[p. 75r]
[1452] um book with its little special pencil, the yawned goodbyes.
[1453] Some even take a cab to get more quickly to the rendezvous or, when the fun is over, home or to the hotel, where their comfortable bed is waiting for them.
[1454] Then you see the last stage of the horse, between its recent career as a pet horse, or a race-horse, or a pack-horse, or a plough-horse, and the shambles.
[1455] It spends most of its time standing still in an attitude of dejection, its head hanging as low as the shafts and harness permit, that is to say almost tot eh to the bcobble-stones.
[1456] But once in motion it is transformed, momentarily, perhaps because of the memories that motion revives, for the mere fact of running and plulling cannot give it much satisfaction, under such conditions.
[1457] But when the shafts tilt up, announcing that a fare has been taken on board, or when on the contrary the back-band begins to gall the its spine, according as the passenger is seated facing the way he is going or, what is perhaps even more restful, with his back to it, then it rears its head, stiffens its houghs and looks almost content.
[1458] And you see the cabman too, all alone on his box ten feet from the ground, his knees covered at all seasons and in all weathers with a kind of rug as a rule originally brown, the same precisely which he has just snatched from the rump of his horse.
[1459] Furious and livid perhaps from want of passengers, the least fare seems to excite him to a frenzy.
[1460] Then with his huge exasperated hands he tears at the reins or, half rising and leaning out over his horse, brings them down with a c crack all along its back.
[1461] And he launches his equipage blindly
[p. 76r]
[1461] through the dark thronging streets, his mouth full of curses.
[1462] But the passenger, having named the place he wants to go and knowing himself as helpless to act on the course of events as the dark box that encloses him, abandons himself to the pleasant feeling of being freed from all responsibility, or he ponders on what lies before him, or on what lies behind him, saying, Twill not be ever thus, and then in the same breath, But twas ever thus, for there are not five hundred different kinds of passengers.
[1463] And so they hasten, the horse, the driver and the passenger, towards the appoi appointed place, byt by the shortest route or deviously, through rthe press of other misplaced persons.
[1464] And each one has his reasons, while wondering from time to time what they are worth, and if they are the true ones, for going where he is going rather than somewhere else, and the horse hardly less darkly than the men, though as a rule it will not know where it is going until it gets there, and not always even then.
[1465] And if as suggested it is dusk, then another phenomenon to be observed is the number of windows and shop-windows that light up an instant, almost after the fashion of the setting sun, though hthat all depends on the season.
[1466] But for Macmann, thank God, he's still there, for Macmann it is a true Spring evening, an equinoctial gale howls along the quays bordered by high red houses many of which are warehouses.
[1467] Or it is perhaps an evening in autumn and these leaves whirling in the air, whence it is impossible to say, for here there are no trees, are perhaps no longer the first of the year, barely green, but old leaves that have known the long joys of summer and now are good for nothing but to lie rotting in a heap, now ythat men and beasts
[p. 77r]
[1467] have no more need of shade, on the contrary, nor birds of nests to lay and hatch out in, and trees must blacken even wqhere no hear heart beats, though it appears that some stay forever green[ ] 
, for some obscure reason.
[1468] And it is no doubt all the same to Macmann whether it is spring or whether it is autumn, unless he prefers summer to winter or inversely, which is improbable.
[1469] But it must not be thought he will never move again, out of this place and attitude, for he has still the whole of his old age before him, and then that kind of epilogue when it is not very clear what is happening and which does not seem to add very much to what has already been acquired or to shed any great light on its confusion, but which no doubt has its usefulness, as hay is left out to dry before being garnered.
[1470] He will teherefore rise, whether he likes it or not, and proceed by other places to another place, and then by others still to yet another, unless he comes back here where he seems to be snug enough, but one never knows, does one? And so on, on, for long years.
[1471] Because in order not to die you must come and go, come and go, unless you happen to have someone who brings you food wherever you happen to me be, like myself.
[1472] And you can remain for two, three and even four days without stirring hand or foot, wbut what are four days when you have all old age before you, and then the lingers of evaporation., a evaporation, a drop in the ocean.
[1473] It is true you know nothing of this, you flatter yourself you are hanging by a thread like all mankind, but thtat is not the point.
[1474] For the there is no point, no point in not knowing this or that, either you know all or you know nothing, and Macmann knows nothing.
[p. 78r]
[1474] But he is concerned only with his ignorance of certain things, of those that appall him among others, which is only human.
[1475] But it is bad policy, for on the fifth day rise you must, and rise in fact you do, but with how much greater pains than if you had made up your mind to it the day before, or better still two days before, and why add to,[₰]your pains, it's bad policy, assuming you do add to them, and nothing is less certain.
[1476] For on the fifth day, when the problem is how to rise, the fourth and third do not matter any more, all that matters is how to rise, for you are half out of your mind.
[1477] And sometimes tyou cannot, get to your feet I mean, and have to drag yourself to the nearest plot of vegetables, using the tufts of grass and asperities of the earth to drag yourself forward, or to the nearest clump of brambles, where there are something go sometimes good things to eat, if acid, and which are
superior to the plots in this, that you can crawl into them and hide, as you cannoot in a plot of ripe potatoes for example, and in this also, that often you frighten the little wild things away, both furred and feathered.
[1478] For it is not as if he possessed the means of accumulating, in a single day, enough food to keep him alive for three weeks or a month, and what is a month compared to the whole of second childishness, a drop in a buvcket.
[1479] But he does not, possess them I mean, and could not employ them even if he did, he feels so far from the morrow.
[1480] And perhaps there is none, no morrow any more, for one who has waited so long for it in vain.
[1481] And perhaps he has come to that stage of his instandt when to live
[p. 79r]
[1481] is to wander the last of the living at the bottom in the depths of an instant without bounds, where the ligh(t never changes and the wrecks look all alike.
[1482] Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the spavce before them, namely the fulness of the great deep and its unchanging calm.
[1483] But at long intervals they close, with the gentle suddenness of flesh that tightens, often without anger, and closes on itself.
[1484] Then you see the old lids all red and worn that seem hard set to meet, for there are four, two for each lachrymal.
[1485] And perhaps it is then he sees the heaven of the old dream, the h heaven of the sea and of the earth too, and the spasms of the waves from shore to shore all stirring to their tiniest stir, and the so different motion of men for example, who are not tied together, but free to come and go as they please.
[1486] And they make fumll use of it and come and go, their great balls and sockets rattling and clacking like knackers, each on his way.
[1487] And when one dies the others go on, as if nothing had happened.
[1488] I feel
[1489] I feel it's coming. [1490] How goes it, thanks, it's coming. [1491] I wanted to be quite sure before I noted it. [1492] Scrupulous to the last, finical to a fault, that's Malone, all over. [1493] I mean sure of feeling that my hour is at hand. For I never doubted it would come, sooner or later, except the days I felt it was past. [1494] For my stories are all in vain, deep down I never doubted, even the days