Digital Manuscript ProjectMalone meurt / Malone Dies

[2190] And he had then been told
that if he was good he might indeed be let up one day, and out
into the pure plateau air, and that on that day, in the great hall
where the staff assembled at dawn before entering on their duties,
there would be seen pinned on the board a note thus conceived, Let
one hundred and sixty-six get up and go out.
[2191] For when it came to
the regulations Moll was inflexible and their voice was stronger
than the voice of love, in her heart, whenever they made themselves
heard there simultaneously.
[2192] The oysters for example, which the
Board had refused in a note calling her attention to the article
whereby they were prohibited, but which she could easily have
smuggled in, Macmann never saw sight or sign of the oysters.
[2193] But
Lemuel was made of sterner stuff, in this connexion, and far from
being a stickler for the statutes seemed to have little or no
acquaintance with them.
[2194] Indeed the question might have arisen, in
the mind of one looking down upon the scene, as to whether he had
all his wits about him.
[2195] For when not rooted to the spot in a
daze he was to be seen, with heavy, furious, reeling tread,
stamping up and down for hours on end, gesticulating and ejaculat-
ing unintelligible words.
[2196] Flayed alive by memory, his mind crawl-
ing with cobras, not daring to dream or think and powerless not
to, his cries were of two kinds, those having no other cause than
moral anguish and those, similar in every respect, by means of
which he hoped to forestall same.
[2197] Physical pain, on the contrary,
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Malone meurt / Malone Dies © 2017 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Dirk Van Hulle, Pim Verhulst and Vincent Neyt