was brave enough to conceal all his terror in a strange jumble of feeling pride in not turning to others, shame of being afraid, and the scrupulousness of a tenderness which forbade him to trouble his mother. But he never ceased to think: "This time I am ill. I am seriously ill. It is diphtheria. . . ." He had chanced on the word " diphtheria." ..." Dear God ! not this time! . . ." He had religious ideas : he loved to believe what his mother had told him. that after deatli the soul ascended to the Lord, and if it were pious entered into the garden of paradise. But the idea of this journey rather frightened than attracted him. He was not at all envious of the children whom Cod, as a recompense, according to his mother, took in their sleep and called to Him without having made them suffer. lie trembled, as he went to sleep, for fear that God should indulge this whimsy at his expense. It must be terrible to be taken suddenly from the warmth of one's bed and dragged through the void into the presence of God. He imagined God as an enormous sun, with a voice of thunder. How it must hurt! It must burn the eyes, ears all one's soul ! Then. God could punish- you never know. . . . Arid besides, that did not prevent all the other horrors which he did not know very well, though he THE DAWN 55 could guess them from what lie had hoard your body in a box, all alone at the bottom of a hole, lo.st in the crowd of those revolting cemeteries to which he was taken to pray. . . (Jod! Uod ! How sad ! how sad ! . . . And yet it was not exactly joyous to live, and be hungry, and see your father drunk, and to be beaten, to suffer in so many ways from the wickedness of other children, from the insulting pity of grown-up persons, and to be understood by no one, not even by your mother. Everybody humiliates you, no one loves you. You are alone alone, and matter so little! Yes; but it was just this that made him want to live. He felt in himself a surging power of wrath. A strange thing, that power! Jt could do nothing yet: it was as though it were afar off and gagged, swaddled, paralyzed; he had no idea what it wanted, what, later on, it would be. But it was in him; he was sure of it; he felt it stirring and crying out. To-morrow to-morrow, what a voyage he would take! He had a savage desire to live, to punish the wicked, to do great things. "Oh! but how I will live when 1 am . . .'" he pondered a little "when 1 am eighteen!" Sometimes he put it at twentv-one: that was the extreme limit. He thought that was enough for th'e domination of the world, lie thought of the heroes dearest to him of Napoleon, and of that other more remote hero, whom he preferred, Alexander the (Jreat. Snrelv he would be like them if onlv he lived for another twelve ten vears. Ho never thought of pitying those who died at thirty. They \\ere old; they had lived their lives; it was their fault if they had failed. But to die now . . . despair! Too terrible to pass while yet a little child, and forever to be in the minds of men a little boy whom everybody thinks he has the right to scold! He wept with ra^e at the thought, as though he were alreadv dead. This agony of death tortured his childish years corrected only by disgust with all life and the sadness of hi It was in the midst of those gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that every moment seemed to intensifv about him. that there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space, the liirht which was to illuminate his life: divine music. , 50 JEAX-CHRISTOPHE His grandfather gave the children an old piano, which one of his clients, anxious to be rid of it, had asked him to take. His patient ingenuity had almost put it in order. The present had not been very well received. Louisa thought her room already too small, without filling it up any more; and Melchior said that Jean Michel had not ruined himself over it: just firewood. Only Jean-Christophe was glad of it without exactly knowing why. It seemed to him a magic box. full of marvelous stories, just like the ones in the fairy-book a volume of the "Thousand and One Nights "which his grandfather read to him sometimes to their mutual delight. He had heard his father try the piano on the day of its arrival, and draw from it a little rain of arpeggios like the drops that a puff of wind shakes from the wet branches of a tree after a shower. He clapped his hands, and cried " Encore ! '' but Melchior scornfully closed the piano, saying that it was worthless. Jean-Christophe did not insist, but after that ho was always hovering about the instrument. As soon as no one was near he would raise the lid, and softly press down a key, just as if he were moving with his finger the living shell of some great insect; lie wanted to push out the creature that was locked up in it. Sometimes in his haste he would strike too hard, and then his mother would cry out, " Will you not be quiet ? Don't go touching every- thing!" or else he would pinch himself cruelly in closing the piano, and make piteous faces as he sucked his bruised fin- gers. . . . Now his greatest joy is when his mother is gone out for a day's service, or to pay some visit in the town. He listens as she goes down the stairs, and into the street, and away. He is alone. He opens the piano, and brings up a chair, and perches on it. His shoulders just about reach the keyboard; it is enough for what he wants. Why does he wait until he is alone? No one would prevent his playing so long as he did not make too much noise. But he is ashamed before the others, and dare not. And then they talk and move about: that spoils his pleasure. It is so much more beautiful when he is alone ! Jean-Christophe holds his breath so that the silence may be even greater, and also because he is a little excited, as though he were in>in