"
This is the miracle of the resurrection; he who has cast off his
mortal coil and thinks that he has lost everything, finds that he is
only just entering on his true life. Not only are others as well as
himself restored to him, but he sees that up to now he has never
really possessed them. Outside in the throng, how can he see over the
heads of those who press about him? And it is not possible for him to
look long into the eyes of those who influence him, even though they
are his dearest, for they are pressed too close against him. There
is no time; no perspective. We feel only that our bodies are crushed
together, closely entwined by our common destiny, and tossed on the
muddy torrent of multitudinous existence. Clerambault felt that he
had not seen his son in any real sense until after his death; and the
brief hour in which he and Rosine had recognised each other was one in
which the bonds of a baleful delusion had been broken by the force of
suffering.
Now that by means of successive eliminations, he had arrived at
solitude, he felt withdrawn from the passions of the living, but they
stood out all the more to him in a kind of lucid intimacy. All, not
only his wife and children, but the millions of beings whom he had
thought to embrace in an oratorical affection; they all painted
themselves on the dark background.
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