I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.

I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.