Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

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Segment 1

[0508] but reason is against it. [0509] It is better to leave things to the
police.
[0510] I don't know. [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.

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Segment 2

[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.

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Segment 3

[0518] I have
only to be told what good behaviour is and I am well-behaved,
within the limits of my physical possibility [place = overwritten] i [place = supralinear] ies.
[0519] And so I have
never ceased to improve, from this point of view, for I — I used
to be intelligent and quick.

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Segment 4

[0520] And as far as good-will is concerned,
I had it to overflowing, the exast [place = overwritten] perated good-will of the over-
anxious.
[0521] So that my repertory of permitted attitudes has never
ceased to grow, from my first steps until my last, executed last
year.

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Segment 5

[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
former to the latter, and how to trace back to its ultimate source
a given comportment.
[0523] For that would have allowed me, before

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