Among really serious and intelligent workers, there is a certain aversion toward those who advertise what they do by turning it into fine words. We had not been at the Lycée or at the Sorbonne together, but we did separately follow courses given by some of the same lecturers (and I remember Saint-Loup’s smile) who, when they gave a particularly noteworthy course, as some of them did, tried to make themselves look like men of genius by giving an ambitious name to their theories. Whenever we talked about this Robert would laugh out loud. Naturally, our instinctive predilection was not for the
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