The truth was that, at the same time that Clerambault pursued his relentless analysis which struck at the foundations of current beliefs, an inverse process of reconstruction and idealisation was going on in the mind of Madame Mairet. Her grief longed to convince itself that after all there had been a holy cause, and the dead man was no longer there to help her to bear the truth. Where two stand together there may be joy in the most terrible truths, but when one is alone they are mortal.
Clerambault understood it all, and his quick sympathies warned him of the pain he caused and shared; for he made the suffering of this woman his own. He nearly reached the point of approving her revolt against himself, for he knew her deep hidden sorrow, and that the truth that he brought was powerless to help it—still worse, it added one evil more. …
Insoluble problem! Those who are bereaved cannot dispense with the murderous delusions of which they are the victims, and if these are torn away their suffering becomes intolerable. Families that have lost sons, husbands, and fathers, must needs believe that it was for a just and holy cause, and statesmen are forced to continue to deceive themselves and others. For if this were to cease, life would be insupportable to themselves and to those whom they govern. How unfortunate is Man; he is the prey of his own ideas, has given up everything to them, and finds that each day he must continue to give more, lest the gulf open under his feet and he be swallowed up in it. After four years of unheard-of pain and ruin, can we possibly admit that it was all for nothing? That not only our victory will be more ruinous still, but that we ought not to have expected anything else; that the war was absurd, and we, self-deceivers? … Never! we would rather die to the last man. When one man finds that he has thrown away his life, he sinks down in despair. What would it be in the case of a nation, of ten nations, or of civilisation as a whole? …
Clerambault heard the cry that went up from the multitude: “Life, at any cost! Save us, no matter how!”
“But, you do not know how to save yourselves. The road you follow only leads on to fresh catastrophes, to an infinite mass of suffering.”
“No matter how frightful they are not as bad as what you offer us. Let us die with our illusions, rather than live without them. Such a life as that, is a death in life!”
He who has deciphered the secret of life and found the answer, says the disenchanted, but harmonious voice of Amiel,is no longer bound on the great wheel of existence, he has quitted the world of the living. When illusion vanishes, nothingness resumes its eternal reign, the bright bubble has burst in infinite space, and our poor thought is dissolved in the immutable repose of the limitless void.
Unluckily this repose in the void is the worst torture for a man of the white race. He would rather endure any torment that life may bring. “Do not tear them from me,” he cries, “you kill me when you destroy the cruel falsehoods by which I live.”
Clerambault bitterly adopted the name that a nationalist paper had given him in derision: “The one against all.” Yes, he was the common enemy, the destroyer of our life-giving illusions.
He could not bear this; the thought of making others suffer was too painful to him. How then was he to get out of this tragic no-thoroughfare? Wherever he turned, he found the same insolvable dilemma; either a fatal illusion, or death without it.
“I will accept neither the one nor the other.”
“Whether you accept it or no, you must yield—for the way is barred.”
“Nevertheless, I shall pass through. …”
Part IV
Clerambault was passing through a new danger-zone. His solitary journey was like a mountain ascension, where a man finds himself suddenly enveloped in fog, clinging to a rock, unable to advance a step. He could see nothing in front of him, and, no matter to which side he turned, he could hear beneath him the roar of the torrent of suffering. Even so, he could not stand still; though he hung over the abyss and his hold threatened to give way.
He had reached one of these dark turnings, and to make it worse, the news that day, as barked out by the press, made the heart ache by its insanity. Useless hecatombs, which the induced egotism of the world behind the lines thought natural; cruelties on all sides, criminal reprisals for crimes—for which these good people clamoured, and loudly applauded. The horizon that surrounded the poor human creatures in their burrow had never seemed so dark and pitiless.
Clerambault asked himself if the law of love that he felt within himself had not been designed for other worlds, and different humanities. The mail had brought him letters full of fresh threats; and knowing that, in the tragic absurdity of the time, his life was at the mercy of the first madman who happened to turn up, he hoped secretly that
