Part 12 (1/2)

He showed the letter to Rosine, and in spite of the partiality of love, she was hurt that her friend should have wished to do violence to her father's convictions. Her conclusion was that Daniel did not love her enough; and she said that her own feeling was not sufficiently strong to endure such exactions; even if Clerambault had been willing to yield, she would not have consented to such an injustice; whereupon she kissed her father, tried to laugh bravely, and to forget her cruel disappointment.

A glimpse of happiness, however, is not so easily forgotten, especially if there remains a faint chance of its renewal. She thought of it constantly, and after a time Clerambault felt that she was growing away from him. It is difficult not to feel bitterly towards those for whom we sacrifice ourselves, and in spite of herself Rosine held her father responsible for her lost happiness.

A strange phenomenon now made itself apparent in Clerambault's mind; he was cast down but strengthened at the same time. He suffered because he had spoken, and yet he felt that he should speak again, for he had ceased to belong to himself. His written word held and constrained him; he was bound by his thought as soon as it was published. ”That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.” Born in an hour of mental exaltation, his work prolonged and reproduced itself in his mind, which would otherwise have fallen exhausted. An artist's thought is the ray of light from the depths, the best of himself, the most enduring; it supports his lower nature.

Man, whether he likes it or not, leans on his works and is led by them. They have an existence outside of his own, and so restore his lost vigour, recall him to his duty, guide and command him.

Clerambault would have preferred to remain silent, but he wrote once more.

This time he did not go very far. ”Tremble, poor carca.s.s, you know where I am going to drag you,” said Turenne to his body before the battle. The carca.s.s of Clerambault was not more courageous, though the conflict to which it was driven was of a humbler sort. It was none the less hard, for he was alone with no army at his back. As he watched by his arms, he was a pitiable spectacle in his own eyes. He saw himself, an ordinary man, of a timid, rather cowardly, disposition, depending greatly on the affection and approval of others. It was terribly painful to break these ties, to meet the hatred of others halfway....

Was he strong enough to resist?... All his doubts came back upon him.... What forced him to speak? Who would listen to him, and what good would it do? Did not the wisest people set him the example of silence?

Nevertheless his brain was firm, and continued to dictate to him what he should write; his hand also wrote it down without the alteration of a word. There seemed to be two men in him; one who threw himself on the ground in terror, and cried: ”I will not fight,” and the other who dragged him along by the collar, without trying to persuade him, saying simply: ”Yes, you will.”

It would be praising him too highly to say that he acted in this manner through bravery; he felt that he could not act otherwise, even if he had wished to stop; something forced him to go on, to speak....

It was his ”mission.” He did not understand it, did not know why he was chosen, he, the poet of tenderness, made for a calm, peaceful life, free from sacrifices; while other men--strong, war-like, good fighters with the souls of athletes--remained unemployed. But it was of no use to dispute it; the word had gone forth, and there was nothing for it but to obey.

When the stronger of his two souls had once a.s.serted itself, the duality of his nature led him to yield to it entirely. A more normal man would have tried to unite them, or combine them, or find some kind of compromise to satisfy the demands of the one and the prudence of the other; but with Clerambault it was everything or nothing. Whether he liked it or not, once he had chosen his road, he followed it straight before him; and the same causes that had made him accept absolutely the views of those around him, drove him to cast off every consideration now that he had begun to see the falsehoods which had deceived him. If he had been less misted, he would not have unmasked them.

Thus the brave-man-in-spite-of-himself set off like Oedipus for the fight with the Sphinx, Country, who awaited him at the crossroads.

Bertin's attack drew the attention of several politicians to Clerambault; they belonged to the extreme Left, and found it difficult to conciliate the opposition to the Government--their reason for existence--with the Sacred Union formed against the enemies' invasion.

They republished the first two articles in a socialist paper which was then balancing itself between contradictions; opposing the war, and at the same time voting for credits. You could see in its pages eloquent statements of internationalism side by side with the appeals of ministers who were preaching a nationalist policy. In this seesaw Clerambault's lightly lyrical pages, where the attack on the idea of Country was made with caution, and the criticism covered up by devotion, would have been taken as a harmless platonic protestation.

Unfortunately, the teeth of censure had fastened themselves upon some phrases, with the tenacity of ants; they might have escaped notice in the general distraction of thought, if it had not been for this.

In the article addressed ”_To Her whom We have Loved_,” the word country appears the first time coupled with an invocation to love.

