It was a dark hour; the turn of the year 1917-18. In the foggy winter
nights men waited for the supreme onslaught of the German armies,
which rumour had foretold for months past; the Gotha raids on Paris
had already begun. Those who wanted to fight to the end pretended
confidence, the papers kept on boasting, and Clemenceau had never
slept better in his life. But the tension showed in the increasing
bitterness of feeling among civilians. The agonised public turned on
the suspects among them, the defeatists and the pacifists, and
for days at a time the baying of an accusing public pursued these
miserable creatures and hunted them down. And spies swarmed of all
sorts, patriotic denouncers, half-crazed witnesses. When towards the
end of March the long-threatened great offensive against Paris began,
the "sacred" fury between fellow-citizens reached its height, and
there is no doubt that if the invasion had succeeded, before the
Germans had arrived at the gates of the city, the gallows at
Vincennes, that altar of the country's vengeance, would have known
many victims, innocent or guilty, accused or condemned.
Clerambault was often shouted at in the streets, but he was not alarmed; perhaps because he did not realise the danger. One day Moreau found him in a group of people disputing with an excited young man who had spoken to him in a most insulting manner. While they were talking the shell from a "Big Bertha" exploded close by. Clerambault took no notice, and went on quietly explaining his position to the angry young man. There was something positively comic in this obstinacy, and the circle of listeners was quick to feel it, like true Frenchmen, and began to exchange jokes not entirely of a refined nature, but
