Nevertheless he was not entirely metamorphosed, for his soul was not altered, it was only forgotten; as soon as he was alone he could hear it moaning, and for this reason he avoided solitude.  He persisted in not returning to St. Prix, where the family usually stayed in summer, and reinstalled himself in his apartment at Paris, on the fifth floor in the Rue d’Assas.  He would not wait a week, or go back to help in the moving.  He craved the friendly warmth that rose up from Paris, and poured in at his windows; any excuse was enough to plunge into it, to go down into the streets, join the groups, follow the processions, buy all the newspapers,—­which he despised as a rule.  He would come back more and more demoralised, anaesthetised as to what passed within him, the habit of his conscience broken, a stranger in his house, in himself;—­and that is why he felt more at home out of doors than in.

Madame Clerambault came back to Paris with her daughter, and the first evening after their arrival Clerambault carried Rosine off to the Boulevards.  The solemn fervour of the first days had passed.  War had begun, and truth was imprisoned.  The press, the arch-liar, poured into the open mouth of the world the poisonous liquor of its stories of victories without retribution; Paris was decked as for a holiday; the houses streamed with the tricolour from top to bottom, and in the poorer quarters each garret window had its little penny flag, like a flower in the hair.

On the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre they met a strange procession.  At the head marched a tall old man carrying a flag.  He walked with long strides, free and supple as if he were going to leap or dance, and the skirts of his overcoat flapped in the wind.  Behind came an indistinct, compact, howling mass, gentle and simple, arm in arm,—­a child carried on a shoulder, a girl’s red mop of hair between a chauffeur’s cap and the helmet of a soldier.  Chests out, chins raised, mouths open like black holes, shouting the Marseillaise.  To right and left of the ranks, a double line of jail-bird faces, along the curbstone, ready to insult any absent-minded passer-by who failed to salute the colours.  Rosine was startled to see her father fall into step at the end of the line, bare-headed, singing and talking aloud.  He drew his daughter along by the arm, without noticing the nervous fingers that tried to hold him back.

When they came in Clerambault was still talkative and excited.  He kept on for hours, while the two women listened to him patiently.  Madame Clerambault heard little as usual, and played chorus.  Rosine did not say a word, but she stealthily threw a glance at her father, and her look was like freezing water.