MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[1066] glad to have it, yes, I suppose. [1067] Thanks I suppose, as the urchin said
when I picked up his marble, I don't know, I didn't have to, and I expect
he would have preferred to pick it up himself. [1068] Or perhaps it wasn't to
be picked up. [1069] And the effort it cost me, with my stiff leg. [1070] The words
engraved themselves for ever on my memory, perhaps because I understood
them at once, a thing I didn't often do.

[1071] Not that I was hard of hearing,
for I had quite a sensitive ear, and sounds unencumbered with precise
meaning were registered perhaps better by me than by most. [1072] What was it
then? [1073] A defect of the understanding perhaps, which only began to vibrate
on repeated solicitations, or which did vibrate, if you like, but at a
lesser frequency than that of ratiocination, if such a thing is
conceivable, and such a thing is conceivable, since I conceive it.

[1074] Yes,
the words I heard, and heard distinctly, having quite a sensitive ear,
were heard a first time, then a second, and often even a third, as pure
sounds, free of all meaning, and this is probably one of the reasons
conversation was unspeakably painful to me. [1075] And the words I uttered
myself and which must nearly always have gone with an effort of the
intelligence, were often to me as the buzzing of an insect.

[1076] And this
is perhaps one of the reasons I was so untalkative, I mean this trouble
I had in understanding not only what others said to me, but also what
I said to them. [1077] It is true that in the end, by dint of patience, we
made ourselves understood, but understood about what, I ask of you, and
to what purpose. [1078] And to the noises of nature too, and of the works of
men, I reacted I think in my own way and without desire of enlightenment.

[1079] And my eye too, the seeing one, must have been ill-connected with the
spider, for I found it hard to name what was mirrored there, often quite
distinctly. [1080] And without going so far as to say that I saw the world
upside down (that would have been too easy) it is certain I saw it in a