In a little while Clerambault became known, and even celebrated. Bertin, somewhat surprised, sincerely pleased by his friend’s success—the least bit vexed by it, perhaps—intimated that he thought it exaggerated, and that the better Clerambault was the obscure Clerambault before his reputation was made. He would even undertake to prove this to Clerambault himself, sometimes, who neither agreed nor disagreed. For how could he tell, who thought very little about it, his head being always full of some new work? The two old comrades remained on excellent terms, but little by little they began to see less of one another.
The war had made Bertin a furious jingo. In the old days at school he used to scandalise Clerambault’s provincial mind by his impudent disrespect for all values, political and social—country, morality, and religion. In his literary works he continued to parade his anarchism, but in a sceptical, worldly, bored sort of manner which was to the taste of his rich clientele. Now, before this clientele and the rest of those who purveyed to it, his brethren of the popular press and theatres, the contemptible Parny’s and Crebillon Jr.’s of the day, he suddenly assumed the attitude of Brutus immolating his sons. It is true he himself had none, but perhaps that was a regret to him.
Clerambault did not dream of finding fault with him for these opinions; but he did not dream either that his old friend and amoralist would come out against him as the defender of his outraged country. But was it a question simply of his country?
There was a personal note in the furious diatribe that Bertin hurled at him that Clerambault could not understand. In the general mental confusion, Bertin, naturally shocked by Clerambault’s ideas, might have remonstrated with him frankly, face to face; but without any warning, he began by a public denunciation. On the first page of his paper appeared an article of the utmost virulence; he attacked, not only his ideas, but his character, speaking of Clerambault’s tragic struggle with his conscience as an attack of literary megalomania, brought on by undeserved success. It seemed as if he expressly chose words likely to wound Clerambault, and he ended by summoning him to retract his errors in a tone of the most insulting superiority.
The violence of this article, from so well-known an author, made an event in Paris of the “Clerambault Case.” It occupied the reporters for more than a week, a long time for these feather-headed gentry. Hardly anyone read what Clerambault had actually written; it was not worth while. Bertin had read it, and newspaper men do not make a practice of taking unnecessary trouble; besides it was not a question of reading, but of judgment. A strange sort of Sacred Union was formed over Clerambault; clericals and Jacobins came together to condemn him, and the man whom they admired yesterday was dragged in the mud today. The national poet became at once a public enemy, and all the myrmidons of the press attacked him with heroic invective. The greater number of them united bad faith with a remarkable ignorance. Very few knew Clerambault’s works, they scarcely knew his name or the titles of his books, but that no more kept them from disparaging him now than it had hindered them from praising him when he was the fashion. Now, in their eyes, everything that he had written was tainted with “bochism,” though all their quotations were inexact. In the excitement of his investigation, one of them foisted upon Clerambault the authorship of another man’s book, the author of which, pale with fright, protested with indignation, dissociating himself entirely from his dangerous fellow-author. Uneasy at their intimacy with Clerambault, some of his friends did not wait to have it recalled, but met it halfway, writing “open letters,” to which the papers gave a conspicuous place. Some, like Bertin, coupled their public censure with a demand that he should confess himself in the wrong, and others, less considerate, cast him off in the bitterest and most insulting terms. Clerambault was crushed by all this animosity; it could not arise solely from his articles, it must have been long dormant in the hearts of these men. And why so much hidden hatred?—What had he done to them? … A successful artist does not suspect that besides the smiles of those around there are also teeth, only waiting for the opportunity to bite.
Clerambault did his best to conceal the insults in the papers from his wife. Like a schoolboy trying to spirit away his bad marks he watched for the post so as to suppress the obnoxious sheets, but at last their venom seemed to poison the very air. Among their friends in society, Madame Clerambault and Rosine had to bear many painful allusions, small affronts, even insults. With the instinct of justice which characterises the human beast, and especially the female, they were held responsible for Clerambault’s ideas, though his wife and daughter knew little of them and disapproved what they knew. (Their critics did not understand them either.) The more polite were reticent, taking pains not to mention Clerambault’s name, or ask after him—you don’t speak of ropes, you know, in the house of a man who has been hanged. … And this calculated silence was worse than open abuse. You would have said that Clerambault had done something dishonest or immodest. Madame Clerambault would come back full of bitterness, and Rosine suffered too, though she pretended not to mind. One day, a friend, whom they met in the street, crossed to the other side, turning away her head so as to avoid bowing to them; and Rosine was excluded from a benevolent society where she had worked hard for years.
Women were particularly active in this patriotic reprobation. Clerambault’s appeal for reconciliation and pardon had no more
