'The clerk who cashes my cheques at the bank is quite a bright, intelligent-looking boy. To-day I had a copy of [italics] Bouvard et Pecuchet [end italics]. He looked at it with curiosity then said "I expect you think I'm rude, looking like that. But I used to read a lot of those sorts of books once" "What sort of books?" "Oh, yellow books like that. I picked up a lot in a booksellers. But mine were much bigger than that" "What were they?" "Oh I don't remember their names or what they were about" "Do you remember the authors?" "Can't say I do. I seem to remember one was some sort of a Japanese story" "And they were in French?" "Oh yes, in French of course".'