A few letters from Paris, which at last reached him, plucked Christophe for a moment out of his despairing apathy. They were from Cécile and Madame Arnaud. They brought him messages of comfort. Cold comfort. Futile condolence. Those who talk about suffering know it not. The letters only brought him an echo of the voice that was gone. … He had not the heart to reply: and the letters ceased. In his despondency he tried to blot out his tracks. To disappear. … Suffering is unjust: all those who had loved him dropped out of his existence. Only one creature still existed: the man who was dead. For many weeks he strove to bring him to life again: he used to talk to him, write to him:
“My dear, I had no letter from you today. Where are you? Come back, come back, speak to me, write to me! …”
But at night, hard though he tried, he could never succeed in seeing him in his dreams. We rarely dream of those we have lost, while their loss is still a pain. They come back to us later on when we are beginning to forget.
However, the outside world began gradually to penetrate to the sepulcher of Christophe’s soul. At first he became dimly conscious of the different noises in the house and to take an unwitting interest in them. He marked the time of day when the front door opened and shut, and how often during the day, and the different ways in which it was opened for the various visitors. He knew Braun’s step: he used to visualize the doctor coming back from his rounds, stopping in the hall, hanging up his hat and cloak, always with the same meticulous fussy way. And when the accustomed noises came up to him out of the order in which he had come to look for them, he could not help trying to discover the reason for the change. At meals he began mechanically to listen to the conversation. He saw that Braun almost always talked single-handed. His wife used only to give him a curt reply. Braun was never put out by the want of anybody to talk to: he used to chat pleasantly and verbosely about the houses he had visited and the gossip he had picked up. At last, one day, Christophe looked at Braun while he was speaking: Braun was delighted, and laid himself out to keep him interested.
Christophe tried to pick up the threads of life again. … It was utterly exhausting! He felt old, as old as the world! … In the morning when he got up and saw himself in the mirror he was disgusted with his body, his gestures, his idiotic figure. Get up, dress, to what end? … He tried desperately to work: it made him sick. What was the good of creation, when everything ends in nothing? Music had become impossible for him. Art—(and everything else)—can only be rightly judged in unhappiness. Unhappiness is the touchstone. Only then do we know those who can stride across the ages, those who are stronger than death. Very few bear the test. In unhappiness we are struck by the mediocrity of certain souls upon whom we had counted—(and of the artists we had loved, who had been like friends to our lives).—Who survives? How hollow does the beauty of the world ring under the touch of sorrow!
But sorrow grows weary, the force goes from its grip. Christophe’s nerves were relaxed. He slept, slept unceasingly. It seemed that he would never succeed in satisfying his hunger for sleep.
At last one night he slept so profoundly that he did not wake up until well on into the afternoon of the next day. The house was empty. Braun and his wife had gone out. The window was open, and the smiling air was quivering with light. Christophe felt that a crushing weight had been lifted from him. He got up and went down into the garden. It was a narrow rectangle, enclosed within high walls, like those of a convent. There were gravel paths between grass-plots and humble flowers; and an arbor of grapevines and climbing roses. A tiny fountain trickled from a grotto built of stones: an acacia against the wall hung its sweet-scented branches over the next garden. Above stood the old tower of the church, of red sandstone. It was four o’clock in the evening. The garden was already in shadow. The sun was still shining on the top of the tree and the red belfry. Christophe sat in the arbor, with his back to the wall, and his head thrown back, looking at the limpid sky through the interlacing tendrils of the vine and the roses. It was like waking from a nightmare. Everywhere was stillness and silence. Above his head nodded a cluster of roses languorously. Suddenly the most lovely rose of all shed its petals and died: the snow of the rose-leaves was scattered on the air. It was like the passing of a lovely innocent life. So simply! … In Christophe’s
