while his own eyes are in shadow.

The look of his young friend had revealed an unknown treasure to poor
Clerambault, and the knowledge of the divine message with which he was
entrusted re-established his lost union with other men. He had
only contended with them because he was their hardy pioneer, their
Christopher Columbus forcing his way across the desert ocean, that he
might open the road to the New World. They deride, but follow him; for
every true idea, whether understood or not, is a ship under weigh, and
the souls of the past are drawn after in its wake.

From this day onward he averted his eyes from the irreparable present
of the war and its dead, and looked towards the living, and the future
which is in our hands. We are hypnotised, obsessed by the thought of
those that we have lost, and the morbid temptation to bury our hearts
in their graves, but we must tear ourselves away from the baleful
vapours that rise, as in Rome, from The Way of the Tombs. March on!
This is no time to halt. We have not yet earned the right to rest with
them, for there are others who need us. There, like the wrecks of the
Grand Army, you can see in the distance those who drag themselves
along, searching on the dreary plain for the half-effaced path.

The thought of the sombre pessimism which threatened to overwhelm
these young men after the war was a grave anxiety to Clerambault.
The moral danger was a serious one, of which the Governments took no
notice at all. They were like bad coachmen who flog their horses up a
steep hill at a gallop; it is true that the horse reaches the top, but
as the road goes on he stumbles and falls, foundered for life. With
what a gallant spirit our young men rushed to the assault in the
beginning of the war! And then their ardour gradually diminished.
But the horse was still in harness, and the shafts held him up. A
factitious excitement was kept up all around him, his daily ration was
seasoned with glittering hopes; and though the strength went out of
it little by little, the poor creature could not fall down, could not
even complain, he had not the strength to think. The countersign all
about these victims was to hear nothing, to stop the ears and to lie.

Day after day the battle-tide ebbed, and left wrecks on the sand, men
wounded and maimed; and through them the depths of this human ocean
were brought to the light. These poor wretches, ruthlessly torn
from life, moved helplessly in the void, too f