“I am afraid of the pain of dying,” he said. “I have been wounded before, once so badly that it was feared I would not survive. I can recall the agony of it, and I don’t wish to endure it again.
“But I feared more the death of others. I did not want to lose them, and I worried about them while they were alive. Sometimes, I think that I concerned myself so much with the possibility of their loss that I never truly took pleasure in the fact of their existence. It was part of my nature, even with Raphael. Yet he was the blood in my veins, the sweat on my brow. Without him, I am less than I once was.”