Jean-Christophe: Journeys End | Page 4

against the "sacristy art" of the masters who had preceded him,--(he whose soul was nourished by the souls of those great men),--it was too much....
"The swine! They're trying to make me out an idiot!..."
And then, what was the sense of using him as a cudgel to thwack talented French musicians, whom he loved more or less,--(though rather less than more),--though they knew their trade, and honored it? And--worst of all--with an incredible want of tact he was credited with odious sentiments about his country!... No, that, that was beyond endurance....
"I shall write and tell them so," said Christophe.
Olivier intervened.
"No, no," he said, "not now! You are too excited. Tomorrow, when you are cooler...."
Christophe stuck to it. When he had anything to say he could not wait until the morrow. He promised Olivier to show him his letter. The precaution was useful. The letter was duly revised, so as to be confined practically to the rectification of the opinions about Germany with which he had been credited, and then Christophe ran and posted it.
"Well," he said, when he returned, "that will save half the harm being done: the letter will appear to-morrow."
Olivier shook his head doubtfully. He was still thoughtful, and he looked Christophe straight in the face, and said:
"Christophe, did you say anything imprudent at lunch?"
"Oh no," said Christophe with a laugh.
"Sure?"
"Yes, you coward."
Olivier was somewhat reassured. But Christophe was not. He had just remembered that he had talked volubly and unguardedly. He had been quite at his ease at once. It had never for a moment occurred to him to distrust any of them: they seemed so cordial, so well-disposed towards him! As, in fact, they were. We are always well-disposed to people when we have done them a good turn, and Christophe was so frankly delighted with it all that his joy infected them. His affectionate easy manners, his jovial sallies, his enormous appetite, and the celerity with which the various liquors vanished down his throat without making him turn a hair, were by no means displeasing to Ars��ne Gamache, who was himself a sturdy trencherman, coarse, boorish, and sanguine, and very contemptuous of people who had ill-health, and those who dared not eat and drink, and all the sickly Parisians. He judged a man by his prowess at table. He appreciated Christophe. There and then he proposed to produce his Gargantua as an opera at the Op��ra.--(The very summit of art was reached for these bourgeois French people in the production on the stage of the Damnation of Faust, or the Nine Symphonies.)--Christophe, who burst out laughing at the grotesqueness of the idea, had great difficulty in preventing him from telephoning his orders to the directors of the Op��ra, or the Minister of Fine Arts.--(If Gamache were to be believed, all these important people were apparently at his beck and call.)--And, the proposal reminding him of the strange transmutation which had taken place in his symphonic poem, David, he went so far as to tell the story of the performance organized by Deputy Roussin to introduce his mistress to the public. Gamache, who did not like Roussin, was delighted: and Christophe, spurred on by the generous wines and the sympathy of his hearers, plunged into other stories, more or less indiscreet, the point of which was not lost on those present. Christophe was the only one to forget them when the party broke up. And now, on Olivier's question, they rushed back to his memory. He felt a little shiver run down his spine. For he did not deceive himself: he had enough experience to know what would happen: now that he was sober again he saw it as clearly as though it had actually happened: his indiscretions would be twisted and distorted, and scattered broadcast as malicious blabbing, his artistic sallies would be turned into weapons of war. As for his letter correcting the article, he knew as well as Olivier how much that would avail him: it is a waste of ink to answer a journalist, for he always has the last word.
Everything happened exactly to the letter as Christophe had foreseen it would. His indiscretions were published, his letter was not. Gamache only went so far as to write to him that he recognized the generosity of his feelings, and that his scruples were an honor to him: but he kept his scruples dark: and the falsified opinions attributed to Christophe went on being circulated, provoking biting criticism in the Parisian papers, and later in Germany, where much indignation was felt that a German artist should express himself with so little dignity about his country.
Christophe thought he would be clever, and take advantage of an interview by the reporter of another paper to protest his love for the Deutsches Reich, where, he said, people