Clerambault tried to talk with one and another of these people but
found himself everywhere opposed by the same hidden, half-unconscious
resistance. They were armed with the will not to hear, or rather with
a remarkable not-will to hear. Their minds were as impervious to
contrary arguments as a duck's feathers to water. Men in general are
endowed, for their comfort, with a precious faculty; they can make
themselves blind and deaf when it does not suit them to see and hear,
and when by chance they pick up some inconvenient object, they drop it
quickly, and forget it as soon as possible. How many citizens in any
country knew the truth about the divided responsibility for the
war, or about the ill-omened part played by their politicians, who,
themselves deceived, pretended with great success to be ignorant!
If everyone is trying to escape from himself, it is clear, that a man will run faster from someone who, like Clerambault, would help him to recover himself. In order to avoid their own conscience, intelligent, serious, honourable men do not blush to employ the little tricks of a woman or a child trying to get its own way; and dreading a discussion which might unsettle them, they would seize on the first awkward expression used by Clerambault. They would separate it from the context, dress it up if necessary, and with raised voices and eyes starting from their heads, feign an indignation which they ended by feeling sincerely. They would repeat "_mordicus_," even after the proof, and if obliged to admit it, would rush off, banging the door after them: "Can't stand any more of that!" But two, or perhaps ten days after, they would come back and renew the argument, as if nothing had happened.
