She was not bored. She needed very little to keep her interest in things alive: the very smallest daily task was enough, or a tiny plant, whose delicate foliage she would clean with motherly care every morning. She had her quiet gray cat, who had lost something of his manners, as is apt to happen with domestic animals who are loved by their masters: he used to spend the day, like herself, sitting by the fire, or on the table near the lamp watching her fingers as she sewed, and sometimes gazing at her with his strange eyes, which watched her for a moment and then closed again. Even the furniture was company to her. Every piece was like a familiar face. She took a childlike pleasure in looking after them, in gently wiping off the dust which settled on their sides, and in carefully replacing them in their usual corners. She would hold silent conversations with them. She would smile at the fine Louis XVI. round-topped bureau, which was the only piece of old furniture she had. Every day she would feel the same joy in seeing it. She was always absorbed in going over her linen, and she would spend hours standing on a chair, with her hands and arms deep in the great country cupboard, looking and arranging, while the cat, whose curiosity was roused, would spend hours watching her.

But her real happiness came when, after her work was done and she had lunched alone, God knows how—(she never had much of an appetite)—and had gone the necessary errands, and her day was at an end, she would come in about four and sit by the window or the fire with her work and her cat. Sometimes she would find some excuse for not going out at all; she was glad when she could stay indoors, especially in the winter when it was snowing. She had a horror of the cold, and the wind, and the mud, and the rain, for she was something of a cat herself, very clean, fastidious, and soft. She would rather not eat than go and procure her lunch when the tradespeople forgot to bring it. In that case she would munch a piece of chocolate or some fruit from the sideboard. She was very careful not to let Arnaud know. These were her escapades. Then during the days when the light was dim, and also sometimes on lovely sunny days,—(outside the blue sky would shine, and the noise of the street would buzz round the dark silent rooms; like a sort of mirage enshrouding the soul),—she would sit in her favorite corner, with her feet on her hassock, her knitting in her hands, and go off into day-dreams while her fingers plied the needles. She would have one of her favorite books by her side: as a rule one of those humble, red-backed volumes, a translation of an English novel. She would read very little, hardly more than a chapter a day; and the book would lie on her knees open at the same page for a long time together, or sometimes she would not even open it: she knew it already, and the story of it would be in her dreams. So the long novels of Dickens and Thackeray would be drawn out over weeks, and in her dreams they would become years. They wrapped her about with their tenderness. The people of the present day, who read quickly and carelessly, do not know the marvelous vigor irradiated by those fine books which must be taken in slowly. Madame Arnaud had no doubt that the lives of the characters in the novels were not as real as her own. There were some for whom she would have laid down her life: the tender jealous creature, Lady Castlewood, the woman who loved in silence with her motherly virginal heart, was a sister to her: little Dombey was her own dear little boy: she was Dora, the child-wife, who was dying: she would hold out her arms to all those childlike souls which pass through the world with the honest eyes of purity: and around her there would pass a procession of friendly beggars and harmless eccentrics, all in pursuit of their touchingly preposterous cranks and whims,—and at their head the fond genius of dear Dickens, laughing and crying together at his own dreams. At such times, when she looked out of the window, she would recognize among the passers-by the beloved or dreaded figure of this or that personage in that imaginary world. She would fancy similar lives, the same lives, being lived behind the walls of the houses. Her dislike for going out came from her dread of that world with its moving mysteries. She saw around her hidden dramas and comedies being played. It was not always an illusion. In her isolation she had come by the gift of mystical intuition which in the eyes of the passers-by can perceive the secrets of their lives of yesterday and to-morrow, which are often unknown to themselves. She mixed up what she actually saw with what she remembered of the novels and distorted it. She felt that she must drown in that immense universe. And she would have to go home to regain her footing.

But what need had she to read or to look at others? She had but to gaze in upon herself. Her pale, dim existence—seeming so when seen from without—was gloriously lit up within. There was abundance and fullness of life in it. There were memories, and treasures, the existence of which lay unsuspected.... Had they ever had any reality?—No doubt they were real, since they were real to her.... Oh! the wonder of such lowly lives transfigured by the magic wand of dreams!

Madame Arnaud would go back through the years to her childhood: each of the little frail flowers of her vanished hopes sprang silently into life again.... Her first childish love for a girl, whose charm had fascinated her at first sight: she loved her with the love which is only possible to those who are infinitely pure: she used to think she would die at the touch of her: she used to long to kiss her feet, to be her little girl, to marry her: the girl had married, had not been happy, had had a child which died, and then she too had died.... Another love, when she was about twelve years old, for a little girl of her own age, who tyrannized over her: a fair-haired mad-cap, gay and imperious, who used to amuse herself by making her cry, and then would devour her with kisses: she laid a thousand romantic plans for their future together: then, suddenly, the girl became a Carmelite nun, without anybody knowing why: she was said to be happy.... Then there had been a great passion for a man much older than herself. No one had ever known anything about it, not even the object of it. She had given to it a great and ardent devotion and untold wealth of tenderness.... Then another passion: this time she was loved. But from a strange timidity, and mistrust of herself, she had not dared to believe that she was loved, or to let the man see that she loved him. And happiness passed without her grasping it.... Then.... But what is the use of telling others what only has a meaning for oneself? So many trivial facts which had assumed a profound significance: a little attention at the hands of a friend: a kind word from Olivier, spoken without his attaching any importance to it: Christophe's kindly visits, and the enchanted world evoked by his music: a glance from a stranger: yes, and even in that excellent woman, so virtuous and pure, certain involuntary infidelities in thought, which made her uneasy and feel ashamed, while she would feebly thrust them aside, though all the same—being so innocent—they brought a little sunshine into her heart.... She loved her husband truly, although he was not altogether the husband of her dreams. But he was kind, and one day when he said to her: "My darling wife, you do not know all you are to me; you are my whole life," her heart melted: and that day she felt that she was one with him, wholly and forever, without any possibility of going back on it. Each year brought them closer to each other, and tightened the bond between them. They had shared lovely dreams: of work, traveling, children. What had become of them?... Alas!... Madame Arnaud was still dreaming them. There was a little boy of whom she had so often and so profoundly dreamed, that she knew him almost as well as though he really existed. She had slowly begotten him through the years, always adorning him with all the most beautiful things she saw, and the things she loved most dearly.... Silence!...

That was all. It meant worlds to her. There are so many tragedies unknown, even the most intimate, in the depths of the most tranquil and seemingly most ordinary lives! And the greatest tragedy of all perhaps is:—that nothing happens in such lives of hope crying for what is their right, their just due promised, and refused, by Nature—wasting away in passionate anguish—showing nothing of it all to the outside world! Madame Arnaud, happily for herself, was not only occupied with herself. Her own life filled only a part of her dreams. She lived also in the lives of those she knew, or had known, and put herself in their place: she thought much of Christophe and his friend Cecile. She was thinking of them now. The two women had grown fond of one another. The strange thing was that of the two it was the sturdy Cecile who felt most need to lean on the frail Madame Arnaud. In reality the healthy, high-spirited young woman was not so strong as she seemed to be. She was passing through a crisis. Even the most tranquil hearts are not immune from being taken by surprise. Unknown to herself, a feeling of tenderness had crept into her heart: she refused to admit it at first: but it had grown so that she was forced to see it:—she loved Olivier. His sweet and affectionate disposition, the rather feminine charm of his personality, his weakness and inability to defend himself, had attracted her at once:—(a motherly nature is attracted by the nature which has need of her).—What she had learned subsequently of his marital troubles had inspired her with a dangerous pity for Olivier. No doubt these reasons would not have been enough. Who can say why one human being falls in love with another? Neither counts for anything in the matter, but often it merely happens that a heart which is for the moment of its guard is taken by surprise, and is delivered up to the first affection it may meet on the road,—As soon as she had no room left for doubt as to her state of mind, Cecile bravely struggled to pluck out the barb of a love which she thought wicked and absurd: she suffered for a long time and did not recover. No one would have suspected what was happening to her: she strove valiantly to appear happy. Only Madame Arnaud knew what it must have cost her. Not that Cecile had told her her secret. But she would sometimes come and lay her head on Madame Arnaud's bosom. She would weep a little, without a word, kiss her, and then go away laughing. She adored this friend of hers, in whom, though she seemed so fragile, she felt a moral energy and faith superior to her own. She did not confide in her. But Madame Arnaud could guess volumes on a hint. The world seemed to her to be a sad misunderstanding. It is impossible to dissolve it. One can only love, have pity, and dream.

