Smilingly he contemplated their artificially inflamed anger, addressing them in the words of his own Clerambault: "You say that yours is the better way? The only good way? Very well, take your own path, and leave me to take mine. I make no attempt to compel you to follow me. I merely show you which way I am going. What are you so excited about? Perhaps at the bottom of your hearts you are afraid that my way is the right one?" CHAPTER XIII FRIENDS As soon as he had uttered his first words, a void formed round this brave man. As Verhaeren finely phrased it, he positively loved to encounter danger, whereas most people shun danger. His oldest friends, those who had known his writings and his character from youth upwards, left him in the lurch; prudent folk quietly turned their backs on him; newspaper editors and publishers refused him hospitality. For the moment, Rolland seemed to be alone. But, as he had written in _Jean Christophe_, "A great soul is never alone. Abandoned by friends, such a one makes new friends, and surrounds himself with a circle of that affection of which he is himself full." Necessity, the touchstone of conscience, had deprived him of friends, but had also brought him friends. It is true that their voices were hardly audible amid the clangor of the opponents. The war-makers had control of all the channels of publicity. They roared hatred through the megaphones of the press. Friends could do no more than give expression to a few cautious words in such petty periodicals as could slip through the meshes of the censorship. Enemies formed a compact mass, flowing to the attack in a huge wave (whose waters were ultimately to be dispersed in the morass of oblivion); his friends crystallized slowly and secretly around his ideas, but they were steadfast. His enemies were a regiment advancing fiercely to the attack at the word of command; his friends were a fellowship, working tranquilly, and united only through love. The friends in Paris had the hardest task. It was barely possible for them to communicate with him openly. Half of their letters to him and half of his replies were lost on the frontier. As from a beleaguered fortress, they hailed the liberator, the man who was freely proclaiming to the world the ideals which they were forbidden to utter. Their only possible way of defending their ideas was to defend the man. In Rolland's own fatherland, Amédée Dunois, Fernand Desprès, Georges Pioch, Renaitour, Rouanet, Jacques Mesnil, Gaston Thiesson, Marcel Martinet, and Sévérine, boldly championed him against calumny. A valiant woman, Marcelle Capy, raised the standard, naming her book _Une voix de femme dans la mêlée_. Separated from him by the blood-stained sea, they looked towards him as towards a distant lighthouse upon the rock, and showed their brothers the signal of hope.