He looked back at the last visit of his son, and reflected on their last talks together. How many things were clear to him now, which he had not understood at the time! Maxime's silence, the reproach in his eyes. The worst of all was when he recognised that he had understood, at the time, when his son was there, but that he would not admit it.

This discovery, which had hung over him like a dark cloud for weeks,—this realisation of inward falsehood,—crushed him to the earth.



Until the actual crisis was upon them, Rosine Clerambault seemed thrown into the shade. Her inward life was unknown to the others, and almost to herself; even her father had scarcely a glimpse of it. She had lived under the wing of the warm, selfish, stifling family life, and had few friends or companions of her own age, for her parents stood between her and the world outside, and she had grown up in their shadow.

As she grew older if she had wished to escape she would not have dared, would not have known how; for she was shy outside the family circle, and could hardly move or talk; people thought her insignificant. This she knew; it wounded her self-respect, and therefore she went out as little as possible, preferring to stay at home, where she was simple, natural and taciturn. This silence did not arise from slowness of thought, but from the chatter of the others. As her father, mother, and brother were all exuberant talkers, this little person by a sort of reaction, withdrew into herself, where she could talk freely.

She was fair, tall, and boyishly slender, with pretty hair, the locks always straying over her cheeks. Her mouth was rather large and serious, the lower lip full at the corners, her eyes large, calm and vague, with fine well-marked eyebrows. She had a graceful chin, a pretty throat, an undeveloped figure, no hips; her hands were large and a little red, with prominent veins. Anything would make her blush, and her girlish charm was all in the forehead and the chin. Her eyes were always asking and dreaming, but said little.

Her father's preference was for her, just as her mother was drawn towards the son by natural affinity. Without thinking much about it, Clerambault had always monopolised his daughter, surrounding her from childhood with his absorbing affection. She had been partly educated by him, and with the almost offensive simplicity of the artist mind, he had taken her for the confidante of his inner life. This was brought about by his overflowing self-consciousness, and the little response that he found in his wife, a good creature, who, as the saying is, sat at his feet, in fact stayed there permanently, answering yes to all that he said, admiring him blindly, without understanding him, or feeling the lack; the essential to her was not her husband's thought but himself, his welfare, his comfort, his food, his clothing, his health. Honest Clerambault in the gratitude of his heart did not criticise his wife, any more than Rosine criticised her mother, but both of them knew how it was, instinctively, and were drawn closer by a secret tie. Clerambault was not aware that in his daughter he had found the real wife of his heart and mind. Nor did he begin to suspect it, till in these last days the war had seemed to break the tacit accord between them. Rosine's approval hitherto had bound her to him, and now all at once it failed him. She knew many things before he did, but shrank from the depths of the mystery; the mind need not give warning to the heart, it knows.

Strange, splendid mystery of love between souls, independent of social and even of natural laws. Few there be that know it, and fewer still that dare to reveal it; they are afraid of the coarse world and its summary judgments and can get no farther than the plain meaning of traditional language. In this conventional tongue, which is voluntarily inexact for the sake of social simplification, words are careful not to unveil, by expressing them, the many shades of reality in its multiple forms. They imprison it, codify it, drill it; they press it into the service of the mind already domesticated; of that reasoning power which does not spring from the depth of the spirit, but from shallow, walled-in pools—like the basins at Versailles—within the limits of constituted society.

In this somewhat legal phraseology love is bound to sex, age, and social classes; it is either natural or unnatural, legitimate or the reverse. But this is a mere trickle of water from the deep springs of love, which is as the law of gravitation that keeps the stars in their courses, and cares nothing for the ways that we trace for it. This infinite love fulfils itself between souls far removed by time and space; across the centuries it unites the thoughts of the living and the dead; weaves close and chaste ties between old and young hearts; through it, friend is nearer to friend, the child is closer in spirit to the old man than are husband or wife in the whole course of their lives. Between fathers and children these ties often exist unconsciously, and "the world" as our forefathers used to say, counts so little in comparison with love eternal, that the positions are sometimes reversed, and the younger may not always be the most childlike. How many sons are there who feel a devout paternal affection for an old mother? And do we not often see ourselves small and humble under the eyes of a child? The look with which the Bambino of Botticelli contemplates the innocent Virgin is heavy with a sad unconscious experience, and as old as the world.

The affection of Clerambault and Rosine was of this sort; fine, religious, above the reach of reason. That is why, in the depths of the troubled sea, below the pains and the conflicts of conscience caused by the war, a secret drama went on, without signs, almost without words, between these hearts united by a sacred love. This unavowed sentiment explained the sensitiveness of their mutual reactions. At first Rosine drew away in silence, disappointed in her affection, her secret worship tarnished, by the effect of the war on her father; she stood apart from him, like a little antique statue, chastely draped. At once Clerambault became uneasy; his sensibility sharpened by tenderness, felt instantly this Noli me tangere, and from this arose an unexpressed estrangement between the father and daughter. Words are so coarse, one would not dare to speak even in the purest sense of disappointed love, but this inner discord, of which neither ever spoke a word, was pain to both of them; made the young girl unhappy, and irritated Clerambault. He knew the cause well enough, but his pride refused to admit it; though little by little he was not far from confessing that Rosine was right. He was ready to humiliate himself, but his tongue was tied by false shame; and so the difference between their minds grew wider, while in their hearts each longed to yield.

In the confusion that followed Maxime's death, this inward prayer pressed more on the one less able to resist. Clerambault was prostrated by his grief, his wife aimlessly busy, and Rosine was out all day at her war work. They only came together at meals. But it happened that one evening after dinner Clerambault heard her mother violently scolding Rosine, who had spoken of wounded enemies whom she wanted to take care of. Madame Clerambault was as indignant as if her daughter had committed a crime, and appealed to her husband. His weary, vague, sad eyes had begun to see; he looked at Rosine who was silent, her head bent, waiting for his reply.

"You are right, my little girl," he said.

Rosine started and flushed, for she had not expected this; she raised her grateful eyes to his, and their look seemed to say: "You have come back to me at last."

After the brief repast they usually separated; each to eat out his heart in solitude. Clerambault sat before his writing-table and wept, his face hidden in his hands. Rosine's look had pierced through to his suffering heart; his soul lost, stifled for so long, had come to be as it was before the war. Oh, the look in her eyes!...

He listened, wiping away his tears; his wife had locked herself into Maxime's room as she did every evening, and was folding and unfolding his clothes, arranging the things left behind.... He went into the room where Rosine sat alone by the window, sewing. She was absorbed in thought, and did not hear him coming till he stood before her; till he laid his grey head on her shoulder and murmured: "My little girl."

Then her heart melted also. She took the dear old head between her hands, with its rough hair, and answered:

"My dear father."

Neither needed to ask or to explain why he was there. After a long silence, when he was calmer, he looked at her and said:

"It seems as if I had waked up from a frightful dream." ... But she merely stroked his hair, without speaking.

"You were watching over me, were you not?... I saw it.... Were you unhappy?" ...

She just bowed her head not daring to look at him. He stooped to kiss her hands, and raising his head he whispered:

"My good angel. You have saved me!"



When he had gone back to his room she stayed there without moving, filled with emotion, which kept her for long, still, with drooping head, her hands clasped on her knees. The waves of feeling that flowed through her almost took away her breath. Her heart was bursting with love, happiness, and shame. The humility of her father overcame her.... And all at once a passionate impulse of tender, filial piety broke the bonds which paralysed her soul and body, as she stretched out her arms towards the absent, and threw herself at the foot of her bed, thanking God, beseeching Him to give all the suffering to her, and happiness to the one she loved.

The God to whom she prayed did not give ear; for it was on the head of this young girl that he poured the sweet sleep of forgetfulness; but Clerambault had to climb his Calvary to the end.

Alone in his room, the lamp put out, in darkness, Clerambault looked within himself. He was determined to pierce to the bottom of his timid, lying soul which tried to hide itself. On his head he could still feel the coolness of his daughter's hand, which had effaced all his hesitation.

He would face this monster Truth, though he were torn by its claws which never relax, once they have taken hold.

With a firm hand, in spite of his anguish, he began to tear off in bleeding fragments the covering of mortal prejudices, passions, and ideas foreign to his real nature, which clung to him.

First came the thick fleece of the thousand-headed beast, the collective soul of the herd. He had hidden under it from fear and weariness. It is hot and stifling, a dirty feather-bed; but once wrapped in it, one cannot move to throw it off, or even wish to do so; there is no need to will, or to think; one is sheltered from cold, from responsibilities. Laziness, cowardice!... Come, away with it!... Let the chilly wind blow through the rents. You shrink at first, but already this breath has shaken the torpor; the enfeebled energy begins to stagger to its feet. What will it find outside? No matter what, we must see....

Sick with disgust, he saw first what he was loath to believe; how this greasy fleece had stuck to his flesh. He could sniff the musty odour of the primitive beast, the savage instincts of war, of murder, the lust for blood like living meat torn by his jaws. The elemental force which asks death for life. Far down in the depths of human nature is this slaughter-house in the ditch, never filled up but covered with the veil of a false civilisation, over which hangs a faint whiff from the butcher's shop.... This filthy odour finally sobered Clerambault; with horror he tore off the skin of the beast whose prey he had been.

