Aline for months, and had therefore been unable to follow the change
in her mood. Rosine might have spoken of it before him, but he had
paid no attention. Within the last twenty-four hours he had heard in
quick succession of the birth of the baby and of the fact that Aline's
husband was missing, like Maxime, and he immediately pictured to
himself the suffering of the young mother. He thought of her as he
had always known her--vibrating between pleasure and pain, but always
feeling the latter more keenly, giving herself up to it, and even when
she was happy, finding reasons for distress. She was violent too,
bitter, agitated, fighting against fate, and apt to be vexed with
everyone around her. He was not sure that she was not angry with him
personally, on account of his ideas about reconciliation now that
she must be breathing out vengeance. He knew that his attitude was
a scandal in the family, and that no one would be less disposed to
tolerate it than Aline. But no matter how she received him, he felt
that he must go to her and help her in any way that his affection
could suggest. Expecting a storm, but resigned to it, he climbed up
the stairs and rang the bell at his niece's door.
He found her lying in bed with the infant, which she had had placed
by her side. She looked calm and young, with a sweet expression of
beaming happiness on her face. She was like the blooming older sister
of the tiny baby, at whom she looked with adoring laughter, as he lay
there waving his little spidery legs, his mouth open, hardly alive as
yet, still dreaming of the dark warm place from which he had come. She
greeted Clerambault with a cry of triumph:
"Oh, Uncle dear, how sweet of you to come! Do look at him! Did you
ever see such a darling?"
She was so proud of her wonderful masterpiece that she was positively
grateful to anyone who would look at him. Clerambault had never seen
her so pretty and so sweet. He hardly saw the child, though he went
through all the antics that politeness required, making inarticulate
admiring noises which the mother expected and snapped up like a bird.
He saw only her happy face, her lovely smiling eyes, and heard her
charming childish laughter. How good it is to see anyone so happy! All
the things that he had come prepared to say to her went clean out of
his head--all useless and out of place. The only thing necessary was
to gaze on the infant wonder, and share the delight of the hen over
her chick, joining in her delicious cluck of innocent vanity.
The shadow of the war, however, did pass before his eyes for a moment,
the thought of the brutal, useless carnage, the dead son, the missing
husband; and as he bent over the child he could not help thinking with
a sad smile:
"Why bring children into the world, if it is to butcher them like
this? I wonder what will happen to this poor little chap twenty years
hence?"
Thoughts like these did not trouble the mother. They could not dim her
sunshine. All cares seemed far away. She could see nothing but the
"joy that a man was born into the world."
This man-child is to each mother in turn the incarnation of all the
hope of humanity. The sadness and folly of the present day, what do
they matter? It is _he_ perhaps who will put an end to them. He is for
every mother the miracle, the promised Messiah!...
Just as he was going, Clerambault ventured a word of sympathy as to
her husband. She sighed deeply:
"Poor Armand! I'm sure that he was taken prisoner."
"Have you had any news?" asked Clerambault.
"No, no, but it is more than probable.... I am almost certain. If not,
you know, I should have heard...."
She seemed to brush away the disagreeable thought, as if it were a
fly. (Go away! How did it get in here?)
Then she added, the smile coming back into her eyes:
"It will be much better for him, he can rest. I am easier about him
there, than when he was in the trenches...." And then, her mind
springing back to her world's wonder:
"Won't he be glad when he sees the treasure the good God has sent
me?"...
It was when Clerambault stood up to go that she condescended to
remember that there were sorrows still in the world. She thought of
Maxime's death, and did drop a word of pretty sympathy. But how clear
it was that at bottom she was completely indifferent! Absolutely so
... though full of good-will, which was something with her. More
surprising still, softened by her new happiness, she had a glimpse
of the tired face and sad heart of the old man. She had a vague
recollection that he had done something foolish, and had trouble in
consequence. And instead of scolding him as he deserved, she forgave
him tacitly, with a magnanimous smile, like a little princess. "Dear
Uncle," she said, with an affectionate if slightly patronising tone:
"you must not worry yourself, it will all come out right.... Give me a
kiss!"
