lazing fire of life which purifies
corruption and renews long-dead corpses, the flame ever new and young
which circles the earth with its burning arms. Be free! Conquerors
of the Bastille, you have not yet opened the dungeon within you,
the falsely called Fatality. It was built as a prison-house for you
centuries ago, by slaves or tyrants. They were all convicts of the
same stamp, who were afraid that you would discover that you were
free. Religions, races, countries, materialistic science, the heavy
shadows of the past, are between you and the sun; but go forward!
Liberty is there, behind those ramparts and towers, built of
prejudices, dead laws, and consecrated falsehoods. They are guarded by
the interests of some, the opinion of the drilled masses, and your own
doubting spirit. Dare to will; and behind the crumbling walls of
this spurious Destiny, you will once more behold the sun and the
illimitable horizon_.

Insensible to the revolutionary heat of this appeal, the staff of
the newspaper only fastened its attention on the few lines where
Clerambault seemed to lump all violences together, those of the "left"
along with those of the "right." What did this poet mean by giving
lessons to the socialists in a party paper? In the name of what
theory? He was not even a socialist. He was nothing but a Tolstoyian
anarchist; let him go back to his exercises in style, and his
middle-class where he belonged. Some larger-minded spirits
remonstrated in vain, that, with or without any label, liberal ideas
ought to be welcomed, and that those of Clerambault, however ignorant
he might be of the party doctrines, were more truly socialistic than
those of members of the party who joined in the work of national
slaughter. These views were over-ruled; Clerambault's article was
returned to him, after spending some weeks in the bottom of a drawer,
on the pretext that there were so many current items that they took up
all the space, and that the paper had too much copy already.

Clerambault took his article to a small review, which was more
attracted by his name than by his ideas. The upshot was that the
review was called down, and suspended by police order the day after
the article appeared, though it had been whitewashed through and
through.

Clerambault, however, persisted. The most rebellious people in the
world are those who are forced to rebellion after a lifetime of
submission. I remember once to have seen a big sheep so worried