your perpetual anxiety; that is the terrible voice coming from an unknown abyss; that is the inexorable condemnation of your wise and moral life, and howsoever you wad your ears with cotton that voice penetrates—it penetrates! And I wish to go to them. I, Dr. Kerzhentseff, wish to take a place in the ranks of this much-dreaded army—as an eternal reproach, as one who asks and awaits an answer.
I do not cringe before you, but I demand that you report me as in normal health. Lie, if you do not believe it. However, if you pusillanimously wash your learned hands and sentence me to the insane asylum, or open the doors to freedom, I forewarn you in a friendly way that I'll commit some considerable unpleasantries.
I acknowledge no judge, no law, no forbidden thing. All is permissible. Can you imagine a world, having no laws of gravitation, having no above nor below, in which everything is a matter of whim and chance? I, Dr. Kerzhentseff, am that new world. All
