Why should I take the occasion of such distinguished honours to say that I begin to see deeper into Gustave Flaubert's doleful refrain about the hatred of literature?
I refer you again to the perverse constitution of man.
"The Princess is a massive lady with the organisation of an athlete and the confusion of tongues of a valet de place.

She contrives to commit herself extraordinarily little in a great many languages, and is entertained and conversed with in detachments and relays, like an institution which goes on from generation to generation or a big building contracted for under a forfeit.

She can't have a personal taste any more than, when her husband succeeds, she can have a personal crown, and her opinion on any matter is rusty and heavy and plain--made, in the night of ages, to last and be transmitted.

I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some custode for my glimpse of it.

She has been told everything in the world and has never perceived anything, and the echoes of her education respond awfully to the rash footfall--I mean the casual remark--in the cold Valhalla of her memory.