I have been here, ever since I began to be (my appearances elsewhere having been put in by other parties). All has proceeded, all this time, in the utmost calm, in the most perfectorder (apart from one or two manifestations the meaning of which escapes me). (No, it isnot just their meaning escapes me, my own escapes me just as much.) Here all things..... No, I shall not say it, being unable to.I owe my existence to no one: these faint fires are not of those that illuminate or burn.Going nowhere, coming from nowhere, Malone passes.These notions of forbears, of houses where lamps are lit at night, and other such: wheredo they come to me from? And all these questions I ask myself? It is not in a spirit of curiosity: I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one inventsobscurities. Rhetoric. These lights, for instance (which I do not require to meananything): what is there so strange about them, so wrong? Is it their irregularity, their instability, their shining strong one minute and weak the next, but never beyond the power of one or two candles? Malone appears and disappears with the punctuality of clockwork, always at the same remove, the same velocity, in the same direction, the sameattitude. But the play of the lights is truly unpredictable. It is only fair to say that to eyesless knowing than mine they would probably pass unseen. But even to mine do they notsometimes do so? They are perhaps unwavering and fixed, and my fitful perceiving thecause of their inconstancy.I hope I may have occasion to revert to this question. But I shall remark without further delay (in order to be sure of doing so) that I am relying on these lights (as indeed on allother similar sources of credible perplexity) to help me continue and perhaps evenconclude.I resume, having no alternative. Where was I? Ah yes: from the unexceptionable order which has prevailed here up to date may I infer that such will always be the case?I may of course. But the mere fact of asking myself such a question gives me to reflect. Itis in vain I tell myself that its only purpose is to stimulate the lagging discourse: thisexcellent explanation does not satisfy me. Can it be I am the prey of a genuine preoccupation, of a need to know as one might say? I don't know. I'll try it another way. If one day a change were to take place, resulting from a principle of disorder already present, what then? That would seem to depend on the nature of the change. (No: here allchange would be fatal and land me back, there and then, in all the fun of the fair.)I'll try it another way. Has nothing really changed since I have been here? No, frankly,hand on heart..... wait a second..... no, nothing to my knowledge. But, as I have said, the place may well be vast, as it may well measure twelve feet in diameter. It comes to thesame thing, as far as discerning its limits is concerned.I like to think I occupy the centre, but nothing is less certain. In a sense I would be better off at the circumference, since my eyes are always fixed in the same direction. But I amcertainly not at the circumference. For if I were it would follow that Molloy, wheelingabout me as he does, would issue from the enceinte at every revolution (which ismanifestly impossible). But does he in fact wheel? Does he not perhaps simply pass before me in a straight line? No, he wheels, I feel it. And about me, like a planet about its sun. And if he made a noise,as he goes, I would hear him all the time (on my right hand, behind my back, on my left
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