I had never found anything, not even a friend.

I was a poor man stranded for a day in a boarding-house room where everybody comes and everybody goes.

And yet I longed for glory! For glory bound to me like a miraculous wound that I should feel and everybody would talk about.

I longed for a following of which I should be the leader, my name acclaimed under the heavens like a new clarion call.
But I felt my grandeur slip away.

My childish imagination played in vain with those boundless fancies.