easier, easier

The car was at the door—the hearse.  The whole party had assembled to see him go.  Good-bye, good-bye.  Mechanically he tapped the barometer that hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left.  A sudden smile lighted up his lugubrious face.

“‘It sinks, and I am ready to depart,’” he said, quoting Landor with exquisite aptness.  He looked quickly round from face to face.  Nobody had noticed.  He climbed into the hearse.

-Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow