I'm sure you understand, without my having to write it, that I hope this book-product of my imagination and reason, my dreams, my readings, and my life-will be the best book ever written, full of the most elegant and clever prose, every word le mot juste, every word with a double (triple, quadruple?) intention. But if, as Dickens has it, like begets like, what could this sterile, untilled time of ours beget but a shrivelled, whimsical character, full of thoughts that ought never to have existed, thoughts that might arise in a prison, full of misery and mourning?