What matters what anybody thinks? "It will be all the same as a hundred years hence." That is the most sensible proverb ever invented.
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But meanwhile!
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The judge puts on the black cap, and it is all for you! Every eye is fixed on you, so big and young and strong and full of life! Ugh!
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They pinion you, and you have to walk and be a man, and the chaplain exhorts and prays and tries to comfort. Then a sea of faces; people opposite, who have been eating and drinking and making merry, waiting for you! A cap is pulled over your eyes—oh, horror! horror! horror!
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"Heureux tambour-major de Sicile!"
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