Clerambault. Romain Rolland

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      Clerambault was overwhelmed, beside himself, but (though he did not admit it), in his heart he was glad.

      Seeking for someone to share in his excitement and keep it up by fresh arguments, he went to his friend Perrotin.

      Hippolyte Perrotin was of one of those types, formerly the pride of the higher instruction in France but seldom met with in these days—a great humanist. Led by a wide and sagacious curiosity, he walked calmly through the garden of the centuries, botanising as he went. The spectacle of the present was the object least worthy of his attention, but he was too keen an observer to miss any of it, and knew how to draw it gently back into scale to fit into the whole picture. Events which others regarded as most important were not so in his eyes, and political agitations appeared to him like bugs on a rose-bush which he would carefully study with its parasites. This was to him a constant source of delight. He had the finest appreciation of shades of literary beauty, and his learning rather increased than impaired the faculty, giving to his thought an infinite range of highly-flavoured experiences to taste and compare. He belonged to the great French tradition of learned men, master writers from Buffon to Renan and Gaston Pâris. Member of the Academy and of several Classes, his extended knowledge gave him a superiority, not only of pure and classic taste, but of a liberal modern spirit, over his colleagues, genuine men of letters. He did not think himself exempt from study, as most of them did, as soon as they had passed the threshold of the sacred Cupola; old profesor as he was, he still went to school. When Clerambault was still unknown to the rest of the Immortals, except to one or two brother poets who mentioned him as little as possible with a disdainful smile, Perrotin had already discovered and placed him in his collection, struck by certain pictures, an original phraseology, the mechanism of his imagination, primitive yet complicated by simplicity. All this attracted him, and then the man interested him too. He sent a short complimentary note to Clerambault who came to thank him, overflowing with gratitude, and ties of friendship were formed between the two men. They had few points of resemblance; Clerambault had lyrical gifts and ordinary intelligence dominated by his feelings, and Perrotin was gifted with a most lucid mind, never hampered by flights of the imagination. What they had in common were dignity of life, intellectual probity, and a disinterested love of art and learning, for its own sake, and not for success. None the less as may be seen, this had not prevented Perrotin from getting on in the world; honours and places had sought him, not he them; but he did not reject them; he neglected nothing.

      Clerambault found him busy unwinding the wrappings with which the readers of centuries had covered over the original thought of a Chinese philosopher. At this game which was habitual with him, he came naturally to the discovery of the contrary of what appeared at first to be the meaning; passing from hand to hand the idol had become black.

      Perrotin received Clerambault in this vein, polite, but a trifle absent-minded. Even when he listened to society gossip he was inwardly critical, tickling his sense of humour at its expense.

      Clerambault spread his new acquisitions before him, starting from the recognised unworthiness of the enemy-nation as from a certain, well-known fact; the whole question being to decide if one should see in this the irremediable decadence of a great people, or the proof, pure and simple, of a barbarism which had always existed, but hidden from sight. Clerambault inclined to the latter explanation, and full of his recent information he held Luther, Kant and Wagner responsible for the violation of Belgian neutrality, and the crimes of the German army. He, however, to use a colloquial expression, had never been to see for himself, being neither musician, theologian, or metaphysician. He trusted to the word of Academicians, and only made exceptions in favour of Beethoven, who was Flemish, and Goethe, citizen of a free city and almost a Strassburger, which is half French—or French and a half. He paused for approbation.

      He was surprised not to find in Perrotin an ardour corresponding to his own. His friend smiled, listened, contemplated Clerambault with an attentive and benevolent curiosity. He did not say no, but he did not say yes, either, and to some assertions he made prudent reservations. When Clerambault, much moved, quoted statements signed by two or three of Perrotin's illustrious colleagues, the latter made a slight gesture as much as to say: "Ah, you don't say so!"

      Clerambault grew hotter and hotter, and Perrotin then changed his attitude, showing a keen interest in the judicious remarks of his good friend, nodding his head at every word, answering direct questions by vague phrases, assenting amiably as one does to someone whom one cannot contradict.

      Clerambault went away out of countenance and discontented, but a few days later he was reassured as to his friend, when he read Perrotin's name on a violent protestation of the Academies against the barbarians. He wrote to congratulate him, and Perrotin thanked him in a few prudent and sibylline words:

      "DEAR SIR,"—he affected in writing the studied, ceremonious formulas of Monsieur de Port-Royal—"I am ready to obey any suggestions of my country, for me they are commands. My conscience is at her service, according to the duty of every good citizen."

      One of the most curious effects of the war on the mind, was that it aroused new affinities between individuals. People who up to this time had not a thought in common discovered all at once that they thought alike; and this resemblance drew them together. It was what people called "the Sacred Union." Men of all parties and temperaments, the choleric, the phlegmatic, monarchists, anarchists, clericals, Calvinists, suddenly forgot their everyday selves, their passions, their fads and their antipathies—shed their skins. And there before you were now creatures, grouped in an unforeseen manner, like metal filings round an invisible magnet. All the old categories had momentarily disappeared, and no one was astonished to find himself closer to the stranger of yesterday than to a friend of many years' standing. It seemed as if, underground, souls met by secret roots that stretched through the night of instinct, that unknown region, where observation rarely ventures. For our psychology stops at that part of self which emerges from the soil, noting minutely individual differences, but forgetting that this is only the top of the plant, that nine-tenths are buried, the feet held by those of other plants. This profound, or lower, region of the soul is ordinarily below the threshold of consciousness, the mind feels nothing of it; but the war, by waking up this underground life, revealed moral relationships which no one had suspected. A sudden intimacy showed itself between Clerambault and a brother of his wife whom he had looked upon until now, and with good reason, as the type of a perfect Philistine.

      Leo Camus was not quite fifty years old. He was tall, thin, and stooped a little; his skin was grey, his beard black, not much hair on his head—you could see the bald spots under his hat behind—little wrinkles everywhere, cutting into each other, crossing, like a badly-made net; add to this a frowning, sulky expression, and a perpetual cold in the head. For thirty years he had been employed by the State, and his life had passed in the shadow of a court-yard at the Department. In the course of years he had changed rooms, but not shadows; he was promoted, but always in the court-yard, never would he leave it in this life. He was now Under-Secretary, which enabled him to throw a shadow in his turn. The public and he had few points of contact, and he only communicated with the outside world across a rampart of pasteboard boxes and piles of documents. He was an old bachelor without friends, and he held the misanthropical opinion that disinterested friendship did not exist upon earth. He felt no affection except for his sister's family, and the only way that he showed that was by finding fault with everything that they did. He was one of those people whose uneasy solicitude causes them to blame those they love when they are ill, and obstinately prove to them that they suffer by their own fault.

      At the Clerambaults no one minded him very much. Madame Clerambault was so easy-going that she rather liked being pushed about in this way, and as for the children, they knew that these scoldings were sweetened by little presents; so they pocketed the presents and let the rest go by.

      The conduct of Leo Camus towards his brother-in-law had varied with time. When СКАЧАТЬ