VIa
"You like Andersen's Tales?" he asked thoughtfully. "I couldn't make them out when they first appeared in the translation of Marko Vovtchok, but about ten years later I took up the book and read it, and suddenly realized with great clearness that Andersen was very lonely—very. I don't know about his life, but he seems to have lived loosely and to have travelled a great deal, but that only confirms my feeling that he was lonely. And because of that he addressed himself to the young, although it's a mistake to imagine that children pity a man more than grown-ups do. Children pity nothing; they do not know what pity is."