Her big body, better fed, more
fleshly than others, offered a greater target to the attacks of the
epidemic. It was terrible; but by the time the evil began to abate
with her, it had penetrated elsewhere and under the form of a slow
tenacious disease it ate to the very bone. To the insanities of German
thinkers, speakers in Paris and everywhere were not slow to respond
with their extravagances; they were like the heroes in Homer; but if
they did not fight, they screamed all the louder. They insulted not
only the adversary, they insulted his father, his grandfather, and
his entire race; better still they denied his past. The tiniest
academician worked furiously to diminish the glory of the great men
asleep in the peace of the grave.
Clerambault listened and listened, absorbed, though he was one of the
few French poets who before the war had European relations and whose
work would have been appreciated in Germany. He spoke no foreign
language, it is true; petted old child of France that he was, who
would not take the trouble to visit other people, sure that they would
come to him. But at least he welcomed them kindly, his mind was free
from national prejudices, and the intuitions of his heart made up for
his lack of instruction and caused him to pour out without stint his
admiration for foreign genius.
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