unmasked their batteries and violently taxed him with absurd, criminal
pride. They asked him if he thought himself cleverer than anyone else,
that he set himself up against the entire nation? On what did he found
this overweening self-confidence? Duty consists in being humble, and
keeping to one's proper place in the community; when it commands, our
duty is to bow to it, and, whether we agree or not, we must carry out
its orders. Woe to the rebel against the soul of his country! To be in
the right and in opposition to her is to be wrong, and in the hour of
action wrong is a crime. The Republic demands obedience from her sons.
"The Republic or death," said Clerambault ironically. "And this is a
free country? Free, yes, because there have always been, and always
will be some souls like mine, which refuse to bend to a yoke which
their conscience disavows. We are become a nation of tyrants. There
was no great advantage in taking the Bastille. In the old days one ran
the risk of perpetual imprisonment if one made so bold as to differ
from the Prince--the fagot, if you did not agree with the Church; but
now you must think with forty millions of men and follow them in their
frantic contradictions. One day you must scream: "Down with England!"
Tomorrow it will be: "Down with Germany!" and the next day it may be
the turn of Italy; and _da capo_ in a week or two. Today we acclaim a
man or an idea, tomorrow we shall insult him; and anyone who refuses
risks dishonour--or a pistol bullet. This is the most ignoble and
shameful servitude of all!... By what right do a hundred, a thousand,
one or forty millions of men, demand that I shall renounce my soul?
Each of them has one, like mine. Forty millions of souls together
often make only one, which has denied itself forty millions of
times.... I think what I think. Go you and do likewise. The living
truth can be re-born only from the equilibrium of opposing thoughts.
To make the citizen respect the city, it must be reciprocal; each has
his soul. It is his right and his first duty is to be true to it....
I have no illusions, and in this world of prey I do not attribute an
exaggerated importance to my own conscience, but however small we may
be or little we may do, we must exist. We are all liable to err, but
deceived or not, a man should be sincere; an honest mistake is not a
lie, but a stage on the road to truth. The real lie is to fear the
truth and try to stifle it. Even if you were a thousand times right,
if you resort to force to crush a sincere mistake, you commit the most
odious crime against reason itself. If reason is persecutor, and error
persecuted, I am for the victim, for error has rights as well as
truth.... Truth--the real truth, is to be always seeking what is true,
and to respect the efforts of those who suffer in the pursuit. If you
insult a man who is striving to hew out his path, if you persecute him
who wishes, and perhaps fails, to find less inhuman roads for human
progress, you make a martyr of him. Your way is the best, the only
one, you say? Follow it then, and let me follow mine. I do not oblige
you to come with me, so why are you angry? Are you afraid lest I
should prove to be in the right?"
The impression left on Clerambault's mind by his last interview with
Perrotin, was one of sadness and pity; but on the whole he decided to
go again to see him, having by now arrived at a better understanding
of his ironical and prudent attitude towards the world. If he had
retained but small esteem for Perrotin's character, on the other hand
the great intelligence of the old scholar continued to command his
highest admiration; he still saw in him a guide towards the light.
Perrotin was not exactly delighted to see Clerambault again. The other
day he had been obliged to commit a little cowardly act; he did not
mind that, for he was used to it, but it was under the eyes of an
incorruptible witness, and he was too clever not to have retained a
disagreeable memory of the incident. He foresaw a discussion, and he
hated to discuss with people who had convictions--there is no fun in
it, they take everything so seriously--however, he was courteous,
weak, good-natured, and unable to refuse when anyone attacked him
vigorously. He tried at first to avoid serious questions; but when he
saw that Clerambault really needed him, and that perhaps he might save
him from some imprudence, he consented, with a sigh, to give up his
morning.
Clerambault related to him all that he had done, and the result. He
realised that the world around served other gods than his; for he had
shared the same faith, and even now was impartial enough to see a
certain grandeur and beauty in it. Since these last trials, however,
he had also seen its horror and absurdity; he had abandoned it for a
new ideal, which would certainly bring him into conflict with the old.
With brief and passionate touches, Clerambault explained this new
ideal, and called on Perrotin to say if to him it seemed true or
false; entreating his friend to lay aside considerations of tact or
politeness, to speak clearly and frankly. Struck by Clerambault's
tragic earnestness, Perrotin changed his tone, and answered in the
same key.
