All that I have just been telling even then belonged to the distant past, a past fabulously remote.
I was lying on the bed, inert, watching my dead body awash in the stream. I tried to remember what had happened....
Yes ... I fell.... I was bending over the edge to peer into the depths of the chasm ... and a heavy blow struck me between the shoulders ... one of those blows such as I had several times received between the shoulders ... and on the back of my head ... blows from the overwhelming gaze of those old men ... of the old marquis ... which had pounded me to pulp.
So then, I was watching the dead body ... my dead body.... Carrion already old! Flies swarming on and over it. The torrent foaming around and against it—and running water erodes, dissolves, disintegrates!... Yes, carrion indeed!... The coffin maker must come soon, or little will be left for him!...
* * * * * * * * *
Carrion already old!
But not so old as my living body—that too was old, limitlessly aged!
Was I as old as this, a little while before? Or had the sun merely stopped in the heavens? And if so, how long? For many many years? I could not say....
* * * * * * * * *
I remember, yes ... I fainted.... I lost consciousness completely. When I fell over the cliff ... my head and my hands struck hard on the tiled floor ... the Ever-living Men probably brought me to the room and put me on that bed.... Perhaps the rushing water of the stream, or the rain, or the winter wind turned me so old.... One cannot help but change ... lying out in the weather!...