Thoughts strange because they were so incongruous to his present situation, and because it was curious that in his misery he should be filled with all the old burning pangs of ambition and desire for power and glory.
And yet he could not even die gloriously; no man could have a more ignominious end than he would have, he knew that. He cursed the body that had failed him, that had broken like any peasant’s body, that was dragging him down–demeaning him, bringing all his philosophy to mockery. His mind flew back over the salient points of his life; yet there was no need for him to consider his past years: one word covered them all–that word was failure.
Failure–had any failure ever been more bitter, more complete?
For he had conceived loftily and dared greatly, and his fall was terrible and his end abject.
Intolerable became the heat of the sun, intolerable the dust on his dry lips, on his hot lids; intolerable the chafing of his feet, caked with blood and dirt; intolerable the deep pain of his elbows and the cutting of the rope round his wrists; intolerable the agony of fatigue in his weak body, already worn to the last endurance.…
He concentrated all his mental powers on self-control; the man whose mind had flown out into the widest realms of thought now brought that same mind to bear on the terrible effort of holding himself upright, so that he might not, before those whom he despised, fall face downwards in the dust.
He dare not think how far it was to Bourg-la-Reine; he looked ahead of him and could see nothing–no house, no sign of a town; only the dusty hedges, the dusty road.…
“Let me keep upright,” he muttered to himself, “let me keep upright—”
The sky seemed to be burning–blue it was, but not gentle–he had never understood before that the sky can be both blue and flaming, as bitter and fierce as scarlet.
The grass, too, and the trees, they were not soothing nor peaceful but harsh and glaring.