Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House. Romain Rolland
"I am listening. … It's the same thing over and over again."
"Ah! you are no musician," she would say pettishly.
"As if that were music or anything like it!"
"What! Not music! … What is it, then, if you please?"
"You know quite well: I won't tell you, because it would not be polite."
"All the more reason why you should say it."
"You want me to? … So much the worse for you! … Well, do you know what you are doing with your piano? … You are flirting with it."
"Indeed!"
"Certainly. You say to it: 'Dear piano, dear piano, say pretty things to me; kiss me; give me just one little kiss!'"
"You need not say any more," said Colette, half vexed, half laughing. "You haven't the least idea of respect."
"Not the least."
"You are impertinent. … And then, even if it were so, isn't that the right way to love music?"
"Oh, come, don't mix music up with that."
"But that is music! A beautiful chord is a kiss."
"I never told you that."
"But isn't it true? … Why do you shrug your shoulders and make faces?"
"Because it annoys me."
"So much the better."
"It annoys me to hear music spoken of as though it were a sort of indulgence. … Oh, it isn't your fault. It's the fault of the world you live in. The stale society in which you live regards music as a sort of legitimate vice. … Come, sit down! Play me your sonata."
"No. Let us talk a little longer."
"I'm not here to talk. I'm here to teach you the piano. … Come, play away!"
"You're so rude!" said Colette, rather vexed—but at heart delighted to be handled so roughly.
She played her piece carefully: and, as she was clever, she succeeded fairly well, and sometimes even very well. Christophe, who was not deceived, laughed inwardly at the skill "of the little beast, who played as though she felt what she was playing, while really she felt nothing at all." And yet he had a sort of amused sympathy for her. Colette, on her part, seized every excuse for going on with the conversation, which interested her much more than her lesson. It was no good Christophe drawing back on the excuse that he could not say what he thought without hurting her feelings: she always wheedled it out of him: and the more insulting it was, the less she was hurt by it: it was an amusement for her. But, as she was quick enough to see that Christophe liked nothing so much as sincerity, she would contradict him flatly, and argue tenaciously They would part very good friends.
However, Christophe would never have had the least illusion about their friendship, and there would never have been the smallest intimacy between them, had not Colette one day taken it into her head, out of sheer instinctive coquetry, to confide in him.
The evening before her parents had given an At Home. She had laughed, chattered, flirted outrageously: but next morning, when Christophe came for her lesson, she was worn out, drawn-looking, gray-faced, and haggard. She hardly spoke: she seemed utterly depressed. She sat at the piano, played softly, made mistakes, tried to correct them, made them again, stopped short, and said:
"I can't. … Please forgive me. … Please wait a little. … "
He asked if she were unwell. She said: "No. … She was out of sorts. … She had bouts of it. … It was absurd, but he must not mind."
He proposed to go away and come again another day: but she insisted on his staying:
"Just a moment. … I shall be all right presently. … It's silly of me, isn't it?"
He felt that she was not her usual self: but he did not question her: and, to turn the conversation, he said:
"That's what comes of having been so brilliant last night. You took too much out of yourself."
She smiled a little ironically.
"One can't say the same of you," she replied.
He laughed.
"I don't believe you said a word," she went on.
"Not a word."
"But there were interesting people there."
"Oh yes. All sorts of lights and famous people, all talking at once. But I'm lost among all your boneless Frenchmen who understand everything, and explain everything, and excuse everything—and feel nothing at all. People who talk for hours together about art and love! Isn't it revolting?"
"But you ought to be interested in art if not in love."
"One doesn't talk about these things: one does them."
"But when one cannot do them?" said Colette, pouting.
Christophe replied with a laugh:
"Well, leave it to others. Everybody is not fit for art."
"Nor for love?"
"Nor for love."
"How awful! What is left for us?"
"Housekeeping."
"Thanks," said Colette, rather annoyed. She turned to the piano and began again, made mistakes, thumped the keyboard, and moaned:
"I can't! … I'm no good at all. I believe you are right. Women aren't any good."
"It's something to be able to say so," said Christophe genially.
She looked at him rather sheepishly, like a little girl who has been scolded, and said:
"Don't be so hard."
"I'm not saying anything hard about good women," replied Christophe gaily.
"A good woman is Paradise on earth. Only, Paradise on earth. … "
"I know. No one has ever seen it."
"I'm not so pessimistic. I say only that I have never seen it: but that's no reason why it should not exist. I'm determined to find it, if it does exist. But it is not easy. A good woman and a man of genius are equally rare."
"And all the other men and women don't count?"
"On the contrary, it is only they who count—for the world."
"But for you?"
"For me, they don't exist."
"You are hard," repeated Colette.
"A little. Somebody has to be hard, if only in the interest of the others! … If there weren't a few pebbles here and there in the world, the whole thing would go to pulp."
"Yes. You are right. It is a good thing for you that you are strong," said Colette sadly. "But you must not be too hard on men—and especially on women who aren't strong. … You don't know how terrible our weakness is to us. Because you see us flirting, and laughing, and doing silly things, you think we never dream of anything else, and you despise us. Ah! if you could see all that goes on in the minds of the girls of from fifteen to eighteen as they go out into society, and have the sort of success that comes to their youth and freshness—when they have danced, and talked smart nonsense, and said bitter things at which people laugh because they laugh, when they have given themselves to imbeciles, and sought in vain in their eyes the light that is nowhere to be found—if you could see them in their rooms at night, in silence, alone, kneeling in agony to pray! … "
"Is it possible?" said Christophe, altogether amazed. "What! you, too, have suffered?"
Colette did not reply: but tears came to her eyes. She tried to smile and held out her hand to Christophe: he grasped it warmly.
"What