"It amounts to this, that you think I am wrong?" asked Clerambault,
distressed. "I see that I am alone in this, but I cannot help it. Do
not try to spare me now, but tell me, am I wrong to think as I do?"
"No, my friend," replied Perrotin gravely, "you are right."
"Then you agree that I ought to fight against these murderous
mistakes?"
"Ah, that is another matter."
"Ought I to betray the truth, when it is clear to me?"
"Truth, my poor friend! No, don't look at me like that, I shall not
follow Pilate's example, and ask: What is Truth? Like you, and longer
than you perhaps, I have loved her. But Truth, my dear Sir, is higher
than you, than I, than all those that ever have, or ever will inhabit
the earth. We may believe that we obey the Great Goddess, but in
fact we serve only the _Dî minores_, the saints in the side chapels,
alternately adored and neglected by the crowd. The one in honour of
whom men are now killing and mutilating themselves in a Corybantic
frenzy, can evidently be no longer yours nor mine. The ideal of the
Country is a god, great and cruel, who will leave to the future the
image of a sort of bugaboo Cronos, or of his Olympian son whom Christ
superseded. Your ideal of humanity is the highest rung of the ladder,
the announcement of the new god--who will be dethroned later on by one
higher still, who will embrace more of the universe. The ideal and
life never cease to evolve, and this continual advance forms the
genuine interest of the world to the liberal mind; but if the mind can
constantly rise without rest or interruption, in the world of fact
progress is made step by step, and a scant few inches are gained in
the whole of a lifetime. Humanity limps along, and your mistake, the
only one, is that you are two or three days' journey ahead of it,
but--perhaps with good reason--that is one of the mistakes most
difficult to forgive. When an ideal, like that of Country, begins
to age with the form of society to which it is strongly bound, the
slightest attack makes it ferocious, and it will blaze out furiously
in its exasperation. The reason is that it has already begun to
doubt itself. Do not deceive yourself; these millions of men who are
slaughtering each other now in the name of patriotism, have no longer
the early enthusiasm of 1792, or 1813, even though there is more noise
and ruin today. Many of those who die, and those who send them to
their death, feel in their hearts the horrible touch of doubt; but
entangled as they are, too weak to escape, or even to imagine a way of
salvation, they proclaim their injured faith with a kind of despair,
and throw themselves blindly into the abyss. They would like to throw
in also those who first raised doubts in them by words or actions. To
wish to destroy the dream of those who are dying for its sake, is to
wish to kill twice over."
Clerambault held out his hand to stop him:--"Ah! you have no need to
tell me that, and it tortures me. Do you think I am insensible to the
pain of these poor souls whose faith I undermine? Respect the beliefs
of others; offend not one of these little ones.... My God! what can I
do? Help me to get out of this dilemma; shall I see wrong done, let
men go to ruin,--or risk injuring them, wound their faith, draw hatred
upon myself when I try to save them?... Show me the law!"
"Save yourself."
"But that would be to lose myself, if the price is the life of others,
if we do nothing. You and I, no effort would be too great,--the ruin
of Europe, of the whole world, is imminent."
Perrotin sat quietly, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands
folded over his Buddha-like belly. He twirled his thumbs, looking
kindly at Clerambault, shook his head, and replied: "Your generous
heart, and your artistic sensibilities urge you too far, my friend,
but fortunately the world is not near its end. This is not the first
time. And there will be many others. What is happening today is
painful, certainly, but not in the least abnormal. War has never kept
the earth from turning on its axis, nor prevented the evolution of
life; it is even one of the forms of its evolution. Let an old scholar
and philosopher oppose his calm inhumanity to your holy Man of
Sorrows. In spite of all it may bring you some benefit. This struggle,
this crisis which alarms you so much, is no more than a simple case
of systole, a cosmic contraction, tumultuous, but regulated, like the
folding of the earth crust accompanied by destructive earthquakes.
