But the rhythm of the motor-car embraced him too delightfully. Third street ... sixth street ... it was still very far to the ninetieth block.
He was filled with the wonder of being thus couched, the bewilderment of the lights, the shudder of entrancement at the motion.
The further that, with the soundless gliding of the wheels, he drew away from the New Tower of Babel, the further did he seem to draw away from the consciousnes of his own self.
Who was he—? Had he not just stood in a greasy, patched, blue linen uniform, in a seething hell, his brain mangled by eternal watchfulness, with bones, the marrow of which was being sucked out by eternally making the same turn of the lever to eternally the same rhythm, with face scorched by unbearable heat, and in the skin of which the salty sweat tore its devouring furrows?
Did he not live in a town which lay deeper under the earth than the underground stations of Metropolis, with their thousand shafts—in a town the houses of which storied just as high above squares and streets as, above in the night, did the houses of Metropolis, which towered so high, one above the other?
Had he ever known anything else than the horrible sobriety of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, recognisable only by the enormous placards by the house-doors?
Had his life ever had any purpose other than to go out from these doors, framed with numbers, out to work, when the sirens of Metropolis howled for him—and ten hours later, crushed and tired to death, to stumble into the house by the door of which his number stood?
Was he, himself, anything but a number—number 11811—crammed into his linen, his clothes, his cap? Had not the number also become imprinted into his soul, into his brain, into his blood, that he must even stop and think of his own name?
And now—?
And now—?