[p. 35r]
[0665] more beautiful, though with a different beauty.
[0666] And now it was a name I sought, in my memory, the name of the only town it was had been given me to know, with the intention, as soon as I had found it, of stopping and saying to a passer-by, doffing my hat, I beg your pardon, Sir, this is X, isn't it is it not?, X being the name of my town.
[0667] And this name that I sought, I felt sure that it began with a B or with a P, but in spite of this clue, or perhaps because of its falsity, the other letters continued to escape me.
[0668] I had been living so far from words so long, you understand, that it was enough for me to see my town, since we're talking of my town, to be unable, you understand.
[0669] It's too difficult to say, for me.
[0670] And even my sense of identity was veiled [⁁]wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think.
[0671] And so on for all the other things which mocked [⁁]made merry with my senses.
[0672] Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, and no names but thingless names.
[0673] I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.
[0674] All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
[0675] And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing.
[0676] Saying is inventing.
[0677] Wrong, and rightly so 
.very rightly [⁁]very rightly wrong.
[0678] You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept.
[0679] To hell with it anyway.
[0680] Where was I.?
[0681] Unable to remember
[p. 36r]
[0681] the name of my town,[₰] I resolved to stop by the kerb, to wait for a passer-by with a friendly and intelligent air,[₰] and then to take whip[₰] off my hat and to[₰] say, with my smile, I beg your pardon,[₰] Sir, excuse me Sir, what is the name of this town, if you please?
[0682] For the word once let fall I would know if it was the right word, the one I was seeking, in my memory, or another,
[0683] and so would know[₰] where I stood.
[0684] This resolution, actually formed as I rode along, was never to be carried out, an absurd mishap prevented it.
[0685] Yes, my resolutions were remarkable in this, that they were no sooner formed than something always happened to prevent their execution.
[0686] That must be why I am even less resolute now than then, just as then I was even less so too, than I once had been.
[0687] But to tell the truth (to tell the truth!) I have never been particularly resolute, I mean subject to taking [⁁]given to resolutions, but rather inclined to plunge headlong into the shit, without knowing who was shitting against whom or on which side I had the better chance of skulking with sucfcess.
[0688] But from this leaning too I derived scant satisfaction and if I have never quite got rid of it is it is not for want of trying.
[0689] The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope to be is to be a little less,in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.
[0690] For I had hardly perfected my plan, in my head, when my bicycle ran over a dog, as subsequently appeared, and fell to the ground, with an ineptness all the more inexcusable unpardonable[₰] as the dog, duly leashed, was not out on the road, but in on the pavement, docile at its mistresse's heels.
[0691] Precautions are like resolutions, to be taken with precaution.
[0692] The lady must have thought she had left nothing to chance, so far as the safetlyy of her dog was
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[0692] concerned, whereas in reality she was setting the whole system of nature at noaught, no less outrageously [⁁]surely than I myself with my insane demands for more light.
[0693] But instead of grovelling in my turn, invoking my great age and infirmities, I made things worse by making [⁁]trying to run away.
[0694] I was soon overtaken, by a bloodthirsty mob of both sexes and all ages, for I caught a glimpse of white beards and little almost angelfaces, and they were preparing to set about me tear me to pieces when the lady intervened.
[0695] She said in effect, she told me so later on and I believed her, Leave this poor old man alone.
[0696] He has killed Teddy, I grant you that, Teddy whom I loved like my own child, but it is not so serious as it seems, for as it happens I was taking him to the vet veterinary surgeon, to have him put out of his pain [⁁]misery.
[0697] For Teddy was old, blind, deaf, prostrated crippled with rheumatism and perpetually incontinent, night and day, both indoors and out of doors.
[0698] Thanks then to this poor old man I have been saved [⁁]spared a painful task, not to mention the expense which I am ill able to afford, having no other means [⁁]of support than the pension of my dear departed, fallen in defence of a country that called itself his and from which in his lifetime he never derived the smallest bnenefit, nothing but only insults and vexations.
