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struggle with his conscience as an attack of literary megalomania,
brought on by undeserved success. It seemed as if he expressly chose
words likely to wound Clerambault, and he ended by summoning him to
retract his errors in a tone of the most insulting superiority.

The violence of this article, from so well-known an author, made an
event in Paris of the "Clerambault Case." It occupied the reporters
for more than a week, a long time for these feather-headed gentry.
Hardly anyone read what Clerambault had actually written; it was not
worth while. Bertin had read it, and newspaper men do not make a
practice of taking unnecessary trouble; besides it was not a question
of reading, but of judgment. A strange sort of Sacred Union was formed
over Clerambault; clericals and Jacobins came together to condemn him,
and the man whom they admired yesterday was dragged in the mud today.
The national poet became at once a public enemy, and all the myrmidons
of the press attacked him with heroic invective. The greater number
of them united bad faith with a remarkable ignorance. Very few knew
Clerambault's works, they scarcely knew his name or the titles of his
books, but that no more kept them from disparaging him now than it had
hindered them from praising him when he was the fashion. Now, in their
eyes, everything that he had written was tainted with "bochism,"
though all their quotations were inexact. In the excitement of his
investigation, one of them foisted upon Clerambault the authorship of
another man's book, the author of which, pale with fright, protested
with indignation, dissociating himself entirely from his dangerous
fellow-author. Uneasy at their intimacy with Clerambault, some of his
friends did not wait to have it recalled, but met it halfway, writing
"open letters," to which the papers gave a conspicuous place. Some,
like Bertin, coupled their public censure with a demand that he should
confess himself in the wrong, and others, less considerate, cast him
off in the bitterest and most insulting terms. Clerambault was crushed
by all this animosity; it could not arise solely from his articles,
it must have been long dormant in the hearts of these men. And why so
much hidden hatred?--What had he done to them?... A successful artist
does not suspect that besides the smiles of those around there are
also teeth, only waiting for the opportunity to bite.

Clerambault did his best to conceal the insults in the papers from