“Whom is he decrying?”
Olivier went hot with shame as he read the paper, and said to himself:
“A fine thing I’ve done!”
He could hardly get through his lecture. As soon as he had finished he hurried home. What was his consternation to find that Christophe had already gone out with the journalists! He delayed lunch for him. Christophe did not return. Hours passed, and Olivier grew more and more anxious and thought:
“What a lot of foolish things they will make him say!”
About three o’clock Christophe came home quite lively. He had had lunch with Arsène Gamache, and his head was a little muzzy with the champagne he had drunk. He could not understand Olivier’s anxiety, who asked him in fear and trembling what he had said and done.
“What have I been doing? I’ve had a splendid lunch. I haven’t had such a good feed for a long time.”
He began to recount the menu.
“And wine. … I had wine of every color.”
Olivier interrupted him to ask who was there.
“Who was there? … I don’t know. There was Gamache, a little round man, true as gold: Clodomir, the writer of the article, a charming fellow: three or four journalists whom I didn’t know, very jolly, all very nice and charming to me—the cream of good fellows.”
Olivier did not seem to be convinced. Christophe was astonished at his small enthusiasm.
“Haven’t you read the article?”
“Yes. I have. Have you read it?”
“Yes. … That is to say, I just glanced at it. I haven’t had time.”
“Well: read it.”
Christophe took it up. At the first words he spluttered.
“Oh! The idiot!” he said.
He roared with laughter.
“Bah!” he went on. “These critics are all alike. They know nothing at all about it.”
But as he read farther he began to lose his temper: it was too stupid, it made him look ridiculous. What did they mean by calling him “a Republican musician”; it did not mean anything. … Well, let the fib pass. … But when they set his “Republican” art against the “sacristy art” of the masters who had preceded him—(he whose soul was nourished by the souls of those great men)—it was too much. …
“The swine! They’re trying to make me out an idiot! …”
And then, what was the sense of using him as a cudgel to thwack talented French musicians, whom he loved more or less—(though rather less than more)—though they knew their trade, and honored it? And—worst of all—with an incredible want of tact he was credited with odious sentiments about his country! … No, that, that was beyond endurance. …
“I shall write and tell them so,” said Christophe.
Olivier intervened.
“No, no,” he said, “not now! You are too excited. Tomorrow, when you are cooler. …”
Christophe stuck to it. When he had anything to say he could not wait until the morrow. He promised Olivier to show him his letter. The precaution was useful. The letter was duly revised, so as to be confined practically to the rectification of the opinions about Germany with which he had been credited, and then Christophe ran and posted it.
“Well,” he said, when he returned, “that will save half the harm being done: the letter will appear tomorrow.”
Olivier shook his head doubtfully. He was still thoughtful, and he looked Christophe straight in the face, and said:
“Christophe, did you say anything imprudent at lunch?”
“Oh no,” said Christophe with a laugh.
“Sure?”
“Yes, you coward.”
Olivier was somewhat reassured. But Christophe was not. He had just remembered that he had talked volubly and unguardedly. He had been quite at his ease at once. It had never for a moment occurred to him to distrust any of them: they seemed so cordial, so well-disposed towards him! As, in fact, they were. We are always well-disposed to people when we have done them a good turn, and Christophe was so frankly delighted with it all that his joy infected them. His affectionate easy manners, his jovial sallies, his enormous appetite, and the celerity with which the various liquors vanished down his throat without making him turn a hair, were by no means displeasing to Arsène Gamache, who was himself a sturdy trencherman, coarse, boorish, and sanguine, and very contemptuous of people who had ill-health, and those who dared not eat and drink, and all the sickly Parisians. He judged a man by his prowess at table. He appreciated Christophe. There and then he proposed to produce his Gargantua as an opera at the Opéra.—(The very summit of art was reached for these bourgeois French people in the production on the stage of the Damnation of Faust, or the Nine Symphonies.)—Christophe, who burst out laughing at the grotesqueness of the idea, had great difficulty in preventing him from telephoning his orders to the directors of the Opéra, or the Minister of Fine Arts.—(If Gamache were to be believed, all these important people were apparently at his beck and call.)—And, the proposal reminding him of the strange transmutation
