“We have to take the same sort of pre-cautions as a lion tamer. If he has the misfortune, before going in the cage, to cut himself while shaving, what a feast for the creatures ... I realized that all at once. On the day when suspicion arrived that, perhaps, I was not such an admirable man. Since then, I have become weary. If I bled a little, then all was lost: they would devour me.”