He plunged deeper into his gloom along with the flying train and closed his eyes....
When he opened them again—a few steps away, but separated by the bodies of two strangers, stood a young girl who had just entered. At first all he saw of her was a delicate profile under the shadow of her hat, one blonde curl on a somewhat thin cheek, a highlight perched upon the smooth cheekbone, the fine line of nose and lifted upper lip, and her mouth, slightly parted, still quivering a little from her sudden rush into the car. Through the portals of his eyes into his heart she entered, she entered all complete; and the door closed. Noises from without fell to nothing. Silence. Peace. She was there.
She did not look at him. In fact she did not even know as yet of his existence. And yet she was there inside him. He held her image there, speechless, crushed in his arms, and he dared not breathe for fear that his breath might ruffle her.
A jostling at the next station. Noisily talking, the crowd threw themselves into the already packed carriage. Pierre found himself shoved and carried along by the human wave. Above the tunnel vault, in the city up there, certain dull reports. The train started up again. At that moment a man quite out of his senses, who covered up his face with his hands, came running down the stairway of the station and rolled down on the floor at the bottom. There was just enough time to catch sight of the blood that trickled through his fingers.... Then the tunnel and darkness again. In the car frightened outcries: "The Gothas are at it again!" During the general excitement which fused these closely packed bodies into one, his hand had seized the hand that touched him. And when he raised his eyes he saw it was She.
She did not pull her hand away. At the pressure of his fingers hers replied in a sympathy of emotion, drawing together a bit, and then letting themselves go, soft and burning, without budging. Thus the two remained in the protective darkness, their hands like two birds hid in the same nest; and the blood from their hearts ran in a single flood through the warmth of their palms. They said no word to one another. His mouth almost touched the curl on her cheek and the tip of her ear. They did not make a gesture. She did not look at him. Two stations beyond, she loosed her hand from his, which did not keep her, slipped between the bodies and left without having looked at him.
When she had vanished it occurred to him to follow.... Too late. The train was in motion. At the next stop he ran up to the surface. There he found the nocturnal cold, the unseen touches of some flakes of snow and the City, frightened and amused at its fright; above it very high in the air circled the warlike birds. But he saw only her, the one who was within him; and he reached home holding the hand of the unknown girl.
Pierre Aubier lived with his parents near Cluny Square. His father was a municipal judge; his brother, older than he by six years, had volunteered at the beginning of the war. A good sound family of the bourgeois class, excellent folks, affectionate and human, never having dared to think for themselves and very probably never imagining that such a thing could be. Profoundly honest and with a lofty sense of the duties of his office, Judge Aubier would have rejected with indignation as a supreme insult the suspicion even that the verdicts he announced could have been dictated by any other considerations than those of equity and his own conscience. But the voice of his conscience had never spoken—let us better say whispered—against the government. For that conscience was born a functionary. It registered thoughts as a State function—variable but infallible. Established powers were invested by him with a sacred truth. He admired sincerely those souls of iron, the great free and unbending magistrates of the past; and perhaps secretly believed himself to be of their stock. He was a very small edition of Michel de l'Hospital over whom a century of republican slavery had passed.
As to Madame Aubier she was as good a Christian as her husband was a good republican. Just as sincerely and honestly as he made himself a docile instrument of the government against any form of liberty which was not official, so did she mingle her prayers, and that in perfect purity of heart, with the homicidal vows which were made about the war in every country of Europe by the Catholic priests, the Protestant ministers, the rabbis and the popes, the newspapers and the right-minded thinkers of the time. And both of them, father and mother, adored their children and, like true French people, had for them only a profound, essential affection, would have sacrificed everything for them, and yet, in order to do as others, would sacrifice them without hesitation. To whom? Why, to the unknown god. In every epoch Abraham has led Isaac to the funeral pile. And his magnificent folly still remains an example for poor human beings.
As often is the case, at this family hearth affection was great and intimacy null. How should thoughts communicate freely from one to the other when each one forbore a look into the bottom of his own mind? Whatever one may feel, one knows that certain dogmas at any rate must be blinked, set aside; and if it already amounts to an embarrassment when the dogmas are discreet enough to stay within the limits traced for them (that was the case, to sum all up, of those belonging to the beyond) what is to be said when they pretend to mix themselves with life, to rule life entirely as our laical and obligatory dogmas actually do? Just you try to forget the dogma of your country! The new religion compelled a return to the Old Testament. It was not to be made comfortable with lip devotion and innocent rituals, hygienic and ridiculous, like confession, Friday fasting, rest on Sunday, which once upon a time incited the racy spirit of our "philosophers" during the period when the people were free—under the kings. The new religion wanted all, was not satisfied with less; all the man complete, his body, his blood, his life and his thinking mind. Above all his blood. Since the time of the Aztecs of Mexico never was there a divinity so gorged with blood. It would be deeply unjust to say that the believers did not suffer from this. They suffered, but they believed. Alas my poor brother men, for whom suffering itself is a proof positive of the divine!...