"What—afterwards? Afterwards there'll be wars, naturally, but civilized wars. Afterwards? Why, future posterity! Own up that you'd like to save the world, eh, what? When you launch out into these great machinations you say enormities compulsively. The future? Ha, ha!"
I turn away from him. Of what use to try to tell him that the past is dead, that the present is passing, that the future alone is positive!
Through Crillon's paternal admonishment I feel the threat of the others. It is not yet hostility around me; but it is already a rupture. With this truth that clings to me alone, amid the world and its phantoms, am I not indeed rushing into a sort of tragedy impossible to maintain? They who surround me, filled to the lips, filled to the eyes, with the gross acceptance which turns men into beasts, they look at me mistrustfully, ready to be let loose against me. Little more was lacking before I should be as much a reprobate as Brisbille, who, in this very place, before the war, stood up alone before the multitude and tried to tell them to their faces that they were going into the gulf.
* * * * * *
I move away with Marie. We go down into the valley, and then climb Chestnut Hill. I like these places where I used so often to come in the days when everything around me was a hell which I did not see. Now that I am a ghost returning from the beyond, this hill still draws me through the streets and lanes. I remember it and it remembers me. There is something which we share, which I took away with me yonder, everywhere, like a secret. I hear that despoiled soldier who said, "Where I come from there are fields and paths and the sea; nowhere else in the world is there that," and amid my unhappy memories that extraordinary saying shines like news of the truth.
We sit down on the bank which borders the lane. We can see the town, the station and carts on the road; and yonder three villages make harmony, sometimes more carefully limned by bursts of sunshine. The horizons entwine us in a murmur. The crossing where we are is the spot where four roads make a movement of reunion.
But my spirit is no longer what it was. Vaguely I seek, everywhere. I must see things with all their consequences, and right to their source. Against all the chains of facts I must have long arguments to bring; and the world's chaos requires an interpretation equally terrible.
* * * * * *
There is a slight noise—a frail passer-by and a speck which jumps round her feet. Marie looks and says mechanically, like a devout woman, making the sign of the cross, "Poor little angel!"
It is little Antoinette and her dog. She gropes for the edge of the road with a stick, for she has become quite blind. They never looked after her. They were going to do it, unendingly, but they never did it. They always said, "Poor little angel," and that was all.