by flashes of the liberating Spirit:  Buddha, the Sages, Jesus—­all breakers of chains!  I can see the lightning coming, feel it thrill through me, like sparks that fly up beneath the horse’s hoofs.  The air vibrates with it, as the thick clouds of hate come together with a crash.  The flame springs up!  If you are alone against the world, have you cause to complain?  You have escaped the crushing yoke, fought your way through, like a nightmare in which one struggles and tears oneself out of the dark waters.  You sink, choking, and all at once with a despairing effort you throw yourself beyond the reach of the wave, and sink exhausted but safe on the shore.  These people wound me?  So much the better, I shall wake up in the free air.

Yes, threatening world, I am indeed free from your fetters, I can never be chained again, and my detested will with which I so often had to fight, my will is now in you.  You wanted, like me, to be free, and that made you suffer, and made you my enemy; but now even if you kill me, you have seen the light in me, and once seen, you can no longer reject it.  Strike then!  But know that in fighting against me you fight yourself also; you are beaten in advance, and when I defend myself, it is you that I defend as well. The One against All is the One for All, and soon will be The One with All.

I shall no longer be solitary!  I feel that I have never been in truth alone.  My brothers of the world, you may indeed be scattered afar over the earth like a handful of grain, but I know that you are here beside me.  The thought of a man is not solitary; the idea which grows in him springs up in others; when he feels it in his heart, let him rejoice, no matter how unhappy, how injured he may be, for it is the earth reviving.  The first spark in a lonely soul is the point of the ray which will pierre the night.  So, welcome, Light.  Break through the night which is around and within me!...  “Clerambault.”

The fresh light of day returned, ever young and new, untouched by the stains of men which the sun drinks up like a morning mist.

Madame Clerambault woke, and when she saw her husband with open eyes, she thought that he too had just waked up.

“You had a good sleep,” said she.  “I don’t think you stirred all night long.”  He did not contradict her, but thought of the vast distances he had traversed in the spirit, that fiery bird that flies through the night....  But feeling that he had come back to earth, he got up.

At the same hour another man rose, who had also passed a sleepless night, who had also evoked his dead son, and thought of Clerambault. whom he did not know, with fierce hatred.