When the stronger of his two souls had once asserted itself, the duality of his nature led him to yield to it entirely.  A more normal man would have tried to unite them, or combine them, or find some kind of compromise to satisfy the demands of the one and the prudence of the other; but with Clerambault it was everything or nothing.  Whether he liked it or not, once he had chosen his road, he followed it straight before him; and the same causes that had made him accept absolutely the views of those around him, drove him to cast off every consideration now that he had begun to see the falsehoods which had deceived him.  If he had been less misted, he would not have unmasked them.

Thus the brave-man-in-spite-of-himself set off like Oedipus for the fight with the Sphinx, Country, who awaited him at the crossroads.

Bertin’s attack drew the attention of several politicians to Clerambault; they belonged to the extreme Left, and found it difficult to conciliate the opposition to the Government—­their reason for existence—­with the Sacred Union formed against the enemies’ invasion.

They republished the first two articles in a socialist paper which was then balancing itself between contradictions; opposing the war, and at the same time voting for credits.  You could see in its pages eloquent statements of internationalism side by side with the appeals of ministers who were preaching a nationalist policy.  In this seesaw Clerambault’s lightly lyrical pages, where the attack on the idea of Country was made with caution, and the criticism covered up by devotion, would have been taken as a harmless platonic protestation.  Unfortunately, the teeth of censure had fastened themselves upon some phrases, with the tenacity of ants; they might have escaped notice in the general distraction of thought, if it had not been for this.

In the article addressed “To Her whom We have Loved,” the word country appears the first time coupled with an invocation to love.  The critics kept this, but cut it out when it occurred further on dissociated from such flattering expressions.  The word, awkwardly concealed under this extinguisher, shone all the more brightly in the mind of the reader—­but this they were too dull to perceive, and great importance was thus given to writings which had not much in themselves.  It must be added that all minds were then in a passive state, in which the slightest word of liberal humanitarianism took on an extraordinary importance, particularly if signed by a well-known name.

The “Pardon Asked of the Dead,” was more effective than the other ever could be; its sadness touched the mass of simple hearts, to whom the war was agony.  The authorities had been indifferent up to now, but at the first hint of this they tried to put a stop to it.  They had sense enough to know that rigorous measures against Clerambault would be a mistake, but they could put pressure on the paper through influence behind the scenes.  An opposition to the writer showed itself on the staff of the paper.  Naturally they did not blame the internationalism of his views; they merely stigmatised it as bourgeois sentimentality.