Clerambault Part 24

They laid him on a bed, in a room beside that in which the young paralytic lay with his friends now gathered round him. The door remained open. The spirit of the dead man seemed near them.

Moreau spoke bitterly of the absurdity of this murder; why not strike one of the great pirates of the triumphant reaction, or a recognised head of the revolutionary group? Why choose this inoffensive, unbia.s.sed man, who was kind to everyone, and almost too comprehending to all sides?

"Hatred makes no mistakes," said Edme Froment. "It has been guided by a sure instinct to the right mark; for an enemy often sees more clearly than a friend. No, there is no doubt about it, the most dangerous adversary of society and the established order in this world of violence, falsehood, and base compromises, is, and has always been, the man of peace and a free conscience. The crucifixion of Jesus was no accident; He had to be put to death. He would be executed today; for a great evangelist is a revolutionary, and the most radical of all. He is the inaccessible source from whence revolutions break through the hard ground, the eternal principle of non-submission of the spirit to Caesar, no matter who he may be--the unjust force. This explains the hatred of those servants of the State, the domesticated peoples, for the insulted Christ who looks at them in silence, and also for His disciples, for us, the eternal insurrectionists, the conscientious objectors to tyranny from high or low, to that of today or tomorrow ... for us, who go before One greater than ourselves, who comes bringing to the world the Word of salvation, the Master laid in the grave but '_qui sera en agonie jusqu' a la fin du monde_,'[1]

whose suffering will endure to the world's end, the unfettered Spirit, the Lord of all." [Footnote 1: The quotation is from Pascal.

(Author.)]

SIERRE, 1916--PARIS, 1920.