direct the distracted
forces of his mind towards a fixed point, as the first bark of the
shepherd's dog drives the sheep together.

Clerambault had but one wish left, to rejoin the flock, rub himself
against the human animals, his brothers, feel with them, act with them....
Though exhausted by sleeplessness, he started, in spite of his
wife, to take the train for Paris with Maxime. They had to wait a
long time at the station, and also in the train, for the tracks were
blocked, and the cars crowded; but in the common agitation Clerambault
found calm. He questioned and listened, everybody fraternised, and
not being sure yet what they thought, everyone felt that they thought
alike. The same questions, the same trials menaced them, but each man
was no longer alone to stand or fall, and the warmth of this contact
was reassuring. Class distinctions were gone; no more workmen or
gentlemen, no one looked at your clothes or your hands; they only
looked at your eyes where they saw the same flame of life, wavering
before the same impending death. All these people were so visibly
strangers to the causes of the fatality, of this catastrophe, that
their innocence led them like children to look elsewhere for the
guilty. It comforted and quieted their conscience. Clerambault
breathed more easily when he got to Paris. A stoical and virile
melancholy had succeeded to the agony of the night. He was however
only at the first stage.

The order for general mobilisation had just been affixed to the doors
of the _Mairies_. People read and re-read them in silence, then went
away without a word. After the anxious waiting of the preceding
days, with crowds around the newspaper booths, people sitting on
the sidewalk, watching for the news, and when the paper was issued
gathering in groups to read it, this was certainty. It was also a
relief. An obscure danger, that one feels approaching without knowing
when or from where, makes you feverish, but when it is there you can
take breath, look it in the face, and roll up your sleeves. There had
been some hours of deep thought while Paris made ready and doubled up
her fists. Then that which swelled in all hearts spread itself abroad,
the houses were emptied and there rolled through the streets a human
flood of which every drop sought to melt into another.

Clerambault fell into the midst and was swallowed up. All at once.
He had scarcely left the station, or set his foot on the pavement.
Nothi