It was clear to Clerambault that when personal energy is lacking, the highest qualities of head and heart only increase the public servitude.  The stoicism which submits to the laws of the universe prevents us from resisting those which are cruel, instead of saying to destiny:  “No, thus far, and no farther!” ...  If it pushes on you will see the stoic stand politely aside, as he murmurs:  “Please come in!”—­Cultivated heroism, the taste for the superhuman, even the inhuman, chokes the soul with its sacrifices, and the more absurd they are, the more sublime they appear—­Christians of today, more generous than their Master, render all to Caesar; a cause seems sacred to them from the moment that they are asked to immolate themselves to it.  To the ignominy of war they piously kindle the flame of their faith, and throw their bodies on the altar.  The people bend their backs, and accept with a passive, ironic resignation....  “No need to borrow trouble.”  Ages and ages of misery have rolled over this stone, but in the end stones do wear down and become mud.

Clerambault tried to talk with one and another of these people but found himself everywhere opposed by the same hidden, half-unconscious resistance.  They were armed with the will not to hear, or rather with a remarkable not-will to hear.  Their minds were as impervious to contrary arguments as a duck’s feathers to water.  Men in general are endowed, for their comfort, with a precious faculty; they can make themselves blind and deaf when it does not suit them to see and hear, and when by chance they pick up some inconvenient object, they drop it quickly, and forget it as soon as possible.  How many citizens in any country knew the truth about the divided responsibility for the war, or about the ill-omened part played by their politicians, who, themselves deceived, pretended with great success to be ignorant!

If everyone is trying to escape from himself, it is clear, that a man will run faster from someone who, like Clerambault, would help him to recover himself.  In order to avoid their own conscience, intelligent, serious, honourable men do not blush to employ the little tricks of a woman or a child trying to get its own way; and dreading a discussion which might unsettle them, they would seize on the first awkward expression used by Clerambault.  They would separate it from the context, dress it up if necessary, and with raised voices and eyes starting from their heads, feign an indignation which they ended by feeling sincerely.  They would repeat “mordicus,” even after the proof, and if obliged to admit it, would rush off, banging the door after them:  “Can’t stand any more of that!” But two, or perhaps ten days after, they would come back and renew the argument, as if nothing had happened.

Some treacherous ones provoked Clerambault to say more than he intended, and having gained their point, exploded with rage.  But even the most good-natured told him that he lacked good sense—­“good,” of course, meaning “my way of thinking.”