Jean-Christophe, vol 1 | Page 6

it would only make things worse. You would make each
other angry, and I don't want that. Please, please go!"
The old man sighed, rose, and said:
"Well ... I'll go."
He went to her and brushed her forehead with his stiff beard. He asked
if she wanted anything, put out the lamp, and went stumbling against
the chairs in the darkness of the room. But he had no sooner reached
the staircase than he thought of his son returning drunk, and he stopped
at each step, imagining a thousand dangers that might arise if Melchior
were allowed to return alone....
In the bed by his mother's side the child was stirring again. An
unknown sorrow had arisen from the depths of his being. He stiffened
himself against her. He twisted his body, clenched his fists, and knitted
his brows. His suffering increased steadily, quietly, certain of its
strength. He knew not what it was, nor whence it came. It appeared
immense,--infinite, and he began to cry lamentably. His mother
caressed him with her gentle hands. Already his suffering was less
acute. But he went on weeping, for he felt it still near, still inside
himself. A man who suffers can lessen his anguish by knowing whence
it comes. By thought he can locate it in a certain portion of his body
which can be cured, or, if necessary, torn away. He fixes the bounds of
it, and separates it from himself. A child has no such illusive resource.
His first encounter with suffering is more tragic and more true. Like his
own being, it seems infinite. He feels that it is seated in his bosom,
housed in his heart, and is mistress of his flesh. And it is so. It will not
leave his body until it has eaten it away.

His mother hugs him to her, murmuring: "It is done--it is done! Don't
cry, my little Jesus, my little goldfish...." But his intermittent outcry
continues. It is as though this wretched, unformed, and unconscious
mass had a presentiment of a whole life of sorrow awaiting, him, and
nothing can appease him....
The bells of St. Martin rang out in the night. Their voices are solemn
and slow. In the damp air they come like footsteps on moss. The child
became silent in the middle of a sob. The marvelous music, like a flood
of milk, surged sweetly through him. The night was lit up; the air was
moist and tender. His sorrow disappeared, his heart began to laugh, and
he slid, into his dreams with a sigh of abandonment.
The three bells went on softly ringing in the morrow's festival. Louisa
also dreamed, as she listened to them, of her own past misery and of
what would become in the future of the dear little child sleeping by her
side. She had been for hours lying in her bed, weary and suffering. Her
hands and her body were burning; the heavy eiderdown crushed her;
she felt crushed and oppressed by the darkness; but she dared not move.
She looked at the child, and the night did not prevent her reading his
features, that looked so old. Sleep overcame her; fevered images passed
through her brain. She thought she heard Melchior open the door, and
her heart leaped. Occasionally the murmuring of the stream rose more
loudly through the silence, like the roaring of some beast. The window
once or twice gave a sound under the beating of the rain. The bells rang
out more slowly, and then died down, and Louisa slept by the side of
her child.
All this time Jean Michel was waiting outside the house, dripping with
rain, his beard wet with the mist. He was waiting for the return of his
wretched son: for his mind, never ceasing, had insisted on telling him
all sorts of tragedies brought about by drunkenness; and although he
did not believe them, he could not hate slept a wink if he had gone
away without having seen his son return. The sound of the bells made
him: melancholy, for he remembered all his shattered hopes. He
thought of what he was doing at such an hour in the street, and for very
shame he wept.

* * * * *
The vast tide of the days moves slowly. Day and night come up and go
down with unfailing regularity, like the ebb and low of an infinite
ocean. Weeks and months go by, and then begin again, and the
succession of days is like one day.
The day is immense, inscrutable, marking the even beat of light and
darkness, and the beat of the life of the torpid creature dreaming in the
depths of his cradle--his imperious needs, sorrowful or glad--so regular
that the night and the day which bring