MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

[0516] my head, rocking and abandoned. [0517] It is indeed a deplorable sight,
a deplorable example for the people, who so need to be encouraged
in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations
of strength only, of courage and of joy, without which they
might collapse at the end of the day and roll on the ground. [0518] I
have only to be told what good behavior is, and I am well ^[|=|]
behaved, within the limits of my physical possibilities.

[0519] And
so I have never ceased to improve, from this point of view, for I --^[]
I used to be intelligent and quick. [0520] And as far as good^[#]will
is concerned, I had it to overflowing, the exasperated good^[#]will
of the overanxious. [0521] So that my repertory of permitted attitudes
has never ceased to grow, from my first steps until my last,
executed last year.

[0522] And if I h^ave always behaved like a pig, the
fault lies not with me but with my superiors, who corrected me
only on points of detail instead of showing me the essence of the
system, after the manner of the great English schools, and the
guiding principles of good manners and how to proceed, without
going wrong, from the latter to the former, and how to trace back
to its ultimate source a given comportment.

[0523] For that would have
allowed me, before parading in public certain habits such as the
finger in the nose, the scratching of the balls, digital emunction
and the peripatetic pee,^[?] to refer them to the first rules of a
reasoned theory.

[0524] On this subject I had only negative and empirical
notions, which means that I was in the dark, most of the time, and
all the more completely as a lifetime of observations had left me
doubting the possibility of ^systematic decorum, even within a
limited area. [0525] But it is only since I have ceased to live that I
think of these things and the other things. [0526] It is in the tranquill-
ity of decomposition that I remember the long^, confused emotion which