The Immoralist
ture I felt when I was with them; I seemed to feel things with their senses rather than with my own—and while I knew what our friends were going to say before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of these poor fellows filled me with perpetual amazement.
If at first they appeared as condescending in their answers as I tried to avoid being in my questions, they soon became more tolerant of my presence. I came into closer contact with them. Not content with following them at their work, I wanted to see them at their play; their obtuse thoughts had little interest for me, but I shared their meals, listened to their jokes, fondly watched their pleasures. By a kind of sympathy similar to that which had made my heart throb at the throbs of Marceline's, their alien sensations immediately awoke the echo of my own—no vague echo, but a sharp and precise one. I felt my own arms grow stiff with the mower's stiffness; I was weary with his weariness; the mouthful of cider he drank quenched my thirst; I felt it slip down his throat; one day, one of them, while sharpening his scythe, cut his thumb badly; his pain hurt me to the bone.
And it seemed to me that it was no longer with my sight alone that I became aware of the landscape, but
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