All of us know of this anonymous abomination that acts upon us without any of us knowing just how it acts upon us, all of us know, alas, that, by continually barring our path, continually obliging us to adopt unidiomatic circumlocutions, roundabout ways of saying things and dubiously woolly abstrac- tions, continually damning us to a bogus philosophy and its just as bogus spiritual comfort, a 'comfort' stifling all our crying and sighing, sobbing and blubbing - all of us know, as I say, that a wall far too high for any of us to surmount is now imprisoning us for good and a malignant wrath is thwarting all our approxima- tions of that missing sign - quixotic approximations born out of a natural wish to grasp such an amorphous immaculation in our hands. So, Haig, my boy, you must know that, from this day 1 4 0 on, as in a not too distant past, Thanatos is in our midst, prowling all around Azincourt. ' T o start with," said Augustus, "I was optimistic about saving you from that inhuman fatality to which I was bound hand and foot.
