In self-justification, and also perhaps to diminish the degree of the censure in your waking consciousness of my ignorance of this language indispensable for contemporary life, I consider it necessary to say, with a humble heart and cheeks flushed with shame, that although I too was taught this language in my childhood, and even though certain of my elders who prepared me for responsible life, constantly forced me “without sparing or economizing” any intimidatory means to “learn by rote” the host of various “nuances” which in their totality compose this contemporary “delight”, yet, unfortunately of course for you, of all that I then learned by rote, nothing stuck and nothing whatsoever has survived for my present activities as a writer. BTG I

“‘Thus it came about that every time I began to feel the same unpleasant sensation I began to drink this alcohol, even with a feeling of some self-justification, and in this way became gradually accustomed to this, as you have quite justly called it, poison’. BTG XLII