Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/73

 to throw it off, or even wish to do so; there is no need to will, or to think; one is sheltered from cold, from responsibilities. Laziness, cowardice!... Come, away with it!... Let the chilly wind blow through the rents. You shrink at first, but already this breath has shaken the torpor; the enfeebled energy begins to stagger to its feet. What will it find outside? No matter what, we must see....

Sick with disgust, he saw first what he was loath to believe; how this greasy fleece had stuck to his flesh. He could sniff the musty odour of the primitive beast, the savage instincts of war, of murder, the lust for blood like living meat torn by his jaws. The elemental force which asks death for life. Far down in the depths of human nature is this slaughter-house in the ditch, never filled up but covered with the veil of a false civilisation, over which hangs a faint whiff from the butcher's shop.... This filthy odour finally sobered Clerambault; with horror he tore off the skin of the beast whose prey he had been.

Ah, how thick it was,--warm, silky, and beautiful, and at the same time stinking and bloody, made of the lowest instincts, and the highest illusions. To love, give ourselves to all, be a sacrifice for all, be but one body and one soul, our Country the sole life!... What then is this Country, this living thing to which a man sacrifices his life, the life of all but his conscience and the consciences of others? What is this blind love, of which the other side of the shield is an equally blinded hate?

... "It was a great error to take the name of reason from that of love," says Pascal, "and we have no good cause to think them opposed, for love and reason are in truth the same. Love is a precipitation of thought to one side without considering everything; but it is always reason." ...

Well, let us consider everything. Is not this love in a great measure the fear of examining all thing