been ill?"

"Yes, ill enough," answered Clerambault, "but I have pulled myself
together again, and am better now."

"It is the cruelest blow of all," said Perrotin, "to lose at our age,
such a friend as your poor boy was to you ..."

"The most cruel is not his loss," said the father, "it is that I
contributed to his death."

"What do you mean, my good friend?" said Perrotin in surprise. "How
can you imagine such things to add to your trouble?"

"It was I who shut his eyes," said Clerambault bitterly, "and he has
opened mine."

Perrotin pushed aside the work, which according to his habit he
had continued to ruminate upon during the conversation, and looked
narrowly at his friend, who bent his head, and began his story in an
indistinct voice, sad and charged with feeling. Like a Christian
of the early times making public confession, he accused himself of
falsehood towards his faith, his heart, and his reason.

When the Apostle saw his Lord in chains, he was afraid and denied Him;
but he was not brought so low as to offer his services as executioner.
He, Clerambault, had not only deserted the cause of human brotherhood,
he had debased it; he had continued to talk of fraternity, while he
was stirring up hatred. Like those lying priests who distort the
Scriptures to serve their wicked purposes, he had knowingly altered
the most generous ideas to disguise murderous passions.

He extolled war, while calling himself a pacifist; professed to be
humanitarian, previously putting the enemy outside humanity.... Oh,
how much franker it would have been to yield to force than to lend
himself to its dishonouring compromises! It was thanks to such
sophistries as his that the idealism of young men was thrown into the
arena. Those old poisoners, the artists and thinkers, had sweetened
the death-brew with their honeyed rhetoric, which would have been
found out and rejected by every conscience with disgust, if it had not
been for their falsehoods....

"The blood of my son is on my head," said Clerambault sadly. "The
death of the youth of Europe, in all countries, lies at the door of
European thought. It has been everywhere a servant to the hangman."

Perrotin leaned over and took Clerambault's hand. "My poor friend,"
said he, "you make too much of this. No doubt you are right to
acknowledge the errors of judgment into which you have been drawn by
public opinion, and I may confess to you now that I was sorry to see
it; but you ar