Clerambault Part 10

"But it is not an invention," said Clerambault, looking Camus in the face. It was the turn of the latter to look as if he had been struck by lightning.

"You say it is not,--not?" he stammered.

"I wrote the pamphlet," said Clerambault, "but the meaning has been distorted by this article."

Camus could not wait for the end of the sentence, but began to howl: "You wrote a thing like that!... You, a man like you!"

Clerambault tried to calm his brother-in-law, begging him not to judge until he knew all; but Camus would do nothing but shout, calling him crazy, and screaming: "I don't know anything about all that. Have you written against the war, or the country. Yes, or no?"

"I wrote that war is a crime, and that all countries are stained by it...."

Without allowing Clerambault to explain himself farther, Camus sprang at him, as if he meant to shake him by the collar; but restraining himself, he hissed in his face that he was the criminal, and deserved to be tried by court-martial at once.

The raised voices brought the servant to listen at the door, and Madame Clerambault ran in, trying to appease her brother, in a high key. Clerambault volunteered to read the obnoxious pamphlet to Camus, but in vain, as he refused furiously, declaring that the papers had told him all he wanted to know about such filth. (He said all papers were liars, but acted on their falsehoods, none the less.) Then, in a magisterial tone, he called on Clerambault to sit down and write on the spot a public recantation. Clerambault shrugged his shoulders, saying that he was accountable to nothing but his own conscience--that he was free.

"No!" roared Camus.

"Do you mean that I am not free to say what I think?"

"You are not free, you have no right to say such things," cried the exasperated Camus. "Your country has claims on you, and your family first of all. They ought to shut you up."

He insisted that the letter should be written that very moment, but Clerambault simply turned his back on him. So he left, banging the door after him, and vowing that he would never set foot there again, that all was over between them.

After this poor Clerambault had to submit to a string of questions from his wife who, without knowing what he had done, lamented his imprudence and asked with tears: "Why, why he had not kept silent? Had they not trouble enough? What was this mania he had for talking? And particularly for talking differently from other people?"

While this was going on, Rosine came back from an errand, and Clerambault appealed to her, telling her in a confused manner of the painful scene that had just taken place, and begging her to sit down there by his table and let him read the article to her. Without even taking off her hat and gloves, Rosine did sit down near him, and listened sensibly, sweetly, and when he had done, kissed him and said:

"Yes, I think it's fine,--but, dear Papa, why did you do it?"

Clerambault was completely taken aback.

"What? You ask why I did it? Don't you think it is right?"

"I don't know. Yes, I believe it must be right since you say so....

But perhaps it was not necessary to write it...."

"Not necessary? But if it is right, it must be necessary."

"But if it makes such a fuss!"

"That is no reason against it."

"But why stir people up?"

"Look here, my little girl, you think as I do about this, do you not?"

"Yes, Papa, I suppose so...."

"You only suppose?... Come now, you detest the war, as I do, and wish it were over; everything that I wrote there I have said to you, and you agreed...."

"Yes, Papa."

"Then you think I am right?"

"Yes, Papa." She put her arms around his neck, "but we don't have to write everything that we think."

Clerambault, much depressed, tried to explain what seemed so evident to him. Rosine listened, and answered quietly, but it was clear that she did not understand. When he had finished, she kissed him again and said:

"I have told you what I think, Papa, but it is not for me to judge.

You know much better than I."

With that she went into her room, smiling at her father, and not in the least suspecting that she had just taken away from him his greatest support.

This abusive attack was not the only one, for when the bell was once tied on the cat it never ceased to ring. However, the noise would have been drowned in the general tumult, if it had not been for a persistent voice which led the chorus of malignity against Clerambault.

Unhappily it was the voice of one of his oldest friends, the author Octave Bertin; for they had been school-fellows at the Lycee Henri IV.

Bertin, a little Parisian, quick-witted, elegant, and precocious, had welcomed the awkward enthusiastic advances of the overgrown youth fresh from the country,--ungainly in body and mind, his clothes always too short for his long legs and arms, a mixture of innocence, simplicity, ignorance, and bad taste, always emphatic, with overflowing spirits, yet capable of the most original sallies, and striking images. None of this had escaped the sharp malicious eye of young Bertin; neither Clerambault's absurdities nor the treasures of his mind, and after thinking him over he had decided to make a friend of him. Clerambault's unfeigned admiration had something to do with this decision. For several years they shared the superabundance of their youthful ideas. Both dreamed of being artists; they read their literary attempts to each other, and engaged in interminable discussions, in which Bertin always had the upper hand. He was apt to be first in everything. Clerambault never thought of contesting his superiority; he was much more likely to use his fists to convince anyone who denied it. He stood in open-mouthed admiration before his brilliant friend, who won all the University prizes without seeming to work for them, and whom his teachers thought destined to the highest honours--official and academic, of course.

