MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-2

[4544] Anyone else would have lain down in the snow, firmly resolved never
to rise again. [4545] Not I. [4546] I used to think that men would never ^get the better
of me. [4547] I still think I am cleverer than things. [4548] There are men and there
are things, let me have no talk of ^{to hell with} animals. [4549] Nor of ^{[⁁]And with with} God. [4550] When a thing
resists me, even if it is for my own good, it does not resist me long.
[4551] This snow, for example.

[4552] Though to tell the truth it lured me more than
it resisted me. [4553] But in a sense it resisted me. [4554] That was enough. [4555] I
vanquished it, grinding my teeth with joy, it is quite possible to grind
one's incisors. [4556] I forged my way through it, towards what I would have
called my ruin if I could have conceived what I had left to be ruined.
[4557] Perhaps I have conceived it since, perhaps I have not done conceiving it,
^{[⁁]it takes time,} one is bound to in the end ^time, I am bound to.

[4558] But on the way home, a prey
to the maligaⁿancy of man and nature and my own failing flesh, I could not
conceive it. [4559] My knee, allowance made for the dulling effects of habit,
was neither more nor less painful than the first day. [4560] The disease,
whatever it was, was dormant! [4561] How can such a thing^[⁁]s be^? explained? [4562] But
to return to the flies, I like to think of those that hatch out at the
beginning of winter, within doors, and die shortly after.

[4563] You see them
crawling and fluttering in the warm corners, puny, sluggish, torpid, mute.
[4564] That is you see an odd one now and then. [4565] They must die very young, without
having been able to lay. [4566] You sweep them away, you push them into the
dust-pan with the brush, without knowing. [4567] There is a strange race of
flies.

[4568] But I was succumbing to other affections, that is not the word,
intestinal for the most part. [4569] I would have described them once, not now,
I am sorry, it would have been worth reading. [4570] I shall merely say that
no one else would have surmounted them, without help. [4571] But I! [4572] Bent double,
my free hand pressed to my belly, I advanced, and every now and then I
let a roar, of triumph and distress. [4573] Certain mosses I consumed must have