[0699] The crowd was beginning to disperse, the danger was past, but the lady in her stride.
[0700] You may saiy, she said, that he did wrong to run away, that he should have explained, asked to be forgiven.
[0701] Granted.
[0702] But it is clear he has not all his wits about him, that he is beside himself, for reasons of which we know nothing and which might put us all to shame, if we did know them.
[0703] I even wonder if he knows what he has done.
[0704] There issued fr [⁁]emanated such tedium from this droning voice that I was making ready to move on when the unavoidable police constable rose up before me.
[p. 38r]
[X]
[0705] He brought down heavily on my handle-bars his big red hairy paw, I noticed it myself, and had it appears with the lady the following conversation.
[0706] Is this the man who ran over your dog, Madam?
[0707] He is, sergeant, and what of it?
[0708] No, I can't record this fatuous collowquy.
[0709] So I will merely observe that finally in his turn the constable too dispersed, the word is not too strong, grumbling and growling, followed by the last idlers who had given up all hope of my coming to a bad end.
[0710] But he turned back and said, Remove that dog.
[0711] Free at last to go I began to do so.
[0712] But the lady, a Mrs Loy, I might ats well say it now and be done with it, or Lousse, I forget, Christian name something like Sophie, held me back, by the tail of my coat, and said, assuming the words were the same when I heard them as when first spoken, Sir, I need you.
[0713] And seeing I suppose from my expression, which frequently betrays me, that she had made herself understood, she must have said, If he understands that he can understand the rest anything.
[0714] And she was not mistaken, for by the end of a certain [⁁]after some time I found myself in possession of certain ideas or points of view which could only have come to me from her, namely that having killed her dog I was morally obliged to help her carry it home and bury it, that she did not wish to prosecute me for what I had done, but that it was not always possible to do as one did not wish, that she found me likeable enough in spite of my hideous appearance and that she would be happy to hold out to me a helping hand, and so on, I've forgoetten the half of it.
[0715] Ah yes, I too needed her, it seemed.
[0716] She needed me to help her get rid of her dog, and I needed her, I've forgotten for what.
[0717] She must have told me, for that was an insinuation that I could not decently pass over in silence as I had the rest, and I made no bones about telling her I needed hneither her nor
[p. 39r]
[0717] anyone else, whisch was perhaps a slight exaggeration, for I must have needed my mother, otherwise why this frenzy of wanting to get to her?
[0718] That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as far [⁁]much as possible.
[0719] For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine.
[0720] And I shall not abandon this subject, to which I shall probably never have occasion to return, with such a storm blowing up, without making this curious observation, that it often happened to me, before I gave up speaking for good, to think I had said too little when in fact I had said too much and in fact to have said too little when I thought I had said too much.
[0721] I mean that on reflexion, in the long run rather, my verbal profusion turned out to be dearth penury and inversely.
[0722] So time sometimes turns the tables.
[0723] In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much.
[0724] Yes, I was never silent, whatever I said I was never silent.
[0725] Divine analysis that conduces thus to knowledge of yourself, and of your fellow men, if you happen to have any.
[0726] For to say I needed no-one [₰] was not to say too much, but an infinitesimal part of what I should have said, could not have said, should never have said.
[0727] Need of my mother!
[0728] No, there were no words for the want of need in which I was perishing.
[0729] So that she, I mean Sophie, must have told me the reasons why I needed her, since I had dared to disagree.
[0730] And perhaps if I took the trouble I might find them again, but trouble, thanks very much [⁁]many thanks, some other time.
[0731] And I've had [⁁]now enough of this boulevard, it must have been a boulevard, of all these righteous men [⁁]ones, these guardians of the peace, all these feet and hands, stamping, clutching, clenched in vain, these bawling menou[⁁]ouths that never bawl out of season, this sky beginning to drip, enough of being abroad, trapped, visible.
[0732] Someone was poking the dog,