“Oh, what stupidity! What have you written? Throw it away. I can’t understand a word of it.”
At this interruption I would stop writing and say:
“What is that?”
And he would go on: “Rub out that nonsense. I will tell you what to say, and you can put quotation marks.”
“Don’t you want to sign it, too?” I asked, laughing.
But I agreed to what he proposed, and was always satisfied with what he did. In the end I accepted his services absolutely.
“Fiam,” I would sometimes say, “I am tired. I don’t feel like thinking. Tell me what to write.”
And he would shout at me: “Lazy fellow, if I weren’t here what would you do? Well, just this once” ... and he would dictate page after page.
Dear little Fiam, how good he was!