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Updated: May 13, 2025
Certain books, borrowed from the Reinharts, had told him about the terrible trials through which the German musicians of the seventeenth century had passed, and the calmness and resolution with which one of these great souls the greatest of all, the heroic Schutz had striven, as unshakably he went on his way in the midst of wars and burning towns, and provinces ravaged by the plague, with his country invaded, trampled underfoot by the hordes of all Europe, and worst of all broken, worn out, degraded by misfortune, making no fight, indifferent to everything, longing only for rest.
Then one day it appears that your idea has made its way. It was impossible to be sure that Christophe's Lieder had not reached the hearts of a few good people buried in the country, who were too timid or too tired to tell him so. One person wrote to him. Two or three months after the Reinharts had sent them, a letter came for Christophe.
The excellent Reinharts found other more subtle ways of showing their real friendship. He had also sent a certain number to the libraries of Leipzig and Berlin, with which he had dealings through his classbooks. For the moment at least their touching enterprise, of which Christophe knew nothing, bore no fruit.
He now saw the Reinharts every day and frequently several times a day. They spent almost all the evenings together. After spending the day alone in concentration he had a physical need of talking, of saying everything that was in his mind, even if he were not understood, and of laughing with or without reason, of expanding and stretching himself. He played for them.
But no man has the right to more; it rests with a man's self to gain the surplus of happiness, not with others." Such thoughts brought him new serenity, and he loved his good friends the Reinharts the more for them. He had no idea that even this affection was to be denied him. He reckoned without the malevolence of small towns.
If they had let him, he would have replied with a stupid letter, or perhaps, upon reflection, he would have thought himself very prudent and generous in not replying at all. Fortunately, the Reinharts were amused by his ill-humor, and kept him from committing any further absurdity. They succeeded in making him write a letter of thanks. But the letter, written reluctantly, was cold and constrained.
The Lieder which had been scattered broadcast seemed to miss fire; nobody talked of them; and the Reinharts, who were hurt by this indifference, were glad they had not told Christophe about what they had done, for it would have given him more pain than consolation. But in truth nothing is lost, as so often appears in life; no effort is in vain. For years nothing happens.
The intolerable susceptibilities of the little provincial town did not allow people to enter it as though it were a mill, without having properly asked for the honor of becoming part of it. The Reinharts had not sufficiently attended to the provincial code which regulated the duties of new arrivals in the town towards those who had settled in it before them.
It was warm, ceremonious, enthusiastic, old-fashioned in form, and came from a little town in Thuringia, and was signed "Universitaets Musikdirektor Professor Dr. Peter Schulz." It was a great joy for Christophe, and even greater for the Reinharts, when at their house he opened the letter, which he had left lying in his pocket for two days. They read it together.
Christophe was more frank, and said: "Let us part, my friends. We are not strong enough." The Reinharts wept. But they were happier when the breach was made. The town had its triumph. This time Christophe was quite alone. It had robbed him of his last breath of air: the affection, however humble, without which no heart can live. He had no one. All his friends had disappeared.
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