Clerivault

“ It is idle to dwell on the sad, fond scene, the more so as the spirit of youth is elastic, and easily extended to new interests, so that, even at the worst, there was a measure of consolation to be foreseen in the prospect of unknown adventuring. But presently they all came out into the road; and there in the blown evening was a man standing, and three horses held by him in a group; at sight of whom some spark of ancient memory glowed in the boy, and the name Clerivault sprang out of nowhere into his mind. ”

“ The two walked on a little; and then said Clerivault, breaking a silence between them: ‘This place consorts not with your dreams, mayhap, of what was to be; yet shall you come to be as happy as the day in it. We are few, but the moor is big. It is a wild free life thou shalt lead, and content and lustihood shalt thou draw from it. Now mount with me, I prithee, to thy chamber once again, and I will show thee things.’
So they went up together, and there found Gammer Harlock busy bed-making. She was an old woman, bent and bony, but with an amazing vigour in her attenuated frame. ”

“ And indeed, what with vigorous exercise, health, a mighty appetite and fine weather, Brion was soon in the mind to welcome solitude, though in a desolate mansion, as a condition as admirable as any which could have befallen him. He and Clerivault, his constant companion, were for ever on foot or on horseback, galloping over the moors, penetrating to town or village, or scrambling over rock and fell in search, pedantically, of the picturesque. They climbed the great tors, and swung the famous logging-stone ”

“ Going down the garden on the morning after the encounter, Brion felt his every pore expanding with delight. Balm was in the air; an incense rose from the earth; the winter aconites had blinked the frost from their golden eyes, and, with their ruffs starched and smart, were smiling in holiday rows under the wall. Even a surviving snowdrop or two—those sweet little acolytes of Candlemas, as Clerivault called them—opened their hearts to the sun, and betrayed to it the tender green thoughts they were used to guard so shyly. ”

“ The idea of snatching his precious hatred away from between his teeth! From the slight acquaintance that he had with Clerambault before the war, he felt an antipathy for him; as a writer, on account of the new form of his art, and as a man for numerous reasons: his love of life, and other men, his democratic ideals, his rather silly optimism, and his European aspirations. At the very first glance, with the instinct of a rheumatic in mind and body, Vaucoux had classed Clerambault as one of those pestilent persons who open doors and windows and make a draught in that closed house, his Country. ”

“ Clerambault resisted feebly, for he knew that nothing can be done to convince a young man who has made himself part of a system. Discussion is hopeless at that age. Earlier there is some chance to act on him, when, as it were, the hermit-crab is looking for his shell; and later something may be done when the shell begins to wear and be uncomfortable; but when the coat is new, the only thing is to let him wear it while it fits him. If he grows, or shrinks, he will get another. We will force no one, but let no one try to put force on us! ”

“ There was proof enough and to spare; there always is; all that is needed is to know when to open and shut your eyes ...But nevertheless Clerambault was not entirely satisfied. These half-truths, or truths with false tails to them, produced a secret uneasiness in the conscience of this honest man, showing itself in a passionate irritation against the enemy, which grew more and more. On the same lines--like two buckets in a well, one going up as the other goes down--his patriotic enthusiasm grew and drowned the last torments of his mind in a salutary intoxication. ”

“ Their brains were given to them to be used, not for truth, but for victory. Since in the wars of today, in which entire peoples are engulfed, thoughts as well as guns are enrolled. They slay the soul, they reach beyond the seas, and destroy after centuries have passed. Thought is the heavy artillery which works from a distance. Naturally Clerambault aimed his pieces, also the question for him was no longer to see clearly, largely, to take in the horizon, but to sight the enemy,—it gave him the illusion that he was helping his son. ”

“ The thought of the sombre pessimism which threatened to overwhelm these young men after the war was a grave anxiety to Clerambault. The moral danger was a serious one, of which the Governments took no notice at all. They were like bad coachmen who flog their horses up a steep hill at a gallop; it is true that the horse reaches the top, but as the road goes on he stumbles and falls, foundered for life. With what a gallant spirit our young men rushed to the assault in the beginning of the war! And then their ardour gradually diminished. ”

“ The hill on which the town is built is surmounted by a keep of the 14th century, the relic of a fortress the site of which is partly occupied by a large penitentiary for women. The church dates from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The hôtel-de-ville, built by King Charles IV., who was born at Clermont in 1294, is the oldest in the north of France. The most attractive feature of the town is the Promenade du Châtellier on the site of the old ramparts. Clermont is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a tribunal of first instance, a communal college and a large lunatic asylum. ”

“ This filthy odour finally sobered Clerambault; with horror he tore off the skin of the beast whose prey he had been.
Ah, how thick it was,--warm, silky, and beautiful, and at the same time stinking and bloody, made of the lowest instincts, and the highest illusions. To love, give ourselves to all, be a sacrifice for all, be but one body and one soul, our Country the sole life!... What then is this Country, this living thing to which a man sacrifices his life, the life of all but his conscience and the consciences of others? ”

