Clerambault was exciting himself; he was not yet at the bottom, but he was conscientiously trying to reach it.  Nevertheless there remained to him enough lucidity to alarm him at his own progress.  An artist yields more through his sensibility to waves of emotion which reach him from without, but to resist them he has also weapons which others have not.  For the least reflective, he who abandons himself to his lyrical impulses, has in some degree the faculty of introspection which it rests with him to utilise.  If he does not do this, he lacks good-will more than power; he is afraid to look too clearly at himself for fear of seeing an unflattering picture.  Those however who, like Clerambault, have the virtue of sincerity without psychological gifts, are sufficiently well-equipped to exercise some control over their excitability.

One day as he was walking alone, he saw a crowd on the other side of the street, he crossed over calmly and found himself on the opposite sidewalk in the midst of a confused agitation circling about an invisible point.  With some difficulty he worked his way forward, and scarcely was he within this human mill-wheel, than he felt himself a part of the rim, his brain seemed turning round.  At the centre of the wheel he saw a struggling man, and even before he grasped the reason for the popular fury, he felt that he shared it.  He did not know if a spy was in question, or if it was some imprudent speaker who had braved the passions of the mob, but as cries rose around him, he realised that he, yes he, Clerambault, had shrieked out:  ...  “Kill him.” ...

A movement of the crowd threw him out from the sidewalk, a carriage separated him from it, and when the way was clear the mob surged on after its prey.  Clerambault followed it with his eyes; the sound of his own voice was still in his ears,—­he did not feel proud of himself....

From that day on he went out less; he distrusted himself, but he continued to stimulate his intoxication at home, where he felt himself safe, little knowing the virulence of the plague.  The infection came in through the cracks of the doors, at the windows, on the printed page, in every contact.  The most sensitive breathe it in on first entering the city, before they have seen or read anything; with others a passing touch is enough, the disease will develop afterwards alone.  Clerambault, withdrawn from the crowd, had caught the contagion from it, and the evil announced itself by the usual premonitory symptoms.  This affectionate tender-hearted man hated, loved to hate.  His intelligence, which had always been thoroughly straightforward, tried now to trick itself secretly, to justify its instincts of hatred by inverted reasoning.  He learned to be passionately unjust and false, for he wanted to persuade himself that he could accept the fact of war, and participate in it, without renouncing his pacifism of yesterday, his humanitarianism of the day before, and his constant