MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

[1385] Yes, so far as I was capable of being bent on anything all a lifetime
long, and what a lifetime, I had been bent on settling this matter between
my mother and me, but had never succeeded. [1386] And while saying to myself
that time was running out, and that soon it would be too late, was
perhaps too late already, to settle the matter in question, I felt myself
drifting towards other cares, other phantoms.

[1387] And far more than to know
what town I was in, my haste was now to leave it, even were it the right
one, where my mother had waited so long and perhaps was waiting still.
[1388] And it seemed to me that if I kept on in a straight line I was bound to
leave it, sooner or later. [1389] So I set myself to this as m^best I could,
making allowance for the drift to the right of the feeble light that was
my guide.

[1390] And my pertinacity was such that I did indeed come to the
ramparts as night was falling, having described a good quarter of a
circl3^e, through bad navigation. [1391] It is true I stopped many times, to
rest, but not for long, for I felt harried, wrongly perhaps. [1392] But in
the country there is another justice, other judges, at first. [1393] And having
cleared the ramparts I had to confess the sky was clearing, prior to its
winding in the other shroud, night.

[1394] Yes, the great cloud was ravelling,
discovering here and there a pale and dying sky, [1395] and the sun, already
down, was manifest in the livid tongues of fire darting towards the
zenith, falling and darting again, ever more pale and languid, and
doomed no sooner lit to be extinguished. [1396] This phenomenon, if I remember
rightly, was charact4^eristic of my region. [1397] Things are perhaps different
today.

[1398] Though I fail to see, never having left my region, what right
I have to speak of its characteristics. [1399] No, I never escaped, and even
the limits of my region were unknown to me. [1400] But I felt they were far
away. [1401] But this feeling was based on nothing serious, it was a simple
feeling. [1402] For if my region had ended no further than my feet could carry
me, surely I would have felt it changing slowly. [1403] For regions do not