ty that spreads like greasy water
over the world.

"We who have so far kept our heads above the gloomy surface, what
are we to do in face of the implacable universe, where the stronger
eternally crushes the weaker, and is crushed by a stronger yet, in his
turn? Shall we resign ourselves to a voluntary sacrifice through pity
or weariness? Or shall we join in and cut the throats of the weak,
without the shadow of an illusion as to the blind cosmic cruelty?
What choice is left, but to try to keep out of the struggle through
selfishness--or wisdom, which is another form of the same thing?"

In the crisis of acute pessimism which had seized upon Clerambault
during these months of inhuman isolation, he could not contemplate
even the possibility of progress; that progress in which he had once
believed, as men do in God. The human species now appeared to him as
devoted to a murderous destiny. After having ravaged the planet and
exterminated other species, it was now to be destroyed by its own
hands. It is the law of justice. Man only became ruler of the world by
treachery and force (above all by treachery). Those more noble than he
have perhaps--or certainly--fallen under his blows; he has destroyed
some, degraded and brutalised others. During the thousands of years
in which he has shared life with other beings, he has
feigned--falsely--not to comprehend them, not to see them as brothers,
suffering, loving, and dreaming like himself. In order to exploit
them, to torture them without remorse, his men of thought have told
him that these creatures cannot think, that he alone possesses
this gift. And now he is not far from saying the same thing of his
fellow-men whom he dismembers and destroys. Butcher, murderer, you
have had no pity, why should you implore it for yourself today?...

Of all the old friendships that had once surrounded Clerambault, one
only remained, his friendship with Madame Mairet, whose husband had
been killed in the Argonne.

Francois Mairet was not quite forty years old when he met with an
obscure death in the trenches. He was one of the foremost French
biologists, an unpretending scholar and hard worker, a patient spirit.
But celebrity was assured to him before long, though he was in no
haste to welcome the meretricious charmer, as her favours have to be
shared with too many wire-pullers. The silent joys that intimacy with
science bestows on her elect were sufficient for him, with only
one heart on