Bertin was of the same mind as his teachers; he was in haste to succeed, and believed that the fruit of triumph has more flavour when one's teeth are young enough to bite into it. He had scarcely left the University when he found means to publish in a great Parisian review a series of essays which immediately brought him to the notice of the general public. And without pausing to take breath, he produced one after another a novel in the style of d'Annunzio, a comedy in Rostand's vein, a book on love, another on reforms in the Const.i.tution, a study of Modernism, a monograph on Sarah Bernhardt, and, finally, the "Dialogues of the Living." The sarcastic but measured spirit of this last work obtained for him the position of column writer on one of the leading dailies. Having thus entered journalism he stayed in the profession, and became one of the ornaments of the Paris of Letters, while Clerambault's name was still unknown. The latter had been slow in gaining the mastery over his inward resources, and was so occupied in struggles with himself that he had no time for the conquest of the public. His first works, which were published with difficulty, were not read by more than a dozen people. It is only fair to Bertin to say that he was one of the dozen, and that he appreciated Clerambault's talents. He was even ready to say so, when opportunity served, and as long as Clerambault was unknown, he took pleasure in defending him. It is true that he would sometimes add a friendly and patronising piece of advice to his praises, which, if Clerambault did not always follow, he received with the old affectionate respect.

In a little while Clerambault became known, and even celebrated.

Bertin, somewhat surprised, sincerely pleased by his friend's success--the least bit vexed by it, perhaps--intimated that he thought it exaggerated, and that the better Clerambault was the obscure Clerambault before his reputation was made. He would even undertake to prove this to Clerambault himself, sometimes, who neither agreed nor disagreed. For how could he tell, who thought very little about it, his head being always full of some new work? The two old comrades remained on excellent terms, but little by little they began to see less of one another.

The war had made Bertin a furious jingo. In the old days at school he used to scandalise Clerambault's provincial mind by his impudent disrespect for all values, political and social--country, morality, and religion. In his literary works he continued to parade his anarchism, but in a sceptical, worldly, bored sort of manner which was to the taste of his rich clientele. Now, before this clientele and the rest of those who purveyed to it, his brethren of the popular press and theatres, the contemptible Parny's and Crebillon Jr.'s of the day, he suddenly a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of Brutus immolating his sons. It is true he himself had none, but perhaps that was a regret to him.

Clerambault did not dream of finding fault with him for these opinions; but he did not dream either that his old friend and amoralist would come out against him as the defender of his outraged country. But was it a question simply of his country?

There was a personal note in the furious diatribe that Bertin hurled at him that Clerambault could not understand. In the general mental confusion, Bertin, naturally shocked by Clerambault's ideas, might have remonstrated with him frankly, face to face; but without any warning, he began by a public denunciation. On the first page of his paper appeared an article of the utmost virulence; he attacked, not only his ideas, but his character, speaking of Clerambault's tragic struggle with his conscience as an attack of literary megalomania, brought on by undeserved success. It seemed as if he expressly chose words likely to wound Clerambault, and he ended by summoning him to retract his errors in a tone of the most insulting superiority.

The violence of this article, from so well-known an author, made an event in Paris of the "Clerambault Case." It occupied the reporters for more than a week, a long time for these feather-headed gentry.

Hardly anyone read what Clerambault had actually written; it was not worth while. Bertin had read it, and newspaper men do not make a practice of taking unnecessary trouble; besides it was not a question of reading, but of judgment. A strange sort of Sacred Union was formed over Clerambault; clericals and Jacobins came together to condemn him, and the man whom they admired yesterday was dragged in the mud today.

The national poet became at once a public enemy, and all the myrmidons of the press attacked him with heroic invective. The greater number of them united bad faith with a remarkable ignorance. Very few knew Clerambault's works, they scarcely knew his name or the t.i.tles of his books, but that no more kept them from disparaging him now than it had hindered them from praising him when he was the fas.h.i.+on. Now, in their eyes, everything that he had written was tainted with "bochism,"

though all their quotations were inexact. In the excitement of his investigation, one of them foisted upon Clerambault the authors.h.i.+p of another man's book, the author of which, pale with fright, protested with indignation, dissociating himself entirely from his dangerous fellow-author. Uneasy at their intimacy with Clerambault, some of his friends did not wait to have it recalled, but met it halfway, writing "open letters," to which the papers gave a conspicuous place. Some, like Bertin, coupled their public censure with a demand that he should confess himself in the wrong, and others, less considerate, cast him off in the bitterest and most insulting terms. Clerambault was crushed by all this animosity; it could not arise solely from his articles, it must have been long dormant in the hearts of these men. And why so much hidden hatred?--What had he done to them?... A successful artist does not suspect that besides the smiles of those around there are also teeth, only waiting for the opportunity to bite.

