[14] See the Memoirs of Collé—his wife.
[15] Physiologists, who understand our organs, tell you: "Injustice, in the relations of social life, produces harshness, diffidence and misery."
BOOK III
SCATTERED FRAGMENTS
Under this title, which I would willingly have made still more modest, I have brought together, without excessive severity, a selection made from three or four hundred playing cards, on which I found a few lines scrawled in pencil. That which, I suppose, must be called the original manuscript, for want of a simpler name, was in many places made up of pieces of paper of all sizes, written on in pencil, and joined together by Lisio with sealing-wax, to save him the trouble of copying them afresh. He told me once that nothing he ever noted down seemed to him worth the trouble of recopying an hour later. I have entered so fully into all this in the hope that it may serve as an excuse for repetitions.
I
Everything can be acquired in solitude, except character.