He thought of his hopes and expectations and the absence of language for most of them. There were euphemisms, there were male group brutalities, there were books. He did not want, above all, to think at this time of his own previous life, so he thought about books. He walked up and down by that sharp-smoky fire of seacoals and remembered Shakespeare’s Troilus: What will it be When that the wat’ry palate tastes indeed Love’s thrice-repured nectar? He thought of Honoré de Balzac, from whom he had learned much, some of it erroneous, some of it simply too French to be useful in the
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