“I don’t know.  Yes, I believe it must be right since you say so....  But perhaps it was not necessary to write it....”

“Not necessary?  But if it is right, it must be necessary.”

“But if it makes such a fuss!”

“That is no reason against it.”

“But why stir people up?”

“Look here, my little girl, you think as I do about this, do you not?”

“Yes, Papa, I suppose so....”

“You only suppose?...  Come now, you detest the war, as I do, and wish it were over; everything that I wrote there I have said to you, and you agreed....”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Then you think I am right?”

“Yes, Papa.”  She put her arms around his neck, “but we don’t have to write everything that we think.”

Clerambault, much depressed, tried to explain what seemed so evident to him.  Rosine listened, and answered quietly, but it was clear that she did not understand.  When he had finished, she kissed him again and said: 

“I have told you what I think, Papa, but it is not for me to judge.  You know much better than I.”

With that she went into her room, smiling at her father, and not in the least suspecting that she had just taken away from him his greatest support.

This abusive attack was not the only one, for when the bell was once tied on the cat it never ceased to ring.  However, the noise would have been drowned in the general tumult, if it had not been for a persistent voice which led the chorus of malignity against Clerambault.

Unhappily it was the voice of one of his oldest friends, the author Octave Bertin; for they had been school-fellows at the Lycee Henri IV.  Bertin, a little Parisian, quick-witted, elegant, and precocious, had welcomed the awkward enthusiastic advances of the overgrown youth fresh from the country,—­ungainly in body and mind, his clothes always too short for his long legs and arms, a mixture of innocence, simplicity, ignorance, and bad taste, always emphatic, with overflowing spirits, yet capable of the most original sallies, and striking images.  None of this had escaped the sharp malicious eye of young Bertin; neither Clerambault’s absurdities nor the treasures of his mind, and after thinking him over he had decided to make a friend of him.  Clerambault’s unfeigned admiration had something to do with this decision.  For several years they shared the superabundance of their youthful ideas.  Both dreamed of being artists; they read their literary attempts to each other, and engaged in interminable discussions, in which Bertin always had the upper hand.  He was apt to be first in everything.  Clerambault never thought of contesting his superiority; he was much more likely to use his fists to convince anyone who denied it.  He stood in open-mouthed admiration before his brilliant friend, who won all the University prizes without seeming to work for them, and whom his teachers thought destined to the highest honours—­official and academic, of course.