rs possess; and so, blushing, one
hides one's nudity from the public.

The only one who was able to comprehend the tortures of the young fellow
was his elder brother. Pierre had for Philip that adoration which the
younger ones often have (but which they jealously conceal) for the older
brother or sister, some stranger comrade, at times merely the vision of
an hour and lost again--who realizes in their eyes the dream at once of
what they could wish to be and of what they would like to love: chaste
ardors and troublesome, of the future, formed of mixing currents. The
big brother was aware of this naive homage and was flattered by it. Not
so long ago he had tried to read the heart of the little brother, and
explain things to him with discretion; for, although more robust, like
him he was molded of that fine clay which, among the better sort of men,
retains a little of the woman and does not blush to own it. But the war
had come and torn him away from his hard working career, from his study
of the sciences, from his twenty-year-old dream and from his intimacy
with his young brother. He had dropped everything in the intoxicating
idealism of the moment, like a big crazy bird that launches out into
space with the heroic and absurd illusion that his beak and his talons
will put an end to the war and restore to earth the reign of peace.
Since then the big bird had returned two or three times to the nest;
each time, alas, a little more worn in plumage. He had come back
denuded of many of his illusions, but he found himself too much
mortified about them to acknowledge it. He was ashamed to have believed
in them. Folly, not to have known how to see life as it is! Now he set
his heart upon dissipating its enchantment and accepting it stoically,
whatsoever it might turn out. Not himself alone did he punish; a
wretched suffering urged him to punish his illusions in the heart of his
young brother, where he found that they held their own. At his first
coming back, when Pierre had run up to him burning in his walled-up
heart, he had been frozen at once by the welcome his elder gave him,
affectionate certainly, always affectionate, but with a certain harsh
irony in his tone hard to fathom. Questions that pressed forward to his
lips were pushed back on the instant. Philip had seen them coming and
cut them down with a word, with a look. After two or three attempts
Pierre drew back with an aching heart. He did not recognize his brother
any m