Humanity is tightening. And war is its _seismos_. Yesterday, in all
countries, provinces were at war with each other. Before that, in each
province, cities fought together. Now that national unity has been
reached, a larger unity develops. It is certainly regrettable that it
should take place by violence, but that is the natural method. Of the
explosive mixture of conflicting elements in conflict, a new chemical
body will be born. Will it be in the East, or in Europe? I cannot
tell; but surely what results will have new properties, more valuable
than its parts. The end is not yet. The war of which we are now
witnesses is magnificent ... (I beg your pardon; I mean magnificent to
the mind, where suffering does not exist) ... Greater, finer conflicts
still are preparing. These poor childish peoples who imagine that they
can disturb the peace of eternity with their cannon shots!... The
whole universe must first pass through the retort. We shall have a war
between the two Americas, one between the New World and the Yellow
Continent, then the conquerors and the rest of the world.... That is
enough to fill up a few centuries. And I may not have seen all, my
eyes are not very good. Naturally each of these shocks will lead to
social struggles.
"It will all be accomplished in about a dozen centuries. (I am
rather inclined to think that it will be more rapid than it seems by
comparison with the past, for the movement becomes accelerated as
it proceeds.) No doubt we shall arrive at a rather impoverished
synthesis, for many constituent elements, some good, some bad, will
be destroyed in the process, the one being too delicate to resist the
hostile environment, the other injurious and impossible to assimilate.
Then we shall have the celebrated United States of the whole world;
and this union will be all the more solid, because, as is probable,
man will be menaced by a common danger. The canals of Mars, the
drying-up or cooling-off of the planet, some mysterious plague,
the pendulum of Poe, in short, the vision of an inevitable death
overwhelming the human race.... There will be great things to behold!
The Genius of the race, stretched to the uttermost, in its last
agonies.
"There will be, on the other hand, very little liberty; human
multiplicity when near its end will fuse itself into a Unity of Will.
Do we not see the beginnings already? Thus, without abrupt mutations,
will be effected the reintegration of the complex in the one, of old
Empedocles' Hatred in Love."
"And what then?"
"After that? A rest, and then it will all begin over again, there can
be no doubt. A young cycle. The new Kalpa. The world will turn once
more, on the re-forged wheel."
"And what is the answer to the riddle?"
"The Hindoos would tell you Siva. Siva, who creates and destroys;
destroys and creates."
"What a hideous dream."
"That is an affair of temperament. Wisdom liberates. To the Hindoos,
Buddha is the deliverer. As for me, curiosity is a sufficient reward."
"It would not be enough for me, and I cannot content myself either
with the wisdom of a selfish Buddha, who sets himself free by
deserting the rest. I know the Hindoos as you do, and I love them, but
even among them, Buddha has not said the last word of wisdom. Do you
remember that Bodhisattva, the Master of Pity, who swore not to become
Buddha, never to find freedom in Nirvana, until he had cured all pain,
redeemed all crimes, consoled all sorrows?"
Perrotin smiled and patted Clerambault's hand affectionately as he
looked at his troubled face.
"Dear old Bodhisattva," he said, "what do you want to do? And whom
would you save?"
"Oh, I know well enough," said Clerambault, hanging his head. "I know
how small I am, how little I can do, the weakness of my wishes and
protestations. Do not think me so vain; but how can I help it, if I
feel it is my duty to speak?"
"Your duty is to do what is right and reasonable; not to sacrifice
yourself in vain."
"Do you certainly know what is in vain? Can you tell beforehand which
seed will germinate and which will turn out sterile and perish? But
you sow seed nevertheless. What progress would ever have been made,
if those who bore the germ of it had stopped terrified before the
enormous mass of accumulated routine which hung ready to crush them,
above their heads."
"I admit that a scholar is bound to defend the Truth that he has
discovered, but is this social question your mission? You are a poet;
keep to your dreams, and may they prove a defence to you!"
"Before considering myself as a poet, I consider myself as a man, and
every honest man has a mission."
"A mind like yours is too precious and valuable to be sacrificed, it
would be murder."
