But if we ever meet in the Elysian Fields--where I cannot depict him
to myself otherwise than attended in the distance by his flock of geese
(birds sacred to Jupiter)--and he addresses me in the stillness of
that passionless region, neither light nor darkness, neither sound nor
silence, and heaving endlessly with billowy mists from the impalpable
multitudes of the swarming dead, I think I know what answer to make.
I would say, after listening courteously to the unvibrating tone of his
measured remonstrances, which should not disturb, of course, the solemn
eternity of stillness in the least--I would say something like this:
"It is true, Almayer, that in the world below I have converted your name
to my own uses. But that is a very small larceny. What's in a name, O
Shade? If so much of your old mortal weakness clings to you yet as
to make you feel aggrieved (it was the note of your earthly voice,
Almayer), then, I entreat you, seek speech without delay with our
sublime fellow-Shade--with him who, in his transient existence as a
poet, commented upon the smell of the rose. He will comfort you. You
came to me stripped of all prestige by men's queer smiles and the
disrespectful chatter of every vagrant trader in the Islands.
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