“ 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....
"The blood of my son is on my head," said Clerambault sadly. "The death of the youth of Europe, in all countries, lies at the door of European thought. It has been everywhere a servant to the hangman." ”

“ Thou art called the Public Enemy, or The One against All. To think that this nickname should have been fastened on the weak, ordinary Clerambault! But he did not remember that at this moment, his thoughts were filled with the one who has always existed, ever since man has been known on the earth; the one who has never ceased to fight their follies, that they may be delivered--_The One whom All oppose_.... How many times throughout the ages have they rejected and crushed him! But in the midst of his agony a supernatural joy sustains him ”

“ One gloried to be a bubble tossed on the flood,--some said of the race and others of the universal life. These fine theories, from which men of talent managed to extract receipts for art and thought, were in full flower in 1914. The heart of the simple Clerambault rejoiced in such visions, for nothing could have harmonised better with his warm heart and inaccurate mind. If one has but little self-possession it is easy to give oneself up to others, to the world, to that indefinable Providential Force on whose shoulders we can throw the burden of thought and will. ”

“ Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval; I was myself when young: but that wears out in a very short time."
M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me.
Clerval was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for the minutiæ of science. Languages were his principal study; and he sought, by acquiring their elements, to open a field for self-instruction on his return to Geneva. ”

“ The truth of this remark was abundantly evident to Clerambault in a long conversation that he had with Froment the next day. If the courage of the young man did not desert him in the ruin of his life, it was all the more to his credit, as he had never professed to be an apostle of self-abnegation. He had had great hopes and robust ambitions, fully justified by his talents and vigorous youth, but unlike his friend Chastenay, he had never for a moment cherished any illusions as to the war. ”

“ Clerambault heard him one day talking with a friend named Lagneau on leave from the front; they said the poilus meant to knock everything to pieces when the war was over, maybe before. A man of the lower classes in France is often charming, quick to seize on your idea before you have had a chance to explain it thoroughly ”

“ And it is not possible for him to look long into the eyes of those who influence him, even though they are his dearest, for they are pressed too close against him. There is no time; no perspective. We feel only that our bodies are crushed together, closely entwined by our common destiny, and tossed on the muddy torrent of multitudinous existence. Clerambault felt that he had not seen his son in any real sense until after his death; and the brief hour in which he and Rosine had recognised each other was one in which the bonds of a baleful delusion had been broken by the force of suffering. ”

“ It is all very well for sentimental Germans to have a thick-headed belief in themselves; deep down in an eloquent and sensitive creature like Clerambault, the vision of the Gaul—always alert in his thick woods—observes, lets nothing escape, and is ready for a laugh at everything. ”

“ 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. ”

“ True human intercourse is banished from the education of today, but this vital sentiment, hitherto repressed, had revived in the trenches, filled with living, suffering flesh thrown together. At first it was hard to let oneself go; the general hardening, the fear of sentimentality or of ridicule, tended to put barriers between hearts; but when Moreau was laid up, his sheath of pride began to give way, and Clerambault had little difficulty in breaking through it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one in this circle, at least in the early days, thought of constraining Clerambault, but sometimes it seemed to him that his ideas were strangely habited in the fashion of his hosts. What unexpected echoes he heard on their lips! He let his friends talk, while he himself said but little, but when he had left them, he would feel troubled and rather ironical. "Are those my thoughts?" he would say to himself. It is terribly difficult for one soul to communicate with another, impossible perhaps, and who knows?... Nature is wiser than we ... ”

“ Each felt his inferiority; with pride on the one hand, and awkwardness on the other, for Clerambault knew that in many essential respects he was inferior to the intelligent workman. He was right; for from their ranks will be recruited the leaders of the future. The best class of these men contained many honest and virile minds able to understand Clerambault. With an untouched idealism they still kept a firm hold on reality, and though their daily life had accustomed them to struggles, disappointments, and treachery, they were trained to patience ”

“ When an artist submits his work for your approval, is it proper to say to him: "I should prefer to read another one quite different from this?" This was a fresh sign to Clerambault of the sadly lukewarm patriotism that he had already noticed in Perrotin. This lack of comprehension chilled his feeling towards his old friend. The war, he thought, was the great test of characters, it revised all values, and tried out friendships. And he thought that the loss of Perrotin was balanced by the gain of Camus, and many new friends, plain people, no doubt, but simple and warm-hearted. ”

“ It would be difficult to find an example, in any regular army, of one so young and of such a subordinate rank as Clive, having crowded into the short space of two years such a series of successful enterprises. He was not more than twenty-seven years of age, and had only within the last year been promoted to the rank of Captain. After being distinguished on several occasions by the most resolute valour, he had displayed at Arcot, and during the operations which followed that memorable siege, all the superior qualities of a military leader. ”