MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-2

[4656] thing to comfort. [4657] For I was still eager for my little joy, from time to
time! [4658] And I admitted with a^[₰] good grace the possibility that this dance
was after all no better than the dances of the people of the West,
frivolous and meaningless.

[4659] But for me, sitting near my sundrenched hives,
it would always be a noble thing to contemplate, too noble ever to be
sullied by the cogitations of a man like me, exiled in his manhood. [4660] And
I would never do my bees the wrong I had done my God, to whom I had been
taught to ascribe my angers, fears, desires, and even my body.

[4661] I have spoken of a voice giving me orders, or rather advice. [4662] It was
on the way home I heard it for the first time. [4663] I paid no attention to it.

[4664] Physically speaking it seemed to me I was now becoming rapidly
unrecognizable. [4665] And when I passed my hands over my face, in a characterist-
-ic and now more than ever pardonable gesture, the face my hands felt was
not my face any more, and the hands my face felt were my hands no longer.

[4666] And yet the gist of the sensation was the same as in the far-off days when
I was well-shaven and perfumed and proud of my intellectual's soft white
hands. [4667] And this belly I did not know remained my belly, my old belly,
thanks to I know not what intuition.

[4668] And to tell the truth I not only
knew who I was, but I had a sharper and clearer sense of my identity
than ever before, in spite of its deep lesions and the wounds with which
it was covered. [4669] And from this point of view I was less fortunate than
my other acquaintances. [4670] I am sorry if this last pha^rase is not so happy
as it might be. [4671] It deserved, who knows, to be without ambiguity.

[4672] Then there are the clothes that cleave so close to the body and are
so to speak inseparable from it, in time of peace. [4673] Yes, I have always
been very sensitive to clothing, though not in the least a dandy. [4674] I had
not to complain of mine, tough and of good cut. [4675] I was of course
inadequately covered, but whose fault was that? [4676] And I had to part with