a violent, concentrated joy such as is felt in the last second before
extinction by a woman who drowns herself with the man she loves.
Clerambault however was weaker, and waking from his dizziness he
thought:

"I too have given all, even what was not my own."

He inquired of the military authorities, but they knew nothing as yet.
Ten days later came the news that Sergeant Clerambault was reported
as missing from the night of the 27-28th of the preceding month.
Clerambault could get no further details at the Paris bureaus;
therefore he set out for Geneva, went to the Red Cross, the Agency for
Prisoners,--could find nothing; followed up every clue, got permission
to question comrades of his son in hospitals or depots behind the
lines. They all gave contradictory information; one said he was a
prisoner, another had seen him dead, and both the next day admitted
that they had been mistaken.... Oh! tortures! God of vengeance!...
He came back after a fortnight from this Way of the Cross, aged,
broken-down, exhausted.

He found his wife in a paroxysm of frantic grief, which in this
good-natured creature had turned to a furious hatred of the enemy;
she cried out for revenge, and for the first time Clerambault did not
answer. He had not strength enough to hate, he could only suffer.

He shut himself into his room. During that frightful ten days'
pilgrimage he had scarcely looked his thoughts in the face, hypnotised
as he was, day and night by one idea, like a dog on a scent,--faster!
go faster! The slowness of carriages and trains consumed him, and
once, when he had taken a room for the night, he rushed away the same