Clerambault | Page 7

take the train for Paris with Maxime. They had to wait a long
time at the station, and also in the train, for the tracks were blocked,
and the cars crowded; but in the common agitation Clerambault found
calm. He questioned and listened, everybody fraternised, and not being
sure yet what they thought, everyone felt that they thought alike. The
same questions, the same trials menaced them, but each man was no
longer alone to stand or fall, and the warmth of this contact was
reassuring. Class distinctions were gone; no more workmen or
gentlemen, no one looked at your clothes or your hands; they only
looked at your eyes where they saw the same flame of life, wavering
before the same impending death. All these people were so visibly
strangers to the causes of the fatality, of this catastrophe, that their
innocence led them like children to look elsewhere for the guilty. It
comforted and quieted their conscience. Clerambault breathed more
easily when he got to Paris. A stoical and virile melancholy had
succeeded to the agony of the night. He was however only at the first
stage.

The order for general mobilisation had just been affixed to the doors of
the Mairies. People read and re-read them in silence, then went away
without a word. After the anxious waiting of the preceding days, with
crowds around the newspaper booths, people sitting on the sidewalk,
watching for the news, and when the paper was issued gathering in
groups to read it, this was certainty. It was also a relief. An obscure
danger, that one feels approaching without knowing when or from

where, makes you feverish, but when it is there you can take breath,
look it in the face, and roll up your sleeves. There had been some hours
of deep thought while Paris made ready and doubled up her fists. Then
that which swelled in all hearts spread itself abroad, the houses were
emptied and there rolled through the streets a human flood of which
every drop sought to melt into another.
Clerambault fell into the midst and was swallowed up. All at once. He
had scarcely left the station, or set his foot on the pavement. Nothing
happened; there were no words or gestures, but the serene exaltation of
the flood flowed into him. The people were as yet pure from violence;
they knew and believed themselves innocent, and in these first hours
when the war was virgin, millions of hearts burned with a solemn and
sacred enthusiasm. Into this proud, calm intoxication there entered a
feeling of the injustice done to them, a legitimate pride in their strength,
in the sacrifices that they were ready to make, and pity for others, now
parts of themselves, their brothers, their children, their loved ones. All
were flesh of their flesh, closely drawn together in a superhuman
embrace, conscious of the gigantic body formed by their union, and of
the apparition above their heads of the phantom which incarnated this
union, the Country. Half-beast, half-god, like the Egyptian Sphinx, or
the Assyrian Bull; but then men saw only the shining eyes, the feet
were hid. She was the divine monster in whom each of the living found
himself multiplied, the devouring Immortality where those about to die
wished to believe they would find life, super-life, crowned with glory.
Her invisible presence flowed through the air like wine; each man
brought something to the vintage, his basket, his bunch of grapes;--his
ideas, passions, devotions, interests. There was many a nasty worm
among the grapes, much filth under the trampling feet, but the wine
was of rubies and set the heart aflame;--Clerambault gulped it down
greedily.
Nevertheless he was not entirely metamorphosed, for his soul was not
altered, it was only forgotten; as soon as he was alone he could hear it
moaning, and for this reason he avoided solitude. He persisted in not
returning to St. Prix, where the family usually stayed in summer, and
reinstalled himself in his apartment at Paris, on the fifth floor in the

Rue d'Assas. He would not wait a week, or go back to help in the
moving. He craved the friendly warmth that rose up from Paris, and
poured in at his windows; any excuse was enough to plunge into it, to
go down into the streets, join the groups, follow the processions, buy
all the newspapers,--which he despised as a rule. He would come back
more and more demoralised, anaesthetised as to what passed within
him, the habit of his conscience broken, a stranger in his house, in
himself;--and that is why he felt more at home out of doors than in.

Madame Clerambault came back to Paris with her daughter, and the
first evening after their arrival Clerambault carried Rosine off