Ah, how thick it was,—warm, silky, and beautiful, and at the same time stinking and bloody, made of the lowest instincts, and the highest illusions. To love, give ourselves to all, be a sacrifice for all, be but one body and one soul, our Country the sole life!... What then is this Country, this living thing to which a man sacrifices his life, the life of all but his conscience and the consciences of others? What is this blind love, of which the other side of the shield is an equally blinded hate?

... "It was a great error to take the name of reason from that of love," says Pascal, "and we have no good cause to think them opposed, for love and reason are in truth the same. Love is a precipitation of thought to one side without considering everything; but it is always reason." ...

Well, let us consider everything. Is not this love in a great measure the fear of examining all things, as a child hides his head under the sheet, so as not to see the shadow on the wall?

Country? A Hindoo temple: men, monsters, and gods. What is she? The earth we tread on? The whole earth is the mother of us all. The family? It is here and there, with the enemy as with ourselves, and it asks nothing but peace. The poor, the workers, the people, they are on both sides, equally miserable, equally exploited. Thinkers have a common field, and as for their rivalries and their vanities, they are as ridiculous in the East as in the West; the world does not go to war over the quarrels of a Vadius or a Trissotin. The State? But the State and the Country are not the same thing. The confusion is made by those who find profit in it; the State is our strength, used and abused by men like ourselves, no better than ourselves, often worse. We are not duped by them, and in times of peace we judge them fairly enough, but let a war come on, they are given carte blanche, they can appeal to the lowest instincts, stifle all control, suppress liberty and truth, destroy all humanity; they are masters, we must stand shoulder to shoulder to defend the honour and the mistakes of these Masacarilles arrayed in borrowed plumes. We are all answerable, do you say? Terrible net-work of words! Responsible no doubt we are for the best and the worst of our people, it is a fact as we well know, but that it is a duty that binds us to their injustices and their insanities.... I deny it!...

There can be no question as to community of interest. No one, thought Clerambault, has had more joy in it, or said more in praise of its greatness. It is good and healthy, it makes for rest and strength, to plunge the bare, stiff, cold ego into the collective mind, as into a bath of confidence and fraternal gifts. It unbends, gives itself, breathes more deeply; man needs his fellow-man, and owes himself to him, but in order to give out, he must possess, he must be something. But how can he be, if his self is merged in others? He has many duties, but the highest of all is to be and remain himself; even when he sacrifices and gives all that he is. To bathe in the soul of others would be dangerous as a permanent state; one dip, for health's sake, but do not stay too long, or you will lose all moral vigour. In our day you are plunged from childhood, whether you like it or not, into the democratic tub. Society thinks for you, imposes its morality upon you; its State acts for you, its fashions and its opinions steal from you the very air you breathe; you have no lungs, no heart, no light of your own. You serve what you despise, you lie in every gesture, word, and thought, you surrender, become nothing.... What does it profit us all, if we all surrender? For the sake of whom, or what? To satisfy blind instincts, or rogues? Does God rule, or do some charlatans speak for the oracle? Let us lift the veil, and look the hidden thing behind it in the face.... Our Country! A great noble word! The father, brother embracing brother.... That is not what your false country offers me, but an enclosure, a pit full of beasts, trenches, barriers, prison bars.... My brothers, where are they? Where are those who travail all over the world? Cain, what hast thou done with them? I stretch out my arms; a wave of blood separates us; in my own country I am only an anonymous instrument of assassination.... My Country! but it is you who destroy her!... My Country was the great community of mankind; you have ravaged it, for thought and liberty know not where to lay their heads in Europe today. I must rebuild my house, the home of us all, for you have none, yours is a dungeon.... How can it be done, where shall I look, or find shelter?... They have taken everything from me! There is not a free spot on earth or in the mind; all the sanctuaries of the soul, of art, of science, religion, they are all violated, all enslaved! I am alone, lost, nothing remains to me but death!...

* * * * *

When he had torn everything away, there remained nothing but his naked soul. And for the rest of the night, it could only stand chilled and shivering. But a spark lived in this spirit that shivered, in this tiny being lost in the universe like those shapes which the primitive painters represented coming out of the mouth of the dying. With the dawn the feeble flame, stifled under so many falsehoods, began to revive, and was relighted by the first breath of free air; nothing could again extinguish it.

* * * * *

Upon this agony or parturition of the soul there followed a long sad day, the repose of a broken spirit, in a great silence with the aching relief of duty performed.... Clerambault sat with his head against the back of his armchair, and thought; his body was feverish, his heart heavy with recollections. The tears fell unnoticed from his eyes, while out of doors nature awoke sadly to the last days of winter, like him stripped and bare. But still there trembled a warmth beneath the icy air, which was to kindle a new fire everywhere.



PART TWO



It was a week before Clerambault could go out again. The terrible crisis through which he had passed had left him weak but resolved, and though the exaltation of his despair had quieted down, he was stoically determined to follow the truth even to the end. The remembrance of the errors in which his mind had delighted, and the half-truths on which it had fed made him humble; he doubted his own strength, and wished to advance step by step. He was ready to welcome the advice of those wiser than himself. He remembered how Perrotin listened to his former confidences with a sarcastic reserve that irritated him at the time, but which now attracted him. His first visit of convalescence was to this wise old friend.

Perrotin was rather short-sighted and selfish, and did not take the trouble to look carefully at things that were not necessary to him, being a closer observer of books than of faces, but he was none the less struck by the alteration in Clerambault's expression.

"My dear friend," said he, "have you been ill?"

"Yes, ill enough," answered Clerambault, "but I have pulled myself together again, and am better now."

"It is the cruelest blow of all," said Perrotin, "to lose at our age, such a friend as your poor boy was to you ..."

"The most cruel is not his loss," said the father, "it is that I contributed to his death."

"What do you mean, my good friend?" said Perrotin in surprise. "How can you imagine such things to add to your trouble?"

"It was I who shut his eyes," said Clerambault bitterly, "and he has opened mine."

Perrotin pushed aside the work, which according to his habit he had continued to ruminate upon during the conversation, and looked narrowly at his friend, who bent his head, and began his story in an indistinct voice, sad and charged with feeling. Like a Christian of the early times making public confession, he accused himself of falsehood towards his faith, his heart, and his reason.

When the Apostle saw his Lord in chains, he was afraid and denied Him; but he was not brought so low as to offer his services as executioner. He, Clerambault, had not only deserted the cause of human brotherhood, he had debased it; he had continued to talk of fraternity, while he was stirring up hatred. Like those lying priests who distort the Scriptures to serve their wicked purposes, he had knowingly altered the most generous ideas to disguise murderous passions.

He extolled war, while calling himself a pacifist; professed to be humanitarian, previously putting the enemy outside humanity.... Oh, how much franker it would have been to yield to force than to lend himself to its dishonouring compromises! It was thanks to such sophistries as his that the idealism of young men was thrown into the arena. Those old poisoners, the artists and thinkers, had sweetened the death-brew with their honeyed rhetoric, which would have been found out and rejected by every conscience with disgust, if it had not been for their falsehoods....

"The blood of my son is on my head," said Clerambault sadly. "The death of the youth of Europe, in all countries, lies at the door of European thought. It has been everywhere a servant to the hangman."

Perrotin leaned over and took Clerambault's hand. "My poor friend," said he, "you make too much of this. No doubt you are right to acknowledge the errors of judgment into which you have been drawn by public opinion, and I may confess to you now that I was sorry to see it; but you are wrong to ascribe to yourself and other thinkers so much responsibility for the events of today. One man speaks, another acts; but the speakers do not move the others to action; they are all drifting with the tide. This unfortunate European thought is a bit of drift-wood like the rest, it does not make the current, it is carried along by it."

"It persuades people to yield to it," said Clerambault, "instead of helping the swimmers, and bidding them struggle against it; it says: Let yourself go.... No, my friend, do not try to diminish its responsibility, it is the greatest of all. Our thought had the best place from which to see; its business was to keep watch, and if it saw nothing, it was through lack of good-will, for it cannot lay the blame on its eyes, which are clear enough. You know it and so do I, now that I have come to my senses. The same intelligence which darkened my eyes, has now torn away the bandage; how can it be, at the same time, a power for truth and for falsehood?"

Perrotin shook his head.

"Yes, intelligence is so great and so high that she cannot put herself at the service of any other forces without derogation; for if she is no longer mistress and free, she is degraded. It is a case of Roman master debasing the Greek, his superior, and making him his purveyor—Graeculus, sophist, Laeno.... To the vulgar the intelligence is a sort of maid-of-all-work, and in this position she displays the sly, dishonest cleverness of her kind. Sometimes she is employed by hatred, pride, or self-interest, and then she flatters these little devils, dressing them up as Idealism, Love, Faith, Liberty, and social generosity; for when a man does not love his neighbour, he says he loves God, his Country, or even Humanity. Sometimes the poor master is himself a slave to the State. Under threat of punishment, the social machine forces him to acts which are repugnant, but the complaisant intelligence persuades him that these are fine and glorious, and performed by him of his own free will. In either case the intelligence knows what she is about, and is always at our disposition if we really want her to tell us the truth; but we take good care to avoid it, and never to be left alone with her. We manage so as to meet her only in public when we can put leading questions as we please.... When all is said, the earth goes round none the less, e pur se muove;—the laws of the world are obeyed, and the free mind beholds them. All the rest is vanity; the passions, faith, sincere or insincere, are only the painted face of that necessity which rules the world, without caring for our idols: family, race, country, religion, society, progress.... Progress indeed! The great illusion! Humanity is like water that must find its level, and when the cistern brims over a valve opens and it is empty again.... A catastrophic rhythm, the heights of civilisation, and then downfall. We rise, and are cast down ..."

