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 featherbed; 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 slaughterhouse 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 Hindu 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 network 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,
