Clerambault. Romain Rolland
did Maxime's mobile features, but the slight flush on her cheek and the moist glance of her eyes under their drooping lids showed inward ardour and feeling. She looked like those Florentine pictures of the Virgin stirred by the magical salutation of the Archangel. Clerambault saw it all and as he glanced around his little circle his eye rested with special delight on the fair bending head which seemed to feel his look.
On this July evening these four people were united in a bond of affection and tranquil happiness of which the central point was the father, the idol of the family.
He knew that he was their idol, and by a rare exception this knowledge did not spoil him, for he had such joy in loving, so much affection to spread far and wide that it seemed only natural that he should be loved in return; he was really like an elderly child. After a life of ungilded mediocrity he had but recently come to be known, and though the one experience had not given him pain, he delighted in the other. He was over fifty without seeming to be aware of it, for if there were some white threads in his big fair moustache—like an ancient Gaul's—his heart was as young as those of his children. Instead of going with the stream of his generation, he met each new wave; the best of life to him was the spring of youth constantly renewed, and he never troubled about the contradictions into which he was led by this spirit always in reaction against that which had preceded it. These inconsistencies were fused together in his mind, which was more enthusiastic than logical, and filled by the beauty which he saw all around him. Add to this the milk of human kindness, which did not mix well with his aesthetic pantheism, but which was natural to him.
He had made himself the exponent of noble human ideas, sympathising with advanced parties, the oppressed, the people—of whom he knew little, for he was thoroughly of the middle-class, full of vague, generous theories. He also adored crowds and loved to mingle with them, believing that in this way he joined himself to the All-Soul, according to the fashion at that time in intellectual circles. This fashion, as not infrequently happens, emphasised a general tendency of the day; humanity turning to the swarm-idea. The most sensitive among human insects—artists and thinkers—were the first to show these symptoms, which in them seemed a sort of pose, so that the general conditions of which they were a symptom were lost sight of.
The democratic evolution of the last forty years had established popular government politically, but socially speaking had only brought about the rule of mediocrity. Artists of the higher class at first opposed this levelling down of intelligence—but feeling themselves too weak to resist they had withdrawn to a distance, emphasising their disdain and their isolation. They preached a sort of art, acceptable only to the initiated. There is nothing finer than such a retreat when one brings to it wealth of consciousness, abundance of feeling and an outpouring soul, but the literary groups of the end of the XIXth century were far removed from those fertile hermitages where robust thoughts were concentrated. They cared much more to economise their little store of intelligence than to renew it. In order to purify it they had withdrawn it from circulation. The result was that it ceased to be perceived. The common life passed on its way without bothering its head further, leaving the artist caste to wither in a make-believe refinement. The violent storms at the time of the excitement about the Dreyfus Case did rouse some minds from this torpor, but when they came out of their orchid-house the fresh air turned their heads and they threw themselves into the great passing movement with the same exaggeration that their predecessors had shown in withdrawing from it. They believed that salvation was in the people, that in them was virtue, even all good, and though they were often thwarted in their efforts to get closer to them, they set flowing a current in the thought of Europe. They were proud to call themselves the exponents of the collective soul, but they were not victors but vanquished; the collective soul made breaches in their ivory tower, the feeble personalities of these thinkers yielded, and to hide their abdication from themselves, they declared it voluntary. In the effort to convince themselves, philosophers and aesthetics forged theories to prove that the great directing principle was to abandon oneself to the stream of a united life instead of directing it, or more modestly following one's own little path in peace. It was a matter of pride to be no longer oneself, to be no longer free to reason, for freedom was an old story in these democracies. One gloried to be a bubble tossed on the flood—some said of the race and others of the universal life. These fine theories, from which men of talent managed to extract receipts for art and thought, were in full flower in 1914. The heart of the simple Clerambault rejoiced in such visions, for nothing could have harmonised better with his warm heart and inaccurate mind. If one has but little self-possession it is easy to give oneself up to others, to the world, to that indefinable Providential Force on whose shoulders we can throw the burden of thought and will. The great current swept on and these indolent souls, instead of pursuing their way along the bank found it easier to let themselves be carried … Where? No one took the trouble to ask. Safe in their West, it never occurred to them that their civilisation could lose the advantages gained; the march of progress seemed as inevitable as the rotation of the earth. Firm in this conviction, one could fold one's arms and leave all to nature; who meanwhile was waiting for them at the bottom of the pit that she was digging.
As became a good idealist, Clerambault rarely looked where he was going, but that did not prevent him from meddling in politics in a fumbling sort of way, as was the mania of men of letters in his day. He had his word to say, right or wrong, and was often entreated to speak by journalists in need of copy, and fell into their trap, taking himself seriously in his innocent way. On the whole he was a fair poet and a good man, intelligent, if rather a greenhorn, pure of heart and weak in character, sensitive to praise and blame, and to all the suggestions round him. He was incapable of a mean sentiment of envy or hatred, and unable also to attribute such thoughts to others. Amid the complexity of human feelings, he remained blind towards evil and an advocate of the good. This type of writer is born to please the public, for he does not see faults in men, and enhances their small merits, so that even those who see through him are grateful. If we cannot amount to much, a good appearance is a consolation, and we love to be reflected in eyes which lend beauty to our mediocrity.
This widespread sympathy, which delighted Clerambault, was not less sweet to the three who surrounded him at this moment. They were as proud of him as if they had made him, for what one admires does seem in a sense one's own creation, and when in addition one is of the same blood, a part of the object of our admiration, it is hard to tell if we spring from him, or he from us.
Agénor Clerambault's wife and his two children gazed at their great man with the tender satisfied expression of ownership; and he, tall and high-shouldered, towered over them with his glowing words and enjoyed it all; he knew very well that we really belong to the things that we fancy are our possessions.
Clerambault had just finished with a Schilleresque vision of the fraternal joys promised in the future. Maxime, carried away by his enthusiasm in spite of his sense of humour, had given the orator a round of applause all by himself. Pauline noisily asked if Agénor had not heated himself in speaking, and amid the excitement Rosine silently pressed her lips to her father's hand.
The servant brought in the mail and the evening papers, but no one was in a hurry to read them. The news of the day seemed behind the times compared with the dazzling future. Maxime however took up the popular middle-class sheet, and threw his eye over the columns. He started at the latest items and exclaimed; "Hullo! War is declared." No one listened to him: Clerambault was dreaming over the last vibrations of his verses; Rosine lost in a calm ecstasy; the mother alone, who could not fix her mind on anything, buzzing about like a fly, chanced to catch the last word—"Maxime, how can you be so silly?" she cried, but Maxime protested, showing his paper with the declaration of war between Austria and Servia.
"War with whom?"—"With Servia?"—"Is that all?" said the good woman, as if it were a question of something in the moon.
Maxime however persisted—doctus cum libro—arguing that from one thing to another, this shock no matter how distant, might bring about a general explosion; but Clerambault, who was beginning to come out of his pleasant trance, smiled calmly, and said that nothing would happen.
"It is only a bluff," he declared, "like so many we have had for the last thirty years; we get them regularly every spring and summer; just bullying and sabre-rattling." People did not believe in war, no one wanted it; war had been