eeble to cling to the
passions of yesterday or dreams of tomorrow. Some asked themselves
blindly, and others with a cruelly clear insight, why they had been
born, what life meant....

"_Since he who is destroyed, suffers, and he who destroys has
no pleasure, and is shortly destroyed himself, tell me what no
philosopher can explain; whom does it please, and to whose profit is
this unfortunate life of the universe, which is only preserved by the
injury or death of all the creatures which compose it_?"[1] ...

[Footnote 1: Leopardi.]

It is necessary to answer these men, to give them a reason for living,
but there is no such need for a man of Clerambault's age; his life
is over, and all he requires is to free his conscience as a sort of
public bequest.

To young people who have all their life before them, it is not enough
to contemplate truth across a heap of corpses; whatever the past may
have been, the future alone counts for them. Let us clear away the
ruins!

What causes them the most pain? Their own suffering?

No, it is their lack of faith in the altar on which this suffering was
laid--(does a man regret if he sacrifices himself for the woman he
loves, or for his child?)--This doubt poisons them, takes away the
courage to pursue their way, because they fear to find only despair
at the end. This is why people say to you: "Never shake the ideal of
Country, it ought rather to be built up." What a derision! As if it
were possible to restore a lost faith by force of will! We deceive
ourselves; we know it in the bottom of our hearts, and this
consciousness kills courage and joy.

Let us be brave enough to reject that in which we no longer believe.
The trees drop their leaves in the autumn in order that they may put
forth new leaves in the spring. Out of your past illusions, make fires
as the peasants do with the fallen leaves; the fresh grass, the new
faith, will grow all the more thickly, for it is there waiting. Nature
does not die, it changes shape continually; like her, let us cast off
the garment of the past.

Look carefully, and reckon up these hard years. You have fought and
suffered for your country, and what have you gained by it? You have
discovered the brotherhood of the men who fight and suffer. Is the
price too high? No, if you will listen to your heart, if you will
dare to open it to the new faith which has come to you when you least
expected it.

The thing that disappoints and drives us to despa