Clerambault | Page 3

showing affection!
Rosine was silent according to her habit; it was not easy to know her
thoughts as she listened, bent forward, her hands folded and her arms
leaning on the table. Some natures seem made to receive, like the earth
which opens itself silently to every seed. Many seeds fall and remain
dormant; none can tell which will bring forth fruit. The soul of the
young girl was of this kind; her face did not reflect the words of the
reader as did Maxime's mobile features, but the slight flush on her
cheek and the moist glance of her eyes under their drooping lids
showed inward ardour and feeling. She looked like those Florentine
pictures of the Virgin stirred by the magical salutation of the Archangel.
Clerambault saw it all and as he glanced around his little circle his eye
rested with special delight on the fair bending head which seemed to
feel his look.
On this July evening these four people were united in a bond of
affection and tranquil happiness of which the central point was the
father, the idol of the family.

He knew that he was their idol, and by a rare exception this knowledge
did not spoil him, for he had such joy in loving, so much affection to
spread far and wide that it seemed only natural that he should be loved
in return; he was really like an elderly child. After a life of ungilded

mediocrity he had but recently come to be known, and though the one
experience had not given him pain, he delighted in the other. He was
over fifty without seeming to be aware of it, for if there were some
white threads in his big fair moustache,--like an ancient Gaul's,--his
heart was as young as those of his children. Instead of going with the
stream of his generation, he met each new wave; the best of life to him
was the spring of youth constantly renewed, and he never troubled
about the contradictions into which he was led by this spirit always in
reaction against that which had preceded it. These inconsistencies were
fused together in his mind, which was more enthusiastic than logical,
and filled by the beauty which he saw all around him. Add to this the
milk of human kindness, which did not mix well with his aesthetic
pantheism, but which was natural to him.
He had made himself the exponent of noble human ideas, sympathising
with advanced parties, the oppressed, the people--of whom he knew
little, for he was thoroughly of the middle-class, full of vague, generous
theories. He also adored crowds and loved to mingle with them,
believing that in this way he joined himself to the All-Soul, according
to the fashion at that time in intellectual circles. This fashion, as not
infrequently happens, emphasised a general tendency of the day;
humanity turning to the swarm-idea. The most sensitive among human
insects,--artists and thinkers,--were the first to show these symptoms,
which in them seemed a sort of pose, so that the general conditions of
which they were a symptom were lost sight of.
The democratic evolution of the last forty years had established popular
government politically, but socially speaking had only brought about
the rule of mediocrity. Artists of the higher class at first opposed this
levelling down of intelligence,--but feeling themselves too weak to
resist they had withdrawn to a distance, emphasising their disdain and
their isolation. They preached a sort of art, acceptable only to the
initiated. There is nothing finer than such a retreat when one brings to it
wealth of consciousness, abundance of feeling and an outpouring soul,
but the literary groups of the end of the XIXth century were far
removed from those fertile hermitages where robust thoughts were
concentrated. They cared much more to economise their little store of

intelligence than to renew it. In order to purify it they had withdrawn it
from circulation. The result was that it ceased to be perceived. The
common life passed on its way without bothering its head further,
leaving the artist caste to wither in a make-believe refinement. The
violent storms at the time of the excitement about the Dreyfus Case did
rouse some minds from this torpor, but when they came out of their
orchid-house the fresh air turned their heads and they threw themselves
into the great passing movement with the same exaggeration that their
predecessors had shown in withdrawing from it. They believed that
salvation was in the people, that in them was virtue, even all good, and
though they were often thwarted in their efforts to get closer to them,
they set flowing a current in the thought of Europe. They were proud to
call themselves the exponents of the collective soul, but they were