"Great men have no need of us," said Christophe. "We must think of the others."
"Who? The dull public, the shadows who hide life from us? Act, write for such people? Give your life for them? That would be bitter indeed!"
"Bah!" said Christophe. "I see them as they are just as you do: but I don't let it make me despondent. They are not as bad as you say."
"Dear old German optimist!"
"They are men, like myself. Why should they not understand me?…—And suppose they don't understand me, why should I despair? Among all the thousands of people there will surely be one or two who will be with me: that is enough for me, and gives me window enough to breathe the outer air…. Think of all the simple playgoers, the young people, the old honest souls, who are lifted out of their tedious everyday life by your appearance, your voice, your revelation of tragic beauty. Think of what you were yourself when you were a child! Isn't it a fine thing to give to others—perhaps even only to one other—the happiness that others gave you, and to do to them the good that others did to you?"
"Do you really believe that there is one such in the world? I have come to doubt it…. Besides, what sort of love do we get from the best of those who love us? How do they see us? They see so badly! They admire you while they degrade you: they get just as much pleasure out of watching any old stager act: they drag you down to the level of the idiots you despise. In their eyes all successful people are exactly the same."
"And yet, when all is told, it is the greatest of all who go down to posterity with the greatest."
"It is only the backward movement of time. Mountains grow taller the farther you go away from them. You see their height better: but you are farther away from them…. And besides, who is to tell us who are the greatest? What do you know of the men who have disappeared?"
"Nonsense!" said Christophe. "Even if nobody were to feel what I think and what I am, I think my thoughts and I am what I am just the same. I have my music, I love it, I believe in it: it is the truest thing in my life."
"You are free in your art,—you can do what you like. But what can I do? I am forced to act in the plays they give me, and go on acting until I am sick of it. We are not yet, in France, such beasts of burden as those American actors who play Rip or Robert Macaire ten thousand times, and for twenty-five years of their lives go on grinding out and grinding out an idiotic part. But we are on the road to it. Our theaters are so poverty-stricken! The public will only stand genius in infinitesimal doses, sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature…. A 'fashionable genius'! Doesn't that make you laugh?… What waste of power! Look at what they have made of a Mounet. What has he had to play the whole of his life? Two or three parts that are worth the struggle for life: the Oedipus and Polyeucte. The rest has been rot! Isn't that enough to disgust one? And just think of all the great and glorious things he might have had to do!… Things are no better outside France? What have they made of a Duse? What has her life been given up to? Think of the futile parts she has played?"