A fortuitous circumstance gave Christophe a yet greater interest in the girl, and showed him the full extent of the suppression of the emotions of the French, their fear of life, of letting themselves go, and claiming their birthright.
Elsberger, the engineer, had a brother ten years younger than himself, likewise an engineer. He was a very good fellow, like thousands of others, of the middle-class, and he had artistic aspirations: he was one of those people who would like to practise an art, but are afraid of compromising their reputation and position. As a matter of fact, it is not a very difficult problem, and most of the artists of today have solved it without any great danger to themselves. But it needs a certain amount of willpower: and not everybody is capable of even that much expenditure of energy: such people are not sure enough of wanting what they really want: and as their position in life grows more assured, they submit and drift along, without any show of revolt or protest. They cannot be blamed if they become good citizens instead of bad artists. But their disappointment too often leaves behind it a secret discontent, a qualis artifex pereo, which as best it can assumes a crust of what is usually called philosophy, and spoils their lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxieties have erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of André Elsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who was very self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon a scientific career. André was clever, and quite well equipped for scientific work—or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough of being an artist, and he was too sure that he was middle-class: and so, provisionally at first—(one knows what that means)—he had bowed to his brother’s wishes: he entered the Centrale, high up in the list, and passed out equally high, and since then he had practised his profession as an engineer conscientiously, but without being interested in it. Of course, he had lost the little artistic quality that he had possessed, and he never spoke of it except ironically.
“And then,” he used to say—(Christophe recognized Olivier’s pessimistic tendency in his arguments)—“life is not good enough to make one worry about a spoiled career. What does a bad poet more or less matter! …”
The brothers were fond of one another: they were of the same stamp morally: but they did not get on well together. They had both been Dreyfus-mad. But André was attracted by syndicalism, and was an anti-militarist: and Elie was a patriot.
From time to time André would visit Christophe without going to see his brother: and that astonished Christophe: for there was no great sympathy between himself and André, who used hardly ever to open his mouth except to gird at something or somebody—which was very tiresome: and when Christophe said anything, André would not listen. Christophe made no effort to conceal the fact that he found his visits a nuisance: but André did not mind, and seemed not to notice it. At last Christophe found the key to the riddle one day when he found his visitor leaning out of the window, and paying much more attention to what was happening in the garden below than to what he was saying. He remarked upon it, and André was not reluctant to admit that he knew Mademoiselle Chabran, and that she had something to do with his visits to Christophe. And, his tongue being loosed, he confessed that he had long been attached to the girl, and perhaps something more than that: the Elsbergers had long ago been in close touch with the Chabrans: but, though they had been very intimate, politics and recent events had separated them: and thereafter they saw very little of each other. Christophe did not disguise his opinion that it was an idiotic state of things. Was it impossible for people to think differently, and yet to retain their mutual esteem? André said he thought it was, and protested that he was very broad-minded: but he would not admit the possibility of tolerance in certain questions, concerning which, he said, he could not admit any opinion different from his own: and he instanced the famous Affair. On that, as usual, he became wild. Christophe knew the sort of thing that happened in that connection, and made no attempt to argue: but he asked whether the Affair was never going to come to an end, or whether its curse was to go on and on to the end of time, descending even unto the third and fourth generation. André began to laugh: and without answering Christophe, he fell to tender praise of Céline Chabran, and protested against her father’s selfishness, who thought it quite natural that she should be sacrificed to him.
“Why don’t you marry
