Explore "Clerambault" by Romain Rolland on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Clerambault was passing through a new danger-zone. His solitary journey was like a mountain ascension, where a man finds himself suddenly enveloped in fog, clinging to a rock, unable to advance a step. He could see nothing in front of him, and, no matter to which side he turned, he could hear beneath him the roar of the torrent of suffering. Even so, he could not stand still; though he hung over the abyss and his hold threatened to give way.
He had reached one of these dark turnings, and to make it worse, the news that day, as barked out by the press, made the heart ache by its insanity. Useless hecatombs, which the induced egotism of the world behind the lines thought natural; cruelties on all sides, criminal reprisals for crimes -- for which these good people clamoured, and loudly applauded. The horizon that surrounded the poor human creatures in their burrow had never seemed so dark and pitiless.