Madame Clerambault came back to Paris with her daughter, and the first evening after their arrival Clerambault carried Rosine off to the Boulevards. The solemn fervour of the first days had passed. War had begun, and truth was imprisoned. The press, the arch-liar, poured into the open mouth of the world the poisonous liquor of its stories of victories without retribution; Paris was decked as for a holiday; the houses streamed with the tricolour from top to bottom, and in the poorer quarters each garret window had its little penny flag, like a flower in the hair. + 

On the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre they met a strange procession. At the head marched a tall old man carrying a flag. He walked with long strides, free and supple as if he were going to leap or dance, and the skirts of his overcoat flapped in the wind. Behind came an indistinct, compact, howling mass, gentle and simple, arm in arm⁠—a child carried on a shoulder, a girl’s red mop of hair between a chauffeur’s cap and the helmet of a soldier. Chests out, chins raised, mouths open like black holes, shouting the Marseillaise. To right and left of the ranks, a double line of jailbird faces, along the curbstone, ready to insult any absentminded passerby who failed to salute the colours. Rosine was startled to see her father fall into step at the end of the line, bareheaded, singing and talking aloud. He drew his daughter along by the arm, without noticing the nervous fingers that tried to hold him back. + 

When they came in Clerambault was still talkative and excited. He kept on for hours, while the two women listened to him patiently. Madame Clerambault heard little as usual, and played chorus. Rosine did not say a word, but she stealthily threw a glance at her father, and her look was like freezing water. + 

Clerambault was exciting himself; he was not yet at the bottom, but he was conscientiously trying to reach it. Nevertheless there remained to him enough lucidity to alarm him at his own progress. An artist yields more through his sensibility to waves of emotion which reach him from without, but to resist them he has also weapons which others have not. For the least reflective, he who abandons himself to his lyrical impulses, has in some degree the faculty of introspection which it rests with him to utilise. If he does not do this, he lacks goodwill more than power; he is afraid to look too clearly at himself for fear of seeing an unflattering picture. Those however who, like Clerambault, have the virtue of sincerity without psychological gifts, are sufficiently well-equipped to exercise some control over their excitability. + 

One day as he was walking alone, he saw a crowd on the other side of the street, he crossed over calmly and found himself on the opposite sidewalk in the midst of a confused agitation circling about an invisible point. With some difficulty he worked his way forward, and scarcely was he within this human mill-wheel, than he felt himself a part of the rim, his brain seemed turning round. At the centre of the wheel he saw a struggling man, and even before he grasped the reason for the popular fury, he felt that he shared it. He did not know if a spy was in question, or if it was some imprudent speaker who had braved the passions of the mob, but as cries rose around him, he realised that he, yes he, Clerambault, had shrieked out:⁠ ⁠… “Kill him.”⁠ ⁠… + 

A movement of the crowd threw him out from the sidewalk, a carriage separated him from it, and when the way was clear the mob surged on after its prey. Clerambault followed it with his eyes; the sound of his own voice was still in his ears⁠—he did not feel proud of himself.⁠ ⁠… + 

From that day on he went out less; he distrusted himself, but he continued to stimulate his intoxication at home, where he felt himself safe, little knowing the virulence of the plague. The infection came in through the cracks of the doors, at the windows, on the printed page, in every contact. The most sensitive breathe it in on first entering the city, before they have seen or read anything; with others a passing touch is enough, the disease will develop afterwards alone. Clerambault, withdrawn from the crowd, had caught the contagion from it, and the evil announced itself by the usual premonitory symptoms. This affectionate tenderhearted man hated, loved to hate. His intelligence, which had always been thoroughly straightforward, tried now to trick itself secretly, to justify its instincts of hatred by inverted reasoning. He learned to be passionately unjust and false, for he wanted to persuade himself that he could accept the fact of war, and participate in it, without renouncing his pacifism of yesterday, his humanitarianism of the day before, and his constant optimism. It was not plain sailing, but there is nothing that the brain cannot attain to. When its master thinks it absolutely necessary to get rid for a time of principles which are in his way, it finds in these same principles the exception which violates them while confirming the rule. Clerambault began to construct a thesis, an ideal⁠—absurd enough⁠—in which these contradictions could be reconciled: War against War, War for Peace, for eternal Peace. + 