Zazie dans le métro1960

Uncle Gabriel:
And over there, way out yonder, the cemetery is piled high with former Parisians... who went up and down countless steps, to and fro along endless streets, until in the end they went and were no more. Pleasure bringeth them, a hearse taketh them away. Meanwhile, the Tower rusts, the Pantheon cracks, quicker than their bones rot... and melt away in the humus of the woeful metropolis. But I... I am alive! And there my knowledge ceases. Of the cabbie and my niece, 1,000 feet up in the air, and of my sweet spouse, Albertine, back at the hearth, at this precise moment, I know only this: that they are almost dead since they are not here. Created in a flash... animated in a splash... negated in a dash.