The psychological problem is clear enough, and the solution is not hard. Other children of men, animated by a desire to produce something new, give themselves neither rest nor peace in the pursuit of their object, but they hide the true motive which instigates them under a mask of modesty; they pretend to be the unwilling instruments of fate. I frankly admit that what animated me was the indomitable ambition to do something out of the common, something that would make me famous. I think I must have been born with this fire in my veins, this devil in my flesh. The confession brings no blush of shame to my face, for now in my seventieth year, looking back upon the thorny path of my life, I am fully convinced it was this longing for fame and the insatiable thirst for activity in the early stages of my career which were at the bottom of all the inconsistencies of my life. On the one hand, the desire to put to some practical use the experience and the knowledge I had gained urged me on to take an active part in whatever was going on in Europe or Asia, while, on the other, my natural propensities, or, perhaps more correctly, the poverty and simplicity of my bringing up, made me lean more towards a quiet, contemplative life and the retirement of my own study. The severe rules of etiquette and the demands of society, where everybody is so important in his own eyes, have ever been distasteful to me, and often when I mixed with the leading people of the diplomatic world or of high life I felt wearied with the empty talk and hollow, would-be importance of these folks. These feelings were not calculated to lit me for a diplomatic career, for, notwithstanding my eminently practical turn of mind, I was anything but a man of the world.