She wrote to Clerambault, and he, who was eating his heart
out in his provincial retreat, lacking even the energy to get away,
welcomed her letter as a deliverance. He returned at once to Paris;
and they both found a bitter joy in evoking together the image of the
absent. They formed the habit of meeting on one evening in the week,
when they would, so to speak, immerse themselves in recollections of
him. Clerambault was the only one of his friends who could understand
the tragedy, hidden under a sacrifice gilded by no patriotic illusion.
At first Madame Mairet seemed to find comfort in showing all that she
had received; she read his letters, full of disenchanted confidences;
they reflected on them with deep emotion, and she brought them into
the discussion of the problems that had caused the death of Mairet
and of millions of others. In this keen analysis, nothing stopped
Clerambault; and she was not a woman to hesitate in the search for
truth. But nevertheless....
Clerambault soon became aware that his words made her uneasy, though
he was only saying aloud things that she knew well and that were
strongly confirmed by Mairet's letters, namely, the criminal futility
of these deaths, and the sterility of all this heroism. She tried to
take back her confidences, or even to minimise the meaning of them,
with an eagerness that did not seem perfectly sincere.
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