Thus Perrotin calmly unveiled his Thought. She was not much accustomed to going naked; but she forgot that she had a witness, and undressed as if she were alone. She was extremely bold, as is often the thought of a man of letters not obliged to suit the action to the word, but who much prefers, on the contrary, not to do so. The alarmed Clerambault listened with his mouth open; certain words revolted him, others pierced him to the heart; his head swam, but he overcame his weakness, for he was determined to lose nothing of these profundities. He pressed Perrotin with questions: and he, on his part, flattered and smiling, complaisantly unrolled his pyrrhonian visions, as peaceable as they were destructive.

The vapours of the pit were rising all about them; and Clerambault was admiring the ease of this free spirit perched on the edge of the abyss and enjoying it, when the door opened, and the servant came in with a card which he gave to Perrotin.

At once the terrible phantoms of the brain vanished; a trap-door shut out the emptiness, and an official drawing-room rug covered it. Perrotin roused himself and said eagerly: "Certainly, show him in at once." Turning to Clerambault he added:

"Pardon me, my dear friend, it is the Honourable Under-Secretary of State for Public Instruction."

He was already on his feet and went to meet his visitor, a stage-lover looking fellow, with the blue clean-shaven chin of a priest or a Yankee, who held his head very high, and wore in the grey cut-a-way which clothed his well-rounded figure, the rosette which is displayed alike by our heroes and our lackeys. The old gentleman presented Clerambault to him with cheerful alacrity: "Mr. Agenor Clerambault—Mr. Hyacinth Moncheri," and asked the Honourable Under-Secretary of State to what he owed the honour of his visit. The Honourable Under-Secretary, not in the least surprised by the obsequious welcome of the old scholar, settled himself in his armchair with the lofty air of familiarity suitable to the superior position he held over the two representatives of French letters. He represented the State.

Speaking haughtily through his nose, and braying like a dromedary, he extended to Perrotin an invitation from the Minister to preside over a solemn contest of embattled intellectuals from ten nations, in the great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne—"an imprecatory meeting," he called it. Perrotin promptly accepted, and professed himself overcome by the honour. His servile tone before this licensed government ignoramus made a striking contrast with his bold statements a few moments before, and Clerambault, somewhat taken aback, thought of the Graeculus.

Mr. "Cheri" walked out with his head in the air, like an ass in a sacred procession, accompanied by Perrotin to the very threshold, and when the friends were once more alone, Clerambault would have liked to resume the conversation, but he could not conceal that he was a little chilled by what had passed. He asked Perrotin if he meant to state in public the opinions he had just professed, and Perrotin refused, naturally, laughing at his friend's simplicity. What is more, he cautioned him affectionately against proclaiming such ideas from the house-tops. Clerambault was vexed and disputed the point, but in order to make the situation clear to him, and with the utmost frankness, Perrotin described his surroundings, the great minds of the higher University, which he represented officially: historians, philosophers, professors of rhetoric. He spoke of them politely but with a deep half-concealed contempt, and a touch of personal bitterness; for in spite of his prudence, the less intelligent of his colleagues looked on him with suspicion; he was too clever. He said he was like an old blind man's dog in a pack of barking curs; forced to do as they did and bark at the passers-by.

Clerambault did not quarrel with him, but went away with pity in his heart.



He stayed in the house for several days, for this first contact with the outside world had depressed him, and the friend on whom he had relied for guidance had failed him miserably. He was much troubled, for Clerambault was weak and unused to stand alone. Poet as he was, and absolutely sincere, he had never felt it necessary to think independently of others; he had let himself be carried along by their thought, making it his own, becoming its inspired voice and mouth-piece. Now all was suddenly changed. Notwithstanding that night of crisis, his doubts returned upon him; for after fifty a man's nature cannot be transformed at a touch, no matter how much the mind may have retained the elasticity of youth. The light of a revelation does not always shine, like the sun in a clear summer sky, but is more like an arc-light, which often winks and goes out before the current becomes strong. When these irregular pulsations fade out, the shadows appear deeper, and the spirit totters and then—. It was hard for Clerambault to get along without other people.

He decided to visit all his friends, of whom he had many, in the literary world, in the University, and among the intelligent bourgeoisie. He was sure to find some among them who, better than he, could divine the problems which beset him, and help him in their solution.

Timidly, without as yet betraying his own mind, he tried to read theirs, to listen and observe; but he had not realised that the veil had fallen from his eyes; and the vision that he saw of a world, once well-known to him, seemed strange and cold.

The whole world of letters was mobilised; so that personalities were no longer to be distinguished. The universities formed a ministry of domesticated intelligence; its functions were to draw up the acts of the State, its master and patron; the different departments were known by their professional twists.

The professors of literature were above all skilful in developing moral arguments oratorically under the three terms of the syllogism. Their mania was an excessive simplification of argument; they put high-sounding words in the place of reason, and made too much of a few ideas, always the same, lifeless for lack of colour or shading. They had unearthed these weapons of a so-called classic antiquity, the key to which had been jealously guarded throughout the ages by academic Mamelukes, and these eloquent antiquated ideas were falsely called Humanities, though in many respects they offended the common-sense and the heart of humanity as it is today. Still they bore the hall-mark of Rome, prototype of all our modern states, and their authorised exponents were the State rhetoricians.

The philosophers excelled in abstract constructions; they had the art of explaining the concrete by the abstract, the real by its shadow. They systematised some hasty partial observations, melted them in their alembics, and from them deduced laws to regulate the entire world. They strove to subject life, multiple and many-sided, to the unity of the mind, that is, to their mind. The time-serving trickeries of a sophistical profession facilitated this imperialism of the reason; they knew how to handle ideas, twisting, stretching, and tying them together like strips of candy; it would have been child's play for them to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle. They could also prove that black was white, and could find in the works of Emanuel Kant the freedom of the world, or Prussian militarism, just as they saw fit.

The historians were the born scribes, attorneys, and lawyers of the Government, charged with the care of its charters, its title-deeds, and cases, and armed to the teeth for its future quarrels.... What is history after all? The story of success, the demonstration of what has been done, just or unjust. The defeated have no history. Be silent, you Persians of Salamis, slaves of Spartacus, Gauls, Arabs of Poitiers, Albigenses, Irish, Indians of both Americas, and colonial peoples generally!... When a worthy man revolting against the injustices of his day, puts his hope in posterity by way of consolation, he forgets that this posterity has but little chance to learn of former events. All that can be known is what the advocates of official history think favourable to the cause of their client, the State. A lawyer for the adverse party may possibly intervene—someone of another nation, or of an oppressed social or religious group; but there is small chance for him; the secret is kept too well!

Orators, sophists, and pleaders, the three corporations of the Faculty of Letters,—Letters of State, signed and patented!

The studies of the "scientifics" ought to have protected them better from the suggestions and contagions of the outside world—that is, if they confined themselves to their trade. Unfortunately they have been tempted from it, for the applied sciences have taken so large a place in practical affairs that experts find themselves thrown into the foremost ranks of action, and exposed to all the infections of the public mind. Their self-respect is directly interested in the victory of the community, which can as easily assimilate the heroism of the soldier as the follies and falsehoods of the publicist. Few scientific men have had the strength to keep themselves free; for the most part they have only contributed the rigour, the stiffness of the geometrical mind, added to professional rivalries, always more acute between learned bodies of different nationalities.

The regular writers, poets, and novelists, who have no official ties, they, at least should have the advantages of their independence; but unfortunately few of them are able to judge for themselves of events which are beyond the limits of their habitual preoccupations, commercial or aesthetic. The greater number, and not the least known, are as ignorant as fishes. It would be best for them to stick to their shop, according to their natural instinct; but their vanity has been foolishly tickled, and they have been urged to mix themselves up with public affairs, and give their opinion on the universe. They can naturally have but scattering views on such subjects, and in default of personal judgment, they drift with the current, reacting with extreme quickness to any shock, for they are ultra-sensitive, with a morbid vanity which exaggerates the thoughts of others when it cannot express their own. This is the only originality at their disposal, and God knows they make the most of it!

What remains? the Clergy? It is they who handle the heaviest explosives; the ideas of Justice, Truth, Right, and God; and they make this artillery fight for their passions. Their absurd pride, of which they are quite unconscious, causes them to lay claim to the property of God, and to the exclusive right to dispose of it wholesale and retail.