And when the swarm of her dreams buzzed too loudly, when her thoughts stopped, she would go to her piano and let her hands fall lightly on the keys, at random, and play softly to wreathe the mirage of life about with the subdued light of music....

But the good little creature would not forget to perform her everyday duties: and when Arnaud came home he would find the lamp lit, the supper ready, and his wife's pale, smiling face waiting for him. And he would have no idea of the universe in which she had been living.

The great difficulty was to keep the two lives going side by side without their clashing: her everyday life and that other, the great life of the mind, with its far-flung horizons. It was not always easy. Fortunately Arnaud also lived to some extent in an imaginary life, in books, and works of art, the eternal fire of which fed the flickering flames of his soul. But during the last few years he had become more and more preoccupied with the petty annoyances of his profession, injustice and favoritism, and friction with his colleagues or his pupils: he was embittered: he began to talk politics, and to inveigh against the Government and the Jews: and he made Dreyfus responsible for his disappointments at the university. His mood of soreness infected Madame Arnaud a little. She was at an age when her vital force was upset and uneasy, groping for balance. There were great gaps in her thoughts. For a time they both lost touch with life, and their reason for existence: for they had nothing to which to bind their spider's web, which was left hanging in the void. Though the support of reality be never so weak, yet for dreams there must be one. They had no sort of support. They could not contrive any means of propping each other up. Instead of helping her, he clung to her. And she knew perfectly well that she was not strong enough to hold him up, for she could not even support herself. Only a miracle could save her. She prayed for it to come. It came from the depths of her soul. In her solitary pious heart Madame Arnaud felt the irony of the sublime and absurd hunger for creation in spite of everything, the need of weaving her web in spite of everything, through space, for the joy of weaving, leaving it to the wind, the breath of God, to carry her whithersoever it was ordained that she should go. And the breath of God gave her a new hold on life, and found her an invisible support. Then the husband and wife both set patiently to work once more to weave the magnificent and vain web of their dreams, a web fashioned of their purest suffering and their blood.

Madame Arnaud was alone in her room.... It was near evening.

The door-bell rang. Madame Arnaud, roused from her reverie before the usual time, started and trembled. She carefully arranged her work and went to open the door. Christophe came in. He was in a great state of emotion. She took his hands affectionately.

"What is it, my dear?" she asked.

"Ah!" he said. "Olivier has come back."

"Come back?"

"He came this morning and said: 'Christophe, help me!' I embraced him. He wept. He told me: I have nothing but you now. She has gone."

Madame Arnaud gasped, and clasped her hands and said:

"Poor things!"

"She has gone," said Christophe. "Gone with her lover."

"And her child?" asked Madame Arnaud.

"Husband, child—she has left everything."

"Poor thing!" said Madame Arnaud again.

"He loved her," said Christophe. "He loved her, and her alone. He will never recover from the blow. He keeps on saying: 'Christophe, she has betrayed me.... My dearest friend has betrayed me.' It is no good my saying to him, 'Since she has betrayed you, she cannot have been your friend. She is your enemy. Forget her or kill her!'"

"Oh! Christophe, what are you saying! It is too horrible!"

'Yes, I know. You all think it barbaric and prehistoric to kill! It is jolly to hear these Parisians protesting against the brutal instincts which urge the male to kill the female if she deceives him, and preaching indulgence and reason! They're splendid apostles! It is a fine thing to see the pack of mongrel dogs waxing wrath against the return to animalism. After outraging life, after having robbed it of its worth, they surround it with religious worship.... What! That heartless, dishonorable, meaningless life, the mere physical act of breathing, the beating of the blood in a scrap of flesh, these are the things which they hold worthy of respect! They are never done with their niceness about the flesh: it is a crime to touch it. You may kill the soul if you like, but the body is sacred...."

"The murderers of the soul are the worst of all: but one crime is no excuse for another. You know that."

"I know it. Yes. You are right. I did not think what I was saying.... Who knows? I should do it, perhaps."

"No. You are unfair to yourself. You are so kind."

"If I am roused to passion, I am as cruel as the rest. You see how I had lost control of myself!... But when you see a friend brought to tears, how can you not hate the person who has caused them? And how can one be too hard on a woman who leaves her child to run after her lover?"

"Don't talk like that, Christophe. You don't know."

"What! You defend her?"

"I pity her, too."

"I pity those who suffer. Not those who cause suffering."

"Well! Do you think she hasn't suffered too? Do you think she has left her child and wrecked her life out of lightness of heart? For her life is wrecked too. I hardly know her, Christophe. I have only seen her a few times, and that only in passing: she never said a friendly word to me, she was not in sympathy with me. And yet I know her better than you. I am sure she is not a bad woman. Poor child! I can guess what she has had to go through...."

"You.... You whose life is so worthy and so right and sensible!..."

"Yes, Christophe, I. You do not know. You are kind, but you are a man and, like all men, you are hard, in spite of your kindness—a man hard and set against everything which is not in and of yourself. You have no real knowledge of the women who live with you. You love them, after your fashion; but you never take the trouble to understand them. You are so easily satisfied with yourselves! You are quite sure that you know us.... Alas! If you knew how we suffer sometimes when we see, not that you do not love us, but how you love us, and that that is all we are to those we love the best! There are moments, Christophe, when we clench our fists so that the nails dig into our hands to keep ourselves from crying to you: 'Oh! Do not love us, do not love us! Anything rather than love us like that!'... Do you know the saying of a poet: 'Even in her home, among her children, surrounded with sham honors, a woman endures a scorn a thousand times harder to bear than the most utter misery'? Think of that, Christophe. They are terrible words."

"What you say has upset me. I don't rightly understand. But I am beginning to see.... Then, you yourself...."

"I have been through all these torments."

"Is it possible?... But, even so, you will never make me believe that you would have done the same as that woman."

"I have no child, Christophe. I do not know what I should have done in her place."

"No. That is impossible. I believe in you. I respect you too much. I swear that you could not."

"Swear nothing! I have been very near doing what she has done.... It hurts me to destroy the good idea you had of me. But you must learn to know us a little if you do not want to be unjust. Yes, I have been within an ace of just such an act of folly. And you yourself had something to do with my not going on with it. It was two years ago. I was going through a period of terrible depression, that seemed to be eating my life away. I kept on telling myself that I was no use in the world, that nobody needed me, that even my husband could do without me, that I had lived for nothing.... I was on the very point of running away, to do Heaven knows what! I went up to your room.... Do you remember?... You did not understand why I came. I came to say good-bye to you.... And then, I don't know what happened, I can't remember exactly ... but I know that something you said ... (though you had no idea of it....) ... was like a flash of light to me.... Perhaps it was not what you said.... Perhaps it was only a matter of opportunity; at that moment the least thing was enough to make or mar me.... When I left you I went back to my own room, locked myself in, and wept the whole day through.... I was better after that: the crisis had passed."

"And now," asked Christophe, "you are sorry?"

"Now?" she said. "Ah! If I had been so mad as to do it I should have been at the bottom of the Seine long ago. I could not have borne the shame of it, and the injury I should have done to my poor husband."

"Then you are happy?"

"Yes. As happy as one can be in this life. It is so rare for two people to understand each other, and respect each other, and know that they are sure of each other, not merely with a simple lover's belief, which is often an illusion, but as the result of years passed together, gray, dull, commonplace years even—especially with the memory of the dangers through which they have passed together. And as they grow older their trust grows greater and finer."

She stopped and blushed suddenly.

"Oh, Heavens! How could I tell you that?... What have I done?... Forget it, Christophe, I beg of you. No one must know."

"You need not be afraid," said Christophe, pressing her hand warmly. "It shall be sacred to me."

Madame Arnaud was unhappy at what she had said, and turned away for a moment.

Then she went on:

"I ought not to have told you.... But, you see, I wanted to show you that even in the closest and best marriages, even for the women ... whom you respect, Christophe ... there are times, not only of aberration, as you say, but of real, intolerable suffering, which may drive them to madness, and wreck at least one life, if not two. You must not be too hard. Men and women make each other suffer terribly even when they love each other dearly."

