“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?”