Nothing can be more convenient than to detest those who differ from
you, especially when you do not understand them; but poor Clerambault
had not this resource, for he did understand perfectly. These good
people had had to bear injuries from the enemy; of course because they
were struck by them, but also frankly, because of Injustice with a
capital I; for in their short-sightedness it filled the field of
vision. The capacity to feel and judge is very limited in an ordinary
man; submerged as he is in the species, he clings to any driftwood;
and just as he reduces the infinite number of shades in the river of
light to a few colours, the good and evil that flow in the veins
of the world are only perceptible to him when he has bottled a few
samples, chosen among those around him. All good and bad then he has
in his flask, and on these he can expend his whole power of liking or
repulsion; witness the fact that to millions of excellent people the
condemnation of Dreyfus, or the sinking of the "Lusitania," remains
the crime of the century. They cannot see that the path of social
life is paved with crime, and that they walk over it in perfect
unconsciousness, profiting by injustices that they make no effort to
prevent. Of all these, which are the worst? Those which rouse long
echoes in the conscience of mankind, or those which are known alone to
the stifled victim? Naturally, our worthy friends have not arms long
enough to embrace all the misery of the world; they can only reach one
perhaps, but that they press close to their heart; and when they have
chosen a crime, they pour out upon it all the pent-up hatred within
them;--when a dog has a bone to gnaw, it is wiser not to touch him.
Clerambault had tried to take his bone away from the