The critics kept this, but cut it out when it occurred further on dissociated from such flattering expressions. The word, awkwardly concealed under this extinguisher, shone all the more brightly in the mind of the reader--but this they were too dull to perceive, and great importance was thus given to writings which had not much in themselves. It must be added that all minds were then in a pa.s.sive state, in which the slightest word of liberal humanitarianism took on an extraordinary importance, particularly if signed by a well-known name.

The ”_Pardon Asked of the Dead_,” was more effective than the other ever could be; its sadness touched the ma.s.s of simple hearts, to whom the war was agony. The authorities had been indifferent up to now, but at the first hint of this they tried to put a stop to it. They had sense enough to know that rigorous measures against Clerambault would be a mistake, but they could put pressure on the paper through influence behind the scenes. An opposition to the writer showed itself on the staff of the paper. Naturally they did not blame the internationalism of his views; they merely stigmatised it as _bourgeois_ sentimentality.

Clerambault furnished them with fresh arguments by a new article, where his aversion to war seemed incidentally to condemn revolution as well. Poets are proverbially bad politicians.

It was a reply to ”_The Appeal to the Dead_,” that Barres, like an owl perched on a cypress in a graveyard, had wailed forth.

_TO THE LIVING_

_Death rules the world. You that are living, rise and shake off the yoke! It is not enough that the nations are destroyed. They are bidden to glorify Death, to march towards it with songs; they are expected to admire their own sacrifice ... to call it the ”most glorious, the most enviable fate” ... but how untrue this is! Life is the great, the holy thing, and love of life is the first of virtues. The men of today have it no longer; this war has shown that, and even worse. It has proved that during the last fifteen years, many have hoped for these horrible upheavals--you cannot deny it! No man loves life who has no better use for it than to throw it into the jaws of Death. Life is a burden to many--to you rich of the middle-cla.s.s, reactionary conservatives, whose moral dyspepsia takes away your appet.i.te, everything tastes flat and bitter. Everything bores you. It is a heavy burden also to you proletarians, poor, unhappy, discouraged by your hard lot. In the dull obscurity of your lives, hopeless of any change for the better,--Oh, Ye of little faith!--your only chance of escape seems to be through an act of violence which lifts you out of the mire for one moment at least, even if it be the last. Anarchists and revolutionists who have preserved something of the primitive animal energy rely on these qualities to liberate themselves in this way; they are the strong. But the ma.s.s of the people are too weary to take the initiative, and that is why they eagerly welcome the sharp blade of war which pierces through to the core of the nations. They give themselves up to it, darkly, voluptuously. It is the only moment of their dim lives when they can feel the breath of the infinite within them,--and this moment is their annihilation_....

_Is this a way to make the best of life?... Which we can only maintain, it would seem, by renouncing it; and for the sake of what carnivorous G.o.ds?... Country, Revolution ... who grind millions of men in their b.l.o.o.d.y jaws_.

_What glory can be found in death and destruction? It is Life that we need, and you do not know it, for you are not worthy. You have never felt the blessing of the living hour, the joy that circulates in the light. Half-dead souls, you would have us all die with you, and when we stretch out our hands to save you, our sick brothers, you seek to drag us down with you into the pit_.

_I do not lay the blame on you, poor unfortunates, but on your masters, our leaders of the hour, our intellectual and political heads, masters of gold, iron, blood, and thought!... You who rule the nations, who move armies; you who have formed this generation by your newspapers, your books, your schools and your churches, and who have made docile sheep of the free souls of men!... All this enslaving education, whether lay or Christian, though it dwells with an unhealthy joy on military glory and its beat.i.tude, still shows its utter hollowness, for both Church and State bait their hook with Death_....

_Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, politicians, and priests, artists, authors, dancers of death; inwardly you are all full of decay and dead men's bones. Truly you are the sons of them that slew Christ, and like them you lay on men's shoulders burdens grievous to be borne, which you yourselves would not touch with the end of your fingers. Crucifiers are you like them, and those who come among you to help the suffering peoples, bringing blessed peace in their hands, you imprison and insult them, and as the Scripture says, persecute them from city to city until all the righteous blood shed upon the earth shall fall upon your heads_.

_You work only to provide food for Death; your countries are made to subdue the future to the past, and bind the living to the putrifying corpses of the dead. You condemn the new life to perpetuate the empty rites of the tomb.... Let us rise! The resurrection, the Easter of the living, is at hand_!