This time she gave him a shock of disillusion. She made him explain the whole matter to her, and advised him to accept. He was very hurt, and saw in her advice the proof of her indifference.
Probably Grazia was sorry to give him such advice. But why did Christophe ask her for it? The more he turned to her and asked her to decide for him, the more she thought herself responsible for her friend’s actions. As a result of their interchange of ideas she had gained from Christophe a little of his willpower: he had revealed to her duty and the beauty of action. At least she had recognized duty as far as her friend was concerned, and she would not have him fail in it. Better than he, she knew the power of languor given off by the Italian soil, which, like the insidious poison of its warm scirocco, creeps into the veins and sends the will to sleep. How often had she not felt its maleficent charm, and had no power to resist it! All her friends were more or less tainted by this malaria of the soul. Stronger men than they had in old days fallen victim to it: it had rusted away the brass of the Roman she-wolf. Rome breathes forth death: it is too full of graves. It is healthier to stay there for a little time than to live there. Too easily does one slip out of one’s own time, a dangerous taste for the still young forces that have a vast duty to accomplish. Grazia saw clearly that the society about her had not a life-giving air for an artist. And although she had more friendship for Christophe than for any other … (dared she confess it?) … she was not, at heart, sorry for him to go. Alas! He wearied her with the very qualities that she most loved in him, his overflowing intelligence, his abundance of vitality, accumulated for years, and now brimming over: her tranquillity was disturbed by it. And he wearied her, too, perhaps, because she was always conscious of the menace of his love, beautiful and touching, but ever-present: so that she had always to be on her guard against it; it was more prudent to keep him at a distance. She did not admit it to herself, and thought she had no consideration for anything but Christophe’s interests.
There was no lack of sound reasons at hand. In Italy just then it was difficult for a musician to live: the air was circumscribed. The musical life of the country was suppressed and deformed. The factory of the theater scattered its heavy ashes and its burning smoke upon the soil, whose flowers in old days had perfumed all Europe. If a man refused to enroll himself in the train of the brawlers, and could not, or would not, enter the factory, he was condemned to exile or a stifled existence. Genius was by no means dried up. But it was left to stagnate unprofitably and to go to ruin. Christophe had met more than one young musician in whom there lived again the soul of the melodious masters of the race and the instinct of beauty which filled the wise and simple art of the past. But who gave a thought to them? They could neither get their work played nor published. No interest was taken in the symphony. There were no ears for music except it were presented with a painted face! … So discouraged, they sang for themselves, and soon sang no more. What was the good of it? Sleep. … —Christophe would have asked nothing better than to help them. While they admitted that he could do so, their umbrageous pride would not consent to it. Whatever he did, he was a foreigner to them; and for Italians of long descent, in spite of the warm welcome they will give him, every foreigner is really a barbarian. They thought that the wretched condition of their art was a question to be threshed out among themselves, and while they extended all kind of friendly tributes to Christophe, they could not admit him as one of themselves.—What could he do? He could not compete with them and dispute with them their meager place in the sun, where they were by no means secure! …
Besides, genius cannot do without its food. The musician must have music—music to hear, music to make heard. A temporary withdrawal is valuable to the mind by forcing it to recuperate. But this can only be on condition that it will return. Solitude is noble, but fatal to an artist who has not the strength to break out of it. An artist must live the life of his own time, even if it be clamorous and impure: he must forever be giving and receiving, and giving, and giving, and again receiving.—Italy, at the time of Christophe’s sojourn, was no longer the great market of the arts that once it was, and perhaps will be again. Nowadays the meeting-place of ideas, the exchange of the thought and spirit of the nations, are in the North. He who has the will to live must live in the North.
Left to himself, Christophe would have shuddered away from the rout. But Grazia felt his duty more clearly than he could see it. And she demanded more of him than of herself: no doubt because she valued him more highly, but also because it suited her. She delegated her energy upon him, and so maintained her tranquillity.—He had not the heart to be angry with her for it. Like Mary, hers was the better part. Each of us has his part to play
