“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 bygone 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—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
