As his son, or
his victim, could not get away from him, he inoculated him with all
his own mental diseases; like those insects which deposit their eggs
in the living bodies of others. And when the war broke out, he took
him at once to a recruiting station and made him enlist. For a man of
his sort, "Country" was the noblest of things--the holy of holies; he
did not need to breathe the thrilling suggestion of the crowd, his
head was already turned, and, besides, he never went with the crowds;
he carried "Country" about with him;--The Country and The Past,--The
Eternally Past.
[Footnote 1: "Simon and I then understood our hatred of strangers and
barbarians, and our egotism, in which we included ourselves and our
entire small moral family.--_The first care of him who would wish to
live must be to surround himself with high walls; but even in his
closed garden he must introduce only those who are guided by the same
feelings, and interests analogous to his own_." "A Free Man."
In three lines, three times, this "free man" expresses the idea of
"shutting-up," "closing," and "surrounding with walls."]
His son was killed, like Clerambault's son, and the sons of millions
of other fathers, for the faith and the ideals of those fathers in
which they did not believe.
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