“Anyone who had seen me reading would have compared me to a man dying of thirst who was gulping down some fresh, pure water... Lighting my lamp with extraordinary caution, I threw myself hungrily into the reading. An easy eloquence, effortless and animated, carried me from one page to the next without my noticing it. A clock struck off the hours in the silence of the shadows, and I heard nothing. My lamp began to run out of oil and produced only a pale light, but I still read on. I could not even take out time to raise the wick for fear of interrupting my pleasure. How those ideas rushed into my brain! How my intelligence adopted them!”