His ingenious cowardice strives to adapt them mentally to his weakness; he lies about love, about hatred, about his gods, and above all he is false about woman and about Country.  If the naked truth were shown to him, he would fear to fall into convulsions, and so he substitutes the pale chromos of his idealism.  The war had broken through the thin disguise, and Clerambault saw the cruel beast without the mantle of feline courtesy in which civilisation drapes itself.

Among Clerambault’s former friends, the most tolerant were those belonging to the political world.  Deputies, Ministers, past or future; accustomed to drive the human flock, they know just what it is worth.  Clerambault’s daring seemed merely foolish to them.  What they thought in their hearts was twenty times worse, but they thought it silly to speak it, dangerous to write it, more dangerous still to answer it.  You make a thing known when you attack it, and condemnation only gives it greater importance.  Their best advice would have been to keep silent about these unlucky articles, which the sleepy, stumbling public would have neglected if left to itself.  This was the course usually followed by Germany during the war; if the authorities did not see their way clear to suppress rebellious writers, they hid them under some flowery humbug.

The political spirit of the French Democracy, however, is more outspoken and more narrow-minded; silence is unknown to it, and far from concealing its hatreds, it spits them forth from the house-tops.  Like that of Rude, French liberty opens her mouth and bawls.  Anyone who differs from her opinion of the moment is declared a traitor forthwith; there are always some yellow journals to tell at what price the independent voice was bought, and twenty fanatics to stir up the crowd against it.  Once started, there is nothing to do but wait until the fit has passed off; but in the meantime, look out for yourself!  Prudent folks join in the hue and cry from a safe distance.

The editor of the magazine which had been proud to publish Clerambault’s poems for years whispered to him that all this row was absurd—­that there was really nothing in his “case,” but that on account of his subscribers he should have to scuttle him.  He was awfully sorry ... hoped there was no hard feeling?...  In short, without being rude, he made the whole thing look ridiculous.

Alas for human nature!  Even Perrotin laughed at Clerambault in a brilliantly sarcastic interview, and considered himself to be still his friend at bottom.

In his own house Clerambault now found himself without support.  His old helpmate, who for thirty years had seen only through his eyes, repeating his words without even understanding them, was now afraid, indignant at what he had written, reproaching him bitterly for the scandal, the harm done to the name of the family, to the memory of his dead son, to the sacred cause of vengeance, to his Country.