Jean-Christophe Journey's End

by Romain Rolland

Color verus, corpus solidum et succi plenum.

Her figure had taken on an harmonious fullness: her body was bathed in a proud languor. The very genius of tranquillity hovered in her presence. She had that greed of sunny silence, and still contemplation, the delightful joy in the peace of living which the people of the North will never really know. What especially she had preserved out of the past was her great kindness which inspired all her other feelings. But in her luminous smile many new things were to be read: a melancholy indulgence, a little weariness, much knowledge of the ways of men, a fine irony, and tranquil common sense. The years had veiled her with a certain coldness, which protected her against the illusions of the heart; rarely could she surrender herself; and her tenderness was ever on the alert, with a smile that seemed to know and tell everything, against the passionate impulses that Christophe found it hard to suppress. She had her weaknesses, moments of abandonment to the caprice of the minute, a coquetry at which she herself mocked but never fought against. She was never in revolt against things, nor against herself: she had come to a gentle fatalism, and she was altogether kind, but a little weary.

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She entertained a great deal, and—at least, in appearance—not very selectively: but as, for the most part, her intimates belonged to the same world, breathed the same atmosphere, had been fashioned by the same habits, they were homogeneous and harmonious enough, and very different from the polite assemblages that Christophe had known in France and Germany. The majority were of old Italian families, vivified here and there by foreign marriages; they all had a superficial cosmopolitanism and a comfortable mixture of the four chief languages, and the intellectual baggage of the four great nations of the West. Each nation brought into the pool its personal characteristic, the Jews their restlessness and the Anglo-Saxons their phlegm, but everything was quickly absorbed in the Italian melting-pot. When centuries of great plundering barons have impressed on a race the haughty and rapacious profile of a bird of prey, the metal may change, but the imprint remains the same. Many of the faces that seemed the most pronouncedly Italian, with a Luini smile, or the voluptuous, calm gaze of a Titian, flowers of the Adriatic, or the plains of Lombardy, had blossomed on the shrubs of the North transplanted to the old Latin soil. Whatever colors be spread on the palette of Rome, the color which stands out is always Roman.

Christophe could not analyze his impressions, but he admired the perfume of an age-old culture, an ancient civilization exhaled by these people, who were often mediocre, and, in some cases, less than mediocre. It was a subtle perfume, springing from the smallest trifles. A graceful courtesy, a gentleness of manners that could be charming and affectionate, and at the same time malicious and consciously superior, an elegant finesse in the use of the eyes, the smile, the alert, nonchalant, skeptical, diverse, and easy intelligence. There was nothing either stiff or familiar. Nothing literary. Here there was no fear of meeting the psychologues of a Parisian drawing-room, ensconced behind their eyeglasses, or the corporalism of a German pedant. They were men, quite simply, and very human men, such as were the friends of Terence and Scipio the Æmilian….

Homo sum….

It was fine to see. It was a life more of appearance than reality. Beneath it lay an incurable frivolity which is common to the polite society of every country. But what made this society characteristic of its race was its indolence. The frivolity of the French is accompanied by a fever of the nerves—a perpetual agitation of the mind, even when it is empty. The brain of the Italian knows how to rest. It knows it only too well. It is sweet to sleep in the warm shadows, on the soft pillow of a padded Epicureanism, and a very supple, fairly curious, and, at bottom, prodigiously indifferent intelligence.

All the men of this society were entirely lacking in decided opinions. They dabbled in politics and art in the same dilettante fashion. Among them were charming natures, handsome, fine-featured patrician, Italian faces, with soft, intelligent eyes, men with gentle, quiet manners, who, with exquisite taste and affectionate hearts, loved Nature, the old masters, flowers, women, books, good food, their country, music…. They loved everything. They preferred nothing. Sometimes one felt that they loved nothing. Love played so large a part in their lives, but only on condition that it never disturbed them. Their love was indolent and lazy, like themselves; even in their passion it was apt to take on a domestic character. Their solid, harmonious intelligence was fitted with an inertia in which all the opposites of thought met without collision, were tranquilly yoked together, smiling, cushioned, and rendered harmless. They were afraid of any thorough belief, of taking sides, and were at their ease in semi-solutions and half-thoughts. They were conservative-liberal in temper of mind. They needed politics and art half-way up the hill, like those health resorts where there is no danger of asthma or palpitations. They recognized themselves in the lazy plays of Goldoni, or the equally diffused light of Manzoni. Their amiable indifference was never disturbed. Never could they have said like their great ancestors: "Primum vivere …" but rather "Dapprima, quieto vivere."

To live in peace. That was the secret vow, the aim of even the most energetic of those who controlled politics. A little Machiavelli, master of himself and others, with a heart as cold as his head, a lucid, bored intelligence, knowing how and daring to use all means to gain his ends, ready to sacrifice all his friends to his ambition, would be capable of sacrificing his ambition to one thing only: his quieto vivere. They needed long periods of absolute lassitude. When they issued from them, as from a good sleep, they were fresh and ready: these grave men, these tranquil Madonnas would be taken with a sudden desire to talk, to be gay, to plunge into social life; then they would break out into a profusion of gestures and words, paradoxical sallies, burlesque humor: they were always playing an opera bouffe. In that gallery of Italian portraits rarely would you find the marks of thought, the metallic brilliance of the eyes, faces stained with the perpetual labor of the mind, such as are to be found in the North. And yet, here, as elsewhere, there was no lack of souls turned in upon themselves, to feed upon themselves, concealing their woes, and desires and cares seething beneath the mask of indifference, and, voluptuously, drawing on a cloak of torpor. And, in certain faces there would peep out, queerly, disconcertingly, indications of some obscure malady of the spirit peculiar to very ancient races—like the excavations in the Roman Campagna.

There was great charm in the enigmatic indifference of these people, and their calm, mocking eyes, wherein there slumbered hidden tragedy. But Christophe was in no humor to recognize it. He was furious at seeing Grazia surrounded by worldly people with their courteous, witty, and empty manners. He hated them for it, and he was angry with her. He sulked at her just as he sulked at Rome. His visits to her became less and less frequent, and he began to make up his mind to go.