"Must they, then, live alone and apart?"

"That is even worse for us. The life of a woman who has to live alone, and fight like men (and often against men), is a terrible thing in a society which is not ready for the idea of it, and is, in a great measure, hostile to it...."

She stopped again, leaning forward a little, with her eyes fixed on the fire in the grate; then she went on softly, in a rather hushed tone, hesitating every now and then, stopping, and then going on:

"And yet it is not our fault when a woman lives like that, she does not do so from caprice, but because she is forced to do so; she has to earn her living and learn how to do without a man, since men will have nothing to do with her if she is poor. She is condemned to solitude without having any of its advantages, for in France she cannot, like a man, enjoy her independence, even in the most innocent way, without provoking scandal: everything is forbidden her. I have a friend who is a school-mistress in the provinces. If she were shut up in an airless prison she could not be more lonely and more stifled. The middle-classes close their doors to women who struggle to earn their living by their work; they are suspected and contemned; their smallest actions are spied upon and turned to evil. The masters at the boys' school shun them, either because they are afraid of the tittle-tattle of the town, or from a secret hostility, or from shyness, and because they are in the habit of frequenting cafes and consorting with low women, or because they are too tired after the day's work and have a dislike, as a result of their work, for intellectual women. And the women themselves cannot bear each other, especially if they are compelled to live together in the school. The head-mistress is often a woman absolutely incapable of understanding young creatures with a need of affection, who lose heart during the first few years of such a barren trade and such inhuman solitude; she leaves them with their secret agony and makes no attempt to help them; she is inclined to think that they are only vain and haughty. There is no one to take an interest in them. Having neither fortune nor influence, they cannot marry. Their hours of work are so many as to leave them no time in which to create an intellectual life which might bind them together and give them some comfort. When such an existence is not supported by an exceptional religious or moral feeling,—(I might say abnormal and morbid; for such absolute self-sacrifice is not natural),—it is a living death....—In default of intellectual work, what resources does charity offer to women? What great disappointments it holds out for those women who are too sincere to be satisfied with official or polite charity, philanthropic twaddle, the odious mixture of frivolity, beneficence, and bureaucracy, the trick of dabbling in poverty in the intervals of flirtation! And if one of them in disgust has the incredible audacity to venture out alone among the poor or the wretched, whose life she only knows by hearsay, think of what she will see! Sights almost beyond bearing! It is a very hell. What can she do to help them? She is lost, drowned in such a sea of misfortune. However, she struggles on, she tries hard to save a few of the poor wretches, she wears herself out for them, and drowns with them. She is lucky if she succeeds in saving one or two of them! But who is there to rescue her? Who ever dreams of going to her aid? For she, too, suffers, both with her own and the suffering of others: the more faith she gives, the less she has for herself; all these poor wretches cling desperately to her, and she has nothing with which to stay herself. No one holds out a hand to her. And sometimes she is stoned.... You knew, Christophe, the splendid woman who gave herself to the humblest and most meritorious charitable work; she took pity on the street prostitutes who had just been brought to child-bed, the wretched women with whom the Public Aid would have nothing to do, or who were afraid of the Public Aid; she tried to cure them physically and morally, to look after them and their children, to wake in them the mother-feeling, to give them new homes and a life of honest work. She taxed her strength to the utmost in her grim labors, so full of disappointment and bitterness—(so few are saved, so few wish to be saved! And think of all the babies who die! Poor innocent little babies, condemned in the very hour of their birth!...)—That Woman who had taken upon herself the sorrows of others, the blameless creature who of her own free will expiated the crimes of human selfishness—how do you think she was judged, Christophe? The evil-minded public accused her of making money out of her work, and even of making money out of the poor women she protected. She had to leave the neighborhood, and go away, utterly downhearted....—You cannot conceive the cruelty of the struggles which independent women have to maintain against the society of to-day, a conservative, heartless society, which is dying and expends what little energy it has left in preventing others from living."

"My dear creature, it is not only the lot of women. We all know these struggles. And I know the refuge."

"What is it?"

"Art,"

"All very well for you, but not for us. And even among men, how many are there who can take advantage of it?"

"Look at your friend Cecile. She is happy."

"How do you know? Ah! You have jumped to conclusions! Because she puts a brave face on it, because she does not stop to think of things that make her sad, because she conceals them from others, you say that she is happy! Yes. She is happy to be well and strong, and to be able to fight. But you know nothing of her struggles. Do you think she was made for that deceptive life of art? Art! Just think of the poor women who long for the glory of being able to write or play or sing as the very summit of happiness! Their lives must be bare indeed, and they must be so hard pressed that they can find no affection to which to turn! Art! What have we to do with art, if we have all the rest with it? There is only one thing in the world which can make a woman forget everything else, everything else: and that is the child." "And when she has a child, you see, even that is not enough."

"Yes. Not always.... Women are not very happy. It is difficult to be a woman. Much more difficult than to be a man. You men never realize that enough. You can be absorbed in an intellectual passion or some outside activity. You mutilate yourselves, but you are the happier for it. A healthy woman cannot do that without suffering for it. It is inhuman to stifle a part of yourself. When we women are happy in one way, we regret that we are not happy in another. We have several souls. You men have but one, a more vigorous soul, which is often brutal and even monstrous. I admire you. But do not be too selfish. You are very selfish without knowing it. You hurt us often, without knowing it."

"What are we to do? It is not our fault."

"No, it is not your fault, my dear Christophe. It is not your fault, nor is it ours. The truth is, you know, that life is not a simple thing. They say that there we only need to live naturally. But which of us is natural?"

"True. Nothing is natural in our way of living. Celibacy is not natural. Nor is marriage. And free love delivers the weak up to the rapaciousness of the strong. Even our society is not a natural thing: we have manufactured it. It is said that man is a sociable animal. What nonsense! He was forced to be so to live. He has made himself sociable for the purposes of utility, and self-defence, and pleasure, and the rise to greatness. His necessity has led him to subscribe to certain compacts. Nature kicks against the constraint and avenges herself. Nature was not made for us. We try to quell her. It is a struggle, and it is not surprising that we are often beaten. How are we to win through it? By being strong."

"By being kind."

"Heavens! To be kind, to pluck off one's armor of selfishness, to breathe, to love life, light, one's humble work, the little corner of the earth in which one's roots are spread. And if one cannot have breadth to try to make up for it in height and depth, like a tree in a cramped space growing upward to the sun."

"Yes. And first of all to love one another. If a man would feel more that he is the brother of a woman, and not only her prey, or that she must be his! If both would shed their vanity and each think a little less of themselves, and a little more of the other!... We are weak: help us. Let us not say to those who have fallen: 'I do not know you.' But: 'Courage, friend. We'll pull through.'"

They sat there in silence by the hearth, with the cat between them, all three still, lost in thought, gazing at the fire It was nearly out; but a little flame flickered up, and with its wing lightly touched Madame Arnaud's delicate face, which was suffused with the rosy light of an inward exaltation which was strange to her. She was amazed at herself for having been so open. She had never said so much before, and she would never say so much again.

She laid her hand on Christophe's and said:

"What will you do with the child?"

She had been thinking of that from the outset. She talked and talked and became another woman, excited and exalted. But she was thinking of that and that only. With Christophe's first words she had woven a romance in her heart. She thought of the child left by its mother, of the happiness of bringing it up, and weaving about its little soul the web of her dreams and her love. And she thought:

"No. It is wicked of me: I ought not to rejoice in the misfortunes of others."

But the idea was too strong for her. She went on talking and talking, and her silent heart was flooded with hope.

Christophe said:

"Yes, of course we have thought it over. Poor child! Both Olivier and I are incapable of rearing it. It needs a woman's care. I thought perhaps one of our friends would like to help us...."

Madame Arnaud could hardly breathe.

Christophe said:

"I wanted to talk to you about it. And then Cecile came in just as we were talking about it. When she heard of our difficulty, when she saw the child, she was so moved, she seemed so delighted, she said: 'Christophe....'"

Madame Arnaud's heart stopped; she did not hear what else he said: there was a mist in front of her eyes. She was fain to cry out:

"No, no. Give him to me...."

Christophe went on speaking. She did not hear what he was saying. But she controlled herself. She thought of what Cecile had told her, and she thought:

"Her need is greater than mine. I have my dear Arnaud ... and ... and everything ... and besides, I am older...."

And she smiled and said:

"It is well."

But the flame in the dying fire had flickered out: so too had the rosy light in her face. And her dear tired face wore only its usual expression of kindness and resignation.

* * * * *

"My wife has betrayed me."

Olivier was crushed by the weight of that idea. In vain did Christophe try affectionately to shake him out of his torpor.

"What would you?" he said. "The treachery of a friend is an everyday evil like illness, or poverty, or fighting the fools. We have to be armed against it. It is a poor sort of man that cannot bear up against it."

"That's just what I am. I'm not proud of it ... a poor sort of man: yes: a man who needs tenderness, and dies if it is taken from him."

"Your life is not finished: there are other people to love."

"I can't believe in any one. There are none who can be friends."

"Olivier!"

"I beg your pardon. I don't doubt you, although there are moments when I doubt everybody—myself included.... But you are strong: you don't need anybody: you can do without me."

"So can she—even better."

"You are cruel, Christophe."

"My dear fellow. I'm being brutal to you just to make you lash out. Good Lord! It is perfectly shameful of you to sacrifice those who love you, and your life, to a woman who doesn't care for you."

"What do I care for those who love me? I love her."

"Work. Your old interests...."

"... Don't interest me any longer. I'm sick of it all. I seem to have passed out of life altogether. Everything seems so far away.... I see, but I don't understand.... And to think that there are men who never grow tired of winding up their clockwork every day, and doing their dull work, and their newspaper discussions, and their wretched pursuit of pleasure, men who can be violently for or against a Government, or a book, or an actress.... Oh! I feel so old! I feel nothing, neither hatred, nor rancor against anybody. I'm bored with everything. I feel that there is nothing in the world.... Write? Why write? Who understands you? I used to write only for one person: everything that I did was for her.... There is nothing left: I'm worn out, Christophe, fagged out. I want to sleep."

"Sleep, then, old fellow. I'll sit by you."

But sleep was the last thing that Olivier could have. Ah! if only a sufferer could sleep for months until his sorrow is no more and has no part in his new self; if only he could sleep until he became a new man! But that gift can never be his: and he would not wish to have it. The worst suffering of all were to be deprived of suffering. Olivier was like a man in a fever, feeding on his fever: a real fever which came in regular waves, being at its height in the evening when the light began to fade. And the rest of the day it left him shattered, intoxicated by love, devoured by memory, turning the same thought over and over like an idiot chewing the same mouthful again and again without being able to swallow it, with all the forces of his brain paralyzed, grinding slowly on with the one fixed idea.

He could not, like Christophe, resort to cursing his injuries and honestly blackguarding the woman who had dealt them. He was more clear-sighted and just, and he knew that he had his share of the responsibility, and that he was not the only one to suffer: Jacqueline also was a victim:—she was his victim. She had trusted herself to him: how had he dealt with his trust? If he was not strong enough to make her happy, why had he bound her to himself? She was within her rights in breaking the ties which chafed her.

"It is not her fault," he thought. "It is mine. I have not loved her well. And yet I loved her truly. But I did not know how to love since I did not know how to win her love."

So he blamed himself: and perhaps he was right. But it is not much use to hold an inquest on the past: if it were all to do again, it would be just the same, inquiry or no inquiry: and such probing stands in the way of life. The strong man is he who forgets the injury that has been done him—and also, alas! that which he has done himself, as soon as he is sure that he cannot make it good. But no man is strong from reason, but from passion. Love and passion are like distant relations: they rarely go together. Olivier loved: he was only strong against himself. In the passive state into which he had fallen he was an easy prey to every kind of illness. Influenza, bronchitis, pneumonia, pounced on him. He was ill for part of the summer. With Madame Arnaud's assistance, Christophe nursed him devotedly: and they succeeded in checking his illness. But against his moral illness they could do nothing: and little by little they were overcome by the depression and utter weariness of his perpetual melancholy, and were forced to run away from it.

Illness plunges a man into a strange solitude. Men have an instinctive horror of it. It is as though they were afraid lest it should be contagious: and at the very least it is boring, and they run away from it. How few people there are who can forgive the sufferings of others! It is always the old story of the friends of Job. Eliphaz the Temanite accuses Job of impatience. Bildad the Shuhite declares that Job's afflictions are the punishment of his sins. Sophar of Naamath charges him with presumption. "Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram: against Job was his wrath kindled, because he justifieth himself, rather than God."—Few men are really sorrowful. Many are called, but few are chosen. Olivier was one of these. As a misanthrope once observed: "He seemed to like being maltreated. There is nothing to be gained by playing the part of the unhappy man. You only make yourself detested."

Olivier could not tell even his most intimate friends what he felt. He saw that it bored them. Even his friend Christophe lost patience with such tenacious and importunate grief. He knew that he was clumsy and awkward in remedying it. If the truth must be told, Christophe, whose heart was generous, Christophe who had gone through much suffering on his own account, could not feel the suffering of his friend. Such is the infirmity of human nature. You may be kind, full of pity, understanding, and you may have suffered a thousand deaths, but you cannot feel the pain of your friend if he has but a toothache. If illness goes on for a long time, there is a temptation to think that the sufferer is exaggerating his complaint. How much more, then, must this be so when the illness is invisible and seated in the very depths of the soul! A man who is outside it all cannot help being irritated by seeing his friend moaning and groaning about a feeling which does not concern him in the very least. And in the end he says: by way of appeasing his conscience:

"What can I do? He won't listen to reason, whatever I say."

To reason: true. One can only help by loving the sufferer, by loving him unreasoningly, without trying to convince him, without trying to cure him, but just by loving and pitying him. Love is the only balm for the wounds of love. But love is not inexhaustible even with those who love the best: they have only a limited store of it. When the sick man's friends have once written all the words of affection they can find, when they have done what they consider their duty, they withdraw prudently, and avoid him like a criminal. And as they feel a certain secret shame that they can help him so little, they help him less and less: they try to let him forget them and to forget themselves. And if the sick man persists in his misfortune and, indiscreetly, an echo of it penetrates to their ears, then they judge harshly his want of courage and inability to bear up against his trials. And if he succumbs, it is very certain that lurking beneath their really genuine pity lies this disdainful under-thought:

"Poor devil! I had a better opinion of him."

Amid such universal selfishness what a marvelous amount of good can be done by a simple word of tenderness, a delicate attention, a look of pity and love! Then the sick man feels the worth of kindness. And how poor is all the rest compared with that!... Kindness brought Olivier nearer to Madame Arnaud than anybody else, even his friend Christophe. However, Christophe most meritoriously forced himself to be patient, and in his affection for him, concealed what he really thought of him. But Olivier, with his natural keenness of perception sharpened by suffering, saw the conflict in his friend, and what a burden he was upon him with his unending sorrow. It was enough, to make him turn from Christophe, and fill him with a desire to cry:

"Go away. Go."

So unhappiness often divides loving hearts. As the winnower sorts the grain, so sorrow sets on one side those who have the will to live, and on the other those who wish to die. It is the terrible law of life, which is stronger than love! The mother who sees her son dying, the friend who sees his friend drowning,—if they cannot save them, they do not cease their efforts to save themselves: they do not die with them. And yet, they love them a thousand times better than their lives....

In spite of his great love, there were moments when Christophe had to leave Olivier. He was too strong, too healthy, to be able to live and breathe in such airless sorrow. He was mightily ashamed of himself! He would feel cold and dead at heart to think that he could do nothing for his friend: and as he needed to avenge himself on some one, he visited his wrath upon Jacqueline. In spite of Madame Arnaud's words of understanding and sympathy, he still judged her harshly, as a young, ardent, and whole-hearted man must, until he has learned enough of life to have pity on its weaknesses.

He would go and see Cecile and the child who had been entrusted to her. That refreshed his soul. Cecile was transfigured by her borrowed motherhood: she seemed to be young again, and happy, more refined and tender. Jacqueline's departure had not given her any unavowed hope of happiness. She knew that the memory of Jacqueline must leave her farther away from Olivier than her presence. Besides, the little puff of wind that had set her longing had passed: it had been a moment of crisis, which the sight of poor Jacqueline's frenzied mistake had helped to dissipate: she had returned to her normal tranquillity, and she could not rightly understand what it was that had dragged her out of it. All that was best in her need of love was satisfied by her love for the child. With the marvelous power of illusion—of intuition—of women, she found the man she loved in the little child: in that way she could have him, weak and utterly dependent, utterly her own: he belonged to her: and she could love him, love him passionately, with a love as pure as the heart of the innocent child, and his dear blue eyes, like little drops of light.... True, there was mingled with her tenderness a regretful melancholy. Ah! It could never be the same thing as a child of her own blood!... But it was good, all the same.

