I was not sorry to see the head which had
occasioned me so much embarrassment at length make a final
separation from my body. It first rolled down the side of the steeple,
then lodge, for a few seconds, in the gutter, and then made its way,
with a plunge, into the middle of the street.
I will candidly confess that my feelings were now of the most
singular- nay, of the most mysterious, the most perplexing and
incomprehensible character. My senses were here and there at one and
the same moment. With my head I imagined, at one time, that I, the
head, was the real Signora Psyche Zenobia- at another I felt convinced
that myself, the body, was the proper identity. To clear my ideas on
this topic I felt in my pocket for my snuff-box, but, upon getting it,
and endeavoring to apply a pinch of its grateful contents in the
ordinary manner, I became immediately aware of my peculiar deficiency,
and threw the box at once down to my head. It took a pinch with
great satisfaction, and smiled me an acknowledgement in return.
Shortly afterward it made me a speech, which I could hear but
indistinctly without ears. I gathered enough, however, to know that it
was astonished at my wishing to remain alive under such circumstances.
In the concluding sentences it quoted the noble words of Ariosto-
Il pover hommy che non sera corty
And have a combat tenty erry morty;
thus comparing me to the hero who, in the heat of the combat, not
perceiving that he was dead, continued to contest the battle with
inextinguishable valor.
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