Clerambault | Page 5

but
Maxime protested, showing his paper with the declaration of war
between Austria and Servia.
"War with whom?"--"With Servia?"--"Is that all?" said the good
woman, as if it were a question of something in the moon.
Maxime however persisted,--doctus cum libro,--arguing that from one
thing to another, this shock no matter how distant, might bring about a
general explosion; but Clerambault, who was beginning to come out of
his pleasant trance, smiled calmly, and said that nothing would happen.
"It is only a bluff," he declared, "like so many we have had for the last
thirty years; we get them regularly every spring and summer; just
bullying and sabre-rattling." People did not believe in war, no one
wanted it; war had been proved to be impossible,--it was a bugbear that
must be got out of the heads of free democracies ... and he enlarged on
this theme. The night was calm and sweet; all around familiar sounds
and sights; the chirp of crickets in the fields, a glow-worm shining in
the grass,--delicious perfume of honey-suckle. Far away the noise of a
distant train; the little fountain tinkled, and in the moonless sky
revolved the luminous track of the light on the Eiffel Tower.
The two women went into the house, and Maxime, tired of sitting down,
ran about the garden with his little dog, while through the open
windows floated out an air of Schumann's, which Rosine, full of timid
emotion, was playing on the piano. Clerambault left alone, threw

himself back in his wicker chair, glad to be a man, to be alive,
breathing in the balm of this summer night with a thankful heart.

Six days later ... Clerambault had spent the afternoon in the woods, and
like the monk in the legend, lying under an oak tree, drinking in the
song of a lark, a hundred years might have gone by him like a day. He
could not tear himself away till night-fall. Maxime met him in the
vestibule; he came forward smiling but rather pale, and said: "Well,
Papa, we are in for it this time!" and he told him the news. The Russian
mobilisation, the state of war in Germany;--Clerambault stared at him
unable to comprehend, his thoughts were so far removed from these
dark follies. He tried to dispute the facts, but the news was explicit, and
so they went to the table, where Clerambault could eat but little.
He sought for reasons why these two crimes should lead to nothing.
Common-sense, public opinion, the prudence of governments, the
repeated assurances of the socialists, Jaurès' firm stand;--Maxime let
him talk, he was thinking of other things,--like his dog with his ears
pricked up for the sounds of the night ...Such a pure lovely night!
Those who recall the last evenings of July, 1914, and the even more
beautiful evening of the first day of August, must keep in their minds
the wonderful splendour of Nature, as with a smile of pity she stretched
out her arms to the degraded, self-devouring human race.
It was nearly ten o'clock when Clerambault ceased to talk, for no one
had answered him. They sat then in silence with heavy hearts, listlessly
occupied or seeming to be, the women with their work, Clerambault
with his eyes, but not his mind, on a book. Maxime went out on the
porch and smoked, leaning on the railing and looking down on the
sleeping garden and the fairy-like play of the light and shadows on the
path.
The telephone bell made them start. Someone was calling Clerambault,
who went slowly to answer, half-asleep and absent so that at first he did
not understand; "Hullo! is that you, old man?" as he recognised the
voice of a brother-author in Paris, telephoning him from a newspaper

office. Still he could not seem to understand; "I don't hear,--Jaurès?
What about Jaurès?...Oh, my God!" Maxime full of a secret
apprehension had listened from a distance; he ran and caught the
receiver from his father's hand, as Clerambault let it drop with a
despairing gesture. "Hullo, Hullo! What do you say? Jaurès
assassinated!..." As exclamations of pain and anger crossed each other
on the wire, Maxime made out the details, which he repeated to his
family in a trembling voice. Rosine had led Clerambault back to the
table, where he sat down completely crushed. Like the classic Fate, the
shadow of a terrible misfortune settled over the house. It was not only
the loss of his friend that chilled his heart,--the kind gay face, the
cordial hand, the voice which drove away the clouds,--but the loss of
the last hope of the threatened people. With a touching, child-like
confidence he felt Jaurès to be the only man who could avert the
gathering storm, and he fallen, like Atlas,