Clerambault Part 23

When Clerambault at last went to bed, his wife was sound asleep. She was one of those people whom nothing can keep awake, who sink into profound slumber as soon as their heads touch the pillow. But Clerambault could not follow her example; he lay on his back with his eyes open, staring into the darkness, all through the rest of the night.

There were pale glimmers from the street in the half-shadow; and a quiet star or two high up in a dark sky; one seemed to be falling in a great half-circle--it was only an airplane keeping watch over the sleeping city. Clerambault followed its sweep with his eyes, and seemed, to fly with it, the distant hum of the human planet coming faintly to his ear, like a strange music of the spheres not foreseen by Ionian sages.

He felt happy, for the burden was lifted from his body and soul, his whole being seemed to be relaxed, to float in air. Pictures of the past day with its agitations and fatigues, pa.s.sed before his eyes, but did not disturb him. An old man hustled by a mob of young _bourgeois_ ... He could hear their loud voices, too loud--but now they had vanished like faces that you catch a glimpse of from a moving train.

The train flies on and the vision disappears in the roaring tunnel....

There is the sombre sky again, and the mysterious star, still falling.

Silent s.p.a.ces around, the clear darkness, and the cool fresh air blowing on his soul; all infinity in one tiny drop of life, in a heart whose spark flickers to its end, but knows it is free, and that its vast home is near.

Like a good steward of the treasure placed in his charge, Clerambault made up the account of his day. He looked back on his attempts, his efforts, his impulses, his mistakes; how little remained of his life, for nearly all that he had built up he had afterwards destroyed with his own hands. He had first stated, then denied, and had never ceased to wander in the forest of doubts and contradictions; often torn and bruised, with no guide but the stars half-seen through the branches.

What meaning had there been in this long troubled course, now ending in darkness? One only, he had been free.

Free!... What was this freedom, then, which intoxicated him so completely? This liberty of which he was the master and the slave--this imperious need to be free? He knew well enough that no more than others was he emanc.i.p.ated from the eternal bonds; but the orders that he obeyed differed from others; all are not alike. The word liberty is only one of the clear high commands of the invisible sovereign who rules the world ... whom we call necessity. She it is who excites those of the advance-guard to rebel, and causes them to break with the heavy past which the blind mult.i.tude drags along behind it; for she is the battle-field of the eternal present, where the past and the future must ever strive together, and on this field the ancient laws are conquered, that they may give place to new laws, which will be conquered in their turn.

O Liberty! Thou art always in chains, but they are not the heavy fetters of the past; for each struggle has enlarged thy prison. Who can tell? Perhaps later, when the prison walls have been thrown down....

But in the meanwhile, those whom thou wouldst save resist thee.

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; he is the sacred golden seed of liberty, which fell from we know not what sheaf, and in the darkness of destiny has sowed the germs of light, ever since the first chaos. In the depths of the savage heart of man, the frail atom found shelter, it fought against elementary laws which grind and bend living things; but tirelessly the small golden seed grew, and man the weakest of all creatures, marched against nature and fought her. Each step cost a drop of his blood, in this gigantic duel; he has had to fight nature not only in the world without, but within himself, since he is a part of her. This is the hardest battle, that waged by the man divided against himself; and in the end who will conquer? On the one side is nature with her chariot of iron, in which she hurls worlds and peoples into the abyss; and on the other is only,--The Word. It is no wonder that you laugh, ye slaves! no wonder the servants of force say that it is like "a cur barking at the wheels of an express-train." Yes, if man were only a fragment of matter writhing in vain beneath the hammer of fate; but there is a spirit within him which knows how to smite Achilles on his heel, and Goliath in his forehead. Let him but wrench off a nut, the swift train is overturned, its course stayed. Planetary swirls, obscure ma.s.ses of human-kind, roll down through the ages lighted by flashes of the liberating Spirit: Buddha, the Sages, Jesus--all breakers of chains! I can see the lightning coming, feel it thrill through me, like sparks that fly up beneath the horse's hoofs. The air vibrates with it, as the thick clouds of hate come together with a crash. The flame springs up! If you are alone against the world, have you cause to complain?

