Part 23 (2/2)
The professional soldiers will keep the war going as long as they can, and when that is stopped, they will plan for another in the shortest possible time. Before-the-war pacifists will all come out of their holes, and be found at their posts, with touching demonstrations of joy, while their old leaders who have been beating the drum in the rear for over five years will reappear with olive branches in their hands, smiling and talking of brotherly love. The men who swore never to forget when they were in the trenches will accept all the explanations and congratulations that are offered them. It is such a bore not to forget! Five years of exhausting fatigue make you accept anything through sheer weariness or boredom, or the wish to finish it all, so the flourishes of triumph will drown the cries of the vanquished. The one thought of most people will be to go back to their sleepy before-the-war habits; first they will dance on the graves, and then lie down and go to sleep on them, till after a while the war will be only something to boast about in the evening. Perhaps they will succeed in forgetting it so entirely, that the Dance of Death can be resumed;--not all at once, of course, but later when we have had a good rest. So there will be peace everywhere, till the time when it will be war everywhere again. In the meaning that is now given to the words, my friends, peace and war are just different labels for the same bottle. It reminds me of what King Bomba said of his valiant soldiers; dress them in red or in green as you choose, they will take to their heels just the same. One says peace and the other war, but neither means anything, there is only universal servitude, mult.i.tudes swept along like the ebb and flow of tides; and this will continue as long as no strong souls raise themselves above the human ocean, as long as no one dares to fight against the fate that sways these great ma.s.ses.”
”Fight against nature,” said Coulanges. ”Would you resist her laws?”
”There are no immutable laws,” said Clerambault, laws like beings, live, change, and die. It is the duty of the spirit, not to accept these as the Stoics taught us, but rather to modify and shape them to our needs. Laws are the outside form of the soul, and if it grows they must grow also. The only just laws are those that suit me. Am I wrong in thinking that the shoe should be made to fit the foot, not the foot for the shoe?”
”I do not say that you are wrong,” said the Count, ”we force nature all the time in cattle-breeding, so that even the shape and instincts of the animals are modified; why not the human creature? No, far from blaming you, I maintain on the contrary that the object and the duty of every man worthy of the name is, just as you say, to alter human nature. It is the source of all real progress; even to strive after the impossible has a concrete value. But that does not mean that we shall succeed in what we undertake.”
”It is possible that we may not succeed for ourselves and our children; it is, even more, probable. Perhaps our unhappy nation, the entire West is on the downward path. There are many things that make me fear that we are hastening to our fall; our vices and our virtues, which are almost equally injurious, the pride and hatred, the jealous spite worthy of a big village, the endless chain of revenges, the blind obstinacy, the clinging to the past with its superannuated conceptions of honour and duty, which causes us to sacrifice the future for the past; all these make me fear that the terrible warning of this war has taught nothing to our slothful and turbulent heroism.
There was a time when I should have been overwhelmed by such a thought as this, but now I feel lifted above it, as I am above my own mortal body; the only tie between me and it is made of pity. My spirit is brother to that which, on the other side of the globe, is now touched by the new fire. Do you remember the beautiful words of the Seer of St. Jean d'Acre?[1]”
[Footnote 1: Reference to Abdul Baha, at present the head of the Babists or Bahaists. He was at that time a prisoner at St. Jean d'Acre. See ”Lessons of St. Jean d'Acre,” by Abdul Baha, collected by Laura Clifford Barney. (Author.)]
”'_The Sun of Truth is like our sun. It rises in many different places.
One day it appears in the sign of Cancer, on another it rises in Libra, but it is always the same sun. Once the Sun of Truth rose in the constellation of Abraham, and set in that of Moses, flaming over the whole horizon; and later it was seen in the sign of Christ, bright and resplendent. When its light shone over Sinai, the followers of Abraham were blinded. But wherever the sun may rise, my eyes will be fixed upon it; even if it should appear in the west it will always be the sun._'”
”'_C'est du Nord aujourd'hui que nous vient la lumiere_,'”[1] said Moreau, laughing (”It is from the North that our light comes today”).
[Footnote 1: A famous line of Voltaire's. (Author.)]
Though the hearing was set for one o'clock, and it was now barely twelve, Clerambault wanted to start at once, he was so afraid of being late.
They had not far to go, and indeed his friends had no need to protect him against the rabble which hung about the Palais de Justice, a crowd which in any case was considerably thinned out by the morning's news.
There were only a few curs, more noisy than dangerous, who might have snapped at their heels.
They had reached the corner of the Rue Vaugirard and the Rue d'a.s.sas, when Clerambault, finding that he had forgotten an important paper, went back to look for it in his apartment; the others stood there waiting for him. They saw him come out and cross the street. On the opposite sidewalk, near a cab-stand, was a well-dressed man of about his own age, grey-haired, not very tall, and rather stout. They saw this person go up to Clerambault--it all pa.s.sed so quickly that they had no time even to cry out. There was a brief exchange of words, an arm raised, a shot!--they saw him totter, and ran up. Too late.
They laid him down on a bench; a little crowd gathered, more curious than shocked (people had seen so many things of this kind), looking over each ether's shoulders:
”Who is it?”
”A defeatist.”
”Serve him right, then I The dirty beasts have done us harm enough!”
”I don't know, there are worse things than to want the war to be over.”
”There is only one way to finish it; we must fight it out. It is the pacifists' fault that it has dragged on so long.”
”You might almost say that they were the cause of it; the boches counted on them. Without those fools there wouldn't have been any war.” Clerambault lying there half-unconscious, thought of the old woman who threw her f.a.got on the wood stacked around John Huss ...
_Sancta simplicitas._
Vaucoux had not attempted to get away, but let them take the revolver out of his hand without resistance. They held his arms fast, and he stood looking at his victim, whose eyes met his; each thought of his son.
Moreau, much excited, spoke threateningly to Vaucoux; who, like an impa.s.sive image of hatred, only answered briefly: ”I have killed the Adversary, the Enemy.”
A faint smile hovered on Clerambault's lips as he looked at Vaucoux.
”My poor friend,” he thought, ”It is within you yourself that the Enemy lies,”--his eyes closed ... centuries seemed to pa.s.s.... ”There are no enemies....” and Clerambault entered into the peace of the worlds to come.
Seeing that he had lost consciousness, his friends carried him into Froment's house which was close by; but he was dead before they reached it.
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