his seemed to touch the visitor on a tender point, and he answered:
"I can get up well enough," and turned towards the staircase.
Clerambault now understood that besides his other wounds, the heart
within him had been wounded to the quick.

They sat down in the fireless study, and like the room, it was some
time before the conversation thawed out. All that Clerambault could
get out of the man were short stiff answers, not very clear, and given
in rather an irritated tone. He learned that his name was Julian
Moreau, that he had been a student at the Faculty of Letters, and
had just passed three months at Val-de-Grace. He was living alone in
Paris, in a room over in the Latin Quarter, though he had a widowed
mother and some other relations in Orleans; he did not explain at
first why he was not with them.

All at once after a short silence he decided to speak, and in a
low voice, hoarse at first, but softening as he went on, he told
Clerambault that his articles had been brought into his trench by a
man just back from leave, and handed about from one to the other; to
him they had been a real blessing. They answered to the cry of his
inmost soul: "Thou shalt not lie." The papers and reviews made him
furious; they had the impudence to show the soldier a false picture of
the armies, trumped-up letters from the front, a cheap comedy style of
courage, and inappropriate joking; all the abject boasting of actors
safe at home, speechifying over the death of others. It was an insult
to be slobbered over with the disgusting kisses of these prostitutes
of the press. As if their sufferings were a mockery!

Clerambault's writings found an echo in their hearts; not that he
understood them, no one could understand who had not shared their
hardships. But he pitied them, and spoke humanely of the unfortunates
in all camps. He dared to speak of the injustices, common to all
nations, which had led to the general suffering. He could not take
away their trouble, but he did raise it into an atmosphere where it
could be borne.

"If you only knew how we crave a word of real sympathy; it is all very
well to be hardened, or old,--there are grey-haired, bent men among
us--but after what we have seen, suffered, and done to others, there
are times when we are like lost children, looking for their mother to
console them. Even our mothers seem far away. At times we get strange
letters from home, as if we were deserted by our own flesh and blood."