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 II
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 shortsighted 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