It is not so much that they lack sincerity, virtue, or kindness, but they do lack humility; they have none, however much they may profess it. Their practice consists in adoring their navel as they see it reflected in the Talmud, or the Old and New Testaments. They are monsters of pride, not so very far removed from the fool of legend who thought himself God the Father. Is it so much less dangerous to believe oneself His manager, or His secretary?

Clerambault was struck by the morbid character of the intellectual species. In the bourgeois caste the power of organisation and expression of ideas has reached almost monstrous proportions. The equilibrium of life is destroyed by a bureaucracy of the mind which thinks itself much superior to the simple worker. Certainly no one can deny that it has its uses; it collects and classifies thoughts in its pigeon-holes and puts them to various purposes, but the idea rarely occurs to it to examine its material and renew the content of thought.

It remains the vain guardian of a demonetised treasure. If only this mistake were a harmless one; but ideas that are not constantly confronted with reality, which are not frequently dipped into the stream of experience, grow dry, and take on a toxic character. They throw a heavy shadow over the new life, bring on the night and produce fever. What a stupid thraldom to abstract words! Of what use is it to dethrone kings and by what right do we jeer at those who die for their masters, if it is only to put tyrannic entities in their places, which we adorn with their tinsel? It is much better, to have a flesh and blood monarch, whom you can control—suppress if necessary—than these abstractions, these invisible despots, that no one knows now, nor ever has known. We deal only with the head Eunuchs, the priests of the hidden Crocodile, as Taine calls him, the wire-pulling ministers who speak in the idol's name.—Ah! let us tear away the veil and know the creature hidden inside of us. There is less danger when man shows frankly as a brute than when he drapes himself in a false and sickly idealism. He does not eliminate his animal instincts, he only deifies and tries to explain them, but as this cannot be done without excessive simplification—according to the law of the mind which in order to grasp must let go an equal amount—he disguises and intensifies them in one direction. Everything that departs from the straight line or that interferes with the strict logic of his mental edifice, he denies; worse he pulls it up by the roots, and commands that it be destroyed in the name of sacred principles. It therefore follows that he cuts down much of the infinite growth of nature, and allows to stand only the trees of the mind that he chooses—generally those that flourish in deserts and ruins and which there grow abnormally. Of such is the crushing predominance of one single tyrannous form of the Family, of Country, and of the narrow morality which serves them. The poor creature is proud of it all; and it is he who is the victim.

Humanity does not dare to massacre itself from interested motives. It is not proud of its interests, but it does pride itself on its ideas which are a thousand times more deadly. Man sees his own superiority in his ideas, and will fight for them; but herein I perceive his folly, for this warlike idealism is a disease peculiar to him, and its effects are similar to those of alcoholism; they add enormously to wickedness and criminality. This sort of intoxication deteriorates the brain, filling it with hallucinations, to which the living are sacrificed.

What an extraordinary spectacle, seen from the interior of our skulls! A throng of phantoms rising from our overexcited brains: Justice, Liberty, Right, Country.... Our poor brains are all equally honest, but each accuses the other of insincerity. In this fantastic shadowy struggle, we can distinguish nothing but the cries and the convulsions of the human animal, possessed by devils.... Below are clouds charged with lightnings, where great fierce birds are fighting; the realists, the men of affairs, swarm and gnaw like fleas in a skin; with open mouths, and grasping hands, secretly exciting the folly by which they profit, but in which they do not share....

O Thought! monstrous and splendid flower springing from the humus of our time-honoured instincts!... In truth, thou art an element penetrating and impregnating man, but thou dost not spring from him, thy source is beyond him, and thy strength greater than his. Our senses are fairly well-adapted to our needs but our thought is not, it overflows and maddens us. Very, very few among us men can guide themselves on this torrent; the far greater number are swept along, at random, trusting to chance. The tremendous power of thought is not under man's control; he tries to make it serve him, and his greatest danger is that he believes that it does so; but he is like a child handling explosives; there is no proportion between these colossal engines and the purpose for which his feeble hands employ them. Sometimes they all blow up together....

How guard against this danger? Shall we stifle thought, uproot living ideas? That would mean the castration of man's brain, the loss of his chief stimulus in life; but nevertheless the eau-de-vie of his mind contains a poison which is the more to be dreaded because it is spread broadcast among the masses, in the form of adulterated drugs.... Rouse thee, Man, and sober thyself! Look about; shake off ideas. Free thyself from thine own thoughts and learn to govern thy gigantic phantoms which devour themselves in their rage.... And begin by taking the capitals from the names of those great goddesses, Country, Liberty, Right. Come down from Olympus into the manger, and come without ornaments, without arms, rich only in your beauty, and our love.... I do not know the gods of Justice and Liberty; I only know my brother-man, and his acts, sometimes just, sometimes unjust; and I also know of peoples, all aspiring to real liberty but all deprived of it, and who all, more or less, submit to oppression.



The sight of this world in a fever-fit would have filled a sage with the desire to withdraw until the attack was over; but Clerambault was not a sage. He knew this, and he also knew that it was vain to speak; but none the less he felt that he must, that he should end by speaking. He wished to delay the dangerous moment, and his timidity, which shrank from single combat with the world, sought about him for a companion in thought. The fight would not be so hard if there were two or three together.

The first whose feeling he cautiously sounded were some unfortunate people who, like him, had lost a son. The father, a well-known painter, had a studio in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs. His name was Omer Calville and the Clerambaults were neighbourly with him and his wife, a nice old couple of the middle class, devoted to each other. They had that gentleness, common to many artists of their day, who had known Carriere, and caught remote reflections of Tolstoism, which, like their simplicity, appeared a little artificial, for though it harmonised with their real goodness of heart, the fashion of the time had added a touch of exaggeration.

Those artists who sincerely profess their religious respect for all that lives, are less capable than anyone else of understanding the passions of war. The Calvilles had held themselves outside the struggle; they did not protest, they accepted it, without acquiescing, as one accepts sickness, death, or the wickedness of men, with a dignified sadness.

When Clerambault read them his burning poems they listened politely and made little response—but strangely enough, at the very time that Clerambault, cured of his warlike illusions, turned to them, he found that they had changed places with him. The death of their son had produced on them the opposite effect. And now they were awkwardly taking part in the conflict, as if to replace their lost boy. They snuffed up eagerly all the stench in the papers, and Clerambault found them actually rejoicing, in their misery, over the assertion that the United States was prepared to fight for twenty years.

"What would become of France, of Europe, in twenty years?" he tried to say, but they hastily put this thought away from them with much irritation, almost as if it were improper to mention, or even to think of such a thing.

The question was to conquer; at what price? That could be settled afterwards.—Conquer? Suppose there were no more conquerors left in France? Never mind, so long as the others are beaten. No, it should not be that the blood of their son had been shed in vain.

"And to avenge his death, must other innocent lives also be sacrificed?" thought Clerambault, and in the hearts of these good people he read the answer: "Why not?" The same idea was in the minds of all those who, like the Calvilles, had lost through the war what they held dearest—a son, a husband, or a brother....

"Let the others suffer as we have, we have nothing left to lose." Was there nothing left? In truth there was one thing only, on which the fierce egotism of these mourners kept jealous guard; their faith in the necessity of these sacrifices. Let no one try to shake that, or doubt that the cause was sacred for which these dear ones fell. The leaders of the war knew this, and well did they understand how to make the most of such a lure. No, by these sad fire-sides there was no place for Clerambault's doubts and feelings of pity.

"They had no pity on us," thought the unhappy ones, "why should we pity them?"

Some had suffered less, but what characterised nearly all of these bourgeois was the reverence they had for the great slogans of the past: "Committee of Public Safety," "The Country in Danger," "Plutarch," "De Viris," "Horace,"—it seemed impossible for them to look at the present with eyes of today; perhaps they had no eyes to see with. Outside of the narrow circle of their own affairs, how many of our anemic bourgeoisie have the power to think for, themselves, after they have reached the age of thirty? It would never cross their minds; their thoughts are furnished to them like their provisions, only more cheaply. For one or two cents a day they get them from their papers. The more intelligent, who look for thought in books, do not give themselves the trouble to seek it also in life, and think that one is the reflection of the other. Like the prematurely aged, their members become stiff, and their minds petrified.

In the great flock of those ruminating souls who fed on the past, the group of bigots pinning its faith to the French Revolution was easily distinguished. Among the backward bourgeoisie they were reckoned incendiary in former days;—about the time of the 16th of May, or a little later. Like quinquagenarians grown stolid and settled, they looked back with pride to their wild conduct, and lived on the memory of the emotions of by-gone days. If their mirror showed them no change, the world had altered around them without their suspecting it, while they continued to copy their antiquated models. It is a curious imitative instinct, a slavery of the brain, to remain hypnotised by some point in the past, instead of trying to follow Proteus in his course—the life of change. One picks up the old skin which the young snake has thrown off long ago, and tries to sew it together again. These pedantic admirers of old revolutions believe that those of the future will be made on the same lines. They will not see that the new liberty must have a gait of its own, and will overleap barriers before which its grandmother of ninety-three stopped, out of breath. They are also much more vexed by the disrespect of the young people who have gone by them, than they are by the spiteful yelping of the old whom they have left behind; this is only natural, for these young folks make them feel their age, and then it is their turn to yelp.

