As for me, I have been disliked all my life, since I was the tiniest child, and have learned to live with it, because the few people I myself have liked have always liked me back – all except for L. His calumny, therefore, had a rare power over me. Hearing the dreadful things he had said about me, it seemed to me there was nothing stable, no actual truth in all the universe, save the immutable one, that nothing exists except what one creates for oneself. To realise this is to bid a last and lonely farewell to dreams.