Clerambault did his best to conceal the insults in the papers from his wife. Like a schoolboy trying to spirit away his bad marks he watched for the post so as to suppress the obnoxious sheets, but at last their venom seemed to poison the very air. Among their friends in society, Madame Clerambault and Rosine had to bear many painful allusions, small affronts, even insults. With the instinct of justice which characterises the human beast, and especially the female, they were held responsible for Clerambault's ideas, though his wife and daughter knew little of them and disapproved what they knew. (Their critics did not understand them either.) The more polite were reticent, taking pains not to mention Clerambault's name, or ask after him,--you don't speak of ropes, you know, in the house of a man who has been hanged.... And this calculated silence was worse than open abuse.

You would have said that Clerambault had done something dishonest or immodest. Madame Clerambault would come back full of bitterness, and Rosine suffered too, though she pretended not to mind. One day, a friend, whom they met in the street, crossed to the other side, turning away her head so as to avoid bowing to them; and Rosine was excluded from a benevolent society where she had worked hard for years.

Women were particularly active in this patriotic reprobation.

Clerambault's appeal for reconciliation and pardon had no more violent opponents--and it was the same everywhere. The tyranny of public opinion is an engine of oppression, invented by the modern State, and much more despotic than itself. In times of war certain women have proved, its most ferocious instruments. Bertrand Russell cites the case of an unfortunate man, conductor on a tramway, married, with children, and honourably discharged from the army, who killed himself on account of the insults and persecutions of the women of Middles.e.x.

In all countries, poor wretches like him have been pursued, crazed, driven to death, by these war-maddened Bacchantes. This ought not to surprise us; if we have not foreseen this madness, it is because we, like Clerambault hitherto, have lived on comfortable accepted opinions and idealisations. In spite of the efforts of woman to approximate the fallacious ideal imagined by man for his pleasure and tranquillity, the woman of the present day, weak, cut-off, trimmed into shape as she is, comes much closer than man to the primitive earth. She is at the source of our instincts, and more richly endowed with forces, which are neither moral nor immoral but simply animal. If love is her chief function, it is not the pa.s.sion sublimated by reason but love in the raw state, splendidly blind, mingling selfishness and sacrifice, equally irresponsible, and both subservient to the deep purposes of the race. The tender, flowery embellishments with which the couple always try to veil the forces that affright them, are like arches of tropical vines over a rus.h.i.+ng stream; their object is to deceive. Man could not bear life if his feeble soul saw the great forces, as they are, that carry him along.

His ingenious cowardice strives to adapt them mentally to his weakness; he lies about love, about hatred, about his G.o.ds, and above all he is false about woman and about Country. If the naked truth were shown to him, he would fear to fall into convulsions, and so he subst.i.tutes the pale chromos of his idealism. The war had broken through the thin disguise, and Clerambault saw the cruel beast without the mantle of feline courtesy in which civilisation drapes itself.

Among Clerambault's former friends, the most tolerant were those belonging to the political world. Deputies, Ministers, past or future; accustomed to drive the human flock, they know just what it is worth.

Clerambault's daring seemed merely foolish to them. What they thought in their hearts was twenty times worse, but they thought it silly to speak it, dangerous to write it, more dangerous still to answer it.

You make a thing known when you attack it, and condemnation only gives it greater importance. Their best advice would have been to keep silent about these unlucky articles, which the sleepy, stumbling public would have neglected if left to itself. This was the course usually followed by Germany during the war; if the authorities did not see their way clear to suppress rebellious writers, they hid them under some flowery humbug.

The political spirit of the French Democracy, however, is more outspoken and more narrow-minded; silence is unknown to it, and far from concealing its hatreds, it spits them forth from the house-tops.

Like that of Rude, French liberty opens her mouth and bawls. Anyone who differs from her opinion of the moment is declared a traitor forthwith; there are always some yellow journals to tell at what price the independent voice was bought, and twenty fanatics to stir up the crowd against it. Once started, there is nothing to do but wait until the fit has pa.s.sed off; but in the meantime, look out for yourself!