I know I could master the difficulties in a week, and read any book in the language at the end of a month, but I have not the courage to attempt it.

If there had not been really something in me, idleness would have ruined me.' "I said that I was surprised at the great accuracy of his information, considering how desultory his reading had been.

'My accuracy as to facts,' he said, 'I owe to a cause which many men would not confess.
It is due to my love of castle-building.

The past is in my mind soon constructed into a romance.' He then went on to describe the way in which from his childhood his imagination had been filled by the study of history.

'With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events.
Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows.