Christophe gave them no time for it. Whenever he thought he felt that at heart any man disliked him, but would not admit it and tried to cover it up so as to remain on good terms with him, he would never rest until he had succeeded in proving to him that he was his enemy. One evening at the Wagner-Verein when he had come up against a wall of hypocritical hostility, he could bear it no longer and sent in his resignation to Lauber without wasting words. Lauber could not understand it: and Mannheim hastened to Christophe to try and pacify him. At his first words Christophe burst out:
“No, no, no—no! Don’t talk to me about these people. I will not see them again. … I cannot. I cannot. … I am disgusted, horribly, with men: I can hardly bear to look at one.”
Mannheim laughed heartily. He was thinking much less of smoothing Christophe down than of having the fun of it.
“I know that they are not beautiful,” he said; “but that is nothing new: what new thing has happened?”
“Nothing. I have had enough, that is all. … Yes, laugh, laugh at me: everybody knows I am mad. Prudent people act in accordance with the laws of logic and reason and sanity. I am not like that: I am a man who acts only on his own impulse. When a certain quantity of electricity is accumulated in me it has to expend itself, at all costs: and so much the worse for the others if it touches them! And so much the worse for them! I am not made for living in society. Henceforth I shall belong only to myself.”
“You think you can do without everybody else?” said Mannheim. “You cannot play your music all by yourself. You need singers, an orchestra, a conductor, an audience, a claque. …”
Christophe shouted.
“No! no! no!”
But the last word made him jump.
“A claque! Are you not ashamed?”
“I am not talking of a paid claque—(although, indeed, it is the only means yet discovered of revealing the merit of a composition to the audience).—But you must have a claque: the author’s coterie is a claque, properly drilled by him: every author has his claque: that is what friends are for.”
“I don’t want any friends!”
“Then you will be hissed.”
“I want to be hissed!”
Mannheim was in the seventh heaven.
“You won’t have even that pleasure for long. They won’t play you.”
“So be it, then! Do you think I care about being a famous man? … Yes. I was making for that with all my might. … Nonsense! Folly! Idiocy! … As if the satisfaction of the vulgarest sort of pride could compensate for all the sacrifices—weariness, suffering, infamy, insults, degradation, ignoble concessions—which are the price of fame! Devil take me if I ever bother my head about such things again! Never again! Publicity is a vulgar infamy. I will be a private citizen and live for myself and those whom I love. …”
“Good,” said Mannheim ironically. “You must choose a profession. Why shouldn’t you make shoes?”
“Ah! if I were a cobbler like the incomparable Sachs!” cried Christophe. “How happy my life would be! A cobbler all through the week—and a musician on Sunday, privately, intimately, for my own pleasure and that of my friends! What a life that would be! … Am I mad, to waste my time and trouble for the magnificent pleasure of being a prey to the judgment of idiots? Is it not much better and finer to be loved and understood by a few honest men than to be heard, criticised, and toadied by thousands of fools? … The devil of pride and thirst for fame shall never again take me: trust me for that!”
“Certainly,” said Mannheim. He thought:
“In an hour he will say just the opposite.” He remarked quietly:
“Then I am to go and smooth things down with the Wagner-Verein?”
Christophe waved his arms.
“What is the good of my shouting myself hoarse with telling you ‘No,’ for the last hour? … I tell you that I will never set foot inside it again! I loathe all these Wagner-Vereine, all these Vereine, all these flocks of sheep who have to huddle together to be able to baa in unison. Go and tell those sheep from me that I am a wolf, that I have teeth, and am not made far the pasture!”
“Good, good, I will tell them,” said Mannheim, as he went. He was delighted with his morning’s entertainment. He thought:
“He is mad, mad, mad as a hatter. …”
His sister, to whom he reported the interview, at once shrugged her shoulders and said:
“Mad? He would like us to think so! … He is stupid, and absurdly vain. …”
Christophe went on with his fierce campaign in Waldhaus’s Review. It was not that it gave him pleasure: criticism disgusted him, and he was always wishing it at the bottom of the sea. But he stuck to it because people were trying to stop him: he did not wish to appear to have
