Old abandoned idols still harboured a peculiar venom. He was quick to revel in malice towards them when the occasion presented itself, but the slightest blatancy, the crossing of a line which would inevitably be crossed, turned this malice against himself. Why did he care? Each was a whole world in which at one time he thought he was at home, but his banishment was implicit from the start. Such a world is nothing more than the promise of never banishing, and hence a strategic mobilisation of cunning toxicities.