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His family and the Clerambaults had known each other in the country, before either of them were transplanted to Paris; this acquaintance formed the basis of an amicable intercourse, solid rather than intimate for Mairet opened his heart to no one but his wife but resting on an esteem that nothing could shake.
Besides, many courtiers go there, such as the Duc de Bouillon, Monsieur d'Aubijoux, the Comte de Brion, the Cardinal de la Vallette, Messieurs de Montresor, Fontrailles; men illustrious in the sciences, as Mairet, Colletet, Desmarets, author of Araine; Faret, Doujat, Charpentier, who wrote the Cyropedie; Giry, Besons, and Baro, the continuer of Astree all academicians."
However, there were even early examples of an extravagance of an opposite description. In the Mariamne of Mairet, an older poet than Corneille, the player who acted Herod, roared himself to death. This may, indeed, be called "out-heroding Herod!" When Voltaire was instructing an actress in some tragic part, she said to him, "Were I to play in this manner, sir, they would say the devil was in me."
Clerambault felt that she had a grudge against him and that he should see no more of her. The truth was that, at the same time that Clerambault pursued his relentless analysis which struck at the foundations of current beliefs, an inverse process of reconstruction and idealisation was going on in the mind of Madame Mairet.
And now he is not far from saying the same thing of his fellow-men whom he dismembers and destroys. Butcher, murderer, you have had no pity, why should you implore it for yourself today?... Of all the old friendships that had once surrounded Clerambault, one only remained, his friendship with Madame Mairet, whose husband had been killed in the Argonne.
He spoke of them to his wife, saying what comfort he had found in these words of an honest man driven to speak out, and he begged her to let Clerambault know that his old friendship for him was now all the warmer and closer. He also asked Madame Mairet to send him the succeeding articles, but he died before they could reach him.
François Mairet was not quite forty years old when he met with an obscure death in the trenches. He was one of the foremost French biologists, an unpretending scholar and hard worker, a patient spirit. But celebrity was assured to him before long, though he was in no haste to welcome the meretricious charmer, as her favours have to be shared with too many wire-pullers.
They had no children and had every thought in common, both of them being freethinkers, with high ideals, destitute of religion, as well as of any national superstition. In 1914 Mairet was mobilised, and went simply as a duty, without any illusions as to the cause that he was called upon to serve by the accidents of time and country.
Besides, many courtiers go there, such as the Duc de Bouillon, Monsieur d'Aubijoux, the Comte de Brion, the Cardinal de la Vallette, Messieurs de Montresor, Fontrailles; men illustrious in the sciences, as Mairet, Colletet, Desmarets, author of Araine; Faret, Doujat, Charpentier, who wrote the Cyropedie; Giry, Besons, and Baro, the continuer of Astree all academicians."
He noticed that she skipped a phrase in which Mairet expressed his heroic pessimism, and when he remarked on it she appeared vexed. After this her manner became more distant, her annoyance passed into coldness, then irritation, till it even grew into a sort of smothered hostility, and finally she avoided him, though without an open rupture.
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