Clerambault Part 12

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_!

_Sons of men, it is not true that you are, the slaves of the dead and are chained by them like serfs to the earth. Let the dead past bury its dead, and itself with them; you are children of the living, and live in your turn. Souls who are bound to the countries of the past, shake off the neurasthenic torpor, wracked by outbursts of frenzy, which weighs you down. Shake it off, my brothers, you who are young and strong; be masters of the present and the past, fathers and sons of your works. Set yourselves free! Each one of you is Man;--not flesh that rots in the tomb, but the blazing fire of life which purifies corruption and renews long-dead corpses, the flame ever new and young which circles the earth with its burning arms. Be free! Conquerors of the Bastille, you have not yet opened the dungeon within you, the falsely called Fatality. It was built as a prison-house for you centuries ago, by slaves or tyrants. They were all convicts of the same stamp, who were afraid that you would discover that you were free. Religions, races, countries, materialistic science, the heavy shadows of the past, are between you and the sun; but go forward!

Liberty is there, behind those ramparts and towers, built of prejudices, dead laws, and consecrated falsehoods. They are guarded by the interests of some, the opinion of the drilled ma.s.ses, and your own doubting spirit. Dare to will; and behind the crumbling walls of this spurious Destiny, you will once more behold the sun and the illimitable horizon_.

Insensible to the revolutionary heat of this appeal, the staff of the newspaper only fastened its attention on the few lines where Clerambault seemed to lump all violences together, those of the "left"

along with those of the "right." What did this poet mean by giving lessons to the socialists in a party paper? In the name of what theory? He was not even a socialist. He was nothing but a Tolstoyian anarchist; let him go back to his exercises in style, and his middle-cla.s.s where he belonged. Some larger-minded spirits remonstrated in vain, that, with or without any label, liberal ideas ought to be welcomed, and that those of Clerambault, however ignorant he might be of the party doctrines, were more truly socialistic than those of members of the party who joined in the work of national slaughter. These views were over-ruled; Clerambault's article was returned to him, after spending some weeks in the bottom of a drawer, on the pretext that there were so many current items that they took up all the s.p.a.ce, and that the paper had too much copy already.

Clerambault took his article to a small review, which was more attracted by his name than by his ideas. The upshot was that the review was called down, and suspended by police order the day after the article appeared, though it had been whitewashed through and through.

Clerambault, however, persisted. The most rebellious people in the world are those who are forced to rebellion after a lifetime of submission. I remember once to have seen a big sheep so worried by a dog that he finally threw himself upon him. The dog was overcome by this unexpected reversal of the laws of nature and ran away, howling with surprise and terror. The Dog-State is too sure of its own fangs to feel afraid of a few mutinous sheep; but the lamb Clerambault no longer calculated the danger; he simply put his head down and b.u.t.ted.

Generous and weak natures are p.r.o.ne to pa.s.s without transition from one extreme to another; so from an intensely gregarious feeling Clerambault had jumped at one bound to the extreme of individual isolation. Because he knew it so well, he could see nothing around him but the plague of obedience, that social suggestion of which the effects are everywhere manifest. The pa.s.sive heroism of the armies excited to frenzy, like millions of ants absorbed in the general ma.s.s, the servility of a.s.semblies, despising the head of their Government, but sustaining him by their votes, even at the risk of an explosion brought about by one "bolter," the sulky but well-drilled submission of even the liberal Parties, sacrificing their very reason for existence to the absurd fetish of abstract unity. This abdication, this pa.s.sion, represented the true enemy in Clerambault's eyes. And it was his task, he thought, to break down its great suggestive power by awakening doubt, the spirit that eats away all chains.

The chief seat of the disease was the idea of Nation; this inflamed point could not be touched without howls from the beast. Clerambault attacked it at once, without gloves.

_What have I to do with your nations? Can you expect me to love or hate a nation? It is men that I love or hate, and in all nations you will find the n.o.ble, the base, and the ordinary man. Yes, and everywhere are few great or low, while the ordinary abound. Like or dislike a man for what he is, not for what others are; and if there is one man who is dear to me in a whole nation, that prevents me from condemning it. You talk of struggles and hatred between races? Races are the colours of life's prism; it binds them together, and we have light. Woe to him who shatters it! I am not of one race, I belong to life as a whole; I have brothers in every nation, enemy or ally, and those you would thrust upon me as compatriots are not always the nearest. The families of our souls are scattered through the world.

Let us re-unite them! Our task is to undo these chaotic nations, and in their place to bind together more harmonious groups. Nothing can prevent it; on the anvil of a common suffering, persecution will forge the common affection of the tortured peoples_.

Clerambault did not pride himself on his logic, but only tried to get at the popular idol through the joints of his armour. Often he did not deny the nation-idea, but accepted it as natural, at the same time attacking national rivalries in the most forcible manner. This att.i.tude was by no means the least dangerous.

_I cannot interest myself in struggles for supremacy between nations; it is indifferent which colour comes up, for humanity gains, no matter who is the winner. It is true, that in the contests of peace, the most vital, intelligent, and hard-working people, will always excel. But if the defeated compet.i.tors, or those who felt themselves falling behind, were to resort to violence to eliminate their successful rivals, it would be a monstrous thing. It would mean the sacrifice of the welfare of mankind to a commercial interest, and Country is not a business firm. It is of course unfortunate that when one nation goes up, another is apt to go down. But when "big business" in my country interferes with smaller trade, we do not say that it is a crime of lese-patriotism, despite the fact that it may be a fight which brings ruin and death to many innocent victims_.

