of the men standing near, tapped him on the
shoulder, and said:

"This ought to be a pleasure to you."

Clerambault started: "Pleasure," he said, "pleasure?"--he took his hat
and went out. It was pitch dark in the street outside, all the lights
having been out on account of an air-raid. Before his mind there
flowered the fine clear-cut face of a boy of sixteen, with its warm
pale skin and dark soft eyes, the curling hair, the mobile, smiling
mouth, the tone of the sweet voice--Bertin, as he was when they first
met at about the same age. Their long evening talks, the tender
confidences, the discussions, the dreams ... for in those days Bertin
too was a dreamer, and even his common-sense, his precocious irony did
not protect him from impossible hopes and generous schemes for the
renovation of the human race. How fair the future had appeared to
their youthful eyes! And in those moments of ecstatic vision how their
hearts had seemed to melt together in loving friendship ...

And now to see what life had made of them both! This rancorous
struggle, Bertin's insane determination to trample under foot those
early dreams, and the friend who still cherished them;--and he, too,
Clerambault, who had let himself be carried away by the same murderous
impulse, trying to render blow for blow, to draw blood from his
adversary. Could it be that at the first moment, when he heard of the
death of his former friend--he was horrified at himself--but did he
not feel it as a relief? What is it that possesses us all? What wicked
insanity that turns us against our better selves?...

Lost in these thoughts, he had wandered from the road, and now
perceived that he was walking in the wrong direction. He could see the
long arms of the search-lights stretching across the sky, hear the
tremendous explosions of the Zeppelin bombs over the city, and the
distant growlings of the forts in the aerial fight. The enraged people
tearing each other to pieces! And to what end? That they all might be
as Bertin was now, reach the extinction which awaited all men, and all
countries. And those rebels who were planning more violence, other
sanguinary idols to set up against the old ones, new gods of carnage
that man carves for himself, in the vain hope of ennobling his deadly
instincts!

Good God! Why do they not see the imbecility of their conduct, in face
of the gulf that swallows up each man that dies, all humanity with
him? These millions of creatures who