VI. Lord Jim II, ou les faisceaux dialogiques

The past – it’s pretty damn solid, Phil. It’s a little like a compost pile – fairly soft near the surface but packed hard further down, with all that Time piled on top of it.
F. M. Busby, ‘A Gun for Grand-father’ (1987).

He [the ‘harlequin’] surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through.
J. Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899a).