Christophe now regarded Cecile with very different eyes. He remembered an ironic saying of Francoise Oudon:

"How is it that you and Philomela, who would do so well as husband and wife, are not in love with each other?"

But Francoise knew the reason better than Christophe: it is very rarely that a man like Christophe loves those who can do him good: rather he is apt to love those who can do him harm. Opposites meet: his nature seeks its own destruction, and goes to the burning and intense life rather than to the cautious life which is sparing of itself. And a man like Christophe is quite right, for his law is not to live as long as possible, but as mightily as possible.

However, Christophe, having less penetration than Francoise, said to himself that love is a blind, inhuman force, throwing those together who cannot bear with each other. Love joins those together who are like each other. And what love inspires is very small compared with what it destroys. If it be happy it dissolves the will. If unhappy it breaks hearts. What good does it ever do?

And as he thus maligned love he saw its ironic, tender smile saying to him:

"Ingrate!"

* * * * *

Christophe had been unable to get out of going to one of the At Homes given at the Austrian Embassy. Philomela was to sing lieder by Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Christophe. She was glad of her success and that of her friend, who was now made much of by a certain set. Christophe's name was gaining ground from day to day, even with the great public: it had become impossible for the Levy-Coeurs to ignore him any longer. His works were played at concerts: and he had had an opera accepted by the Opera Comique. The sympathies of some person unknown were enlisted on his behalf. The mysterious friend, who had more than once helped him, was still forwarding his claims. More than once Christophe had been conscious of that fondly helping hand in everything he did: some one was watching over him and jealously concealing his or her identity. Christophe had tried to discover it: but it seemed as though his friend were piqued by his not having attempted sooner to find out who he was, and he remained unapproachable. Besides, Christophe was absorbed by other preoccupations: he was thinking of Olivier, he was thinking of Francoise: that very morning he had just read in the paper that she was lying seriously ill at San Francisco: he imagined her alone in a strange city, in a hotel bedroom, refusing to see anybody, or to write to her friends, clenching her teeth, and waiting, alone, for death.

He was obsessed by these ideas and avoided the company present: and he withdrew into a little room apart: he stood leaning against the wall in a recess that was half in darkness, behind a curtain of evergreens and flowers, listening to Philomela's lovely voice, with its elegiac warmth, singing The Lime-tree of Schubert: and the pure music called up sad memories. Facing him on the wall was a large mirror which reflected the lights and the life of the next room. He did not see it: he was gazing in upon himself: and the mist of tears swam before his eyes.... Suddenly, like Schubert's rustling tree, he began to tremble for no reason. He stood so for a few seconds, very pale, unable to move. Then the veil fell from before his eyes, and he saw in the mirror in front of him his "friend," gazing at him.... His "friend"? Who was she? He knew nothing save that she was his friend and that he knew her: and he stood leaning against the wall, his eyes meeting hers, and he trembled. She smiled. He could not see the lines of her face or her body, nor the expression in her eyes, nor whether she was tall or short, nor how she was dressed. Only one thing he saw: the divine goodness of her smile of compassion.

And suddenly her smile conjured up in Christophe an old forgotten memory of his early childhood.... He was six or seven, at school, unhappy: he had just been humiliated and bullied by some older, stronger boys, and they were all jeering at him, and the master had punished him unjustly: he was crouching in a corner, utterly forlorn, while the others were playing: and he wept softly. There was a sad-faced little girl who was not playing with the others,—(he could see her now, though he had never thought of her since then; she was short, and had a big head, fair, almost white hair and eyebrows, very pale blue eyes, broad white cheeks, thick lips, a rather puffy face, and small red hands),—and she came close up to him, then stopped, with her thumb in her mouth and stood watching him cry: then she laid her little hand on Christophe's head and said hurriedly and shyly, with just the same smile of compassion:

"Don't cry! Don't cry!"

Then Christophe could not control himself any longer, and he burst into sobs, and buried his face in the little girl's pinafore, while, in a quavering, tender voice, she went on saying:

"Don't cry...."

She died soon afterwards, a few weeks perhaps: the hand of death must have been upon her at the time of that little scene.... Why should he think of her now? There was no connection between the child who was dead and forgotten, the humble daughter of the people in a distant German town, and the aristocratic young lady who was gazing at him now. But there is only one soul for all: and although millions of human beings seem to be all different one from another, different as the worlds moving in the heavens, it is the same flash of thought or love which lights up the hearts of men and women though centuries divide them. Christophe had just seen once more the light that he had seen shining upon the pale lips of the little comforter....

It was all over in a second. A throng of people filled the door and shut out Christophe's view of the other room. He stepped back quickly into the shade, out of sight of the mirror: he was afraid lest his emotion should be noticed. But when he was calm again he wanted to see her once more. He was afraid she would be gone. He went into the room and he found her at once in the crowd, although she did not look in the least like what he had seen in the mirror. Now he saw her in profile sitting in a group of finely dressed ladies: her elbow was resting on the arm of her chair, she was leaning forward a little, with her head in her hand, and listening to what they were saying with an intelligent absent smile: she had the expression and features of the young St. John, listening and looking through half-closed eyes, and smiling at his own thoughts, of The Dispute of Raphael.... Then she raised her eyes, saw him, and showed no surprise. And he saw that her smile was for himself. He was much moved, and bowed, and went up to her.

"You don't recognize me?" she said.

He knew her again that very moment.

"Grazia".... he said. [Footnote: See "Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market Place."]

At the same moment the ambassador's wife passed by, and smiled with pleasure to see that the long-sought meeting had at last come about: and she introduced Christophe to "Countess Bereny." But Christophe was so moved that he did not even hear her, and he did not notice, the new name. She was still his little Grazia to him.

* * * * *

Grazia was twenty-two. She had been married for a year to a young attache of the Austrian Embassy, a nobleman, a member of a great family, related to one of the Emperor's chief ministers, a snob, a man of the world, smart, prematurely worn out; with whom she had been genuinely in love, while she still loved him, though she judged him. Her old father was dead. Her husband had been appointed to the Embassy in Paris. Through Count Bereny's influence, and her own charm and intelligence, the timid little girl, whom the smallest thing used to set in a flutter, had become one of the best-known women in Parisian society, though she did nothing to procure that distinction, which embarrassed her not at all. It is a great thing to be young and pretty, and to give pleasure, and to know it. And it is a thing no less great to have a tranquil heart, sound and serene, which can find happiness in the harmonious coincidence of its desires and its fate. The lonely flower of her life had unfolded its petals: but she had lost some of the calm music of her Latin soul, fed by the light and the mighty peace of Italy. Quite naturally she had acquired a certain influence in Parisian society: it did not surprise her, and she was discreet and adroit in using it to further the artistic or charitable movements which turned to her for aid: she left the official patronage of these movements to others: for although she could well maintain her rank, she had preserved a secret independence from the days of her rather wild childish days in the lonely villa in the midst of the fields, and society wearied while it amused her, though she always disguised her boredom by the amiable smile of a courteous and kind heart.

