MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

[0610] to drag me out,^? [0611] I don't think so. [0612] I don't smell like a
sheep, I wish I smelt like a sheep, or a puckaun^[?] . [0613] When I wake
I see the first things quite clearly, the first things that
offer, and I understand them, when they are not too difficult.

[0614] Then in my eyes and in my head a fine rain begins to falls , as
from a rose, [0615] highly important. [0616] So I knew at once it was a
shepherd and his dog I had before me, above me rather^, for they
had not left the path. [0617] And I identified the bleating too, with-
out any trouble, the anxious bleating of the sheep, missing the
dog at their heels. [0618] It is then^, too^, that the meaning of words
is least obscure to me, so that I said, with tranquit^l assurance,
Where are you taking them, to the fai^elds or to the slaughterhouse?

[0619] I must have completely lost my sense of direction, as if direction
had anything to do with the matter. [0620] For even if he was going
towards the town, what prevented him from skirting it, or from
leaving it again by another gate, on his way to new pastures,
and if he was going away from it that meant nothing either, for
slaughterhouses are not confined to towns, no, they are everywhere,
the country is full of them, every butcher has his slaughterhouse
and the right to slaughter, according to his needs.

[0621] But whether
it was he didn[½]^'t understand, or didn't want to reply, he didn't
reply, but went on his way without a word, without a word for me
I mean, for he spoke to his dOg who listened attentively, cocking
his ears. [0622] I got to my knees, no, that doesn't work, I got up and
watched the little procession recede.

[0623] I heard the shepherd
whistle, and I saw him flourishing his crook, and the dog bustling
about the herd, which but for him would no doubt have fallen into
the canal. [0624] All that through a glittering dust, and soon through
that mist^, too^, which rises in me every day and v^[/]eils the worl^[/]d from