All the same, I felt I ought to do something....
With a moment’s hesitation I stepped up to her:
“Mad....”
She started from her grieving reverie, saw that I was there, swept her great muff across her tear-stained cheeks.... Then she felt around inside the muff with her fingers, tossed me a handful of coins ... and fled....
XXXVIII
And I fled too.
There was no doubt after that! I was dead! Very very dead! More dead perhaps than He, than the other Man, whose corpse I see, I persist in seeing there inside its coffin ... a terribly wasted corpse, frightfully decomposed. More dead than He, because He does not know that He is dead; while ... I ... I....
Furthermore it was not his funeral they were celebrating; it was mine.... I am the man those tears were for ... and those flowers, and those uniforms, and the hushed voices of the multitude ... all that fascinated gazing at my decoration, my shoulder straps, my sabre ... there on the coffin. And those same people are now shivering out there in this cold of a December evening ... to pay their respects to ... me ... to me ... not to Him.