
[1806] that you can't stand up for yourself, and generally speaking that is
so.
[1807] But given favourable conditions, a feeble and awkward assailant,
in your own class what, and a lonely place, and there's a chance of your [place = supralinear] [⁁]you have a good chance of
showing what stuff you are made of.
[1808] And it is doubtless in order to
revive interest in this possibility, too often forgotten, that I have
delayed over an incident of no interest in itself, like all that has
a moral.
[1809] But did I eat at least, from time to time?
[1813] And having heard, or more probably read somewhere,
in the days when I thought it would help [place = supralinear] [⁁]I would be well advised to educate myself, or to amuse
myself, or to stupefy myself, or to kill time, that when a man in a
forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is
going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way
to go in a straight line.
[1814] For I stopped being a half-witted, [place = margin right] [₰] and became
as cute as a fox [place = supralinear] [⁁]sly, whenever I took the trouble.
[1815] And my head was a store-
-house of useful knowledge.
[1816] And if I did not go in a rigorously straight
line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a
circle, and that was something.
[1817] And by going on doing this, day after
day, and night after night, I looked forward to getting out of the
forest, some day.
[1818] For my region was not all forest, far from it. [1819] But
there were plains too, mountains and sea, and some towns and villages,
with [place = supralinear] [⁁]connected by highways and byways [place = inline] . between them.
[1820] And I was all the more convinced
that I would get out of the forest some day, for having [place = supralinear] because I had [place = supralinear] [⁁]as I had already got out
of it, more than once, and I knew how difficult it was not to do again
what you have done already [place = supralinear] before.
[1821] But things had been rather different then.
[1822] And yet I did not despair of seeing the light treme [place = overwritten] ble, some day, through
the still boughs, the strange light of the plain, its pale wild eddies,
- Segments
Molloy © 2016 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Magessa O'Reilly, Dirk Van Hulle, Pim Verhulst and Vincent Neyt