So the days passed. Christophe regained his strength. Braun's heavy but
kindly attentions, the tranquillity of the household, the restful
regularity of such a domestic life, the extremely nourishing German
food, restored him to his old robustness. His physical health was
repaired: but his moral machinery was still out of gear. His new vigor
only served to accentuate the disorder of his mind, which could not
recover its balance, like a badly ballasted ship which will turn turtle
on the smallest shock.

He was profoundly lonely. He could have no intellectual intimacy with
Braun. His relations with Anna were reduced, with a few exceptions, to
saying good-morning and good-night. His dealings with his pupils were
rather hostile than otherwise: for he hardly hid from them his opinion
that the best thing for them to do was to give up music altogether. He
knew nobody. It was not only his fault, though he had hidden himself
away since his loss. People held aloof from him.

He was living in an old town, full of intelligence and vitality, but
also full of patrician pride, self-contained, and self-satisfied. There
was a bourgeois aristocracy with a taste for work and the higher
culture, but narrow and pietistic, who were calmly convinced of their
own superiority and the superiority of their city, and quite content to
live in family isolation. There were enormous families with vast
ramifications. Each family had its day for a general gathering of the
clan. They were hardly at all open to the outside world. All these great
houses, with fortunes generations old, felt no need of showing their
wealth. They knew each other, and that was enough: the opinion of others
was a thing of no consequence. There were millionaires dressed like
humble shopkeepers, talking their raucous dialect with its pungent
expressions, going conscientiously to their offices, every day of their