She had not forgotten her great friend Christophe. No doubt there was nothing left of the child in whom an innocent love had burned in silence. This new Grazia was a very sensible woman, not at all given to romance. She regarded the exaggerations of her childish tenderness with a gentle irony. And yet she was always moved by the memory of it. The thought of Christophe was associated with the purest hours of her life. She could not hear his name spoken without feeling pleasure: and each of his successes delighted her as though she had shared in it herself: for she had felt that they must come to him. As soon as she arrived in Paris she tried to meet him again. She had invited him to her house, and had appended her maiden name to her letter. Christophe had paid no attention to it, and had flung the invitation into the waste-paper basket unanswered. She was not offended. She had gone on following his doings and, to a certain extent, his life, without his knowing it. It was she whose helping hand had come to his aid in the recent campaign against him in the papers. Grazia was in all things correct and had hardly any connection with the world of the Press: but when it came to doing a friend a service, she was capable of a malicious cunning in wheedling the people whom she most disliked. She invited the editor of the paper which was leading the snarling pack, to her house: and in less than no time she turned his head: she skilfully flattered his vanity: and she gained such an ascendancy over him, while she overawed him, that it needed only a few careless words of contemptuous astonishment at the attacks on Christophe for the campaign to be stopped short. The editor suppressed the insulting article which was to appear next day: and when the writer asked why it was suppressed he rated him soundly. He did more: he gave orders to one of his factotums to turn out an enthusiastic article about Christophe within a fortnight: the article was turned out to order; it was enthusiastic and stupid. It was Grazia, too, who thought of organizing performances of her friend's music at the Embassy, and, knowing that he was interested in Cecile, helped her to make her name. And finally, through her influence among the German diplomatists, she began gently, quietly, and adroitly to awaken the interest of the powers that be in Christophe, who was banished from Germany: and little by little she did create a current of opinion directed towards obtaining from the Emperor a decree reopening the gates of his country to a great artist who was an honor to it. And though it was too soon to expect such an act of grace, she did at least succeed in procuring an undertaking that the Government would close its eyes to his two days' visit to his native town.

And Christophe, who was conscious of the presence of his invisible friend hovering about him without being able to find out who she was, at last recognized her in the young St. John whose eyes smiled at him in the mirror.

* * * * *

They talked of the past. Christophe hardly knew what they said. A man hears the woman he loves just as little as he sees her. He loves her. And when a man really loves he never even thinks whether he is loved or no. Christophe never doubted it. She was there: that was enough. All the rest had ceased to exist....

Grazia stopped speaking. A very tall young man, quite handsome, well-dressed, clean-shaven, partly bald, with a bored, contemptuous manner, stood appraising Christophe through his eye-glass, and then bowed with haughty politeness.

"My husband," said she.

The clatter and chatter of the room rushed back to his ears. The inward light died down. Christophe was frozen, said nothing, bowed, and withdrew at once.

How ridiculous and consuming are the unreasonable demands of the souls of artists and the childish laws which govern their passionate lives! Hardly had he once more found the friend whom he had neglected in the old days when she loved him, while he had not thought of her for years, than it seemed to him that she was his, his very own, and that if another man had taken her he had stolen her from him: and she herself had no right to give herself to another. Christophe did not know clearly what was happening to him. But his creative daimon knew it perfectly, and in those days begat some of his loveliest songs of sorrowful love.

Some time passed before he saw her again. He was obsessed by thoughts of Olivier's troubles and his health. At last one day he came upon the address she had given him and he made up his mind to call on her.

As he went up the steps he heard the sound of workmen hammering. The anteroom was in disorder and littered with boxes and trunks. The footman replied that the Countess was not at home. But as Christophe was disappointedly going away after leaving his card, the servant ran after him and asked him to come in and begged his pardon. Christophe was shown into a little room in which the carpets had been rolled up and taken away. Grazia came towards him with her bright smile and her hand held out impulsively and gladly. All his foolish rancor vanished. He took her hand with the same happy impulsiveness and kissed it.

"Ah!" she said, "I am glad you came! I was so afraid I should have to go away without seeing you again!"

"Go away? You are going away!"

Once more darkness descended upon him.

"You see...." she said, pointing to the litter in the room. "We are leaving Paris at the end of the week."

"For long?"

She shrugged:

"Who knows?"

He tried to speak. But his throat was dry.

"Where are you going?"

"To the United States. My husband has been appointed first secretary to the Embassy."

"And so, and so...." he said ... (his lips trembled) ... "it is all over?"

"My dear friend!" she said, touched by his tone.... "No: it is not all over."

"I have found you again only to lose you?"

There were tears in her eyes.

"My dear friend," she said again.

He held his hand over his eyes and turned away to hide his emotion.

"Do not be so sad," she said, laying her hand on his.

Once more, just then, he thought of the little girl in Germany. They were silent.

"Why did you come so late?" she asked at last, "I tried to find you. You never replied."

"I did not know. I did not know," he said.... "Tell me, was it you who came to my aid so many times without my guessing who it was?... Do I owe it to you that I was able to go back to Germany? Were you my good angel, watching over me?"

She said:

"I was glad to be able to do something for you. I owe you so much!"

"What do you owe?" he asked. "I have done nothing for you."

"You do not know," she said, "what you have been to me."

She spoke of the days when she was a little girl and met him at the house of her uncle, Stevens, and he had given her through his music the revelation of all that is beautiful in the world. And little by little, with growing animation she told him with brief allusions, that were both veiled and transparent, of her childish feeling for him, and the way in which she had shared Christophe's troubles, and the concert at which he had been hissed, and she had wept, and the letter she had written and he had never answered: for he had not received it. And as Christophe listened to her, in all good faith, he projected his actual emotion and the tenderness he felt for the tender face so near his own into the past.

They talked innocently, fondly, and joyously. And, as he talked, Christophe took Grazia's hand. And suddenly they both stopped: for Grazia saw that Christophe loved her. And Christophe saw it too....

For some time Grazia had loved Christophe without Christophe knowing or caring. Now Christophe loved Grazia: and Grazia had nothing for him but calm friendship: she loved another man. As so often happens, one of the two clocks of their lives was a little faster than the other, and it was enough to have changed the course of both their lives....

Grazia withdrew her hand, and Christophe did not stay her. And they sat there for a moment, mum, without a word.

And Grazia said:

"Good-bye."

Christophe said plaintively once more:

"And it is all over?"

"No doubt it is better that it should be so."

"We shall not meet again before you go."

"No," she said.

"When shall we meet again?"

She made a sad little gesture of doubt.

"Then," said Christophe, "what's the good, what's the good of our having met again?"

Her eyes reproached him, and he said quickly:

"No. Forgive me. I am unjust."

"I shall always think of you," said she.

"Alas!" he replied, "I cannot even think of you. I know nothing of your life."

Very quietly she described her ordinary life in a few words and told him how her days were spent. She spoke of herself and of her husband with her lovely affectionate smile.

"Ah!" he said jealously. "You love him?"

"Yes," she said. He got up.

"Good-bye."

She got up too. Then only he saw that she was with child. And in his heart there was an inexpressible feeling of disgust, and tenderness, and jealousy, and passionate pity. She walked with him to the door of the little room. There he turned, bent over her hands, and kissed them fervently. She stood there with her eyes half closed and did not stir. At last he drew himself up, turned, and hurried away without looking at her.

... E chi allora m'avesse domandalo di cosa alcuna, la mia risponsione sarebbe stata solamente AMORE, con viso vestito d'umilta....

All Saints' Day. Outside, a gray light and a cold wind. Christophe was with Cecile, who was sitting near the cradle, and Madame Arnaud was bending over it. She had dropped in. Christophe was dreaming. He was feeling that he had missed happiness: but he never thought of complaining: he knew that happiness existed.... Oh! sun, I have no need to see thee to love thee! Through the long winter days, when I shiver in the darkness, my heart is full of thee: my love keeps me warm: I know that thou art there....

And Cecile was dreaming too. She was pondering the child, and she had come to believe that it was indeed her own. Oh, blessed power of dreams, the creative imagination of life! Life.... What is life? It is not as cold reason and our eyes tell us that it is. Life is what we dream, and the measure of life is love.

Christophe gazed at Cecile, whose peasant face with its wide-set eyes shone with the splendor of the maternal instinct,—she was more a mother than the real mother. And he looked at the tender weary face of Madame Arnaud. In it, as in books that moved him, he read the hidden sweetness and suffering of the life of a married woman which, though none ever suspects it, is sometimes as rich in sorrow and joy as the love of Juliet or Ysolde: though it touches a greater height of religious feeling ....

Soda rei humana atque divina....

And he thought that children or the lack of children has as much to do with the happiness or unhappiness of those who marry and those who do not marry as faith and the lack of faith. Happiness is the perfume of the soul, the harmony that dwells, singing, in the depths of the heart. And the most beautiful of all the music of the soul is kindness.

