He cried with a clear voice--"Liebknecht!"
He stood up with his arms still crossed. His face, as profoundly
serious as a statue's, drooped upon his chest. But he emerged once
again from his marble muteness to repeat, "The future, the future!
The work of the future will be to wipe out the present, to wipe it
out more than we can imagine, to wipe it out like something
abominable and shameful. And yet--this present--it had to be, it
had to be! Shame on military glory, shame on armies, shame on the
soldier's calling, that changes men by turns into stupid victims or
ignoble brutes. Yes, shame. That's the true word, but it's too true;
it's true in eternity, but it's not yet true for us. It will be true
when there is a Bible that is entirely true, when it is found
written among the other truths that a purified mind will at the same
time let us understand. We are still lost, still exiled far from
that time. In our time of to-day, in these moments, this truth is
hardly more than a fallacy, this sacred saying is only blasphemy!"
A kind of laugh came from him, full of echoing dreams--"To think I
once told them I believed in prophecies, just to kid them!"
I sat down by Bertrand's side. This soldier who had always done more
than was required of him and survived notwithstanding, stood at that
moment in my eyes for those who incarnate a lofty moral conception,
who have the strength to detach themselves from the hustle of
circumstances, and who are destined, however little their path may
run through a splendor of events, to dominate their time.
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