So it ever shall be; as they grow older there are very few men willing to let life take its own course, and who are generous enough to look at the future through the eyes of their juniors, as their own sight grows dim. The greater number of those who loved liberty in their youth, want to make a case of it now for the new broods, because they can no longer fly themselves.

The followers of the national revolutionary cult—in the style of Danton, or of Robespierre—were the bitterest adversaries of the internationalism of today; though they did not always agree perfectly amongst themselves, and the friends of Danton and Robespierre, with the shadow of the guillotine between them, hurled the epithet of heretic at each other with the deadliest threats. They did, however, all agree on one point, and devoted to destruction those who did not believe that Liberty is shot out of the mouth of cannon, those who dared to feel the same aversion towards violence, whether it was exerted by Caesar, Demos, or his satellites, or even if it was in the name of right and liberty itself. The face underneath is the same, no matter what mask may be worn.

Clerambault knew several of these fanatics, but there was no point in discussing with them whether the right, or its counterfeit, were only on one side in war; it would have been equally sensible to argue about the Holy Inquisition with a Manichee. Lay religions have their great seminaries and secret societies where they deposit their doctrinal treasures with great pride. He who departs from these is excommunicated—until he in turn belongs to the past, when he becomes a god, and can excommunicate in future himself.

* * * * *

If Clerambault was not tempted to convert these hardened intellectuals with their stiff helmet of truth, he knew others who had not the same proud certainty; far from it. Those who sinned rather through softness and pure dilettantism—Arsene Asselin was one of these, an amiable Parisian, unmarried, a man of the world, clever and sceptical; and as much shocked by a defect in sentiment as in expression. How could he like extremes of thought, which are the cultures in which the germs of war develop? His critical and sarcastic spirit inclined him towards doubt; so there was no reason why he should not have understood Clerambault's point of view, and he came within an ace of doing so. His choice depended on some fortuitous circumstances, but from the moment that he turned his face in the other direction, it was impossible for him to go back; and the more he stuck in the mud, the more obstinate he grew. French self-respect cannot bear to admit its mistakes; it would rather die in defence of them.... But French or not, how many are there in the world who would have the strength of mind to say: "I have made a mistake, we must begin all over again." Better deny the evidence ... "To the bitter end" ... And then break down.

Alexandre Mignon was a before-the-war pacifist and an old friend of Clerambault's. He was a bourgeois of about his own age, intellectual, a member of the University, and justly respected for the dignity of his life. He should not be confounded with those parlour pacifists covered with official decorations and grand cordons of international orders, for whom peace is a gilt-edged investment in quiet times. For thirty years he had sincerely denounced the dangerous intrigues of the dishonest politicians and speculators of his country; he was a member of the League for the Rights of Man, and loved to make speeches for either cause, as it might happen. It was enough if his client purported to be oppressed; it did not matter if the victim had been a would-be oppressor himself. His blundering generosity sometimes made him ridiculous, but he was always liked. He did not object to the ridicule, nor did he dread a little unpopularity, as long as he was surrounded by his own group, whose approbation was necessary to him. As a member of a group which was independent when they all held together, he thought that he was an independent person, but this was not the case. Union is strength they say, but it accustoms us to lean upon it, as Alexandre Mignon found to his cost.

The death of Jaures had broken up the group; and lacking one voice—the first to speak—all the others failed. They waited for the password that no one dared to give. When the torrent broke over them these generous but weak men were uncertain, and were carried away by the first rush. They did not understand nor approve of it, but they could make no resistance. From the beginning desertions began in their ranks, produced largely by the terrible speech-makers who then governed the country—demagogue lawyers, practised in all the sophistries of republican idealogy: "War for Peace, Lasting Peace at the End ..." (Requiescat) ... In these artifices the poor pacifists saw a way to get out of their dilemma; it was not a very brilliant way and they were not proud of it, but it was their only chance. They hoped to reconcile their pacific principles with the fact of violence by means of "big talk" which did not sound to them as outrageous as it really was. To refuse would have been to give themselves up to the war-like pack, which would have devoured them.

Alexandre Mignon would have had courage to face the bloody jaws if he had had his little community at his back, but alone it was beyond his strength. He let things go at first, without committing himself, but he suffered, passing through agonies something like those of Clerambault, but with a different result. He was less impulsive and more intellectual. In order to efface his last scruples he hid them under close reasoning, and with the aid of his colleagues he laboriously proved by a + b that war was the duty of consistent pacifism. His League had every advantage in dwelling on the criminal acts of the enemy; but did not dwell on those in its own camp. Alexandre Mignon had occasional glimpses of the universal injustice; an intolerable vision, on which he closed his shutters....

In proportion as he was swaddled in his war arguments, it became more difficult for him to disentangle himself, and he persisted more and more. Suppose a child carelessly pulls off the wing of an insect; it is only a piece of nervous awkwardness, but the insect is done for, and the child ashamed and irritated, tears the poor creature to pieces to relieve his own feelings.

The pleasure with which he listened to Clerambault's mea culpa may be imagined; but the effect was surprising. Mignon, already ill at ease, turned on Clerambault, whose self-accusations seemed to point at him, and treated him like an enemy. In the sequel no one was more violent than Mignon against this living remorse.

* * * * *

There were some politicians who would have understood Clerambault better, for they knew as much as he did and perhaps more; but it did not keep them awake at night. They had been used to mental trickery ever since they cut their first teeth, and were expert at combinazione; they had the illusion of serving their party, cheaply gained by a few compromises here and there!... To think and walk straightforwardly was the one thing impossible to these flabby shufflers, who backed, or advanced in spirals, who dragged their banner in the mud, by way of assuring its triumph, and who, to reach the Capitol, would have crawled up the steps on their stomachs.

* * * * *

Here and there some clear-sighted spirits were hidden, but they were easier to guess at than to see; they were melancholy glow-worms who had put out their lanterns in their fright, so that not a gleam was visible. They certainly had no faith in the war, but neither did they believe in anything against it;—fatalists, pessimists all.

It was clear to Clerambault that when personal energy is lacking, the highest qualities of head and heart only increase the public servitude. The stoicism which submits to the laws of the universe prevents us from resisting those which are cruel, instead of saying to destiny: "No, thus far, and no farther!" ... If it pushes on you will see the stoic stand politely aside, as he murmurs: "Please come in!"—Cultivated heroism, the taste for the superhuman, even the inhuman, chokes the soul with its sacrifices, and the more absurd they are, the more sublime they appear—Christians of today, more generous than their Master, render all to Caesar; a cause seems sacred to them from the moment that they are asked to immolate themselves to it. To the ignominy of war they piously kindle the flame of their faith, and throw their bodies on the altar. The people bend their backs, and accept with a passive, ironic resignation.... "No need to borrow trouble." Ages and ages of misery have rolled over this stone, but in the end stones do wear down and become mud.



Clerambault tried to talk with one and another of these people but found himself everywhere opposed by the same hidden, half-unconscious resistance. They were armed with the will not to hear, or rather with a remarkable not-will to hear. Their minds were as impervious to contrary arguments as a duck's feathers to water. Men in general are endowed, for their comfort, with a precious faculty; they can make themselves blind and deaf when it does not suit them to see and hear, and when by chance they pick up some inconvenient object, they drop it quickly, and forget it as soon as possible. How many citizens in any country knew the truth about the divided responsibility for the war, or about the ill-omened part played by their politicians, who, themselves deceived, pretended with great success to be ignorant!

If everyone is trying to escape from himself, it is clear, that a man will run faster from someone who, like Clerambault, would help him to recover himself. In order to avoid their own conscience, intelligent, serious, honourable men do not blush to employ the little tricks of a woman or a child trying to get its own way; and dreading a discussion which might unsettle them, they would seize on the first awkward expression used by Clerambault. They would separate it from the context, dress it up if necessary, and with raised voices and eyes starting from their heads, feign an indignation which they ended by feeling sincerely. They would repeat "mordicus," even after the proof, and if obliged to admit it, would rush off, banging the door after them: "Can't stand any more of that!" But two, or perhaps ten days after, they would come back and renew the argument, as if nothing had happened.

Some treacherous ones provoked Clerambault to say more than he intended, and having gained their point, exploded with rage. But even the most good-natured told him that he lacked good sense—"good," of course, meaning "my way of thinking."

There were the clever talkers also who, having nothing to fear from a contest of words, began an argument in the flattering hope that they could bring the wandering sheep back to the fold. It was not his main idea that they disputed, so much as its desirability; they would appeal to Clerambault's better side:

"Certainly, of course, I think as you do, or almost as you do; I understand what you mean; ... but you ought to be cautious, my dear friend, not to trouble the consciences of those who have to fight. You cannot always speak the truth, at least not all at once. These fine things may come about ... in fifty years, perhaps. We must wait and not go too fast for nature ..."

