Vaucoux had not attempted to get away, but let them take the revolver out of his hand without resistance. They held his arms fast, and he stood looking at his victim, whose eyes met his; each thought of his son.
Moreau, much excited, spoke threateningly to Vaucoux; who, like an impassive image of hatred, only answered briefly: “I have killed the Adversary, the Enemy.”
A faint smile hovered on Clerambault’s lips as he looked at Vaucoux. “My poor friend,” he thought, “It is within you yourself that the Enemy lies,”—his eyes closed … centuries seemed to pass. … “There are no enemies. …” and Clerambault entered into the peace of the worlds to come.
Seeing that he had lost consciousness, his friends carried him into Froment’s house which was close by; but he was dead before they reached it.
They laid him on a bed, in a room beside that in which the young paralytic lay with his friends now gathered round him. The door remained open. The spirit of the dead man seemed near them.
Moreau spoke bitterly of the absurdity of this murder; why not strike one of the great pirates of the triumphant reaction, or a recognised head of the revolutionary group? Why choose this inoffensive, unbiased man, who was kind to everyone, and almost too comprehending to all sides?
“Hatred makes no mistakes,” said Edmé Froment. “It has been guided by a sure instinct to the right mark; for an enemy often sees more clearly than a friend. No, there is no doubt about it, the most dangerous adversary of society and the established order in this world of violence, falsehood, and base compromises, is, and has always been, the man of peace and a free conscience. The crucifixion of Jesus was no accident; He had to be put to death. He would be executed today; for a great evangelist is a revolutionary, and the most radical of all. He is the inaccessible source from whence revolutions break through the hard ground, the eternal principle of non-submission of the spirit to Caesar, no matter who he may be—the unjust force. This explains the hatred of those servants of the State, the domesticated peoples, for the insulted Christ who looks at them in silence, and also for His disciples, for us, the eternal insurrectionists, the conscientious objectors to tyranny from high or low, to that of today or tomorrow … for us, who go before One greater than ourselves, who comes bringing to the world the Word of salvation, the Master laid in the grave but ‘qui sera en agonie jusqu’ à la fin du monde,’6 the unfettered Spirit, the Lord of all.”
Endnotes
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This Introduction was published in the Swiss newspapers in December, 1917, with an episode of the novel and a note explaining the original title, L’Un contre Tous. “This somewhat ironical name was suggested—with a difference—by La Boëtie’s Le Contr’ Un; but it must not be supposed that the author entertained the extravagant idea of setting one man in opposition to all others; he only wishes to summon the personal conscience to the most urgent conflict of our time, the struggle against the herd-spirit.” ↩
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Leopardi. ↩
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“Simon and I then understood our hatred of strangers and barbarians, and our egotism, in which we included ourselves and our entire small moral family.—The first care of him who would wish to live must be to surround himself with high walls; but even in his closed garden he must introduce only those who are guided by the same feelings, and interests analogous to his own.”
—A Free ManIn three lines, three times, this “free man” expresses the idea of “shutting-up,” “closing,” and “surrounding with walls.” ↩
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Reference to ʻAbduʻl-Bahá, at present the head of the Babists or Bahaists. He was at that time a prisoner at St. Jean d’Acre. See Lessons of St. Jean d’Acre, by ʻAbduʻl-Bahá, collected by Laura Clifford Barney. ↩
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“It is from the North that our light comes today.”
—Voltaire -
“Whose suffering will endure to the world’s end.”
—Pascal
Colophon
Clerambault
was published in by
Romain Rolland.
It was translated from French in by
Katherine Miller.
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News About the War, Place Bellecour in Lyon,
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