its most precious treasures, strength, and genius, its highest virtues, to the bestial idol of war.  It was to him a moral agony, a heart-rending communion with these unhappy millions.  To what end?  And of what use had been all the efforts of the ages?  His heart seemed gripped by the void; he felt he could no longer live if his faith in the reason of men and their mutual love was destroyed, if he was forced to acknowledge that the Credo of his life and art rested on a mistake, that a dark pessimism was the answer to the riddle of the world.

He turned his eyes away in terror, he was afraid to look it in the face, this monster who was there, whose hot breath he felt upon him.  Clerambault implored,—­he did not know who or what—­that this might not be, that it might not be.  Anything rather than this should be true!  But the devouring fact stood just behind the opening door....  Through the whole night he strove to close that door ...

At last towards morning, an animal instinct began to wake, coming from he did not know where, which turned his despair towards the secret need of finding a definite and concrete cause, to fasten the blame on a man, or a group of men, and angrily hold them responsible for the misery of the world.  It was as yet but a brief apparition, the first faint sign of a strange obscure, imperious soul, ready to break forth, the soul of the multitude ...  It began to take shape when Maxime came home, for after the night in the streets of Paris, he fairly sweated with it; his very clothes, the hairs of his head, were impregnated.  Worn out, excited, he could not sit down; his only thought was to go back again.  The decree of mobilisation was to come out that day, war was certain, it was necessary, beneficial; some things must be put an end to, the future of humanity was at stake, the freedom of the world was threatened.  “They” had counted on Jaures’ murder to sow dissension and raise riots in the country they meant to attack, but the entire nation had risen to rally round its leaders, the sublime days of the great Revolution were re-born ...Clerambault did not discuss these statements, he merely asked:  “Do you think so?  Are you quite sure?” It was a sort of hidden appeal.  He wanted Maxime to state, to redouble his assertions.  The news Maxime had brought added to the chaos, raised it to a climax, but at the same time it began to direct the distracted forces of his mind towards a fixed point, as the first bark of the shepherd’s dog drives the sheep together.

Clerambault had but one wish left, to rejoin the flock, rub himself against the human animals, his brothers, feel with them, act with them....  Though exhausted by sleeplessness, he started, in spite of his wife, to take the train for Paris with Maxime.  They had to wait a long time at the station, and also in the train, for the tracks were blocked, and the cars crowded; but in the common agitation Clerambault found calm.  He questioned and listened, everybody fraternised,