MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[1179] avoiding, I did it and avoided it all unsuspecting that one day, much
later, I would have to go back over all these acts and omissions, dimmed
and mellowed by age, and drag them into the eudemonist slop. [1180] But I must
say that with Lousse my health got no worse, or scarcely. [1181] By which I
mean that what was already wrong with me got worse and worse, little by
little, as was only to be expected.

[1182] But there was kindled no new seat
of suffering or infection, except of course those arising from the spread
of existing plethoras and deficiencies. [1183] But I may very well be wrong.
[1184] For of the disorders to come, as for example the loss of the toes of my
left foot, no, I am wrong, of my right foot, who can say exactly when,
oh uninvited! the fatal seeds were sown.

[1185] So all I can say, and I do my
best to say no more, is that during my stay with Lousse no more new
symptoms appeared, of a pathological nature, I mean nothing new r^or
strange, nothing I could not have for^eseen if I could have, nothing at all
comparable to the sudden loss of half my toes. [1186] For that is something I
could never have foreseen and the meaning of which I have never fathomed,
I mean its connection with my other discomforts, from my ignorance of
medical matters, I suppose.

[1187] For all things run togt^ethe5^r, in the body's
long madness, I feel it. [1188] But it is useless to drag out this chapter of
my.... existence, for it has no sense, to my mind. [1189] It is an udder at
which I tug in vain, it yields nothing but wind and spatter.

[1190] So I will
confine myself to the following brief additional remarks, and the first
of which is this, that Lousse was a woman of an extraordinary flatness,
physically speaking of course, to such a point that I am still wondering
this evening, in the comparative silence of my last abode, if she was not
a man rather or at least androgynous.

[1191] She had a somewhat hairy face, or
I^am I imagining it, in the interests of the narrative. [1192] The poor woman,
I saw her so little, so little looked at her. [1193] And was not her voice
suspiciously deep. [1194] So she appears to me today. [1195] Don't be tormenting