Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/237

 blinded by this smoke; he could not plunge into a fresh fight; but in this short-sighted world it is an impropriety, almost a fault to see more clearly than your neighbours.

This sardonic truth was brought home to him in a discussion with these young St. Justs. They pointed out his mistakes, impertinently enough, by comparing him to the "Astrologer who fell into the Pit":

... "They said, poor creature, if your eye What lies beneath can hardly spy,  Think you your gaze can pierce the sky?"

He had enough sense of humour to see the justice of the comparison; yes, he was of the number of:

"Those whom phantoms alarm While some serious harm  Threatens them or their farm."

"Even so," he said, "do you think that your republic will have no need of astronomers, just as the first one could get along without chemists? Or are they all to be mobilised? In that case there would be a good chance of your all finding yourselves together at the bottom of the well! Is that what you want? I should not object so much if it were only a question of sharing your fate, but when it comes to joining in your hatreds!"

"You have some of your own, from what I have heard," said one of the young men. Just at this moment another man came in with a newspaper in his hand and called to Clerambault:

"Congratulations, old boy, I see your enemy Bertin is dead."

The irascible journalist had died in a few hours from an attack of pneumonia. For the last six months he had pursued with fury anyone whom he suspected of working for peace, or even of wishing for it. From one step to another