—Later, I would have been a mercenary bivouacking beneath German nights.

But there’s more! I dance on the sabbath, in a red clearing with old women and children.

I don’t remember anything prior to this earth and this Christianity. I don’t see myself anywhere but in that past. And always alone; without family, speaking what language? I never see myself in Christ’s councils; nor in the councils of Lords—Christ’s delegates.

What was I last century? I only see myself now. No more vagabonds or nebulous wars. The inferior race has spread, everywhere—people or, as we now say, reason: nationality and science.

Oh, science! We’ve remade the world. For body and soul—as viaticum—we have medicine and philosophy—home remedies and coverversions of popular songs. Princely amusements and the games they forbade. Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry …!

Science, the new nobility. Progress. The world turns. Why wouldn’t it?

Numerical visions. We close in upon the Animus. What I say is irrefutable, oracular. I understand, and not knowing how to explain myself but in pagan words, I’d be better off shutting my mouth.

Pagan blood returns! The Animus nears, why won’t Christ help me, grace my soul with nobility and liberty. But the Gospel is gone. The Gospel! The Gospel.

I await God, hungrily. I am an eternal member of an inferior race.

There I am on the beaches of Brittany. Cities blaze in the night. My day is done: I’m leaving Europe. The marine air will burn my lungs; unknown climates will tan my skin. To swim, trample grass, hunt, and above all, smoke; drink liquors as strong as molten metal—like our cherished ancestors around their fires.

I’ll return with iron limbs, dark skin, an imperious gaze: my mask will mark me as member of a powerful race. I’ll have gold: be lazy and merciless. Women pamper fierce invalids returned from hot countries. I’ll enter politics. Saved.

Now, though, I’m cursed: I can’t stand my country. The best I can hope for is drunken sleep, by the shore.

But we don’t leave. —We take the same roads, burdened with my vice, vice that since the age of reason has sunk its roots right into my side—climbing skyward, beating me, toppling me, dragging me along.

The final innocence and the final humility. That does it. I won’t hump my disgusts and deceits across the world.

We’re off! The march, the burden, the desert, the boredom, the anger.

What flag will I bear? What beast worship? What shrine besiege? What hearts break? What lies tell? —And walk through whose blood?

Better yet: steer well clear of Justice. —The hard life, simple brutishness—lift the coffin’s lid with a withered fist, sit inside, suffocate.