MS-HRC-SB-5-10

[1765] want of nourishment, they could pronounce me dead with
every appearance of veracity.[1766] And without ever having had to
move I would have gained my rest and heard them say, striking
^softly together their dry old hands as if to shake off
the dust, He'll never move again.[1767] That would be too simple.

[1768] We
must have the heavens and God knows what else, lights, lumin-
aries, the three-monthly ray of hope and the ^gleams of consol-
ation.[1769] But let us close this parenthesis an^d with a
light heart, open the next.[1770] The noise.[1771] How long ^di^d I remaⁱn
a pure ear?[1772] Up to the moment when ^this could go on ^no
longer, being too good to last, ^compared to what was soming .

[1773] These millions of different sounds, always the same, recurring
without pause, are ^all one requires to sprout a head, a bud to begin with, finally huge,
its function first to silence, then to extinguish when the eye
joins in, and worse than the evil, its treasure-house.[1774] But no
^lingering on this thin ice.[1775] The mechanism matters little, provid-
ed I succeed in saying, before I go deaf, It's a voice, and it
speaks to me.[1776] In enquiring, boldly, if it is not mine.

[1777] In
deciding, it doesn't matter how, that I have none.[1778] In blowing
darkly hot and cold, boiling and froz^en, with attendant similar
sensations.[1779] It's a starting-point, he's off, they don't see
me, but they hear me, panting, riveted, they don't know I'm
riveted.

[1780] He knows they are words, he is not sure they are not
his, ^{that's how it begins,} with such a start no one ever looked back, one day he'll
make them his, when he thinks he is alone, far from
all men, out of range of every voice, and come to the light
of day they keep telling him of.[1781] Yes, I know they are words,
there was a time I didn't, as I still don't know if they are
mine.[1782] Their hopes are therefore justified.

[1783] In their shoes I'd
be content with my knowing what I know, I'd demand no more of
me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent and
necessary sound of dumb things in their need to endure, but
the terror-stricken babble of the condemned to silence.I

[1784] I