Clerambault | Page 6

the sky would crumble.
Maxime rushed off to the station to get the news in Paris, promising to
come back later in the evening, but Clerambault stayed in the isolated
house, from which in the distance could be seen the far-off
phosphorescence of the city. He had not stirred from the seat where he
had fallen stupified. This time he could no longer doubt, the
catastrophe was coming, was upon them already. Madame Clerambault
begged him to go to bed, but he would not listen to her. His thought
was in ruins; he could distinguish nothing steady or constant, could not
see any order, or follow an idea, for the walls of his inward dwelling
had fallen in, and through the dust which rose, it was impossible to see
what remained intact. He feared there was nothing left but a mass of
suffering, at which he looked with dull eyes, unconscious of his falling
tears. Maxime did not come home, carried away by the excitement at
Paris.
Madame Clerambault had gone to bed, but about one o'clock she came
and persuaded him to come up to their room, where he lay down; but
when Pauline had fallen asleep--anxiety made her sleepy--he got up
and went into the next room. He groaned, unable to breathe; his pain
was so close and oppressive, that he had no room to draw his breath.
With the prophetic hyper-sensitiveness of the artist, who often lives in

tomorrow with more intensity than in the present moment, his agonised
eyes and heart foresaw all that was to be. This inevitable war between
the greatest nations of the world, seemed to him the failure of
civilisation, the ruin of the most sacred hopes for human brotherhood.
He was filled with horror at the vision of a maddened humanity,
sacrificing its most precious treasures, strength, and genius, its highest
virtues, to the bestial idol of war. It was to him a moral agony, a
heart-rending communion with these unhappy millions. To what end?
And of what use had been all the efforts of the ages? His heart seemed
gripped by the void; he felt he could no longer live if his faith in the
reason of men and their mutual love was destroyed, if he was forced to
acknowledge that the Credo of his life and art rested on a mistake, that
a dark pessimism was the answer to the riddle of the world.
He turned his eyes away in terror, he was afraid to look it in the face,
this monster who was there, whose hot breath he felt upon him.
Clerambault implored,--he did not know who or what--that this might
not be, that it might not be. Anything rather than this should be true!
But the devouring fact stood just behind the opening door.... Through
the whole night he strove to close that door ...
At last towards morning, an animal instinct began to wake, coming
from he did not know where, which turned his despair towards the
secret need of finding a definite and concrete cause, to fasten the blame
on a man, or a group of men, and angrily hold them responsible for the
misery of the world. It was as yet but a brief apparition, the first faint
sign of a strange obscure, imperious soul, ready to break forth, the soul
of the multitude ... It began to take shape when Maxime came home,
for after the night in the streets of Paris, he fairly sweated with it; his
very clothes, the hairs of his head, were impregnated. Worn out, excited,
he could not sit down; his only thought was to go back again. The
decree of mobilisation was to come out that day, war was certain, it was
necessary, beneficial; some things must be put an end to, the future of
humanity was at stake, the freedom of the world was threatened.
"They" had counted on Jaurès' murder to sow dissension and raise riots
in the country they meant to attack, but the entire nation had risen to
rally round its leaders, the sublime days of the great Revolution were

re-born ...Clerambault did not discuss these statements, he merely
asked: "Do you think so? Are you quite sure?" It was a sort of hidden
appeal. He wanted Maxime to state, to redouble his assertions. The
news Maxime had brought added to the chaos, raised it to a climax, but
at the same time it began to direct the distracted forces of his mind
towards a fixed point, as the first bark of the shepherd's dog drives the
sheep together.
Clerambault had but one wish left, to rejoin the flock, rub himself
against the human animals, his brothers, feel with them, act with
them.... Though exhausted by sleeplessness, he started, in spite of his
wife, to