GR translation: and faces of great administrators engraved and run off to signify

[Mike Jing]

P351.30-352.6   Chu Piang being a monument to all this, nowadays whole
tourist caravans come through to look at him, usually while he’s Under The
Influence . . . “Here ladies and gentlemen, as you may have observed, the
characteristic sooty-gray complexion. . . .” They all stand peering into
his dreamstruck facies, attentive men with mutton-chop sideburns, holding
pearl-gray morning hats in their hands, the women lifting their skirts away
from where horrid Asian critters are seething microscopically across the
old floorboards, while their tour leader indicates items of interest with
his metal pointer, an instrument remarkably thin, thinner than a rapier in
fact, often flashing along much faster than eyes can really follow—“His
Need, you will notice, retains its shape under all manner of stresses. No
bodily illness, no scarcity of supply seems to affect it a whit . . .” all
their mild, their shallow eyes following gently as piano chords from a
suburban parlor . . . the inelastic Need turns luminous this stagnant air:
it is an ingot beyond price, from which sovereigns yet may be struck, and
faces of great administrators engraved and run off to signify.

What is the meaning of "run off" here?
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