Clerambault

died in a few hours from an attack of pneumonia. For the last six months he had pursued with fury anyone whom he suspected of working for peace, or even of wishing for it. From one step to another he had come to look upon, not only the country, as sacred, but the war also, and among those whom he attacked most fiercely, Clerambault had a foremost place. Bertin could not pardon the resistance to his onslaughts; Clerambault’s replies had at first only irritated him, but the disdainful silence with which his latest invectives had been met drove him beside himself. His swollen vanity was deeply wounded, and nothing would have satisfied him but the total annihilation of his adversary. To him Clerambault was not only a personal enemy, but a foe to the public; and in the endeavour to prove this, he made him the centre of a great pacifist plot. At any other time, this would have seemed absurd in everyone’s eyes, but now no one had eyes to see with. During the last weeks Bertin’s fury and violence had gone beyond anything that he had written before; they were a threat against anyone who was convicted or suspected of the dangerous heresy of Peace.

In this little reunion the news of his death was received with noisy satisfaction; and his funeral oration was preached with an energy that yielded nothing in this line to the efforts of the most famous masters. But Clerambault, absorbed in the newspaper account, scarcely seemed to hear. One of the men standing near, tapped him on the shoulder, and said:

“This ought to be a pleasure to you.”

Clerambault started: “Pleasure,” he said, “pleasure?”⁠—he took his hat and went out. It was pitch dark in the street outside, all the lights having been out on account of an air-raid. Before his mind there flowered the fine clear-cut face of a boy of sixteen, with its warm pale skin and dark soft eyes, the curling hair, the mobile, smiling mouth, the tone of the sweet voice⁠—Bertin, as he was when they first met at about the same age. Their long evening talks, the tender confidences, the discussions, the dreams⁠ ⁠… for in those days Bertin too was a dreamer, and even his common sense, his precocious irony did not protect him from impossible hopes and generous schemes for the renovation of the human race. How fair the future had appeared to their youthful eyes! And in those moments of ecstatic vision how their hearts had seemed to melt together in loving friendship⁠ ⁠…

And now to see what life had made of them both! This rancorous struggle, Bertin’s insane determination to trample under foot those early dreams, and the friend who still cherished them;⁠—and he, too, Clerambault, who had let himself be carried away by the same murderous impulse, trying to render blow for blow, to draw blood from his adversary. Could it be that at the first moment, when he heard of the death of his former friend⁠—he was horrified at himself⁠—but did he not feel it as a relief? What is it that possesses us all? What wicked insanity that turns us against our better selves?⁠ ⁠…

Lost in these thoughts, he had wandered from the road, and now perceived that he was walking in the wrong direction. He could see the long arms of the searchlights stretching across the sky, hear the tremendous explosions of the zeppelin bombs over the city, and the distant growlings of the forts in the aerial fight. The enraged people tearing each other to pieces! And to what end? That they all might be as Bertin was now, reach the extinction which awaited all men, and all countries. And those rebels who were planning more violence, other sanguinary idols to set up against the old ones, new gods of carnage that man carves for himself, in the vain hope of ennobling his deadly instincts!

Good God! Why do they not see the imbecility of their conduct, in face of the gulf that swallows up each man that dies, all humanity with him? These millions of creatures who have but a moment to live, why do they persist in making it infernal by their atrocious and absurd quarrels about ideas; like wretches who cut each other’s throats for a handful of spurious coins thrown to them? We are all victims, under the same sentence, and instead of uniting, we fight among ourselves. Poor fools! On the brow of each man that passes I can see the sweat of agony; efface it by the kiss of peace!

As he thought this, a crowd of people rushed by⁠—men and women, shrieking with joy. “There’s one of them down! One gone! The brutes are burning up!”

And the birds of prey, in the air, rejoiced in their turn over every handful of death that they scattered on the town, like gladiators dying in the arena for the pleasure of some invisible Nero.

Alas, my poor fellow-prisoners!

Part V

They also serve who only stand and wait.

Milton

Once more Clerambault found himself wrapt in solitude; but this time she appeared to him as never before, calm and beautiful, kindness shining from her face, with eyes full of affection and soft cool hands which she laid on his fevered forehead. He knew that now she had chosen him for her own.

It is not given to every man to be alone; many groan under it, but with a secret pride. It is the complaint of the ages; and proves, without those who complain being aware of it, that solitude has not marked them for her own; that they are not her familiars. They have passed the outer door, and are cooling their heels in the vestibule; but they have not had patience to wait their turn to go in, or else their recriminations have kept them at a distance.

No one can penetrate to the heart of friendly solitude unless they have the gift of God’s grace, or