This intolerance made him feel that he could never attach himself to any party, no matter what it was.  Between the two sides, war or revolution, he could frankly state his preference for one, revolution.  For it alone offered some hope for the future, which the war could only destroy.  But to prefer a party does not mean that you yield to it all independence of thought.  It is the error and abuse of democracies that they wish that all should have the same duties, and impose the same tasks on all; but in an advancing community there are multiple tasks.  While the main body fights to gain an immediate advantage in progress, there are others who should maintain eternal values far above the victors of tomorrow or yesterday and which are beyond all the rest and throw light on the way above the smoke of battle.  Clerambault had allowed himself to be too long blinded by this smoke; he could not plunge into a fresh fight; but in this short-sighted world it is an impropriety, almost a fault to see more clearly than your neighbours.

This sardonic truth was brought home to him in a discussion with these young St. Justs.  They pointed out his mistakes, impertinently enough, by comparing him to the “Astrologer who fell into the Pit”: 

  ...  “They said, poor creature, if your eye
  What lies beneath can hardly spy,
  Think you your gaze can pierce the sky?”

He had enough sense of humour to see the justice of the comparison; yes, he was of the number of: 

  “Those whom phantoms alarm
  While some serious harm
  Threatens them or their farm.”

“Even so,” he said, “do you think that your republic will have no need of astronomers, just as the first one could get along without chemists?  Or are they all to be mobilised?  In that case there would be a good chance of your all finding yourselves together at the bottom of the well!  Is that what you want?  I should not object so much if it were only a question of sharing your fate, but when it comes to joining in your hatreds!”

“You have some of your own, from what I have heard,” said one of the young men.  Just at this moment another man came in with a newspaper in his hand and called to Clerambault: 

“Congratulations, old boy, I see your enemy Bertin is dead.”

The irascible journalist had died in a few hours from an attack of pneumonia.  For the last six months he had pursued with fury anyone whom he suspected of working for peace, or even of wishing for it.  From one step to another he had come to look upon, not only the country, as sacred, but the war also, and among those whom he attacked most fiercely, Clerambault had a foremost place.  Bertin could not pardon the resistance to his onslaughts; Clerambault’s replies had at first only irritated him, but the disdainful silence with which his latest invectives had been met drove him beside himself.  His swollen vanity was deeply wounded, and nothing would have satisfied