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The blow overwhelmed Christophe. Violent and uncritical as he was, it never occurred to him to think how utterly fantastic the story was: he only saw one thing: his secrets which he had confided to Olivier had been betrayed betrayed to Lucien Levy-Coeur. He could not stay to the end of the concert: he left the hall at once. Around him all was blank and dark.
The man who, in Grazia's eyes, was the very type of art, the personification of all that was divine in life! She was on the point of tears; she longed to get away. She had to listen to all the caterwauling, the hisses, the howls, and, when they reached home, to the laughter of Colette as she exchanged pitying remarks with Lucien Levy-Coeur.
Behind that mode of thought there was only the mechanical pleasure of analysis, analysis pushed to extremes, a sort of animal desire to nibble at thought, the instinct of a worm. And side by side with that ideal of intellectual nibbling was a girlish sensuality, the sensuality of a blue-stocking: for to Levy-Coeur everything became literature.
He had suffered more from his timidity, which sometimes led him to betray his thoughts, or deprived him of the courage to defend his thoughts conclusively, and even to apologize for them, as had happened in the argument with Lucien Levy-Coeur about Christophe. He had passed through many crises of despair before he had been able to strike a compromise between himself and the rest of the world.
It was only when she had to choose between her cousin and Christophe that she felt her heart turn against Colette. With her girlish intuition she saw that Christophe was made to suffer by Colette's coquetry, and the persistent courtship of her by Lucien Levy-Coeur. Instinctively she disliked Levy-Coeur, and she detested him as soon as she knew that Christophe detested him.
If only he could have had Christophe's admiration he would have been on quite good terms with him, but that he never could obtain: he saw that clearly, for Christophe had not the art of disguising his feelings. And so Lucien Levy-Coeur passed insensibly from an abstract intellectual antagonism to a little, carefully veiled, war, of which Colette was to be the prize.
The seconds intervened while Levy-Coeur escaped. Christophe broke away from them, and, without listening to their laughing expostulation, he strode along in the direction of the forest, talking loudly and gesticulating wildly. He did not even notice that he had left his hat and coat on the dueling-ground. He plunged into the woods.
And he was filled with an immense pity for Levy-Coeur. His first impulse was to write to him: he began two letters, but was not satisfied, was ashamed of them, and did not send either. But a few days later when he met Levy-Coeur with a weary, miserable face, it was too much for him: he went straight up to the poor wretch and held out both hands to him.
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