January 16

The house, which was otherwise so silent. The haunting lucidity of insomnia, that used-up look of the dead (one can easily make a mistake) the necessary black occasion for an immortal undertaking, a strict sense of duty held the signs of a very disciplined and methodical energy, notoriously the most liquid, lying with one ear pressed to the floor, half-paralyzed from remaining, every muscle taut under the skin (conspires to leisurely voluptuousness, incredibly frivolous . . .), lungs made of bronze, for them when they do hear it, barely marked with a faint thread of blood. A chapel in a small forest. (. . . nothing can happen to us).