Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/131



Clerambault asked no one's advice but as soon as he had written these pages he took them to the editor of a small socialist paper nearby. He came back much relieved, as he thought:

"That is off my mind. I have spoken out, at last." But in the following night, a weight on his heart told him that the burden was still there, heavier than ever. He roused himself.

"What have I done?"

He felt that he had been almost immodest to show his sacred sorrow to the public; and though he did not foresee the anger his article would provoke, he knew the lack of comprehension, the coarse comments, which are in themselves a profanation.

Days passed, and nothing happened. Silence. The appeal had fallen on the ear of an inattentive public, the publisher was little known, the pamphlet carelessly issued. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear, and the few readers who were attracted by Clerambault's name, merely glanced at the first lines, and threw it aside, thinking:

"The poor man's head has been turned by his sorrow,"--a good pretext for not wishing to upset their own balance.

A second article followed, in which Clerambault took a final leave of the bloody old fetish falsely called Country; or rather in opposition to the great flesh-eater, the she-wolf of Rome, on whose altar men are now offered up, he set the august Mother of all living, the universal Country: