“Oh, don’t think that I have no sense of my own humiliation! I have suffered already in reading so far. Which of you all does not think me a fool at this moment⁠—a young fool who knows nothing of life⁠—forgetting that to live as I have lived these last six months is to live longer than grey-haired old men. Well, let them laugh, and say it is all nonsense, if they please. They may say it is all fairytales, if they like; and I have spent whole nights telling myself fairytales. I remember them all. But how can I tell fairytales now? The time for them is over. They amused me when I found that there was not even time for me to learn the Greek grammar, as I wanted to do. ‘I shall die before I get to the syntax,’ I thought at the first page⁠—and threw the book under the table. It is there still, for I forbade anyone to pick it up.