" Clerambault turned to walk on. "All right," said he,
"you know your own thoughts better than I do."
For some minutes they continued in silence; then Moreau seized his old
friend's arm, and said excitedly:
"How did you know it?"--and his resistance having broken down, he
confessed the despair hidden under his aggressive determination to
believe and act. He was eaten up with pessimism, a natural consequence
of his excessive idealism which had been so cruelly disappointed. The
religious souls of former times were tranquil enough; they placed the
kingdom of God so far away that no event could touch it; but those
of today have established it on earth, by the work of human love and
reason, so that when life deals a blow at their dream all life seems
horrible to them. There were days when Moreau was tempted to cut his
throat! Humanity seemed made of rotteness; he saw with despair the
defeats, failures, flaws carved on the destiny of the race from the
very beginning--the worm in the bud--and he could not endure the idea
of this absurd and tragic fate, which man can never escape. Like
Clerambault, he recognized the poison which is in the intelligence,
since he had it in his veins, but unlike his elder, who had passed the
crisis and only saw danger in the irregularity of thought and not in
its essence, Moreau was maddened by the idea that the poison was a
necessary part of intelligence.
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