_The existing economic system of the world is calamitous and bad; it ought to be remedied; but war, which tries to swindle a more fortunate and able compet.i.tor for the benefit of the inexpert or the lazy, makes this vicious system worse; it enriches a few, and ruins the community_.

_All peoples cannot walk abreast on the same road; they are always pa.s.sing each other, and being outstripped in their turn. What does it matter, since we are all in the same column? We should get rid of our silly self-conceit. The pole of the world's energy is constantly changing, often in the same country. In France it has pa.s.sed from Roman Provence to the Loire of the Valois; now it is at Paris, but it will not stay there always. The entire creation swings in alternate rhythm from germinating spring to dying autumn. Commercial methods are not immutable, any more than the treasures beneath the earth are inexhaustible. A people spends itself for centuries, without counting the cost; its very greatness will lead to its decline. It is only by renouncing the purity of its blood and mixing with other nations that it can subsist. Our old men today are sending the young ones to death; it does not make them younger, and they are killing the future_.

_Instead of raging against the laws of life, a wholesome people will try to understand them and see its real progress, not in a stupid obstinacy which refuses to grow old, but in a constant effort to advance with the age, changing and becoming greater. To each epoch its own task. It is merely sloth and weakness if we cling all our lives to the same one. Learn to change, for in that is life. The factory of humanity has work for all of us. Labour for all, peoples of the world, each man taking pride in the work of all the rest, for the travail, the genius of the whole earth is ours also!_

These articles appeared here and there, whenever possible, in some little sheet of advanced literary and anarchistic views, in which violent attacks on persons took the place of a reasoned-out campaign against the order of things. They were nearly illegible, defaced as they were by the censor. Besides, when an article was reprinted in another paper, he would let pa.s.s with a capricious forgetfulness what he had cut out the day before, and cut what he had pa.s.sed then. It took close study to make out the sense of the article after this treatment, but the remarkable thing was that the adversaries of Clerambault, not his friends, went to this trouble. Ordinarily, at Paris, these squalls do not last long. The most vindictive enemies, trained to wars of the pen, know that silence is a sharper weapon than insult, and get more out of their animosity by keeping it quiet; but in the hysterical crisis in which Europe was struggling, there was no guide, even for hatred. Clerambault was continually being recalled to the public mind by the violent attacks of Bertin, though he never failed to conclude each one in which he had discharged his venom, with a disdainful: "He is not worth speaking of."

Bertin was only too familiar with the weaknesses, defects of mind, and small absurdities of his former friend; he could not resist the temptation to touch them with a sure hand, and Clerambault, stung and not wise enough to hide it, let himself be drawn into the fight, retaliated, and proved that he too could draw blood from the other.

Thus a fierce enmity arose between the two.

The result might have been foreseen. Up to this time Clerambault had been inoffensive, confining himself on the whole to moral dissertations. His polemic did not step outside the circle of ideas.

It might as well have been applied to Germany, England, or ancient Rome, as to the France of today. To tell the truth, like nine-tenths of his cla.s.s and profession, he was ignorant of the political facts about which he declaimed, so that his trumpetings could hardly disturb the leaders of the day. In the midst of the tumult of the press, the noisy pa.s.sage of arms between Clerambault and Bertin had two consequences; in the first place it forced Clerambault to play with more care, and choose a less slippery ground than logomachy, and on the other it brought him in contact with men better informed as to the facts who furnished him with the necessary information. A short time before there had been formed in France a little society, semi-clandestine, for independent study and free criticism on the war, and the causes that had led up to it. The Government, always vigilant and ready to crush any attempt at freedom of thought, nevertheless did not consider this society dangerous. Its members were prudent and calm, men of letters before all, who avoided notoriety, and contented themselves with private discussion; it was thought better policy to keep them under observation, and between four walls.

These calculations proved to be wrong, for truth modestly and laboriously discovered, though known only to five or six, cannot be uprooted; it will spring from the earth with irresistible force.

Clerambault now learned for the first time of the existence of these pa.s.sionate seekers after truth, who recalled the times of the Dreyfus case. In the general oppression, their apostolate behind closed doors took on the appearance of a little early-Christian group in the catacombs. Thanks to them, he discovered the falsehoods as well as the injustices of the "Great War." He had had a faint suspicion of them, but he had not dreamed how far the history that touches us most closely had been falsified, and the knowledge revolted him. Even in his most critical moments, his simplicity would never have imagined the deceptive foundations on which reposes a Crusade for the Right, and as he was not a man to keep his discovery to himself, he proclaimed it loudly, first in articles which were forbidden by the censor, and then in the shape of sarcastic apologues, or little symbolic tales, touched with irony. The Voltairian apologues slipped through sometimes, owing to the inattention of the censor, and in this way Clerambault was marked out to the authorities as a very dangerous man.

Those who thought they knew him best were surprised. His adversaries had called him sentimental, and a.s.suredly so he was, but he was aware of it, and because he was French he could laugh at it, and at himself.

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. The surprising thing is that this under-spirit will emerge when you least expect it, during the darkest trials and in the most pressing danger. The universal sense of humour came as a tonic to Clerambault, and his character, scarcely freed from the conventions in which it had been bound, took on suddenly a vital complexity. Good, tender, combative, irritable, always in extremes--he knew it, and that made him worse--tearful, sarcastic, sceptical, yet believing, he was surprised when he saw himself in the mirror of his writings. All his vitality, hitherto prudently shut into his _bourgeois_ life, now burst forth, developed by moral solitude and the hygiene of action.

Clerambault saw that he had not known himself; he was, as it were, new-born, since that night of anguish. He learned to taste a joy of which he had never before had an idea--the giddy joy of the free lance in a fight; all his senses strung like a bow, glad in a perfect well-being.