Olivier came in. He was quite calm and reposeful in his movements: a new serenity shone in him. He smiled at the child, shook hands with Cecile and Madame Arnaud, and began to talk quietly. He watched them with a sort of surprised affection. He was no longer the same. In the isolation in which he had shut himself up with his grief, like a caterpillar in the nest of its own spinning, he had succeeded after a hard struggle in throwing off his sorrow like an empty shell. Some day we shall tell how he thought he had found a fine cause to which to devote his life, in which he had no interest save that of sacrifice: and, as it is ordered, on the very day when in his heart he had come to a definite renunciation of life, it was kindled once more. His friends looked at him. They did not know what had happened, and dared not ask him: but they felt that he was free once more, and that there was in him neither regret nor bitterness for anything or against anybody in the whole wide world.

Christophe got up and went to the piano, and said to Olivier:

"Would you like me to sing you a melody of Brahms?"

"Brahms?" said Olivier. "Do you play your old enemy's music nowadays?"

"It is All Saints' Day," said Christophe. "The day when all are forgiven."

Softly, so as not to wake the child, he sang a few bars of the old Schwabian folk-song:

"... Fur die Zeit, wo du g'liebt mi hast, Da dank' i dir schon, Und i wunsch', dass dir's anders wo Besser mag geh'n...."

"... For the time when thou did'st love me, I do thank thee well; And I hope that elsewhere Thou may'st better fare...."

"Christophe!" said Olivier.

Christophe hugged him close.

"Come, old fellow," he said. "We have fared well."

The four of them sat near the sleeping child. They did not speak. And if they had been asked what they were thinking,—with the countenance of humility, they would have replied only:

"Love."



THE BURNING BUSH

I

Came calmness to his heart. No wind stirred. The air was still....

Christophe was at rest: peace was his. He was in a certain measure proud of having conquered it: but secretly, in his heart of hearts, he was sorry for it. He was amazed at the silence. His passions were slumbering: in all good faith he thought that they would never wake again.

The mighty, somewhat brutal force that was his was browsing listlessly and aimlessly. In his inmost soul there was a secret void, a hidden question: "What's the good?": perhaps a certain consciousness of the happiness which he had failed to grasp. He had not force enough to struggle either with himself or with others. He had come to the end of a stage in his progress: he was reaping the fruits of all his former efforts, cumulatively: too easily he was tapping the vein of music that he had opened and while the public was naturally behindhand, and was just discovering and admiring his old work, he was beginning to break away from them without knowing as yet whether he would be able to make any advance on them. He had now a uniform and even delight in creation. At this period of his life art was to him no more than a fine instrument upon which he played like a virtuoso. He was ashamedly conscious of becoming a dilettante.

"If," said Ibsen, "a man is to persevere in his art; he must have something else, something more than his native genius: passions, sorrows, which shall fill his life and give it a direction. Otherwise he will not create, he will write books."

Christophe was writing books. He was not used to it. His books were beautiful. He would have rather had them less beautiful and more alive. He was like an athlete resting, not knowing to what use to turn his muscles, and, yawning in boredom like a caged wild beast, he sat looking ahead at the years and years of peaceful work that awaited him. And as, with his old German capacity for optimism, he had no difficulty in persuading himself that everything was for the best, he thought that such a future was no doubt the appointed inevitable end: he flattered himself that he had issued from his time of trial and tribulation and had become master of himself. That was not saying much.... Oh, well! A man is sovereign over that which is his, he is what he is capable of being.... He thought that he had reached his haven.

The two friends were not living together. After Jacqueline's flight, Christophe had thought that Olivier would come back and take up his old quarters with him. But Olivier could not. Although he felt keenly the need of intimacy with Christophe, yet he was conscious of the impossibility of resuming their old existence together. After the years lived with Jacqueline, it would have seemed intolerable and even sacrilegious to admit another human being to his most intimate life,—even though he loved and were loved by that other a thousand times more than Jacqueline.—There was no room for argument.

Christophe had found it hard to understand. He returned again and again to the charge, he was surprised, saddened, hurt, and angry. Then his instinct, which was finer and quicker than his intelligence, bade him take heed. Suddenly he ceased, and admitted that Olivier was right.

But they saw each other every day: and they had never been so closely united even when they were living under the same roof. Perhaps they did not exchange their most intimate thoughts when they talked. They did not need to do so. The exchange was made naturally, without need of words, by grace of the love that was in their hearts.

They talked very little, for each was absorbed: one in his art, the other in his memories. Olivier's sorrow was growing less: but he did nothing to mitigate it, rather almost taking a pleasure in it: for a long time it had been his only reason for living. He loved his child: but his child—a puling baby—could occupy no great room in his life. There are men who are more lovers than fathers, and it is useless to cry out against them. Nature is not uniform, and it would be absurd to try to impose identical laws upon the hearts of all men. No man has the right to sacrifice his duty to his heart. At least the heart must be granted the right to be unhappy where a man does his duty. What Olivier perhaps most loved in his child was the woman of whose body it was made.

Until quite recently he had paid little attention to the sufferings of others. He was an intellectual living too much shut up in himself. It was not egoism so much as a morbid habit of dreaming. Jacqueline had increased the void about him: her love had traced a magic circle about Olivier to cut him off from other men, and the circle endured after love had ceased to be. In addition he was a little aristocratic by temper. From his childhood on, in spite of his soft heart, he had held aloof from the mob for reasons rooted in the delicacy of his body and his soul. The smell of the people and their thoughts were repulsive to him.

But everything had changed as the result of a commonplace tragedy which he had lately witnessed.

* * * * *

He had taken a very modest lodging at the top of the Mont-rouge quarter, not far from Christophe and Cecile. The district was rather common, and the house in which he lived was occupied by little gentlepeople, clerks, and a few working-class families. At any other time he would have suffered from such surroundings in which he moved as a stranger: but now it mattered very little to him where he was: he felt that he was a stranger everywhere. He hardly knew and did not want to know who his neighbors were. When he returned from his work—(he had gone into a publishing-house)—he withdrew into his memories, and would only go out to see his child and Christophe. His lodging was not home to him: it was the dark room in which the images of the past took shape and dwelling: the darker it was the more clearly did the inward images emerge. He scarcely noticed the faces of those he passed on the stairs. And yet unconsciously he was aware of certain faces that were impressed upon his mind. There is a certain order of mind which only really sees things after they have passed. But then, nothing escapes them, the smallest details are graven on the plate. Olivier's was such a mind: he bore within himself multitudes of the shadowy shapes of the living. With any emotional shock they would come mounting up in crowds: and Olivier would be amazed to recognize those whom he had never known, and sometimes he would hold out his hands to grasp them.... Too late.

One day as he came out of his rooms he saw a little crowd collected in front of the house-door round the housekeeper, who was making a harangue. He was so little interested that he was for going his way without troubling to find out what was the matter: but the housekeeper, anxious to gain another listener, stopped him, and asked him if he knew what had happened to the poor Roussels. Olivier did not even know who "the poor Roussels" were, and he listened with polite indifference. When he heard that a working-class family, father, mother, and five children, had committed suicide to escape from poverty in the house in which he lived, he stopped, like the rest, and looked up at the walls of the building, and listened to the woman's story, which she was nothing loth to begin again from the beginning. As she went on talking, old memories awoke in him, and he realized that he had seen the wretched family: he asked a few questions.... Yes, he remembered them: the man—(he used to hear him breathing noisily on the stairs)—a journeyman baker, with a pale face, all the blood drawn out of it by the heat of the oven, hollow cheeks always ill shaven: he had had pneumonia at the beginning of the winter: he had gone back to work only half cured: he had had a relapse: for the last three weeks he had had no work and no strength. The woman had dragged from childbirth to childbirth: crippled with rheumatism, she had worn herself out in trying to make both ends meet, and had spent her days running hither and thither trying to obtain from the Public Charity a meager sum which was not readily forthcoming. Meanwhile the children came, and went on coming: eleven, seven, three—not to mention two others who had died in between:—and, to crown all, twins who had chosen the very dire moment to make their appearance: they had been born only the month before.

—On the day of their birth, a neighbor said, the eldest of the five, a little girl of eleven, Justine—poor little mite!—had begun to cry and asked how ever she could manage to carry both of them.

Olivier at once remembered the little girl,—a large forehead, with colorless hair pulled back, and sorrowful, gray bulging eyes. He was always meeting her, carrying provisions or her little sister: or she would be holding her seven-year-old brother by the hand, a little pinch-faced, cringing boy he was, with one blind eye. When they met on the stairs Olivier used to say, with his absent courteous manner:

"Pardon, mademoiselle."

