'We reached his room about eleven. To do what? Not a blessed thing but to sit before a fire and talk and read again.... On his shelf was ... Edmund Rostand's [italics] Cyrano de Bergerac [end italics] in the original French. I started to read the famous speech on his nose. My good friend went ahead with me line for line without the book. Then he in turn read the "Non merci" speech with immense gusto.'