Jan Mattys always liked to discuss things. Only his idea of a discussion was one where he talked and you agreed. So it would be fairer to say that Jan Mattys always liked to sermonise about things.

Sometimes, when he was really working up a head of steam about something, this look would come into his eyes. And he'd just stop talking and fold in on himself (clutching a bourbon close). He'd just realised that there he was, sermonising away - just like the bishops did.

Of course, he was sermonising in a rat-infested bar full of broken-down sots and down-and-outs, and they were sermonising in grand and glorious cathedrals, but there it was even so.

And Jan Mattys hated bishops. And I think what hurt him most before the end - hurt him even more than that pike, maybe - was thinking that he was becoming just like them.

Was he right? Maybe what matters more is that he thought he was right. Perhaps it would have been worse for him to live on, feeling like he'd become everything he hated.