"Yes, you are willing to sacrifice people who have little to lose." He
was silent for a moment, and then went on:
"Perrotin, I have often thought that we, men of thought, artists, all
of us, we do not live up to our obligations. Not only now, but for a
long time, perhaps always. We are custodians of the portion of Truth
that is in us, a little light, which we have prudently kept for
ourselves. More than once this has troubled me, but I shut my eyes
to it then; now they have been unsealed by suffering. We are the
privileged ones, and that lays duties upon us which we have not
fulfilled; we are afraid of compromising ourselves. There is an
aristocracy of the mind, which claims to succeed to that of blood; but
it forgets that the privileges of the old order were first purchased
with blood. For ages mankind has listened to words of wisdom, but it
is rare to see the wise men offer themselves as a sacrifice, though
it would do no harm if the world should see some of them stake their
lives on their doctrines, as in the heroic days. Sacrifice is the
condition of fecundity. To make others believe, you must believe first
yourself, and prove it. Men do not see a truth simply because it
exists, it must have the breath of life; and this spirit which
is ours, we can and ought to give. If not, our thoughts are only
amusements of dilettanti--a play, which deserves only a little
applause. Men who advance the history of the world make
stepping-stones of their own lives. How much higher than all our
great men was the Son of the carpenter of Galilee. Humanity knows the
difference between them and the Saviour."
"But did He save it?
"'When Jahveh speaks: "'Tis my desire,"
His people work to feed the fire.'"
"Your circle of flame is the last terror, and Man exists only to break
through, that he may come out of it free."
"Free?" repeated Perrotin with his quiet smile.
"Yes, free! It is the highest good, but few reach it, although the
name is common enough. It is as exceptional as real beauty, or real
goodness. By a free man I mean one who can liberate himself from
himself, his passions, his blind instincts, those of his surroundings,
or of the moment. It is said that he does this in obedience to the
voice of reason; but reason in the sense that you give it, is a
mirage. It is only another passion, hardened, intellectualised, and
therefore fanatical. No, he must put himself out of sight, in order to
get a clear view over the clouds of dust raised by the flock on the
road of today, to take in the whole horizon, so as to put events in
their proper place in the scheme of the universe."
"Then," said Perrotin, "he must accommodate himself to the laws of
that universe."
"Not necessarily," said Clerambault, "he can oppose them with a clear
conscience if they are contrary to right and happiness. Liberty
consists in that very thing, that a free man is in himself a conscious
law of the universe, a counter-balance to the crushing machine, the
automaton of Spitteler, the bronze _Ananké_. I see the universal
Being, three parts of him still embedded in the clay, the bark, or the
stone, undergoing the implacable laws of the matter in which he is
encrusted. His breath and his eyes alone are free; "I hope," says his
look. And his breath declares, "I will!" With the help of these he
struggles to release himself. We are the look and the breath, that is
what makes a free man."
"The look is enough for me," said Perrotin gently.
"And without the breath I should die!" exclaimed Clerambault.
In a man of thought there is a wide interval between the word and the
deed. Even when a thing is decided upon, he finds pretexts for putting
it off to another day, for he sees only too clearly what will follow;
what pains and troubles. And to what end? In order to calm his
restless soul he pours out a flood of energetic language on his
intimate friends, or to himself alone, and in this way gains the
illusion of action cheaply enough. In the bottom of his heart he does
not believe in it, but like Hamlet, he waits till circumstances shall
force his hand.
Clerambault was brave enough when he was talking to the indulgent
Perrotin, but he had scarcely got home when he was seized again by his
hesitations. Sharpened by his sorrow, his sensitiveness anticipated
the emotions of those around him; he imagined the discord that his
words would cause between himself and his wife, and worse, without
exactly knowing why, he was not sure of his daughter's sympathy, and
shrank from the trial. The risk was too great for an affectionate
heart like his.
Matters stood thus, when a doctor of his acquaintance wrote that he
had a man dangerously wounded in his hospital who had been in the
great Champagne offensive, and had known Maxime. Clerambault went at
once to see him.
On the bed he saw a man who might have been of any age. He lay still
on his back, swathed like a mummy, his thin peasant-face all wrinkled
and brown, with the big nose and grey beard emerging from the white
bandages. Outside the sheet you could see his right hand, rough and
work-worn; a joint of the middle-finger was missing--but that did not
matter, it was a peace injury. His eyes looked out calmly under the
bushy eyebrows; their clear grey light was unexpected in the burned
face.
Clerambault came close and asked him how he did, and the man thanked
him politely, without giving details, as if it were not worth the
trouble to talk about oneself.