"Wait, until the appetites of the exploiter, and the folly of the exploited are equally exhausted? When the thinking of clear-sighted, better sort gives way to the blindness of coarser minds, it goes directly contrary to that nature which it professes to follow, and against the historical destiny which they themselves make it a point of honour to obey. For do we respect the plans of Nature when we stifle one part of its thought, and the higher, at that? The theory which would lop off the strongest forces from life, and bend it before the passions of the multitude, would result in suppressing the advance-guard, and leaving the army without leaders.... When the boat leans over, must I not throw my weight on the other side to keep an even keel? Or must we all sit down to leeward? Advanced ideas are Nature's weights, intended to counter-balance the heavy stubborn past; without them the boat will upset.... The welcome they will receive is a side issue. Their advocates can expect to be stoned, but whoever has these things in his mind and does not speak them, is a dishonoured man. He is like a soldier in battle, to whom a dangerous message is entrusted; is he free to shirk it?... Why does not everyone understand these things?"

When they saw that persuasion had no effect on Clerambault, they unmasked their batteries and violently taxed him with absurd, criminal pride. They asked him if he thought himself cleverer than anyone else, that he set himself up against the entire nation? On what did he found this overweening self-confidence? Duty consists in being humble, and keeping to one's proper place in the community; when it commands, our duty is to bow to it, and, whether we agree or not, we must carry out its orders. Woe to the rebel against the soul of his country! To be in the right and in opposition to her is to be wrong, and in the hour of action wrong is a crime. The Republic demands obedience from her sons.

"The Republic or death," said Clerambault ironically. "And this is a free country? Free, yes, because there have always been, and always will be some souls like mine, which refuse to bend to a yoke which their conscience disavows. We are become a nation of tyrants. There was no great advantage in taking the Bastille. In the old days one ran the risk of perpetual imprisonment if one made so bold as to differ from the Prince—the fagot, if you did not agree with the Church; but now you must think with forty millions of men and follow them in their frantic contradictions. One day you must scream: "Down with England!" Tomorrow it will be: "Down with Germany!" and the next day it may be the turn of Italy; and da capo in a week or two. Today we acclaim a man or an idea, tomorrow we shall insult him; and anyone who refuses risks dishonour—or a pistol bullet. This is the most ignoble and shameful servitude of all!... By what right do a hundred, a thousand, one or forty millions of men, demand that I shall renounce my soul? Each of them has one, like mine. Forty millions of souls together often make only one, which has denied itself forty millions of times.... I think what I think. Go you and do likewise. The living truth can be re-born only from the equilibrium of opposing thoughts. To make the citizen respect the city, it must be reciprocal; each has his soul. It is his right and his first duty is to be true to it.... I have no illusions, and in this world of prey I do not attribute an exaggerated importance to my own conscience, but however small we may be or little we may do, we must exist. We are all liable to err, but deceived or not, a man should be sincere; an honest mistake is not a lie, but a stage on the road to truth. The real lie is to fear the truth and try to stifle it. Even if you were a thousand times right, if you resort to force to crush a sincere mistake, you commit the most odious crime against reason itself. If reason is persecutor, and error persecuted, I am for the victim, for error has rights as well as truth.... Truth—the real truth, is to be always seeking what is true, and to respect the efforts of those who suffer in the pursuit. If you insult a man who is striving to hew out his path, if you persecute him who wishes, and perhaps fails, to find less inhuman roads for human progress, you make a martyr of him. Your way is the best, the only one, you say? Follow it then, and let me follow mine. I do not oblige you to come with me, so why are you angry? Are you afraid lest I should prove to be in the right?"



The impression left on Clerambault's mind by his last interview with Perrotin, was one of sadness and pity; but on the whole he decided to go again to see him, having by now arrived at a better understanding of his ironical and prudent attitude towards the world. If he had retained but small esteem for Perrotin's character, on the other hand the great intelligence of the old scholar continued to command his highest admiration; he still saw in him a guide towards the light.

Perrotin was not exactly delighted to see Clerambault again. The other day he had been obliged to commit a little cowardly act; he did not mind that, for he was used to it, but it was under the eyes of an incorruptible witness, and he was too clever not to have retained a disagreeable memory of the incident. He foresaw a discussion, and he hated to discuss with people who had convictions—there is no fun in it, they take everything so seriously—however, he was courteous, weak, good-natured, and unable to refuse when anyone attacked him vigorously. He tried at first to avoid serious questions; but when he saw that Clerambault really needed him, and that perhaps he might save him from some imprudence, he consented, with a sigh, to give up his morning.

Clerambault related to him all that he had done, and the result. He realised that the world around served other gods than his; for he had shared the same faith, and even now was impartial enough to see a certain grandeur and beauty in it. Since these last trials, however, he had also seen its horror and absurdity; he had abandoned it for a new ideal, which would certainly bring him into conflict with the old. With brief and passionate touches, Clerambault explained this new ideal, and called on Perrotin to say if to him it seemed true or false; entreating his friend to lay aside considerations of tact or politeness, to speak clearly and frankly. Struck by Clerambault's tragic earnestness, Perrotin changed his tone, and answered in the same key.

"It amounts to this, that you think I am wrong?" asked Clerambault, distressed. "I see that I am alone in this, but I cannot help it. Do not try to spare me now, but tell me, am I wrong to think as I do?"

"No, my friend," replied Perrotin gravely, "you are right."

"Then you agree that I ought to fight against these murderous mistakes?"

"Ah, that is another matter."

"Ought I to betray the truth, when it is clear to me?"

"Truth, my poor friend! No, don't look at me like that, I shall not follow Pilate's example, and ask: What is Truth? Like you, and longer than you perhaps, I have loved her. But Truth, my dear Sir, is higher than you, than I, than all those that ever have, or ever will inhabit the earth. We may believe that we obey the Great Goddess, but in fact we serve only the Di minores, the saints in the side chapels, alternately adored and neglected by the crowd. The one in honour of whom men are now killing and mutilating themselves in a Corybantic frenzy, can evidently be no longer yours nor mine. The ideal of the Country is a god, great and cruel, who will leave to the future the image of a sort of bugaboo Cronos, or of his Olympian son whom Christ superseded. Your ideal of humanity is the highest rung of the ladder, the announcement of the new god—who will be dethroned later on by one higher still, who will embrace more of the universe. The ideal and life never cease to evolve, and this continual advance forms the genuine interest of the world to the liberal mind; but if the mind can constantly rise without rest or interruption, in the world of fact progress is made step by step, and a scant few inches are gained in the whole of a lifetime. Humanity limps along, and your mistake, the only one, is that you are two or three days' journey ahead of it, but—perhaps with good reason—that is one of the mistakes most difficult to forgive. When an ideal, like that of Country, begins to age with the form of society to which it is strongly bound, the slightest attack makes it ferocious, and it will blaze out furiously in its exasperation. The reason is that it has already begun to doubt itself. Do not deceive yourself; these millions of men who are slaughtering each other now in the name of patriotism, have no longer the early enthusiasm of 1792, or 1813, even though there is more noise and ruin today. Many of those who die, and those who send them to their death, feel in their hearts the horrible touch of doubt; but entangled as they are, too weak to escape, or even to imagine a way of salvation, they proclaim their injured faith with a kind of despair, and throw themselves blindly into the abyss. They would like to throw in also those who first raised doubts in them by words or actions. To wish to destroy the dream of those who are dying for its sake, is to wish to kill twice over."

Clerambault held out his hand to stop him:—"Ah! you have no need to tell me that, and it tortures me. Do you think I am insensible to the pain of these poor souls whose faith I undermine? Respect the beliefs of others; offend not one of these little ones.... My God! what can I do? Help me to get out of this dilemma; shall I see wrong done, let men go to ruin,—or risk injuring them, wound their faith, draw hatred upon myself when I try to save them?... Show me the law!"

"Save yourself."

"But that would be to lose myself, if the price is the life of others, if we do nothing. You and I, no effort would be too great,—the ruin of Europe, of the whole world, is imminent."

Perrotin sat quietly, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands folded over his Buddha-like belly. He twirled his thumbs, looking kindly at Clerambault, shook his head, and replied: "Your generous heart, and your artistic sensibilities urge you too far, my friend, but fortunately the world is not near its end. This is not the first time. And there will be many others. What is happening today is painful, certainly, but not in the least abnormal. War has never kept the earth from turning on its axis, nor prevented the evolution of life; it is even one of the forms of its evolution. Let an old scholar and philosopher oppose his calm inhumanity to your holy Man of Sorrows. In spite of all it may bring you some benefit. This struggle, this crisis which alarms you so much, is no more than a simple case of systole, a cosmic contraction, tumultuous, but regulated, like the folding of the earth crust accompanied by destructive earthquakes. Humanity is tightening. And war is its seismos. Yesterday, in all countries, provinces were at war with each other. Before that, in each province, cities fought together. Now that national unity has been reached, a larger unity develops. It is certainly regrettable that it should take place by violence, but that is the natural method. Of the explosive mixture of conflicting elements in conflict, a new chemical body will be born. Will it be in the East, or in Europe? I cannot tell; but surely what results will have new properties, more valuable than its parts. The end is not yet. The war of which we are now witnesses is magnificent ... (I beg your pardon; I mean magnificent to the mind, where suffering does not exist) ... Greater, finer conflicts still are preparing. These poor childish peoples who imagine that they can disturb the peace of eternity with their cannon shots!... The whole universe must first pass through the retort. We shall have a war between the two Americas, one between the New World and the Yellow Continent, then the conquerors and the rest of the world.... That is enough to fill up a few centuries. And I may not have seen all, my eyes are not very good. Naturally each of these shocks will lead to social struggles.

