Maxime rushed off to the station to get the news in Paris, promising
to come back later in the evening, but Clerambault stayed in the
isolated house, from which in the distance could be seen the far-off
phosphorescence of the city. He had not stirred from the seat where
he had fallen stupified. This time he could no longer doubt, the
catastrophe was coming, was upon them already. Madame Clerambault
begged him to go to bed, but he would not listen to her. His thought
was in ruins; he could distinguish nothing steady or constant, could
not see any order, or follow an idea, for the walls of his inward
dwelling had fallen in, and through the dust which rose, it was
impossible to see what remained intact. He feared there was nothing
left but a mass of suffering, at which he looked with dull eyes,
unconscious of his falling tears. Maxime did not come home, carried
away by the excitement at Paris.

Madame Clerambault had gone to bed, but about one o'clock she came and
persuaded him to come up to their room, where he lay down; but when
Pauline had fallen asleep--anxiety made her sleepy--he got up and went
into the next room. He groaned, unable to breathe; his pain was so
close and oppressive, that he had no room to draw his breath. With
the prophetic hyper-sensitiveness of the artist, who often lives in
tomorrow with more intensity than in the present moment, his agonised
eyes and heart foresaw all that was to be. This inevitable war between
the greatest nations of the world, seemed to him the failure of
civilisation, the ruin of the most sacred hopes for human brotherhood.
He was filled with horror at the vision of a maddened humanity,
sacrificing its most precious treasures, strength, and genius, its
highest virtues, to the bestial idol of war. It was to him a moral
agony, a heart-rending communion with these unhappy millions. To what
end? And of what use had been all the efforts of the ages? His heart