To be naught but a remainder! Such a thing is beyond the power of

language to express. To exist no more, yet to persist; to be in the

abyss, yet out of it; to reappear above death as if indissoluble--there

is a certain amount of impossibility mixed with such reality. Thence

comes the inexpressible. This being--was it a being? This black witness

was a remainder, and an awful remainder--a remainder of what? Of nature

first, and then of society. Naught, and yet total.

The lawless inclemency of the weather held it at its will; the deep

oblivion of solitude environed it; it was given up to unknown chances;

it was without defence against the darkness, which did with it what it

willed. It was for ever the patient; it submitted; the hurricane (that

ghastly conflict of winds) was upon it.

The spectre was given over to pillage. It underwent the horrible outrage

of rotting in the open air; it was an outlaw of the tomb. There was no

peace for it even in annihilation: in the summer it fell away into dust,

in the winter into mud. Death should be veiled, the grave should have

its reserve. Here was neither veil nor reserve, but cynically avowed

putrefaction. It is effrontery in death to display its work; it offends

all the calmness of shadow when it does its task outside its laboratory,

the grave.

This dead thing had been stripped. To strip one already

stripped--relentless act! His marrow was no longer in his bones; his

entrails were no longer in his body; his voice no longer in his throat.

A corpse is a pocket which death turns inside out and empties. If he

The Man Who Laughs