I have already said that I was extraordinarily childish for my years.
If the personage I then was could but be brought into the presence of
the little Parisian boys of twelve or thirteen, educated according to
the more perfect modern method, who at so early an age declaim, discuss
and harangue, and entertain all sorts of political ideas, I would, I am
sure, be struck dumb by their discourses, and how singular they would
find me and with what disdain they would treat me!
I am myself astonished at the childishness that I displayed in certain
ways, for in artistic perception and imagination, in spite of my lack
of method, and lack of real knowledge, I was incontestably more advanced
than are the majority of boys of my age; if that youthful journal,
the strip of paper wrapped about a reed in the similitude of a
conjuring-book, of which I spoke a short time ago, were still in
existence it would emphasize twenty fold this pale record, on which it
seems to me there has already fallen the dust of ages.