MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-2

[3384] than usual and tomorrow I may be of a different mind. [3385] It also tells me,
this voice I am only just beginning to know, that the memory of this work
brought scrupulously to a close will help me to endure the long anguish of
vagrancy and freedom.

[3386] Does this mean I shall one day be banished from my
house, from my garden, lose my trees, my lawns, my birds of which the least
is known to me and the way all its own it has of singing, of flying, of
coming up to me or flying ^[⁁]fleeing at my coming, and all ^{[⁁]lose and be banished from} the absurd comforts of my
home where all is snug and neat, where ^and all those things are at hand without
which I could not bear being a man, where my enemies cannot reach me, which
it was my life's work to build, to adorn, to perfect, to keep?

[3387] I am too old
to lose all this, and begin again, I am too old! [3388] Be still ^[⁁]Quiet, Moran, be still. ^[⁁]quiet.
[3389] No emotion, please.

[3390] I was saying I would not relate all the vicissitudes of the journey
from my country to Molloy's, for the simple reason that I do not intend to.
[3391] And in writing these lines I know in what danger I am of offending him
who without any doubt my interest is to conciliate ^{[⁁]whose favour I know I should court,}, now more than ever.
[3392] But I write them all the same, and with a firm hand, weaving inexorably
back and forth and devouring my page as indifferent as ^{with the indifference of} a shuttle.

[3393] But some
I shall relate briefly, because that seems to me desirable, and in order
to give some idea of the methods of my full maturity. [3394] But before coming
to that I shall say what little I knew, on leaving my home, about the
Molloy country, so different from my own.

[3395] For it is one of the features
of this penance that I may not passov over what is over and [come] straight-
-way ^come to the heart of the matter. [3396] But that must again be unknown to me
which is no longer so and that again fondly believed which then I fondly
believed, at my setting out. [3397] And if I occasionally break this rule, it is
only over details of little importance. [3398] And in the main I observe it.