Explore "Clerambault" by Romain Rolland on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Clerambault came back from the hospital, shut himself into his room, and began to write. His wife tried to come in, to discover what he was doing; it seemed as if the good woman had a suspicion, an intuition, rare with her, which gave her a sort of obscure fear of what her husband might be about to do, but he succeeded in keeping her away until he had finished. Ordinarily not a line of his was spared to his family; it was a pleasure to his simple-hearted, affectionate vanity, and a duty towards their love also, which none of them would have neglected. This time, however, he did neglect it, for reasons which he would not admit to himself, for though he was far from imagining the consequences of his act, he was afraid of their objections, he did not feel sure enough to expose himself to them, and so preferred to confront them with the accomplished fact.
His first word was a cry of self-accusation: