John laughed loudly, and it was clear that the paradox in no way
displeased him.

"But we were speaking," he continued, "not of temporal, but of spiritual
pains and penalties. Now, anyone who did not know me--and none will ever
know me--would think that I had not a care in the world. Well, I have
suffered as horribly, I have been tortured as cruelly, as ever poor
mortal was.... I have lain on the floor of my room, my heart dead
within me, and moaned and shrieked with horror."

"Horror of what?"

"Horror of death and a worse horror of life. Few amongst men ever
realise the truth of things, but there are rare occasions, moments of
supernatural understanding or suffering (which are two words for one and
the same thing), when we see life in all its worm-like meanness, and
death in its plain, stupid loathsomeness. Two days out of this year live
like fire in my mind. I went to my uncle Richard's funeral. There was
cold meat and sherry on the table; a dreadful servant asked me if I
would go up to the corpse-room. (Mark the expression.) I went. It lay
swollen and featureless, and two busy hags lifted it up and packed it
tight with wisps of hay, and mechanically uttered shrieks and moans.

"But, though the funeral was painfully obscene, it was not so obscene as
the view of life I was treated to last week....

"Last week I was in London; I went to a place they call the 'Colonies.'
Till then I had never realised the foulness of the human animal, but
there even his foulness was overshadowed by his stupidity. The masses,
yes, I saw the masses, and I fed with them in their huge intellectual