His solitude did not trouble him. Far from it: he did not have enough of it to suit his taste. He was beginning to suffer from the patronage of the Grand Journal. Arsène Gamache had a tendency to believe that he had proprietary rights in the famous men whom he had taken the trouble to discover: he took it as a matter of course that their fame should be associated with his own, much as Louis XIV grouped Molière, Le Brun, and Lulli about his throne. Christophe discovered that the author of the Hymn to Aegis was not more imperial or more of a nuisance to art than his patron of the Grand Journal. For the journalist, who knew no more about art than the Emperor, had opinions no less decided about it: he could not tolerate the existence of anything he did not like: he decreed that it was bad and pernicious: and he would ruin it in the public interest. It is both comic and terrible to see such coarse-grained uncultivated men of affairs presuming to control not only politics and money, but also the mind, and offering it a kennel with a collar and a dish of food, or, if it refuses, having the power to let loose against it thousands of idiots whom they have trained into a docile pack of hounds!—Christophe was not the sort of man to let himself be schooled and disciplined. It seemed to him a very bad thing that an ignoramus should take upon himself to tell him what he ought and ought not to do in music: and he gave him to understand that art needed a much more severe training than politics. Also, without any sort of polite circumlocution, he declined a proposal that he should set to music a libretto, which the author, a leading member of the staff of the paper, was trying to place, while it was highly recommended by his chief. It had the effect of cooling his relations with Gamache.
Christophe did not mind that in the least. Though he had so lately risen from his obscurity, he was longing to return to it. He found himself “exposed to that great light in which a man is lost among the many.” There were too many people bothering their heads about him. He pondered these words of Goethe:
“When a writer has attracted attention by a good piece of work, the public tries to prevent his producing another. … The brooding talent is dragged out into the hurly-burly of the world, in spite of itself, because everyone thinks he will be able to appropriate a part of it.”
He shut his door upon the outside world, and began to seek the company of some of his old friends in his own house. He revisited the Arnauds, whom he had somewhat neglected. Madame Arnaud, who was left alone for part of the day, had time to think of the sorrows of others. She thought how empty Christophe’s life must be now that Olivier was gone: and she overcame her shyness so far as to invite him to dinner. If she had dared, she would even have offered to go in from time to time and tidy his rooms: but she was not bold enough: and no doubt it was better so: for Christophe did not like to have people worrying about him. But he accepted the invitation to dinner, and made a habit of going in to the Arnauds’ every evening.
He found them just as united, living in the same atmosphere of rather sad, sorrowful tenderness, though it was even grayer than before. Arnaud was passing through a period of depression, brought on by the wear and tear of his life as a teacher—a life of exhausting labor, in which one day is like unto another, and each day’s work is like that of the next, like a wheel turning in one place, without ever stopping, or ever advancing. Though he was very patient, the good man was passing through a crisis of discouragement. He let certain acts of injustice prey upon him, and was inclined to think that all his zeal was futile. Madame Arnaud would comfort him with kind words: she seemed to be just as calm and peaceful as in the old days: but her face was thinner. In her presence Christophe would congratulate Arnaud on having such a sensible wife.
“Yes,” Arnaud would say, “she is a good little creature; nothing ever puts her out. She is lucky: so am I. If she had suffered in this cursed life, I don’t see how I could have got through.”
Madame Arnaud would blush and say nothing. Then in her even tones she would talk of something else.—Christophe’s visits had their usual good effect: they brought light in their train: and he, for his part, found it very pleasant to feel the warmth of their kind, honest hearts.
Another friend, a girl, came into his life. Or rather he sought her out: for though she longed to know him, she could not have made the effort to go and see him. She was a young woman of a little more than twenty-five, a musician, and she had taken the first prize at the Conservatoire: her name was Cécile Fleury. She was short and rather thickset. She had heavy eyebrows, fine, large eyes, with a soft expression, a short, broad, turned-up nose, inclined to redness, like a duck’s beak, thick lips, kind and tender, an energetic chin, heavy and solid, and her forehead was broad, but not high. Her hair was done up in a large bun at the back of her neck. She had strong arms and a pianist’s hands, very long, with a splayed thumb and square fingertips. The general impression she gave was one of a rather sluggish vitality and of rude rustic health. She lived with her mother, who was
