GRGR(24): Pudding's death

[Jeremy Osner]

On  p. 533, Pudding's death is described as occuring "just before dawn,
as he had wished". I've read this sentence enough times to have
internalized the notion that P would have wished to die "just before
dawn", but looking at it now, that wish doesn't seem very meaningful.
Why just before dawn? Is that the most romantic time to die? Does
someone in Ivanhoe die just before dawn? Did P perhaps express such a
wish earlier in the book and I've forgotten? There is a heavy dose of
irony here, assuming for the moment that he wanted to die just before
dawn for the putative romantic/military connotations of the hour; his
wish for a noble death presumably did not include the cause of death
being an infection contracted from eating shit.

Jeremy