But she never said anything: she used to go stiffly by, hardly moving aside: but his illusory courtesy used to give her a secret pleasure. Only the evening before, at six o'clock, as he was going downstairs, he had met her for the last time: she was carrying up a bucket of charcoal. He had not noticed it, except that he did remark that the burden seemed to be very heavy. But that is merely in the order of things for the children of the people. Olivier had bowed, as usual, without looking at her. A few steps lower down he had mechanically looked up to see her leaning over the balustrade of the landing, with her little pinched face, watching him go down. She turned away at once, and resumed her climb upstairs. Did she know whither she was climbing?—Olivier had no doubt that she did, and he was obsessed by the thought of the child bearing death in the load that was too heavy for her, death the deliverer—the wretched children for whom to cease to be meant an end of suffering! He was unable to continue his walk. He went back to his room. But there he was conscious of the proximity of the dead.... Only a few thin walls between him and them.... To think that he had lived so near to such misery!

He went to see Christophe. He was sick at heart: he told himself that it was monstrous for him to have been so absorbed as he had been in vain regrets for love while there were so many creatures suffering misfortunes a thousand times more cruel, and it was possible to help and save them. His emotion was profound: there was no difficulty In communicating it. Christophe was easily impressionable, and he in his turn was moved. When he heard Olivier's story he tore up the page of music he had just been writing, and called himself a selfish brute to be amusing himself with childish games. But, directly after, he picked up the pieces. He was too much under the spell of his music. And his instinct told him that a work of art the less would not make one happy man the more. The tragedy of want was no new thing to him: from his childhood on he had been used to treading on the edge of such abysmal depths, and contriving not to topple over. But he was apt to judge suicide harshly, being conscious as he was of such a fullness of force, and unable to understand how a man, under the pressure of any suffering whatsoever, could give up the struggle. Suffering, struggling, is there anything more normal? These things are the backbone of the universe.

Olivier also had passed through much the same sort of experience: but he had never been able to resign himself to it, either on his own account or for others. He had a horror of the poverty in which the life of his beloved Antoinette had been consumed. After his marriage with Jacqueline, when he had suffered the softening influence of riches and love, he had made haste to thrust back the memory of the sorrowful years when he and his sister had worn themselves out each day in the struggle to gain the right to live through the next, never knowing whether they would succeed or no. The memories of those days would come to him now that he no longer had his youthful egoism to preserve. Instead of flying before the face of suffering he set out to look for it. He did not need to go far to find it. In the state of mind in which he was he was prone to find it everywhere. The world was full of it, the world, that hospital.... Oh, the agony, the sorrow! Pains of the wounded body, quivering flesh, rotting away in life. The silent torture of hearts under gnawing grief. Children whom no one loves, poor hopeless girls, women seduced or betrayed, men deceived in their friends, their loves, their faith, the pitiable herd of the unfortunates whom life has broken and forgotten!... Not poverty and sickness were the most frightful things to see, but the cruelty of men one to another. Hardly had Olivier raised the cover of the hell of humanity than there rose to his ears the plaint of all the oppressed, the exploited poor, the persecuted peoples, massacred Armenians, Finland crushed and stifled, Poland rent in pieces, Russia martyred, Africa flung to the rapacious pack of Europe, all the wretched creatures of the human race. It stifled him: he heard it everywhere, he could no longer close his ears to it, he could no longer conceive the possibility of there being people with any other thought. He was for ever talking about it to Christophe. Christophe grew anxious, and said:

"Be quiet! Let me work."

And as he found it hard to recover his balance he would lose his temper and swear.

"Damnation! My day is wasted! And you're a deal the better for it, aren't you?"

Olivier would beg his pardon.

"My dear fellow," said Christophe, "it's no good always looking down into the pit. It stops your living."

"One must lend a hand to those who are in the pit."

"No doubt. But how? By flinging ourselves down as well? For that is what you want. You've got a propensity for seeing nothing but the sad side of life. God bless you! Your pessimism is charitable, I grant you, but it is very depressing. Do you want to create happiness? Very well, then, be happy."

"Happy! How can one have the heart to be happy when one sees so much suffering? There can only be happiness in trying to lessen it and fighting the evil."

"Very good. But I don't help the unfortunate much by lashing out blindly in all directions. It means only one bad soldier the more. But I can bring comfort by my art and spread force and joy. Have you any idea how many wretched beings have been sustained in their suffering by the beauty of an idea, by a winged song? Every man to his own trade! You French people, like the generous scatterbrains that you are, are always the first to protest against the injustice of, say, Spain or Russia, without knowing what it is all about. I love you for it. But do you think you are helping things along? You rush at it and bungle it and the result is nil,—if not worse.... And, look you, your art has never been more weak and emaciated than now, when your artists claim to be taking part in the activities of the world. It is the strangest thing to see so many little writers and artists, all dilettante and rather dishonest, daring to set themselves up as apostles! They would do much better if they were to give the people wine to drink that was not so adulterated.—My first duty is to do whatever I am doing well, and to give you healthy music which shall set new blood coursing in your veins and let the sun shine in upon you."

* * * * *

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself. Olivier had none of it. Like the best man of to-day, he was not strong enough to radiate force by himself. But in unison with others he might have been able to do so. But with whom could he unite? He was free in mind and at heart religious, and he was rejected by every party political and religious. They were all intolerant and narrow and were continually at rivalry. Whenever they came into power they abused it. Only the weak and the oppressed attracted Olivier. In this at least he agreed with Christophe's opinion, that before setting out to combat injustice in distant lands, it were as well to fight injustice close at hand, injustice everywhere about, injustice for which each and every man is more or less responsible. There are only too many people who are quite satisfied with protesting against the evil wrought by others, without ever thinking of the evil that they do themselves.

At first he turned his attention to the relief of the poor. His friend, Madame Arnaud, helped to administer a charity. Olivier got her to allow him to help. But at the outset he had more than one setback: the poor people who were given into his charge were not all worthy of interest, or they were unresponsive to his sympathy, distrusted him, and shut their doors against him. Besides, it is hard for a man of intellect to be satisfied with charity pure and simple: it waters such a very small corner of the kingdom of wretchedness! Its effects are almost always piecemeal, fragmentary: it seems to move by chance, and to be engaged only in dressing wounds as fast as it discovers them: generally it is too modest and in too great a hurry to probe down to the roots of the evil. Now it was just this probing that Olivier's mind found indispensable.

He began to study the problem of social poverty. There was no lack of guides to point the way. In those days the social question had become a society question. It was discussed in drawing-rooms, in the theater, in novels. Everybody claimed some knowledge of it. Some of the young men were expending the best part of their powers upon it.

Every new generation needs to have some splendid mania or other. Even the most selfish of young people are endowed with a superfluity of life, a capital sum of energy which has been advanced to them and cannot be left idle and unproductive: they are for ever seeking to expend it on a course of action, or—(more prudently)—on a theory. Aviation or Revolution, a muscular or intellectual exercise. When a man is young he needs to be under the illusion that he is sharing in some great movement of humanity and is renewing the life of the world. It is a lovely thing when the senses thrill in answer to every puff of the winds of the universe! Then a man is so free, so light! Not yet is he laden with the ballast of a family, he has nothing, risks next to nothing. A man is very generous when he can renounce what is not yet his. Besides, it is so good to love and to hate, and to believe that one is transforming the earth with dreams and shouting! Young people are like watch-dogs: they are for ever howling and barking at the wind. An act of injustice committed at the other end of the world will send them off their heads.

Dogs barking through the night. From one farm to another in the heart of the forest they were yelping to one another, never ceasing. The night was stormy. It was not easy to sleep in those days. The wind bore through the air the echoes of so many acts of injustice!... The tale of injustice is unnumbered: in remedying one there is danger of causing others. What is injustice?—To one man it means a shameful peace, the fatherland dismembered. To another it signifies war. To another it means the destruction of the past, the banishment of princes: to another, the spoliation of the Church: to yet another the stifling of the future to the peril of liberty. For the people, injustice lies in inequality: for the upper ten, in equality. There are so many different kinds of injustice that each age chooses its own,—the injustice that it fights against, and the injustice that it countenances.