He called a policeman, and I desired nothing better than to have one
between my hands just for one moment. I slackened my pace intentionally in
order to give him an opportunity of overtaking me; but he did not come.
Was there now any reason whatever that absolutely every one of one's most
earnest and most persevering efforts should fail? Why, too, had I written
1828? In what way did that infernal date concern me? Here I was going
about starving, so that my entrails wriggle together in me like worms, and
it was, as far as I knew, not decreed in the book of fate that anything in
the shape of food would turn up later on in the day.
I was becoming mentally and physically more and more prostrate; I was
letting myself down each day to less and less honest actions, so that I
lied on each day without blushing, cheated poor people out of their rent,
struggled with the meanest thoughts of making away with other men's
blankets--all without remorse or prick of conscience.
Foul places began to gather in my inner being, black spores which spread
more and more. And up in Heaven God Almighty sat and kept a watchful eye
on me, and took heed that _my_ destruction proceeded in accordance
with all the rules of art, uniformly and gradually, without a break in the
measure.
But in the abysses of hell the angriest devils bristled with range because
it lasted such a long time until I committed a mortal sin, an unpardonable
offence for which God in His justice must cast me--down.
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