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 housetops. 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 passersby.
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 mouthpiece. 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 hallmark 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 timeserving 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
