would)--exactly the same things as he had heard from the original:
beings similar to each other would pass through similar phases, knock up
against the same obstacles, suffer from them in exactly the same way. If
it is true that "nothing so much brings weariness of life as the new
beginning of love," how much more then the new beginning of everything!
It was elusive and delusive.--Christophe tried not to think of it, since
it was necessary to do so, if he were to live, and since he wished to
live. It is the saddest hypocrisy, such rejection of self-knowledge, in
shame or piety, it is the invincible imperative need of living hiding
away from itself! Knowing that no consolation is possible, a man invents
consolations. Being convinced that life has no reason, he forges reasons
for living. He persuades himself that he must live, even when no one
outside himself is concerned. If need be he will go so far as to pretend
that the dead man encourages him to live. And he knows that he is
putting into the dead man's mouth the words that he wishes him to say. O
misery!...

Christophe set out on the road once more: his step seemed to have
regained its old assurance: the gates of his heart were closed upon his
sorrow: he never spoke of it to others: he avoided being left alone with
it himself: outwardly he seemed calm.

"_Real sorrows_," says Balzac, "_are apparently at peace in the deep bed
that they have made for themselves, where they seem to sleep, though all
the while they never cease to fret and eat away the soul_."

Any one knowing Christophe and watching him closely, seeing him coming
and going, talking, composing, even laughing--(he could laugh
now!)--would have felt that for all his vigor and the radiance of life
in his eyes, something had been destroyed in him, in the inmost depths