Quotation from: Lord Jim

Written by: Joseph Conrad


'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling
off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy
sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest
and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the
cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of
exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to
see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common
occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time.
Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit
the finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take
opinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual
opinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman's, for instance.
His own country's pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and
definite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The
head of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like
alabaster.

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