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That very day, when Christophe returned, irritated, though still grateful, to his attic, after his interview with Weil, he found Mooch there, doing Olivier some fresh act of service, and also a review containing a disparaging article on his music by Lucien Levy-Coeur; it was not written in a vein of frank criticism, but took the insultingly kindly line of chaffing him and banteringly considering him alongside certain third-rate and fourth-rate musicians whom he loathed.
"You soil and sully everything that is great in the world," he went on furiously. "There's the door! Get out, you cur, or I'll fling you through the window!" He moved towards him. The ladies moved aside screaming. There was a moment of general confusion. Christophe was surrounded at once. Lucien Levy-Coeur had half risen to his feet: then he resumed his careless attitude in his chair.
But he did not know that Lucien Levy-Coeur had also contrived to figure in the opposite camp, where he had succeeded in allying himself with men of the most anti-Liberal opinions, if not anti-Semite, in politics and art, He asked Achille Roussin: "How can you put up with such men?" Roussin replied: "He is so clever! And he is working for us; he is destroying the old world."
But Christophe stood waiting, stripped to his shirt, which was open to reveal his thick neck, while his sleeves were rolled up to show his strong wrists, head down, with his eyes glaring at Levy-Coeur: he stood taut, with murder written implacably on every feature: and Count Bloch, who watched him carefully, thought what a good thing it was that civilization had as far as possible suppressed the risks of fighting.
Levy-Coeur was exactly the opposite of Christophe, and represented the spirit of irony and decay which fastened gently, politely, inexorably, on all the great things that were left of the dying society: the family, marriage, religion, patriotism: in art, on everything that was manly, pure, healthy, of the people: faith in ideas, feelings, great men, in Man.
There Christophe marked the likeness of Lucien Levy-Coeur. He was not surprised to learn that Lucien Levy-Coeur was a Socialist. He only thought that Socialists must be fairly on the road to success to have enrolled Lucien Levy-Coeur.
So he made no effort to conceal his dislike of Lucien Levy-Coeur, At first that gentleman maintained towards Christophe an irreproachable and ironical politeness. He, too, scented the enemy: but he thought he had nothing to fear from him: he made fun of him without seeming to do so.
Christophe could not understand how a girl like Colette, who seemed to have so refined a nature and a touching eagerness to escape from the degrading round of her life, could find pleasure in such company. Christophe was no psychologist. Lucien Levy-Coeur could easily beat him on that score. Christophe was Colette's confidant: but Colette was the confidante of Lucien Levy-Coeur.
And as the first person to receive her confidence was naturally her inseparable Lucien Levy-Coeur, who had no reason for keeping it secret, the story went the rounds, and was embellished by the way: a note of ironic pity for Olivier, who was represented as a victim, was introduced, and he cut rather a sorry figure.
When he heard Goujart proposing that he should shake hands with his adversary, who advanced chivalrously towards him with his perpetual smile, he was exasperated by the pretense of the whole thing. Angrily he hurled his pistol away, pushed Goujart aside, and flung himself upon Lucien Levy-Coeur. They were hard put to it to keep him from going on with the fight with his fists.
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