"I am ashamed of my weakness," said Odette. "I should not flinch before any sort of wound, but the thought that the war has deprived a man of the light of day forces me to ask myself whether I myself have a right to look upon these beautiful silks, this sunlight——"
"Take pleasure in the silks, in objects of art, and in sunlight, you who are made to charm that portion of humanity that remains intact. You would not, on the pretext that millions of men have been plunged into darkness or death, irritate them gratuitously by an ill-regulated sympathy? Innumerable lives have, alas, been shattered, but life remains, the light is brilliant, plants are growing, animals and even men still swarm upon the earth. Recall to mind the tragic and paradoxical truth that human life, which is the highest work and appears to have been the purpose of the creation of the world, is that for which, on the whole, that great work appears to care the least. Whatever part man may be called to play, his destiny is to pass away. That horror of war with which we are inspired by the extermination of men is in the long run kept up and perpetuated by material depredations; the memory of an illustrious building destroyed will last longer than that of a hundred thousand young men mown down in their youth."
"And meanwhile you are throwing overboard all you possess to rescue men who are only half alive. That is all that I wanted to know."
[XXX]
Odette spent several days in bed as a consequence of the marriage of the little de Blauve girl—which took place in the strictest privacy, and which she had not attended. But her imagination was lively, and she pictured things to herself.
She sought out her friend La Villaumer, as it were, now that she had detected him in an act of kindness. As for him, in her presence he took less pains to conceal his acts, now that she understood him better.
"I have always loved men," he said. "Why should I not love them since I have always professed to criticise them? Have I misunderstood them? Remember how indulgent I was for all that in them is so far removed from the only thing that I really prize—intelligence. How vulnerable I have been to their instincts! How I have smiled at their innumerable follies! I simply enjoyed studying them, without the slightest partiality, notwithstanding my secret reverence for reason, which seems to me to be a torch lighted at the altar of a god and carefully transmitted by certain privileged beings to certain privileged beings, while yet the chain that they form never succeeds—no one can tell why—in producing an illumination. Therefore, I have never believed that the world belonged to what we have learned to venerate under the name of intelligence. Intelligence is a divine part which no doubt gives us notions of what there is on high, but which has almost no application to things here below. The world is not governed by intelligence. Sometimes intelligence makes converts, and we believe that its reign has come. Illusion! It is precisely then that we are upon the point of falling again into blessed ignorance, and going back to the age of barbarism. Do you know, I am tempted to believe that the age of barbarism is the normal period of humanity! We probably need cruelty, absurdity, injustice, superstition, torrents of bloodshed, in order that the mystery which we admire under the name of life may exist and perpetuate itself. Our bodies can be fed only by offensive means. The majority of human pleasures are unfathomably stupid. The great masses obey certain elementary formulas, sayings of which they have never weighed the meaning, and which often have no meaning. Governments are not carried on by luminous reasoning, but by the allurement of sounding words that flatter the senses. In order to hold our own in a large and influential social group, my poor friend, are we going to be called to admit the timeliness of belief in prophets, in wonder-workers, in ghosts, in the platitudes of 'apparitions,' in the genius of simple minds? Is a torrent of puerility about to inundate the surface of the globe? May it be that this is the indispensable element of reparation? Intelligence, reduced to its own resources, has in fact no power of expansion, no means of action. It is enough to make one die of shame and vexation! Law, justice, liberty—we can imagine men shrugging their shoulders when they hear the words, for the words are efficacious only when they are emptied of their significance and travestied into elementary ideas which naturally lead to the violation of law, liberty, justice. In the matter of ideas men believe only in their tutelary virtue; they are protecting divinities; and the idea is nothing but a word that men symbolize on their flagstaffs, like a fetich. We are as credulous as Homer's warriors. Minerva fights with us. For that matter, I do not think that there ever was a better opportunity for adopting the theocratic conception of the world, for men are at this moment given over to the elements, and the greatest political genius imaginable would probably be powerless so long as the convulsions with which the world is attacked are not quieted of themselves. In these conditions there is no room in the home of a poor fellow for any but the virtues of pity and affection. I confess the fact, my dear Odette, I can no longer control my heart."
"To be moved to compassion is to be weakened, I have been told."
"There is truth in that opinion so far as those persons are concerned who are more especially called by circumstances to act, and especially to direct the actions of others; such must put on blinders and look only to the immediate purpose which demands all their energies. But it is desirable that in the midst of this tempest-tossed world a few contemplative persons shall devote themselves to pity as to the conservation of a 'precious blood'; if only for the sake of the efficacy, or at least of the beauty of the thing. And the worshippers at this altar will need to contend—do you know with whom?—with humanity itself, which has little remembrance of its own ills, and which, like a kitten, hastens to play with the first ray of sunshine. It is true that the dead keep a great silence."