Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing.

A skull, a coffin, the Gospel--it seemed to him that he had expected all this and even more.

Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.

"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself, associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas.