Vaucoux had none of Clerambault's doubts; he did not know the meaning
of the word, and if he could have permitted himself such a feeling he
would have despised the idea. Hard man as he was, he had loved his son
passionately, though he had never shown it; and he could think of no
better way to prove it now than by a ferocious hatred for those who
had killed him; not, of course, reckoning himself among the number.
There were not many methods of revenge open to a man of his age,
rheumatic and stiff in one arm; but he tried to enlist and was
rejected. He felt that something must be done, and all that he had
left was his brain. Alone in his deserted house with the memory of his
dead wife and child, he sat for hours brooding on these vindictive
thoughts; and like a beast shaking the bars of its cage, waiting for
the chance to spring, his mind raged furiously against the inhibitions
the war put upon him with its iron circle of the trenches.
The clamours of the press drew his attention to Clerambault's articles
which were intensely distasteful to him. The idea of snatching
his precious hatred away from between his teeth! From the slight
acquaintance that he had with Clerambault before the war, he felt an
antipathy for him; as a writer, on account of the new form of his art,
and as a man for numerous reasons: his love of life, and other men,
his democratic ideals, his rather silly optimism, and his European
aspirations.
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