As Clerambault went away he was amused by the consolation he had
received from her whom he had gone to console. He realised how slight
our suffering must appear in the eyes of indifferent Nature. All her
concern is for the bloom of the coming spring. Let the dead leaves
fall now to the ground, the tree will grow all the better and put
forth fresh foliage in due season.... Lovely, beloved Spring!
Those who can never bloom again find you very cruel, gentle Spring!
Those who have lost all that they loved, their hopes, their strength,
their youth--everything that made life worth living to them....
The world was full of mutilated bodies and souls; some bitterly
lamenting their lost happiness, and some, yet more miserable,
sorrowing for what had been denied them, the cup dashed from their
lips, in the full bloom of love, and of their twenty years.
* * * * *
Clerambault came home one evening at the end of January, wet and
chilled through with the fog, after standing at a wood-yard. He had
stood for hours in line waiting his turn in the crowd, and after all
they had been told that there would be no distribution that day. As he
came near the house where he lived he heard his name, and a young man
who was talking to the janitor turned and held out a letter, looking
rather embarrassed as Clerambault came forward. The right sleeve of
his coat was pinned up to the shoulder, and there was a patch over his
right eye; he was pale, and evidently had been laid up for months.
Clerambault spoke pleasantly to him and tried to take the letter, but
the man drew it back quickly, saying that it was of no consequence
now. Clerambault then asked if he would not come up and talk to him
a little while, but the other hesitated, and the poet might have
perceived that he was trying to get away, but not being very quick at
seeing into other people's minds, he said good-naturedly: "My flat is
rather high up...."
This seemed to touch the visitor on a tender point, and he answered:
"I can get up well enough," and turned towards the staircase.
Clerambault now understood that besides his other wounds, the heart
within him had been wounded to the quick.
They sat down in the fireless study, and like the room, it was some
time before the conversation thawed out. All that Clerambault could
get out of the man were short stiff answers, not very clear, and given
in rather an irritated tone. He learned that his name was Julian
Moreau, that he had been a student at the Faculty of Letters, and
had just passed three months at Val-de-Grace. He was living alone in
Paris, in a room over in the Latin Quarter, though he had a widowed
mother and some other relations in Orleans; he did not explain at
first why he was not with them.
All at once after a short silence he decided to speak, and in a
low voice, hoarse at first, but softening as he went on, he told
Clerambault that his articles had been brought into his trench by a
man just back from leave, and handed about from one to the other; to
him they had been a real blessing. They answered to the cry of his
inmost soul: "Thou shalt not lie." The papers and reviews made him
furious; they had the impudence to show the soldier a false picture of
the armies, trumped-up letters from the front, a cheap comedy style of
courage, and inappropriate joking; all the abject boasting of actors
safe at home, speechifying over the death of others. It was an insult
to be slobbered over with the disgusting kisses of these prostitutes
of the press. As if their sufferings were a mockery!
Clerambault's writings found an echo in their hearts; not that he
understood them, no one could understand who had not shared their
hardships. But he pitied them, and spoke humanely of the unfortunates
in all camps. He dared to speak of the injustices, common to all
nations, which had led to the general suffering. He could not take
away their trouble, but he did raise it into an atmosphere where it
could be borne.
"If you only knew how we crave a word of real sympathy; it is all very
well to be hardened, or old,--there are grey-haired, bent men among
us--but after what we have seen, suffered, and done to others, there
are times when we are like lost children, looking for their mother to
console them. Even our mothers seem far away. At times we get strange
letters from home, as if we were deserted by our own flesh and blood."
Clerambault hid his face in his hands with a groan.
"What is the matter?" said Moreau, "are you ill?"
"You remind me of all the harm that I did."
"You? No, it was other people that did the harm."
"Yes, I, as much as the others. You must try to forgive us all."
"You are the last who ought to say so."
"If the truth were known, I should be among the first. For I am one of
the few who see clearly how wicked I was." He began to inveigh against
his generation, but broke off with a discouraged gesture:
"None of that does any good.... Tell me about yourself."
