y without psychological gifts,
are sufficiently well-equipped to exercise some control over their
excitability.

One day as he was walking alone, he saw a crowd on the other side of
the street, he crossed over calmly and found himself on the opposite
sidewalk in the midst of a confused agitation circling about an
invisible point. With some difficulty he worked his way forward, and
scarcely was he within this human mill-wheel, than he felt himself a
part of the rim, his brain seemed turning round. At the centre of the
wheel he saw a struggling man, and even before he grasped the reason
for the popular fury, he felt that he shared it. He did not know if
a spy was in question, or if it was some imprudent speaker who had
braved the passions of the mob, but as cries rose around him, he
realised that he, yes he, Clerambault, had shrieked out: ... "Kill
him." ...

A movement of the crowd threw him out from the sidewalk, a carriage
separated him from it, and when the way was clear the mob surged on
after its prey. Clerambault followed it with his eyes; the sound
of his own voice was still in his ears,--he did not feel proud of
himself....

From that day on he went out less; he distrusted himself, but he
continued to stimulate his intoxication at home, where he felt himself
safe, little knowing the virulence of the plague. The infection came
in through the cracks of the doors, at the windows, on the printed
page, in every contact. The most sensitive breathe it in on first
entering the city, before they have seen or read anything; with others
a passing touch is enough, the disease will develop afterwards alone.
Clerambault, withdrawn from the crowd, had caught the contagion from
it, and the evil announced itself by the usual premonitory symptoms.
This affectionate tender-hearted man hated, loved to hate. His
intelligence, which had always been thoroughly straightforward, tried
now to trick itself secretly, to justify its instincts of hatred by
inverted reasoning. He learned to be passionately unjust and false,
for he wanted to persuade himself that he could accept the fact
of war, and participate in it, without renouncing his pacifism of
yesterday, his humanitarianism of the day before, and his constant
optimism. It was not plain sailing, but there is nothing that the
brain cannot attain to. When its master thinks it absolutely necessary
to get rid for a time of principles which are in his way, it finds
in these same princip