ould do so, and
even if they had seen, they would never have understood. They could
not bear the idea that a man who condemned the present state of things
as bad and destructive, should hesitate at the most energetic methods
for its suppression. They were not wrong from their point of view,
which was that of immediate action, but the field of the mind is
greater, its battles cover a wider space; it does not waste its
energies in bloody skirmishes. Even admitting the methods advocated by
his friends, Clerambault could not accept their axiom, that "the end
justifies the means." For, on the contrary, he believed that the means
are even more important to real progress than the end ... what end?
Will there ever be such a thing?

This idea was irritating and confusing to these young minds; it served
to increase a dangerous hostility, which had arisen in the last five
years among the working class, against the intellectuals. No doubt the
latter had richly deserved it; how far away seemed the time when men
of thought marched at the head of revolutions! Whereas now they were
one with the forces of reaction. Even the limited number of those who
had kept aloof, while blaming the mistakes of the ring, were, like
Clerambault, unable to give up their individualism, which had saved
them once, but now held them prisoners, outside the new movement of
the masses. This conclusion once reached by the revolutionists, it was
but one step to a declaration that the intellectuals must fall, and
not a very long step. The pride of the working class already showed
itself in articles and speeches, while waiting for the moment when,
as in Russia, it could pass to action; and it demanded that the
intellectuals should submit servilely to the proletarian leaders. It
was even remarkable how some of the intellectuals were among the most
eager in demanding this lowering of the position of their group. One
would have thought that they did not wish it to be supposed that they
belonged to it. Perhaps they had forgotten that they did.

Moreau, however, had not forgotten it; he was all the more bitter in
repudiating this class, whose shirt of Nessus still clung to his skin,
and it made him extremely violent.

He now began to display singularly aggressive sentiments towards
Clerambault; during a discussion he would interrupt him rudely, with
a kind of sarcastic and bitter irritation. It almost seemed as if he
meant to wound him.

Clerambault did not take o