"It will all be accomplished in about a dozen centuries. (I am rather inclined to think that it will be more rapid than it seems by comparison with the past, for the movement becomes accelerated as it proceeds.) No doubt we shall arrive at a rather impoverished synthesis, for many constituent elements, some good, some bad, will be destroyed in the process, the one being too delicate to resist the hostile environment, the other injurious and impossible to assimilate. Then we shall have the celebrated United States of the whole world; and this union will be all the more solid, because, as is probable, man will be menaced by a common danger. The canals of Mars, the drying-up or cooling-off of the planet, some mysterious plague, the pendulum of Poe, in short, the vision of an inevitable death overwhelming the human race.... There will be great things to behold! The Genius of the race, stretched to the uttermost, in its last agonies.

"There will be, on the other hand, very little liberty; human multiplicity when near its end will fuse itself into a Unity of Will. Do we not see the beginnings already? Thus, without abrupt mutations, will be effected the reintegration of the complex in the one, of old Empedocles' Hatred in Love."

"And what then?"

"After that? A rest, and then it will all begin over again, there can be no doubt. A young cycle. The new Kalpa. The world will turn once more, on the re-forged wheel."

"And what is the answer to the riddle?"

"The Hindoos would tell you Siva. Siva, who creates and destroys; destroys and creates."

"What a hideous dream."

"That is an affair of temperament. Wisdom liberates. To the Hindoos, Buddha is the deliverer. As for me, curiosity is a sufficient reward."

"It would not be enough for me, and I cannot content myself either with the wisdom of a selfish Buddha, who sets himself free by deserting the rest. I know the Hindoos as you do, and I love them, but even among them, Buddha has not said the last word of wisdom. Do you remember that Bodhisattva, the Master of Pity, who swore not to become Buddha, never to find freedom in Nirvana, until he had cured all pain, redeemed all crimes, consoled all sorrows?"

Perrotin smiled and patted Clerambault's hand affectionately as he looked at his troubled face.

"Dear old Bodhisattva," he said, "what do you want to do? And whom would you save?"

"Oh, I know well enough," said Clerambault, hanging his head. "I know how small I am, how little I can do, the weakness of my wishes and protestations. Do not think me so vain; but how can I help it, if I feel it is my duty to speak?"

"Your duty is to do what is right and reasonable; not to sacrifice yourself in vain."

"Do you certainly know what is in vain? Can you tell beforehand which seed will germinate and which will turn out sterile and perish? But you sow seed nevertheless. What progress would ever have been made, if those who bore the germ of it had stopped terrified before the enormous mass of accumulated routine which hung ready to crush them, above their heads."

"I admit that a scholar is bound to defend the Truth that he has discovered, but is this social question your mission? You are a poet; keep to your dreams, and may they prove a defence to you!"

"Before considering myself as a poet, I consider myself as a man, and every honest man has a mission."

"A mind like yours is too precious and valuable to be sacrificed, it would be murder."

"Yes, you are willing to sacrifice people who have little to lose." He was silent for a moment, and then went on:

"Perrotin, I have often thought that we, men of thought, artists, all of us, we do not live up to our obligations. Not only now, but for a long time, perhaps always. We are custodians of the portion of Truth that is in us, a little light, which we have prudently kept for ourselves. More than once this has troubled me, but I shut my eyes to it then; now they have been unsealed by suffering. We are the privileged ones, and that lays duties upon us which we have not fulfilled; we are afraid of compromising ourselves. There is an aristocracy of the mind, which claims to succeed to that of blood; but it forgets that the privileges of the old order were first purchased with blood. For ages mankind has listened to words of wisdom, but it is rare to see the wise men offer themselves as a sacrifice, though it would do no harm if the world should see some of them stake their lives on their doctrines, as in the heroic days. Sacrifice is the condition of fecundity. To make others believe, you must believe first yourself, and prove it. Men do not see a truth simply because it exists, it must have the breath of life; and this spirit which is ours, we can and ought to give. If not, our thoughts are only amusements of dilettanti—a play, which deserves only a little applause. Men who advance the history of the world make stepping-stones of their own lives. How much higher than all our great men was the Son of the carpenter of Galilee. Humanity knows the difference between them and the Saviour."

"But did He save it?

"'When Jahveh speaks: "'Tis my desire," His people work to feed the fire.'"

"Your circle of flame is the last terror, and Man exists only to break through, that he may come out of it free."

"Free?" repeated Perrotin with his quiet smile.

"Yes, free! It is the highest good, but few reach it, although the name is common enough. It is as exceptional as real beauty, or real goodness. By a free man I mean one who can liberate himself from himself, his passions, his blind instincts, those of his surroundings, or of the moment. It is said that he does this in obedience to the voice of reason; but reason in the sense that you give it, is a mirage. It is only another passion, hardened, intellectualised, and therefore fanatical. No, he must put himself out of sight, in order to get a clear view over the clouds of dust raised by the flock on the road of today, to take in the whole horizon, so as to put events in their proper place in the scheme of the universe."

"Then," said Perrotin, "he must accommodate himself to the laws of that universe."

"Not necessarily," said Clerambault, "he can oppose them with a clear conscience if they are contrary to right and happiness. Liberty consists in that very thing, that a free man is in himself a conscious law of the universe, a counter-balance to the crushing machine, the automaton of Spitteler, the bronze Ananke. I see the universal Being, three parts of him still embedded in the clay, the bark, or the stone, undergoing the implacable laws of the matter in which he is encrusted. His breath and his eyes alone are free; "I hope," says his look. And his breath declares, "I will!" With the help of these he struggles to release himself. We are the look and the breath, that is what makes a free man."

"The look is enough for me," said Perrotin gently.

"And without the breath I should die!" exclaimed Clerambault.



In a man of thought there is a wide interval between the word and the deed. Even when a thing is decided upon, he finds pretexts for putting it off to another day, for he sees only too clearly what will follow; what pains and troubles. And to what end? In order to calm his restless soul he pours out a flood of energetic language on his intimate friends, or to himself alone, and in this way gains the illusion of action cheaply enough. In the bottom of his heart he does not believe in it, but like Hamlet, he waits till circumstances shall force his hand.

Clerambault was brave enough when he was talking to the indulgent Perrotin, but he had scarcely got home when he was seized again by his hesitations. Sharpened by his sorrow, his sensitiveness anticipated the emotions of those around him; he imagined the discord that his words would cause between himself and his wife, and worse, without exactly knowing why, he was not sure of his daughter's sympathy, and shrank from the trial. The risk was too great for an affectionate heart like his.

Matters stood thus, when a doctor of his acquaintance wrote that he had a man dangerously wounded in his hospital who had been in the great Champagne offensive, and had known Maxime. Clerambault went at once to see him.

On the bed he saw a man who might have been of any age. He lay still on his back, swathed like a mummy, his thin peasant-face all wrinkled and brown, with the big nose and grey beard emerging from the white bandages. Outside the sheet you could see his right hand, rough and work-worn; a joint of the middle-finger was missing—but that did not matter, it was a peace injury. His eyes looked out calmly under the bushy eyebrows; their clear grey light was unexpected in the burned face.

Clerambault came close and asked him how he did, and the man thanked him politely, without giving details, as if it were not worth the trouble to talk about oneself.

"You are very good, Sir. I am getting on all right." But Clerambault persisted affectionately, and it did not take long for the grey eyes to see that there was something deeper than curiosity in the blue eyes that bent over him.

"Where are you wounded?" asked Clerambault.

"Oh, a little of everywhere; it would take too long to tell you, Sir." But as his visitor continued to press him:

"There is a wound wherever they could find a place. Shot up, all over. I never should have thought there would have been room enough on a little man like me."

Clerambault found out at last that he had received about a score of wounds; seventeen, to be exact. He had been literally sprinkled—he called it "interlarded"—with shrapnel.

"Wounded in seventeen places!" cried Clerambault.

"I have only a dozen left," said the man.

"Did they cure the others?"

"No, they cut my legs off." Clerambault was so shocked that he almost forgot the object of his visit. Great Heaven! What agonies! Our sufferings, in comparison, are a drop in the ocean.... He put his hand over the rough one, and pressed it. The calm grey eyes took in Clerambault from his feet to the crape on his hat.

"You have lost someone?"

"Yes," said Clerambault, pulling himself together, "you must have known Sergeant Clerambault?"

"Surely," said the man, "I knew him."

"He was my son."

The grey eyes softened.

"Ah, Sir! I am sorry for you. I should think I did know him, poor little chap! We were together for nearly a year, and a year like that counts, I can tell you! Day after day, we were like moles burrowing in the same hole.... We had our share of trouble."

"Did he suffer much?"

"Well, Sir, it was pretty bad sometimes; hard on the boy, just at the first. You see he wasn't used to it, like us."

"You come from the country?"

