It must also be said that owing to all kinds of accidentally and perhaps not accidentally formed conditions of my youth, I have had to learn, and moreover very seriously and of course always with self-compulsion, to speak, read, and write a great many languages, and to such a degree of fluency, that if in following this profession unexpectedly forced on me by Fate, I decided not to take advantage of the “automatism” which is acquired by practice, then I could perhaps write in any one of them. BTG I