Christophe tried to pick up the threads of life again.... It was utterly
exhausting! He felt old, as old as the world!... In the morning when he
got up and saw himself in the mirror he was disgusted with his body, his
gestures, his idiotic figure. Get up, dress, to what end?... He tried
desperately to work: it made him sick. What was the good of creation,
when everything ends in nothing? Music had become impossible for Mm.
Art--(and everything else)--can only be rightly judged in unhappiness.
Unhappiness is the touchstone. Only then do we know those who can stride
across the ages, those who are stronger than death. Very few bear the
test. In unhappiness we are struck by the mediocrity of certain souls
upon whom we had counted--(and of the artists we had loved, who had been
like friends to our lives).--Who survives? How hollow does the beauty of
the world ring under the touch of sorrow!

But sorrow grows weary, the force goes from its grip. Christophe's
nerves were relaxed. He slept, slept unceasingly. It seemed that he
would never succeed in satisfying his hunger for sleep.

At last one night he slept so profoundly that he did not wake up until
well on into the afternoon of the next day. The house was empty. Braun
and his wife had gone out. The window was open, and the smiling air was
quivering with light. Christophe felt that a crushing weight had been
lifted from him. He got up and went down into the garden. It was a
narrow rectangle, inclosed within high walls, like those of a convent.
There were gravel paths between grass-plots and humble flowers; and an
arbor of grape-vines and climbing roses. A tiny fountain trickled from a
grotto built of stones: an acacia against the wall hung its
sweet-scented branches over the next garden. Above stood the old tower
of the church, of red sandstone. It was four o'clock in the evening. The