“What? Well, not lately, then, since you’re so precise. I was just trying to reckon. Well, then, some time ago, it was, I got a glimpse behind the scenes⁠—purely by chance⁠—and I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was when they brought the Sacrament to little Hujus, Barbara Hujus⁠—she was a Catholic⁠—the Last Sacrament, you know, Extreme Unction. She was still about when I first came up here, and she could be wildly hilarious, regularly giggly, like a little kid. But after that it went pretty fast with her, she didn’t get up any more⁠—her room was three doors off mine⁠—and then her parents arrived, and now the priest was coming to her. It was while everybody was at tea, not a soul in the passages. But I had gone to sleep in the afternoon rest and overslept myself, I hadn’t heard the gong and was a quarter of an hour late. So that at the decisive moment I wasn’t where all the others were, but behind the scenes, as you call it; as I go along the corridor, they come toward me, in their lace robes, with the cross in front, a gold cross with lanterns⁠—it made me think of the schellenbaum they march with, in front of the recruits.”