Clerambault was not the only one to feel the benefit of Froment’s energy, for at his bedside he was sure to find some friend who came, perhaps without admitting it, more to get comfort than to bring it. Two or three of these were young, about Edmé’s age, the others, men over fifty, old friends of the family, or those who had known Froment before the war.
One of these had been his professor, an old Hellenist, with a sweet absent smile. Then there was a grey-haired sculptor, his face ploughed by deep tragic lines; a country gentleman, clean-shaved, red-cheeked, with the massive head of an old peasant; and finally a doctor. He had a white beard, his face was worn and kind, and you were struck by the strange expression of his eyes; one seemed to look sharply at you, and the other was sad and dreamy.
There was little resemblance between these men who sometimes met at the invalid’s house. All shades of thought could be found in the group, from the Catholic to the freethinker and the bolshevist—one of Froment’s young friends professed to be of this opinion. In them you could find the traces of the most various intellectual ancestry; the ironic Lucian appeared in the old professor; the Count de Coulanges was wont to solace himself in the evenings on his estate with cattle and fertiliser, but also revelled in the gorgeous texture of Froissart’s style, like cloth of gold, and the countrified, juicy talk of that rascal Gondi—the count certainly had the old French chroniclers in his veins. The sculptor wrinkled his brow in the effort to find metaphysics in Rodin and Beethoven; and Dr. Verrier had a streak of the marvellous in his disposition. This he satisfied by the hypotheses of biology, and the wonders of modern chemistry, though he would glance at the paradise of religion with the disenchanted smile of the man of science. He bore his part in the sad trials of the time, but the era of war with all its gory glory faded for him before the heroic discoveries of thought made by a new Newton, the German Einstein, in the midst of the general distraction.
These men all differed in the form of their minds and in their temperament; but they all agreed in this, they belonged to no party, each thought for himself, and each respected and loved liberty in himself or in others. What else mattered? In our day, all the old framework is broken down; religious, political, or social. It is but small progress if we call ourselves socialists, or republicans, rather than monarchists, if these castes accept nationalism of State, faith, or class. There are now only two sorts of minds: those shut up behind bars, and those open to all that is alive, to the entire race of man, even our enemies. These men, few though they may be, compose the true “International” which rests on the worship of truth and universal life. They know well that they are each too weak to embrace alone their great ideal, but it is infinite and can embrace them all. United in one object, they push on by their separate ways towards the unknown God.
These independent spirits were all drawn towards Edmé Froment at this time, because they obscurely saw in him the point where they could meet, the clearing from which every path in the forest is visible. Froment had not always tried to bring others together; as long as he was well and strong, he too had taken his own way, but since his course had been cut short, after a time of bitter despondency of which he said nothing, he had placed himself at the crossroads. As he could not possibly act himself, he was better able to view the whole field and take part in spirit. He saw the different currents: country, revolution, contests between states and classes, science and faith—like a stream’s conflicting forces, with its rapids, whirlpools, and reefs; it may sometimes slacken, or turn its course, but it always flows on irresistibly (even reaction is carried forward). And he, the poor youth staked at his crossroads, took all these currents unto him, the entire stream.
Edmé reminded Clerambault sometimes of Perrotin, but he and Froment were worlds apart. The latter also denied nothing of what is, and wished to understand everything; but his was a fiery spirit, his whole soul was filled with ordered movement and feeling; with him all life and death went forward and upward. And his body lay there motionless.