MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[2440] babble, like a multitude whispering? [2441] I don't understand. [2442] With
my distant hand I count the pages that remain. [2443] They will do. [2444] This
exercise-book is my life, this big child's exercise-book, it has
taken me a long time to resigⁿ myself to that. [2445] And yet I shall not
throw it away. [2446] For I want to put down in it, for the last time,
those I have called to my help, but ill, so that they did not
understand, so that they may cease with me. [2447] Now rest.

[2448] Wearing over his long shirt a great strⁱped cloak reaching down
to his ankles^[₰] Macmann took the air in all weathers, from morning
to night. [2449] And more than once they had been obliged to go out look-
ing for him with lanterns, to bring him back to his cell, for he
had remained deaf to the call of the bell and to the shouts
and threats first of Lemuel, then of the other keepers.

[2450] Then the
keepers, in their white clothes, armed with sticks and lanterns,
spread out from the buildings and beat the thickets, the copses
and the fern-brakes, calling the fugitive ^by name and threatening
him with the direst reprisals if he did not surrender immediately.
[2451] But they finally remarked that he ^hid, when he did, always in the
same place and that such a deployment of force was unnecessary.

[2452] From then on it was Lemuel who went out alone, in silence, as al-
ways when he knew w^hat he had to do, straight to the bush in which
Macmann had made his lair, whenever this was necessary. [2453] My God.
[2454] And often the two of them remained there for some time, in the
bush, before going in, huddled together, for the lair was small,
saying nothing, perhaps listening to the noises of the night, the
owls, the wind in the leaves, the sea when it was high enough to