When he opened his eyes again his Uncle Gottfried was sitting at the foot of his bed. Jean-Christophe was worn out, and could remember nothing. Then his memory returned, and he began to weep. Gottfried got up and kissed him.
“Well, my boy—well?” he said gently.
“Oh, uncle, uncle!” sobbed the boy, clinging to him.
“Cry, then …” said Gottfried. “Cry!”
He also was weeping.
When he was a little comforted Jean-Christophe dried his eyes and looked at Gottfried. Gottfried understood that he wanted to ask something.
“No,” he said, putting a finger to his lips, “you must not talk. It is good to cry, bad to talk.”
The boy insisted.
“It is no good.”
“Only one thing—only one! …”
“What?”
Jean-Christophe hesitated.
“Oh, uncle!” he asked, “where is he now?”
Gottfried answered:
“He is with the Lord, my boy.”
But that was not what Jean-Christophe had asked.
“No; you do not understand. Where is he—he himself?” (He meant the body.)
He went on in a trembling voice:
“Is he still in the house?”
“They buried the good man this morning,” said Gottfried. “Did you not hear the bells?”
Jean-Christophe was comforted. Then, when he thought that he would never see his beloved grandfather again, he wept once more bitterly.
“Poor little beast!” said Gottfried, looking pityingly at the child.
Jean-Christophe expected Gottfried to console him, but Gottfried made no attempt to do so, knowing that it was useless.
“Uncle Gottfried,” asked the boy, “are not you afraid of it, too?”
(Much did he wish that Gottfried should not have been afraid, and would tell him the secret of it!)
“ ’Ssh!” he said, in a troubled voice. …
“And how is one not to be afraid?” he said, after a moment. “But what can one do? It is so. One must put up with it.”
Jean-Christophe shook his head in protest.
“One has to put up with it, my boy,” said Gottfried. “He ordered it up yonder. One has to love what He has ordered.”
“I hate Him!” said Jean-Christophe, angrily shaking his fist at the sky.
Gottfried fearfully bade him be silent. Jean-Christophe himself was afraid of what he had just said, and he began to pray with Gottfried. But blood boiled, and as he repeated the words of servile humility and resignation there was in his inmost heart a feeling of passionate revolt and horror of the abominable thing and the monstrous Being who had been able to create it.
Days passed and nights of rain over the freshly-turned earth under which lay the remains of poor old Jean Michel. At the moment Melchior wept and cried and sobbed much, but the week was not out before Jean-Christophe heard him laughing heartily. When the name of the dead man was pronounced in his presence, his face grew longer and a lugubrious expression came into it, but in a moment he would begin to talk and gesticulate excitedly. He was sincerely afflicted, but it was impossible for him to remain sad for long.
Louisa, passive and resigned, accepted the misfortune as she accepted everything. She added a prayer to her daily prayers; she went regularly to the cemetery, and cared for the grass as if it were part of her household.
Gottfried paid touching attention to the little patch of ground where the old man slept. When he came to the neighborhood, he brought a little souvenir—a cross that he had made, or flowers that Jean Michel had loved. He never missed, even if he were only in the town for a few hours, and he did it by stealth.
Sometimes Louisa took Jean-Christophe with her on her visits to the cemetery. Jean-Christophe revolted in disgust against the fat patch of earth clad in its sinister adornment of flowers and trees, and against the heavy scent which mounts to the sun, mingling with the breath of the sonorous cypress. But he dared not confess his disgust, because he condemned it in himself as cowardly and impious. He was very unhappy. His grandfather’s death haunted him incessantly, and yet he had long known what death was, and had thought about it and been afraid of it. But he had never before seen it, and he who sees it for the first time learns that he knew nothing, neither of death nor of life. One moment brings everything tottering. Reason is of no avail. You thought you were alive, you thought you had some experience of life; you see then that you knew nothing, that you have been living in a veil of illusions spun by your own mind to hide from your eyes the awful countenance of reality. There is no connection between the idea of suffering and the creature who bleeds and suffers. There is no connection between the idea of death and the convulsions of body and soul in combat and in death. Human language, human wisdom, are only a puppet-show of stiff mechanical dolls by the side of the grim charm of reality and the creatures of mind and blood, whose desperate and vain efforts are strained to the fixing of a life which crumbles away with every day.
Jean-Christophe thought of death day and night. Memories of the last agony pursued him. He heard that horrible breathing; every night, whatever he might be doing, he saw his grandfather again. All Nature was changed; it seemed as though there were an icy vapor drawn over her. Round him, everywhere, whichever way he turned, he felt upon his face the fatal breathing of the blind, all-powerful Beast; he felt himself in the grip of