His voice was so humble that Moreau was really touched to see the
older man blame himself so severely. All his distrust melted away, and
he threw wide the door of his bitter, wounded spirit, confessing that
he had come several times as far as the house, but could not make up
his mind to leave his letter. He never did consent to show it. Since
he came out of the hospital he had not been able to talk to anyone;
these people back here sickened him with their little preoccupations,
their business, their pleasures, the restrictions to their pleasures,
their selfishness, their ignorance and lack of comprehension. He felt
like a stranger among them, more than if he were with African
savages. Besides,--he stopped, the angry words seemed to stick in his
throat--it was not only these people--he felt a stranger to all the
world, cut off from normal life, from the pleasures and work of other
men by his infirmities. He was a mere wreck, blind and maimed. The
poor fellow was absurdly ashamed of it; he blushed at the pitying
glances that people threw at him in passing--like a penny that you
give, turning away your head at the same time from the unpleasant
sight. For in his sensitiveness he exaggerated his ugliness and was
disgusted by his deformity. He dwelt on his lost joys and ruined
youth; when he saw couples in the street, he could not help feeling
jealous; the tears would come into his eyes.
Even this was not all, and when he had poured out the bitterness
of his heart--and Clerambault's compassion encouraged him to speak
further--he got down to the worst of the trouble, which he and his
comrades felt like a cancer that one does not dare to look at. Through
his obscure, violent, and miserable talk, Clerambault at last made out
what it was that tore the hearts of these young men. It is easy enough
for dried-up egotists, withered intellectuals, to sneer at this love
of life in the young, and their despair at the loss of it; but it
was not alone their ruined, blasted youth that pressed on these poor
soldiers,--though that was terrible enough--the worst was not to know
the reason for this sacrifice, and the poisonous suspicion that it was
all in vain. The pain of these victims could not be soothed by the
gross appeal of a foolish racial supremacy, nor by a fragment of
ground fought for between States. They knew now how much earth a man
needs to die on, and that the blood of all races is part of the same
stream of life.
Clerambault felt that he was a sort of elder brother to these young
men; the sense of this and his duty towards them gave him a strength
that he would not otherwise have had, and he charged their messenger
with words of hope and consolation.
"Your sufferings are not thrown away," he said. "It is true that they
are the fruit of a cruel error, but the errors themselves are not
all lost. The scourge of today is the explosion of evils which
have ravaged Europe for ages; pride and cupidity. It is made up of
conscienceless States, the disease of capitalism, and is become the
monstrous machine called Civilisation, full of intolerance, hypocrisy,
and violence. Everything is breaking up; all must be done over again;
it is a tremendous task, but do not speak of discouragement, for yours
is the greatest work that has ever been offered to a generation. The
fire of the trenches and the asphyxiating gases that blind you come as
much from agitators in the rear as from the enemy; you must strive to
see clearly, to see where the real fight lies. It is not against a
people but against an unhealthy society founded on exploitation and
rivalry between nations, on the subordination of the free conscience
to the Machine-State. The peoples, resigned or sceptical, would not
have seen this with the tragical clearness in which it now appears,
without the painful disturbance of the war. I do not bless this pain;
leave that to the bigots of our old religions! We do not love sorrow
and we all want happiness, but if sorrow must come, at least let it be
of some use! Do not let your sufferings add to those of others. You
must not give way. You are taught in the army that when the order to
advance is once given in a battle it is more dangerous to fall back
than to go on; so do not look back; leave your ruins behind you, and
march on towards the new world."
As he spoke the eyes of his young auditor seemed to say: "Tell me
more, more yet, more even than hopes, give me certainties, tell of the
victory which will come soon."
Men need to be tempted and decoyed, even the best of them. In exchange
for any sacrifice they make for an ideal, you have to promise them, if
not immediate realisation, at least an eternal compensation, as all
the religions do. Jesus was followed because they thought that He
would give them victory here or hereafter.--But he who would speak the
truth cannot promise or assure men of victory; the risks are not to
be ignored; perhaps it will never come, in any case it will be a long
time. To disciples, such a thought is crushingly pessimistic; not so
for the master, who has the serenity of a man who, having reached the
mountain top, can see over all the surrounding country, while they
can only see the steep hill-side which they must climb. How is he to
communicate his calm to them? If they cannot look through the eyes of
the master, they can always see his eyes from which are reflected the
vision denied to them; there they can read the assurance that he who
knows the truth (as they believe) is delivered from all their trials.
