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meeting our friends, for quietly bidding farewell unto them? If we are not equipped beforehand, we shall have yet to depart any unexpected moment without meeting those friends, without instructing our nearest kin, without accepting any memorial gifts from our loved ones, without even taking the provision box. And need I press upon you how unbearable, how distressing, how utterly futile such an unforeseen departure would be? No, no, my friends! You know everything. I have nothing to add. But you know as well, I am a talkative friend of yours and it is my habit to talk on continually. So am I givinge out all this, otherwise I should have no more than this one humble suggestion to offer to you as a friend: 'Here are all the indications, my friends, hinting at the arrival of the grand carriage of death. And the earth, too, is trembling with the reverberations of its approach!
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