Perrotin was rather short-sighted and selfish, and did not take the trouble to look carefully at things that were not necessary to him, being a closer observer of books than of faces, but he was none the less struck by the alteration in Clerambault's expression.
"My dear friend," said he, "have you been ill?"
"Yes, ill enough," answered Clerambault, "but I have pulled myself together again, and am better now."
"It is the cruelest blow of all," said Perrotin, "to lose at our age, such a friend as your poor boy was to you …"
"The most cruel is not his loss," said the father, "it is that I contributed to his death."
"What do you mean, my good friend?" said Perrotin in surprise. "How can you imagine such things to add to your trouble?"
"It was I who shut his eyes," said Clerambault bitterly, "and he has opened mine."
Perrotin pushed aside the work, which according to his habit he had continued to ruminate upon during the conversation, and looked narrowly at his friend, who bent his head, and began his story in an indistinct voice, sad and charged with feeling. Like a Christian of the early times making public confession, he accused himself of falsehood towards his faith, his heart, and his reason.
When the Apostle saw his Lord in chains, he was afraid and denied Him; but he was not brought so low as to offer his services as executioner. He, Clerambault, had not only deserted the cause of human brotherhood, he had debased it; he had continued to talk of fraternity, while he was stirring up hatred. Like those lying priests who distort the Scriptures to serve their wicked purposes, he had knowingly altered the most generous ideas to disguise murderous passions.
He extolled war, while calling himself a pacifist; professed to be humanitarian, previously putting the enemy outside humanity…. Oh, how much franker it would have been to yield to force than to lend himself to its dishonouring compromises! It was thanks to such sophistries as his that the idealism of young men was thrown into the arena. Those old poisoners, the artists and thinkers, had sweetened the death-brew with their honeyed rhetoric, which would have been found out and rejected by every conscience with disgust, if it had not been for their falsehoods….