is not my own
extremity I remember best--a vision of grayness without form filled
with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all
things--even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to
have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped
over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating
foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the
wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that
inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the
invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been
a word of careless contempt. Better his cry--much better. It was
an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by
abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!
That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond,
when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but
the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as
translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.

"No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I
remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some
inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself
back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying
through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour
their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their
insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They
were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense,
because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.
Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals
going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was
offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of
a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to
enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from
laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. I dare say I was
not very well at that time. I tottered about the streets--there were
various affairs to settle--grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable
persons. I admit my behavior was inexcusable, but then my temperature
was seldom normal in these days. My dear aunt's endeavors to 'nurse up
my strength' seemed altogether