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Updated: May 28, 2025
Pottpetschmidt bowed as stiff as a poker and his features lost all expression; then when the formalities were over he caught hold of Christophe's hand and shook it five or six times, as though he were trying to pull his arm out, and then began to shout again. Christophe was able to make out that he thanked God and his stars for the extraordinary meeting.
He had remembered that Pottpetschmidt had had to go away that afternoon for an operation at a neighboring town where he had to spend the night and stay a day or two. Schulz was distressed. Kunz was equally put out. They were proud of Pottpetschmidt; they would have liked to show him off. They stood in the middle of the road and could not make up their minds what to do. "What shall we do?
He looked at Pottpetschmidt and wondered: "Does he really feel that?" But he could not see in his eyes any other light than that of satisfied vanity. Some unconscious force stirred in that solid flesh. The blind passion was like an army fighting without knowing against whom or why.
He tried hard to stop his going down that perilous slope. It was not easy to silence Pottpetschmidt. Schulz found it enormously difficult, when the singer had exhausted Christophe's repertory, to keep him from breaking out into the lucubrations of mediocre compositions at the mention of whose names Christophe curled up and bristled like a porcupine.
As for Kunz and Pottpetschmidt, they had no value outside the friendship they had for Schulz and Schulz for them. Christophe valued them at their proper worth. He wrote to them once and their relation ended there. He tried also to write to Modesta, but she answered with a commonplace letter in which she spoke only of trivialities. He gave up the correspondence.
He did not confound him with his two friends; he felt that he was the soul of the little group; the others were only reflections of that living fire of goodness and love. The friendship that Kunz and Pottpetschmidt had for him was very different. Kunz was selfish; music gave him a comfortable satisfaction like a fat cat when it is stroked.
Kunz repeated: "And Pottpetschmidt!..." Christophe looked at the two of them; he was touched by the dismay on their kind friendly faces and said: "How good you are!... If you like I will go to-morrow morning." Schulz took him by the hand. "Ah!" he said. "How glad I am! Thank you! Thank you!" He was like a child to whom to-morrow seems so far, so far, that it will not bear thinking on.
There vas only one shadow over their joy: the absence of Pottpetschmidt. They often returned to it. "Ah! If he were here! How he would eat! How he would drink! How he would sing!" Their praises of him were inexhaustible. "If only Christophe could see him!... But perhaps he would be able to. Perhaps Pottpetschmidt would return in the evening, on that night at latest...." "Oh!
He had an untuned voice and could never hear himself without disgust. However, intoxicated by his success, Pottpetschmidt began to "put expression" into Christophe's Lieder, that is to say he substituted his own for Christophe's. Naturally he did not think that the music gained by the change, and he grew gloomy. Schulz saw it.
Pottpetschmidt in the carriage and Schulz and Kunz on the step were making a deafening noise, they were marveling at their encounter. They climbed into the train as it was going. Schulz introduced Christophe.
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