MS-HRC-SB-5-9-2

[1425] she make me a nest at the approach of winter,
would she protect me from the snow, would she
change my sawdust, would she rub salt into
my ailing ^{[ADDITION]Addition on page 14vscalp} , I hope I'm not forgetting
anything, if I wasn't there?

[1426] Would she have
put on my collar, raised me on a pedestal,
hung me with lanterns, if she was
not certain of my substantiality?[1427] How happy
I should be to submit to this evidence and
to the execution upon me of the judgement
it invites.

[1428] Unfortunately I regard it as
highly subject to caution, not to say irreceivable
(inacceptable).[1429] What is to one to think of
the redoubled attentions to which she has
subjected me, for some time past. Do they
not betray great uneasiness on her part?

[1430]
What a difference compared to the calm of our
early relations, when I only saw her once a
week.[1431] No, there is no getting away from, this woman
is losing faith in me.

[1432] And she is trying to put
off the moment when she will finally have
to confess her mistake by coming every few minutes
to see if I am still more or less imaginable, in
situ.[1433] Similarly the belief in God, in all modesty
let it be said, is sometimes lost following
a period of intensified zeal & observance,
it appears.

[1434] Here I must pause to make a
distinguo (I am still thinking).[1435] That my
sanctuary is really standing where they say,
all right, I wouldn't dream
of denying it, it's none of my
business, though the presence at such a
place, about the reality of which I do not
propose to quibble either, of so vast an urn
does not seem very credible to me.[1436] No.

[1437] I merely
doubt that I am inside it.[1438] It is easier to
erect a shrine than have the idol ^{object of worship} elect
his dwelling there.[1439] But I am getting mixed.
[1440] That's what comes of distinguos.[1441] No matter.
[1442] She loves me, I've always sensed it.[1443] She needs
me.

[1444] Her business, her garden, her husband, perhaps
her children, are not enough, there is in her a
void that I alone can fill.[1445] It is not surprising,
under these conditions, if she has visions.

[1446] There was a time I thought she was perhaps
a near relation, of mine, mother, sister,
daughter, or suchlike, even wife, and that
she was sequestrating me.[1447] That is to say that Mahood,
seeing how little impressed I was by his trump card, whispered this hypothesis in my
ear, adding, I have said nothing.

[1448] I must
say it is not as preposterous as it looks, at first
sight.[1449] It even accounts for certain bizarreries
which had not yet struck me at the
time of its formulation, among others my inexistence
in the eyes of those not in the know, that is to say
all mankind.[1450] But assuming I was being
stowed away in a