Except us, and somehow the narrator too. As we move into the section on Decoud's suicide, we would be tempted to overlook the required omniscience of our first-person narrator, were it not for this line calling deliberate attention to it. The narrator has already had a complex relationship with Decoud in this novel, stepping into the foreground to denigrate him at his first appearance, waffling back and forth ever since about whether he is a skeptic or an idealist in his "genuine impulses." It is as if Decoud, who disbelieved in objective judgement (see his line "What is a conviction?" ), serves to bring to the surface the narrator's biases and pretentions. This section too will pass narrative judgement, and really is not too much more omniscient than the rest of the book. If we are alerted here to take what follows with a grain of salt, it reminds us to apply the same to the whole of the narration, and indeed to any pretense of objectivity or omniscience, in literature or life.