Alas, by the time he realized it, it was too late. Already paralyzed by the blood amassed, crammed into his head like iron in a hammer's head, he didn't know what to do. He was lost. Terrified, he saw the far-away floor, the armchair, so hospitable in the past, the whole room, an astonishing abyss.
How he wished he might be in a brimming water-tank, in a wolf-trap, in a cabinet, in a copper water-heater rather than there, on this ridiculously deserted ceiling and without any way of getting down unless it were, one may as well say, to kill himself.
Bad luck! Bad luck always attracted to him... meanwhile so many others throughout the entire world kept on walking unflappably on the ground, people who were surely not so very much better than him.
If at least he'd been able to get inside the ceiling and there bring his sad life to a conclusion, however, quickly... But ceilings are hard, and can only make you "rebound," that's the word.
Without any choice in such bad luck, you have to make do with what you can. And as he held out desperately, a mole on the ceiling, a delegation from the Bren Club, which had gone off looking for him, found him when they raised their heads.
Then they got him down, without saying a word, by raising a ladder.
They were upset. They apologized to him. In any case they accused an organizer who was absent. They stroked Plume's pride because he'd never lost his courage, while so many others, demoralized, might have thrown themselves into the void, and might have broken their arms and legs and more besides, since this country has high ceilings, dating almost from the time of the Spanish conquest.