' If you as much
as smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--offer to fight you. I would
not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near
enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not
because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it
appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in
lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want
to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten
would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by
letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to
my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as
the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion
it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not
see--you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in
the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do
you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you ya
dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey
the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and
bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being
captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.
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