Yes: but Georges never by any chance consulted Christophe about anything he was going to do:—(did he know himself?).—He only told him about things when they were done.—And then? … Then, what could he do but look in dumb reproach at the culprit, and shrug his shoulders and smile, like an old uncle who knows that he is not heeded?
On such occasions they would sit for several minutes in silence. Georges would look up at Christophe’s grave eyes, which seemed to be gazing at him from far away. And he would feel like a little boy in his presence. He would see himself as he was, in that penetrating glance, which was shot with a gleam of malice: and he was not proud of it.
Christophe hardly ever made use of Georges’s confidences against him; it was often as though he had not heard them. After the mute dialogue of their eyes, he would shake his head mockingly, and then begin to tell a story without any apparent bearing on the story he had just been told, some story about his life, or someone else’s life, real or fictitious. And gradually Georges would see his double (he recognized it at once) under a new light, grotesquely, ridiculously postured, passing through vagaries similar to his own. Christophe never added any commentary. The extraordinary kindliness of the storyteller would produce far more effect than the story. He would speak of himself just as he spoke of others, with the same detachment, the same jovial, serene humor. Georges was impressed by his tranquillity. It was for this that he came. When he had unburdened himself of his lighthearted confession, he was like a man stretching out his limbs and lying at full length in the shade of a great tree on a summer afternoon. The dazzling fever of the scorching day would fall away from him. Above him he would feel the hovering of protecting wings. In the presence of this man who so peacefully bore the heavy burden of his life, he was sheltered from his own inward restlessness. He found rest only in hearing him speak. He did not always listen: his mind would wander, but wheresoever it went, it was surrounded by Christophe’s laughter.
However, he did not understand his old friend’s ideas. He used to wonder how Christophe could bear his soul’s solitude, and dispense with being bound to any artistic, political, or religious party, or any group of men. He used to ask him: “Don’t you ever want to take refuge in a camp of some sort?”
“Take refuge?” Christophe would say with a laugh. “It is much too good outside. And you, an open-air man, talk of shutting yourself up?”
“Ah!” Georges would reply. “It is not the same thing for body and soul. The mind needs certainty: it needs to think with others, to adhere to the principles admitted by all the men of the time. I envy the men of old days, the men of the classic ages. My friends are right in their desire to restore the order of the past.”
“Milksop!” said Christophe. “What have I to do with such disheartened creatures?”
“I am not disheartened,” protested Georges indignantly. “None of us is that.”
“But you must be,” said Christophe, “to be afraid of yourselves. What! You need order and cannot create it for yourselves? You must always be clinging to your great-grandmother’s skirts! Dear God! You must walk alone!”
“One must take root,” said Georges, proudly echoing one of the pontiffs of the time.
“But do you think the trees need to be shut up in a box to take root? The earth is there for all of us. Plunge your roots into it. Find your own laws. Look to yourself.”
“I have no time,” said Georges.
“You are afraid,” insisted Christophe.
Georges indignantly denied it, but in the end he agreed that he had no taste for examining his inmost soul: he could not understand what pleasure there could