You have escaped the crushing yoke, fought your way through, like a nightmare in which one struggles and tears oneself out of the dark waters. You sink, choking, and all at once with a despairing effort you throw yourself beyond the reach of the wave, and sink exhausted but safe on the sh.o.r.e. These people wound me? So much the better, I shall wake up in the free air.

Yes, threatening world, I am indeed free from your fetters, I can never be chained again, and my detested will with which I so often had to fight, my will is now in you. You wanted, like me, to be free, and that made you suffer, and made you my enemy; but now even if you kill me, you have seen the light in me, and once seen, you can no longer reject it. Strike then! But know that in fighting against me you fight yourself also; you are beaten in advance, and when I defend myself, it is you that I defend as well. _The One against All_ is the _One for All_, and soon will be _The One with All_.

I shall no longer be solitary! I feel that I have never been in truth alone. My brothers of the world, you may indeed be scattered afar over the earth like a handful of grain, but I know that you are here beside me. The thought of a man is not solitary; the idea which grows in him springs up in others; when he feels it in his heart, let him rejoice, no matter how unhappy, how injured he may be, for it is the earth reviving. The first spark in a lonely soul is the point of the ray which will pierre the night. So, welcome, Light. Break through the night which is around and within me!... "Clerambault."

The fresh light of day returned, ever young and new, untouched by the stains of men which the sun drinks up like a morning mist.

Madame Clerambault woke, and when she saw her husband with open eyes, she thought that he too had just waked up.

"You had a good sleep," said she. "I don't think you stirred all night long." He did not contradict her, but thought of the vast distances he had traversed in the spirit, that fiery bird that flies through the night.... But feeling that he had come back to earth, he got up.

At the same hour another man rose, who had also pa.s.sed a sleepless night, who had also evoked his dead son, and thought of Clerambault.

whom he did not know, with fierce hatred.

A letter came from Rosine by the first mail, containing a secret that Clerambault had guessed long ago. Daniel had spoken to his parents, and the marriage would take place the next time he came home from the front. She went through the form of asking the consent of her father and mother, but she knew that her wishes were theirs. Her letter radiated happiness and a triumphant security that nothing could shake.

The sad riddle of the agonised world had found an answer, and in the absorption of her young love the universal suffering; did not seem too high a price for the flower that bloomed for her on this b.l.o.o.d.y stem.

In the midst of it all, she was tender and compa.s.sionate as usual, remembering the troubles of others, her father and his worries.

But she seemed to put her happy arms about them, with a simple affectionate conceit, as if she said: "Please don't worry any more over all these ideas, darlings! It is foolish of you to be sad, when you see that happiness is coming."

Clerambault smiled tenderly as he read the letter. No doubt happiness was on the way, but some of us cannot wait for it. "Greet it from me, my little Rose, and do not let it fly away."

About eleven o'clock the Count de Coulanges came to ask after him; he had seen Moreau and Gillot mounting guard before the door. They had come to escort Clerambault according to their promise, but they had not dared to come up because they were an hour too early. Clerambault sent for them, laughing at their excess of zeal, and they admitted that they had thought him perfectly capable of sneaking out of the house without waiting for them; an idea which he confessed had crossed his mind.

The news from the front was good; during the last few days the German offensive had wavered; strange signs of weakness began to appear; and well-founded rumours made it evident that there was a secret disorganisation in the formidable ma.s.s. People said that the limit of his strength had been pa.s.sed and that the athlete was exhausted. There was talk also of contagion from the Russian revolutionary spirit brought by the German troops that had been on the Eastern Front.

With the usual mobility of the French mind, the pessimists of yesterday began to shout for the approaching victory. Already Moreau discounted the calming down of pa.s.sions and the return to common sense. The reconciliation of the nations and the triumph of Clerambault's ideas would follow shortly. He advised them not to deceive themselves too much, and amused himself by describing what would happen when peace was signed; for peace would have to come some day.

"I am going to pretend," said he, "that I am hovering over the town--like the devil on two sticks--the first night after the armistice. I see innumerable sorrowing hearts behind shutters closed against the shouts in the streets. Hearts straining all through these years towards a victory that would lend meaning to their grief; and now they can let go--or break down, sleep, die, perhaps. The politicians will reflect on the quickest and most lucrative way to exploit the success, or turn a somersault if they have guessed wrong.

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.