"I was labourer on a farm. You have to live with the beasts, and you get to be like 'em. But it is the truth I tell you now, Sir, that men do treat each other worse than the beasts. 'Be kind to the animals.' That was on a notice a joker stuck up in our trench.... But what isn't good enough for them is good enough for us. All right; I'm not kicking. Things are like that. We have to take it as it comes. But you could see that the little Sergeant had never been up against it before; the rain and the mud, and the meanness; the dirt worst of all, everything that you touch, your food, your skin, full of vermin.... He came close to crying, I could see, once or twice, when he was new to it. I wouldn't let on that I noticed, for the boy was proud, didn't want any help, but I would jolly him, try to cheer him up, lend him a hand sometimes; he was glad to get it. You see you have to get together. But before long he could stick it out as well as anybody; then it was his turn to help me. I never heard him squeal, and we had gay times together—must have a joke now and then, no matter what happens. It keeps off bad luck."

Clerambault sat and listened with a heavy heart.

"Was he happier towards the last?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir, I think he was what you call resigned, just like we all were. I don't know how it is, but you all seem to start out with the same foot in the morning. We are all different, but somehow, after a while it seems as if we were growing alike. It's better, too, that way. You don't mind things so much all in a bunch.... It's only when you get leave, and after you come back—it's bad, nothing goes right any more. You ought to have seen the little Sergeant that last time."

Clerambault felt a pang as he said quickly:

"When he came back?"

"He was very low. I don't know as I ever saw him so bad before."

An agonised expression came over Clerambault's face, and at his gesture, the wounded man who had been looking at the ceiling while he talked, turned his eyes and understood, for he added at once:

"He pulled himself together again, after that."

"Tell me what he said to you, tell me everything," said Clerambault again taking his hand.

The sick man hesitated and answered.

"I don't think I just remember what he said." Then he shut his eyes, and lay still, while Clerambault bent over him and tried to see what was before those eyes under their closed lids.

* * * * *

An icy moonless night. From the bottom of the hollow boyau one could see the cold sky and the fixed stars. Bullets rattled on the hard ground. Maxime and his friend sat huddled up in the trench, smoking with their chins on their knees. The lad had come back that day from Paris. He was depressed, would not answer questions, shut himself up in a sulky silence. The other had left him all the afternoon to bear his trouble alone. Now here in the darkness he felt that the moment had come, and sat a little closer, for he knew that the boy would speak of his own accord. A bullet over their heads glanced off, knocking down a lump of frozen turf.

"Hullo, old gravedigger," said the other, "don't get too fresh."

"Might as well make an end of it now," said Maxime. "That's what they all seem to want."

"Give the boche your skin for a present? I'll say you're generous!"

"It's not only the boches; they all have a hand in it."

"Who, all?"

"All of them back there where I come from, in Paris, friends and relations; the people on the other side of the grave, the live ones.—As for us, we are as good as dead."

In the long silence that followed they could hear the scream of a shell across the sky. Maxime's comrade blew out a mouthful of smoke. "Well, youngster," he said, "it didn't go right, back there this time, did it?—I guessed as much!"

"I don't know why."

"When one is hurt, and the other isn't, they haven't much to say to one another."

"Oh, they suffer too."

"Not the same. You can't make a man know what a toothache is unless he feels it. Can't be done. Go to them all snuggled up in their beds, and make them understand how it is out here!... It's nothing new to me. I didn't have to wait for the war. Always have lived like this. But do you believe when I was working in the soil, sweating all the fat off my bones, that any of them bothered their heads about me? I don't mean that there's any harm in them, nor much good, either, but like anybody else, they don't see how it is. To understand a thing properly you've got to take hold of it yourself, take the work, and the hurt. If not, and that's what it is, you know—might as well make up your mind—no use trying to explain. That's the way things are, and we can't do anything about it."

"Life would not be worth living, if it were as bad as that."

"Why not, by gosh? I've stuck it out all this time, and you're just as good as me, better, because you've got more brains and can learn. That's the way to get on, the harder it is the more it teaches you. And then when you're together, like us here, and things are rocky, it's not a pleasure, exactly, but it ain't all pain. The worst is to be off by yourself; and you're not lonesome, are you, boy?" Maxime looked him in the face, as he answered:

"I was back there, but I don't feel it here with you."

* * * * *

The man who lay on the bed said nothing of what had been passing before his closed eyes. He turned them tranquilly on the father, whose agonised look seemed to implore him to speak. And then, with an awkward kindness, he tried to explain that if the boy was down-hearted it was probably because he had just left home, but they had cheered him up as well as they could; they knew how he felt. He had never known what it was to have a father himself, but when he was a kid he used to think what luck it would be to have one.... "So I thought I might try. I spoke to him, Sir, like you would yourself,... and he soon quieted down. He said, all the same, there was one thing we got out of this blooming war; that there were lots of poor devils in the world who don't know each other, but are all made alike. Sometimes we call 'em our brothers, in sermons and places like that, but no one takes much stock in it. If you want to know it's true, you have to slave together like us—He kissed me then, Sir."

Clerambault rose, and bending over the bandaged face, kissed the wounded man's rough cheek.

"Tell me something that I can do for you," he said.

"You are very good, Sir, but there's not much you can do now. I am so used up. No legs, and a broken arm. I'm no good,—what could I work at? Besides, it's not sure yet that I shall pull through. We'll have to leave it at that. If I go out, good-bye. If not, can't do anything but wait. There are plenty of trains."

As Clerambault admired his patience, he repeated his refrain: "I've got the habit. There's no merit in being patient when there's nothing else to do.... A little more or less, what does it matter?... It's like life, this war is."

Clerambault saw that in his egotism he had asked the man nothing about himself. He did not even know his name.

"My name? It's a good fit for me,—Courtois Aime is what they call me—Aime, that's the Christian name, fine for an unlucky fellow like me, and Courtois on the top of it. Queer enough, isn't it?... I never had a family, came out of an Orphan Asylum; my foster-father, a farmer down in Champagne, offered to bring me up; and you can bet he did it! I had all the training I wanted; but anyhow it learned me what I had to expect. I've had all that was coming to me!"

Thereupon he told in a few brief dry phrases, without emotion, of the series of bad luck which had made up his life. Marriage with a girl as poor as himself—"hunger wedding thirst," as they say, sickness and death, the struggle with nature,—it would not be so bad if men would only help.... Homo, homini ... homo.... All the social injustice weighs on the under dog. As he listened Clerambault could not keep down his indignation, but Aime Courtois took it as a matter of course; that's the way it always has been, and always will be; some are born to suffer, others not. You can't have mountains without valleys. The war seemed perfectly idiotic to him, but he would not have lifted a finger to prevent it. He had in his way the fatalist passivity of the people, which hides itself, on Gallic soil, behind a veil of ironic carelessness. The "no use in getting in a sweat about it," of the trenches. Then there is also that false pride of the French, who fear nothing so much as ridicule, and would risk death twenty times over for something they know to be absurd, rather than be laughed at for an act of unusual common-sense. "You might as well try to stop the lightning as talk against war." When it hails there is nothing to do but to cover over your cold-frames if you can, and when it's over go round and see how much is left of your crop. And they will keep on doing this until the next hailstorm, the next war, to the end of time. "No use getting in a sweat." ... It would never occur to them that Man can change Man.

This stupid heroic resignation irritated Clerambault profoundly. The upper classes are charmed with it, no doubt, for they owe their existence to it,—but it makes a Danaid's sieve of the human race, and its age-long effort, since all its courage, its virtues, and its labours, are spent in learning how to die.... But when he looked at the fragment of a man before him, his heart was pierced with an infinite pity. What could this wretched man do, symbol as he was, of the mutilated, sacrificed people? For so many centuries he has bled and suffered under our eyes, while we, his more fortunate brothers, have only encouraged him to persevere, throwing him some careless word of praise from a distance, which cost us nothing. What help have we ever given him? Nothing at all in action, and little enough in words. We owe to his sacrifices the leisure to think; but all the fruit of our thought we have kept for ourselves; we have not given him a taste of it. We are afraid of the light, of impudent opinion and the rulers of the hour who call to us saying: "Put it out! You who have the Light, hide it, if you wish to be pardoned...." Oh, let us be cowards no more. For who will speak, if we do not? The others are gagged and must die without a word.

A wave of pain passed over the features of the wounded man. With eyes fixed on the ceiling, his big mouth twisted, his teeth obstinately clenched, he could say no more.—Clerambault went away, his mind was made up. The silence of this soldier on his bed of agony had brought him to a decision. He would speak.



PART THREE



Clerambault came back from the hospital, shut himself into his room, and began to write. His wife tried to come in, to discover what he was doing; it seemed as if the good woman had a suspicion, an intuition, rare with her, which gave her a sort of obscure fear of what her husband might be about to do, but he succeeded in keeping her away until he had finished. Ordinarily not a line of his was spared to his family; it was a pleasure to his simple-hearted, affectionate vanity, and a duty towards their love also, which none of them would have neglected. This time, however, he did neglect it, for reasons which he would not admit to himself, for though he was far from imagining the consequences of his act, he was afraid of their objections, he did not feel sure enough to expose himself to them, and so preferred to confront them with the accomplished fact.