not.  You can’t have mountains without valleys.  The war seemed perfectly idiotic to him, but he would not have lifted a finger to prevent it.  He had in his way the fatalist passivity of the people, which hides itself, on Gallic soil, behind a veil of ironic carelessness.  The “no use in getting in a sweat about it,” of the trenches.  Then there is also that false pride of the French, who fear nothing so much as ridicule, and would risk death twenty times over for something they know to be absurd, rather than be laughed at for an act of unusual common-sense.  “You might as well try to stop the lightning as talk against war.”  When it hails there is nothing to do but to cover over your cold-frames if you can, and when it’s over go round and see how much is left of your crop.  And they will keep on doing this until the next hailstorm, the next war, to the end of time.  “No use getting in a sweat.” ...  It would never occur to them that Man can change Man.

This stupid heroic resignation irritated Clerambault profoundly.  The upper classes are charmed with it, no doubt, for they owe their existence to it,—­but it makes a Danaid’s sieve of the human race, and its age-long effort, since all its courage, its virtues, and its labours, are spent in learning how to die....  But when he looked at the fragment of a man before him, his heart was pierced with an infinite pity.  What could this wretched man do, symbol as he was, of the mutilated, sacrificed people?  For so many centuries he has bled and suffered under our eyes, while we, his more fortunate brothers, have only encouraged him to persevere, throwing him some careless word of praise from a distance, which cost us nothing.  What help have we ever given him?  Nothing at all in action, and little enough in words.  We owe to his sacrifices the leisure to think; but all the fruit of our thought we have kept for ourselves; we have not given him a taste of it.  We are afraid of the light, of impudent opinion and the rulers of the hour who call to us saying:  “Put it out!  You who have the Light, hide it, if you wish to be pardoned....”  Oh, let us be cowards no more.  For who will speak, if we do not?  The others are gagged and must die without a word.

A wave of pain passed over the features of the wounded man.  With eyes fixed on the ceiling, his big mouth twisted, his teeth obstinately clenched, he could say no more.—­Clerambault went away, his mind was made up.  The silence of this soldier on his bed of agony had brought him to a decision.  He would speak.

PART THREE