"I ought to wish that it were so perhaps; for pain is a tie between us and the shore. However, I confess that I prefer the silence of this body in which I am encased … let us say no more about it…. My mind at least is free. And if it is not true that it 'agitat molem,' does often escape."
"I know," said Clerambault, "it came to see me the other day."
"Not for the first time; it has been there before."
"And I who thought myself deserted!"
"Do you recall," said Edmé, "the words of Randolph to Cecil?—'The voice of a man alone can in one hour put more life into us than the clang of five hundred trumpets sounded continuously.'"
"That always reminds me of you," said Chastenay, but Edmé went on as if he had not heard him: … "You have waked us all up."
Clerambault looked at the brave calm eyes of the paralytic, and said:
"Your eyes do not look as if they needed to be waked."
"They do not need it now," said Edmé, "the farther off one is, the better one sees; but when I was close to everything I saw very little."
"Tell me what you see now."