MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[0511] If it is unlawful to be without papers, why did they not insist on
my getting them. [0512] Because that costs money and I had none? [0513] But in
that case could they not have appropriated my bicycle? [0514] Probably
not, without a court order. [0515] All that is incomprehensible. [0516] What
is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet
obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on
my arms 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 behaviour 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 quic^k. [0520] And as far as good-will
is concerned, I had it to overflowing, the exasperated good-will
of the over-anxious. [0521] So that my repertory of permitte^d attitudes
has never ceased to grow, from my first steps until my last,
executed last year.

[0522] And if I have 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 cert^ain habits such as the
finger in the nose, the scratching of the balls, digital emunction
and the peripatetic piss, to refer them to the first rules of a