[Grantaire is rather delighted with the cluster of questions. This too-familiar-looking Viscount is adding substantial amusement to his evening, innocuous as he seems to be.] Ah, Monsieur, and why should you have recognized the moment of your death? Did this god of yours offer some sacred promise of awareness? Are men of your age (whatever age that may hail from, though I daresay you smell of a world not too far from my own), are you blessed with some foreknowledge of death? How fortunate, and how wretched you must be!

But fear not: I make no certain claim that you or even I have died. I suggest only the possibility, gifted--what a word!--as I am with the knowledge of what I saw. I hold no evidence, and must add that I have met others who have given combat to the idea. Trust not my words, nor any conclusions I may claim to draw. All, you understand, is provisional.

Drink your wine, my good Viscount, and keep a clear head. What good could distress possibly do for you? Whether we are dead or adrift in dreams, whether we are in some new world, higher world, foundational world, who is to say? Whatever and however this place may be, we retain consciousness here. We perceive it as clearly as we see one another. We have no name for it, and our prior experience has not prepared us for an understanding (though, it must be admitted, there was little enough sense in the world before this).