The eyes of Julian Moreau sought in Clerambault's eyes for this
security of soul, this inward harmony; and poor anxious Clerambault
had it not. But was he sure that it was not there?... Looking at
Julian humbly, he saw,... he saw that Julian had found it in him.
And as a man climbing up through a fog suddenly finds himself in the
light, he saw that the light was in him, and that it had come to him
because he needed it to shine upon another.
After the wounded man had gone away, somewhat comforted, Clerambault
felt slightly dazed, and sat drinking in the strange happiness that
the heart feels when, however unfortunate itself, it has been able to
help another now or in the future. How profound is the instinct for
happiness, the plenitude of being! All aspire to it, but it is not the
same for all. There are some that wish only to possess; to others,
sight is possession, and to others yet, faith is sight. We are links
of a chain and this instinct unites us; from those who only seek their
own good, or that of their family, or their country, up to the being
which embraces millions of beings and desires the good of all. There
are those who, having no joy of their own, can almost unconsciously
bestow it on others, as Clerambault had done; for they can see the
light on his face while his own eyes are in shadow.
The look of his young friend had revealed an unknown treasure to poor
Clerambault, and the knowledge of the divine message with which he was
entrusted re-established his lost union with other men. He had
only contended with them because he was their hardy pioneer, their
Christopher Columbus forcing his way across the desert ocean, that he
might open the road to the New World. They deride, but follow him; for
every true idea, whether understood or not, is a ship under weigh, and
the souls of the past are drawn after in its wake.
From this day onward he averted his eyes from the irreparable present
of the war and its dead, and looked towards the living, and the future
which is in our hands. We are hypnotised, obsessed by the thought of
those that we have lost, and the morbid temptation to bury our hearts
in their graves, but we must tear ourselves away from the baleful
vapours that rise, as in Rome, from The Way of the Tombs. March on!
This is no time to halt. We have not yet earned the right to rest with
them, for there are others who need us. There, like the wrecks of the
Grand Army, you can see in the distance those who drag themselves
along, searching on the dreary plain for the half-effaced path.
The thought of the sombre pessimism which threatened to overwhelm
these young men after the war was a grave anxiety to Clerambault.
The moral danger was a serious one, of which the Governments took no
notice at all. They were like bad coachmen who flog their horses up a
steep hill at a gallop; it is true that the horse reaches the top, but
as the road goes on he stumbles and falls, foundered for life. With
what a gallant spirit our young men rushed to the assault in the
beginning of the war! And then their ardour gradually diminished.
But the horse was still in harness, and the shafts held him up. A
factitious excitement was kept up all around him, his daily ration was
seasoned with glittering hopes; and though the strength went out of
it little by little, the poor creature could not fall down, could not
even complain, he had not the strength to think. The countersign all
about these victims was to hear nothing, to stop the ears and to lie.
Day after day the battle-tide ebbed, and left wrecks on the sand, men
wounded and maimed; and through them the depths of this human ocean
were brought to the light. These poor wretches, ruthlessly torn
from life, moved helplessly in the void, too feeble to cling to the
passions of yesterday or dreams of tomorrow. Some asked themselves
blindly, and others with a cruelly clear insight, why they had been
born, what life meant....
"_Since he who is destroyed, suffers, and he who destroys has
no pleasure, and is shortly destroyed himself, tell me what no
philosopher can explain; whom does it please, and to whose profit is
this unfortunate life of the universe, which is only preserved by the
injury or death of all the creatures which compose it_?"[1] ...
[Footnote 1: Leopardi.]
It is necessary to answer these men, to give them a reason for living,
but there is no such need for a man of Clerambault's age; his life
is over, and all he requires is to free his conscience as a sort of
public bequest.
To young people who have all their life before them, it is not enough
to contemplate truth across a heap of corpses; whatever the past may
have been, the future alone counts for them. Let us clear away the
ruins!
What causes them the most pain? Their own suffering?
No, it is their lack of faith in the altar on which this suffering was
laid--(does a man regret if he sacrifices himself for the woman he
loves, or for his child?)--This doubt poisons them, takes away the
courage to pursue their way, because they fear to find only despair
at the end. This is why people say to you: "Never shake the ideal of
Country, it ought rather to be built up." What a derision! As if it
were possible to restore a lost faith by force of will! We deceive
ourselves; we know it in the bottom of our hearts, and this
consciousness kills courage and joy.
Let us be brave enough to reject that in which we no longer believe.
The trees drop their leaves in the autumn in order that they may put
forth new leaves in the spring. Out of your past illusions, make fires
as the peasants do with the fallen leaves; the fresh grass, the new
faith, will grow all the more thickly, for it is there waiting. Nature
does not die, it changes shape continually; like her, let us cast off
the garment of the past.
Look carefully, and reckon up these hard years. You have fought and
suffered for your country, and what have you gained by it? You have
discovered the brotherhood of the men who fight and suffer. Is the
price too high? No, if you will listen to your heart, if you will
dare to open it to the new faith which has come to you when you least
expected it.
The thing that disappoints and drives us to despair is that we cling
to what we had at the beginning; and when we no longer trust that, we
feel that all is lost. A great nation has never reached the object
sought; and so much the better, for almost always what is reached is
superior to what was sought, though different. It is not wise to start
out with our wisdom ready made, but to gather it sincerely as we go
along.
You are not the same men that you were in 1914. If you dare admit it,
then dare to act it also! That will be the chief gain--perhaps the
only one--of the war. But do you really care? So many things conspire
to intimidate you; the weariness of these years, old habits, dread of
the effort needed to examine yourself, to throw away what is dead, and
stand for what is living. We have, we do not know what respect for the
old, a lazy preference for what we are accustomed to, even if it is
bad, fatal. Then there is the indolent need for what is easy which
makes us take a trodden path rather than hew out a new one for
ourselves. Is it not the ideal of most Frenchmen to accept their plan
of life ready-made in childhood and never change it? If only this war,
which has destroyed so many of your hearths, could force you to come
out from your ashes, to found other healths, to seek other truths!
The wish to break with the past, and adventure themselves in unknown
regions was not lacking to these young men. They would rather have
preferred to go ahead without stopping, and they had scarcely left
the Old World when they expected to take possession of the New.--No
hesitation, no middle course; they wanted absolute solutions, either
the docile servitude of the past, or revolution.
These were Moreau's views; he looked upon Clerambault's hope of
social revolution as a certainty, and in the exhortation to win truth
patiently step by step he heard an appeal to violent action which
would conquer it at once.
He introduced Clerambault to two or three groups of young
intellectuals with revolutionary tendencies. They were not very
numerous, for here and there you would see the same faces, but they
gained an importance which they would not otherwise have had, from
the watch which was kept on them by the authorities. Silly people in
power, armed to the teeth with millions of bayonets, police and courts
of justice at their command, yet uneasy and afraid to let a dozen
freethinkers meet to discuss them!
These circles had not the air of conspiracies, and though they rather
invited persecution, their activities were confined to words. What
else was there for them to do but talk? They were separated from the
mass of their fellow thinkers, who had been drawn into the army or
the war-machine, which would only give them up when they were past
service. What of the youth of Europe remained behind the lines?
There were the slackers, who often descended to the lowest depths of
meanness to make others fight, so that it should be forgotten
that they did not fight themselves. Setting these aside, the
representatives--_rari nantes_--of the younger generation in civil
life were those discharged from the army for physical incapacity, and
a few broken-down wrecks of the war, like Moreau. In these mutilated
or diseased bodies the spirit was like a candle lighted behind broken
windows. Twisted and smoky, it seemed as if a breath would extinguish
it. But it was all the more ardent for knowing what to expect from
life.