Clerambault | Page 8

to the
Boulevards. The solemn fervour of the first days had passed. War had
begun, and truth was imprisoned. The press, the arch-liar, poured into
the open mouth of the world the poisonous liquor of its stories of
victories without retribution; Paris was decked as for a holiday; the
houses streamed with the tricolour from top to bottom, and in the
poorer quarters each garret window had its little penny flag, like a
flower in the hair.
On the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre they met a strange
procession. At the head marched a tall old man carrying a flag. He
walked with long strides, free and supple as if he were going to leap or
dance, and the skirts of his overcoat flapped in the wind. Behind came
an indistinct, compact, howling mass, gentle and simple, arm in arm,--a
child carried on a shoulder, a girl's red mop of hair between a
chauffeur's cap and the helmet of a soldier. Chests out, chins raised,
mouths open like black holes, shouting the Marseillaise. To right and
left of the ranks, a double line of jail-bird faces, along the curbstone,
ready to insult any absent-minded passer-by who failed to salute the
colours. Rosine was startled to see her father fall into step at the end of
the line, bare-headed, singing and talking aloud. He drew his daughter
along by the arm, without noticing the nervous fingers that tried to hold
him back.
When they came in Clerambault was still talkative and excited. He kept
on for hours, while the two women listened to him patiently. Madame

Clerambault heard little as usual, and played chorus. Rosine did not say
a word, but she stealthily threw a glance at her father, and her look was
like freezing water.
Clerambault was exciting himself; he was not yet at the bottom, but he
was conscientiously trying to reach it. Nevertheless there remained to
him enough lucidity to alarm him at his own progress. An artist yields
more through his sensibility to waves of emotion which reach him from
without, but to resist them he has also weapons which others have not.
For the least reflective, he who abandons himself to his lyrical impulses,
has in some degree the faculty of introspection which it rests with him
to utilise. If he does not do this, he lacks good-will more than power; he
is afraid to look too clearly at himself for fear of seeing an unflattering
picture. Those however who, like Clerambault, have the virtue of
sincerity without psychological gifts, are sufficiently well-equipped to
exercise some control over their excitability.
One day as he was walking alone, he saw a crowd on the other side of
the street, he crossed over calmly and found himself on the opposite
sidewalk in the midst of a confused agitation circling about an invisible
point. With some difficulty he worked his way forward, and scarcely
was he within this human mill-wheel, than he felt himself a part of the
rim, his brain seemed turning round. At the centre of the wheel he saw
a struggling man, and even before he grasped the reason for the popular
fury, he felt that he shared it. He did not know if a spy was in question,
or if it was some imprudent speaker who had braved the passions of the
mob, but as cries rose around him, he realised that he, yes he,
Clerambault, had shrieked out: ... "Kill him." ...
A movement of the crowd threw him out from the sidewalk, a carriage
separated him from it, and when the way was clear the mob surged on
after its prey. Clerambault followed it with his eyes; the sound of his
own voice was still in his ears,--he did not feel proud of himself....
From that day on he went out less; he distrusted himself, but he
continued to stimulate his intoxication at home, where he felt himself
safe, little knowing the virulence of the plague. The infection came in
through the cracks of the doors, at the windows, on the printed page, in

every contact. The most sensitive breathe it in on first entering the city,
before they have seen or read anything; with others a passing touch is
enough, the disease will develop afterwards alone. Clerambault,
withdrawn from the crowd, had caught the contagion from it, and the
evil announced itself by the usual premonitory symptoms. This
affectionate tender-hearted man hated, loved to hate. His intelligence,
which had always been thoroughly straightforward, tried now to trick
itself secretly, to justify its instincts of hatred by inverted reasoning. He
learned to be passionately unjust and false, for he wanted to persuade
himself that he could accept the fact of war, and participate in it,
without renouncing his pacifism of yesterday, his humanitarianism of
the