That I write this chapter at
all is due, purely and simply, to the, I daresay, unjustified hope on my
part that--by recording certain events--it may hurl a little additional
light into a very tremendous darkness....
At the outset let me state that what occurred subsequent to the departure
for Precigne of B. and Pete and The Sheeneys and Rockyfeller is shrouded
in a rather ridiculous indistinctness; due, I have to admit, to the
depression which this departure inflicted upon my altogether too human
nature. The judgment of the Three Wise Men had--to use a peculiarly
vigorous (not to say vital) expression of my own day and time--knocked me
for a loop. I spent the days intervening between the separation from
"_votre camarade_" and my somewhat supernatural departure for freedom in
attempting to partially straighten myself. When finally I made my exit,
the part of me popularly referred to as "mind" was still in a slightly
bent if not twisted condition. Not until some weeks of American diet had
revolutionized my exterior did my interior completely resume the contours
of normality. I am particularly neither ashamed nor proud of this (one
might nearly say) mental catastrophe. No more ashamed or proud, in fact,
than of the infection of three fingers which I carried to America as a
little token of La Ferte's good-will.
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