"Do you know what's even worse? It's not being able to read the damned newspapers. You have to be in the trade to understand that.... Sometimes at night, when I am coming home, I buy one just for the smell of the fresh, moist paper, and newsprint.... It's so good! But there's not a soul willing to read it to me! My wife could, but she doesn't want to. She makes out that there are indecent things in the news items. Ah-ha! these old mistresses, once they marry you, there's no one more prudish. That Madame Bixiou has turned herself into a right little bigot--but only as far as it suits her!... It was she who wanted to me rub my eyes in Salette water. And then there was the blessed bread, the pilgrimages, the Holy Child, the Chinese herbal remedies, and God knows what else.... We're up to our necks in good works. And yet, it would be a real kindness to read the papers to me.... But there you are, there's no chance, she simply doesn't want to.... If my daughter was still at home, she would; but since I became blind, I've sent her to the Notre-Dame-des-Arts, so there'd be one less mouth to feed.... "Now there's another one sent to test me! She's only had nine years on earth and already she's had every imaginable illness... And miserable! And ugly! Uglier than I am, if that's possible ... a real monster!... What do you expect? I have never known how to face up to my responsibilities.... "Well, what good company I turned out to be, boring you with my family business. And what's it all got to do with you?... Come on, give me a bit more brandy. I'd better be off. When I leave here, I am off to the public information service and the ushers are not famed for their sense of humour. They're all retired teachers." I poured him some brandy. He sipped it and then seemed moved by something.... Suddenly, on a whim, I think, he got up, glass in hand, and briefly moved his blind, viper-like head around, with the amiable smile of someone about to speak, and then speaking in a strident voice, as if holding forth to a banquet for two hundred, "To the arts! To literature! To the press!" And there he stood, spouting a toast for fully ten minutes. It was the most wild, the most marvellous improvisation which his clown's brain could devise.