“No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I remember dimly, with trembling wonder, as a passage through an inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself in the sepulchral city, annoyed by the sight of people running through the streets to steal a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cuisine, to guzzle their unhealthy beer, to dream their meaningless and foolish dreams. They invaded my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was an irritating fiction to me, because I was so sure they couldn't know the things I knew. Their behavior, which was simply the behavior of ordinary people going about their business with the certainty of perfect safety, was as offensive to me as the outrageous display of madness in the face of a danger they cannot understand. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in refraining from laughing at them so full of stupid importance. I dare say I wasn't very well at that time. I staggered through the streets - there were various affairs to settle - smiling bitterly at perfectly respectable people. I admit that my behavior was inexcusable, but these days my temperature was rarely normal. My dear aunt's efforts to "get my strength back" seemed completely inadequate. It wasn't my strength that wanted to be nursed, it was my imagination that wanted comfort. I kept the sheaf of papers Kurtz had given me, not knowing exactly what to do with them. His mother had recently died, watched over, as I had been told, by her Fated One. A clean-shaven man, with an official manner and wearing gold-rimmed glasses, came to see me one day and asked me questions, at first tortuous, then sweetly insistent, about what he liked to call certain "documents". I wasn't surprised because I had had two arguments with the coach out there on the subject. I had refused to give up the smallest fragment of the package, and I took the same attitude with the man with the glasses. Eventually he became darkly threatening and argued very hotly that the Company was entitled to every bit of information about its "territories." And he said, "Mr. Kurtz's knowledge of the unexplored regions must necessarily have been extensive and peculiar, owing to his great abilities and the deplorable circumstances in which he had found himself: therefore....