Clerambault saw a young man looking at him as he lay extended on a couch. The fair youthful face lit up by the setting sun, with its intelligent eyes, looked so healthy and calm that at first sight the thought of illness did not present itself.
“You!” he exclaimed. “You here?”
He looked younger than ever with this joyful surprise on his face, but neither the body, nor the arms which were covered, moved in the least, and Clerambault coming nearer saw that the head alone seemed to be alive.
“Mamma, you have been giving me away,” said Edmé Froment.
“Did you not want to see me?” said Clerambault, bending over him.
“That is not just what I meant, but I am not very anxious to be seen.”
“Why not? I should like to know,” said Clerambault, in a tone which he tried to make gay.
“Because a man does not ask visitors to the house when he is not there himself.”
“Where are you?” if one may ask.
“I could almost swear that I was shut up in an old Egyptian mummy”—he glanced at the bed and his immovable body:
“There is no life left in it,” he said.
“You have more life than any of us,” said a voice beside them. Clerambault looked up and saw on the other side of the couch a tall young man full of health and strength, who seemed to be about the same age as Edmé, who smiled and said to Clerambault: “My friend Chastenay has enough vitality to lend me some and to spare.”
“If that were only literally true,” said the other, and the two friends exchanged an affectionate glance. Chastenay continued:
“I should in that case only be giving back a part of what I owe you.” Then turning to Clerambault, he added: “He is the one who keeps us all up, is it not so, Madame Fanny?”
“Indeed yes, I could not do without my strong son,” said the mother tenderly.
“They take advantage of the fact that I cannot defend myself,” said Edmé to Clerambault. “You see I cannot stir an inch.”
“Was it a wound?”
“Paralysis.”—Clerambault did not dare to ask for details, but after a pause: “Do you suffer much?” he inquired.
“I ought to wish that it were so perhaps; for pain is a tie between us and the shore. However, I confess that I prefer the silence of this body in which I am encased … let us say no more about it. … My mind at least is free. And if it is not true that it ‘agitat molem,’ does often escape.”
“I know,” said Clerambault, “it came to see me the other day.”
“Not for the first time; it has been there before.”
“And I who thought myself deserted!”
“Do you recall,” said Edmé, “the words of Randolph to Cecil?—The voice of a man alone can in one hour put more life into us than the clang of five hundred trumpets sounded continuously.”
“That always reminds me of you,” said Chastenay, but Edmé went on as if he had not heard him: … “You have waked us all up.”
Clerambault looked at the brave calm eyes of the paralytic, and said:
“Your eyes do not look as if they needed to be waked.”
“They do not need it now,” said Edmé, “the farther off one is, the better one sees; but when I was close to everything I saw very little.”
“Tell me what you see now.”
“It is getting late,” said Edmé, “and I am rather tired. Will you come another time?”
“Tomorrow, if you will let me.”
As Clerambault went out Chastenay joined him. He felt the need of confiding to a heart that could feel the pain and grandeur of the tragedy of which his friend had been at once the hero and the victim. Edmé Froment had been struck on the spinal column by an exploding shell. Young as he was, he was one of the intellectual leaders of his generation, handsome, ardent, eloquent, overflowing with life and visions, loving and beloved, nobly ambitious, and all at once, at a blow—a living death! His mother who had centred all her pride and love on him now saw him condemned for the rest of his days to this terrible fate. They had both suffered terribly, but each hid it from the other, and this effort kept them up. They took great pride in each other. She had all the care of him, washed and fed him like a little child, and he kept calm for her sake, and sustained her on the wings of his spirit.
“Ah,” said Chastenay, “it makes one feel ashamed—when I think that I am alive and well, that I can reach out my arms to life, that I can run and leap, and draw this blessed air into my lungs. …” As he spoke he stretched out his arms, raised his head, and breathed deeply.
“I ought to feel remorseful,” he added, lowering his voice, “and the worst is that I do not.” Clerambault could not help smiling.
“It is not very heroic,” continued Chastenay, “and yet I care more for Froment than for anyone on earth, and his fate makes me wretchedly unhappy. But all the same, when I think of my luck to be here at this moment when so many are gone, and to be well and sound, I can hardly keep from showing how glad I am. It is so good to live and be whole. Poor Edmé! … You must think me terribly selfish?”
“No, what you say is perfectly natural and healthy. If we were all as sincere as you, humanity would not be the victim of the wicked notion of glory in suffering. You have every right to enjoy life after the trials you have passed through,” and as he spoke he touched the Croix de Guerre which the young man wore on his breast.
“I have been through them and I am going back,” said Chastenay, “but there is no merit in that; there is nothing else that I can do. I am not trying to deceive you and pretend that I love to smell powder; you cannot go through three years of war, and still want to run risks and be indifferent to danger, even if you did feel like that in the beginning. I was so—I may frankly say I did go in for heroism; but I have lost all that, it was really part ignorance and part rhetoric, and when one is rid of these, the nonsense of the war, the idiotic slaughter, the ugliness, the horrible useless sacrifice must be clear to the narrowest mind. If it is not manly to fly from the inevitable, it is not necessary either to go in search of what can be avoided. The great Corneille was a hero behind the lines; those whom I have known at the front were almost heroes in spite of themselves.”
“That is the true heroism,” said Clerambault.
“That is Froment’s kind,” said Chastenay. “He is a hero because there is nothing else that he can be, not even a man; but the dearest thing about him is, that in spite of everything, he is a real man.”