Their long evening talks, the tender
confidences, the discussions, the dreams ... for in those days Bertin
too was a dreamer, and even his common-sense, his precocious irony did
not protect him from impossible hopes and generous schemes for the
renovation of the human race. How fair the future had appeared to
their youthful eyes! And in those moments of ecstatic vision how their
hearts had seemed to melt together in loving friendship ...
And now to see what life had made of them both! This rancorous
struggle, Bertin's insane determination to trample under foot those
early dreams, and the friend who still cherished them;--and he, too,
Clerambault, who had let himself be carried away by the same murderous
impulse, trying to render blow for blow, to draw blood from his
adversary. Could it be that at the first moment, when he heard of the
death of his former friend--he was horrified at himself--but did he
not feel it as a relief? What is it that possesses us all? What wicked
insanity that turns us against our better selves?...
Lost in these thoughts, he had wandered from the road, and now
perceived that he was walking in the wrong direction. He could see the
long arms of the search-lights stretching across the sky, hear the
tremendous explosions of the Zeppelin bombs over the city, and the
distant growlings of the forts in the aerial fight.
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