… "It was a great error to take the name of reason from that of love," says Pascal, "and we have no good cause to think them opposed, for love and reason are in truth the same. Love is a precipitation of thought to one side without considering everything; but it is always reason." …
Well, let us consider everything. Is not this love in a great measure the fear of examining all things, as a child hides his head under the sheet, so as not to see the shadow on the wall?
Country? A Hindoo temple: men, monsters, and gods. What is she? The earth we tread on? The whole earth is the mother of us all. The family? It is here and there, with the enemy as with ourselves, and it asks nothing but peace. The poor, the workers, the people, they are on both sides, equally miserable, equally exploited. Thinkers have a common field, and as for their rivalries and their vanities, they are as ridiculous in the East as in the West; the world does not go to war over the quarrels of a Vadius or a Trissotin. The State? But the State and the Country are not the same thing. The confusion is made by those who find profit in it; the State is our strength, used and abused by men like ourselves, no better than ourselves, often worse. We are not duped by them, and in times of peace we judge them fairly enough, but let a war come on, they are given carte blanche, they can appeal to the lowest instincts, stifle all control, suppress liberty and truth, destroy all humanity; they are masters, we must stand shoulder to shoulder to defend the honour and the mistakes of these Masacarilles arrayed in borrowed plumes. We are all answerable, do you say? Terrible net-work of words! Responsible no doubt we are for the best and the worst of our people, it is a fact as we well know, but that it is a duty that binds us to their injustices and their insanities…. I deny it!…
There can be no question as to community of interest. No one, thought Clerambault, has had more joy in it, or said more in praise of its greatness. It is good and healthy, it makes for rest and strength, to plunge the bare, stiff, cold ego into the collective mind, as into a bath of confidence and fraternal gifts. It unbends, gives itself, breathes more deeply; man needs his fellow-man, and owes himself to him, but in order to give out, he must possess, he must be something. But how can he be, if his self is merged in others? He has many duties, but the highest of all is to be and remain himself; even when he sacrifices and gives all that he is. To bathe in the soul of others would be dangerous as a permanent state; one dip, for health's sake, but do not stay too long, or you will lose all moral vigour. In our day you are plunged from childhood, whether you like it or not, into the democratic tub. Society thinks for you, imposes its morality upon you; its State acts for you, its fashions and its opinions steal from you the very air you breathe; you have no lungs, no heart, no light of your own. You serve what you despise, you lie in every gesture, word, and thought, you surrender, become nothing…. What does it profit us all, if we all surrender? For the sake of whom, or what? To satisfy blind instincts, or rogues? Does God rule, or do some charlatans speak for the oracle? Let us lift the veil, and look the hidden thing behind it in the face…. Our Country! A great noble word! The father, brother embracing brother…. That is not what your false country offers me, but an enclosure, a pit full of beasts, trenches, barriers, prison bars…. My brothers, where are they? Where are those who travail all over the world? Cain, what hast thou done with them? I stretch out my arms; a wave of blood separates us; in my own country I am only an anonymous instrument of assassination…. My Country! but it is you who destroy her!… My Country was the great community of mankind; you have ravaged it, for thought and liberty know not where to lay their heads in Europe today. I must rebuild my house, the home of us all, for you have none, yours is a dungeon…. How can it be done, where shall I look, or find shelter?… They have taken everything from me! There is not a free spot on earth or in the mind; all the sanctuaries of the soul, of art, of science, religion, they are all violated, all enslaved! I am alone, lost, nothing remains to me but death!…
* * * * *
When he had torn everything away, there remained nothing but his naked soul. And for the rest of the night, it could only stand chilled and shivering. But a spark lived in this spirit that shivered, in this tiny being lost in the universe like those shapes which the primitive painters represented coming out of the mouth of the dying. With the dawn the feeble flame, stifled under so many falsehoods, began to revive, and was relighted by the first breath of free air; nothing could again extinguish it.
* * * * *
Upon this agony or parturition of the soul there followed a long sad day, the repose of a broken spirit, in a great silence with the aching relief of duty performed…. Clerambault sat with his head against the back of his armchair, and thought; his body was feverish, his heart heavy with recollections. The tears fell unnoticed from his eyes, while out of doors nature awoke sadly to the last days of winter, like him stripped and bare. But still there trembled a warmth beneath the icy air, which was to kindle a new fire everywhere.
PART TWO
It was a week before Clerambault could go out again. The terrible crisis through which he had passed had left him weak but resolved, and though the exaltation of his despair had quieted down, he was stoically determined to follow the truth even to the end. The remembrance of the errors in which his mind had delighted, and the half-truths on which it had fed made him humble; he doubted his own strength, and wished to advance step by step. He was ready to welcome the advice of those wiser than himself. He remembered how Perrotin listened to his former confidences with a sarcastic reserve that irritated him at the time, but which now attracted him. His first visit of convalescence was to this wise old friend.