For myself I was as cold as a stone.

I had no exultation of triumph, still less any fear of my own fate.

I stood silent, the half-remorseful spectator of a fall like the fall of Lucifer.
'I would have taught the world wisdom.' Laputa was speaking English in a strange, thin, abstracted voice.

'There would have been no king like me since Charlemagne,' and he strayed into Latin which I have been told since was an adaptation of the Epitaph of Charles the Great.

'Sub hoc conditorio,' he crooned, 'situm est corpus Joannis, magni et orthodoxi Imperatoris, qui imperium Africanum nobiliter ampliavit, et multos per annos mundum feliciter rexit.'[1] He must have chosen this epitaph long ago.
He lay for a few seconds with his head on his arms, his breast heaving with agony.
'No one will come after me.