Chapter IV: Part TWO (1)

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. Agénor Clerambault--Mr. Hyacinth Monchéri," 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. "Chéri" 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 Carrière, and caught remote reflections of Tolstoïsm, 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.

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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--Arsène 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 Jaurès 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 _Dî 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."