Part 9 (2/2)
_My son, your words are like stones that a child throws at the sky which he cannot reach; they will fall back on your own head. She whom you insult, who has usurped my name, is an idol carved by yourself, in your own image, not in mine. The true Country is that of the Father.
She belongs to all, and embraces everyone.--It is not her fault if you have brought her down to your own level.... Unhappy creatures, who sully your G.o.ds; there is not a lofty idea that you have not tarnished. You turn the good that is brought you, into poison, and scorch yourselves with the very light that s.h.i.+nes on you. I came among you to bring warmth to your loneliness; I brought your s.h.i.+vering souls together in a flock, and bound your scattered weakness in sheaves of arrows. I am brotherly love, the great Communion; and you destroy your fellows in my name, fools that you are!..._
_For ages I have toiled to deliver you from the chains of b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, to free you from your hard egotism. On the road of Time you advance by toil and sweat; provinces and nations are the military milestones which mark your resting-places. Your weakness alone created them.
Before I can lead you farther, I must wait till you have taken breath; you have so little strength of lungs or heart, that you have made virtues of your weaknesses. You admire your heroes for the distance they went before they dropped exhausted; not because they were the first to reach those limits. And when you have come without difficulty to the spot where these forerunners stopped, you think yourselves heroes in your turn_.
_What have these shadows of the past to do with us today? Bayard, Joan of Arc, we have no further need of heroism like theirs, knights and martyrs of a dead cause. We want apostles of the future, great hearts that will give themselves for a larger country, a higher ideal.
Forward then; cross the old frontiers, and if you must still use these crutches, to help your lameness, thrust the barriers back to the doors of the East, the confines of Europe, until at last step by step you reach the end, and men encircle the globe, each holding by the other's hand. Before you insult me, poor little author, descend into your own heart, examine yourself. The gift of speech was given you to guide your people, and you have used it to deceive yourself and lead them astray. You have added to their error instead of saving them, even to the point that you have laid your own son whom you loved on the altar of your untruth_.
_Now at least dare to show to others the ruin that you are, and say: ”See what I am, and take warning!” ...Go! And may your misfortunes save those that come after from the same fate! Dare to speak, and cry out to them: ”You are mad, peoples of the earth; instead of defending your Country, you are killing her_. You _are your Country and the enemies are your brothers. Millions of G.o.d's creatures” love one another_.
The same silence as before seemed to swallow up this last cry.
Clerambault lived outside of popular circles where he would have found the warm sympathy of simple, healthy minds. Not the slightest echo of his thought came to him.
He knew that he was not really alone, though he seemed so. Two apparently contradictory sentiments--his modesty and his faith--united to say to him: ”What you thought, others have thought also; you are too small, this truth is too great, to exist only in you. The light that your weak eyes have seen has shone also for others. See where now the Great Bear inclines to the horizon,--millions of eyes are looking at it, perhaps; but you cannot see them, only the far-off light makes a bond between their sight and yours.”
The solitude of the mind is only a painful delusion; it has no real existence, for even the most independent of us are members of a spiritual family. This community of spirit has no relation to time or s.p.a.ce; its elements are dispersed among all peoples and all ages.
Conservatives see them in the past, but the revolutionists and the persecuted look to the future for them. Past and future are not less real than the immediate present, which is a wall beyond which the calm eyes of the flock can see nothing. The present itself is not what the arbitrary divisions of states, nations, and religions would have us believe. In our time humanity is a bazaar of ideas, unsorted and thrown together in a heap, with hastily constructed part.i.tions between them, so that brothers are separated from brothers, and thrown in with strangers. Every country has swallowed up different races, not formed to think and act together; so that each one of these spiritual families, or families-in-law, which we call nations, comprises elements which in fact form part of different groups, past, present, or future. Since these cannot be destroyed, they are oppressed; they can escape destruction only by some subterfuge, apparent submission, inward rebellion, or flight and voluntary exile. They are _Heimatlos_.
To reproach them for lack of patriotism is to blame Irishmen and Poles for their resistance to English and Prussian absorption. No matter where they are, men remain loyal to their true country. You who pretend that the object of this war is to give the right of self-determination to all peoples, when will you restore this right to the great Republic of free souls dispersed over the whole world?
However cut off from the world, Clerambault knew that this Republic existed. Like the Rome of Sertorius, it dwelt in him, and though they may be unknown each to the other, it dwells in every man to whom it is the true Country.
The wall of silence which surrounded Clerambault's words fell all at once. But it was not a friendly voice which answered his. It seemed rather as if stupidity and blind hatred had made a breach where sympathy had been too weak to find a way.
Several weeks had pa.s.sed and Clerambault was thinking of a new publication, when, one morning, Leo Camus burst noisily into his room.
He was blue with rage, as with the most tragic expression he held up a newspaper before Clerambault's eyes:
”Read that!” he commanded, and standing behind his brother-in-law as he read, he went on:
”What does the beastly thing mean?”
Clerambault was dismayed to find himself stabbed by what he had believed to be a friendly hand. A well-known writer, a colleague of Perrotin's, a serious honourable man, and one always on good terms with him, had denounced him publicly and without hesitation. Though he had known Clerambault long enough to have no doubt as to the purity of his intentions, he held him up as a man dishonoured. An historian, well used to the manipulation of text, he seized upon detached phrases of Clerambault's pamphlet and brandished them as an act of treason. A personal letter would not have satisfied his virtuous indignation; he chose a loud ”yellow journal,” a laboratory of blackmail despised by a million Frenchmen, who nevertheless swallowed all its humbug with open mouths.
”I can't believe it,” stammered Clerambault, who felt helpless before this unexpected hostility.
”There is no time to be lost,” declared Camus, ”you must answer.”
”Answer? But what can I say?”
”The first thing, of course, is to deny it as a base invention.”
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