MS-WU-MSS008-2-47

[0388] he was committed to a liberal profession. [0389] That was ^yet[^yet] another thing
that went without saying. [0390] It was therefore impossible he should be
unfitted for it. [0391] They thought of him as a doctor for preference.
[0392] He will look after us when we are old, said Mrs Saposcat. [0393] And her
husband replied, I see him rather as a surgeon, as though after
a certain age people were inoperable.

^[⃞][0394] What tedium. [0395] And I call that playing. [0396] I wonder if I am not
talking yet again about myself. [0397] Shall I be incapable, until the
to the end, of lying on any other subject? [0398] I feel the old dark
gathering, the solitude preparing, by which I know myself, and
the call of that ignorance which might be noble and is mere pol-
troonery. [0399] Already I forget what I have said. [0400] That is not how to
play. [0401] Soon I shall not know where Sapo comes from, nor what he
hopes.

[0402] Perhaps I had better abandon this story and go on to the
second, or even the third, the one about the stone. [0403] No, it would
be the same thing. [0404] I must just ^simply be on my guard, [0405] reflecting on what
I have said before I go on [0406] and stopping, each time ruin^{[⁁] disaster}[^disaster] threatens,
to look at myself as I am. [0407] That is just what I wanted to avoid.
[0408] But there seems to be no other solution. [0409] After that mud-bath I
shall be better able to endure a world unsullied by my presence.

[0410] What a way to reason. [0411] My eyes, I shall open my eyes, look at the
little heap of my possessions, give my body the old orders I know
it cannot obey, turn to my spirit gone to rack and ruin, spoil
my agony the better to live it out, far already from the world that
parts at last its labia and lets me go.