This improved state, however, brought no advantage to Clerambault’s family; his wife’s share of the struggle was only the unpleasantness, a general animosity that finally made itself felt even among the small tradespeople of the neighbourhood. Rosine drooped; her secret heartache wore upon her all the more because of her silence; but if she said nothing her mother complained enough for two. She made no distinction between the fools who affronted her and the imprudent Clerambault who caused all the trouble; so that at every meal there were awkward remarks meant to induce him to keep still. All this was of no use, reproaches whether spoken or silent, passed over his head; he was sorry, of course, but he had thrown himself into the thick of the fight, and with a somewhat childish egotism he thrust aside anything that interfered with this new interest. + 

Circumstances, however, came to Madame Clerambault’s assistance; an old relation who had brought her up died, leaving her little property in Berry to the Clerambaults. The mourning was a good excuse for quitting Paris, which had now become detestable, and for tearing the poet from his dangerous surroundings. There was also the question of money and of Rosine, who would be better for change of air. Clerambault gave in, and they all three went to take possession of their small inheritance, and remained in Berry during the rest of the summer and autumn. It was in the country, a respectable old house just outside a village. From the agitation of Paris Clerambault passed at once to a stagnant calm, and in the long silent days all that broke the monotony was a cock crowing in a farmyard or a cow lowing in the meadow. Clerambault was too much wrought up to adapt himself to the slow and placid rhythm of nature; formerly he had adored it and was in harmony with the country people from whom his family had come. Now, however, the peasants with whom he tried to talk seemed to him creatures from another planet. Certainly, they were not infected by the virus of war; they showed no emotion, and no hatred for the enemy; but then they had no animosity either against war, which they accepted as a fact. Certain keen, good-natured observations showed that they were not taken in as to the merits of the case, but since the war was there they made the most they could out of it. They might lose their sons, but they did not mean to lose money; not that they were heartless, grief had marked them deeply, though they spoke little of it; but after all, men pass away⁠—the land is always there. They at least had not, like the bourgeois in cities, sent their children to death through national fanaticism. Only they knew how to get something in exchange for what they gave; and it is probable that their sons would have thought this perfectly natural. Because you have lost someone you love, must you lose your head too? Our peasants did not lose theirs; it is said that in the country districts of France more than a million new proprietors have been made by the war. + 

The mind of Clerambault was alien to all this; he and these people did not speak the same language. They exchanged some vague condolences, but when he is talking to a bourgeois a peasant always complains; it is a habit, a way of defending himself against a possible appeal to his pocketbook; they would have talked in the same way about an epidemic of fever. Clerambault was always the Parisian in their eyes; he belonged to another tribe, and if they had thoughts, they would not tell them to him. + 

This lack of response stifled Clerambault’s words; impressionable as he was, he could no longer hear himself. All was silence; he had friends unknown, and at a distance, who tried to communicate with him, but their voices were intercepted by postal spies⁠—one of the disgraces of our time. On the pretext of suppressing foreign espionage, our Government made spies of its own citizens, and not content with a watch on politics, it violated a man’s thoughts, and taught its agents how to listen at doors like lackeys. The premium thus put on baseness filled this country⁠—and all the others⁠—with volunteer detectives, gentlemen, men of letters, many of them slackers, who bought their own security with the safety of others, calling their denunciations by the name of patriotism. + 

Thanks to these informers, those of liberal opinions could not get in touch with one another; that great monster, the State⁠—pricked by its bad conscience⁠—suspected and feared half a dozen liberal-minded people, alone, weak, and destitute; and each one of these liberals surrounded by spies, ate his heart out in his jail, and ignorant that others suffered with him, felt himself slowly dying, freezing in the polar ice of his despair. + 

Clerambault was too hot-blooded to let himself be buried under this snowy shroud; but the soul is not all, the body is a plant which needs human soil. Deprived of sympathy, reduced to feed on itself, it perishes. In vain did Clerambault try to prove to himself that millions of other minds were in agreement with his own; it could not replace the actual contact with one living heart. Faith is sufficient for the spirit, but the heart is like Thomas, it must touch to be convinced. + 

Clerambault had not foreseen this physical weakness; he felt stifled, his body seemed on fire, his skin burning, his life seemed to be drying up at the source. It was as if he were under an exhausted vacuum-bell. A wall kept him from the air. + 

One evening, like a consumptive after a bad day, he had been wandering about the house from room to room, as if in search of a breath of fresh air, when a letter came that had somehow slipped through the meshes of the net. An old man like himself, a village schoolmaster in a remote valley of Dauphiny wrote thus: + 

“The war has taken everything from me; of those whom I used to know, some have been killed, and the rest are so altered that I hardly recognise them. They have trampled on all that made life worth having to me; my hope of progress, my faith in a future of brotherly reason. + 

“I was ready to die in my despair, when a paper in which you were spoken of insultingly, drew my attention to your articles: ‘To the Dead’ and ‘To Her Whom We Loved.’ I wept with joy as I read them; I am not then left alone to suffer? I am not solitary?⁠—You do believe; then, my dear Sir, tell me that you still have faith in these things. They really exist, and cannot be destroyed? I must tell you how much good it does me to know that; for I had begun to doubt. You must forgive me, but I am old and alone and very weary.⁠ ⁠… God bless you, Sir! I can die in peace, now that, thanks to you, I know that I have not been deceived.” + 

Instantly it was as if a window had been opened to the air; Clerambault’s lungs were filled, his heart beat strongly again, life seemed to be renewed, and to flow once more in a full channel. How deep is the need we have of love from one another!⁠ ⁠… A hand stretched out in the hour of my agony makes me feel that I am not a branch torn from the tree, but a living part of it; we save each other. I give my strength, which would be nothing if it were not taken. Truth alone is like a spark struck from a stone; dry, harsh, ephemeral. Will it die out? No, for it has kindled another soul, and a new star has risen on the horizon. + 