as marked out to the authorities as a very dangerous
man.

Those who thought they knew him best were surprised. His adversaries
had called him sentimental, and assuredly so he was, but he was aware
of it, and because he was French he could laugh at it, and at himself.
It is all very well for sentimental Germans to have a thick-headed
belief in themselves; deep down in an eloquent and sensitive creature
like Clerambault, the vision of the Gaul--always alert in his thick
woods--observes, lets nothing escape, and is ready for a laugh at
everything. The surprising thing is that this under-spirit will emerge
when you least expect it, during the darkest trials and in the most
pressing danger. The universal sense of humour came as a tonic to
Clerambault, and his character, scarcely freed from the conventions in
which it had been bound, took on suddenly a vital complexity. Good,
tender, combative, irritable, always in extremes--he knew it, and that
made him worse--tearful, sarcastic, sceptical, yet believing, he was
surprised when he saw himself in the mirror of his writings. All his
vitality, hitherto prudently shut into his _bourgeois_ life, now burst
forth, developed by moral solitude and the hygiene of action.

Clerambault saw that he had not known himself; he was, as it were,
new-born, since that night of anguish. He learned to taste a joy of
which he had never before had an idea--the giddy joy of the free
lance in a fight; all his senses strung like a bow, glad in a perfect
well-being.

This improved state, however, brought no advantage to Clerambault's
family; his wife's share of the struggle was only the unpleasantness,
a general animosity that finally made itself felt even among the
small tradespeople of the neighbourhood. Rosine drooped; her secret
heart-ache wore upon her all the more because of her silence; but if
she said nothing her mother complained enough for two. She made no
distinction between the fools who affronted her and the imprudent
Clerambault who caused all the trouble; so that at every meal there
were awkward remarks meant to induce him to keep still. All this was
of no use, reproaches whether spoken or silent, passed over his head;
he was sorry, of course, but he had thrown himself into the thick
of the fight, and with a somewhat childish egotism he thrust aside
anything that interfered with this new interest.

Circumstances, however, came to Madame Clerambault's assistance; an
old relatio