Like a good steward of the treasure placed in his charge, Clerambault
made up the account of his day. He looked back on his attempts, his
efforts, his impulses, his mistakes; how little remained of his life,
for nearly all that he had built up he had afterwards destroyed with
his own hands. He had first stated, then denied, and had never ceased
to wander in the forest of doubts and contradictions; often torn and
bruised, with no guide but the stars half-seen through the branches.
What meaning had there been in this long troubled course, now ending
in darkness? One only, he had been free.
Free!... What was this freedom, then, which intoxicated him so
completely? This liberty of which he was the master and the
slave--this imperious need to be free? He knew well enough that no
more than others was he emancipated from the eternal bonds; but the
orders that he obeyed differed from others; all are not alike. The
word liberty is only one of the clear high commands of the invisible
sovereign who rules the world ... whom we call necessity. She it is
who excites those of the advance-guard to rebel, and causes them to
break with the heavy past which the blind multitude drags along behind
it; for she is the battle-field of the eternal present, where the
past and the future must ever strive together, and on this field the
ancient laws are conquered, that they may give place to new laws,
which will be conquered in their turn.
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