Like a good steward of the treasure placed in his charge, Clerambault made up the account of his day. He looked back on his attempts, his efforts, his impulses, his mistakes; how little remained of his life, for nearly all that he had built up he had afterwards destroyed with his own hands. He had first stated, then denied, and had never ceased to wander in the forest of doubts and contradictions; often torn and bruised, with no guide but the stars half-seen through the branches. What meaning had there been in this long troubled course, now ending in darkness? One only, he had been free.
Free! … What was this freedom, then, which intoxicated him so completely? This liberty of which he was the master and the slave—this imperious need to be free? He knew well enough that no more than others was he emancipated from the eternal bonds; but the orders that he obeyed differed from others; all are not alike. The word liberty is only one of the clear high commands of the invisible sovereign who rules the world … whom we call necessity. She it is who excites those of the advance-guard to rebel, and causes them to break with the heavy past which the blind multitude drags along behind it; for she is the battlefield of the eternal present, where the past and the future must ever strive together, and on this field the ancient laws are conquered, that they may give place to new laws, which will be conquered in their turn.
O Liberty! Thou art always in chains, but they are not the heavy fetters of the past; for each struggle has enlarged thy prison. Who can tell? Perhaps later, when the prison walls have been thrown down. … But in the meanwhile, those whom thou wouldst save resist thee. Thou art called the Public Enemy, or The One against All. To think that this nickname should have been fastened on the weak, ordinary Clerambault! But he did not remember that at this moment, his thoughts were filled with the one who has always existed, ever since man has been known on the earth; the one who has never ceased to fight their follies, that they may be delivered—The One whom All oppose. … How many times throughout the ages have they rejected and crushed him! But in the midst of his agony a supernatural joy sustains him; he is the sacred golden seed of liberty, which fell from we know not what sheaf, and in the darkness of destiny has sowed the germs of light, ever since the first chaos. In the depths of the savage heart of man, the frail atom found shelter, it fought against elementary laws which grind and bend living things; but tirelessly the small golden seed grew, and man the weakest of all creatures, marched against nature and fought her. Each step cost a drop of his blood, in this gigantic duel; he has had to fight nature not only in the world without, but within himself, since he is a part of her. This is the hardest battle, that waged by the man divided against himself; and in the end who will conquer? On the one side is nature with her chariot of iron, in which she hurls worlds and peoples into the abyss; and on the other is only—The Word. It is no wonder that you laugh, ye slaves! no wonder the servants of force say that it is like “a cur barking at the wheels of an express-train.” Yes, if man were only a fragment of matter writhing in vain beneath the hammer of fate; but there is a spirit within him which knows how to smite Achilles on his heel, and Goliath in his forehead. Let him but wrench off a nut, the swift train is overturned, its course stayed. Planetary swirls, obscure masses of humankind, roll down through the ages lighted by flashes of the liberating Spirit: Buddha, the Sages, Jesus—all breakers of chains! I can see the lightning coming, feel it thrill through me, like sparks that fly up beneath the horse’s hoofs. The air vibrates with it, as the thick clouds of hate come together with a crash. The flame springs up! If you are alone against the world, have you cause to complain? You have escaped the crushing yoke, fought your way through, like a nightmare in which one struggles and tears oneself out of the dark waters. You sink, choking, and all at once with a despairing effort you throw yourself beyond the reach of the wave, and sink exhausted but safe on the shore. These people wound me? So much the better, I shall wake up in the free air.
Yes, threatening world, I am indeed free from your fetters, I can never be chained again, and my detested will with which I so often had to fight, my will is now in you. You wanted, like me, to be free, and that made you suffer, and made you my enemy; but now even if you kill me, you have seen the light in me, and once seen, you can no longer reject
