I hate to read. The mere thought of unfamiliar pages bores me. I can read only what I already know. My bedside book is Father Figueiredo’s Rhetoric, where every night I read yet again for the thousandth time, in correct and clerical Portuguese, the descriptions of various figures of speech, whose names I still haven’t learned. But the language lulls me....., and I’d sleep fitfully were I to miss out on the Jesuitical words written with c.*

I must, however, give credit to the exaggerated purism of Father Figueiredo’s book for the relative care I take – as much as I can muster

– to write correctly the language in which I express myself.....

And I read:

(a passage from Father Figueiredo)

– pompous, empty[?] and cold,

and this helps me forget life.

Or this:

(a passage about figures of speech),

which returns in the preface.

I’m not exaggerating a verbal smidgen: I feel all this.

As others read passages from the Bible, I read them from this Rhetoric. But I have two advantages: complete repose and lack of devotion.