Clerambault. Romain Rolland

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СКАЧАТЬ knew it perfectly well, but he swallowed all the fawning reviews of the press with infantile vanity. In the evening he made Camus read them aloud in the family circle, beaming with joy as he listened. When it was over he nearly shouted:

      "Encore!"

      In this concert of praise one slightly flat note came from Perrotin. (Undoubtedly he had been much deceived in him, he was not a true friend.) The old scholar to whom Clerambault had sent a copy of his poems did not fail to congratulate him politely, praising his great talent, but he did not say that this was his finest work; he even urged him, "after having offered his tribute to the warlike Muse, to produce now a work of pure imagination detached from the present." What could he mean? When an artist submits his work for your approval, is it proper to say to him: "I should prefer to read another one quite different from this?" This was a fresh sign to Clerambault of the sadly lukewarm patriotism that he had already noticed in Perrotin. This lack of comprehension chilled his feeling towards his old friend. The war, he thought, was the great test of characters, it revised all values, and tried out friendships. And he thought that the loss of Perrotin was balanced by the gain of Camus, and many new friends, plain people, no doubt, but simple and warm-hearted.

      Sometimes at night he had moments of oppression, he was uneasy, wakeful, discontented, ashamed; … but of what? Had he not done his duty?

      The first letters from Maxime were a comforting cordial; the first drops dissipated every discouragement, and they all lived on them in long intervals when no news came. In spite of the agony of these silences, when any second might be fatal to the loved one, his perfect confidence (exaggerated perhaps, through affection, or superstition) communicated itself to them all. His letters were running over with youth and exuberant joy, which reached its climax in the days that followed the victory of the Marne. The whole family yearned towards him as one; like a plant the summit of which bathes in the light, stretching up to it in a rapture of mystic adoration.

      People who but yesterday were soft and torpid, expanded under the extraordinary light when fate threw them into the infernal vortex of the war, the light of Death, the game with Death; Maxime, a spoiled child, delicate, overparticular, who in ordinary times took care of himself like a fine lady, found an unexpected flavour in the privations and trials of his new life, and wondering at himself he boasted of it in his charming, vainglorious letters which delighted the hearts of his parents.

      Neither affected to be cast in the mould of one of Corneille's heroes, and the thought of immolating their child on the altar of a barbaric idea would have filled them with horror; but the transfiguration of their petted boy suddenly become a hero, touched them with a tenderness never before felt. In spite of their anxiety, Maxime's enthusiasm intoxicated them, and it made them ungrateful toward their former life, that peaceful affectionate existence, with its long monotonous days. Maxime was amusingly contemptuous of it, calling it absurd after one had seen what was going on "out there."

      "Out there" one was glad to sleep three hours on the hard ground, or once in a month of Sundays on a wisp of straw, glad to turn out at three o'clock in the morning and warm up by marching thirty kilometres with a knapsack on one's back, sweating freely for eight or ten hours at a time. … Glad above all to get in touch with the enemy, and rest a little lying down under a bank, while one peppered the boches. … This young Cyrano declared that fighting rested you after a march, and when he described an engagement you would have said that he was at a concert or a "movie."

      The rhythm of the shells, the noise when they left the gun and when they burst, reminded him of the passage with cymbals in the divine scherzo of the Ninth Symphony. When he heard overhead as from an airy music-box the buzzing of these steel mosquitoes, mischievous, imperious, angry, treacherous, or simply full of amiable carelessness, he felt like a street boy rushing out to see a fire. No more fatigue; mind and body on the alert; and when came the long-awaited order "Forward!" one jumped to one's feet, light as a feather, and ran to the nearest shelter under the hail of bullets, glad to be in the open, like a hound on the scent. You crawled on your hands and knees, or on your stomach, you ran all bent doubled-up, or did Swedish gymnastics through the underbrush … that made up for not being able to walk straight; and when it grew dark you said: "What, night already?—What have we been doing with ourselves, today?" … "In conclusion," said this little French cockerel, "the only tiresome thing in war is what you do in peace-time—you walk along the high road."

      This was the way these young men talked in the first month of the campaign, all soldiers of the Marne, of war in the open. If this had gone on, we should have seen once more the race of barefooted Revolutionaries, who set out to conquer the world and could not stop themselves.

      They were at last forced to stop, and from the moment that they were put to soak in the trenches, the tone changed. Maxime lost his spirit, his boyish carelessness. From day to day he grew virile, stoical, obstinate and nervous. He still vouched for the final victory, but ceased after a while to talk of it, and wrote only of duty to be done, then even that stopped, and his letters became dull, grey, tired-out.

      Enthusiasm had not diminished behind the lines, and Clerambault persisted in vibrating like an organ pipe, but Maxime no longer gave back the echo he sought to evoke.

      All at once, without warning, Maxime came home for a week's leave. He stopped on the stairs, for though he seemed more robust than formerly, his legs felt heavy, and he was soon tired. He waited a moment to breathe, for he was moved, and then went up. His mother came to the door at his ring, screaming at the sight of him. Clerambault who was pacing up and down the apartment in the weariness of the long waiting, cried out too as he ran. It was a tremendous row.

      After a few minutes there was a truce to embraces and inarticulate exclamations. Pushed into a chair by the window with his face to the light, Maxime gave himself up to their delighted eyes. They were in ecstasies over his complexion, his cheeks more filled out, his healthy look. His father threw his arms around him calling him "My Hero"—but Maxime sat with his fingers twitching nervously, and could not get out a word.

      At table they feasted their eyes on him, hung on every word, but he said very little. The excitement of his family had checked his first impetus, but luckily they did not notice it, and attributed his silence to fatigue or to hunger. Clerambault talked enough for two; telling Maxime about life in the trenches. Good mother Pauline was transformed into a Cornelia, out of Plutarch, and Maxime looked at them, ate, looked again. … A gulf had opened between them.

      When after dinner they all went back to his father's study, and they saw him comfortably established with a cigar, he had to try and satisfy these poor waiting people. So he quietly began to tell them how his time was passed, with a certain proud reserve and leaving out tragical pictures. They listened in trembling expectation, and when he had finished they were still expectant. Then on their side came a shower of questions, to which Maxime's replies were short—soon he fell silent. Clerambault to wake up the "young rascal" tried several jovial thrusts.

      "Come now, tell us about some of your engagements. … It must be fine to see such joy, such sacred fire—Lord, but I would like to see all that, I would like to be in your place."

      "You can see all these fine things better from where you are," said Maxime. Since he had been in the trenches he had not seen a fight, hardly set eyes on a German, his view was bounded by mud and water—but they would not believe him, they thought he was talking "contrariwise" as he did when he was a child.

      "You old humbug," said his father, laughing gaily, "What does happen then all day long in your trenches?"

      "We take care of ourselves; kill time, the worst enemy of all."

      Clerambault slapped him amicably on the back.

      "Time is not the only one you kill?"—Maxime СКАЧАТЬ