"You are very good, Sir. I am getting on all right." But Clerambault
persisted affectionately, and it did not take long for the grey eyes
to see that there was something deeper than curiosity in the blue eyes
that bent over him.
"Where are you wounded?" asked Clerambault.
"Oh, a little of everywhere; it would take too long to tell you, Sir."
But as his visitor continued to press him:
"There is a wound wherever they could find a place. Shot up, all over.
I never should have thought there would have been room enough on a
little man like me."
Clerambault found out at last that he had received about a score of
wounds; seventeen, to be exact. He had been literally sprinkled--he
called it "interlarded"--with shrapnel.
"Wounded in seventeen places!" cried Clerambault.
"I have only a dozen left," said the man.
"Did they cure the others?"
"No, they cut my legs off." Clerambault was so shocked that he almost
forgot the object of his visit. Great Heaven! What agonies! Our
sufferings, in comparison, are a drop in the ocean.... He put his
hand over the rough one, and pressed it. The calm grey eyes took in
Clerambault from his feet to the crape on his hat.
"You have lost someone?"
"Yes," said Clerambault, pulling himself together, "you must have
known Sergeant Clerambault?"
"Surely," said the man, "I knew him."
"He was my son."
The grey eyes softened.
"Ah, Sir! I _am_ sorry for you. I should think I did know him, poor
little chap! We were together for nearly a year, and a year like that
counts, I can tell you! Day after day, we were like moles burrowing in
the same hole.... We had our share of trouble."
"Did he suffer much?"
"Well, Sir, it _was_ pretty bad sometimes; hard on the boy, just at
the first. You see he wasn't used to it, like us."
"You come from the country?"
"I was labourer on a farm. You have to live with the beasts, and you
get to be like 'em. But it is the truth I tell you now, Sir, that men
do treat each other worse than the beasts. 'Be kind to the animals.'
That was on a notice a joker stuck up in our trench.... But what
isn't good enough for them is good enough for us. All right; I'm not
kicking. Things are like that. We have to take it as it comes. But
you could see that the little Sergeant had never been up against it
before; the rain and the mud, and the meanness; the dirt worst of all,
everything that you touch, your food, your skin, full of vermin.... He
came close to crying, I could see, once or twice, when he was new to
it. I wouldn't let on that I noticed, for the boy was proud, didn't
want any help, but I would jolly him, try to cheer him up, lend him
a hand sometimes; he was glad to get it. You see you have to get
together. But before long he could stick it out as well as anybody;
then it was his turn to help me. I never heard him squeal, and we had
gay times together--must have a joke now and then, no matter what
happens. It keeps off bad luck."
Clerambault sat and listened with a heavy heart.
"Was he happier towards the last?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir, I think he was what you call resigned, just like we all
were. I don't know how it is, but you all seem to start out with the
same foot in the morning. We are all different, but somehow, after a
while it seems as if we were growing alike. It's better, too, that
way. You don't mind things so much all in a bunch.... It's only when
you get leave, and after you come back--it's bad, nothing goes right
any more. You ought to have seen the little Sergeant that last time."
Clerambault felt a pang as he said quickly:
"When he came back?"
"He was very low. I don't know as I ever saw him so bad before."
An agonised expression came over Clerambault's face, and at his
gesture, the wounded man who had been looking at the ceiling while he
talked, turned his eyes and understood, for he added at once:
"He pulled himself together again, after that."
"Tell me what he said to you, tell me everything," said Clerambault
again taking his hand.
The sick man hesitated and answered.
"I don't think I just remember what he said." Then he shut his eyes,
and lay still, while Clerambault bent over him and tried to see what
was before those eyes under their closed lids.
* * * * *
An icy moonless night. From the bottom of the hollow _boyau_ one could
see the cold sky and the fixed stars. Bullets rattled on the hard
ground. Maxime and his friend sat huddled up in the trench, smoking
with their chins on their knees. The lad had come back that day from
Paris. He was depressed, would not answer questions, shut himself up
in a sulky silence. The other had left him all the afternoon to bear
his trouble alone. Now here in the darkness he felt that the moment
had come, and sat a little closer, for he knew that the boy would
speak of his own accord. A bullet over their heads glanced off,
knocking down a lump of frozen turf.
"Hullo, old gravedigger," said the other, "don't get too fresh."